Good Day,

Thomas Jefferson, our podcast listeners,

and thank you for listening.

The second installment of our Thomas Jefferson Book Club.

The first one was on First Families

about John and Abigail Adams by our friend Joseph Ellis.

And then we chose common sense by Thomas Payne, that pamphlet that sold over 500,000 copies and

probably changed the course of human history.

Amazing fellow, Jefferson and Payne were friends and after, in Payne

during the French Revolution he was imprisoned

I don't know if you know the story but he was imprisoned and he was he was on the

list of people to be beheaded you've told you know we didn't get to that in this show.

That's such an amazing story with the white ex. Yeah, so they're going in the

every day the the radicals of Robes Pierre's faction would go into the prisons and they would take a piece of chalk and

mark on the door the people that were to be taken out and beheaded that day.

And Payne was very ill near death and he always made friends amongst the working class he was

working class and so the jailer said well I know you're not going to escape

I'll open your door so you can get a little fresh air. And by opening the door,

he inadvertently hid the X. If the door had been closed, the lynch mob that came in to take these people out to be beheaded would have pulled pain and he would have suffered under the guillotine that day, but because the door was open, they didn't see the X, and they passed him by.

And then shortly thereafter, Ropesbyer fell and Thomas Payne was released from prison.

It's really a fascinating book, the arguments, the structure of the book, and how he convinces the citizens

of that time that now is the time and how bad it would be to stay connected to the monarchy of Great Britain.

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