Encyclopedia of Social Reform: "The 'Crisis' exerted wide influence for Independence and Republicanism." Albert Bushnell Hart, LL.D.: "The 'Crisis' [sixteen numbers], written by Paine between 1776 and 1783, exercised an enormous influence over men and events during the Revolution." Albert Payson Terhune: "He plunged, heart and soul, into the struggle for freedom. His 'Common Sense' and other pamphlets [the 'Crisis'] were such strong and eloquent pleas for liberty that Washington ordered some of them read aloud to the patriot armies." National Cyclopedia of American Biography: "Its [the 'Crisis'] initial number was, by the order of General Washington, read aloud to each regiment and to each detachment." William S. Stryker: "The effect of its strong patriotic sentences was apparent upon the spirits of the army." George T. Cram: "The whole patriot army was inspirited by it." Werner's Encyclopedia (Ed. 1899): "Its opening words, 'These are the times that try men's souls,' became a battle cry." Norman Hapgood, LL.B.: "The last sentence [of the first 'Crisis'] sounds like a prophecy and the first sentence, 'These are the times that try men's souls,' was the watchword [at the battle of Trenton]." George Lippard: "In the full prime of early manhood, he joins the army of the Revolution; he shares the crust and the cold with Washington and his men; he is with those brave soldiers on the toilsome march, with them by the camp fire, with them in the hour of battle. "Is the day dark? Has the battle been bloody? Do the American soldiers despair? Hark! that printing press yonder, which moves with the American camp in all its wanderings, is scattering pamphlets through the ranks of the army--pamphlets written by the author-soldier; written sometimes on the head of a drum, or by the midnight fire, or amid the corpses of the dead." "Such words as these stirred up the starved Continentals to the attack on Trenton, and there in the dawn of that glorious morning, George Washington, standing sword in hand over the dead body of the Hessian Rhol, confessed the magic influence of the author-hero's pen." "Under that cloud, by Washington's side, was silently at work the force that lifted it. Marching by day, listening to the consultations of Washington and his generals, Paine wrote by the camp fires; the winter storms, the Delaware waves, were mingled with his ink; the half-naked soldiers in their troubled sleep dreaming of their distant homes, the skulking deserter creeping off in the dusk, the pallid face of the heavy-hearted commander, made the awful shadows beneath which was written that leaflet."--_Dr. Conway_.