The New York Times, May 8, 1910. PAGE NUMBER 48
National Museum in His Memory to Be Opened in the House in New Rochelle Given Him by the State of New York.
A CENTURY after the death of Thomas Paine the honors so long denied him are being accorded. It is somewhat slow, but four or five years ago an organization was perfected of those who wish to bring Paine into his true place among the founders of American independence and liberty.
A Thomas Paine National Museum is to be opened at New Rochelle on Decoration Day; it is expected in the old house presented to Paine by the State of New York in 1784 in recognition of his services in the Revolution. There will be appropriate exercises. Representatives of patriotic bodies, men representing different sections and nationalities and from all parts of the country will be present.
The house, which is now owned by the Huguenot Society of New Rochelle, stands on the Paine farm, which was presented to him with the adjoining farm of 277 acres, confirmed by the State from a previous grant of 1784. It was the Thomas Paine National Historical Association, which was incorporated in 1906, which is in charge of the arrangements.
The museum is to contain relics of Paine, and the association has a large collection of cartoons and caricatures of Paine drawn at the height of the storm provoked by the publication of his “Rights of Man.” It has also many portraits and first or early editions of his works, “Common Sense,” “The Rights of Man,” “The Crisis,” and “The Age of Reason.”
Perhaps the most interesting exhibit of the museum will be a life-sized wax figure of Paine in a sitting posture, with quill in hand. This figure was made by the Eden Musee, formerly of New York, at a cost of $500. It will be seated in the chair which Paine used at his death, and which, with his andirons and fire pot, has been preserved in the museum by the Bayeux family of New Rochelle, in whose possession it has remained for a century or more.
This was figure is a remarkable fine portrait of Paine, carefully modeled from the wax mask taken of his face in 1833 at the height of his career, when he was about thirty-eight or forty years old. The coloring is exactly correct. On this the figure James F. Morton, Jr., a New York lawyer, wrote the following sonnet:
“This is the man of whom a poet said:
‘Who lived and labored for the rights of man,
Unheedful of the calumnies that fall
On him who serves his kind, since time began.
No greater prophet faced the savage ban,
No greater truth than King and ruled the mighty call,
Which shattered the foundations of that wall
Cemented by greed as its own evil plan.
He sits before us, calmly as in life,
Nursing the pen which made the tyrant bow,
And thinking lofty thoughts of liberty;
Again cheerful in the darkness, rife
With strife,
And bearing through, the roaring of the gale,
The still, small voice that bids all men be free.’ “
The house stands about fifty feet from the monument erected by Gilbert Valiance of Paine’s early biographers, a half-century ago. On North Avenue and just behind the house is the spot where Paine’s body was originally buried. He died in New York in a house on what is now known as 59 Grove Street; although the house was long ago replaced by another. He wished to be buried in the Quaker burial grounds, but the Friends refused to allow it, and three days after his death a small company of his faithful friends carried his body to New Rochelle and interred it in North Avenue. Ten years after the burial William Cobbett, the noted English radical, came to America, and removed the body to England. He was a great admirer of Paine, and believed that America had wronged him.
Cobbett’s intention was to have a fine monument erected over the body at its burial-place, but England was in the throes of those political events and Cobbett was unable to get the monument built with his project. When he died, Paine’s body was still in his estate, in an attic room. It disappeared, and unceasing efforts have since been made to trace it. All that has ever been recovered is a small portion of the brain, which Dr. Moncure D. Conway secured four or five years ago and brought to America.
Dr. Conway was the first President of the Paine Historical Association, and he turned the relic over to that organization. On Oct. 14, 1905, with appropriate ceremonies, it was interred under the monument in its original resting place. With Dr. Conway secured a lock of Paine’s hair, and this will be one of the principal exhibitions in the museum.
“The speakers have not yet been announced, but at least one them will be a clergyman. When the Paine Centennial celebration was held at the New Rochelle house last June the Rev. Dr. Thomas R. Elliot, who was one of the speakers, closed his address with the words:
“The progress of the world in political and religious liberty will be written in the estimates that the world has learned from Thomas Paine, and will credit the hundred years since he fell into an undeserved grave.”
“The presence of clergymen at a meeting in honor of Paine would not have been possible years ago. But Paine was not an atheist. He said:
“There are two principal enemies of Fanaticism and Infidelity, or that which is called Atheism. The first requires to be combated by reason and morality, the other by natural philosophy.”
