As his London Packet approached the colonies in November 1774, Thomas Paine was not scanning for land. After turning northwards towards Philadelphia in Delaware Bay, he was not visualizing where, during the Seven Years War, French privateer ships awaited English prey within the folds of the eastern shore. Stricken with typhus fever that had ravaged his ship, the delirious and barely conscious Paine was confined to his cabin.

In a March 1775 letter to Franklin, Paine said he had “suffered dreadfully” during the voyage, “had very little hopes” he “would live to see America,” and that six weeks in the care of Dr. John Kearsley, Jr.—who “attended the ship on her Arrival, ”took Paine on as a patient, had him brought “on Shore,”and “provided a Lodging”— resulted in full recovery.

Why Kearsley? Many doctors then practiced in Philadelphia. Some Paine biographers assert that Kearsley had Paine brought to him because he heard about someone with a letter of introduction from Franklin. Kearsley did not hear it through the grapevine.

He “attended the Ship on her Arrival. ”Presumably appointed under Pennsylvania law to inspect the infected ship, he learned of Paine and the letter during that inspection.

Where did Kearsley inspect the ship and where did Paine recover? Paine biographers, who specify where the ship docked and Paine’s care occurred, assume Philadelphia locations. Instead, Pennsylvania law expressly prohibited ships “disordered with any infectious disease” from coming closer than Little Mud Island, seven nautical miles downriver, and required that infected persons be quarantined at a “hospital or pest house” on adjacent Province Island.

Unless the captain risked severe penalties by flouting Pennsylvania law and obtained Kearsley’s cooperation, Paine sailed no closer than Little Mud Island and was brought “on Shore” on Province Island.

Kearsley would not have defied a law requiring that infected ships be cleansed with vinegar. Kearsley derived significant income from operating a vinegar factory and vigorously advocated vinegar’s health benefits, recommending “bathing the body” of patients “with very strong warm vinegar ”as“ an auxiliary to stop the progress of putridity,” and drawing “hot steams of vinegar” and other ingredients “through a funnel into the lungs.”

The mortality rate for “highly intellectual” people who contracted typhus fever, like Paine, was “very high.” Paine’s delirium upon arriving suggested untreated severe typhus and heightened the prospect of death.

Available evidence indicates that Paine’sship docked downriver, and that, quarantined on Province Island, he was rescued from likely death by Kearsley’s care. Cabin “passengers” like Paine had to pay for care. The hospital’s “Keeper” could charge for a passenger’s stay. Since Paine lacked financial resources, Kearsley having “provided a Lodging” during recovery may mean that he absorbed those charges.

Caring for Paine distant from Philadelphia was a considerable economic hit. Why did Kearsley decide to care for Paine without charge, perhaps pay the Keeper, and travel far downriver on multiple occasions?

Charity was an unlikely motivator. Kearsley prioritized his financial pursuits over needs of the poor. His uncle, dying in 1772, intended to create and fund an infirmary for poor women. Kearsley substantially delayed and nearly thwarted that bequest. Suing to obtain more from his uncle’s estate, his claim prevailed before a jury though legally groundless, and his uncle’sintent was realized only through additional donations by others.

Franklin’s letter of introduction was also an unlikely motivator. Kearsley detested Franklin, who he sarcastically called “The Electrician,” Kearsley accused Franklin of misusing public revenues for his private benefit and cynically predicted he would succeed because “he is wicked enough to Blind the people.”

The most likely rationale for Kearsley taking on Paine’s care isironic. A Loyalist who forcefully opposed American resistance to England, Kearsley was, as friends and foes perceived, “violent” in his Loyalist views and actions. Before and after Paine arrived, Kearsley headed “The Association” that was designed to assure all “Englishmen” actively support British forces, drink to their success against the Americans, and “combine together to join the British Forces when they should arrive.”

Did Kearsley view the Englishman Paine as a potential Association member and fodder for his Loyalist plans? During his inspection, did Kearsley read notes in Paine’s cabin and recognize his extraordinary written communication skills? This explanation gainstraction by considering Kearsley’s actions in October 1775 that were, to Pennsylvanians supporting the American cause, stunningly treasonous.

Kearsley tried to send a map to London that disclosed precisely where British ships could maneuver around carefully constructed and critically important sharpened log structures sunk into the Delaware River – chevaux defrise – to reach and attack Philadelphia. The map was accompanied by a letter proposing that, if Britain sent troops, Kearsley would lead those troops and an equivalent number of Loyalists who, he promised, would come forward. Those papers were intercepted and Kearsley and his co-conspirators were arrested. Kearsley remained imprisoned until, 53 years old, he died in November 1777.

Locations of those chevaux defrise—the prime defense protecting Philadelphia from British ships—were deeply held secrets. Other Loyalists were hanged for far less egregious activities.

Kearsley presumably read Paine’s Common Sense and his first four Crisis essays, published before November 1777. Imagine Kearsley’s rage while consuming Paine’s proclamation that “every Tory is a coward” and, “though he may be cruel, never can be brave.” Or Paine’s claims that “the instant that” a Tory “endeavors to bring his toryism A TRAITOR” and that a “traitor is the foulest fiend on earth.”

Did Kearsley realize that, had he not cared for Paine, independence may never have transpired? Dwelling on that irony, would execution shortly after arrest have seemed an attractive alternative? Rather than being hanged in October 1775, Kearsley watched helplessly for two years —perhaps going insane—as his world turned upside down and the decision to bring Paine back from the brink gave birth to his nightmare.

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“In blasphemy and gross infidelity,” said the Centinel newspaper, Elihu Palmer “‘surpassed The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine and all other deist and atheist books.” Elihu Palmer (1764 1806) was a little-known freethinker who, even after losing his vision, remained active in the intellectual debates of his time. Palmer emerged as one of the leading exponents of deism in the First American Republic. Drawing upon thinkers such as Locke, Hume, Rousseau, and Jefferson, Palmer developed his philosophy by engaging with key currents of Enlightenment thought in North America, including Isaac Ledyard’s materialism, Thomas Paine’s deism, and John Stewart’s vitalism. For Palmer, true morality was rooted in an interconnected system encompassing all living matter. His ideas were widely disseminated through his principal work, published in 1801 and expanded in 1802, in which he proposed replacing religious dogma with ethics based on justice and benevolence. 

Born in 1764 into a family of farmers in Connecticut, Palmer chose a public life after the end of the war in 1783, enrolling at Dartmouth College with the goal of pursuing the ministry or law. In 1787, he began his career as a preacher. At the First Presbyterian Church in Newtown, Long Island, an observer noted that he often set aside discussions of sin and instead urged his listeners to spend the day in innocent joys. Indeed, a year after beginning his ministry, he rejected Calvinist principles and became the “archetype of the radical and democratic deist.”

Soon after, he took a position at a Presbyterian church in Newtown, Long Island, where he met the physician Isaac Ledyard, who introduced him to the idea of eternal, living matter, questioning the existence of God as a transcendent entity. In 1792, he joined Philadelphia’s Society of Deist Natural Philosophers, which included Franklin and Jefferson, where he publicly denied the divinity of Jesus Christ, attracting the attention of clergy and generating tensions between religious traditionalism and new rationalist currents. When preaching to Baptists, he became frustrated with his audience’s reactions, as they expected nothing more than confirmations of their own doctrines. In the Federal Gazette, he wrote that opinions should not be subject to the whims of the masses—they should stand or fall solely by their coherence and truth.

TRAGEDY!

In August 1793, Palmer faced personal tragedy: a yellow fever outbreak on Water Street killed his wife, and he, treated by Dr. Benjamin Rush, was left blind. His enemies interpreted this misfortune as divine retribution for his heresies. Palmer then left his children to be raised by relatives in Connecticut and became an eloquent and tireless advocate of deism and vitalism. He became known for his sermons at the Deistical Society of New York and the Society of Theophilanthropists in Philadelphia.

In 1794, Palmer was profoundly influenced by Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason. He proclaimed Paine “one of the first and best writers of all time, and probably the most important man ever to exist on the face of the earth.” In Philadelphia, he resided in the home of radical poet Philip Freneau and became involved in the dissemination of the first deist newspaper in the Americas, The Temple of Reason, created and edited by Irish immigrant Denis Driscol. Between 1803 and 1805, he maintained his own weekly newspaper, Prospect; or, View of the Moral World. Due to his physical condition, Palmer wrote with the assistance of freethinker Mary Powel, whom he later married. Additionally, Palmer met John Stewart, who introduced the idea of sensitive atoms—particles that recorded sensations and composed the universe. This notion was incorporated into Palmer’s thought, reinforcing his vision of eternal and interconnected matter.

In 1801, he published his principal work, Principles of Nature; or, A Development of the Moral Causes of Happiness and Misery among the Human Species, in New York. The second and third editions, identical, were published in 1802 and 1806. Historian Kerry S. Walters, a professor at Gettysburg College and a leading scholar of deist thought, republished the third edition in 1990 with an introduction.

Like Paine in The Age of Reason, Palmer saw Creation as the true word of God, in contrast to revelations and miracles. Alongside this, he described a conception of creation that was heterodox even among deists: for him, a divine force engendered the world solely from matter. This supreme force, therefore, resided in matter itself—it was not necessarily sentient in the way humans conceived it, nor did it require worship. Nothing existed above or below matter—God’s laws were perfect, and believing in miracles would be an offense to the Creator. Recognizing this force, Palmer argued, would lead to a sense of universal benevolence embracing all things, inspiring the abolition of slavery, war, and all forms of oppression. Politics and religion were deeply intertwined—deism, for Palmer, was an eminently ethical-political force.

BLASPHEMY!

In the early 19th century, Palmer’s writings, like those of Paine, became targets of criticism. His political enemies used his ideas to create scandals, linking him to Jefferson in an effort to discredit the president. In March 1806, Palmer returned to Philadelphia for a final series of lectures but died on the 31st of that month at the age of 41 due to lung inflammation. His work, Principles of Nature, left an important legacy, promoting a philosophy based on reason, individual responsibility, and the pursuit of a morality that benefited society as a whole. Palmer believed that understanding the material condition shared by all things would foster an ethics of compassion, transforming human behavior and, consequently, the world.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aponte, Ryan Nicholas. Dharma of the Founders: Buddhism within the Philosophies of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Elihu Palmer. Georgetown Georgetown University, 2012.

Carvalho, Daniel Gomes de. O pensamento radical de Thomas Paine (1793-1797): artífice e obra da Revolução Francesa. 2017. Tese (Doutorado em História Social) – Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, 2017. doi:10.11606/T.8.2018.tde-12062018-135137.

Fischer, Kirsten. American Freethinker: Elihu Palmer and the Struggle for Religious Freedom in the New Nation. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021.

Fischer, Kirsten. “Elihu Palmer’s Radical Religion in the Early Republic.” The William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 73, no. 3, (Jul. 2016), pp. 501-530.

May, Henry F. The Enlightenment in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976.

Minardi, Margot. “American Freethinker: Elihu Palmer and the Struggle for Religious Freedom in the New Nation” by Kirsten Fischer (Review).” Journal of the Early Republic 41, no. 4 (2021): 694–97. doi:10.1353/jer.2021.0095.
Walters, Kerry S. The American Deists: Voices of Reason and Dissent in the Early Republic. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1992. doi:10.1353/book.94120.

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The dedication of Thomas Paine to rational thought and inquiry was unparalleled amongst the Founders.¹ His commitment to a strictly rational regimen was particularly notable, and fraught, on the religious front.² 

In Paine’s view, organized religions marketed unreliable hearsay piled on hearsay as “revelations” that are, by definition, based on faith rather than evidence.³ Carefully observing nature, he rejected nearly everything propounded by organized religions as antithetical to rational analysis, retaining from Biblical accounts only what was discernable through observation.⁴ 

Restricting his mental diet to reason did not make him an atheist. To the contrary, Paine concluded that “reason can discover” the “existence of God.” Articulating his thought process, Paine first observed that nothing can make itself. He then noted that many things do exist such that those things were undeniably made. Articulating his thought process, Paine first observed that nothing can make itself. He then noted that many things do exist and, therefore, were undeniably made. Rounding out that syllogism, Paine reasoned that there must be “a power superior to all those things, and that power is God.”⁵ 

Related declarations are more difficult to square with his allegiance to reason. Paine expressed absolute confidence that “Providence” actively intervened to protect not just America but Paine himself. By contrast to his express articulation of why, logically, existence of a Deity comported with reason, his surviving writings disclose no hint of a rationale for believing in an intervening Providence.⁶ More puzzling, when he referenced gender regarding Providence, he identified Providence as female, never as male. Like his expressed belief in an intervening Providence, those identifications appear in his writings as unexplained givens.⁷ 

Two separate but intertwined mysteries are implicated. How could Paine reconcile a belief in an intervening Providence with his dedication to rational inquiry? Why did Paine, uniquely among the Founders and other contemporaries, identify Providence as female? That both mysteries ultimately resist resolution should not surprise Paine aficionados given how much is unknowable regarding Paine, primarily due to an 1830s fire that consumed many of his papers.⁸ What may surprise is that, on the unknowable subject of Providence, Paine conveyed definitive conclusions with utter confidence and calmness and without any explanations, rational or otherwise. 

Paine vigorously pursued rational inquiry as far as it would take him—farther than some contemporaries preferred—insisting that societal systems incapable of withstanding rational inquiry should be abandoned. But remarks about the limits of human capabilities and his persistent optimism in the face of frequent adversity suggest that, when faced with the inexplicable, Paine was neither frustrated nor sought to flog the inexplicable into submission.⁹ 

John Keats contended that creativity in people “of Achievement” is opened to new and fruitful frontiers by embracing “uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.”¹⁰ Paine knew nothing about Keats, having died in 1809 when Keats was only thirteen. But conceivably Paine, despite or even because of his dedication to reason, would have appreciated this concept of “Negative Capability” developed by Keats in 1817.¹¹ 

The boundary between the rational and the inexplicable is individual for each human and shifts over time and societal developments with no bright line demarking that boundary. With Keats applying his deeply probing mind to poetical expression, for example, while Paine applied his to clear and rational thinking and writing, they would have encountered dramatically differing locations. But when they each individually faced what they respectively deemed the inexplicable, it is conceivable that their responses may have paralleled. 

Did Paine refrain, in those circumstances, from “irritable reaching after fact & reason”— with irritable being the key word— and, encouraging his sense of wonder to flourish, allow deeper and unexpected insights to come his way?¹² If so, Paine may well have experienced, as Keats expressed elsewhere, “‘the intense pleasure of not knowing’” on those occasions when Paine’s pursuit of rational inquiry left significant questions unanswered and unknowable.¹³ Exploring the two mysteries posed here may provide keys to appreciating the complicated force that was Thomas Paine and, more generally, the limitations of rational inquiry and contemplation of the inexplicable that each human must address within their own mind. 

INTERVENING PROVIDENCE AND RATIONAL INQUIRY 

In America during the Revolutionary Era, belief in an intervening Providence was nearly universal.¹⁴ Contemporaries belonging to Calvinist sects, like Samuel Adams, John Jay and John Witherspoon, were certain that Providence as a manifestation of the male God intervening regularly in human affairs in ways that comported with Biblical texts, which were literally the Word of God.¹⁵ Deist Founders filtered their beliefs in an intervening Providence through rational inquiry.¹⁶ Because Paine was more obsessively dedicated to reason than other Deist Founders, his belief in an intervening Providence is notable.¹⁷ His assumption that Providence directly intervened to protect him personally was most explicitly expressed when, after returning to America, he lambasted Federalists for attacking him. He questioned why they didn’t also attack Providence for having protected Paine “in all his dangers, patronized him in all his undertaking, encouraged him in all his ways, and rewarded him at last by bringing him in safety and in health to the Promised Land.”¹⁸ 

Terrific satire and intentionally over-the-top. But could Paine reason his way to a belief that a supernatural force directly intervened to protect him, as an individual, from harm? Paine firmly rejected the concept of guardian angels, expressly criticizing Quaker pacifists in 1775 by declaring that “we live not in a world of angels” and that we cannot “expect to be defended by miracles.”¹⁹ His Age of Reason more thoroughly eviscerated the concept of miracles.²⁰ Yet he believed in an intervening Providence. Is the answer that Paine was, as George Bernard Shaw said of Joan of Arc, a visionary who was “mentally excessive”?²¹ 

Reconciling Paine’s references to Providence with his overarching commitment to reason would be easier if one accepted the view of an unsympathetic commentator that Paine employed mere rhetorical flourishes insincerely manufactured to persuade readers by exploiting their religious beliefs.²² That commentator’s theory falls apart when one recognizes that he restricted analysis to Paine’s early American writings, ignoring Paine having repeatedly invoked Providence from 1775 through 1803 and even doing so on an occasion when manipulative motives made no sense—a private letter to Franklin.²³ Aldridge, more convincingly, cited Paine’s invocation of an intervening Providence in that letter to Franklin as evidence Paine had “a firm belief in the doctrine of special providence.”²⁴ Paine’s surviving writings confirm that he was sincere in invoking an intervening Providence. 

