Citizen Tom Paine

by Howard Fast

  “Don’t misjudge us, Paine. We aren’t traitors, believe me.”

  “But you would rather see me dead?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Paine told him, and Rush’s face clouded and darkened. He assured Paine that he knew nothing about the attempt. “We are not assassins,” he said grimly.

  In the streets of York, one day, he meet Irene Roberdeau. She greeted him warmly and seemed genuinely pleased to see him. She and her uncle were stopping at the Double Coach, and he walked there with her, telling her briefly what he had done since he had last seen her.

  “You will never rest,” she said. “You will never have peace, Tom.”

  “I suppose not.”

  She told him that she was engaged to be married—when they reoccupied Philadelphia. He nodded, and she wondered from his face whether it mattered at all to him.

  “We will take Philadelphia again?” she asked.

  “I am sure we will.”

  “Tom—”

  He looked at her.

  “It could have been different,” she said.

  “I don’t think it could.”

  Work piled up as secretary to the committee. Again he was a clerk who sat up nights doing Crisis papers, yet somehow he managed to let his weight be felt, putting pressure on those he knew, speaking constantly of Washington’s need, threatening, using himself as a wedge in the countless little plots, breaking them open, writing false orders to commandeer shoes and clothing, talking to the food brokers, promising everything under the sun, actually maneuvering a shipment of grain toward Valley Forge, drinking again, more than he should, writing words that cut like knives—

  A change was coming over things. At the end of that winter of 1777-1778, the crucial point of the war arrived, and the Americans won, not through battles, but simply by existing as an army, as a military force. The tall, unhappy Virginian, who had failed so as a commander, proved his worth as a rallying point, and throughout that dreadful cold winter, he held a nucleus of his men around him. Perhaps if Howe, the British commander, had attacked Valley Forge, the American army—what was left of it—might have been utterly destroyed. But Philadelphia was comfortable, and Howe did not attack, and with spring there was not only a French alliance, the product of old Ben Franklin’s careful work, but a reoccurrence of that incredible phenomenon, the American militia.

  Once again the summer soldiers, through with their plowing, poured into the encampment—householders, farm hands, men and boys. The four thousand left after the winter at Valley Forge became seven thousand, then ten, then twelve thousand. And as a nucleus there was the bitter, hard kernel that had kept alive in the hellish encampment.

  Howe became frightened. Once he could have been the attacker; now he was in a position to be attacked. He marched out of Philadelphia, north through Jersey; and at Monmouth, Washington barred his path. Not for nothing had three years of war, three desperate, losing years, put iron into the ragged, lean continentals. For the first time they fought and held their ground, stood through the shot and shell and fire of a day’s burning battle, and then lay on their weapons and watched a broken British army retreat from the field.

  The war was not over; it was not much more than begun; but now there was an American Army.

  Paine was beginning to understand his new profession, the skill called revolution which he was the first to practice as a sole reason for being. He had seen the people take power, and the means by which they took power; he had seen their appointed leaders, citizens whose livelihood was not war, rally them against the enemy. He had seen the counter-revolution rear its head again and again, in New York, in Philadelphia, in Jersey, and in Pennsylvania. He had seen the army split up into opposing groups, and he had seen staunch patriots eager to sell out to the highest bidder. And now he was watching one of the final phases, a cleavage between the people’s party and the party of finance, of trade and power and aristocracy. And strangely enough these latter forces were united against one who was reputedly the wealthiest man in America: the Virginia farmer, Washington. First, it was a plot to deprive Washington of the command and give it to Gates; then, to dirty his reputation and split the high command from him; and now, lastly, a direct sell-out to Great Britain. England sent across the ocean a party of gentlemen with very broad powers; they knew whom to contact. Paine sent a messenger to Washington and wrote with fury in his pen.

  A Crisis appeared in which Paine, raging mad, wrote: “What sort of men or Christians must you suppose the Americans to be, who, after seeing their most humble petitions insultingly rejected; the most grievous laws passed to distress them in every quarter; an undeclared war let loose upon them, and Indians and Negroes invited to the slaughter; who, after seeing their kinsmen murdered, their fellow citizens starved to death in prisons, and their houses and property destroyed and burned; who, after the most serious appeals to heaven, the most solemn adjuration by oath of all government connected with you, and the most heart-felt pledges and protestations of faith to each other; and who, after soliciting the friendship, and entering into alliance with other nations, should at last break through all these obligations, civil and divine, by complying with your horrid and infernal proposal.…”

  Working underground himself, he fell deeper and deeper into the snarl. He hadn’t the restraint to refrain from direct accusations, yet he could not unearth a scrap of written evidence to back up his suspicions of the plots against the revolution.

  Not trusting Samuel Adams—sincerely believing that Adams and a good many others of the Boston crowd could be bought if the proposals were properly put, the price high enough, and the settlement such as to give them the positions they longed for—he could, nevertheless, find no solid grounds upon which to accuse them. And Richard Henry Lee, stopping him on the street, told him bitterly:

  “You seem to enjoy making enemies, Paine.”

  “I have so many that a few more don’t matter.”

  “A friend might help. A quiet tongue might, too.”

