Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 by Various

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Emerson's saying, that involuntarily we read history as superior beings,
is never so true as when we read history before it has been worked
up for the public, in the raw material of letters, pamphlets, and
newspapers. Feverish paragraphs, which once excited the enthusiasm of
one party and the fiercest opposition of the other, lie before us as
dead and as unmeaning as an Egyptian mummy. The passion which once
gave them life is gone. The objects which the writers considered
all-important we perceive to have been of no real significance even in
their day. We read on with a good-natured pity, akin to the feeling
which the gods of Epicurus might be supposed to experience when they
looked down upon foolish mortals,--and when we shut the book, go out
into our own world to fret, fume, and wrangle over things equally
transitory and frivolous.

When it became evident that the Administration party ran the risk of
being beaten in the election of 1800, their trumpeters sounded the
wildest notes of alarm. "People! how long will you remain blind? Awake!
be up and doing! If Mr. Jefferson is elected, the equal representation
of the small States in the Senate will be destroyed, the funding
system swept away, the navy abolished, all commerce and foreign trade
prohibited, and the fruits of the soil left to rot on the hands of the
farmer. The taxes will all fall on the landed interest, all the churches
will be overturned, none but Frenchmen employed by government, and
the monstrous system of liberty and equality, with all its horrid
consequences, as experienced in France and St. Domingo, will inevitably
be introduced." Thus they shouted, and no doubt many of the shouters
sincerely believed it all. Nevertheless, and in spite of these alarums,
the Revolution of '99, as Mr. Jefferson liked to call it, took place
without bloodshed, and in 1801 that gentleman mounted the throne.

After this struggle was over, the Federalists, some from conviction and
some from disgust at being beaten, gave up the country as lost. Worthy
New-Englanders, like Cabot, Fisher Ames, and Wolcott, had no longer
hope. They sank into the position of mere grumblers, with one leading
principle,--admiration of England, and a willingness to submit to any
insults which England in her haughtiness might please to inflict. "We
are sure," says the "Boston Democrat," "that George III. would find more
desperately devoted subjects in New England than in any part of his
dominions." The Democrats, of course, clung to their motto, "Whatever
is in France is right," and even accepted the arbitrary measures of
Bonaparte at home as a mere change of system, and abroad as forced upon
him by British pirates. It is curious to read the high Federalist papers
in the first days of their sorrow. In their contradictory fault-finding
sulkiness, they give some color of truth to Mr. Jefferson's accusation,
that the Federal leaders were seeking to establish a monarchy,--a charge
well known to be unfounded, as Washington said at the time. "What is the
use of celebrating the Fourth of July?" they asked. "Freedom is a stale,
narcotic topic. The Declaration of Independence a useless, if not an
odious libel upon a friendly nation connected with us by the silken band
of amity." Fenno, in his paper, said the Declaration was "a placard
of rebellion, a feeble production, in which the spirit of rebellion
prevailed over the love of order." Dennie, in the "Portfolio,"
anticipating Mr. Choate, called it "an incoherent accumulation of
indigestible and impracticable political dogmas, dangerous to the
peace of the world, and seditious in its local tendency, and, as a
composition, equally at variance with the laws of construction and the
laws of regular government." The Federalist opinion of the principles
of the Administration party was avowed with equal frankness in their
papers. "A democracy is the most absurd constitution, productive of
anarchy and mischief, which must always happen when the government of a
nation depends upon the caprice of the ignorant, harebrained vulgar. All
the miseries of men for a long series of years grew out of that infamous
mode of polity, a democracy; which is to be reckoned to be only the
corruption and degeneracy of a republic, and not to be ranked among the
legitimate forms of government. If it be not a legitimate government, we
owe it no allegiance. He is a blind man who does not see this truth; he
is a base man who will not assert it. Democratic power is tyranny, in
the principle, the beginning, the progress, and the end. It is on its
trial here, and the issue will be civil war, desolation, and anarchy."
These and other foolish excerpts were kept before their readers by the
"Aurora" and "Boston Chronicle," leading Democratic organs, and
served to sweeten their triumph and to seal the fate of the unlucky
Federalists.

The difference between the tone of these extracts and that of our
present journalists, when they touch upon the abstract principles of
government, may indicate to us the firm hold which the Democratic theory
has taken of our people. As that conquering party marched onward, the
opposition was forced to follow after, and to encamp upon the ground
their powerful enemy left behind him. To-day when we see gentlemen who
consider themselves Conservatives in the ranks of the Democrats, we may
suppose that the tour of the political circle is nearly completed.