Teasing out explanations for the apparent disparity in Paine’s thinking between an unyielding devotion to reason and a belief in an intervening supernatural force was furthered through Matthew Stewart’s superb book Nature’s God. Although Stewart did not expressly address Paine’s views on Providence, he carefully studied views of the Deist Founders in contrast to earlier religious beliefs in England and the colonies and observed that the very idea of Providence was transformed by the Deists.²⁵

Some contemporaries of Paine, for example, took the Bible literally and believed that Providence caused many events contrary to laws of nature, such as the Biblical stories of the Sun standing still in the sky for a full day or the Red Sea parting. For example, that “the Bible was divinely revealed and that its miracles were valid were accepted by Samuel Adams “without question.”²⁶ By contrast, for “the deists, a miracle by definition constituted an infraction of the regular and predictable operations of physical reality.”²⁷ 

Deists generally viewed Providence as causing only events that, while improbable, fully complied with the laws of nature.²⁸ Washington attributed his survival from multiple bullets hitting his coat to the intervention of Providence.²⁹ Improbable but feasible under the laws of nature. Paine attributed his survival during the Jacobin reign to an intervening Providence.³⁰ Improbable but well within the laws of nature. The intervention of Providence, viewed in this way, comports closely with Giordano Bruno’s view that Providence does not override “the operation of nature” and can instead “be explained in terms of natural laws.”³¹ 

Deists were, by nature, individualist and unconfined by a fixed set of creeds mandated by a hierarchical church structure. As a result, their beliefs regarding God and Providence varied. Franklin straddled the fence between Deism and other belief systems and remained governed, due to his Puritan upbringing, by assumptions that God was infinitely powerful and infinitely good.³² Those assumptions directed his reasoning towards a conclusion that God’s Providence must sometimes act in ways contrary to the laws of nature.³³ Otherwise, Franklin reasoned, God would be either impotent or willing to countenance demonstrably evil actions—results inconsistent with God being infinitely powerful and infinitely good.³⁴ 

Recall that Paine, by contrast, deduced the existence of God from a logical supposition that God was whatever first created things.³⁵ Unconstrained by assumptions that troubled Franklin, Paine was freed to view Providence as a force that acted in ways fully compliant with the laws of nature.³⁶ But is belief in an intervening Providence ultimately just belief rather than a result of reasoned examination of actual occurrences? Paine may have responded that human abilities to ferret out explanations for actions of God and Providence are severely restricted. 

In 1782, Paine asserted that “no human wisdom could foresee” the purposes of expectation that rational inquiry in the future would push further than he could, at that time, into probing that “secret.” Eleven years later, Paine concluded that “the power and wisdom” that God “has manifested in the structure of the Creation that I behold is to me incomprehensible,” and “even this manifestation, great as it is, is probably but a small display of that immensity of power and wisdom by which millions of other worlds, to me invisible by their distance, were created and continue to exist.”³⁸ 

Some observers accused Paine of thinking too well of himself and his abilities. Remarks by Paine that fed those types of accusations should be balanced against the humility and calm wonder he displayed when observing nature and the universe. Conceivably, and consistent with the later musings by Keats, his belief in an intervening Providence constituted an effort to appreciate and marvel at the “incomprehensible” while remaining otherwise unflinchingly dedicated to rational inquiry. 

What effect did Paine’s belief in an intervening Providence have on his overall philosophy and his political and social views? Gregory Claeys argued that Paine’s “social theory owed much to his belief in Providence, which underpinned, for example, the optimistic elements of his theory of commerce.”³⁹ Would a Paine who lacked beliefs in an intervening Providence have penned theories substantially different from those he promulgated? Would he have lacked the optimism and confidence to propound and push the radical and uncompromising views that continue to resonate? If Paine, after exhaustive efforts to tease out everything reason had to offer in his lifetime, experienced “the intense pleasure of not knowing” that Keats praised as a font of human creativity and achievement, that may have reignited fires within his mind even as nighttime candles flickered in his darkening writing rooms. 

PROVIDENCE AS FEMALE 

The first mystery ultimately remains unresolved. Exploring the second mystery will similarly leave open questions but will, hopefully, provide insight into Paine. Drilling down into what Paine said about Providence, we discover a startlingly unique conviction. Every time Paine referenced gender for the Deity, he identified the Deity as male.⁴⁰ But every time he referenced gender for Providence—in 1777, 1778, 1782, 1792 and 1802—he identified Providence as female.⁴¹

Where did that perspective come from? While in England, Paine was exposed to Quakers, Anglicans and Methodists. Each sect generally viewed Providence as a manifestation of a male God.⁴² Contemporaries such as Rev. Joseph Priestley and Rev. Richard Price had conveyed the view of Providence as a manifestation of a male God in writings published before Paine emigrated to America.⁴³ References to Providence in Political Disquisitions by James Burgh, which Paine cited several times in Common Sense, nowhere hint at Providence having a female gender.⁴⁴ French influences may be excluded for many reasons, including the Catholicism of France and Paine’s anti-Papist views, but it suffices that Paine publicly identified Providence as female at least three times before first travelling to France in 1780.⁴⁵ 

One Paine biographer, after noting Paine’s identification of Providence as female in Rights of Man, observed, with understatement, that “few references to Providence in this period characterized it as female.”⁴⁶ Few indeed. One must reach back to Imperial Rome to find general beliefs in Providence being female. Unconnected dots invite speculation that Paine may have absorbed a belief in a female Providence from contemporary discussions of that Roman source. In ancient Rome, “Providentia” was viewed as a female “divine personification of the ability to foresee and make provision.”⁴⁷ Macrobius, a Roman author who wrote about paganism about 400 CE, declared that “providence was personified as a proper goddess in her own right.”⁴⁸ 

“In the late Republic PROVIDENTIA was that foresight which…helped to secure the continued and peaceful existence of the state, preserving it against external or internal dangers.”⁴⁹ Refraining from learning Latin in Thetford Grammar School, Paine said, “did not prevent” him “from being acquainted with the subjects of all the Latin books used in the school.”⁵⁰ Reference to “Latin books” is sparse in his writings, although that is unsurprising for an author known for minimalistic citations to other authors. What “Latin books” was he exposed to before first identifying Providence as female that may have influenced him? In several writings that preceded his first identification of Providence as female in Crisis No. 3, published on April 19, 1777, Paine displayed considerable familiarity with Roman times and ways.⁵¹ Later references suggest far deeper absorption by Paine of ancient Roman authors, and books about ancient Rome, than is generally assumed.⁵² With that in mind, Paine may have consumed either an unabridged 1747 or 1755 edition of Polymetis by Joseph Spence, or a 1765 abridged version, most likely sometime after returning from his privateering adventures in 1757.⁵³

The unabridged editions of Polymetis contain detailed discussions about the Imperial Roman belief in female Providence and illustrations of “Providentia” as displayed on Roman coins.⁵⁴ Paine had multiple opportunities prior to first identifying Providence as female in 1777 to be exposed to Spence’s discussions of a female Providence. Benjamin Martin subscribed to the unabridged 1747 edition of Polymetis and Paine later attended his astronomy lectures and became a friend, so Paine could have borrowed a copy from Martin.⁵⁵ Alternately, though the purchase price was likely far beyond Paine’s budget, he could have perused a copy of an unabridged edition through the lending libraries then taking hold in London.⁵⁶ Alternately, Paine could have read a far less expensive abridgment published in 1765 that, like the unabridged version, contained detailed discussions about a female Providence, though with far less content and no “Providentia” illustrations.⁵⁷ 

Assume, however, that Paine was not exposed to any of those editions before emigrating in 1774. He still had opportunities, before first identifying Providence as female in April 1777, to have consumed an unabridged edition of Polymetis. The 1775 catalogue of the Library Company of Philadelphia listed the 1755 unabridged edition amongst its holdings.⁵⁸ Polymetis was sufficiently available in America that Jefferson, in a July 1776 letter, accurately expected that “some library in Philadelphia” would have Spence’s Polymetis.⁵⁹ 

Paine rarely mentioned books he had read and sometimes claimed not to have read books that scholars conclude he must have consumed.⁶⁰ That Polymetisis unmentioned in his writings, particularly since he never attempted to explain his beliefs regarding Providence, is unsurprising. Unabridged editions of Polymetis were filled with citations to Macrobius and Cicero and contained images of the transparently female figure of Providentia as displayed on Roman coins.⁶¹ Even the abridged version published in 1765 would have conveyed the essence, noting that “among the “MORAL DEITIES” in Rome, “PRUDENCE (or GOOD SENSE) was received very early as a goddess,…the affairs of human life are by her regulated as they ought to be” and “She is called also Providentia but when they used it for divine providence, the usual inscription on medals is, PROVIDENTIA DEORUM,” while a different name is used for human prudence.⁶² 

Spence, in Polymetis, conveyed critiques of classically based educational methods that were remarkably like critiques that Paine articulated later.⁶³ Spence took “aim in the Polymetis at the classical scholarship of his day, which he” found “obscure and pedantic, and generally unhelpful in explicating the texts themselves” and “also question[ed] the need for a classical education grounded in a thorough study of Latin and Greek, which he consider[ed] an unnecessary preparation for most professions.”⁶⁴ Paine was similarly critical of classical scholarship for its own sake as opposed for purposedriven uses.⁶⁵ Cursory glances through Polymetistelegraph that the intellectual sponge that Paine was in his twenties after returning from privateering adventures would have thrilled at its content. With Paine’s fascination regarding astronomy, Paine may have found Macrobius interesting because he authored a text “that transmitted classical astronomical knowledge to medieval Latin Europe” by commenting on a work of Cicero that Macrobius included in his work.⁶⁶ 

The 1755 unabridged edition and the 1765 abridgement were extensively advertised in London papers that Paine likely read.⁶⁷ As noted earlier, a copy of the 1755 edition of Polymetis was available in Philadelphia, at the Library Company founded by Franklin, after he arrived in Philadelphia in November 1774 and before April 1777.⁶⁸ The Library Company was open to the public well before Paine emigrated and with Paine’s bibliophilia being a quality about which we have little doubt, it is fair to assume he spent many hours there.⁶⁹ While other books published in England before Paine emigrated noted the Roman belief that Providence was female, their references were so slight and obscure that they are a far less likely source for Paine’s belief.⁷⁰ If his belief is derived from a book, Polymetisis the prime candidate. 

May we connect these disparate dots to create a coherent constellation, in Roman style, displaying the origin of Paine’s belief in a female Providence? Tempting as that may be, evidentiary gaps preclude, for now, a definitive conclusion. But sifting the soil of Paine’s contemporaries during the Revolutionary Era as an alternative source is sufficiently unpromising to return us, by deductive reasoning, to Polymetis.

Many Deist Founders, when referencing gender at all, identified God as male and Providence as either male or a manifestation of a male God.⁷¹ When Paine referenced gender regarding God, he similarly identified God as male and never as female.⁷² Paine was unique among his American contemporaries in identifying Providence as female.⁷³ 

John Adams referenced Providence with some frequency, usually with no gender reference. On occasions when Adams referenced gender, he identified Providence as genderless three times and as male twelve times, never suggesting that Providence was female.⁷⁴ Jefferson referenced Providence more infrequently also without usually referencing gender. Of the occasions when Jefferson referenced gender, he identified Providence as genderless twice, as male six times and, like Adams, never suggested a female gender.⁷⁵ Washington referenced an intervening Providence with extraordinary frequency, usually without identifying gender beyond implying a male gender by equating God with Providence.⁷⁶ Of the occasions when Washington expressly referenced gender for Providence, eighteen identified Providence as genderless (“it” or “its”).⁷⁷ Nine identified Providence as male (“he” or “his”).⁷⁸ Curiously, Washington twice deviated from his general practices by identifying Providence as female in 1777 and 1783.⁷⁹ 

No surviving information sheds light on those two deviations from Washington’s general practices. Paine’s identifications were an unlikely influence.⁸⁰ Conceivably, Washington was exposed to Polymetis since George Wythe—a sufficiently close friend that Washington “settled into” Whyte’s home for a while— apparently had a copy in his personal library.⁸¹ But, with Washington having only used female pronouns for Providence twice among the many occasions that he expressed or implied a gender, could they merely have been slips of the pen? What is certain is that Paine, who was extraordinarily careful with his word choices, consistently and repeatedly Providence as female, even emphasizing “her” on one occasion.⁸² 

A possible explanation is that Paine’s unique perspective among the Founders about the differing genders of God and Providence is unattributable to any, so why did he develop that perspective without any outside influence? Did his identification of Providence as female reflect the respect he had for women as equal human beings?⁸³ There is sparse evidence that Paine’s relatively egalitarian views towards women, while remarkably modern for the time, would have sufficiently evolved by April 1777 to have inspired that initial identification of Providence as female.⁸⁴ More broadly, it seems inconceivable, that Paine would have refrained from his general practice of expressly articulating thought processes that were uniquely his regarding his identification of Providence as female if he had developed that concept entirely on his own.uniquely his regarding his identification of Providence as female if he had developed that concept entirely on his own. 

Deductive reasoning and circumstantial evidence suggest that the most likely influence was reports of ancient Roman beliefs as relayed in one or more sources available to him before, and after, he emigrated. For now, Polymetis seems the most likely inspiration for Paine identifying Providence as female. 

Did his identification of God as male and Providence as female indicate that, unlike other Deist Founders, Paine perceived Providence as an entity separate from God? That has intriguing implications but, given limited evidence, cannot proceed beyond the question being posed.⁸⁵ The only Paine biographer who noted Paine’s practice of identifying Providence as female and God as male reported that it troubled him for quite a while.⁸⁶ Unfortunately, his conclusions were unhelpful, declaring, with evidence-free confidence, that “Paine envisioned Providence as an all-encompassing, nurturing she-goddess of nature” and that “Paine’s Providence was the First Cause, the giver of all life,” and “created the universe,…”⁸⁷ Paine’s writings directly belie those conclusions, with that very biographer repeatedly noting that Paine instead stated that the Creator was a male God and, indeed, was the “sole” Creator.⁸⁸ 

Since Paine also consistently identified Nature as female when referencing gender regarding Nature, did he equate Providence with Nature?⁸⁹ His separate expressions of gratitude to both “nature and providence” suggest that he did not equate them, particularly with Paine generally minimizing redundancy in his writings.⁹⁰ More telling, he did not view Nature as actively intervening in human affairs like Providence. Instead, he viewed the laws of Nature as imposing limits on human affairs and on Providence. 

As with many aspects of Paine, the only clues are disclosed through his surviving writings, which offer tantalizing hints that will likely remain perennially unresolved. Ultimately, we cannot know why he identified God as male and Providence as female. We are, regarding his reasoning, consigned to the “intense pleasure of not knowing.” 

