Citizen Tom Paine

by Howard Fast

  Roberdeau showed Paine a letter, addressed to Robert Morris, who had lately cornered the flour market of the midlands. The letter had come to Roberdeau through means he was not anxious to disclose; there were ways. The line he pointed out read, “It would be a good thing for the welfare of the gentle folk of the country if Mister Thomas Paine were dead.…”

  “If they wish to, they can kill me,” Paine shrugged. “They’ve tried before—”

  “Don’t be a fool. The time is over when you can fight this thing alone.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  Roberdeau suggested that they show their hand. He offered his house for a meeting place. He knew a few who could be trusted, and Paine knew a few. Tomorrow night, he said.

  “Tomorrow night,” Paine agreed. He was very tired; a man could take up a gun, preach revolution, write papers pleading with his fellow citizens to support the war, unearth plots, oppose factions, lose his reputation and his livelihood, be hated and despised, scream aloud that men fought and died, that Philadelphia did not exist for the sole purpose of raising the price of food, clothes, munitions, livestock—but a man reached his limits. It was not easy to know that people wanted to kill you; it made him afraid the way he had never been afraid on the battlefield; it made him afraid of dark streets, afraid to drink too much, afraid to sleep in his miserable two-shilling room without locking the door.

  The last time he had looked in the mirror, it was with the sudden realization that he was growing old. A network of little lines picked out his eyes and cheeks. That was Paine, the staymaker. Irene Roberdeau was married and carrying a child. The world went on, but facing him in his mirror was Paine, the mendicant of revolution.

  It was a good group that gathered at Roberdeau’s house, Paine told himself. A solid group, each person picked, each to be depended on.

  There was David Rittenhouse, the scientist and mechanic, a person of substance, but nevertheless one who had worked with his hands; there was Jackson Garland, who, before his forge had been destroyed by the British, had cast forty-nine cannon for Harry Knox. Garland was Scotch, thin and sour in appearance, but a man with a mind, one who had often explained to Paine his theory of the coming trade unions. There was Charles Wilson Peale, captain in the Continental Army, a painter of amazing skill, and completely devoted to Washington. There was Colonel Matlack, a Quaker who had decided that some things were worth fighting for, who had said publicly that he would die fighting his own brothers before he saw the Morris clique destroy the Pennsylvania constitution. And there were young Thomas Shany and Franklin Pearce, both captains and veterans of Wayne’s Pennsylvania Line. In addition they could count on the active support of both Laurens and Jefferson, neither of whom was present.

  Roberdeau had wine and cake served, and then called the meeting to order. The group was quiet, grave, and somewhat bewildered; vaguely they sensed the possibilities and results of an open split in the Continental Party, and for that reason they felt they were treading on gunpowder. Organized revolt was still a very new thing in the world; organized radicalism, splitting from the rightists within the body of the revolution, was entirely new.

  Roberdeau, his fleshy face red and excited, suggested that Paine take the floor and explain the purpose of the meeting. To which Paine pointed out anxiously:

  “I don’t want to intrude myself. It might be said that I am the least of the company here. I feel—”

  “Damn it, no! This is no time for hedging nor politeness,” Matlack said. “You know what this is, and go ahead and speak, Paine.”

  Paine looked around at the others; heads nodded. Paine said, speaking quietly but swiftly, “I don’t need much of a preamble. A time was when revolution was new to all of us, but we’ve lived with it a good many years now—perhaps not long enough to understand it completely, to know the whole devil in this broth we’re brewing, but long enough to have some comprehension of its structure. Revolution is a method of force by a party not in power, as we understand it by the party of the people, which has never been in power in the history of this earth. When the thirteen states of our confederation aroused themselves to seize the power, the confederation as a whole was in revolt against the British Empire. That we recognize, and the confederation as a whole is now engaged in war with the sovereign state of Great Britain.