A momentary lull had followed the storm of the election, when Mr.
Jefferson boldly threw down another "bone for the Federalists to gnaw."
He wrote to Thomas Paine, inviting him to America, and offering him a
passage home in a national vessel. "You will, in general, find us," he
added, "returned to sentiments worthy of former times; in these it will
be your glory to have steadily labored, and with as much effect as any
man living. That you may live long, to continue your useful labors and
reap the reward in the thankfulness of nations, is my sincere prayer.
Accept the assurance of my high esteem and affectionate attachment." Mr.
Jefferson went even farther. He openly announced his intention of giving
Paine an office, if there were one in his gift suitable for him. Now,
although Paine had been absent for many years, he had not been forgotten
by the Americans. The echo of the noise he made in England reached our
shores; and English echoes were more attentively listened to then even
than at present. His "Rights of Man" had been much read in this country.
Indeed, it was asserted, and upon pretty good authority, that Jefferson
himself, when Secretary of State, had advised and encouraged the
publication of an American edition as an antidote to the "Davila" of Mr.
Adams. Even the "Age of Reason" had obtained an immense circulation from
the great reputation of the author. It reminded the Rev. Mr. Goodrich,
and other Orthodox New-Englanders, of Milton's description of Death,--

"Black it stood as night,
Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell."

Yet numbers of people, nothing frightened, would buy and read. "No
work," Dr. Francis tells us, "had a demand for readers comparable to
that of Paine. The 'Age of Reason,' on its first appearance in New York,
was printed as an orthodox book by orthodox publishers,--doubtless
deceived," the charitable Doctor adds, "by the vast renown which the
author of 'Common Sense' had obtained, and _by the prospects of sale_."
Paine's position in the French Convention, his long imprisonment,
poverty, slovenly habits, and fondness for drink, were all well
known and well talked over. William Cobbett, for one, never lost an
opportunity of dressing up Paine as a filthy monster. He wrote his
life for the sake of doing it more thoroughly. The following extract,
probably much relished at the time, will give some idea of the tone and
temper of this performance:--

"How Tom gets a living now, or what brothel he inhabits, I know not, nor
does it much signify. He has done all the mischief he can do in this
world; and whether his carcass is at last to be suffered to rot on
the earth, or to be dried in the air, is of very little consequence.
Whenever or wherever he breathes his last, he will excite neither sorrow
nor compassion; no friendly hand will close his eyes, not a groan will
be uttered, not a tear will be shed. Like Judas, he will be remembered
by posterity; men will learn to express all that is base, malignant,
treacherous, unnatural, and blasphemous by the single monosyllable of
Paine."

Cobbett also wrote an _ante-mortem_ epitaph, a fit inscription for the
life he had composed. It ends thus:--

"He is crammed in a dungeon and preaches up Reason;
Blasphemes the Almighty, lives in filth like a hog;
Is abandoned in death, and interred like a dog."

This brutal passage does not exaggerate the opinion of Paine's character
held by the good people of America. He was an object of horror
to them,--a rebel against government and against God,--a type of
Jacobinism, a type of Infidelity, and, with what seemed to them, no
doubt, a beautiful consistency, a type of all that was abandoned and
vile. Thomas Paine, a Massachusetts poet of _ci-devant_ celebrity,
petitioned the General Court for permission to call himself Robert Treat
Paine, on the ground that he had no Christian name. In New England,
Christianity and Federalism were looked upon as intimately connected,
and Democracy as a wicked thing, born of Tom Paine, Tom Jefferson, and
the Father of Lies. In this Trinity of Evil, Thomas Paine stood first.

During the struggle for the Presidency, Mr. Jefferson had been accused,
from every Federal stump, of the two unpardonable sins to Yankee
minds,--namely, that his notes could be bought for five shillings in the
pound, and that he did not believe in Revolution. Since his election, he
had been daily reminded of his religious short-comings by keen newspaper
attacks. He knew that he strengthened the hands of his enemies by
inviting home the Arch-Infidel. We are and were then a religious people,
in spite of the declaration in Mr. Adams's Tripolitan treaty that the
government of the United States was "not in any sense founded on the
Christian religion," and Paine could find few admirers in any class. Mr.
Jefferson, too, was well aware that the old man was broken, that the
fire had gone out of him, and that his presence in the United States
could be of no use whatever to the party. But he thought that Paine's
services in the Revolution had earned for him an asylum, and their old
acquaintance made him hasten to offer it. We think that the invitation
to Paine was one of the manliest acts of Jefferson's life.