EXPLAINING THE INEXPLICABLE 

Ultimately, what humans—unlike other species so far as we know—perennially confront is how to explain the inexplicable. For humans, that results in concepts like God and Providence. How did Paine— the Man of Reason dedicated in his bone marrow to rational thought—explain the inexplicable? Paine struggled to develop the best answers he could given the limitations of what was rationally detectable in the late 18th and early 19th Centuries. Recognizing how little could then be explained through reason and the vastness of what was inexplicable, his enlistment of and reliance on Providence is understandable. 

Did he consider his belief in an intervening Providence grounded on reason? He never either said that it was and articulated any rationale in his surviving writings. He may instead have explored the issues as deeply as rational inquiry carried him and then, in proto-Keats fashion, have embraced the unknowable that he labeled “Providence” while refraining from “irritable reaching for fact and reason.” That we, in the 21st Century, may reach different conclusions through reason does not mean that Paine was less dedicated to reason. Then, and today, firm devotees of reason rather than revelation necessarily marvel daily at inexplicable events and at the intricacies presented by Nature that are well beyond the capacities of humans to explain.

ENDNOTES

1. Jack P. Greene, “Paine, America, and the ‘Modernization’ of Political Consciousness, 93, Political Science Quarterly 73-92 (Spring, 1978), 76- 81 (Paine frequently advocated for people to insist on being governed by rationalsystems and was himself devoted to rational thinking). The biography title best capturing Paine may be Alfred Owen Aldridge, Man of Reason: The Life of Thomas Paine (Philadelphia: J. P. Lippincott & Co., 1959). 
2. E.g., John Keane, Tom Paine: A Political Life (New York: Little, Brown & Co., 1995), 500- 503. 
3. Thomas Paine, Age of Reason [1793], The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine, ed. P. Foner (New York: The Citadel Press, 1945), 1:463-514; Age of Reason: Part Second [1795], Paine Writings, 1:514-604. 
4. Age of Reason [1793], Paine Writings, 1:463- 514; Age of Reason: Part Second [1795], Paine Writings, 1:514-604. Religious views expressed in Age of Reason were “based entirely on the observation of nature and reasoning from it.” Aldridge, Man of Reason, 231. “Paine applied tests of reason to scripture,” and “rejected almost everything,” with the “notable exception [of] creation, because he could actually see the results of it”—using “his own rational teststo question every event in the Bible.” Jack Fruchtman, Jr., Thomas Paine and the Religion of Nature, (Baltimore: MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 159 & 160. Paine identified within the Bible a few exceptions grounded on actual observations of “creation” and, therefore, consistent with rational inquiry. Age of Reason [1793], Paine Writings, 1:484-486. 
5. Age of Reason [1793], Paine Writings, 1:486. This logic, compelling in the late 18th Century, was drawn in question by Darwin but only genuinely challenged with the advent of modern physics. Full disclosure calls for noting that, applying the limited knowledge gleaned through the present day, your author views beliefs in a Deity and an intervening Providence to be precluded by rational inquiry while fully respecting Paine’s ability to rationally reach different conclusions using knowledge available while he lived. As indicated elsewhere, the boundary between rational inquiry and the inexplicable is individual and shifts with time and societal changes. 
6. Paine proffered a rationale for his belief in a Deity. Age of Reason [1793], Paine Writings, 1:486. But on none of the occasions that he expressed belief in Providence as an intervening force did he ever broach reasons for that belief. “Crisis No. 1” [1776], Paine Writings, 1:55; “Crisis No. 3” [1777], Paine Writings, 1:75; id, Paine Writings, 1:87; “Crisis No. 5” [1777], Paine Writings, 1:120; “Crisis No. 6” [1778], Paine Writings, 1:131; “Crisis No. 8” [1780] Paine Writings, 1:160: “Crisis No. 9 [1780], Paine Writings, 1:166: “The Crisis Extraordinary” [1780], Paine Writings, 1:185-186, “Crisis No. 10” [1782], Paine Writings, 1:193; id, Paine Writings, 1:193-194; “Crisis No. 13” [1783], Paine Writings, 1:235; Rights of Man, Part the Second [1792], Paine Writings, 1:366; “An Act for Incorporating the American Philosophical Society, held at Philadelphia for Promoting Useful Knowledge” [1780], Paine Writings, 2:39; Letter No. 3 on Peace and Newfoundland Fisheries, [1778], Paine Writings, 2:202; Public Good [1780], Paine Writings, 2:305; “To the Sheriff of the County of Sussex [1792] Paine Writings, 2:464; “Addressto the People of France” [1792], Paine Writings, 2:539; id, Paine Writings, 2:540; “Letter to the Citizens of the United States,” November 15, 1802, Paine Writings, 2:909; “Letter to the Citizens of the United States,” December 29, 1802, Paine Writings, 2:920; “Letter to the Citizens of the United States,” February 2, 1803, Paine Writings, 2:931; March 4, 1775 letter to Franklin, Paine Writings, 2:1130; “To the Chairman of the Society for Promoting Constitutional Knowledge [1792], Paine Writings, 2:1325-1326. Ironically, hissole mention of Providence in Age of Reason wasto dismiss “Christian mythology” that believed in a pantheon of Gods and Goddesses. Age of Reason [1794], Paine Writings, 1:498). De-attributed works are excluded from consideration. Thomas Paine National Historical Association, “Works Removed from the Paine Canon,” https://thomaspaine.org/writings. html#works-removed-from-the-paine-canon last accessed 6/20/2024. 
7. “Crisis No. 3” [1777], Paine Writings, 1:75 (“… embarrass Providence in her good designs”); id, Paine Writings, 1:87 (“…Providence, who best knows how to time her misfortunes as well as her immediate favors, chose this to be the time, and who dare dispute it?”); “Crisis No. 6” [1778], Paine Writings, 1:131 (“To the interposition of Providence, and her blessings on our endeavours, …are we indebted …”); “Crisis No. 10” [1782], Paine Writings, 1:193 (“…providence, for seven yearstogether, has put [the King] out of her protection,…” (italicsin original)); id, Paine Writings, 1:193-194 (“Untainted with ambition, and a stranger to revenge, [America’s] progress hath been marked by providence, and she, in every stage of the conflict, has blest [America] with success”); Rights of Man, Part the Second [1792], Paine Writings, 1:366 (“Such a mode of reasoning … finally amounts to an accusation upon Providence, asifshe had left to man no other choice with respect to government than between two evils,…”); “Letter to the Citizens of the United States,” December 29, 1802, Paine Writings, 2:920 (“They have not yet accused Providence of Infidelity. Yet according to their outrageous piety,she must be as bad as Thomas Paine;she has protected him in all his dangers,…” (italicsin original)). 
8. Conway, observing that “among these papers burned in St. Louis were the two volumes of Paine’s autobiography and correspondence seen by Redman Yorke in 1802,” characterized the loss as a true “catastrophe.” Moncure Daniel Conway, The Life of Thomas Paine (New York: G. P. Putnam’s & Sons, 1908), 1:xx-xxi. 
9. For examples of those remarks,see “Crisis No. 10” [1782], Paine Writings, 1:193 and Age of Reason, Paine Writings, 1:486. 
10. During a walk in 1817, “several things dovetailed” for Keats into his developing the concept of “Negative Capability,” the ability to comfortably be “in uncertainty.” December 22, 1817, letter from John Keatsto George & Thomas Keats, The Poetical Works and Other Writings of John Keats(London: Reeves & Turner, 1883), 3:99, italicsin original. Keats perceived that, for writers “of Achievement” to embrace rather than battle the unexplainable is a criticalspark to human creativity and inventiveness. One biographer observed that it was “precisely the ability to hold contrary truthsin creative tension which Keatssaw asthe essential quality” possessed by writers “of Achievement.” John Barnard, John Keats (Cambridge, England: Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, 1987), 51. Paine’s ability to hold contrary truths in creative tension may be at the heart of the two mysteries we explore here. 
11. December 22, 1817, letter from Keats, Poetical Works, 48. 
12. December 22, 1817, letter from Keats, Poetical Works, 48. 
13. Robert Giddings, John Keats (Boston, MA: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1968), 173; John Keats, “Notes on Milton’s Paradise Lost,” Poetical Works, 3:24 (“What creates the intense pleasure of not knowing? A sense of independence, of power, from the fancy’s creating a world of its own by the sense of probabilities.”) 
14. John F. Berens, Providence and Patriotism in Early America, 1640-1815 (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1978), 81-111. 
15. E.g., Samuel Adams, “Resolution of the Continental Congress,” The Writings of Samuel Adams, ed. Harry Alonzo Cushing (New York: The Knickerbocker Press, 1907), 3:414-416; February 28, 1797 letter from John Jay to Rev. Jedediah Morse, The Correspondence and Papers of John Jay, ed. Henry P. Johnson (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1893), 4:225 (“except the Bible there is not a true history in the world”); John Witherspoon, “A Practical Treatise on Regeneration,” The Works of The Rev. John Witherspoon (Philadelphia: William W. Woodward, 1802), 1:93-265, John Witherspoon, “The Dominion of Providence Over the Passions of Men,” The Works of The Rev. John Witherspoon (Philadelphia: William W. Woodward, 1802), 3:17-46; Jeffry H. Morrison, John Witherspoon and the Founding of the American Republic (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), 20-21, 90-91. “Sam Adams and John Jay…were orthodox, even conservative Christians, while Franklin, Jefferson, and Paine were deists.” Berens, Providence and Patriotism in Early America, 1640-1815, 107. 
16. See “ADAMS, John,” Joseph McCabe, A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Rationalists (London: Watts and Co., 1920), 7-8 (1920); “ALLEN, Colonel Ethan, Biographical Dictionary, 16; “FRANKLIN, Benjamin,” Biographical Dictionary, 267; “JEFFERSON, Thomas,” Biographical Dictionary, 387- 388; “LAFAYETTE, the Marquis M. J. P. R. Y. G. M. de,” Biographical Dictionary, 412-413; “MADISON, James,” Biographical Dictionary, 471-472; “MORRIS, Gouverneur,” Biographical Dictionary, 929-930; “PAINE, Thomas,” Biographical Dictionary, 577-578; WASHINGTON, George,” Biographical Dictionary, 870-872. A “firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence” wasinvoked in the Declaration of Independence. “Declaration of Independence: A Transcription,” National Archives, https://www.archives.gov/foundingdocs/declaration-transcript. The dominant belief among Foundersin an intervening Providence is expressed in the “Eye of Providence” displayed on all one-dollar bills and on the Great Seal of America. Leonard Wilson, The Coat of Arms, Crest and Great Seal of the United States of America: The Emblem of the Independent Sovereignty of the Nation (San Diego, CA: Leonard Wilson, 1928), pp. 28-29; U. S. Department of State, The Great Seal of the United States(Washington D.C.: Office of Media Services, Bureau of Public Affairs, U.S. Department of State, 1976). Superficially, beliefs of Deist Foundersin an intervening Providence seem to differ from those of prior Deists. Giordano Bruno, executed in 1600, created a central tenet of Deism when he “rejected the idea that Providence intervenes in the operation of nature” and that what “are called miracles can be explained in terms of natural laws.” Edward L. Ericson, The Free Mind Through the Ages(New York: F. Unger Publications, 1985), 56. As noted later, the beliefs of the Deist Founders, interrogated more deeply,suggests a heritage deriving from Bruno.
17. One commentator opined that “[n]obody believed more deeply than radical deists in an allwise Providence.” Henry F. May, Ideas, Faiths, and Feelings: Essays on American Intellectual and Religious History, 1952-1982 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 141. May’s opinion is debatable, particularly when compared to contemporarieslike Rev. John Witherspoon, but, even if true, would beg the question of why “radical deists” held such beliefs. 
18. “Letter to the Citizens of the United States,” December 29, 1802, Paine Writings, 2:920. In 1804, Paine contributed numerous articlesto Elihu Palmer’s Prospect magazine. “Prospect Papers” [1804], Paine Writings, 2:789-830. The religious arguments of Paine and Palmer—who was a substantially deeper thinker regarding religious issues—mostly coordinated but may have clashed regarding the existence of an intervening Providence. Kirsten Fischer, American Freethinkers: Elihu Palmer and the Struggle for Religious Freedom in the New Nation (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021), 174-221; Kerry S. Walters, American Deists: Voices of Reason and Dissent in the Early Republic (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 1992), 244-277 (discussing Palmer); G. Adolf Koch, Republican Religion: The American Revolution and the Cult of Reason (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1933), 51- 73 (same); Herbert M. Morais, Deism in Eighteenth Century America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1934), 128-138. Intriguingly, Paine’slast known reference to an intervening Providence was in February 1803 (see n7 supra) before he first published in Palmer’s Prospect. Whether that is coincidence or influenced by Palmer must remain in the realm of speculation. 
19. Thomas Paine, “Thoughts on Defensive War” [1775], The Pennsylvania Magazine or the American Monthly Museum for July 1775 (Philadelphia, July 1775), 313-314; The Writings of Thomas Paine, ed. M. Conway (New York: G. P. Putnam’s, 1894), 1:55 (attribution to Paine). 
20. Age of Reason [1793], Paine Writings, 1:505- 511; Age of Reason, Part the Second [1796], Paine Writings, 1:520 & 1:587. 
21. Bernard Shaw, Preface, Saint Joan, A Chronicle Play in Six Scenes and an Epilogue (London: Penguin Books Ltd., 2001), 13-14. 
22. Nicholas Guyatt, Providence and the Invention of the United States, 1607-1876 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 7-8 (assuming, based on Paine’s assault on Christianity in Age of Reason, that, in Common Sense and the Crisis series, Paine’s “public piety diverged from” his “private convictions” and that he cynically “adopted providential language precisely because” he realized “that many Americans accepted its premises”). 
23. Guyatt, Providence and the Invention of the United States, 7-8, 89-90, 95, 105, 148, 152, 155- 157, 169, 171 (noting only Paine’sreferencesto an intervening Providence in Common Sense and the Crisis series and not Paine’s later references). See n6 supra (noting eleven references by Paine to an intervening Providence in writings other than Common Sense and the Crisis series including a reference as late as 1803). 
24. Aldridge, Man of Reason, 53. See also Aldridge, Man of Reason, 276 (citing 1802 invocation). 
25. Matthew Stewart, Nature’s God: The Heretical Origins of the American Revolution (New York: W. W. Norton, 2014), 190-192. 
26. Morais, Deism in Eighteenth Century America, 97. 
27. Walters, American Deists, 29. 
28. Stewart, Nature’s God, 190-192. John Fea, by contrast, opined that being a Deist and believing in an intervening Providence are entirely incompatible. John Fea, “Deism and Providence,” Current, August 19, 2011, https://currentpub.com/ 2011/08/19/deism-and-providence/ 
29. June 12, 1754, letter to Robert Dinwiddie, Washington Writings, 1:76; July 18, 1755, letter to John Augustine Washington, Washington Writings 1:152. See Stewart, Nature’s God, 190-192. 
30. “Letter to the Citizens of the United States,” December 29, 1802, Writings of Paine, 2:920. 
31. Ericson, The Free Mind Through the Ages, 56. 
32. Benjamin Franklin, “A Lecture on the Providence of God in the Governance of the World,” The Complete Works of Benjamin Franklin, ed. John Bigelow (New York: The Knickerbocker Press, 1888), 7:489-497. 
33. Benjamin Franklin, “A Lecture on the Providence of God,” 7:489-497. 
34. Benjamin Franklin, “A Lecture on the Providence of God,” 7:489-497. 
35. Age of Reason [1793], Paine Writings, 1:486. 
36. Examining those occasions when Paine cited an intervening Providence, each implicates a situation that comports with the laws of nature, even if improbable. See citations at n6 supra. 
37. “Crisis No. 10” [1782], Paine Writings, 1:193. 
38. Age of Reason [1793], Paine Writings, 1:486. See Stewart, Nature’s God, 190. 
39. Gregory Claeys, Thomas Paine: Social and Political Thought (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 204-206 (Paine “extended his notion of Providence unreasonably far”) 
40. References to God as “He” “he” “His” “his” “Him” “him” “Himself” “himself” “Father” “father’s”: “Crisis No. I” [1776], Paine Writings, 1:50- 51; Rights of Man-Part the First [1791], Paine Writings, 1:452; Age of Reason [1793], Paine Writings, 1:478; id, Paine Writings, 1:483; id, Paine Writings, 1:486; id, Paine Writings, 1:487; id, Paine Writings, 1:493; id, Paine Writings, 1:497; id, Paine Writings, 1:506; id, Paine Writings, 1:510; id, Paine Writings, 1:512; Age of Reason-Part the Second [1795], Paine Writings, 1:523; id, Paine Writings, 1:529; id, Paine Writings, 1:583; id, Paine Writings, 1:584; id, Paine Writings, 1:595; id, Paine Writings, 1:601; id, Paine Writings, 1:602; Agrarian Justice [1797], Paine Writings, 1:609; Epistle to Quakers[1776], Paine Writings, 2:58; “The Forester II,” [1776], id., Paine Writings, 2:79; “A Serious Addressto the People of Pennsylvania on the Present Situation of their Affairs” [1778], Paine Writings, 2:295; “Answer to Four Questions on the Legislative and Executive Powers” [1791], Paine Writings, 2:525; “A Letter to the Hon, Thomas Erskine” [1797], Paine Writings, 2:729; id, Paine Writings, 2:733; id, Paine Writings, 2:738; id, Paine Writings, 2:744; “The Existence of God” [1797], Paine Writings, 2:749; id, Paine Writings, 2:750; Paine Writings, 2:754; “Extractsfrom a Reply to the Bishop of Llandaff” [1796-1802], Paine Writings, 2:776; id, Paine Writings, 2:785; id, Paine Writings, 2:786-787; “Remarks on R. Hall’s Sermon” [1804], Paine Writings, 2:790; “Of the Word ‘Religion,’ and Other Words of Uncertain Signification” [1804], Paine Writings, 2:792; id, Paine Writings, 2:793; “Of the Religion of Deism Compared with the Christian Religion, and the Superiority of the Former over the Latter” [1804], Paine Writings, 2:797; id, Paine Writings, 2:798; id, Paine Writings, 2:800; id, Paine Writings, 2:802; “Of the Sabbath Day in Connecticut” [1804], Paine Writings, 2:804; id, Paine Writings, 2:805; “Of the Old and the New Testament” [1804], Paine Writings, 2:806; “To John Mason” [1804], Paine Writings, 2:813; id, Paine Writings, 2:814; id, Paine Writings, 2:815; “On Deism, and the Writings of Thomas Paine” [1804], Paine Writings, 2:816; id, Paine Writings, 2:817; “Biblical Blasphemy” [1804], Paine Writings, 2:824; “Examination of the Prophecies” [1807], Paine Writings, 2:876; id, Paine Writings, 2:886; id, Paine Writings, 2:887; id, Paine Writings,, 2:888; id, Paine Writings, 2:889; id, Paine Writings, 2:890; id, Paine Writings, 2:891; “My Private Thoughts on a Future State,” Paine Writings, 2:892; id, Paine Writings, 2:893;“Predestination: Remarks on RomansIX, 18- 21” [1809], Paine Writings, 2:896. 
41. See citations in n7 supra. 
42. Daniel Gittens, Remarks on the Tenets and Principles of the Quakers as Contained in the Theses Theologica of Robert Barclay (London: J. Betterman, 1758), xii, xviii, 100, 149, 150, 157, 206 & 312 (Quaker views) William Craig Brownlee, A Careful and Free Inquiry into the True Nature and Tendency of the Religious Principles of the Society of Friends, Commonly Called Quakers (Philadelphia: John Mortimer, 1924), 107, 108, 110, 135, 149, 158, 161, 177, 184, 212, 268, (Quaker viewsin 18th century); Quaker anecdotes, ed. Richard Pike (London: Hamilton, Adams, & Co., 2nd ed. 1881), 24, 206-207, 230, 266-267, 272 & 300 (same); Alfred Plummer, The Church of England in the Eighteenth Century (London: Methuen, 1910), 97, 157, 218 (Anglican views in 18th century); A New History of Methodism, eds. Townsend, Workman, & Eayrs (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1909), 1:28- 29, 1:35, 1:66, 1:229, 1:448, 2:36, 2:45, 2:230, 2:287, 2:289 (Methodist views in 18th century). 