  “That is one thing. But the same method of revolution was singularly applied in each of the states of the confederation, and in each of the states the party of the people fought for the power. In some states, the people won; in others they lost, but in no case was the issue clear-cut. The act of revolution goes on in thirteen lands on this continent; there is civil war everywhere; in New York a man takes his life in his hands if he dares travel alone through Westchester County. In Massachusetts, the Tories are so powerful that they openly paint their chimneys with bands of black to identify themselves. In the lake country the Tories and the Indians have allied themselves, in such power as to engage our armies in force. In the Carolinas brother fights brother, and whole families have been wiped out by this civil strife. No one who traveled through the Jerseys in the retreat of seventy-six will ever forget how the whole countryside rose against us, shot at us from behind their shuttered windows, let us starve, just as they let us starve in Valley Forge a year later.

  “In only one place did the revolution triumph, instantly, decisively, and without doubt, and that is here in Pennsylvania, the wealthiest land on this continent, perhaps the most loyal, certainly the most powerful. If the midlands fall, then the revolution falls; and if the midlands go up in smoke, who will say that the Pennsylvania line will not desert Washington and march back to defend their homes?

  “Though I don’t have to remind you, let me briefly reconsider the revolutionary enactments of Pennsylvania. You remember how, even before Concord and Lexington, the working men of Philadelphia formed themselves into an armed citizenry. Alone, unskilled as they were in any sort of warfare, they might not have triumphed, but fortunately they were joined by several thousand hunters and home-steaders from the back country. It was by the long rifle and the buckskin as well as by the musket that we overthrew the anticonstitutionalists. The aristocrats gave way when we threatened them with civil war and when they saw our guns. We won a constitution and we won a democratic state legislature, and then, loyal to the confederation, we sent our men by the thousands to fight with General Washington. I saw that myself. I was at Newark when the Pennsylvanians held the rear, at Valley Forge when they lay in the snow and starved, but held; at Monmouth our buckskin men broke the British backs. And, gentlemen, I was at the Delaware in seventy-six, when Washington fled across to the poor safety of the west bank, when he ordered a count and there were eight hundred men—eight hundred to defend the future of men of good will and make a nation out of this suffering of ours—and then I saw something that I will not forget if I live a hundred years, I saw the working men of Philadelphia, twelve hundred strong, march up from the city and hold the Delaware line until Sullivan joined with Washington. Six months before, the Associators ran away, and that was to the shame of no one; it takes six months of hell to put iron into a man’s soul, and when they marched up out of Philadelphia again, the clerks and masons and smiths and millers, weavers, mercers—they were different. Pennsylvania gave freely, and now we have our deserts.

  “Congress fled and gave our city to the British and Tories. We have it back so that it can become the speculator’s dream, so that Deane can fleece us, so that Morris can corner flour, so that Graves can run up the price of tobacco twenty-two dollars a barrel, so that Jamison can pile up his wool on the river front while the army freezes, so that Mr. Jamie Wilson, whom you know as well as I, can corner a million dollars’ worth of back-country land—easy enough with the woodsmen away fighting—and not content with that, attack everything the people of this state have fought for through his rotten and seditious paper, the Packet. And he has as his good ally, the equally vicious Evening Post. All this, gentlemen, is not a mat
ter of chance, but a concerted attack against the revolution in Pennsylvania. The so-called Republican Society of Mr. Robert Morris is about as much republican as George the Third; its sole purpose, as far as I can see, is to destroy the constitution in which lies the power of the people.

  “I think I have talked too much, gentlemen. There is the situation which I was trying to fight alone, and which General Roberdeau thinks we can fight better together. I leave the rest to you—”

  No applause; he sat down in silence, all of them watching him. He was very tired, and his head ached. Matlack said thoughtfully, thinking aloud more than anything else:

  “Whatever we do, we will need the means of force. Washington—”

  “I think he’ll be with us,” Rittenhouse nodded.

  “Will he, though?”

  Paine said yes. Peale said direct action: if men were profiteering, they would be brought before a tribunal, judged, punished. The constitution would be defended by force—

  “Then that’s civil war.”

  “So be it. They’ve asked for it.”

  “Support?”

  “Bring this out in the open and people will declare themselves. Then we’ll know.”

  Roberdeau sighed; he was growing old; peace was a dream now. Worried, Rittenhouse said they must move cautiously, cautiously.

