On December 8, 1776, Thomas Paine (while serving with General Greene in the retreat from New York) arrived in Philadelphia. “In what I may call a passion of patriotism,” he remembered, he “wrote the first number of the Crisis.”

This was to be the first in a series of 18 essays collectively called “The American Crisis,” Paine’s major writing effort for the remainder of the war. They were printed at his own expense. He turned over all profits to the American cause.

“Crisis One” is familiar: it begins “These are the times that try men’s souls….” Some say that his invigorating words carried the day for Washington’s troops in Trenton on Christmas Day.

It was in “Crisis Two” that Paine wrote the phrase “The United States of America” for the first time in history. It quickly caught on.

–Jack Fruchtman, Jr., Thomas Paine: Apostle of Freedom