Posted on 07/12/2002 7:06:35 PM PDT by Sir Gawain
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If he had not met Benjamin Franklin at a coffeehouse in London, Thomas Paine might have remained an obscure protester in English history. Paine had held a number of mundane jobs up to that point, most recently as a tax collector, from which he had been fired for writing an essay critical of pay so low it made excise officers vulnerable to smugglers' bribes. But Franklin saw brilliance in Paine and decided to write letters of introduction for him to take to America, where his genius might flourish. In December, 1774, the 37-year-old Paine arrived in Philadelphia with Franklin's letters and found a job writing essays for the Pennsylvania Magazine. It was the perfect venue for his intellect. He wrote articles condemning African slavery, the political treatment of women, animal cruelty, the custom of dueling, and war as a means of settling disputes. After fighting began near Boston in April, 1775, the country anguished over the question of reconciliation or separation. Paine, though, had made up his mind with resolve. On January 10, 1776, he published his 50-page polemic, Common Sense, which almost overnight turned the country towards revolution. Paine wrote Common Sense for the common man — in direct, clear language. "It was read by cobblers in their shops, bakers by their ovens, teachers in their schools, and by officers in the army to their standing ranks." [1] He laid out argument after argument championing a complete break with England: "Europe is too thickly planted with kingdoms to be long at peace, and whenever a war breaks out between England and any foreign power, the trade of America goes to ruin, because of her connection with Britain." And again: "Men of passive tempers look somewhat lightly over the offenses of Britain, and, still hoping for the best, are apt to call out, 'Come, we shall be friends again for all this.'" But Paine challenged them. He asked, Did you lose your house to fire or your property to theft because of British transgressions? Did they kill a parent or child and leave you a "ruined and wretched survivor"? If they did and you can still shake hands with "the murderers, then whatever may be your rank or title in life, you have the heart of a coward, and the spirit of a sycophant." [2] For many colonists his pamphlet was the kick they needed to risk independence. Common Sense sold 500,000 copies, roughly equal to 75 million copies today, and raised Paine from obscurity to international fame. [3] Not everyone rallied to his call to arms. A rich loyalist from the colony of Maryland, James Chalmers, wrote a rebuttal to Paine's pamphlet called Plain Truth. Chalmers even had the honor of having his essay appear in Philadelphia's most popular bookstore, Robert Bell's shop, which had carried the first edition of Common Sense. Plain Truth came out about two months after Paine's work. "Unfortunately for Chalmers, he had done precisely the wrong thing," historian Chris New tells us. [4] While Paine's prose was simple enough for semiliterates to digest, Chalmers adopted a high literary style full of historical references that only the well-educated could comprehend. Most loyalists were learned men and didn't need convincing. It was the "great unwashed," the farmers and blacksmiths, who needed to hear his arguments. Chalmers called Paine a "political quack" for criticizing the English constitution and assailed Paine's love of democracy, which in the 18th century was held in low regard. Democracies have always been the playgrounds of demagogues, Chalmers correctly pointed out. John Adams fully agreed. Though he called the Revolutionary War years "The Age of Paine," later in life he described Common Sense as "a poor ignorant, malicious, short-sighted, crapulous mass." [5] One wonders if this judgment is distorted by jealousy, inasmuch as Adams admitted in a letter to his wife Abigail that Common Sense "contained a tolerable summary of the arguments which [he] had been repeating again and again in Congress for nine months." [6] Adams' stand on independence was the reason many colonials thought he had authored Common Sense, which had been published anonymously at first. Having an unknown writer take center stage in the call for independence, especially one recently arrived from England, could have been embarrassing for Adams. While Chalmers' Plain Truth sold under the noses of the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, in other areas of the country the rebels undermined their cause by having it seized. "If such doings are the first fruits of American liberty," Chalmers protested, "grant me Heaven!" Still, Plain Truth was widely read and might have won more converts had it not been for some unfortunate timing. Shortly after it was released, the Americans chased the British from Boston with artillery swiped from Fort Ticonderoga. Was winning a war with England impossible, as Chalmers had claimed? The rebels no longer thought so. During the war Paine fought briefly in the army under General Nathanael Greene, from August, 1776, till January, 1777. The patriot cause fared poorly during this period, and morale suffered. In a letter to George Mason, General Washington wrote, "the history of this war is a history of false hopes . . . our efforts are in vain." [7] Desertion and discouragement plagued the troops. To lift the country's sagging spirits, Paine wrote the first in a series of pamphlets called The American Crisis, which by late December, 1776 was being read throughout Philadelphia. "Instantly it was seized upon. Everyone quoted it, for