In celebration of the 250th anniversary, a historic marker was recently placed at the Paine Monument adjacent to the TPHA Headquarters on North Avenue in New Rochelle, NY. The monument was first erected in 1839, with money raised through “public contributions.” It was situated just a few feet from where Paine was buried in 1809. His former 277-acre farm, a gift from the State of New York for his role in America’s independence, extended up the hill. The monument was repaired and rededicated on May 30, 1881. The bronze bust, sculpted by Wilson McDonald, was added to the monument and dedicated on May 30, 1899. It was rededicated in 1905, when the City of New Rochelle took ownership.

An iron fence protects the monument, and, as a result, many people do not know that all four sides of the obelisk have famous Paine-isms carved into the stone. The new marker shares these timeless messages.

ON THE WEST SIDE

“The world is my country… to do good is my religion”

Paine’s motto

“The palaces of kings are built upon the ruins of the bowers of paradise.”

Common Sense, January 10, 1776

ON THE SOUTH SIDE

Two long quotations cover this side. The top features the famous opening paragraph from Crisis I that begins:

“These are the times that try men’s souls.”

The second offers the long first paragraph of Crisis XIII which begins:

“The times that try men’s souls are over and the greatest and completest revolution the world ever knew, gloriously and happily accomplished.“

ON THE NORTH SIDE

“I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life. I believe in the equality of man, and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavouring to make our fellow-creatures happy.”

Age of Reason, Part 1, Chap. 1

“It is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.”

Age of Reason, Part 1, Chapter 1

ON THE EAST SIDE

Two more long quotations from Age of Reason, Part 1, Chapter IX, cover this side. The first begins with:

“It is only in the CREATION that all our ideas and conceptions of a word of God can unite.”

The second begins with:

“Do we want to contemplate his power? We see it in immensity of the creation.”

The post A Sign for the Times: The Many Sides of the Paine Monument appeared first on Thomas Paine Historical Association.

Part Three of Three Parts 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Part Two of Three Parts

Responding to assaults on civil liberties under the 1873 Comstock Act, freethinkers played central roles in the social reform movement opposing abuses of the rich and powerful in the Gilded Age. They were guided by Thomas Paine and Enlightenment Age ideals of democracy, equality and natural rights. 

The TPNHA’s founding board represented the freethinking liberal movement in late 19th century America, which fought Gilded Age repressions. 

Founded in 1884, the Thomas Paine National Historical Association upheld its founders’ philosophical foundations in freethought, free speech, women’s rights, labor organizing, anarchism, and socialism.This shifted after the first world war as society shifted. 

TPNHA founders were tied to the Liberal League, People’s Party of New York and the Populist Party. Many met through the Manhattan Liberal Club, a New York locus for free thought. The People’s Party was an east coast version of agrarian populism, which sprouted among south and west farmers and spread to the trade unions. The TPNHA was formed just before the National Liberal League split into factions. 

The strongest bond uniting the TPNHA founders in 1884 was free thought and the leading freethought newspaper, The Truth Seeker. Nine TPNHA founding members had direct ties to The Truth Seeker’s editor, D.M. Bennett (De Robigne Mortimer Bennett). In 1879, he was arrested and convicted under the Comstock Act for mailing an anti-marriage tract. His sentence was 13 months of hard labor. 

Bennett called on freethinkers when he spearheaded the 1881 fund-raising drive to renovate the vandalized Thomas Paine Monument in New Rochelle, erected in 1839. At the Memorial Day rededication, Bennett delivered a speech and visited the farmhouse where Paine lived before his 1809 death. Bennett died in 1882. 

Meet the TPNHA founders tied to Bennett: 

Thaddeus Wakeman, a former university president, was D.M. Bennett’s lawyer, defending the editor from his Comstock Act prosecution. He was active in New York politics as the President of the Liberal League. Wakeman was the main force behind TPNHA formation, chairing the organizing meeting in the Liberal Club on January 29, 1884, at the club’s annual celebration of Paine’s birthday, a date observed widely by freethinkers. 

