The TPHA Cartoon collection offers viewers a vivid journey of how Paine’s public image has morphed over the last 250 years. Although there were some positive portrayals of Paine early on, his many enemies, both in Britain and America, eventually took aim at him with vitriolic, often violent imagery, seeking to defame him and attack his allies to quash his message of representative democracy and reason.

The gallery overflows with 1790s cartoons and sketches attacking Paine that were funded by the British monarchy. Created by famous political cartoonists like James Gillray, James Sayers, and Isaac Cruikshank, these images are often vicious, showing Paine’s execution and torture, or portraying him as a demon or in the form of a variety of beasts.

Curated from the British Museum, the Library of Congress, the American Philosophical Society, the New York Public Library, Truth Seeker magazine, the Musée Carnavalet in Paris, and others, our Paine editorial cartoons gallery is a colorful visual carnival. Although we are adding images on an ongoing basis, at this point we have over 130 Paine cartoons arranged in chronological order, spanning from the earliest we have discovered so far, made in 1777, all the way up to a sample of cartoons from Polyp’s 2022 graphic novel PAINE: a Fantastical Visual Biography.

It is a delight to watch new generations of Paine supporters use political art to resurrect hisimage in counterpoint to the negativity of the 18th century, and, with it, his message. The political cartoons of the Truth Seeker magazine’s Watson Heston are a triumph of pro-Paine advocacy that are perhaps without equal. The 1880s illustrations by Joseph Keppler and Adolph Schwarzmann also reflect the era’s optimism and a changing public image of Paine.

PAINE’S REDEMPTION

By the 20th century, Paine illustrations turned less poisonous. Instead, we see Paine reflected in glory in a fresco by Mexican painter Diego Rivera’s 1933 mural at Rockefeller Center (eventually plastered over by Nelson Rockefeller); a 1938 postage stamp from Poland to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the U.S. Constitution; and Paine portrayed as Star Trek’s Mr. Spock.

TPHA now hasthe largest collection of Paine cartoons and artwork to be found anywhere. Explore the galleries and the ever-evolving landscape of Paine’s legacy. If you find other political cartoons or images that our missing from our collections, please reach out to share them with us at info@thomaspaine.org.

See the TPHA Cartoon collection now!

The post Poison Pens: Turning the Corner from Damnation to Praise appeared first on .

Quite appropriately, Thomas Paine Park sits next to the seat of government for the largest city in America, at Civic Center in New York City, the site of many political protests. Consisting mostly of a wide stone-paved walkway flanked by benches, Thomas Paine Park is just a small part of Foley Square, a triangle bound by Lafayette, Worth and Centre Streets in the Civic Center portion of Lower Manhattan. 

Thomas Paine Park is surrounded by New York City Hall, the Manhattan Municipal Building, the New York County Courthouse, the Thurgood Marshall U.S, Courthouse (U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit), the Daniel Patrick Moynihan U.S. Courthouse, the Court of International Trade, and several massive federal office buildings. 

Thomas Paine Park is a small sideshow in Foley Square that should be the main event. After all, in contrast to Paine’s amazing life, Foley Square is named for a man of distinctly different moral quality. 

Historically, the site centuries ago was home to a thriving fishing village on Collect Pond (at Chinatown) named Werpoes by the Munsee, a Lenape-speaking people, said Kenneth Jackson in his 1995 Encyclopedia of New York City. 

By the War of Independence, reports the NYC Parks website, it was a “swamp surrounded, ironically, by three former British prisons for revolutionaries.” A medallion marks the spot of an African-American burial ground from the 1700s. 

The swamp later was drained, and tenements were built there. By the 1800s, Irish gangs fought turf wars here over the impoverished Five Points slum.

Five Points was the initial base of Tammany Hall. Starting in the 1850s for 100 years, Tammany Hall had almost total control of New York politics, most famously led by “Boss” Tweed. 

A prominent Tammany Hall figure was Thomas “Big Tom” Foley, a saloon keeper and corrupt politician featured in Herbert Asbury’s 1928 book, The Gangs of New York, which inspired Martin Scorsese’s 2002 movie. 

Foley’s claim to fame in New York history was being the political godfather of Al Smith, the New York Governor and Democratic presidential candidate. The triangle was named for Foley in 1925. 

Foley also is known for his nefarious ties to Russian-Jewish gangster Mike Salter, owner of The Pelham Café at 12 Pell Street, called “the birthplace of Irving Berlin” by gangland history website Infamous New York, which wrote that Salter “was rumored to have killed ten men on the road to becoming Big Tom Foley’s chief election captain.” Foley used Salter for false voter registrations, ballot box stuffing, repeat voting, and especially “getting out the vote.” 