“We profess and we proclaim in peace, in pure, unmixed, comfortable, and rational belief of a God as ministered to us in the universe.
“I believe in one God, and the Word of God is the creation we behold, and it is in this Word which an human invention can counterfeit or alter that God speaketh universally to man.”
In this day, when Paine’s belief is that not only of Unitarian churches but of many of the most thoughtful of the congregational churches, a clergyman does no longer risk by calling attention to his services to the cause of American Independence. Some one has said of him:
“If he lived to-day his severest critics would be the followers of Ingersoll, who world criticize him for not going further; and the Christman associations would swing wide their gates that he might enter.”
The monument referred to by name of New Rochelle was often mutilated by those who were against Paine, and in late years the monument has been restored by the Paine Historical Association. A bronze bust by Wilson MacDonald placed upon it. The monument was rededicated Oct. 14, 1905.
The officers of the Thomas Paine Historical Association are: Leonard Abbott, President; W. M. van der Weyde, Secretary; L. F. Post, First Vice President and Secretary; and Dr. B. B. Foote, Treasurer. Their letter-head bears the following:
“Thomas Paine it was who first suggested American Independence.
“Thomas Paine it was who by his writings did more for the American cause in the Revolution than any other one person.
“Thomas Paine it was who first suggested the Federal Union of States, and it was he who brought about its accomplishment.
“Thomas Paine it was who first suggested the abolition of negro slavery.
“Thomas Paine it was who first proposed arbitration and international peace.
“Thomas Paine it was who first suggested protection for dumb animals.
“Thomas Paine it was who first proposed arbitration and international peace.
“Thomas Paine it was who first suggested the education of all the nations of the world.
“Thomas Paine it was who was recommended the purchase of the Louisiana Territory.”
It is headed with this quotation from Paine:
“The world is my country; to do good my religion.”
In speaking of the Thomas Paine movement in 1905, Thaddeus B. Wakeman said in his address:
“The great services and achievements of Paine may be described as five great victories, three already won, and two being still fought out on the battlefield of time, to wit:
“First. He was the first to suggest and struggle for American national Independence.
“Second. The next thing he suggested, and did much to achieve, was a democratic republic.
“Third. The next thing he achieved, and which has been achieved, is the Federal Union of States, the framing and adoption of the Federal Constitution.
“Fourth. And now what remains on the battlefield of time is this: He was the first to suggest and struggle to establish the religion of humanity, the brotherhood of mankind.
“Fifth. He was the first to preach in the principle of the brotherhood of mankind, that federated republican of nations and of the world, making war and cannon hereafter absolutely impossible.
“The American Constitution, the religion of humanity, the brotherhood of man — those are the three things that bind and cement him into one people, and the republic that might set the example for all the world. ‘The world is my country,’ said Paine, and that made all the people of the world his brothers.
“Remember these five things and you have the substance of the history of mankind for the last 100 years, and these things have been advanced and accomplished more than by any other man whatsoever. They are, in truth, the contribution to the future welfare and glory of our race.
“Of this advocacy of the brotherhood of man by Paine, Moncure D. Conway wrote: Paine never was a revolutionist in the narrow sense of wanting to shed blood. He did his best to persuade the American statesman not to make a war on a mere point of taxation, and to create peace impossible. He at Lexington made peace impossible. He at Lexington could be heard while talking to the Continental army of preventing war between the countries from becoming chronic.
“He did the same in France; he tried to persuade the republicans that if they obtained a republic in substance it made their formal execution of the king a political mistake. In the last year of his life, he declared, personally opposed to death penalties and revenge, but if the one-man power was withdrawn people might govern well without going to such extremes.”
“It is difficult to associate this peaceful disposition with the same man who, as Paine did at the darkest hour of the American cause, that trumpet-like exhortation in ‘The Crisis’:
“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.
“I call not upon a few, but upon all. Not on this State, or that State, but on every State. Up and help us! Lay your shoulders to the wheel; better have too much force than too little, when so great an object is at stake. Let it be told in the future world that in the depths of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet and repulse it. Say not that thousands are gone, turn out your tens of thousands; throw not the burden of the day upon Providence, but ‘show your faith by your works,’ that God may bless you.”
The heart that beats not now, is dead. The hand that wrote these stirring words is dust. But the words are immortal, when a little might have saved the wings, and these immortal words.