Thomas Paine An American Hero
Thomas Paine http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=pKFKGrmsBDk
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| Western Philosophy 18th-century philosophy | |
 Thomas Paine | |
| Full name | Thomas Paine |
|---|---|
| Birth | January 29, 1737 Thetford, Norfolk, Great Britain |
| Death | June 8, 1809 (aged 72) New York, NY, U.S. |
| School/tradition | Enlightenment, Radicalism, Classical liberalism, Republicanism |
| Main interests | Ethics, Politics |
Thomas Paine (Thetford, England, 29 January 1737–8 June 1809, New York City, U.S.) was an English pamphleteer, revolutionary, radical, inventor, and intellectual. He lived and worked in Britain until age 37, when he immigrated to the British American colonies, in time to participate in the American Revolution. His principal contribution was the powerful, widely-read pamphlet, Common Sense (1776), advocating American colonial independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain, and of The American Crisis (1776-1783), a pro-revolutionary pamphlet series.
Later, he greatly influenced the French Revolution. He wrote the Rights of Man (1791), a guide to Enlightenment ideas. Despite not speaking French, he was elected to the French National Convention in 1792. The Girondists regarded him an ally, so, the Montagnards, especially Robespierre, regarded him an enemy. In December of 1793, he was arrested and imprisoned in Paris, then released in 1794. He became notorious because of The Age of Reason (1793-94), the book advocated deism and argued against Christian doctrines. In France, he also wrote the pamphlet Agrarian Justice (1795), discussing the origins of property, and introduced the concept of a guaranteed minimum income.
He remained in France during the early Napoleonic era, but condemned Napoleon's dictatorship, calling him "the completest charlatan that ever existed". [1] In 1802, he returned to America on at President Thomas Jefferson's invitation.
Thomas Paine died, at age 72, in No. 59 Grove Street, Greenwich Village, N.Y.C., on 8 June 1809. He is buried in New Rochelle, New York, his post-European residence in the U.S. Later, an admirer unburied his cadaver, to repatriate him to England; that grave is unknown.
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[edit] Early life
Thomas Paine was born to Joseph Paine, a Quaker, and Frances Paine (née Cocke) an Anglican, in Thetford, a small market town and coaching stage-post, in rural Norfolk. He attended Thetford Grammar School, which selected entrants on ability, from 1744-1749[2] at a time when there was no compulsory education. He was apprenticed to his father, a corset maker, at 13, but apparently failed at this. In his late teens Paine enlisted as a privateer [3], serving a short time before returning to Great Britain in April 1759. There he became a master corsetmaker and set up a shop in Sandwich, Kent. On September 27, 1759, Paine married Mary Lambert. His business collapsed soon after. His wife became pregnant and, following a move to Margate, went into early labor and died along with her child.
In July 1761, Paine returned to Thetford where he worked as a supernumerary officer. In December 1762, he became an excise officer in Grantham, Lincolnshire. In August 1764, he was again transferred, this time to Alford, where his salary was £50 a year. On 27 August 1765, Paine was discharged from his post for claiming to have inspected goods when in fact he had only seen the documentation. On July 3, 1766, he wrote a letter to the Board of Excise asking to be reinstated. The next day the board granted his request to be filled, upon vacancy. While waiting for an opening, Paine worked as a staymaker in Diss, Norfolk and later as a servant (records show he worked for a Mr Noble of Goodman's Fields and then for a Mr Gardiner at Kensington). He also applied to become an ordained minister of the Church of England and, according to some accounts,[4] he preached in Moorfields.
In 1767, Paine was appointed to a position in Grampound, Cornwall. He was subsequently asked to leave this post to await another vacancy and he became a schoolteacher in London. On February 19, 1768, Paine was appointed to Lewes, East Sussex. He moved into the room above the 15th-century Bull House, a building which held the snuff and tobacco shop of Samuel and Esther Ollive. Here Paine became involved for the first time in civic matters when Samuel Ollive introduced him into the Society of Twelve, a local elite group that met twice a year to discuss town issues. In addition, Paine participated in the Vestry, the influential church group that collected taxes and tithes and distributed them to the poor. On 26 March 1771, at age 34, he married his landlord's daughter, Elizabeth Ollive.