Foley further used Monk Eastman and his gang to conduct election fraud. When a turf war broke out between the Eastman Gang and Paul Kelly’s Five Points Gang, said Asbury, Foley served as a mediator. 

Foley Square at the Civic Center now wears the name of a corrupt politician while Thomas Paine Park has a lightpost marker with no statue of the great man. Paine lived a substantial part of his life in New York and died in Greenwich Village. New York should recognize Paine’s achievements and give him the place of honor at Civic Center, even at the risk of insulting “Big Tom.”

The post The Paradox of NYC’s Thomas Paine Park in Foley Square  appeared first on .

By Adrian Tawfik

A growing academic consensus accepts that cultural exposure to New World indigenous people profoundly shifted European society, helping to inspire the Enlightenment and calls for democracy. 

Europe’s view of the New World as an exotic curiosity (satirized in Swift’s 1726 Gulliver’s Travels) became curious about those living in natural realms for fresh ideas on governance and society. 

As Europeans’ contact with Native Americans increased. Writers like John Locke, David Hume, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau developed ideas about natural law and natural rights inspired by native ways, asserts Donald Grinde Jr. and Bruce Johansen in their 1991 Exemplar of Liberty: Native America and the Evolution of Democracy. 

Grinde and Johansen observe, “European philosophers functioned essentially as their nations’ early industries, importing raw materials from Native America (and other tribal societies around the world), packaging them, and then exporting them around the world as natural-rights philosophy.” 

Rousseau, in particular, contrasted extreme poverty in urban Europe to the egalitarian societies in the New World. He read about the Nambicuara peoples in the Amazon and the Iroquois in North America — unlike anything that’s existed in Europe since the classical era of a Greek democracy and Roman republic. 

A generation later, America’s founders, influenced by writers like Rousseau, understood Native Americans from their own direct contacts, notes Johansen in his 1990 Ethnohistory article, “Native American Societies and the Evolution of Democracy in America.” Grinde added in a 1992 Akwe:kon Press article, “Iroquoian Political Concept and the Genesis of American Government,” the strongest native influence on the founders was the six-nation Iroquois League of Nations. 

The Iroquois Influence 

To show their influence, Benjamin Franklin in 1753 joined a delegation from Pennsylvania signing a treaty with the Iroquois League of Nations, says Walter Isaacson’s biography of Franklin. After meeting the Iroquois, Franklin saw all Native Americans in an increasingly positive light, especially the Iroquois. He worried that their societies and lives were threatened by European immigration and imports of rum. 

Franklin wanted the colonies to follow the Iroquois example. “It would be a very strange thing, if six nations of ignorant savages [sic] could be capable of forming a scheme for such a union,” Franklin said in a 1751 letter to James Parker, but “a like union should be impractical among … ten or a dozen English colonies.” 

Franklin joined Pennsylvania delegates when representees of seven British-American colonies met in 1754 to discuss problems with British rule. Franklin’s “Albany Plan” proposed imitating the Iroquois League of Nations by uniting the colonies as one political body of smaller states, under the Crown.

Franklin’s Albany Plan is seen as a precursor to the Articles of Confederation and the U.S. Constitution. His “Articles of Confederation,” published a year before Common Sense, proposed a federal structure akin to the Iroquois League. 

During the French And Indian War (1754-1763), Native Americans were treated as pawns of the British and French empires in their Seven Years War. The Iroquois, as significant British allies, controlled more than 75 percent of the land that now forms New York State (see map), where much of the war was fought. 

Later, in May 1776, weeks before the Declaration of Independence was signed, the Continental Congress invited Iroquois leaders to Philadelphia. The Iroquois gave John Hancock, President of Congress, the name of Karanduawn, meaning “The Great Tree” (see Paine’s “Liberty Tree” poem below). 

Iroquois League of Nations and the U.S. Constitution 

There’s no scholarly consensus on the thesis of the Iroquois influence on modern democratic structures. Yet similarities exist between the U.S. Constitution and the Iroquois systems of government: 

1. Reliance on community consensus for decisions.
2. Bicameral legislature (Iroquois had one for men and one for women). 
3. States (or Sachems) with equal voting power regardless of population. 
4. Systems for admission of new member states (Sachems). 
5. Balance of power between federal and state (Sachems). 
6. Separation of military and civilian leadership.
7. Restricting members from holding more than one office. 
8. Procedures to impeach representatives (a process called “knocking off the horns”). 
9. The caucus, an Algonquian word, for a political organization or meeting where discussion and consensus are emphasized over voting or formal rules of procedure. 