  “To hell with that!”

  “Bloodshed—”

  “They’ve asked for it,” Garland said harshly. Most of them took that stand; they had been with the army; when campaigning started, they would be with the army again. But, Paine pointed out, this thing must come of the people. Peale suggested a mass meeting, and Roberdeau said he would organize it. A vote was taken, and the others agreed to the method.

  They shook hands and each went home. No one smiled. It was something a long time coming, and now that it was here, they were not happy.

  The meeting was held at the State House, in the court yard. Several hundred people attended, and both Paine and Roberdeau spoke. Matlack moved for the establishment of a Committee of Inspection, and an open vote was taken. Paine was the first elected, then Colonel Smith, a solid supporter of the Constitution, a militiaman and therefore from the people. Rittenhouse, Matlack, and Peale finished the roster. The crowd was grim and earnest. The Republican Society had tried heckling, but the crowd was too somber for that, and it was only by the efforts of Rittenhouse and Roberdeau that violence was avoided.

  The next day Peale and Paine dined with Captain Hardy, in command of a company of Pennsylvania regulars, temporarily bivouacked in the city. Peale explained what was coming. “I’m afraid of the mob,” he said. “If your men support us—”

  At first, Hardy refused. It was not in his province. If Wayne agreed—

  “But there’s no time for that!”

  They argued for an hour, and then Hardy agreed to put it up to the men. Both Paine and Peale spoke, and the troops, after some consultation among themselves, agreed to support them.

  In a way, war had been declared in Philadelphia.

  The city knew. It was like an armed camp. Men kept their muskets at hand; mobs roamed the streets; there was work for Peale’s company of troops. The Committee of Inspection set up its tribunal, and merchant after merchant was hauled before it, ordered to explain their business, ordered to produce books and vouchers. A Mr. Donny was found to have thirty-six hundred pairs of shoes in his warehouse, purchase price averaging eleven dollars, asking price, sixty dollars. Paine prepared the evidence carefully. A Mr. Solikoff, a mysterious gentleman of Baltimore, was found to be Morris’s partner in cornering the flour market. Indictments were drawn up.

  The Philadelphia Post had a rush of courage and attacked Paine more scathingly and filthily than ever before. Paine would have let the matter pass. “It’s not the first time,” he explained.

  But they were out in the open now. Matlack had the Post building surrounded by soldiers, and Towne, the publisher, was asked whether he would like to hang by the neck for a while. The warning was enough.

  “I don’t like that,” Rittenhouse said. “Freedom of the press—”

  But the committee assured him that once the revolution had triumphed, there would be time enough for freedom of the press.

  The committee had no power to punish, but it had a tremendous power for intimidation, and it was solidly supported by the rank and file of Philadelphia. It stored up its evidence for the coming election, and at a great public mass meeting, it presented its case against Morris. The following day, thoroughly frightened, Morris let his corner on flour fall to pieces.

  From a meeting of the committee one night Paine walked home, suddenly as weak as a child, barely able to mount the rickety wooden stairs to his room. He lay on his bed, alternately hot and cold, trembling, delirious, plucking at his memory, whimpering sometimes, but too weak to light a fire in the hearth. All the next day he lay in bed in the same semi-conscious state, half the following day. Top many things were happening; for the moment Paine was forgotten. The tribunal sat over Philadelphia, and the city was frightened, angry, divided in itself. Mobs surged though the street by torchlight, and Peale’s soldiers, spread too thin by far, tried vainly to keep order.

  Roberdeau remembered the absent writer, and by that time Paine was almost dead, a haggard dirty figure in a foul and dirty chamber. When Paine regained consciousness, the first person he saw was Irene Roberdeau, and it was a dream, and this an angel. He said, “I’m dying—” but it didn’t matter. He was too weak to feel anything but a lonely sort of happiness, only strong enough to resist Roberdeau’s efforts to take him out of the place he called his home.