43. Priestley and Price routinely, in writings published before Paine emigrated, referenced the “Providence of God” or “Divine Providence” and never hinted at a female gender for Providence. E.g., Richard Price, “Dissertation I on Providence,” Four Dissertations (London: A. Millar & T. Cadell, 1767), 3- 194; Joseph Priestley, No Man Liveth to Himself: A Sermon Preached Before and Assembly of Dissenting Ministers (Warrington, 1764), viii, 19 & 33. 
44. A. Owen Aldridge, Thomas Paine’s American Ideology (Newark, NJ: University of Delaware Press, 1984), 52-53 & 80 (Paine’s citation to Burgh’s book in Common Sense); J. Burgh, Political Disquisitions: An Enquiry into Public Errors, Defects, and Abuses. Illustrated By, And Established Upon Facts and Remarks, Extracted from a Variety of Authors, Ancient and Modern, (London: Edward & Charles Dilly, 1774) 1:486, 3:85, 3:91, 3:121, 3:162, 3:183, 3:205, 3:257 (references to Providence). 
45. “Crisis No. 3” [1777], Paine Writings, 1:75; “Crisis No. 3” [1777], Paine Writings, 1:87; “Crisis No. 6” [1778], Paine Writings, 1:131. Paine’s belief in a female Providence certainly did not derive, for example, from any Catholic belief in an intervening Virgin Mary. Even Protestants in France firmly rejected Mary cults(e.g., David Garrioch, “Religious Identities and the Meaning of Things in EighteenthCentury Paris,” 3, French History and Civilization 17- 25, (2009), 22) and Paine was unquestionably anti-Papist (e.g., Aldridge, Thomas Paine’s American Ideology, 63). 
46. Fruchtman, Thomas Paine and the Religion of Nature, 188, n27. 
47. “Providentia,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org wiki/Providentia#cite_note1, citing J. Rufus Fears, “The Cult of Virtues and Roman Imperial Ideology,” Aufstieg und Niedergang (1981), 886. See “Providentia,” Encyclopedia Mythica,https://pantheon.org/articles/p/ providentia.html#google_vignette. 
48. Theodorus P. van Baaren, “ProvidenceTheology,” Britannica, https://www.britannica.com /topic/Providence-theology. 
49. Martin Percival Charlesworth, “Providentia and Aeternitas,” 29, The Harvard Theological Review 107-132 (April 1936), 109. 
50. Age of Reason [1793], Paine Writings, 1:496. 
51. See n7 supra. “Thoughts on Defensive War” [July 1775], Paine Writings, 2:54 (the “Romans held the world in slavery, and were themselvesthe slaves of their emperors”); Forester’s Letter No. 1 [April 3, 1776], Paine Writings, 2:61 (addressing a contemporary opponent using the pseudonym Cato by stating that the “fate of the Roman Cato is before his eyes”); “A Dialogue Between the Ghost of General Montgomery Just Arrived from the Elysian Fields; and an American Delegate, in a Wood Near Philadelphia” [May 1776], Paine Writings, 2:92 (listing “Grecian and Roman heroes” by name); “Retreat Acrossthe Delaware” [January 29, 1777], Paine Writings, 2: 95 (“the names of Fabius”— a Roman hero —“and Washington will run parallel through eternity”). Aldridge identified many occasionsthat Paine referenced classical authors or figuresfavorably or unfavorably. A. Owen Aldridge, “Thomas Paine and the Classics,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 370-380 (Summer, 1968), 370-373. 
52. “Crisis No. 5 [1778], Paine Writings, 123-124 (extended discussion of Rome and Greece); Age of Reason [1793], Paine Writings, 1:491-492 (same). In 1795, Paine expressly listed the “works of genius” by Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Cicero, and others “as works of genius,” also mentioning Herotodus, Tacitus and Josephus. Age of Reason: Part the Second [1795], Paine Writings, 1:520. Later in life, Paine expressed admiration for Cicero at considerable length because he advocated rational thought. “Examination of the Prophecies of the New Testament…” [1807], Paine Writings, 2:882-886; Meyer Reinhold, Classica Americana: The Greek and Roman Heritage in the United States(Detroit, MI: Wayne University Press, 1984), 105-106; Aldridge, “Thomas Paine and the Classics,” 371-372. 
53. Keane, Paine, 41-44. 
54. Joseph Spence, Polymetis, or, An Enquiry Concerning the Agreement between the Works of the Roman Poets, and the Remains of the Antient Artists(London: R. & J. Dodsley, 2nd Edition with Corrections by the Author, 1755), https://hdl.handle.net/2027/gri.ark:/13960/t25b8jp2 x, 138, 150-151 (Roman belief in female Providence; Joseph Spence, Polymetis, or, An Enquiry Concerning the Agreement between the Works of the Roman Poets, and the Remains of the Antient Artists, (London: R. & J. Dodsley, 1st Edition, 1747), https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.3901505709 9940, 138, 150-51, 161 (same). Those discussionsin Polymetis were partly supported by a citation to Cicero for the proposition “Providentia deorum mundus administrator.” (Italics added.) The 1747 and 1755 unabridged editions were available in the late 1750s when Paine, living off privateering profits, frequented London bookshops, likely borrowed library booksfor a small fee, and attended astronomy lectures by Benjamin Martin. Keane, Paine, 41-44; Craig Nelson, Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations(New York: Viking, 2006), 22, (Martin as friend). 
55. Joseph Spence, Polymetis, 1st Ed., https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp. 39015057099940, x. 
56. In 1760, an unabridged edition was advertised for “2l. 12s. 6d.” The Public Advertiser” (London, August 6, 1760), 4). Keane, Paine, 41-44. See Eleanor Lochrie, A Study of Lending Libraries in EighteenthCentury Britain, University Of Strathclyde (Thesis, September 2015), https://local.cis.strath.ac. uk/wp/extras/msctheses/papers/strath_cis_publicati on_2684.pdf. 
57. Joseph Spence, A Guide to Classical Learning, or, Polymetis Abridged (London: R. Horsfeld, 1765), https://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.fl1e34. 153-154, text & note c (same). The abridgementsold for three shillings. The Public Advertiser (London, February 22, 1766), 4), far less than the unabridged version (e.g., The Public Advertiser (London, August 6, 1760), 4). 
58. Library Company of Philadelphia, The Second Part of the Catalogue of Books, of the Library Company of Philadelphia (Philadelphia: Robert Aitken, 1775), 55 (listing the 1755 edition of Spence’s Polymetis as No. 292 in its holdings). The Library Company wasfounded several decades earlier by Paine’sfriend, Benjamin Franklin. Austin K. Gray, Benjamin Franklin’s Library: A Short Account of the Library Company of Philadelphia 1731-1931 (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1937), 7-17. “Members could borrow booksfreely and without charge” and nonmembers could read books within the library and even borrow books. “At the Instance of Benjamin Franklin”: A Brief History of the Library Company of Philadelphia (Philadelphia: York Graphic Services, 1995), 14. 
59. July 20, 1776, letter from Jefferson to John Page, Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/ 01-01-02-0189 
60. E.g., Aldridge, Thomas Paine’s American ideology, 95-122. 
61. References to Cicero: Spence, Polymetis, 2nd ed., title page quote, iii, 8-13, 15, 16, 21, 23, 29, 31, 38, 40-41, 46-47, 49-50, 57-58, 68-69, 92, 95, 103- 104, 114, 134-135, 137-140, 143-144, 150, 164, 166, 168, 172, 174, 179-180, 182, 188, 190, 193, 195-196, 207-209, 214, 220, 225, 258, 266-267, 272, 279, 287 & 316. Referencesto Macrobius: Spence, Polymetis, 2nd ed., v, 17, 20, 26, 51, 58-59. 64, 116, 174, 193, 196-198, 288 & 315. Images of Providentia: Spence, Polymetis, 1st ed., # 229, https://hdl.handle.net /2027/mdp.39015057099940?urlappend=%3Bseq=2 29%3Bownerid=113489623-228; Spence, Polymetis, 2nd ed., #225, https://hdl.handle.net /2027/gri.ark:/13960/t25b8jp2x?urlappend=%3Bseq =225. 
62. Spence, A Guide to Classical Learning, 153-154, text & note c. 
63. Maiora, “Classical Almanac: Joseph Spence,” EcBlogue: A Classics Blog, https://classicsblogging. wordpress.com/2009/04/28/classical-almanacjoseph-spence/ Compare Aldridge, “Thomas Paine and the Classics,”, 370-380. 
64. Maiora, “Classical Almanac: Joseph Spence,” EcBlogue: A Classics Blog. 
65. Aldridge, “Thomas Paine and the Classics,”370- 380. 
66. Latura, “Milky Way Vicissitudes: Macrobius to Galileo,” 18 Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry 319-325 (2018), DOI:10.5281/zenodo.1477993, 320, 322 & 324. 
67. A combined total of 67 advertisements appeared for those two versions in The Public Advertiser in London from August 3, 1758 to December 29, 1772. Search for Polymetisin London County newspapers from 1700 to 1774, Newspapers.com, https://www.newspapers.com /search/?query=polymetis&p_province=gb eng&p_county=greater%20london&dr_year=1700- 1774&sort=paper-date-asc 
68. In 1775, the holdings of the Library Company included a copy of the 1755 edition of Polymetis. See n7 supra. Paine arrived in Philadelphia on November 30, 1774. Frank Smith, “The Date of Thomas Paine’s First Arrival in America,” 3, American Literature 317- 318. (November 1931). Paine’s first known identification of Providence asfemale wasin April 1777. “Crisis No. 3” [April 19, 1777], Paine Writings, 1:75 & 1:87. 
69. See n55 supra. 
70. E.g., Edward Herbert, The Antient Religion of the Gentiles, and Causes of their Errors Consider’d (London: John Nutt, 1705), 95-96 (Romans, “by her, mean Divine Providence…”). 
71. Franklin regularly referenced Providence as a manifestation of God, rarely referenced gender regarding Providence, and never identified Providence as a manifestation of God, rarely referenced gender regarding Providence, and never identified Providence asfemale. Benjamin Franklin, The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, ed. A. Smyth (New York: The Macmillan Co. 1905 to 1907), 1:221- 439, 2:1-470, 3:1-483, 4:1-471, 5:1-555, 6:1-477, 7:1-440, 8:1-651, 9:1-703 & 10:1-510. See Walters, American Deists, 53-55 & 74-75 (Franklin); Walters, American Deists, 122-124 (Jefferson); Walters, American Deists, 143, 146 & 148-155 (Ethan Allen). See nn58-62 infra. 
72. See n30 supra. 
73. See n7 supra. 
74. When Adams referenced gender regarding Providence, he sometimes identified Providence as being genderless(“it” “its”): John Adams, Diary Entry of March 9, 1774, Diary, The Works of John Adams, ed. C. Adams(Boston: Charles C. Little & James Brown, 1851), 3:110; Discourses on Davila; A Series of Papers on Political History by an American Citizen, Adams Works, 6:396; “To the Young Men of the City of New York,” Adams Works, 9:198; May 22, 1821, letter to David Sewall, Adams Works, 10:399. More often, when he referenced gender, Adamsidentified Providence as male (His” “his”): Diary Entry of March 2, 1756, Diary, Adams Works, 2:8; Diary Entry of June 14, 1756, Adams Works, 2:22; Diary Entry of October 24, 1756, Adams Works, 2:221; Diary Entry of June 9, 1771, Adams Works, 2:274; Works on Government, Adams Works, 4:220; id, Adams Works, 4:413; “Inaugural Speech to Both Houses of Congress, 4 March 1797,” Adams Works, 9:111; Adams, “Speech to Both Houses of Congress, 8 December 1798,” Adams Works, 9:128; Adams, “Speech to Both Houses of Congress 3 December 1799,” Adams Works, 9:128; December 26, 1806 letter to J.B. Varnum, Adams Works, 9:607; October 4, 1813, letter from Adamsto Jefferson, Adams Works, 10:75; April 5, 1815 letter to Richard Rush, Adams Works, 10:159. No surviving documents reflect Adams identifying Providence as female. 
75. Jefferson sometimes identified Providence as genderless(“it” “its”): March 4, 1801 Inaugural Address, The Writings of ThomasJefferson, ed. A. Bergh (Washington D.C.: The ThomasJefferson Memorial Association, 1903), 3:320; May 31, 1802 letter to Thomas Law, Jefferson Writings, 19:130. Other times, he identified Providence as male (“his” “His” “he” “Him”): March 4, 1804 Inaugural Address, Jefferson Writings, 3:383; December 5, 1805 Fifth Annual Message to Congress, Jefferson Writings, 3:384; October 12, 1786, letter to Mrs. Cosway, Jefferson Writings, 5:444; February 14, 1807, letter to the Two Branches of the Legislature of Massachusetts, Jefferson Writings, 16:287; March 28, 1809, letter to Stephen Cross, Jefferson Writings, 16:352. Jefferson ambiguously referenced Providence by “their” without indicating any particular gender. Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, Jefferson Writings, 2:242. No surviving documents reflect Jefferson identifying Providence as female. 
76. Washington’s first recorded reference to an intervening Providence was in 1754. June 12, 1754, letter to Robert Dinwiddie, The Writings of George Washington, ed. John C. Fitzpatrick (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1931), 1:76. The next year, he credited “the miraculous care of Providence” for protecting him from harm “beyond all human expectation.” July 18, 1755, letter to John Augustine Washington, Washington Writings, 1:152. 
77. April 25, 1773, letter to Burwell Bassett, Washington Writings, 3:133; May 31, 1776, letter to John Augustine Washington, Washington Writings, 5:93; March 1, 1778, letter to Bryan Fairfax, Washington Writings, 11:3; May 30, 1778, letter to Landon Carter, Washington Writings, 11:492; October 18, 1780, letter to Joseph Reed, Washington Writings, 20:213; March 9, 1781, letter to William Gordon, Washington Writings, 21:332; June 5, 1782, letter to Chevalier de la Luzerne, Washington Writings, 24:314; June 30, 1782, lettersto the Ministers, Elders, and Deacons of the Reformed Dutch Church of Schenectady, Washington Writings, 24:391; August 1, 1786, letter to Chevalier de la Luzerne, Washington Writings, 28:501; September 25, 1794, Proclamation, Washington Writings, 33:508; March 30, 1796, letter to Elizabeth Parke Custis Washington, Washington Writings, 35:1; March 30, 1796, letter to Tobias Lear, Washington Writings, 35:5; June 8, 1796, letter to Henry Knox, Washington Writings, 35:85; October 12, 1796, letter to the Inhabitants of Shepard Town and its Vicinity, Washington Writings, 35:242; March 2, 1797, letter to Henry Knox, Washington Writings, 35:409; March 3, 1797, letter to Jonathan Trumbull, Washington Writings, 35:412; August 15, 1798, letter to Reverend Jonathan Boucher, Washington Writings, 36:413-414; November 22, 1799, letter to Benjamin Goodhue, Washington Writings, 37:436. 
78. July 20, 1776, letter to Colonel Adam Stephen, Washington Writings, 5:313; April 23, 1777, letter to Brigadier General Samuel Holden Parsons, Washington Writings, 7:456; November 30, 1777, General Order, Washington Writings, 10:123; April 12, 1778, General Order, Washington Writings, 11:252; August 20, 1778, letter to Thomas Nelson, Washington Writings, 12:343; April 28, 1788, letter to L’Enfant, Washington Writings, 29:481; October 3, 1789, Thanksgiving Proclamation, Washington Writings, 30:427; July 28, 1791, letter to Lafayette, Washington Writings, 31:324; Jun 10, 1792, letter to Marquis de La Fayette, Washington Writings, 32:54. 
79. November 8, 1777, letter to Thomas Nelson, Washington Writings, 10:28 (“We must endeavour to deserve better of Providence, and, I am persuaded,she will smile upon us”); October 12, 1783, letter to Chevalier de Chastellux, Washington Writings, 27:190 (“…with the goodness of that Providence which has dealt her favour to us with so profuse a hand”). 
80. Paine was an unlikely influence on Washington, who first identified Providence as female over six months after Paine had done so. November 8, 1777, letter to Thomas Nelson, Washington Writings, 10:28; “Crisis No. 3” [April 19, 1777], Paine Writings, 1:75 & 1:87. Though Paine and Washington interacted personally shortly before the November 8, 1777, letter, including an extended conversation over breakfast after the Battle of Germantown in early October, no record suggeststhat topic was mentioned. May 16, 1778, letter to Franklin, Paine Writings, 2:1145- 1147; Keane, Paine, 160. Washington’s second identification was a year and half after Paine identified Providence as female in human right to suffrage” and that “women have rights because they are human, not because they are weaker, poorer, or more vulnerable than men”). mythology” (Age of Reason [1794], Paine Writings, 1:498). Hisidentification of Providence asfemale and God as male does not mean that he viewed Providence as a Goddess much less a separate one. “Crisis No. 10.” October 12, 1783, letter to Chevalier de Chastellux, Washington Writings, 27:190; “Crisis No. 10” [March 5, 1782], Paine Writings, 1:193-194. Personal contact in the weeks before October 12, 1783 was precluded by Paine, due to scarlet fever, delaying his visit to Washington’s Rocky Hill estate. Hawke, Paine, 140-142; October 13, 1783, letter to Washington, Paine Writings, 2:1243. 
81. Washington “settled into” Whyte’s home in September 1781. Ron Chernow, Washington: A Life (New York: The Penguin Press, 2010), 410-411. Wythe reportedly had a copy of Polymetis. “Polymetis,” Wythepedia, William and Mary Law Library, https://lawlibrary.wm.edu/ wythepedia/index.php/Polymetis. 
82. See n7 supra. 
83. E.g., Botting, “Thomas Paine amidst the Early Feminists,” The Selected Writings of Thomas Paine, eds. I. Shapiro & J. Calvert (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014), 633 & 643-644 (observing that Paine, in his 1797 Agrarian Justice, made “a creative argument for women’s 
84. While there are many signals of Paine’s egalitarian attitudes towards women in the 1790s, there are far fewer before April 1777. Paine is no longer deemed the author of “An Occasional Letter on the Female Sex” that appeared in Pennsylvania Magazine in 1775. https://thomaspaine.org/works/works-removedfrom-the-paine-canon/an-occasional-letter-on-thefemale-sex.html 
85. Some conclude that Paine was a Pantheist rather than Deist or had pantheistic tendencies. Fruchtman, Thomas Paine and the Religion of Nature, 3-4, 52-53; Zaidi, “Rediscovering Thomas Paine and the Sacred Text of Nature,” Left Curve, No. 35 (2011), 138-141, https://www.academia.edu/2327425/Rediscovering_Thomas_Paine_and_the_S acred_Text_of_Nature. Taking Paine at his own word, however, he believed “in one God, and no more” (Age of Reason, Paine Writings, 1:464) and criticized what he viewed as the pantheism of “Christian mythology,” Age of Reason (1794], Paine Writings, 1:498). His identification of Providence as female and God as male does not mean that he viewed Providence as a Goddess much less a separate one. 
86. Jack Fruchtman, Jr., The Political Philosophy of Thomas Paine (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), 178, n15, (after thinking long on Paine identifying Providence as female and God as male, concluding that “at the least he viewed Providence as an immanent divine element, as part of all of nature (or Nature, in deist terms), whereas his vision of God was as creator of the universe, or First Cause”).“Crisis No. 10.” October 12, 1783, letter to Chevalier de Chastellux, Washington Writings, 27:190; “Crisis No. 10” [March 5, 1782], Paine Writings, 1:193-194. Personal contact in the weeks before October 12, 1783 was precluded by Paine, due to scarlet fever, delaying his visit to Washington’s Rocky Hill estate. Hawke, Paine, 140- 142; October 13, 1783, letter to Washington, Paine Writings, 2:1243. 
87. Fruchtman, Political Philosophy of Paine, 37-38. 88 Fruchtman, Political Philosophy of Paine, 2, 24, 26, 28, 54, 56, 
88. (“Paine’s deeply held faith in God as the sole creator…” (italics added), 135 and 178, n15. 
89. Of the many times Paine referenced gender regarding Nature, he identified Nature as genderless once. “The Existence of God: A Discourse at the Society of Theophilanthropists, Paris” [1796], Paine Writings, 2:252. Otherwise, he identified Nature asfemale—not as male or genderless. Common Sense [1776], Paine Writings, 1:13 (“she”); id, Writings of Paine, 1:23; id, Paine Writings, 1:30; id, Paine Writings, 1:34; id, Paine Writings, 1:40); “Crisis No. 6” [1778], Paine Writings, 1:131; “Crisis No. 8” [1780], Paine Writings, 1:160; Rights of Man, Part the First [1791], Paine Writings, 1:260; Paine Writings, 1:321; Rights of Man, Part the Second [1792], Paine Writings, 1:357; Paine Writings, 1:365; id, Paine Writings, 1:367; Paine Writings, 1:371; id. at p. 400; Age of Reason [1795], Paine Writings, 1:509; id, Paine Writings, 1:529; Forester Letter III [1776], Paine Writings, 1:79; Second Letter on Peace and the Newfoundland Fisheries[July 14, 1779], Paine Writings, 1:198; Third Letter on Peace and the Newfoundland Fisheries[July 21, 1779], Paine Writings, 1:201; Dissertations on Government [1786], Paine Writings, 1:411; “Answer to Four Questions,” Paine Writings, 1:525; Paine Writings, 1:527; Prospects on the Rubicon [1787], Paine Writings, 1:631; Decline and Fall of the English System of Finance [1796], Paine Writings, 1:666; Specification of Thomas Paine, A.D. 1788, No. 1667, Constructing Arches, Vaulted Roofs, and Ceiling [1788], Paine Writings, 1:1032; Spring of 1789 letter from Paine to Sir George Staunton, Bart., Paine Writings, 1:1045; June 25, 1801 Letter from Paine to Jefferson [1801], Paine Writings, 1:1048. 
90. “Crisis No. 13” [1783], Paine Writings, 1:235.