In 1988, Congress passed a resolution by the Select Committee on Indian Affairs (H. Con. Res. 331) that recognized the influence of the Iroquois on the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. 

Enter Paine 

Thomas Paine defended the Iroquois League of Nations and took their democratic ideals to a new level. Paine’s high regard for natural human rights and a republican system of government in Common Sense was highly influenced by the Iroquois example, confirmed Eric Sherbert in the 2006 Canadian Culture Poesis. 

To show how governments evolve, Paine wrote the parable of a remote settlement growing into a society. His fable’s civics lesson on democracy was recognizable to the Iroquois people as well as the American settlers. In Common Sense, he voiced hope for the new world: 

Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia, and Africa, have long expelled her [freedom]. – Europe regards her like a stranger, and England hath given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind. 

For Paine, America was a land where the evils of despotism had yet to take root, says Daniel Paul in the 2007 “We Were Not the Savages: First Nations History, Collision Between European and Native American Civilizations”. After his arrival in the colonies, Paine developed a sharp interest in the “Indians” who lived in a natural state, alien to the urban and supposedly civilized life around him in England, later in Philadelphia and New York. 

After the Revolution began. Paine became secretary for commissioners sent to negotiate with the Iroquois. They gathered at Easton, a town near Philadelphia on the Delaware River in January 1777. After this and subsequent personal encounters with the Iroquois, Paine sought to learn their language. For the rest of his political and writing career Paine cited them as a model for how a society might be organized. 

Iroquois influences are noticeable in many of Paine’s ideas about government and society. Not being noble-born nor wealthy, having personally suffered in England from abuses of wealth and power, Paine took pleasure in witnessing a natural society without any monarchy or aristocracy or established church. 

The lack of money and private property in Iroquois society intrigued Paine. The influence is evident in his 1797 pamphlet, Agrarian Justice, where Paine sharply criticized Europe’s urban poverty: 

The fact is, that the condition of millions, in every country in Europe, is far worse than if they had been born before civilization began, or had been born among the Indians of North-America at the present day. 

Paine added, “The naked and untutored Indian is less savage than the king of Britain.” Paine was harsh in contrasting the relatively peaceful nature of Native Americans to the “grand maniacal architect of systematic colonial oppression,” claimed Vikki Vickers in her 2006, “My Pen and My Soul Have Ever Gone Together: Thomas Paine and the American Revolution”. 

As a champion of human rights, Paine held compassion for the plight of Native Americans. In an age before the permanent devastation to come, Paine was not shy in predicting “that the native Indian would be absorbed into the mainstream of American culture.” He did not foresee the violently enforced assimilation that occurred in the century after his death.

As for the Iroquois, during the Revolutionary War, they mostly allied with Britain. They trusted longstanding trade ties and promises to stop American expansion in New York. After Britain lost the war, many Iroquois resettled in Canada, chiefly Ontario. Those who stayed mostly moved onto reserved lands, such as Red Jacket negotiated for the Seneca in western New York. The Iroquois League of Nations is long gone. Their society is still teaching us about democracy.

The post Thomas Paine and the Iroquois Democracy appeared first on .

By Adrian Tawfik

Thomas Paine in Common Sense wrote, “We have it in our power to begin the world over again.” He meant it in his words, in his politics, and in his life. Paine believed in Enlightenment ideals about science. Fascinated by new technologies, Paine tried his hand at designing bridges. He’d change the world by connecting it together. 

After his 1774 arrival in Philadelphia, Paine spent time with Benjamin Franklin and scientifically-minded friends. John Morton’s 2014 article “Thomas Paine & Sunderland Bridge,” in England’s Northeast Lore, says Paine “studied mechanical philosophy, electricity, mineralogy, and the use of iron in bridge building.” After the American Revolution, Paine devoted considerable energy to innovative bridge designs, which improved on existing designs. 

Paine wanted to build bridges in the United States. His first attempt at bridge design was a never-built 300-foot wooden arch bridge across the Harlem River from Manhattan to the Bronx. 

When he lived in Bordentown, NJ, Paine in 1786 made three small models of iron bridges, which Paine later described in his 1803 “memoir” to Congress, “On the Construction of Iron Bridges.”

“I took the last mentioned one [model] with me to France in 1787 and presented it to the Academy of Sciences at Paris for their opinion of it… I presented it as a model for a bridge of a single arch of four hundred feet span over the river Schuylkill at Philadelphia.” The Academy adopted his design principle, but only for 100-foot spans. That same year, he sent a model to Sir Joseph Banks, president of the Royal Society in England, “and soon after went there myself.” 