When the matter became public, there arose a long, loud cry of abuse,
which rang from Massachusetts Bay to Washington City. Anarchy,
confusion, and the downfall of not only church, but state, were
declared to be the unavoidable consequences of Paine's return to our
shores,--that impious apostate! that Benedict Arnold, once useful, and
then a traitor! The "United States Gazette" had ten leaders on the text
of Tom Paine and Jefferson, "whose love of liberty was neither more
rational, generous, or social, than that of the wolf or the tiger." The
"New England Palladium" fairly shrieked:--"What! invite to the United
States that lying, drunken, brutal infidel, who rejoices in the
opportunity of basking and wallowing in the confusion, devastation,
bloodshed, rapine, and murder, in which his soul delights?" Why, even
the French called him the English orang-outang! He was exposed with a
monkey and a bear in a cage in Paris. In 1792, he was forbidden to haunt
the White-Bear Tavern in London. He subsisted for eight years on the
charity of booksellers, who employed him in the morning to correct
proofs; in the afternoon he was too drunk. He lodged in a cellar. He
helped the _poissardes_ to clean fish and open oysters. He lived in
misery, filth, and contempt. Not until Livingston went to France did any
respectable American call upon him. Livingston's attentions to him not
only astonished, but disgusted the First Consul, and gave him a very
mean opinion of Livingston's talents. The critical Mr. Dennie caused his
"Portfolio" to give forth this solemn strain: "If, during the present
season of national abasement, infatuation, folly, and vice, any portent
could surprise, sober men would be utterly confounded by an article
current in all our newspapers, that the loathsome Thomas Paine, a
drunken atheist and the scavenger of faction, is invited to return in
a national ship to America by the first magistrate of a free people.
A measure so enormously preposterous we cannot yet believe has been
adopted, and it would demand firmer nerves than those possessed by Mr.
Jefferson to hazard such an insult to the moral sense of the nation. If
that rebel rascal should come to preach from his Bible to our populace,
it would be time for every honest and insulted man of dignity to flee to
some Zoar as from another Sodom, to shake off the very dust of his feet
and to abandon America." "He is coming," wrote Noah Webster, ("the
mender and murderer of English,") "to publish in America the third part
of the 'Age of Reason.'" And the epigrammatists, such as they were,
tried their goose-quills on the subject:--

"He passed his forces in review,
Smith, Cheetham, Jones, Duane:
'Dull rascals,--these will never do,'
Quoth he,--'I'll send for Paine.'

"Then from his darling den in France
To tempt the wretch to come,
He made Tom's brain with flattery dance
And took the tax from rum."

The Administration editors held their tongues;--the religious side of
the question was too strong for them.

Paine was unable to accept the passage offered him in the frigate, and
returned in a merchant-vessel in the autumn of the next year (1802).
The excitement had not subsided. Early in October, the "Philadelphia
Gazette" announced that "a kind of tumultuous sensation was produced in
the city yesterday evening in consequence of the arrival of the ship
Benjamin Franklin from Havre. It was believed, for a few moments, that
the carcass of Thomas Paine was on board, and several individuals were
seen disgracing themselves by an impious joy. It was finally understood
that Paine had missed his passage by this vessel and was to sail in a
ship to New York. Under the New York news-head we perceive a vessel from
Havre reported. Infidels! hail the arrival of your high-priest!"

A few days later, the infidel Tom Paine, otherwise Mr. Paine, arrived
safely at Baltimore and proceeded thence to Washington. The journalists
gave tongue at once: "Fire! Age of Reason! Look at his nose! He drank
all the brandy in Baltimore in nine days! What a dirty fellow! Invited
home by a brother Tom! Let Jefferson and his blasphemous crony dangle
from the same gallows." The booksellers, quietly mindful of the
opportunity, got out an edition of his works in two volumes.

