About the Authors

Thomas Paine, Abijah Adams, Thomas Young, and Joshua Wyeth are pseudonyms for four liberal political operatives who have worked in the Democratic Party, in our government, as well as on Democratic and liberal issue campaigns. They continue to do so, despite everything...

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Thomas Paine - from Wikipedia:

(England, 29 January 1737 – 8 June 1809, New York City, USA) was a pamphleteer, revolutionary, radical, liberal and intellectual. Born in Great Britain, he lived in America, having migrated to the American colonies just in time to take part in the American Revolution, mainly as the author of the powerful, widely read pamphlet, Common Sense (1776), advocating independence for the American Colonies from the Kingdom of Great Britain and of The American Crisis, supporting the Revolution.

Later, Paine was a great influence on the French Revolution. He wrote the Rights of Man (1791) as a guide to the ideas of the Enlightenment. Despite an inability to speak French, he was elected to the French National Assembly in 1792. Regarded as an ally of the Girondists, he was seen with increasing disfavour by the Montagnards and in particular by Robespierre.

Paine was arrested in Paris and imprisoned in December 1793; he was released in 1794. He became notorious with his book, The Age of Reason (1793-94), which advocated deism and took issue with Christian doctrines. While in France, he also wrote a pamphlet titled Agrarian Justice (1795), which discussed the origins of property and introduced a concept that is similar to a guaranteed minimum income.

Paine remained in France during the early Napoleonic Era, but condemned Napoleon's moves towards dictatorship, calling him "the completest charlatan that ever existed." Paine remained in France until 1802, when he returned to America on an invitation from Thomas Jefferson, who had been elected president.

Paine died in New York City, 1809.

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Abijah Adams was trained as a tailor in Boston in 1754. He contributed to the Committees of Correspondence as a pamphleteer rousing fellow colonists to action against the British. In 1799, he took a job with the newspaper the Independent Chroncile, a Jeffersonian newspaper controlled by his brother, Thomas Adams.

That same year, he was indicated for libel in a case filed based on the newspaper's stand on the Alien and Sedition Acts, for which he received a short jail sentence. The following year, he was promoted to the position of editor, which he shared with Ebenezer Rhodes.

In 1811, he received a conviction for libel arising from his comments on the conduct in office of Theophilus Parsons, who was at the time the Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.

After President John Adams (the architect of the Alien and Sedition Act) was defeated by Thomas Jefferson in 1800, and the Alien and Sedition Acts repealed as authoritarian, Abijah Adams was pardoned - along with all of the other newspaper editors who had been imprisoned for criticizing Conservative political figures. He died in 1816.

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Thomas Young was an an American radical during the American Revolutionary War who advocated for independence from Britain. He was a participant in the Boston Tea Party along with Paul Revere, and was a member of the Continental Congress.

Young was a mentor for Ethan Allen and was mentored politically by Samuel Adams, with whom he had a number of public correspondences. He also suggested the name of Vermont for the new state north of Massachusetts, which was originally called New Connecticut. The underlying reasoning was a desire to honor the area hardcore guerrillas, the Green Mountain Boys.

Young, like Thomas Paine, advocated for a strongly democratic Pennsylvania constitution. Young favored the working class and western farmers, and he supported a redistribution of wealth clause in the proposed constitution that was later removed by more conservative influences. Still, Young supported the final result and suggested to Vermont's constitutional convention that Vermont's constitution be modeled on the Pennsylvania one, which it was.

The medical profession in revolutionary America was in flux, and there was a lack of licensing. Young supported creating a licensing regime and Regulatory Agencies run by state legislatures, and published his defense of the medical profession in a Boston newspaper.

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Joshua Wyeth

From the Boston Tea Party Historical Society: The first published account of the Boston Tea Party by a participant was recorded from the words of Joshua Wyeth. He was just sixteen when he joined other patriots in boarding the tea ships in Boston Harbor. Mr. Wyeth told his story to a journalist in Cincinnati where he lived during his later years. The account was published in 1826, 53 years after the event has occurred.

Here is Wyeth's account of the Boston Tea Party:

"I had but a few hours warning of what was intended to be done… To prevent discovery we agreed to wear ragged clothes and disfigure ourselves, dressing to resemble Indians… Our most intimate friends among the spectators had not the least knowledge of us… At the appointed hour, we met in an old building at… the wharf, and fell in one after another, as if by accident, as not to excite suspicion. We placed a sentry at the end of the wharf, another in the middle, and one on the bow of each ship as we took possession. We boarded the ship moored by the wharf, and ordered the captain and crew to open the hatchways, and hand us the hoisting tackle and rope, assuring them that no harm was intended them. Some of our numbers then jumped into the hold, and passed the chests to the tackle. As they were hauled on deck others knocked them open with axes, and others raised them to the railings and discharged their contents overboard. All who were not needed on this ship went on board the others where the same ceremonies were repeated. We were merry, in an undertone, at the idea of making so large a cup of tea for the fishes but we used not more words than absolutely necessary. I never worked harder in my life. While we were unloading, the people collected in great numbers about the wharf to see what was going on. They crowded around us. Our sentries were not armed, and could not stop any who insisted on passing."