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Part One of a Three-Part Historiography

Even before Paine’s death, his life was being dissected by those around him on both sides of the Atlantic. The earliest “biographies” of Paine were highly critical, politically-motivated smear campaigns funded by political enemies in high places. Each writer set out to debunk Paine’s major works, especially Common Sense; The Crisis; and the Rights of Man. 

The earliest published works were political hatchet jobs by Paine’s enemies. Francis Oldys, a 1793 biographer, really was George Chalmers, masquerading as a University of Pennsylvania divinity professor. Chalmers painted Paine as a drunken, lazy wife-beater. 

William Cobbett, another British expatriate in America, joined Chalmers in verbally tarring and feathering Paine. Cobbett’s The Life of Thomas Paine (1797) built upon the foundation of Chalmers’ work and quoted heavily from it. 

Like Chalmers, Cobbett offered a running editorial commentary about Paine’s embrace of enlightenment thinking and then picked up with Paine’s life through his release from prison during the French Revolution. Cobbett wrote: 

Whenever or wherever he breathes his last, he will excite neither sorrow nor compassion… men will learn to express all that is base, malignant, treacherous, unnatural, and blasphemous, by a single monosyllable, Paine. 

This statement demands a word about the long and erratic relationship between Cobbett and Paine, the downs and ups of their often parallel lives.

Both were sons of the British working class. Both were successful pamphleteers, although Paine was more commercially successful. Both suffered some degree of egotism and arrogance. 

Cobbett, the angry polemicist, later made a drastic emotional U-turn and disinterred Paine’s corpse from its New Rochelle resting place for an envisioned monument to honour Paine in England, where it was not permitted. 

The Cheetham Biography 

Shortly after Paine died in 1809, his enemies and friends began sharpening their quills. Some spewed vitriol, while others offered praise. 

James Cheetham, the New York publisher of a newspaper called The Citizen, was a colleague of Paine turned bitter foe. Cheetham’s The Life of Thomas Paine (1809) opened with a description of his first meeting with Paine in New York in 1802, shortly after Paine returned to the United States from France. A more unsavory description of the encounter cannot be imagined, which is interesting because Cheetham published Paine’s writing in The Citizen for five years until a falling out (evidently over pay) led to Paine’s refusal to write for him anymore. 

Claiming impartiality, Cheetham wrote that his goal was “neither to please or displease any political party. I have written the life of Mr. Paine, not his panegyrick [sic].” Rather than telling the life of Thomas Paine, Cheetham brought an indictment. 

Cheetham said he’d interviewed many who knew Paine personally, describing them as people of the highest echelons of society. He ridiculed/ Common Sense as “Defective in arrangement, inelegant in diction…” While ostensibly analyzing all of Paine’s writings, Cheetham relentlessly criticized them. 

So vituperative is Cheetham’s tone that one wonders if there’s any value in reading it, but it captures the ethos of the Painehaters, giving a better understanding of the constant bile Paine faced throughout his life in the public eye. 

Harford, Rickman, Sherwin, and Carlile 

Ten years after Paine’s death, a quartet of biographies appeared within months of each other: John S. Harford’s Some Account of the Life, Death, and Principles of Thomas Paine (1819); Thomas Clio Rickman’s The Life of Thomas Paine (1819); W. T. Sherwin’s Memoirs of the Life of Thomas Paine (1819); and Richard Carlile’s The Life of Thomas Paine (1820). 

Harford picked up where Cheetham left off, offering a scathing portrait of a despicable human being. The other three mounted a defense against the virulent misrepresentations of Paine’s life. Rickman, Sherwin and Carlile actually knew Paine and believed that fear of progressive ideas, not facts, were behind the grotesque portrayals being offered. 

John Harford came from a wealthy British banking family. While he shared Paine’s abolitionist sentiments and began his biography promising to be less vindictive than Cheetham, he unleashed an equally critical diatribe. While conceding that Paine did have “considerable natural talent, ” Harford presented Paine as cruel, unclean, constantly drunk, and miserly. He painted Paine as being possessed of an “inordinate spirit of egotism and selfishness which rendered him incapable of friendship to a single human being.” He described those who befriended Paine as “chiefly low and disreputable persons.” 

Clio Rickman, a lifelong friend of Paine, set out to rescue his friend “from the undeserved reproach… cast upon it by the panders of political infamy.” Rickman knew Paine better than anyone and had much in common with him. He grew up in Lewes, the coastal Sussex town where Paine lived, worked and became politically active between 1768 and 1774. The two men shared Quaker beliefs and a love of books. Rickman eventually moved to London, became a publisher of political pamphlets, and a lifelong friend. 

William Thomas Sherwin, a London publisher, wrote the first unbiased assessment of Paine’s life. For Memoirs of the Life of Thomas Paine, Sherwin interviewed Paine’s personal and political friends to offer a biography devoid of mudslinging and name-calling. 

Sherwin pointed at Chalmers, who was paid £500 to smear Paine’s reputation. He pilloried Cheetham as a “treacherous apostate” and “illiterate blockhead.” 

One year later Richard Carlile, released The Life of Thomas Paine. Carlile also rebutted Cheetham’s work by presenting an entirely laudatory portrait, built upon the same structure of analyzing each work in counterpoint to Paine’s life at the time of its writing. 

Carlile’s Paine is a man above reproach, a man so honest that he would not let a friend correct one of his grammatical errors, saying, “he only wished to be known as what he really was, without being decked with the plumes of another.” 

Vale and Linton 

These early works cannot be read as traditional biographies, but they prove useful as a way to understand Anglo-American radicalism in the eighteenth-century. Cobbett, Harford, Rickman, and Carlile all lived with one foot in America and the other in Britain. Much like Paine they were “ideological immigrants.” 

