“...  Many of the soldiers were shoeless and left bloody footprints on the snow-covered line of march.  All were but half-hearted at this time and many utterly discouraged.  Washington wrote most apprehensively concerning the situation to the Congress.  Paine, in the meantime (himself a soldier, with General Greene’s army on the retreat from Fort Lee, New Jersey, to Newark), realising the necessity of at once instilling renewed hope and courage in the soldiers if the cause of liberty was to be saved, wrote by campfire at night the first number of his soul-stirring ‘Crisis.’”

It was before Trenton that those weary and disheartened soldiers,—­ragged, barefoot, half frozen and more than half starved—­first heard the words that have echoed down the years: 

     "These are the times that try men’s souls!"

They answered that call; every man of them answered Paine’s heart cry, as they took up their muskets again.  It was with that immortal sentence as a war slogan, that the Battle of Trenton was won.

Is it any wonder that in England the “Crisis” was ordered to be burned by the hangman?  It was a more formidable enemy than anything ever devised in the shape of steel or powder!

A list of Paine’s services to this country would be too long to set down here.  The Association dedicated to his memory and honour cites twenty-four important reasons why he stands among the very first and noblest figures in American history.  And there are dozens more that they don’t cite.  He did things that were against possibility.  When the patriot cause was weak for lack of money he gave a year’s salary to start a bank to finance the army, and coaxed, commanded and hypnotised other people into subscribing enough to carry it.  He went to Paris and induced the French King to give $6,000,000 to American independence.  He wrote “Rights of Man” and the “Age of Reason,”—­and, incidentally, was outlawed in England and imprisoned in France!  He did more and received less compensation for what he did, either in worldly goods or in gratitude, than any figure in relatively recent history.

America, though—­I hear you say!—­America, for whom he fought and laboured and sacrificed himself:  she surely appreciated his efforts?  Listen.  On his return from Europe, America disfranchised him, ostracised him and repudiated him, refusing, among other indignities, to let him ride in public coaches.

So be it.  He is not the first great man who has found the world thankless.  Oddly enough, it troubled him little in comparison with the satisfaction he felt in seeing his exalted projects meet with success.  So that good things were effectually accomplished, he cared not a whit who got the credit.

In reference to the charges against him of being “an infidel,” or guilty of “infidelity,” he himself, with that straightforward and happy confidence which made some men call him a braggart, wrote: