Somewhere on the list would be Paine—Robert Treat Paine, a Harvard graduate and signer of the Declaration. And, grudgingly for some, another Paine but without a middle name—Thomas Paine—who lacked any of the usual credentials to be considered a founder.

Thomas Paine did not sign any of the founding documents, either the Declaration or the Constitution. Yet there is strong evidence he drafted the Declaration. He was not a Harvard graduate, a successful lawyer, a prominent landowner, or a wealthy banker. He was not a member of the Continental Congress. He never held political office at any level. His only military experience was as an aide-de-camp for Major General Nathanael Greene.

Thomas Paine was "a man who had failed as a skilled craftsman, as a teacher, as a shopkeeper, as a street preacher, as a petty customs official in the Excise, dismissed more than once and a sometime debtor and bankrupt." In short, a nobody. At his death in 1809 he was one of the most despised people in the country.

Yet, without Thomas Paine, America might have become like Canada—a self-governing dominion under the Crown rather than an independent republic. Without Paine, we don't get Common Sense and his clarion call for independence from England.

Even at the time of its publication in January 1776, most colonists still considered themselves loyal British subjects fighting for their rights as Englishmen. Neither words nor arms had changed that conviction. In Jefferson's A Summary View of the Rights of British America published in July, 1774 he repeatedly (58 times) refers to King George III as "his majesty" while repeatedly criticizing his policies and hoping for a restoration of colonial rights as British subjects. He ends his essay with this plea:

. . .that you will be pleased to interpose with that efficacy which your earnest endeavours may ensure to procure redress of these our great grievances, to quiet the minds of your subjects in British America, against any apprehensions of future encroachment, to establish fraternal love and harmony through the whole empire, and that these may continue to the latest ages of time, is the fervent prayer of all British America!

In other words, we are on our knees begging you for relief. Whoever Jefferson's words might have moved, it didn't include Parliament, the king, or most American colonists.

By April 19, the longstanding quarrel with England had erupted into armed conflict on the Lexington Common, and, on June 17, the British pyrrhic victory at Bunker's Hill had convinced Americans that their militia—led by Colonel William Prescott, a man who would fight you to the gates of hell—could stand against British regulars.