What is A Owen Aldridge's opinion of Thomas Paine's The Crisis in his article?

Aldridge writes about how Paine's work is regarded as a
political treatise, but actually reads more of exhortations with a "cheerful gloom"
tone.  Aldridge analyzes the impact that Paine's work holds, a work that he notes
receives much less analysis than his other pamphlet, Common
Sense. Aldridge points out one of the striking features of
Paine's work is that it captures an American spirit, an essence that would not
articulated until quite later.  In writing about a situation where the start of the war
featured more British victories than Colonial ones, and a setting where the might of the
British was on display for all, Aldridge suggests that one striking feature of the
pamphlet was how Paine was able to see through this and argue that success is intrinsic
to the spirit of positivism that was such a part of the
Colonies:

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...Paine introduces the theory that the physical
size of America exercises a kind of metaphysical influence upon the inhabitants of the
country by endowing them with sublime thoughts and superior abilities, a theme which he
later developed in Rights of Man and
which became celebrated in the bombastic phrases of his admirer, Walt
Whitman.

It is interesting to
note that Paine was able to envision a notion of America that would not be fully
articulated until the Transcendental movement, a good seventy to eighty years before its
time.  Such a notion highlights Aldridge's belief that Paine understood much about
America even before America did.  He recognized that victory was essential in order to
bring this character out of its own nation and into the world.  For this, Aldridge
believes that Paine should receive much in way of praise.