As soon as he was fairly on shore, Paine took sides with his host, and
commenced writing "Letters to the People of the United States." He
announced in them that he was a genuine Federalist,--not one of that
disguised faction which had arisen in America, and which, losing sight
of first principles, had begun to contemplate the people as hereditary
property: No wonder that the author of the "Rights of Man" was attacked
by this faction: His arrival was to them like the sight of water to
canine madness: He served them for a standing dish of abuse: The leaders
during the Reign of Terror in France and during the late despotism
in America were the same men in character; for how else was it to be
accounted for that he was persecuted by both at the same time? In every
part of the Union this faction was in the agonies of death, and, in
proportion as its fate approached, gnashed its teeth and struggled: He
should lose half his greatness when they ceased to lie. Mr. Adams, as
the late chief of this faction, met with harsh and derisive treatment in
these letters, and did not attempt to conceal his irritation in his own
later correspondence.

Paine's few defenders tried to back him with weak paragraphs in the
daily papers: His great talents, his generous services, "in spite of a
few indiscreet writings about religion," should make him an object of
interest and respect. The "Aurora's" own correspondent sent to his paper
a favorable sketch of Paine's appearance, manner, and conversation:
He was "proud to find a man whom he had admired free from the
contaminations of debauchery and the habits of inebriety which have been
so grossly and falsely sent abroad concerning him." But the enemy had
ten guns to Paine's one, and served them with all the fierceness of
party-hate. A shower of abusive missiles rattled incessantly about his
ears. However thick-skinned a man may be, and protected over all by the
_oes triplex_ of self-sufficiency, he cannot escape being wounded by
furious and incessant attacks. Paine felt keenly the neglect of his
former friends, who avoided him, when they did not openly cut him. Mr.
Jefferson, it is true, asked him to dinners, and invited the British
minister to meet him; at least, the indignant Anglo-Federal editors
said so. Perhaps he offered him an office. If he did, Paine refused it,
preferring "to serve as a disinterested volunteer." Poor old man! his
services were no longer of much use to anybody. The current of American
events had swept past him, leaving him stranded, a broken fragment of a
revolutionary wreck.

When the nine days of wonder had expired in Washington, and the
inhabitants had grown tired of staring at Paine and of pelting him with
abuse, he betook himself to New York. On his way thither, he met with an
adventure which shows the kind of martyrdom suffered by this political
and religious heretic. He had stopped at Bordentown, in New Jersey, to
look at a small place he owned there, and to visit an old friend and
correspondent, Colonel Kirkbride. When he departed, the Colonel drove
him over to Trenton to take the stage-coach. But in Trenton the Federal
and Religious party had the upperhand, and when Paine applied at the
booking-office for a seat to New York the agent refused to sell him one.
Moreover, a crowd collected about his lodgings, who groaned dismally
when he drove away with his friend, while a band of musicians, provided
for the occasion, played the Rogue's March.

Among the editorial celebrities of 1803, James Cheetham, in New York,
was almost as famous as Duane of the "Aurora." Cheetham, like many of
his contemporaries, Gray, Carpenter, Callender, and Duane himself, was
a British subject. He was a hatter in his native land; but a turn for
politics ruined his business and made expatriation convenient. In the
United States, he had become the editor of the "American Citizen," and
was at that time busily engaged in attacking the Federalists and Burr's
"Little Band," for their supposed attempt to elect Mr. Burr in the place
of Mr. Jefferson. To Cheetham, accordingly, Paine wrote, requesting him
to engage lodgings at Lovett's, afterwards the City Hotel. He sent for
Cheetham, on the evening of his arrival. The journalist obeyed the
summons immediately. This was the first interview between Paine and the
man who was to hang, draw, and quarter his memory in a biography. This
libellous performance was written shortly after Paine's death. It was
intended as a peace-offering to the English government. The ex-hatter
had made up his mind to return home, and he wished to prove the
sincerity of his conversion from radicalism by trampling on the remains
of its high-priest. So long as Cheetham remained in good standing with
the Democrats, Paine and he were fast friends; but when he became
heretical and schismatic on the Embargo question, some three or four
years later, and was formally read out of the party, Paine laid the rod
across his back with all his remaining strength. He had vigor enough
left, it seems, to make the "Citizen" smart, for Cheetham cuts and stabs
with a spite which shows that the work was as agreeable to his feelings
as useful to his plans. His reminiscences must be read _multis cum
granis_.

