By Gary Berton

Using computer methods of analyzing text to determine authorship is not a matter of opinion. Calculations are objective, there is no room to introduce prejudices. 

Such a methodology to analyze text was developed by the Institute for Thomas Paine Studies: to make use of proven methods of comparing author features, they took these methods and combined them for use by historians to determine authorships. This process of analysis began in the early 1960s with Mosteller and Wallace, using function word use (“and”, “but”, “as”, etc.), they achieved 50% accuracy. The “authorships” of the Federalist Papers that you read on the Internet were based on them, and thus only half correct. By deploying the new features (17 of them now, compared to the one above) ITPS was able to achieve 90%. The Java Graphic Author Attribution, JGAAP, is a tool to allow non-experts to use cutting edge machine learning techniques on text attribution problems. Our methodology used all 17 together for the first time to produce a high degree of certainty. Similar versions using a few features are used in court cases to prove authorships, and the FBI uses it to identify certain bloggers (bad always comes with the good). 

This ITPS methodology is being employed in the Collected Works Project managed by this Association. It can identify likely Paine works that otherwise would never be able to be uncovered, and we would remain in ignorance of them. This shines a light on more works and a full biography. 

Remarks in letters are often lies, or misunderstandings. Computers don’t lie. Take Benjamin Rush for example: after Paine’s death Rush claimed Paine wrote an essay against slavery, and the only such essay at the time Rush designated was “African Slavery in America”. To this day most people think Paine wrote it solely based on Rush’s claim. He didn’t – the religious references exhibit a Christian wrote it, and in fact Samuel Hopkins, a Christian preacher, did. And text analysis confirms it. One example of many , which old fashioned historical methods are very inaccurate, but they still are repeated endlessly because they were in a book!

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By Gary Berton

In 1965, a noted historian, Forest MacDonald, wrote a textbook on the creation of the Republic, E Pluribus Unum. He is known for his rationalizing of slavery, ultra-conservatism, and apologist for all things Southern. But he got one thing right: 

“Sometimes in the course of human events, as the Declaration of Independence had proclaimed, it becomes necessary for people to dissolve political bonds….The American Revolution was only the beginning in teaching men the process, but once it was done – once the vulgar overstepped the bounds of propriety and got away with it – there was no logical stopping place. Common Sense led unerringly to Valmy, and Valmy to Napoleon, and Napoleon to the Revolution of 1830, and that to the Revolutions of 1848, and those to the Paris Commune of 1871, and that to the Bolshevik Revolution, and that to the African and Asian Revolutions in Expectations, and those to eternity.” 

What he got right was that Thomas Paine started the age of Revolutions, by introducing that hated process of democracy. To MacDonald, democratizing the world (“overstep the bounds of propriety” by the “vulgar”) led to the listed upheavals starting with the American Revolution. He ignores the history of brutal oppression which created the need for revolutions, known as “propriety”. It was the reaction against the movement towards the rights and equality of people that caused the atrocities and squelched the “Expectations” of peoples. But the “process” is in place, thanks to Paine, and the world can evolve. 

The hatred of Paine by some historians can be well-documented, and this is why many historians are propagandists ahead of documenting all history. As E. H. Carr (an objective historian) said: “Study the historian before you begin to study the facts.” And “By and large, the historian will get the kind of facts he wants.”

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By Gary Berton

Immigration to America was a major impetus for the American Revolution, both physically and intellectually. Thomas Paine welcomed immigrants who were escaping tyranny. In 1776, he wrote in Common Sense, the manifesto of the American Revolution: 

“O! ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose not only the tyranny but the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia and Africa have long expelled her. 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.” 

Common Sense turned a tax revolt into a social and political revolution. 

Other than the indigenous people who originally occupied this continent, the people who were transitioning to becoming American in the 18th century, and Americans of today, are immigrants or descended from immigrants, including kidnapped slaves. And in fact, capital accumulation in America primarily came from three sources: the land stolen from the indigenous nations, the stolen labor power of slavery, and the underpaid labor of the immigrants and their descendants.

Paine was the first American to demand reparations for the crimes of slavery, in his letter to Jefferson in 1808.* He believed that the indigenous nations would live peacefully beside peoples from other parts of the world. He was wrong about that: the commitment to English colonialism infected the minds of too many. In part, the perpetuation of colonialism was due to the failure of democratic structures to take hold. In addition, the ethic of greed came to dominate as the wealthiest people remained in charge of governmental structures. The descendants of the indigenous nations also deserve reparations. 

In every era, immigrants have added to the vibrancy and progress of the nation, bringing not only their talents and energy and cultures, but the possibility and hope of realizing democracy in America. This era is no different. Our Association stands with the principles advanced by Paine; it is why we exist: to educate the world about the most important figure of the age of revolutions, which is still unfolding. Although some historians have attempted to repress him and his ideas, he still influences the choices we have as Americans. 

* The letter to Jefferson signed “A Slave” on November 30, 1808 was attributed to Paine in an article to appear in “Identifying “A Slave”: The Iona College Text Analysis Project Explores a Mystifying Letter to Thomas Jefferson”, Gary Berton, Smiljana Petrovic, Michael Crowder, Lubomir Ivanov, in Mark Boonshoft, Nora Slonimsky, and Ben Wright, eds., American Revolutions in the Digital Age, University of Cornell Press 2024.

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