Editing Thomas Paine (section)

===In ''Pennsylvania Magazine''===
Paine barely survived the transatlantic voyage. The ship's water supplies were bad and [[typhoid fever]] killed five passengers. On arriving at Philadelphia, he was too sick to disembark. Benjamin Franklin's physician, there to welcome Paine to America, had him carried off ship; Paine took six weeks to recover. He became a citizen of Pennsylvania "by taking the oath of allegiance at a very early period".<ref>Conway, Moncure Daniel, 1892. ''The Life of Thomas Paine'' vol. 1, p. 209.</ref> In March 1775, he became editor of the ''Pennsylvania Magazine'', a position he conducted with considerable ability.<ref name="larkin3140">{{cite book |last1=Larkin |first1=Edward |title=Thomas Paine and the Literature of Revolution |date=2005 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |pages=31–40 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=u5z2iRUemxMC |access-date=December 1, 2018 |isbn=978-1139445986 |archive-date=February 4, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210204235328/https://books.google.com/books?id=u5z2iRUemxMC |url-status=live }}</ref>

Before Paine's arrival in America, sixteen magazines had been founded in the colonies and ultimately failed, each featuring substantial content and reprints from England. In late 1774, Philadelphia printer [[Robert Aitken (publisher)|Robert Aitken]] announced his plan to create what he called an "American Magazine" with content derived from the colonies.<ref name="larkin3140" /> Paine contributed two pieces to the magazine's inaugural issue dated January 1775, and Aitken hired Paine as the Magazine's editor one month later. Under Paine's leadership, the magazine's readership rapidly expanded, achieving a greater circulation in the colonies than any American magazine up until that point.<ref name="larkin3140" /> While Aitken had conceived of the magazine as nonpolitical, Paine brought a strong political perspective to its content, writing in its first issue that "every heart and hand seem to be engaged in the interesting struggle for ''American Liberty.''"<ref name="larkin3140" />

Paine wrote in the ''Pennsylvania Magazine'' that such a publication should become a "nursery of genius" for a nation that had "now outgrown the state of infancy," exercising and educating American minds, and shaping American morality.<ref name="larkin3140" /> On March 8, 1775, the ''Pennsylvania Magazine'' published an unsigned abolitionist essay titled ''African Slavery in America''.<ref name="LoA" /> The essay is often attributed to Paine on the basis of a letter by [[Benjamin Rush]], recalling Paine's claim of authorship to the essay.<ref name="LoA">{{cite book |title=American Antislavery Writings: Colonial Beginnings to Emancipation |date=2012 |publisher=Library of America |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JuG3IKMYdIYC |access-date=December 1, 2018 |isbn=978-1598532142 |archive-date=August 19, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200819133421/https://books.google.com/books?id=JuG3IKMYdIYC |url-status=live }}</ref> The essay attacked slavery as an "execrable commerce" and "outrage against Humanity and Justice."<ref name="LoA" />

Consciously appealing to a broader and more working-class audience, Paine also used the magazine to discuss worker rights to production. This shift in the conceptualization of politics has been described as a part of "the 'modernization' of political consciousness," and the mobilization of ever greater sections of society into political life.<ref name="larkin3140" /><ref name="jpgreen">{{cite journal |last1=Green |first1=Jack |title=Paine, America, and the "Modernization" of Political Consciousness |journal=Political Science Quarterly |date=1978 |volume=93 |issue=1 |pages=73–92 |doi=10.2307/2149051 |jstor=2149051  |issn = 0032-3195}}</ref>