I don't usually provide biographies of the persons quoted but Paine is such a fascinating character that I will provide a brief one.
He was on the spot for so many important historical events that he reminds me of Forrest Gump.
From Wikipedia:
Thomas Paine (29 January 1737 – 8 June 1809) was an English pamphleteer, revolutionary, radical, inventor and intellectual. He lived and worked in Britain until age 37, when he emigrated to the British American colonies, in time to participate in the American Revolution. His principal contribution was the powerful, widely-read pamphlet Common Sense (1776), advocating colonial America's independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain, and of The American Crisis (1776–1783), a pro-revolutionary pamphlet series.
