Document · December 19, 1776
The American Crisis, No. I
newspaper essay and broadside · Thomas Paine
Read in context
Paine had marched with the retreating army from Fort Lee toward Pennsylvania. The essay is therefore neither detached philosophy nor a neutral campaign chronicle. It is persuasion written inside a military emergency, when British forces held New York, Patriot authority in New Jersey was fragile, and many enlistments would expire at year’s end.
Why it matters
The opening maxim is famous enough to conceal the essay’s specificity. Paine names Fort Lee, Hackensack, Newark, British occupation, Loyalist choices, and the limits of temporary field forts. Read whole, it links personal fidelity, military survival, and the Declaratory Act’s claim to bind the colonies “in all cases whatsoever.”
Selected passage
These are the times that try men’s souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.
Provenance and locator
The local research copy is the Library of Congress scan of the 1776 Boston broadside. The opening appears on the first printed page; Paine’s first-person account of the Fort Lee retreat begins later on that same broadside sequence. Spelling and punctuation vary among early printings, so quotations on the site should identify the edition used.