Part Three of Three Parts 

When most founding members of the Thomas Paine National Historical Association no longer served on the TPNHA board, others joined the association and took active leadership roles. They reflected the founding philosophy and ideas that prevailed at the turn of the century. 

The philosophy of “anarchism” was popular in leftwing circles in the early 1900s. The American socialism advocated by northeastern progressives often mixed with anarchism. Emma Goldman, the ideological lightning rod, advocated an “anarcho-communist” philosophy that did not separate from socialism, per se, until after World War I. 

Edwin C. Walker and Theodore Schroeder stepped into TPNHA leadership in the early 1900s. Walker was presiding at meetings by 1901, becoming vice president as TPNHA incorporated in 1906. Schroeder became the secretary at that time. 

Edwin C. Walker was respected as a political philosopher and outspoken opponent of the Comstock Law. He wrote the 1903 pamphlet, Who is the Enemy: Anthony Comstock or You? 

His 1904 book, Communism and Conscience, espoused free-market anarchism (related then to individualist anarchism, anarcho-capitalism and libertarian socialism). “I can have little faith,” Walker wrote, ”in the professed love of liberty of one who denies to me the opportunity to hear what he or she does not care to hear, just as I can have little faith in the professions of the Censor who denies to me the opportunity to read what he does not care to read.” 

The TPNHA’s leadership had anarchist affiliations beyond Walker. The leading representative and advocate for anarchism, Emma Goldman, had ties to TPNHA’s Ned Foote and William van der Weyde, plus the Manhattan Liberal Club and the Liberal League. 

Theodore Schroeder grew up in Wisconsin, earned an 1898 law degree, practiced in Utah until relocating to New York in 1900. In 1902, Schroeder formed the Free Speech League (precursor of ACLU) with Lincoln Steffens, TPNHA founder Ned Foote. and other progressives. As a lawyer advocating free speech rights and sexual freedom, he defended Emma Goldman at her Comstock trial in Denver circa 1910. 

At the 1905 rededication of the Paine Monument in New Rochelle, the speakers featured Schroeder with surviving TPNHA founders Thaddeus Wakeman and Ned Foote plus the New Rochelle mayor. A year later Schroeder was voted secretary of the TPNHA. 

Schroeder wrote on the legal absurdities of Comstock. The Free Speech League in 1906 published his booklet, What is Criminally “Obscene”? and a three-part, Freedom of the Press and ‘“Obscene’”Literature. He compiled the 1909 Free Press Anthology. He wrote the 1911 book on press freedoms, “Obscene” Literature and Constitutional Law. Years later he wrote two 1945 biographic pamphlets about Thomas Paine. A Paine statuette sat on Schroeder’s desk until he died in 1953. 

Leonard Abbott exemplified a blend of anarchism and socialism among Progressive Era TPNHA leaders in the early 1900s The son of a wealthy English merchant, he read Paine’s Rights of Man as a student before immigrating to the United States in 1898. 

Shortly after arrival in New York, Abbott met anarchist Emma Goldman. He befriended J. William Lloyd, a libertarian individualist anarchist and “natural law” mystic, The pair published Free Comrade from 1900 to 1912. Abbott joined the executive board of the Socialist Party of America in 1900. He joined Eugene V. Debs in leading the Social Democratic Party. He introduced Upton Sinclair to socialism in 1902. Abbott in 1906 joined the founding board of the Rand School. He was active in the TPNHA by 1908 and became president for one year in 1910. 

After the 1909 execution in Spain of freethinker Francisco Ferrer, Abbot worked with Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman to establish the Ferrer School and colony as educational centers for anarchist philosophy. The school was forced to close after a 1914 anarchist bombing against John D. Rockefeller. Abbott spoke about the bombers killed to a crowd of 5,000.

TPNHA links to activist anarchists could not have happened without the blessings of founder Thaddeus Wakeman, a guiding hand of the association until his passing in 1913. Respected as a political philosopher, T.B. Wakeman was a social progressive with an affinity for anarchist views. A Monist (monism versus dualism), he held that all existence has one origin, so all individuals share natural unity and equality. Wakeman stepped up when needed to become president in 1908 and 1911, meanwhile mentoring younger TPNHA leaders. 