A Compendium of the Life of Thomas Paine (1837) by Gilbert Vale was the first biographical study intended to look at Paine through an American lens, untinged by Whig versus Tory politics. Vale was London-born, but he openly tried to remove Paine’s story from friends and foes on European shores. 

Vale wrote from avowed neutrality, determined to neither debase nor laud. He declared, “We are not… about to write a eulogy; to enhance his virtues, or to suppress his faults, or vices. Paine was a part of human nature, and partook of its imperfections.” 

William James Linton’s The Life of Thomas Paine (1841) clearly shows where his sympathies lay. Linton called Paine a “sturdy champion of political and religious liberty.” In subsequent editions, Linton wove in brief profiles with homage quotes from some of Paine’s notable cohorts — such as Benjamin Franklin and Mary Wollstonecraft — to further humanize him. 

By the mid-1800s, Paine had become a man instead of a monster. The dawn of the 20th century would bring a new scrutiny to his life.

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By Barbara Crane 

My interest in Thomas Paine began when I moved to New Rochelle in 2016 after retirement from decades advancing women’s reproductive health, rights and justice around the world. My earlier academic work had focused on international politics and development, with special attention to the role and influence of transnational networks and policy coalitions, later also designated by scholars as “epistemic communities” – all before the Internet made such networks a feature of the global landscape. 

I found myself in New Rochelle living near the historic sites associated with Paine — the 18th century cottage he lived in briefly from the farm he was granted after the Revolution, the 1839 Monument and the 1925 memorial building constructed in his honor by the Thomas Paine National Historical Association. 

Little did I know my curiosity about these historic sites, owned by two different associations, would draw me into volunteering and an ongoing quest for knowledge about Paine’s political thought and influences on the American and French revolutions. 

As I learned more, I discovered things about Paine that resonated with my interests and experience. 

He was a central figure in an early transnational network of revolutionaries and reformers influenced by thinkers of the Enlightenment, especially in America, France, and Britain — including Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Rush, Thomas Jefferson, the Marquis de Lafayette, the Marquis de Condorcet, Richard Price, Joseph Priestley, and Mary Wollstonecraft. Their impact eventually extended to those fighting oppression in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, and beyond. Paine’s elaboration of the principles of democracy, human rights, equality, and social justice in Common Sense (1776), The Rights of Man (1791) and other works, reflected the reciprocal influences among members of this network at the time. 

Paine was a friend of the early British feminist, Mary Wollstonecraft. They met in the late 1780s in London and moved in the same circles there and later in Paris. She published A Vindication of the Rights of Men in 1790, a critique of Edmund Burke’s writing on the French Revolution. Paine published Rights of Man, also a critique of Burke, in 1791. In 1792, Wollstonecraft published A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Like Paine, she was inspired by the French Revolution and went to France in 1792, where she remained during the worst of the Reign of Terror until 1795. 

Paine’s work, The Age of Reason, initiated while he was imprisoned in France, was fundamental to the emergence of the 19th century Freethought movement in the United States that drew abolitionists, labor groups, women suffragists, birth control activists and those who stood for separation of church and state. 

As one who has worked for reproductive freedom, I learned the role of the Freethought movement in resisting the Comstock Act, a draconian 1873 law that treated disseminating information and means to prevent pregnancy as obscene, including access to contraception and abortion methods. The fight against Comstock was critical to the 1884 founding of the TPNHA. 

The Comstock Act is still on the books and never repealed, despite court decisions. It’s again being invoked in Texas and New Mexico by opponents of reproductive freedom to restrict access to safe abortion. 

Paine’s radical thinking about democracy, human rights and equality put him at odds with more conservative Founding Fathers, leading to personal attacks on him, causing him to be discounted by many mainstream historians. 

I am convinced we need to revive his fervor and his confidence in the power of Enlightenment ideas when understood by all citizens. TPNHA contributes to this goal for society. s Barbara B. Crane, PhD is a political scientist and independent consultant, retired from a career in global women’s reproductive health. She serves as Vice President on the TPNHA board.

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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.

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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.

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By Gary Berton 

Diego Rivera was a famous Mexican artist in the first half of the 20th century. He excelled in large public murals, and also did hundreds of paintings on a smaller scale. He died in 1957 in Mexico City. 

His most controversial project was the mural he created for the Rockefeller Center in New York City. His politics were overlooked by the Rockefeller family (Rivera was a member of the Communist Party in the 1930s), because of his celebrity, but Rivera refused to compromise his politics, and eventually the mural was destroyed rather than be exhibited. The title of the work was Man at the Crossroads, and it depicted workers, with social and political choices visibly represented. When he inserted figures like Lenin and Trotsky, it put an end to the project.

Rivera anticipated that his mural would be destroyed before it could be displayed, which it was. So Rivera had pictures taken, in black and white, of the panels, and the whole mural. He then returned to Mexico and re-created the mural for the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. He renamed it Man, Controller of the Universe. See below: 

As part of the exhibit at the Thomas Paine Memorial Building, we included the panel that depicts the American Revolution. This panel did not become part of Rivera’s final production for Mexico City, as it pertained to the U.S. The only thing that remains of it is the black and white photo. Here is Rivera working on this panel in 1933: 

The panel can be seen at top of this article.

The knowledge that Rivera displays here is impressive. He must have studied Paine to grasp his significance, his close relationship to Franklin (standing next to him), his foundational principle of equality as the basis of his thought (with all the races standing together pointing to Rights of Man), the significance of Crispus Attucks being martyred, and the militant attitude toward a foreign power invading a supposedly weaker country.

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by Gary Berton, with Notes by Dr. Cazenave 

2022 Thomas Paine Symposium Talk

Dr. Noel Cazenave, Professor of Sociology at University of Connecticut, has been researching for a book on Kindness Wars: The History and Political Economy of Human Caring. During his research of Enlightenment thinkers he came to Thomas Paine, and was impressed by his orientation towards the well-being of humanity. He also came across Thomas Jefferson, and immediately formed an opposite opinion, that although he shared a lot of political goals with Paine, he also had no Kindness in his world view. 

I was honored that he contacted me about Paine, and wanted to hear more. We decided we could collaborate on an article about the comparison between the two historical figures who influenced the world on this question of kindness. This is a very brief summary of where we are on this narrow topic.

In examining 21 Enlightenment thinkers, Dr. Cazenave separated them into 3 categories, British Conservatives, Christian Benevolents and Secular Progressives. Both Toms fit into the last. Class plays a major role: Paine from the lower classes, Jefferson from the inherited planter class. 

Paine’s argument for independence was linked to the cause of humanity for justice and equality. “My country is the world; my religion is to do good.” He criticized Rousseau that although Rousseau possessed benevolent sentiments, but “having raised this animation, they do not direct its operation, and leave the mind in love with an object, without describing the means of possessing it.” For Paine, sentiments won’t abolish aristocracy and privilege, or defend the poor, the homeless, the children, and proposed concrete ways of kindness toward humanity which slowly have minimally been addressed if not universally enacted. Even his guaranteed minimal income concept is still a far-off goal, and the economist Thomas Piketty recently outlined the hope of humanity as resting on this concept. Paine called for aggressive political change, and with it a change in thinking. 

But Jefferson is another question. The self- possessed contradiction of Jefferson is almost frightening. Although Franklin probably had more to do with the preamble of the Declaration than Jefferson, the “all men are created equal” gets contradicted by Jefferson in his slavery clause written by a slave-owner, and his clause about savages which shows he didn’t think they were “men”. Relatively few people are aware, however, that Jefferson would become one of that new nation’s earliest and most influential theoreticians of white supremacy, and even fewer people know of the major kindness-theory-related contradictions within the Declaration of Independence, itself. 

In 1807 Jefferson as President told his Secretary of War that if the assimilation of indigenous people don’t conform to the white society, “If we are constrained to lift the hatchet against any tribe, we will never lay it down until that tribe is exterminated.” With America’s indigenous people, like its African slaves, depicted as an existential threat to “white” American colonists, in-group empathy bias was mobilized for a remarkable lack of empathy and kindness for those deemed to be racial outsiders. 

Jefferson was one of this nation’s most influential crafters of racist theory and ideologies. We can see this in his Notes on the State of Virginia; ironically Jefferson introduces his racism theory in a section of the book in which he touts the progressive changes he proposed to the Virginia legislature; including his unsuccessful effort to get it to gradually abolish slavery. Here Jefferson used what he argued was the inferiority of Africans as a race to explain why the Virginia slaves did not seem to benefit from the state’s progressive laws by making significant accomplishments in the arts and sciences. Jefferson’s reliance on genocide as the ultimate solution to his racial fears was evident again when he concluded that “the real distinctions which nature has made,” along with other factors like “white” prejudice and “black” resentment “of the injuries they have sustained,” prevent the two races from living together amicably without “the extermination of the one or the other race.” In making his case, Jefferson’s argument was anything but color-blind, for as he put it “The first difference which strikes us is that of colour.” After wrapping his racist theory in a thin and pretentious veneer of scientific speculation as to the possible origins of “the black of the negro,” Jefferson lays out his aesthetic argument for the importance of “colour, figure, and hair” and other physical differences. After surmising that this inferiority causes African slaves to be less able to achieve in the arts and sciences like painting, sculpture, poetry, even when granted the opportunity to do so, Jefferson concluded “as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind.” And finally, Jefferson made it clear that this conclusion had implications beyond their ability to make significant contributions in the arts and science, when he surmised that due to that “unfortunate difference of colour, and perhaps of faculty” both their emancipation and their assimilation were unwise because if they were freed and allowed to remain in America that would risk “staining the blood of his master.” 

In the book by Tyler Stovall, “White Freedom”, Jefferson, like Voltaire, Kant, Hume and other Enlightenment figures, freedom was not meant to be universal, but reserved for rational white men who owned property which he describes as “white freedom”. He concludes not only that “slavery and reason were not so much paradoxical as complementary and mutually reinforcing” but that, indeed, “race and racial difference played a seminal role in the modern concepts of liberty.” 

Enter sociologist Pierre van den Berge: racism didn’t develop despite the commitments to liberty and freedom, it developed because of it. He answered the question of how slavery is justified in a society built on the assumptions that all human beings are created equal while developing racist ideology: people of African descent were not sufficiently human. And Jefferson was the most influential person to promote this duality. The ideal of equality was not only NOT inconsistent with racism, but it enabled, as it does today, the ability to separate the Africans from full humanity. So the ideal of America has an exception, and once created it bleeds into other “not fully white” peoples, and excluding them in varying degrees. You might say that is better than nothing, but in fact, it created a racist system by using fake science to justify inequality. 

Voltaire, Kant, Mill, and Hume, all considered liberals in thought, are also guilty of this dichotomy among classification of human status. Voltaire even invested in the slave trade, even as his thinking evolved more progressively. And Hume identified “Negroes” as a species inferior to whites. 

But this duality, or caste system of ranking humans, is ended by Paine among widely read Enlightenment figures. After writing the first work that was a collaboration with Benjamin Franklin in 1762, Franklin returned to America for a year or two; it was at this time that he changed his views of slavery, and I will surmise it was his close contact with Paine. Paine had declared he would be too emotional to write on abolition of slavery. He did write in private letters against it, and he wrote with Joseph Priestley in favor of the Slave Trade Act in London in 1792. But on his death bed, he couldn’t contain himself and let Jefferson know about the abomination of the existence and tolerance toward slavery anywhere, but particularly in America, who claimed that all men are created equal. The “Slave Letter” as we call it is the strongest, clearest expression against the abomination, with its contradiction to American creed, and it was the first to call for reparations to begin reversing it. Like much of Paine’s work and ideology he was too far ahead of his time, and he still is. Racism from the white supremacists in the intellectual class infected the country, as did the inherited mentality of British colonialism. A sort of free pass to commit atrocities based on the supposition that whites are superior, the others are subhuman. This ideology remains with us today, and is vying once again for complete power in the growing fascist movement in America, and other countries. 

Paine makes his case for the inalienability of human rights through his argument that while civil rights are based on an individual’s membership in society, natural rights are rooted in mere human existence, and that consequently “every civil right grows out of a natural right.” Consistent with this conceptualization of civil rights as natural rights, in stark contrast to Burke’s insistence that it was God who determined one’s social status and people have no right to change it, Paine argued that, indeed, people are entitled to improve their lives and circumstances, however not at the expense of the public. 

And Paine’s “Slave Letter”, called as such because Paine took the identity of a slave in it to channel his emotions, and even make them focused and more powerful. Paine’s kindness toward humanity, especially towards the disenfranchised on many levels, sets him apart in the Enlightenment spectrum of thought in the 18th century, and presents a different philosophy long suppressed in our philosophical political heritage. 

Paine remains the beacon for another path, still not travelled. Despite the friendship established over many years and discussion and correspondence, the two Toms held opposite positions on equality and kindness, on ALL men are created equal, and a path forward towards true equality – the only basis of democracy. Jefferson turned a blind eye, rooted in fake subjective science, while Paine saw humanity as one whole: “The world is my country, my religion is to do good.” In this sense, Kindness in Paine’s writings is the end product of the Enlightenment, waiting for realization.

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By Gary Berton

Little has been written about the political party formed after Paine’s return from the battlefield in January 1777, the Whig Society. The Society, perhaps the first revolutionary party in modern history, took the lead in the politics of the war in 1777 in Philadelphia, then spread to surrounding states, before fading away towards the end of the war.

In a notice in the Pennsylvania Gazette on March 25th, 1777: 

“At a meeting of the WHIG SOCIETY, held at the Philosophical Hall the first of April, 1777, Voted unanimously, That Messrs. Charles W. Peale, James Cannon, David Rittenhouse, Doctor Thomas Young, and Major Thomas Payne [sic], be a Committee of Correspondence for and in behalf of this Society, to correspond with any societies or individuals from whom they may expect to obtain information interesting to our common liberties. Extract from the Minutes, THOMAS YOUNG, Secretary.“ [Young would die on the battlefield shortly afterwards of disease.] 

Another active member was also a leader in the Society – Timothy Matlack. These six men had hundreds of close followers and activists. They led the formation of mass-democratic committees formed outside of Congress to organize and mobilize militia groups and represent the militia privates, investigate hoarding, counter the Tory spies in the population, and defend the war by opposing reconciliation with Britain, and to defend the new Pennsylvania Constitution. These were the same men, along with Benjamin Franklin, who fought and won the pamphlet wars in the spring of 1776 that secured the passage of the Declaration of Independence. Matlack was instrumental in forming the local militias and the defense of Philadelphia, later becoming a leader in government. Cannon was a mathematics professor and helped craft the Pennsylvania Constitution. Peale became the famous American artist, and fought beside Paine in the march across New Jersey in ’76. Rittenhouse was the famous American scientist who worked with Paine on gunpowder production and had written articles for Paine’s Pennsylvania Magazine. And Young was the leader of the Boston Tea Party, and a doctor, hunted by the British there, he fled to Philadelphia to join Paine. 

Led politically by Paine, these six formed the heart of the politics that secured the political strength to win the Revolutionary War. Its primary focus in addition to the above was to defend against the tactics of the Tories who wanted the Pennsylvania Constitution repealed, and against Tory supporters that included “founders” like Rush and Dickinson as supporters of the tactics. That Constitution was the most progressive and democratic probably in history, serving as the model for France’s 1793 Constitution (with Paine on its committee) which was never enacted due to the Reign of Terror. Cannon and Franklin were the main architects previous to the formation of the Society, as several historians pointed to Paine as the originator of its unicameral legislature and democratic structures. 