  “My only friend is the revolution. And my tongue wags like the tongue of any damned peasant.”

  “Just a word of warning—”

  “I don’t have to be warned, my friend,” Paine smiled.

  And then, hard on that, came the affair of Silas Deane.

  As secretary to die Committee for Foreign Affairs, Paine had come, time and again, upon some very curious matters. There was a European firm called Roderique Hortalez and Company. He himself had had some dealings with them when things were most desperate the winter before. It was a matter of military boots for an army that bound their bleeding feet in rags and sackcloth, and a Mr. Steffins of Charleston said he might obtain a thousand pair of good boots—for a price. The price was a livre a pair; that was high, but in wartime one expects things to come high. Paine negotiated the deal, and when the boots arrived they proved to be of Spanish leather—and the bill was presented by Roderique Hortalez and Company. The company was already widely known among the continentals, but who had hired Mr. Steffins and who had paid him? Going into the matter, Paine discovered that almost all outside help to America—shiploads of wheat from France, flatboat fleets of powder, shot and cannon that came upriver from New Orleans, cargoes of rum from the Indies, clothing from Spain, dried cheese from Holland, even one consignment of Scotch plaid that had somehow been smuggled from the British Isles—all bore bills of sale from Roderique Hortalez and Company.

  Too many people seemed to know all about Roderique Hortalez and Company; too many who were unwilling to talk. For Paine to get details was like pulling teeth. Henry Laurens, the president of the Congress, an honest man trying to fight his way through a wilderness of lies, deceits, and selfishness, one whom Paine respected and liked, told him:

  “What does it matter, so long as it helps the cause?”

  “But the prices,” Paine pointed out.

  Laurens had smiled; that was some time ago.

  From Arthur Lee in Paris came word that it was a probabil
ity, no more than that, that both France and Spain had made secret gifts to America, possibly as much as a million livres apiece. Deane was getting a five per cent commission on all sales through the company, and bills were being presented. Then, in a letter from Franklin, Paine found what he considered almost conclusive proof that all supplies were purchased with a gift of gold from the two governments, a gift handled by a mysterious and incredible person called Caron de Beaumarchais, incredible because he appeared to be the power behind Roderique Hortalez and Company, mysterious because the French government preferred him so, being not yet at war with England when the funds were advanced to him. A neutral power could not show preferences among belligerents, but an international concern could deal with whom it pleased.

  To all this, Henry Laurens had said, “What does it matter?” smiling. Nations could very well act like children about international affairs; face had to be preserved. The world knew that the Continental Congress was perhaps the most impoverished governing power on earth, that it had hardly enough money to buy pen, paper, and ink for the sessions.

  Thus, when bills began to be presented to the Committee for Foreign Affairs, they were politely ignored, recorded, filed, but ignored. One understood those matters.

  “But did one?” Paine wondered.

  He asked Roberdeau to arrange a small dinner at which Laurens would be present, and then he carefully led the talk to the subject of the bills.

  “Why do you harp on that, Paine?” Laurens asked, somewhat impatiently. “Those bills will never be presented for payment. France is at war with England now and the goods advanced to us by Hortalez, or shall I say by the French ministry through Hortalez, are only a mere fraction of the military advantage France has gained through the years we have been at war. Franklin made that plain.”

  “Yet if Hortalez and Company demand payment, it would be rather embarrassing for France to insist that we had received the goods as gifts. Do you know what the bills amount to?”

  “I have some idea,” Laurens said testily.

  “They amount to four and a half million livres,” said Paine. “Beaumarchais can become a millionaire—we’ve paid double for everything, you see—if they present claims. Even Deane’s five per cent would make him a rich man.”

  Roberdeau whistled and Laurens shook his head. “I had no idea it was that much.”

  “The greatest swindle of our time,” Paine prodded.

  “What do you propose to do?”

  “Attack Deane before payment is demanded and what miserable credit we have is broken.”

  “You have no proof that Deane expects to receive a commission. First the bills must be presented for payment.”

  “Proof—my God, isn’t it proof enough that Deane handled all the negotiations. If the goods are a gift, Deane gets nothing; if we are forced to pay, Deane is a rich man.”

  Hard on that dinner, the scandal broke. Beaumarchais, through the mysterious firm of Hortalez, flung his hand into the pot of fortune and demanded payment, and Deane came back to America to collect. The split that had been brewing for so long in America, between the party of the people and the party of trade and power, snapped wide open. Congress, writhing under the impact of four and a half million livres that could never be repaid, demanded of the French ambassador:

  “Was or was not the money a gift?”

  “It was,” they were assured, but it could not be acknowledged publicly. The honor of France was at stake.

  Hortalez again demanded payment; Deane appeared before Congress and smilingly asked for his five per cent. He was not afraid; he knew too much about Congress, too much about what went on in France with Arthur Lee and Franklin. When Congress refused to hear him, he took his case to the papers, attacking the whole Lee family, declaring himself the savior of his country and asking for justice. That was more than Paine could stand, and he wrote a furious, biting reply.

  Deane claimed credit for the supplies sent to America. Paine opened the books of the Committee for Foreign Affairs and proved that the French and Spanish gifts had been made before Silas Deane ever went to France. Philadelphia began to boil.

