Anne Bradstreet, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine

Public Good

In 1780, Paine published a pamphlet entitled "Public Good," in which he made the case that territories west of the 13 colonies that had been part of the British Empire belonged after the Declaration of Independence to the American government, and did not belong to any of the 13 states or to any individual speculators. A royal charter of 1609 had granted to the Virginia Company land stretching to the Pacific Ocean. A small group of wealthy Virginia land speculators, including the Washington, Lee, and Randolph families, had taken advantage of this royal charter to survey and to claim title to huge swaths of land, including much land west of the 13 colonies. In "Public Good," Paine argued that these lands belonged to the American government as represented by the Continental Congress. This angered many of Paine's wealthy Virginia friends, including Richard Henry Lee of the powerful Lee family, who had been Paine's closest ally in Congress, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, all of whom had claimed to huge wild tracts that Paine was advocating should be government owned. The view that Paine had advocated eventually prevailed when the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 was passed.
The animosity Paine felt as a result of the publication of "Public Good" fueled his decision to embark with Lieutenant Colonel John Laurens on a mission to travel to Paris to obtain funding for the American war effort.^[54]