Paine’s bridge design was being compared to The Iron Bridge in England. The first and the only large bridge made of cast iron, The Iron Bridge was built in Shropshire County by Abraham Darby III, owner of massive West Midlands ironworks. The Iron Bridge opened in 1781, reported Eric Delony in his 2000 Invention & Technology Magazine article, “Tom Paine’s Bridge.” Darby’s Iron Bridge set the standard by which any iron bridge would be judged.

After years studying iron bridge design and seeking funds to build one, Paine decided to build a large-scale model as a proof of concept. Patrick Sweeney in 2017 writes in “Tom Paine’s Bridge” for Republican Socialists UK, that funds couldn’t be raised in America, so Paine returned to England in late 1787 to construct it. 

Paine began building what became the “London Model.” He described it to Congress as more than 100 feet long. The model bridge was built away from heavy traffic in a flat field “at a road junction at the edge of Paddington, north west of London.” 

The model was constructed from cast iron. Paine’ told Congress his main innovation was the bridge arch shape, following the top circumference or arc of a circle. The arch “segment was a circle of four-hundred and ten feet diameter; and until this was done no experiment on a circle of such extensive diameter had ever been made in architecture. 

”Paine’s design improved on the 1781 Iron Bridge, writes Sweeney, by offering flexibility to be as big or small, wide or narrow, high or low, “as required by the geography of the location.” The arch height and shape was not predetermined as a semicircle, then the standard design practice. 

Sweeney says Paine’s solution was “based on his observation of a spider’s web, a form derived directly from nature.

He was keen on the fundamental structures of nature being the basis for our own human efforts at construction.” In essence, Paine wrote, his bridge design was:

“Taking a small section across a circle, called in geometry a cord. The bridge could be based on that cord. The starting point is to draw a large imaginary circle, then draw a cord across a section of the circle that matches the width of the river or gap one wishes to bridge. [The] key point is that the size of the circle can be infinitely varied according to the width of the gap being bridged.” 

Cast iron components for the London Model were manufactured by Thomas Walker at his foundry, then transported by ship to London, says Sweeney. 

Paine won a 1788 British patent for his completed London Model. His application stated, “Nothing in the world is as fine as my bridge, except a woman.” 

Paine lacked the needed funds to build a full-scale bridge. His attention turned to the French Revolution and then his new book, Rights of Man. 

Meanwhile, says Sweeney, the London Model sat rusting in a field and had to be dismantled. Thomas Walker, who built the model, paid off debts by sending the iron north to construct his new bridge across the River Wear in Sunderland, a city in County Durham on the North Sea. Many of Paine’s cast components, likely supporting voussoirs, were used directly in the bridge. The rest of the iron was smelted and recast. 

Walker constructed the Sunderland Bridge with Rowland Burdon, a local Member of Parliament. The bridge opened in 1796 as Britain’s second cast-iron bridge. Walker and Burdon took full credit for the Sunderland Bridge, but Paine is the one who really invented its design and technology. 

Burdon took out his own patent in 1795, reports English historian John Morton in his Northeast Lore article, Durham’s other Member of Parliament, Ralph Milbanke, pleaded with Burdon to give Paine “compensation for the advantages the public may have derived from his ingenious model, from which certainly the outline of the bridge at Sunderland was taken.” 

The Sunderland Bridge at 236 feet was twice as long as The Iron Bridge, becoming the world’s longest single-span bridge at 72 meters, writes Leonardo F. Troyano in Bridge Engineering: A Global Perspective. Paine never saw the Sunderland bridge in his lifetime, Troyano says, and he “did not get any credit for it,” but its appearance clearly was that of Paine’s design. 

Morton quotes a Mr. Phipps, C.E., who wrote a report to 19th century architect Robert Stephenson: 

We must not deny to Paine the credit of conceiving the construction of iron bridges of far larger span than had been made before his time, or of the important examples, both as models and large constructions, which he caused to be made and publicly exhibited. 

Paine explicitly decided not to patent his bridge design in America, says Morton, but “he took care to put the country in possession of the means and of the right of making use of the construction freely.” 

Paine wrote to Congress in 1803, “I have to request that this memoir may be put on the journals of Congress, as evidence hereafter that this new method of constructing bridges originated in America.” 

Paine’s bridge is a metaphor for his life. With no formal education or training as an engineer, he joined a small number of people who contributed advances in technology to begin the Industrial Revolution. Like his political achievements were buried. Paine’s important role in the industrial revolution has been lost. It’s time for that to change.

The post Thomas Paine’s Iron Bridge Design Spans the Start of the Industrial Revolution appeared first on .