A reprinting in the Pennsylvania Evening Post on March 20, 1777 of one of the Whig Society’s posters in Philadelphia presents its positions as follows, “Post introduction: The following articles are handing about in this city, and were the first night signed by upwards of fifty, and since then by a considerable number of the friends of liberty: 

Whereas by the steady perseverance many true friends to liberty, and the public welfare, a happy coalition has affected between the different parties equally solicitous for the welfare of their country, the differing an opinion as to some means not essentially necessary for obtaining it, and there is a fair prospect of the restoration of order and the due establishment of civil legal authority, under which the strength of the state may be collected and exerted, and the inhabitants in every state of life be secured in the possession of peace and prosperity. And whereas it appears that there is nevertheless a scheme now forming to overturn all present order and authority, and to deprive us of the advantages of a militia law for our defense, and to throw our public affairs again into confusion, we, as names are underwritten, in order to prevent the irreparable mischiefs, which must ensue, she the enemy’s tour peace succeed, to solemnly engage yourselves to each other, and to the public, that we will most firmly adhere to and abide by the following articles. First, that we will, to the utmost of our abilities, support the just necessary authority of Congress, and the union independence of the American states, against all foreign power and domestic nations whatever.

Secondly, that we will, as far as in us lies, promote peace and good order in the state, and endeavour to bring to justice those who shall attempt to disturb either. Thirdly, that we will not, by force or violence, or by false representations, endeavour either to confirm or overturn a part of the present Constitution, contrary to the general sense of the state, but will refer the proof of every part thereof either to a candid reasoning or a fair experiment. Fourthly, then in the meantime we will, to the utmost of our power, support the civil magistrate in the execution of such wholesome laws as are or shall be enacted by the present assembly. Philadelphia, 18th March 1777.” The Whig Society went on to address Congress to petition it to suppress the activities of the Tory British sympathizers. Gary Burton representations, endeavour either to confirm or overturn a part of the present Constitution, contrary to the general sense of the state, but will refer the proof of every part thereof either to a candid reasoning or a fair experiment. Fourthly, then in the meantime we will, to the utmost of our power, support the civil magistrate in the execution of such wholesome laws as are or shall be enacted by the present assembly. Philadelphia, 18th March 1777.” 

The Whig Society went on to address Congress to petition it to suppress the activities of the Tory British sympathizers. 

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Harvey Kaye is the Ben and Joyce Rosenberg Professor of Social Change and Development at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. This essay was printed in TPNHA’s journal in May, 2001, and it first appeared in his book, Firebrand of the Revolution (Oxford U. Press, 2000).

We should never fail to recount the story of the American Revolution. We should never forget that our nation was forged in struggle, a struggle — however inadequate and in need of continual renewal and advancement — that was revolutionary. And we should never fail to appreciate the fundamental role of the radical Thomas Paine in helping us to realize what we might become. Would there have been an American Revolution, an American war for independence, had Thomas Paine not written his stirring pamphlet Common Sense? Most likely, yes. However, the American Revolution might not have been the kind of republican and democratic struggle it became, and the course of the nation’s development would likely have been quite different.

Born January 29,1737, in Thetford, England, Thomas Paine was the only son of Joseph Pain, a Quaker staymaker, and Frances Cocke, the daughter of an Anglican lawyer. Neither a happy nor an affluent couple, Joseph and Frances nevertheless were extremely fond of their son and committed to his receiving a formal education. In addition to educating the boy in the Bible at home, they enrolled him in the Thetford Grammar School. Among his studies, he most enjoyed science and poetry.

But Tom’s parents could afford to keep him in school only so long. When he turned 13, they apprenticed him to his father. In his father’s workshop, he learned not only the craft of corsetmaking, but also the dissenting and egalitarian spirit of the Quakers and the historical memory of “turning the world upside down” in the English Revolution of the 1640s and 50s.

An artisan’s life apparently afforded insufficient excitement for the young man. Two weeks before his twentieth birthday, Tom ran away to serve aboard an English privateer, hoping to gain adventure and a bit of money. The encounters, rigors, and oppressions on board must have taught him a great deal, but hen soon had enough of life between “the devil and the deep blue sea.” After just a year, he disembarked for London, to work again as a journeyman staymaker.

During the next decade and a half, Tom suffered more than his share of tragic disappointments, mistakes and failures. In 1759,he set up shop as a master craftsman on the southeast coast where he met and married his first love, Mary Lambert. Yet, sadly, within a year Mary died in premature childbirth and, for lack of trade, Tom was forced to give up the business.

In 1764,he secured appointment as an excise officer, but he was expelled a year later, supposedly for having stamped goods without inspecting them (a not-unusual practice of over-worked excise officers). During the next few years he kept himself going by working as a staymaker, a teacher, and a preacher while he petitioned for reinstatement in the excise service.

Finally, in early 1768, he received a new posting, to Lewes in Sussex. There he boarded with a tobacconist, whose daughter, Elizabeth Ollive, he married on the shopkeeper’s death. Tom also became active in local affairs and a “regular” in the political debates at the White Hart Tavern. He soon developed a friendly reputation as a man who enjoyed a few good drinks and had a “skill with words.”

Recognizing his talents, Paine’s fellow officers chose him to lead their campaign for higher salaries. Thus, in 1772 he penned his first pamphlet, The Case of the Officers of Excise, and moved to London to lobby Parliament. His sojourn back in the capital both increased his knowledge and resentment of aristocratic government and politics and renewed his awareness of the popular radicalism of the middle and working classes. Additionally, it enabled him to renew his interest in natural philosophy through attendance at science lectures – occasions that placed him among circles of intellectuals and freethinkers which, fortuitously, included Benjamin Franklin.

Unfortunately, the campaign failed and the Excise Commission discharged Tom for ignoring his official duties. Making matters worse, the tobacco shop also failed, and Tom and his wife agreed to separate.

Now 37 years old, with few resources and without prospects, but possessed of a seemingly indefatigable willingness to try again, Tom resolved to go to America. The renowned Ben Franklin himself provided Tom with a letter of introduction, but little could either man have suspected that the mix of memories and skills, which Paine carried with him, would prove so volatile when brought into contact with America.

America would inspire Paine and he would not only refashion his own life, he would contribute, as well, to refashioning American life. Just a year after his arrival, he would declare: “We have it in our power to begin the world over again.” And his words would fire the imagination of his new compatriots.

The America to which Paine journeyed was thriving, dynamic, and rebellious. The population of the l3 colonies had reached almost 3 million. The vast majority lived in the countryside, but Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Charleston had developed into prosperous regional capitals.

Colonial life did not simply reflect life in the mother country. Americans were more pro-monarchy than the English themselves; but with the king and his ministers an ocean away they could afford to be. While rich gentlemen “lorded it” over others, actual aristocrats were a rare breed in America. And, though religious toleration varied from colony to colony, the Church of England never secured the authority it held at home. Rather, religious pluralism and enthusiasm characterized American life.

Moreover in contrast to Britain, America had little unemployment or poverty. Although the same property-holding qualifications to vote applied in America as in Britain, the colonies were far more democratic places. More than half of colonial white men held enough property to vote; they governed themselves through elected assemblies (subject to the veto power of royal governors); and they enjoyed the freest press of the eighteenth century. Like their British cousins, colonials celebrated their liberties, and the middle and lower classes – though excluded from formal political debates – effectively registered their views through street-crowd actions.

America seemed exceptional, yet serious contradictions marked the developing society. Fundamental inequalities shaped colonial life and antagonisms were intensifying. Women’s lives varied based on class and marital status, but all women suffered the restrictions of male domination. Colonials prided themselves on their liberties, but their economies depended upon denying freedom to others. To gain passage to America, poor white immigrants subjected themselves to indentured servitude. More cruelly, a vicious trade brought Africans to work as slaves and they numbered half a million. The rebelliousness of servants and slaves distressed their masters. And not far away lived the Native American peoples, determined to resist colonial expansion as best they could.

Real inequalities also prevailed among free whites. Landlordism and tenantry spread, periodically inciting farmers to riot in protest. Property also shaped urban life. Wealthy merchants had built fortunes on transatlantic commerce. Together with the southern planters and northern landlords, they constituted provincial ruling classes and dominated colonial assemblies. Also, an intellectual elite of lawyers and prominent Protestant clergy developed in close connection to these ruling classes.

Of course, the urban majority belonged to the working classes. The “master mechanics,” owned their own shops and hired journeymen and apprentices. These skilled artisans were Tom Paine’s folk. Literate and often interested in science and public affairs, they aspired to an independent livelihood and community respect, gained through hard work, moderation, and self-improvement. As well, they desired a greater role in public affairs.

Below the artisans, propertyless laborers grew in number, including sailors, dockworkers, hired servants, and the unskilled. Though better off in America than in Britain, they well knew both that they lacked the rights of the propertied and that the rich were growing richer. Their rising sense of injustice, and readiness to express it, made their superiors nervous.

Holding these diverse colonials together, and binding them to the empire, was their shared sense of “Britishness” (though not all were actually British or even of British descent). Like their British counterparts, they believed they enjoyed rights which other peoples did not – rights secured through the ages and assured by the English Constitution. Ironically, the very demands of the British Empire would soon wear away at the colonials’ attachments to Britain and its institutions.

Britain’s triumph in the Seven Years War – known to us as the French and Indian War (1756-63) – drove the French from Canada and secured British domination of North America and the Atlantic world. But victory and supremacy had a high price, exhausting the treasury and forcing the British Government to raise taxes and seek additional sources of income.

King George III and his chief financial minister, George Grenville, logically assumed that the costs of colonial security should be borne by the colonials themselves. The colonials did not share that assumption; they felt they had paid for the North American war with their blood.

As well, the British Government sought to more effectively regulate American commerce, and to protect Native American treaty rights against white encroachment. The resulting policies instigated a series of imperial crises.

In 1763, Grenville laid out a “Proclamation Line” along the Appalachian Mountains, which restricted white territorial expansion to the west. And during the next decade he and his successors announced a string of new taxes and regulations governing colonial commerce and administration: the Sugar Act, the Stamp Act, the Quartering Act, the Declaratory Act, the Townshend Acts, the Tea Act, and the so-called Coercive or Intolerable Acts.

The British Government believed that the (unwritten) English Constitution gave it the authority to make laws for the colonies, for all Englishmen were supposedly represented in Parliament whether or not they actually voted for its members. But most Americans believed that Parliament was acting in an arbitrary and unconstitutional way, and violating their rights as Englishmen by making laws without their active consent.

Angered by events, colonial leaders delivered speeches and wrote pamphlets decrying tyranny and the threat to liberty. They rightly worried about agitating the colonial masses, for their own words and actions did just that. And, once mobilized, middle and lower-class folk grew less and less willing to defer to their “betters.” They gathered in street protests; they hung figures in effigy; and they attacked British officials and their property.

Colonial defiance made the system unworkable. But every time Parliament repealed its latest revenue-raising law, it turned around and enacted new taxes. In reply, the colonials staged boycotts and actions like the Boston Tea Party. Occasionally, such confrontations turned violent, as in the Boston Massacre, when British troops fired into a protesting crowd and killed several people.

Resistance escalated. Colonials organized, first locally, then across colonial lines, creating groups like the Sons of Liberty and the Committees of Correspondence. By 1774, the dispute had become a full-blown imperial crisis. It came to a head when Parliament closed Boston Harbor and essentially placed Boston and the Massachusetts colony under siege. Outraged, the colonies sent delegates to Philadelphia for the First Continental Congress in September 1774. They promised aid to Massachusetts, called for a continental boycott of British goods, and issued a declaration against “taxation without representation.” Meanwhile, militias trained more seriously and the “Minutemen” readied themselves. The British had united the colonials in rebellion.

It was at this time that Paine sailed to America, landing in Philadelphia only weeks after the First Continental Congress adjourned. The eight-week voyage did not augur well for his future. The crossing was horrible, if not horrific. Following the usual seasickness, a deadly epidemic known as “ship fever,” probably typhus, struck passengers and crew alike. When they finally docked on November 30, l774, Paine had to be carried ashore on a stretcher and spend the next few weeks recuperating.

Given his past, Paine was remarkably fortunate (not just for having survived the journey). Traveling as a free man, with Franklin’s letter of introduction and a bit of money in his purse, Paine’s own status contrasted sharply with that of the majority of new arrivals. One hundred of the 120 passengers with whom he sailed came as indentured servants, and Philadelphia’s Slave Market could easily be seen from his rented lodgings.

In early January, Paine roused himself to get out and about. Though only a square mile in size, Philadelphia – with a fast growing population of 30,000 and America’s busiest harbor – had emerged as the unofficial commercial and cultural capital of British North America. The city’s prosperity and diversity clearly impressed him. Founded by William Penn, a Quaker, Pennsylvania had served as a haven for the Friends and Philadelphia reflected its Quaker heritage. Its European population included native and immigrant English Quakers, Anglicans and Catholics, German Lutherans and Mennonites, Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, and Jews.

Philadelphia’s politics also appealed to Paine. The merchant elite controlled economic affairs and colonial government. However, they faced challenges from below. The skilled mechanics resented the merchants’ domination and they began to demand a direct role in government. Not only the wealthier artisans, but also the poorer mechanics and laborers, numbers of whom had enlisted in Pennsylvania’s militia, started to demand rights of political participation. Such things thrilled Paine – and yet the paradox of white servitude and black bondage in the midst of a prosperous, liberty-loving and spirited people astounded him.

As Franklin had directed, Paine first arranged to meet Richard Bache, who immediately took a liking to the new arrival and promised both to help him find employment as a children’s tutor and to introduce him to the city’s leading figures.

Also, as he had in London, Paine quickly took to spending time in bookshops. One afternoon, the owner of his favorite shop, Robert Aitken, engaged him in conversation about his literary interests, leading Paine to show him several of his own writings. Aitken then amazed Paine by offering him the editorship of the Pennsylvania Magazine, a new periodical that he planned to co-publish with John Witherspoon, the president of the college of New Jersey (later renamed Princeton). Incredibly, only weeks off the ship, Paine had a new career as a journalist.

The first issue appeared on January 24, 1775. The magazine flourished. Paine himself contributed essays, poems and scientific reports, written, as was the custom, under various pseudonyms, such as “Atlanticus,” “Vox Populi,” and “Justice and Humanity'”

Expressing renewed optimism and a progressive view of the future, Paine developed a writing-style and a vocabulary that reflected the promise he sensed in American life. Notably, in his opening editorial he warned against “historical superiority” the idea that the present age represents the highest and final stage of history.

Appreciating American possibilities, Paine also confronted America’s contradictions. He criticized aristocratic and lordly pomposity. In one essay he considered the oppression of women. In yet another he vigorously aatacked slavery, calling for its abolition and insisting upon America’s responsibility to support the slaves following emancipation. Not long after, Franklin returned to Philadelphia and established the first American Anti-Slavery Society with Paine as a founding member.

Though Paine wrote critically of British imperialism, he continued to favor reconciliation. That is, until April I9, l775,when British troops opened fire on colonial militia at Lexington, Massachusetts leaving 8 militiamen dead and 10 wounded. News of the battle — “the shot heard round the world” — turned Paine into an American patriot and radical. Forsaking his Quaker background, he now argued the legitimacy of violence in defense of liberty and, in the poetic verses of The Liberty Tree, he aligned himself with the American cause.

Yet, what exactly was America’s cause: The restoration of “Englishmen’s rights”? The reform of the imperial system? or outright separation? Radicals — like Samuel Adams, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson — privately discussed separation but, publicly, they merely proposed reorganizing America’s colonial relationship to Britain. And even that seemed too extreme to many.

The Pennsylvania Magazine prospered under Paine’s editorship. Nevertheless, Paine’s relations with his bosses soured by the summer of 1775. Witherspoon turned against Paine for having the audacity to actually edit Witherspoon’s words. In revenge, Witherspoon spread rumors that Paine drank heavily, a slur that would follow him to the grave. Paine did drink, mostly wine and brandy, but not at all to the extent his enemies claimed. At the same time, salary questions divided Paine and Aitken. Increasingly confident of his literary abilities, Paine had requested a raise. Aitken refused. In the autumn, Paine left the magazine.

Paine quit not simply because he became fed up with his employer. More important, he had decided upon a new and very daring project: to write a pamphlet calling for separation from Britain.

Ever since the Battles of Lexington and Concord in April l775, a state of war had prevailed. In May 1775, the Second Continental Congress had convened in Philadelphia and created a Continental Army under the command of George Washington. Still, peace overtures continued and American goals remained undefined. Tom Paine, the newcomer, would revolutionize American thinking.