In New York Paine enjoyed the same kind of second-rate ovation as in
Washington. A great number of persons called upon him, but mostly of the
laboring class of emigrants, who had heard of the "Rights of Man,"
and, feeling disposed to claim as many rights as possible in their new
country, looked with reverence upon the inventor of the system.
The Democratic leaders, with one or two exceptions, avoided Paine.
Respectabilities shunned him as a contamination. Grant Thorburn was
suspended from church-membership for shaking hands with him. To the boys
he was an object of curious attention; his nose was the burden of their
songs.

Cheetham carried round a subscription-list for a public dinner. Sixty or
seventy of Paine's admirers attended. It went off brilliantly, and was
duly reported in the "American Citizen." Then the effervescence of New
York curiosity subsided; Paine became an old story. He left Lovett's
Hotel for humble lodgings in the house of a free-thinking farrier.
Thenceforward the tale of his life is soon told. He went rarely to his
farm at New Rochelle; he disliked the country and the trouble of keeping
house; and a bullet which whizzed through his window one Christmas Eve,
narrowly missing his head, did not add agreeable associations to the
place. In the city he moved his quarters from one low boarding-house to
another, and generally managed to quarrel with the blacksmiths, bakers,
and butchers, his landlords. Unable to enjoy society suited to his
abilities and large experience of life, Paine called in low company to
help him bear the burden of existence. To the men who surrounded him,
his opinions on all subjects were conclusive, and his shrewd sayings
revelations. Among these respectful listeners, he had to fear neither
incredulity nor disputation. Like his friend Elihu Palmer, and the
celebrated Dr. Priestley, Paine would not tolerate contradiction.
To differ with him was, in his eyes, simply to be deficient in
understanding. He was like the French lady who naively told Dr.
Franklin, "_Je ne trouve que moi qui aie toujours raison_." Professing
to adore Reason, he was angry, if anybody reasoned with him. But herein
he was no exception to the general rule,--that we find no persons so
intolerant and illiberal as men professing liberal principles.

His occupation and amusement was to write for the papers articles of
a somewhat caustic and personal nature. Whatever subject occupied the
public mind interested Paine and provoked his remarks. He was bitter in
his attacks upon the Federalists and Burrites for attempting to jockey
Jefferson out of the Presidency. Later, when Burr was acquitted of
treason, Paine found fault with Chief-Justice Marshall for his rulings
during the trial, and gave him notice, that he (Marshall) was "a
suspected character." He also requested Dr. Mitchell, then United States
Senator for New York, to propose an amendment to the Constitution,
authorizing the President to remove a judge, on the address of a
majority of both houses of Congress, for reasonable cause, when
sufficient grounds for impeachment might not exist. General Miranda's
filibustering expedition against Caracas, a greater failure even than
the Lopez raid on Cuba, furnished Paine with a theme. He wrote a
sensible paper on the yellow fever, by request of Jefferson, and one or
two on his iron bridge. He was ardent in the defence of Mr. Jefferson's
pet scheme of a gun-boat navy, and ridiculed the idea of fortifying
New York. "The cheapest way," he said, "to fortify New York will be to
banish the scoundrels that infest it." The inhabitants of that city
would do well, if they could find an engineer to fortify their island in
this way.

When the Pennsylvanians called a Convention in 1805 to amend the
Constitution of the State, Paine addressed them at some length, giving
them a summary of his views on Government, Constitutions, and Charters.
The Creoles of Louisiana sent to Congress a memorial of their "rights,"
in which they included the importation of African slaves. Paine was
indignant at this perversion of his favorite specific for all political
ailments, and took the Franco-Americans soundly to task:--"How dare you
put up a petition to Heaven for such a power, without fearing to be
struck from the earth by its justice?" It is manifest that Paine could
not be a Democrat in good standing now. Mingled with these graver
topics were side-blows at the emissary Cullen, _alias_ Carpenter, an
Englishman, who edited a Federal paper,--replies to Cheetham, reprimands
to Cheetham, and threats to prosecute Cheetham for lying, "unless he
makes a public apology,"--and three letters to Governor Morgan Lewis,
who had incensed Paine by bringing an action for political libel against
a Mr. Thomas Farmer, laying his damages at one hundred thousand dollars.

Among his last productions were two memorials to the House of
Representatives. One can see in these papers that old age had weakened
his mind, and that harsh treatment had soured his feelings towards the
land of his adoption.

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