From 1772 to 1773, Paine joined other excise officers in lobbying Parliament for better pay and working conditions for excisemen, and in the summer of 1772 he published The Case of the Officers of Excise, a 21-page article and his first political work. Paine had 4,000 copies printed and spent the winter in London distributing the pamphlet to Members of Parliament. In the spring of 1774, Paine was dismissed from the excise service for being absent from his post without permission, and his tobacco shop failed as well. On April 14, he auctioned off his household possessions to pay his debts. On June 4, he signed a separation agreement with his wife and moved to London where a friend introduced him to Benjamin Franklin in September. Franklin advised Paine to emigrate to the British colonies in America, and wrote him letters of recommendation. Paine left England in October, arriving in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on November 30, 1774.
Paine barely survived the transatlantic voyage. The drinking water on the ship was so bad that typhoid fever killed five passengers, and Paine was too ill to leave his cabin when he arrived in Philadelphia. Benjamin Franklin's physician, who had arrived to welcome him to America, literally had to pick up Paine and carry him off. It took the doctor six weeks to nurse Paine back to health.
Paine was also an inventor, receiving a patent in Europe for a single-span iron bridge, even though through a lack of funds, the bridge was in a field in Paddington, London. He developed a smokeless candle,[5][6] and worked with John Fitch on the early development of steam engines. This aptitude for invention, coupled with his originality of thought, found him an advocate more than a century later in the famous inventor Thomas Edison. Edison championed Paine's achievements and helped increase his historical awareness.
[edit] American Revolution
Thomas Paine is sometimes known as "The Father of the American Revolution" for his writing advocating complete independence from royal rule—his pro-independence monograph pamphlet Common Sense was published anonymously on January 10, 1776 and spread quickly among literate colonists. Within three months, 120,000 copies are alleged to have been distributed throughout the colonies,[7] which themselves totaled only two million free inhabitants, making it the best-selling work in 18th-century America, with the exception of the Bible. Its total sales in both America and Europe reached 500,000 copies.[8] It convinced many colonists, including George Washington and John Adams, to seek redress in political independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain, and argued strongly against any compromise short of independence. The work was greatly influenced (including in its name – Paine had originally proposed the title Plain Truth) by the equally controversial pro-independence writer Benjamin Rush and was instrumental in bringing about the Declaration of Independence.
Loyalists attacked Common Sense with vigor. One such early attack, entitled Plain Truth, was written in 1776 by prominent loyalist James Chalmers. An expatriate of Scotland, Chalmers attacked Paine as a "political quack." Chalmers would serve as commander of the First Battalion of Maryland Loyalists in the American Revolution.[9]
Paine's strength lay in his ability to present complex ideas in clear and concise form, as opposed to the more philosophical approaches of his Enlightenment contemporaries in Europe, and it was Paine who proposed the name United States of America for the new nation. When the war arrived, Paine published a series of important pamphlets, The Crisis, credited with inspiring the early colonists during the ordeals faced in their long struggle with the British. To inspire the troops, General George Washington ordered Paine's "The American Crisis" to be read out loud to his men.[10] The first Crisis paper began with the famous words:
These are the times that try men's souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.
—Published on 23 December 1776
In 1778, Paine alluded to the then ongoing secret negotiations with France in his pamphlets, and there was a scandal which resulted in Paine's being dropped from the Committee on Foreign Affairs. In 1781, however, he accompanied John Laurens during his mission to France. His services were eventually recognized by the state of New York by the granting of an estate at New Rochelle, New York, and he received considerable gifts of money from both Pennsylvania and – at Washington's suggestion – from Congress.
He served in the War as aide to Gen. Nathanael Greene, and appointed by Congress as secretary to the Committee on Foreign Affairs. In his later years, he established himself as "a missionary of world revolution."