James F. Morton, an anarchist writer, served as the president between Wakeman in 1911 and William van der Weyde in 1914. Morton encapsulated the politics of previous leading board members. He graduated from Harvard with W.E.B. DuBois and became active in the NAACP in opposition to bigotry. A personal friend of writer H.P. Lovecraft, Morton wrote for Truth Seeker, Discontent and Mother Earth. He was part of the Ferrer School in New York City. 

William van der Weyde, a noted photojournalist, succeeded Schroeder as TPNHA secretary in 1909. He served as secretary until becoming president in 1914, serving as president until he died in 1929. His legacy includes locating Paine’s death mask and a lock of his hair, still archived in New Rochelle. 

An innovator in photography for newspapers and night photography, he photographed significant people of his day, such as Walt Whitman, Mark Twain and Capt. Alfred Dreyfus of France. 

William van der Weyde and his photographer father were members of the Manhattan Liberal Club. For Mother Earth, he wrote, “Thomas Paine’s Anarchism.” His premise and arguments have since been undercut by modern Paine scholars, yet his anarchist influence is clear. “Paine was an ardent believer in civilization and education,” he wrote. “Were men [sic] but sufficiently civilized, they would have no need for government.” 

More than anarchism, Paine and free thought have united and guided the TPNHA since 1884.

Premiere 1900s events for TPNHA — rededication of the Paine monument in 1905, the 1909 centennial of Paine’s death — were covered by Truth Seeker editor George Macdonald, who succeeded brother Eugene. He led TPNHA committees into the 1910s. 

Honorary TPNHA vice presidents active in the 1910s and 1920s included Ernst Haeckel (German zoologist, Darwinian biologist and Monist with ties to Wakeman); Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner (freethinking English philosopher and peace activist, the daughter of English atheist writer and Member of Parliament, Charles Bradlaugh); Anatole France (Nobel Prize winning author and freethinker); Eden Phillpotts (English novelist, poet and dramatist), Georg Brandes (Danish critic and scholar who advanced realism and naturalism); and William Archer (Scottish author, theatre critic and reformer in London).

The association in 1925 built the Thomas Paine Memorial Building in New Rochelle near the Paine Monument, backed by freethinking inventor Thomas Edison. He became vice president. His advertising manager at New York Edison, Cyril Nast, became the treasurer to manage construction under van der Weyde. At the groundbreaking ceremony, Norman Thomas, a perennial Socialist Party presidential candidate, gave the keynote address. 

TPNHA president van der Weyde took ill shortly after completion of the Memorial Building. He finally died in 1929 at the onset of the Great Depression. The association’s fortunes declined with depleted resources. 

As leaders departed, the association was sustained by well-meaning staffers. The Memorial Building was used by other groups. TPNHA in the 1980s united with the local Huguenot historical group that ran the relocated Paine Cottage museum at the site. 

Paine advocates began to reassert management of the Memorial Building in the 1990s. TPNHA regained independence. The association has evolved substantially since its first four decades, dropping politics and beliefs other than Paine’s own views. 

The formative first 40 years of the Thomas Paine National Historical Association provides the historical memory informing our efforts. A broad-minded board now directs our affairs. We’re renovating the Memorial Building, reviving The Beacon and revamping our website (stay tuned). The association today plays a leading role in Thomas Paine Studies, advancing scholarship on Paine and his impact in world history. We’re a global resource for those researching Paine’s life and works. We’re now preparing for the 2026 release of the six-volume Thomas Paine: Collected Works, coinciding with the 250th anniversary for the publication of Common Sense. 

The association remains an all-volunteer organization supported by the American and world freethought community and friends of Thomas Paine. Educating the public on Paine and his legacy is increasingly vital today. 