  And then the French ambassador, Gerard, saw Paine privately and told him, “This must not go on.”

  “Why?” Paine asked bluntly.

  “For reasons I cannot explain. Certain personages are involved. You must drop your attack on Deane.”

  “And if I refuse?”

  Gerard shrugged and spread his hands. “Do you refuse?”

  “I am sorry,” Paine nodded. “This thing we are doing; it isn’t a little intrigue for the crowned heads of Europe—it’s revolution, do you understand.”

  “I understand,” Gerard said, and the next day told Congress:

  “All the supplies furnished by Monsieur de Beaumarchais to the States, whether merchandise or cannon or military goods, were furnished in the way of commerce, and the articles which came from the King’s magazine and arsenals were sold to Monsieur de Beaumarchais by the department of artillery, and he has furnished his obligations for the price of these articles.”

  Paine writhed and pleaded to Roberdeau, “Proof—if only I had proof.” He wrote bitterly of Deane:

  “It fell not to his lot to turn out to a winter’s campaign, and sleep without tent or blanket. He returned to America when the danger was over, and has since that time suffered no personal hardship. What then are Mr. Deane’s sufferings and what the sacrifices he complains of? Has he lost money in the public service? I believe not. Has he got any? That I cannot tell.…”

  Gerard did not warn Paine again; he sought out the faction in Congress that hated Paine so bitterly. Congress acted, summoned Paine, and demanded whether he wrote Common Sense to the Public on Mr. Deane’s Affair.

  “I wrote it,” Paine acknowledged.

  In secret session, Congress attacked Paine mercilessly; he heard rumors of what was going on, but was denied all his pleas to answer the charges. He heard that the wealthy Gouverneur Morris of New York had said, during session:

  “What would be the idea of a gentleman in Europe of this Mr. Paine? Would he not suppose him to be a man of the most affluent fortune, born in this country of a respectable family, with wide and great connections, and endued with the nicest sense of honor? Certainly he would suppose that all these pledges of fidelity were necessary to a people in our critical circumstances. But, alas, what would he think, should he accidentally be informed, that this, our Secretary of Foreign Affairs, was a mere adventurer from England, without fortune, without family or connections, ignorant even of grammar?”

  Laurens told Paine, “Resign before they have a chance to dismiss you. God knows what is coming, Paine—I don’t.” And Laurens added, “I am doing the same, you see. They will have to find a new president for their Congress.”

  Paine resigned.

  And in Philadelphia hell was brewing.

  Only outwardly was Philadelphia tranquil, and even that tranquillity was fast disappearing. The Quaker city was a revolutionary capital, occupied by the British, reoccupied by the Americans. It was not only geographically the center of the states, but ideologically as well, for Boston soon cooled and the Massachusetts farmers, who had once ripped a British army to shreds at Concord and Lexington, had for the most part gone back to their spades and plows. Their cold, bitter Yankee sense of personal freedom was bound inextricably with their own rocky land, and their fierce individuality made them poor material for any other warfare than the kind they fell into instinctively, guerrilla tactics. That guerrilla warfare might have ended the struggle much sooner was beside the point; it was not being fought that way, and the Yankees drifted off.

  The bulk of the struggle was left to the midlanders, Pennsylvania men for the most part, Jersey men and New York men, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware, and Maryland regiments; and in the South, Virginia and Carolina men. But the core of the regulars, the men who starved and froze and thirsted, the few thousand who clung by the spare figure of Washington in the wo
rst of times, were almost all Pennsylvania and Jersey men. For them, Philadelphia was the altar of revolution, and for them, the blackest day came when Congress fled without even an attempt to defend the city.

  The British, who considered the city worthless, since they already held New York and could not afford troops to garrison both towns, had evacuated it with as little attempt at defense as the Americans before them. Marching to reoccupy the place on the heels of the redcoats, the continentals were not happy or gentle. They wanted revenge, and some they took. The city was dirty, littered, houses in ruins, houses looted, the beautiful Philadelphia Chippendale, the pride of the colonies, hacked and ripped and broken. The Americans walked back into the city with their bayonets bared. Wayne, a hard knife-blade of a man, led the Pennsylvanians. “A Tory,” he said to a committee of important citizens, “is a son of a bitch with — inside of him.” They were used to strong language, but not that strong. They proclaimed their loyalty.

  “As I understand loyalty,” Wayne said, “so I would make you understand it—”

  But to untangle the Tory from the rebel was impossible. Of the thousands of citizens who had remained behind when the British came, who was to say which was loyal and which was not? Of informers, there were plenty, but even those most bitter shied away from the bloody terror that wholesale accusation would bring. The midlanders were hard men, but not that hard.

  And Pennsylvania was a democracy. Of all the countries that made up the union, Pennsylvania was the nearest to a government of workers and farmers—militant workers and farmers who had framed their own liberal constitution, their own single-house form of government in the days when the war started. The backbone of this group were the leatherclad frontiersmen who had sworn that they would have a thing or two to say with their long rifles before the aristocrats took their land.

  Into this brew was flung the Silas Deane affair—to split it wide open.