[edit] Rights of Man
Returning to Europe, Paine finished his Rights of Man on 29 January 1791, while staying with his friend Thomas 'Clio' Rickman. On January 31, he passed the manuscript to the publisher Joseph Johnson, who intended to have it ready for Washington's birthday on February 22. Johnson was visited on a number of occasions by agents of the government. Sensing that Paine's book would be controversial, he decided on the day it was due to be published not to release it. Paine quickly began to negotiate with another publisher, J.S. Jordan. Once a deal was secured, Paine left for Paris on the advice of William Blake, leaving three good friends, William Godwin, Thomas Brand Hollis and Thomas Holcroft, in charge of concluding the publication. The book appeared on March 13, three weeks later than originally scheduled. It was an abstract political tract published in support of the French Revolution, written as a reply to Reflections on the Revolution in France by Edmund Burke. The book — which was highly critical of monarchies and European social institutions — sold briskly but was so seditious that the British government put Paine on trial in absentia for seditious libel. In the summer of 1792, he answered the charges with these famous words: "If, to expose the fraud and imposition of monarchy (..), to promote universal peace, civilization, and commerce, and to break the chains of political superstition, and raise degraded man to his proper rank; if these things be libellous (...) let the name of libeller be engraved on my tomb."[11] In a second edition of the Rights of Man in February 1792 Paine proposed a plan for the reformation of England, including one of the first proposals for a progressive income tax.
Paine was an enthusiastic supporter of the French Revolution, and was granted, along with Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and others, honorary French citizenship. Despite his inability to speak French, he was elected to the National Convention, representing the district of Pas-de-Calais. He voted for the French Republic; but argued against the execution of Louis XVI, saying that he should instead be exiled to the United States: firstly, because of the way royalist France had come to the aid of the American Revolution; and secondly because of a moral objection to capital punishment in general and to revenge killings in particular.
Regarded as an ally of the Girondins, he was seen with increasing disfavour by the Montagnards who were now in power, and in particular by Robespierre. A decree was passed at the end of 1793 excluding foreigners from their places in the Convention (Anacharsis Cloots was also deprived of his place). Paine was arrested and imprisoned in December 1793.
Before his arrest and imprisonment, knowing that he would likely be arrested and executed, Paine wrote the first part of The Age of Reason, an assault on organized "revealed" religion combining a compilation of inconsistencies he found in the Bible with his own advocacy of Deism. In his "Autobiographical Interlude," which is found in The Age of Reason between the first and second parts, Paine writes, "Thus far I had written on the 28th of December, 1793. In the evening I went to the Hotel Philadelphia . . . About four in the morning I was awakened by a rapping at my chamber door; when I opened it, I saw a guard and the master of the hotel with them. The guard told me they came to put me under arrestation and to demand the key of my papers. I desired them to walk in, and I would dress myself and go with them immediately."
Paine protested and claimed that he was a citizen of America, which was an ally of Revolutionary France, rather than of Great Britain, which was by that time at war with France. However, Gouverneur Morris, the American ambassador to France, did not press his claim, and Paine later wrote that Morris had connived at his imprisonment. Paine thought that George Washington had abandoned him, and he was to quarrel with Washington for the rest of his life. Years later he wrote a scathing letter to Washington, accusing him of private betrayal of their friendship and public hypocrisy as general and president, and concluding the letter by saying "the world will be puzzled to decide whether you are an apostate or an impostor; whether you have abandoned good principles or whether you ever had any,"[12] He was also vehemently opposed to Washington owning slaves.
While in prison, Paine escaped execution apparently by chance. A guard walked through the prison placing a chalk mark on the doors of the prisoners who were due to be condemned that day. He placed one on the door of the Paine's cell, but did not notice that the door was open. After the door was closed, the mark was hidden inside the cell. Hence, he was overlooked, and survived the few vital days needed to be spared by the fall of Robespierre on 9 Thermidor (27 July 1794)[13]. Paine was released in November 1794 largely because of the work of the new American Minister to France, James Monroe.