Thomas Paine is an inspiring mentor for progressives to libertarians who value reason, freedom of thought and democracy. As T.B. Wakeman said at our founding, we act “to perpetuate the memory and works of Thomas Paine, to obtain and disseminate accurate information about him, to refute the various slanders and fables that have been circulated concerning him.”

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Imagine Thomas Paine as a “raw and adventurous” youth, scurrying up a ship’s rigging in storm-tossed waters, overwhelmed by the booms of two dozen cannons fired in unison, the clouds of choking smoke, and the violent lurches of a shuddering ship. In Age of Reason, Paine recalled the greatest dangers came “not by cannon balls, but by splinters from the inside of the ship that fly in all directions.” 

Perhaps Paine’s worldview took shape in war. Paine biographers often cite his Quaker father and Anglican mother, his small-town upbringing in Thetford, his forced departure from schooling at age 12 to apprentice in staymaking, effectively ending his formal education. Debate persists if he made corset stays or rope stays for ships. Either way, for young Thomas, the purgatory of grueling, tedious handwork weighed on him.

In Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, Ishmael went to sea “to hurtle after adventure and to inspect the self in a personal quest for truth and knowledge.” Young Paine apparently felt that same pull of the sea. 

He first tried fleeing to the sea in 1756 on the privateer Terrible, commanded by Captain William Death. Paine’s father pursued and begged his son not to go. Good thing, for the Terrible sank midway through its voyage with only a handful of survivors. 

Paine’s next escape attempt in 1757 succeeded. He found adventure on the privateer King of Prussia. For more than six months, he pursued prizes from seized French merchant ships, a life-changing event. 

In “Thomas Paine, Privateersman,” historian Alice Berry writes, “most privateersmen, like their piratical counterparts, sailed not for the glory of King and country, but for profit.” All hands shared the bounty. 

Understudied by biographers of Paine’s youthful years is the impact from his six months of shipboard life amid the Seven Years War. At age 19, he faced his first personal encounter with globalism. Paine worked with or fought against multinational ship crews. All profited directly from their oceanic capitalism. 

Privateers had their own sociability. Anthropologist David Graeber in Pirate Enlightenment, describes a “collectivistic ethos” aboard ships of plunder, including privateers. Graeber writes they were “experimenting with new ways of organizing social relations …happening not in the great cities of Europe — still under the control of various Ancien Régimes — but on the margins of the emerging world system, and particularly in the relatively free spaces.” 

As an inexperienced sailor, Paine’s job was to be “able-bodied,” ready to fight when needed. A knowledge sponge, he was eager to learn the ways of the sea. His desire to learn from experience led him later to observe about seamanship lessons, “a few able and social sailors will soon instruct… active landsmen in the common work of a ship.” 

In his later years Paine told his old friend Thomas “Clio” Rickman that he had “seldom passed five minutes… however circumstanced, in which he did not acquire some knowledge.” 

For Paine, as a curious young privateer exposed for the first time to a wide cross-section of humanity and worldviews, life at sea was a kind of higher education in the ways of the world. 

Paine’s early practical education was put to good use two decades later when he wrote Common Sense. He was able to knowledgeably present precise costs for building a navy. He accurately calculated the “charge of building a ship of each rate [type], and furnishing her with masts, yards, sails and rigging, together with a proportion of eight months boatswain’s and carpenter’s sea-stores.” 

In coming years, Paine’s naval experiences filtered into his fiscal analyses like a political crystal ball to see the future. Paine asserted that for the British, “the expense of the navy is greater than the nation can bear.” He backed up his statement with detailed calculations of the interest rates for the navy debts that Britain was incurring.

In addition to advising his colleagues on the construction and operating costs of navies, he addressed matters of naval invention and engineering by writing about deployment of gunboats for invasion and defense, also the rights of neutral vessels in times of war. His reasoning sprang from knowledge and experience. Paine’s youthful months at sea gave him understanding he carried with him for the rest of his life. 

NOTE: 

Essay excerpted from Thomas Paine and the Company He Kept, a doctoral dissertation in progress by Joy Masoff, PhD candidate

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