Paine’s writings had started to garner significant attention and he had been befriended by one of Congress’s more radical members, the young Philadelphia doctor, Benjamin Rush. When Paine told him of his writing plans, Rush counseled moderation, fearing the time was not yet right. However, Paine would not be deterred. He was absolutely convinced that although Americans did not speak openly of it they yearned for independence. Whatever his reservations, Rush welcomed Paine’s commitment and, in turn, Paine regularly sought his new friend’s editorial advise.

Starting in September 1775, Paine devoted his energies to producing the pamphlet. History beckoned, and he could not afford to hesitate. Determined to reach the broadest possible audience, he held nothing back. He summoned forth his memories of Britain and his affection for America. He drew upon his readings of eighteenth-century liberal and republican political thought- readings that emphasized individual freedom and contended that individuals constitute representative government to protect their rights to life, liberty and property. Paine articulated those ideas with his understanding of popular, democratic political aspirations. He quoted the Bible, he cited historical examples, and called upon the force of reason itself.

After completing the manuscript in December, he sent copies to Sam Adams and Ben Franklin for their consideration. They liked it and suggested only minor revisions. Rush then introduced Paine to the Philadelphia publisher, Robert Bell, who, sympathetic to its arguments, accepted the (dangerous) commission of printing it. Paine wanted to call his pamphlet Plain Truth, but Rush proposed another title, Common Sense, and Paine listened.

Oon January10, 1776, Common Sense swept onto the American scene and into American consciousness. In just two weeks the first printing sold out. Soon, supply could not keep up with demand. With or without permission, presses around the colonies issued new editions, including one in German for immigrants. During the next few months, 150,000 copies were distributed in America alone (the equivalent today would be 15,000,000 – making it, proportionately, the nation’s greatest bestseller ever). And in very little time translations appeared in Europe.

Paine originally signed his pamphlet “Written by an Englishman.” However, within weeks folks had figured out who that Englishman was. Paine himself relished the attention, but he sought no material rewards. He declined all royalties, insisting that any profits be used to purchase mittens for Washington’s troops.

Paine wrote Common Sense to transform the colonial rebellion into a war for independence. But he did more than that. He called upon Americans to recognize their historical possibilities and historic responsibilities. Harnessing their shared- but, as of yet, unstated thoughts, and expressing them in language bold and clear, he urged them to make a true revolution of their struggles.

He forcefully declared the American cause to be much more than a question of separation from Britain. Announcing that “The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth,” he proclaimed it a campaign against the tyranny of hereditary privileges and for a democratic republic.

Even before he issued the call for independence, Paine dealt with Americans’ surviving emotional attachments to the King and Britain. Against those who reverently praised the benevolence of the English Constitution, he insisted that “it is wholly owing to the constitution of the people, and not to the constitution of the government that the crown is not as oppressive in England as in Turkey.”

Paine revealed the monarchy to be a ridiculous institution whose origins were anything but divinely ordained: “A French bastard [William the Conqueror] landing with an armed banditti, and establishing himself king of England against the consent of the natives, is in plain terms a very paltry rascally original. — It certainly hath no divinity in it… The plain truth is, that the antiquity of English monarchy will not bear looking into.”

Appealing to Americans’ religious and egalitarian sentiments, he added that “hereditary succession” compounds the evil of monarchy: “For all men being originally equals, no one by birth could have a right to set up his own family in perpetual preference to all others for ever.”

He humorously observed that “One of the strongest natural proofs of the folly of hereditary right in kings, is, that nature disapproves it, otherwise she would not so frequently turn it into ridicule by giving mankind an ass for a lion.” And he charged that “monarchy and succession have laid (not this or that kingdom only) but the [whole] world in blood and ashes.”

Paine utterly rejected the proposition that Britain was America’s “parent country.” He described British conduct as selfish and shameful: “Even brutes do not devour their young, nor savages make war upon their families.” If anything “Europe, not England, is the parent country of America,” he contended: “This new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from every part of Europe…we claim brotherhood with every European Christian…” Paine then turned to America. He appealed directly to Americans’ economic interests. Yet, in addition to outlining their tremendous commercial prospects, he offered a vision of independence that asked them to see themselves as “Americans.” He wrote so as to compel them to comprehend themselves as a people no longer subject to king and noble but – as was their “natural right” – free and equal before God and “the law” and governing themselves through democratically-elected representatives.

Urging unity, Paine portrayed America, not as thirteen separate entities, but as a nation-state: “Now is the seed time of continental union, faith and honour…Our strength is continental not provincial.” In favor of a republican government, he proposed a one-chamber Continental Congress headed by a rotating President. Finally, he surveyed America’s physical and material riches to prove it had the resources to actually accomplish the revolution.

Philosophers have argued about the originality of Paine’s ideas. But one thing is certain: They were radically original in both appeal and consequence. Elite colonial intellectuals had penned many a speech and pamphlet, but they had narrowly addressed themselves to the upper classes.

Paine – artisan by upbringing and intellectual by effort – addressed himself to Americans of all classes. The very style and content of his words entailed a more democratic conception of “the people” than had prevailed up to that time. Paine not only wrote so working people could understand, but also to integrate them into the political nation. Capturing the imagination of artisans and farmers in an unprecedented fashion, Paine recruited them to the cause of independence and encouraged them to restructure the political and social order. He devised a new, more democratic language of politics and way of arguing about politics than ever before had existed.

Praising America’s religious diversity, Paine connected the advance of religious freedom to the cause of independence and the creation of a new polity. America would serve as a model to the world and, welcoming of immigrants, as a refuge:

O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose, not only tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the world is over-run 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.

Paine’s vision of a democratic republic was potentially unlimited. This point was well understood, not only by loyalist Tories who desired reconciliation with England and vehemently denounced Common Sense and its author. It was also well understood by elite-minded patriots like John Adams who, while pleased by the call for independence, spoke critically of Paine and his ideas because they feared the popular, radical-democratic aspirations that his pamphlet evoked.

For Paine, the American Revolution possessed world-historical importance:” The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind,” he wrote. In fact, whereas before this time “revolution” had meant to merely “revolve,” as in an orbit, hereafter it would mean to overthrow an old regime and create a new one.

Weeks passed before anyone in the Continental Congress responded openly to Paine’s arguments. Apparently, delegates did not know what to do. But they created a great commotion in other parts. In Virginia, Edmund Randolph observed that Common Sense “insinuated itself into the hearts of the people”; in Massachusetts, Deacon Palmer noted that “I believe no pages were ever more eagerly read, nor more generally approved. People speak of it in rapturous praise”; and in the field commanding the Continental Army, George Washington reported how Paine’s pamphlet “is working a wonderful change in the minds of many men,” adding that his own reading of it had finally persuaded him of the need to break with Britain.

Reservations persisted. The propertied rich feared the new politics of the working classes, but most figured they would be better trying to lead than resist it. In the spring, colonial assemblies began to issue resolutions calling for independence and instructing their delegates at Philadelphia to follow suit. Finally, in June, Congress appointed a committee headed by Thomas Jefferson to draft an American Declaration of Independence. Paine was not a member of that committee, but all had read his Common Sense. And, on July 4,1776, the United States of America declared its independence. Paine’s contributions to the making of the American Revolution – indeed, to the making of the Age of Revolution and the modern world – had only just begun. He would go on to write the invaluable American Crisis Papers, the radical-democratic Rights of Man, the freethinking Age of Reason, and the social-democratic Agrarian Justice. For good reason he remains a hero, most of all to radicals, socialists, and religious freethinkers.

Paine clearly deserves a most prominent place in American memory. His words led the way in turning our rebellion into a war for independence, and our war for independence in to a revolution. Moreover, he helped to endow the nation’s history with a radical-democratic impulse, one which would encourage not only eighteenth-century workingmen to refashion the nation, but also later generations of American men and women who have found themselves oppressed and marginalized.

Contrary to the ambitions of our own powers that be: The stuggle for liberty, equality and democracy has not ended. I just hope we will continue to honor Paine, not only in our histories, but also in our politics.

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La Pensee Politique de Thomas Paine en Contexte: Theorie at Pratique. Carine Lounissi. 894pp. Paris Honore Champion 2012. ISBN: 978 —2-7453-2359-0. £139.06. 

This fundamental contribution to Paine’s political thought, based on a Ph. D thesis at the Sorbonne, deserves to be translated into English so that it becomes available to all Anglophones interested in the subject. Dr Lounissi places his writings in context by examining the literature on which he apparently drew for inspiration, and also by discussing the often hostile reactions that they provoked. 

One can only say that previous political thinkers appear to have influenced Paine because he notoriously cited very few authorities in his publications and insisted that his ideas were original. Thus when critics dismissed Common Sense as being derived from John Locke he denied that he had ever read Two Treatises of Government. There were contemporaries who took him at his word that his political thought was homespun. Edmund Burke declined directly responding to the Rights of Man claiming that Paine had ‘not even a moderate portion of learning of any kind. He has learned the instrumental part of literature, a style, and a method of disposing his ideas, without having ever made a previous preparation of study or thinking—for the use of it’. 

Notwithstanding this, commentators on Paine’s political philosophy have sought to trace it back to previous philosophers. Thus despite his own disclaimer some have insisted that he was influenced by Locke since, even if he did not read his works, Lockean ideas were ‘in the air’, or he absorbed them ‘by osmosis’. Lounissi concludes that, while at first sight Paine’s thought often seems Lockean, on a deeper comparison between them differences emerge. For example both place the origins of government in a contract in which individuals agreed to set one up. Superficially these are similar if not identical models. But on closer examination they have significant differences. Locke accepted any government which was established by the contract — monarchy, aristocracy, democracy or, as he claimed was the case in England, a mixture of these. Paine by contrast denied that the original contract could set up any hereditary form of government since it could not bind future generations. Only a polity in which the people had a voice was legitimate. 

Despite her scepticism Lounissi concludes that Paine’s contractual theory was sown in a Lockean soil. She also finds echoes in Paine of the contractual theories of Algernon Sidney and Rousseau. On the latter she is on firmer ground as Rousseau was one of the writers whom Paine did cite, along with Montesquieu, Voltaire and other philosophes, in Rights of Man. One of Paine’s hostile critics lamented that France had been a ‘generous and gallant nation’ before it was ‘unhappily sophisticated by the late — forged philosophy of ingenious, immoral vagabonds, such as Rousseau and Paine’ As with all direct quotations from English authors Lounissi commendably translates this into French in the text but quotes the original in her footnote on page 185. 

The footnote cites the original in the edition of Political Writings of the 1790s edited by Gregory Claeys, in eight volumes published by Pickering and Chatto in 1995. These publishers have rendered a great service to students of Paine with this publication and also that of Thomas Paine and America 1776 — 1809, published in six volumes in 2009 of which Kenneth Burchell is editor. In her discussion of the reception of Paine’s works Lounissi draws frequently on these collections of contemporary works. 

It might be expected that a French scholar would be more informed about Paine’s career in France than about his activities in America. Dr Lounissi, however, is a specialist in the civilisation of the United States at the University of Rouen, with a particular interest in the history of the early Republic. Her book demonstrates familiarity with politics and political theory on both sides of the Atlantic in the late eighteenth century. Thus she points out that the constitutional arrangements for the United States outlined in Common Sense owed much to Benjamin Franklin’s plan for a union of the colonies spelled out at the Albany Congress of 1754. 

Although his proposals were sketchy, leading some to argue that Paine was more concerned with the negative task of bringing down governments rather than the positive problem of replacing them, Lounissi shows that in America he did contribute to the constitutional debates of the revolutionary era. He was not directly involved in the drafting of the radical constitution for Pennsylvania in 1776. This did not prevent his critics, led by John Adams, from associating him with its provisions for a unicameral legislature elected annually by universal adult male suffrage. He certainly supported it, at least initially, in several publications. Again he had no part in the deliberations at Philadelphia in 1787 which resulted in the American Constitution, being overseas in England at the time. But he did approve it to the point of recommending its adoption by the British. 

Paine did have a direct input into the drafting of the abortive French constitution of 1793, being appointed to the committee chaired by Condorcet charged with drawing it up. Unfortunately, as Lounissi points out, it is impossible to discern precisely what his role in the process was, though she does deduce that parts of the document were influenced by passages in Rights of Man, while the prefatory declaration of rights owed much to Paine too. He also had a say in the debates which resulted in the setting up of the Directory in 1795. Although his contribution to them, mainly objecting to the restriction of the franchise, has been long known, Lounissi’s familiarity with the French sources adds details not available elsewhere. 

She also demonstrates a formidable knowledge of English sources. For example, she places discussion of the welfare proposals in the second part of Rights of Man and in Agrarian Justice in the context of the debate on the poor laws in the late eighteenth century. Her research unearthed an anecdote about Paine unknown to his biographers. Thomas Ruggles, in The History of the Poor published in 1793, recounted how he had recently sat next to Paine at a dinner, who informed him that, when his grandfather was an overseer of the poor at Thetford fifty years before, the poor rate was under £40. Now it was between £300 and £400. “In a short time if this evil is not stopped the friends of liberty will, with the greatest ease, walk over the ruins of the boasted constitution; its fall wants no acceleration from the friends of Gallic freedom.’ To this a gentleman instantly replied ‘Thomas, thy wish is father to the thought’.” 

After discussing Paine’s ideas on poverty and property Lounissi proceeds to investigate his republicanism. She concludes that he was not a republican in the eighteenth — century tradition of the commonwealthmen. These, also known as classical republicans, argued that governments always sought to reduce the liberty of their subjects and that it was the duty of the virtuous citizen to be constantly vigilant to detect attempts to do so and resist them. One method rulers employed to distract citizens from their machinations was to corrupt them, for instance by encouraging trade in luxury goods, which allegedly reduced their will to defend their rights. Classical republicans were therefore opposed to commercial expansion. Paine by contrast welcomed commerce and industry, not only because they stimulated economic growth but also because he believed free trade helped to disseminate ideas of liberty in other areas of human activity. 

Lounissi also investigates Paine’s credentials as a historian. He announced his intention of writing a three – volume history of the American Revolution and then of giving an historical account of the French Revolution. Neither of these ambitious projects was ever realised. As she observes, Paine had a certain talent for missing rendezvous with historiography. His only major contribution to the history of the American Revolution was an open Letter to Abbe Rayne! objecting to his interpretation of it. Raynal put the quarrel between Britain and the colonies down to a dispute about the right to raise taxes. Paine insisted that the British government all along plotted to provoke the Americans into violent resistance to its measures in order to deprive them of their liberties. 

Paine absorbed what he had so far written on the Revolution in France into the first part of Rights of Man. Just as his account of the American conflict was written to correct Raynal, as Lounissi observes, so that of the French was to put Burke right. She checks Paine’s account of the events he describes and demonstrates that he frequently got them wrong. In summing up his accounts of the two revolutions she concludes that he was more a theorist than a historian of them. 

Paine’s second sojourn in America, following his return from France, is a period of his life that has been frequently skipped over quickly. Yet during his last few years Paine continued to publish quite prolifically. Lounissi and another French scholar, Marc Belissa, are now doing justice to his later works. For as Lounissi points out, even if these publications did not necessarily add new aspects to his thought, they are nevertheless important. Thus his political writings against the Federalists led by John Adams contributed to the debate over whether the ideals of the American Revolution were in danger until they were rescued by Thomas Jefferson. 

After dealing with Paine’s last years Lounissi ends the book with another account of his political activities in France. Thus she goes into detail on his role in the trial of Louis XVI, and publishes three appendices of contributions he made in the debates on the king’s fate. Two of them have not previously appeared in any collection of his writings, while only inaccurate versions of the third were ever published. 

This exhaustive investigation of Paine’s political thought, which covers all his speculative writings except those on religion, is a colossal achievement. Its range is indicated by the bibliography, which takes up sixty five pages. It is a pity that the index is confined to the names of people mentioned in the text, and even then omits some. But a comprehensive index would have made an already lengthy book unwieldy and more expensive. 

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