In 1800, Paine purportedly had a meeting with Napoleon. Napoleon claimed he slept with a copy of Rights of Man under his pillow and went so far as to say to Paine that "a statue of gold should be erected to you in every city in the universe."[14] Paine discussed with Napoleon on how best to invade England and in December 1797 wrote two essays in which he promoted the idea to finance 1000 gunboats to carry a French invading army across the English Channel. In 1804 Paine returned to the subject, writing To the People of England on the Invasion of England advocating the idea.[15]
Paine moved from admiration to condemnation, however, as he saw Napoleon's moves toward dictatorship, calling him "the completest charlatan that ever existed."[2][not in citation given] Paine remained in France until 1802, when he returned to America on an invitation from Thomas Jefferson.
[edit] Later years
Paine returned to America in the early stages of the Second Great Awakening and a time of great political partisanship. The Age of Reason gave ample excuse for the religiously devout to hate him, and the Federalists attacked him for his ideas of government stated in Common Sense, for his association with the French Revolution, and for his friendship with President Jefferson. Also still fresh in the minds of the public was his Letter to Washington, published six years before his return.
Paine died at the age of 72, at 59 Grove Street in Greenwich Village, New York City on the morning of June 8, 1809. Although the original building is no longer there, the present building has a plaque noting that Paine died at this location. At the time of his death, most American newspapers reprinted the obituary notice from the New York Citizen, which read in part: "He had lived long, did some good and much harm." Only six mourners came to his funeral, two of whom were black, most likely freedmen. The great orator and writer Robert G. Ingersoll wrote:
Thomas Paine had passed the legendary limit of life. One by one most of his old friends and acquaintances had deserted him. Maligned on every side, execrated, shunned and abhorred – his virtues denounced as vices – his services forgotten – his character blackened, he preserved the poise and balance of his soul. He was a victim of the people, but his convictions remained unshaken. He was still a soldier in the army of freedom, and still tried to enlighten and civilize those who were impatiently waiting for his death, Even those who loved their enemies hated him, their friend – the friend of the whole world – with all their hearts. On the 8th of June, 1809, death came – Death, almost his only friend. At his funeral no pomp, no pageantry, no civic procession, no military display. In a carriage, a woman and her son who had lived on the bounty of the dead – on horseback, a Quaker, the humanity of whose heart dominated the creed of his head – and, following on foot, two negroes filled with gratitude – constituted the funeral cortege of Thomas Paine.[16]
"In the summer of 1803 the political atmosphere was in a tempestuous condition, owing to the widespread accusation that Aaron Burr had intrigued with the Federalists against Jefferson to gain the presidency. There was a Society in New York called "Republican Greens," who, on Independence Day, had for a toast "Thomas Paine, the Man of the People", and who seem to have had a piece of music called the "Rights of Man". Paine was also apparently the hero of that day at White Plains, where a vast crowd assembled".
A few years later, the agrarian radical William Cobbett dug up and shipped his bones back to England. The plan was to give Paine a heroic reburial on his native soil, but the bones were still among Cobbett's effects when he died over twenty years later. There is no confirmed story about what happened to them after that, although down the years various people have claimed to own parts of Paine's remains, such as his skull and right hand.[17][18]
[edit] Views
Some believe Paine may have begun to form his early views on natural justice during his childhood, while listening to a mob jeering and attacking those punished in the Thetford stocks.[citation needed] Others have argued that he was influenced by his Quaker father.[19] In The Age of Reason – Paine's treatise in support of deism – he wrote:
The religion that approaches the nearest of all others to true deism, in the moral and benign part thereof, is that professed by the Quakers … though I revere their philanthropy, I cannot help smiling at [their] conceit; … if the taste of a Quaker [had] been consulted at the Creation, what a silent and drab-colored Creation it would have been! Not a flower would have blossomed its gaieties, nor a bird been permitted to sing.
Paine was an early advocate of republicanism
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