  For nine days she stayed with him, an impersonal, competent nurse, and then Paine, who could stand it no longer, begged her to go. She went, and it was lonelier and bleaker than ever. When he got out of bed and looked into the bit of glass he called his mirror, it was not Paine who faced him, but a yellow mask stretched on jutting bones, hollow eyes, a monstrous nose, and long, scraggly, thinning hair.

  While Paine lay sick, civil war raged in Philadelphia. He heard the gunshots of the pitched battle between Wilson’s group and the constitutionalists. He heard, all through one night, the ragged sound of musketry, and wept like a baby because he was confined here, feeble, unable to move. And he was still sick when the state election swept the constitutionalists into a power beyond dispute.

  Peale told him about it, and Paine nodded and tried to smile. “So long as we won,” he said.

  Another dark winter dragged through; it was seventeen-eighty; part of the Pennsylvania Line mutinied, for lack of food, of pay, of clothing. Five long years they had been fighting, and they wanted to see their homes, their wives and their children. Charleston fell. The mutiny was put down. Washington poured his heart into begging letters, and Paine read them. He was clerk of the Assembly now. Washington wrote, “My dear Paine, is there nothing that can be done, nothing?”

  The election had been very decisive. With the constitutionalists in power, Morris, Rush and other leaders of the Republican party threw in their hands. The counter-revolution had been blocked and broken, and it would not rise again for many years. Paine had to live somehow; Crisis papers could be written and printed, but the people who read them had not a penny to give the author. It was then that Roberdeau and Peale had offered Paine the position of clerk to the State Assembly, and Paine had taken it. “I hoped to go back to the army,” he apologized. He didn’t have the strength; strangely, quietly, age crept up on him. His hair was graying, and the curious twisted eyes had a shadow of fear in them.

  As clerk of the Assembly, he read an appeal from Washington: “… every idea you can form of our distresses will fall short of reality.…” To Pennsylvania, this was, when all else had failed; to the men who had taken power and organized the first revolutionary tribunal. “Such a combination of circumstances to exhaust the patience of the soldiery.… We see in every line of the army the most serious features of mutiny and sedition.…” To Paine, it was
more than that, the tall Virginian pleading, “You, Paine, who did this thing with your pen—you who could talk to the men.” He was sick, and his hand trembled. The Assembly sat with dead features; afterwards, he would get drunk. The discussion was hopeless; a delegate saying, “What can we do?”; another putting it into different words.

  He had a thousand dollars in continental money. He took half of it and made the first step of reconciliation with the party of finance. Sending the five hundred dollars to Blair McClenaghan, dealer in tobacco and linens, a Scot who had a grudging admiration for Paine, he suggested some sort of moving fund for the relief of Washington. The Scot mentioned the idea to Salomon, a small and rather mysterious Jew who made his headquarters in a coffee house on Front Street. It was rumored that Salomon had broken the wheat combine, that he had knocked the bottom out of the price for woolen blankets. At any rate, he was involved with the constitutionalists, whose chief financial backing came from Jews.

  “Do it,” Salomon told the Scot. “It’s the only thing—but I am not your man. I can spare a few thousand, five perhaps, but you’ll need capital, a great deal of money. Go to Morris and Reed and Rush. I think they’ll go in.”

  “After the way Paine fought them? It’s his idea.”

  “After the way he fought them. They want it their revolution, but they don’t want to lose the war.”

  McGlenaghan went to Morris. Morris said bitterly, “I hate that man—but he’s right. We’re going under. If I can convince Wilson—”

  “If you can—” the Scot smiled.

  “Nevertheless, one day Mr. Paine will pay,” Morris said grimly. “We won’t forget.”

  The sum of hatred Paine had aroused was left for further collection, and that night, on the basis of his five hundred dollars continental, the Bank of Pennsylvania was organized to supply the army with food, clothes, and munitions.

  Paine wrote Crisis papers in the same white heat, but he had to drink more and more to put the flame in his pen. Twice he went off to the army; old Common Sense was thinner, more haggard than ever, but the men welcomed him and still flung the cry at him, “My God, Tom, this don’t make no sense whatever.” He explained patiently, again and again; they were his children, dirty, haggard, worn as he. Washington said to him, “Don’t let me ever estimate, Paine, what you are worth.”