its words seemed to spring from the very soul of Washington's army and of the leader himself: "These are the times that try men's souls . . . Tyranny, like Hell, is not easily conquered . . . What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly." [8] He also added: "Not a place upon earth might be so happy as America. Her situation is remote from all the wrangling world, and she has nothing to do but to trade with them . . . America will never be happy till she gets clear of foreign dominion. Wars, without ceasing, will break out till that period arrives." [9] Paine didn't limit himself to inspirational authorship only. Late in the war he went to France and brought back a shipload of ammunition, clothes, and money — foreign aid from King Louis XVI. Paine returned to England in 1787 and wrote The Rights of Man (1791, 1792), a scathing rebuttal to Edmund Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution. Paine's treatise included a thorough condemnation of English monarchy. In England among the poor, "The Rights of Man became an underground manifesto, passed from hand to hand, even when it became a crime to be found with it in one's possession." [10] Over a million and a half copies were sold before it was finally suppressed. When men were tried for treason, the Crown cited as evidence the fact that the accused possessed a copy of Paine's book. Paine himself was a marked man and was tried in absentia for seditious libel while he fled to France in December, 1792. A hero in France, Paine served as a deputy on the National Convention, where he voted for the exile rather than the execution of King Louis XVI. He argued that by virtue of his aid to America, the king was a friend of liberty and therefore deserved mercy — France should kill the monarchy but not the monarch. Robespierre took offense and issued a decree to imprison all persons born in England. When Paine's position in the new government insulated him from arrest, Robespierre had a motion passed to expel all foreigners from the Convention, which got Paine removed and incarcerated under the original decree. [11] In terms of newsworthiness, Paine's imprisonment for eleven months and his near-execution were relegated to insignificance by the publication of part one of his Age of Reason (1795). In it, Paine presented the absurdity of believing the word of God could exist in print and advanced the view that the true word of God was nature. In a letter to a friend, Andrew Dean, Paine said that "it is blasphemy to call [the Bible] the word of God. It is a book of lies and contradictions, and a history of bad times and bad men." [12] Furthermore, he maintained that "all national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to [be] no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit." [13] As an enemy of tyranny in all forms, Paine saw the church and state as the two great destroyers of human well-being. For his critique of Christianity and the Bible, he lost nearly all of his friends. After returning to America in 1802, he lived on his modest estate in New Rochelle, NY and died there in 1809 among a handful of people, without recanting his views. Paine's contributions to American independence and human liberty are enormous, and in hindsight his chance meeting with Franklin in 1774 must seem to many like an act of God. Let us hope he was not also a prophet when he wrote: "A thousand years hence, perhaps in less, America may be what Europe now is. The innocence of her character, that won the hearts of all nations in her favor, may sound like a romance and her inimitable virtue as if it had never been. The ruin of that liberty which thousands bled for or struggled to obtain may just furnish materials for a village tale or extort a sigh from rustic sensibility, whilst the fashionable of that day, enveloped in dissipation, shall deride the principle and deny the fact." [14]
References1. George F. Scheer and Hugh F. Rankin, Rebels & Redcoats: The American Revolution Through the Eyes of Those Who Fought and Lived It, DeCapo Press, 1957, p. 150. 2. Common Sense, Thomas Paine, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/paine-common.html 3. Common Sense, publisher review, http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?salesurl=&isbn=1566197007 4. A Loyalist Answers Thomas Paine, M. Christopher New, http://earlyamerica.com/review/fall96/loyalists.html 5. Ibid. 6. Rebels & Redcoats, p. 150. 7. Thomas Paine and The Age of Reason, Joseph Lewis, http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/lewis/lewis01.htm 8. Rebels & Redcoats, p. 210. 9. The American Crisis, I, Thomas Paine, http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/D/1776-1800/paine/AC/crisis01.htm 10. The Rights of Man, http://earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/writings/rights/ 11. Letter to George Washington, http://www.thomaspaine.org/archive/lettergw.html 12. Letter to Andrew Dean, http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/thomas_paine/letter_to_a_dean.html 13. Age of Reason, Thomas Paine, http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/thomas_paine/age_of_reason/part1.html#1 14. Letter to George Washington, ibid. George F. Smith is a freelance writer. His other articles may be found in the Writer Index. |
HERESY! BLASPHEMER! PIG-DOG!
Just kidding. :)
I for one am very happy that we parted ways with Britain. Look at the mess they are in now.
It's great to be American.
I will say a good word for John Adams here. His smuggling profits helped fuel the war effort.
Wise words from a very great man.
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