Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine had every right to be upset at the English for imposing their taxes on them.  The American colonies were going on with their lives and the English were not bothering them.  The English pretty much just ignored them, which right or wrong is what they did.  So when England began to lose more and more money, they began to in a way panic and went out and tried to find ways to make money.  The easiest way to make money, although you can not do it without argument, is to make people give you their money.  It does not require as much work as many other ways do, in trying to get money.  So what do the English do?  They taxed the American colonies, in order to get their money back.  I am sure nobody in the colonies would be very happy with that.  Here the English do not really treat you with much respect, and they ignore you.  They do not interact whatsoever with you, but then all of the sudden they come and tax you.  It is definitely a rude thing to do, looking from the colonies perspective.  It is kind of like a person who never talks to you and is always somewhat rude to you.  They think they are so much above you that it will hurt their reputation to interact with you.  So they never talk to you, but than one day, they decide to come up and tell you to help them with their homework.  They are not asking you, they are making you help.  Although you may be mad, most people are going to go along (angrily) with what they said, and this is kind of like what happened with the English and the colonies.  Thomas Paine agreed that they had to do something and they "lay their shoulders to the wheel... when so great an object is at stake" (Paine 136).  It goes along with the rationalist period because, you need to stand up for what you believe in and what is right.  Paine was not going to let the English walk all over them so he did something about it.
I think that Paine was not writing to a specific group.  I think he was writing to anybody that could get ahold of what he had written. He wanted to show people that what the English were doing was not right, and by writing this, he could not only get to the people on his side, but also to the people who were unsure or on the other side of what Paine believed.  He was trying to write this to change the other sides view, and to show them that they must fight for what they believe is true.  I believe that Paine did an excellent job in writing this, because he used a rationalist way of writing.  He told them what was wrong with evidence and than said what they should do to solve the situation going on between the two sides.

Paine, Thomas. "The Crisis, No. 1." Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 132-136. Print.