An imagined gathering
1776 · Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Paine gathers Franklin, Jefferson, and Henry in the year of Common Sense and argues for a republic without kings.
Common Sense has made Paine famous almost overnight, and his rooms have become a meeting place for the men pushing the colonies toward independence. Franklin, who brought him to America two years earlier, is pleased and a little astonished at his success.
Jefferson, at work on the declaration, shares Paine's view of natural rights but writes more carefully. Henry needs no persuading and talks about the coming war. Paine, who has no patience for ceremony, serves a plain supper and keeps the talk on the argument that matters: that government by hereditary right is an insult to reason, and that the colonies should be free. They eat hasty pudding, fried oysters, and johnnycake, with apple tart and spruce beer, and Paine promises the next pamphlet before the summer is out.
Host: Thomas Paine
Benjamin Franklin — Paine's patron, who had encouraged him to come to America.
Thomas Jefferson — At work on the declaration and sympathetic to Paine's argument.
Patrick Henry — Already committed to independence and spoiling for the fight.
First course
a period dish
First course
a period dish
Side
a period dish
Drink
a period dish
Thomas Paine
Paine's 1776 pamphlet, which argued in plain prose that monarchy is absurd and independence is the only honorable course.
Thomas Paine
Paine's reply to Burke, defending the French Revolution and grounding government in the rights of each generation.
Thomas Paine
Paine's attack on revealed religion, which made him a hero of freethinkers and cost him his American reputation.
This gathering is an editorial recreation grounded in the biographies of those present; it did not necessarily take place as described.