Who Came up with "The United States Of America"

Did you ever wonder who originally came up with the name United States of America?

You can thank Thomas Paine for your countries name. You can also thank him for writing Common Sense and his articles called "The American Crisis" that Washington had read to his troops to bolster their confidence.

Thomas Paine was another founding member of our nation. Like many of the founders he was also a deist. While he languished in a Paris Jail awaiting execution as an enemy of the State, he wrote his last work "The Age of Reason"

This little book was warmly recieved in most countries but not in America. Even though it was dedicated to the USA and to President Washington. Paine argued in this last book that a revolution in theology was needed to follow up on the revolution in government. If not he feared that simple atheism would gradually take over the world.

To Paine all the great religions were nothing but myths. He called Christianity, "an amphibious fraud". This did not endear him to American Christians. However the reformers in Europe, long oppressed more directly by imperious churchmen, eat it up!

Paine was rescued from execution.

In Paris, where he had lived, there is a plaque that reads, "Thomas Paine. Englishman by birth. American by choice. French by decree. Citizen of the World."

Thomas Edison, the inventor, had this to say about Paine:

"I have always regarded Paine as one of the greatest of all Americans. Never have we had a sounder intelligence in this republic… It was my good fortune to encounter Thomas Paine's works in my boyhood… it was, indeed, a revelation to me to read that great thinker's views on political and theological subjects. Paine educated me then about many matters of which I had never before thought. I remember very vividly the flash of enlightenment that shone from Paine's writings and I recall thinking at that time, 'What a pity these works are not today the schoolbooks for all children!' My interest in Paine was not satisfied by my first reading of his works. I went back to them time and again, just as I have done since my boyhood days"

Abraham Lincoln wrote a paper defending Paine's Deism but his friend burned the paper to save Lincoln's political career.