https://www.lewrockwell.com/2026/01/george-f-smith/thomas-paine-libertys-hated-torchbearer/

Thomas Paine, Liberty's Hated Torchbearer
By George F. Smith

January 10 should be a special date in American history. On January 10, 1776, Thomas Paine’s Common Sense rolled off the press in Philadelphia and ignited a drive for independence. As Murray Rothbard wrote,“Tom Paine had, at a single blow, become the voice of the American Revolution and the greatest single force in propelling it to completion and independence.”

When Thomas Paine’s ship pulled into Baltimore harbor on October 30, 1802, a large gathering of friends and admirers were waiting at dockside to welcome him back. Others stood by as well, some filled with loathing, merely to observe a famous figure. Since leaving the United States in 1787 to find a builder for his iron bridge, Paine had authored some of the most incendiary tracts of the 18th century, had been imprisoned and narrowly escaped Robespierre’s guillotine, and was widely reported to be a drunk and an atheist.

When he journeyed to Federal City on November 5 to pay his respects to the country’s third president, he found that he needed an alias and help from a presidential aide to get a room at Lovell’s, the city’s only hotel. As he later wrote a friend and future biographer, Thomas Clio Rickman,

You can have no idea of the agitation which my arrival occasioned. From New Hampshire to Georgia (an extent of 1,500 miles), every newspaper was filled with applause or abuse.

The source of the abuse was the Federalist press, a collection of newspaper editors and writers who were the big-government allies of Alexander Hamilton and his Federalist Party. Thomas Jefferson, the new president, had unseated Federalist John Adams and many of his congressional cohorts in what Jefferson called the “Revolution of 1800.” ...... More on link above ^