Owned by Manhattan Project Scientist, Assistant to Chief of Scientific Branch of the War Department (1946-7) and notable scientist and historian of science Erwin Hiebert.
“I Trust We May Live To See The Stars & Stripes Floating Over The Citadel Over Quebec.”
“If it has been the means of bringing peace then my sacrifice to that end would not have been too great.”
Paine, as Clerk of Pennsylvania’s General Assembly, transmits a resolution to the state’s Supreme Executive Council [no longer enclosed- but about the boundary with Virginia] and requests that it be forwarded to the governor of that state. After years of wrangling, the two states had finally agreed that summer to settle their dispute by extending the Mason-Dixon line.
Paine was involved in Pennsylvania politics for several years after his arrival in America in 1774 - he was associated with the men who drafted the state's new constitution in 1776, and Paine wrote a series of letters in local newspapers supporting the constitution. In 1777 Paine was elected to the Committee of Correspondence of the Whig Society in Pennsylvania. Needing other employment in order to supplement his income as a writer, he was appointed clerk of the Pennsylvania Assembly in November, 1779, shortly after resigning his position as secretary of foreign affairs for the Continental Congress. Any manuscript material from Thomas Paine, especially during the era of the American Revolution, is rare.