Thomas Paine and Robert Treat Pain: A Case of Mistaken Identity

Abstract

Lesser points out there is a confusion, unusual in these days of precise scholarship, in the Thomas Paine bibliography, caused not by the authorship of the song, "Adams and Liberty," also known as "The Boston Patriotic Song," but by the errors which enabled the work to appear in two of the four complete editions of Thomas Paine's works. The real author of the song is Robert Treat Paine, Jr., a prominent Massachusetts Federalist, and the son of one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.  The author corrects this error.