Dr. Edward Bond Foote, Jr., established the National Defense Association and worked with the National Liberal League in efforts to repeal Comstock laws and support Comstock Act victims. “Ned” was a founding member of the Free Speech League and Manhattan Liberal Club. He took leadership roles in organizations backing a woman’s right to contraception, defying Comstock morality. He gave financial support to Mother Jones and Emma Goldman. 

Dr. Edward Bliss Foote, Sr., Ned’s father, a free speech activist, was among the very first arrested under Comstock for promoting sexual education and contraception rights. He also ran for the New York Senate under the Populist and People’s Party banners. Ned and his father were personal friends of Bennett. 

Asenath Chase Macdonald, a Civil War widow and freethinker, was among America’s first trained nurses. Her sons joined Bennett at The Truth Seeker. 

Eugene and George Macdonald, the sons of Arsenath, first worked for Bennett as a printer and printer’s devil, respectively. Years later, Eugene with partners bought the enterprise. George became the editor in 1907, serving in the role until 1937. 

A.E. Chamberlain, a People’s Party member and Truth Seeker contributor, was a founder of the National Defense Association along with Dr. E.B. Foote Jr, and T.B. Wakeman. Formed to fight “Comstockery,” NDA evolved into the American Civil Liberties Union. 

Theron Leland, a friend of Bennett, was an abolitionist and among New York’s first “phonographers” (phonetic shorthand stenographer) A member of the National Liberal League and Liberal Club, he staffed the office of the American Industrial Union. 

Wilson MacDonald, a noted sculptor, was a liberal and spiritualist. He created the bust atop the Paine Monument and made the medallion on the D.M. Bennett monument in Brooklyn’s Green-Wood cemetery. He made busts of George Washington, Washington Irving, Wm. Cullen Bryan and others. MacDonald stayed active in the TPNHA through the turn of the century. 

Daniel E. Ryan, another friend of Bennett, was a Liberal League and Liberal Club member. He’s named in the TPNHA founding meeting minutes. 

Louis Freeland Post, not directly tied to Bennett, was a prominent Georgist who upheld Paine’s Agrarian Justice to assert income from land innately belongs equally to all. He was editor of the pro-labor New York Truth. In 1913 Post became Asst. Secretary of Labor under Woodrow Wilson, doing the job until 1921. He witnessed the Bureau of Immigration conducting the Palmer Raids to deport noncitizen immigrants under the 1918 Anarchist Exclusion Act. He could not stop the red-scare witch hunt, but his 1923 memoir called the raids “deportation delirium,” labeling them a “stupendous and cruel fake.” 

Stephen Pearl Andrews was an abolitionist, labor movement advocate and women’s suffrage supporter. A linguist and political philosopher, the “libertarian socialist” and “individualist anarchist” wrote 17 books on personal autonomy and related topics. 

Samuel Porter Putnam, a former Congregational and Unitarian minister, departed Christianity for freethinking. When the Liberal League split, he allied with the American Secular Union. In 1892 Putnam formed the Freethought Federation of America, which in 1895 merged with the American Secular Union. He urged separating church and state. 

Charles P. Somerby was a freethinking New York publisher and bookseller. He published titles like The Ultimate Generalization (a philosophy of science). 

Capt. George Loyd, a Civil War veteran in the Populist Party, for years cared for Paine’s gravesite. 

Two local women are named in the 1884 TPNHA organizing meeting minutes. Mrs. Kate G. Foote, the wife of Dr. Foote Jr., and Mrs. Hannah A. Allen. Their backstories are unknown. 

These are the freethinkers who in 1884 founded the Thomas Paine National Historical Association. In response to renewed repressions in the 20th century, the organization would evolve.

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Part One of Two Parts

In the wake of the Civil War and the attempt at Reconstruction, the capitalist era entered the Gilded Age, where the wealthy monopolized most of the wealth as the working classes became more impoverished. The reactions to the situation resulted in the activist reform movement. At the same time the federal government took the anti-constitutional step of employing religion to repress that reform movement. 

Several groups were forming to oppose the nature of the Gilded Age on such issues as suffrage for women, health services for women, freedom of the press, freethinking, labor organizing, labor rights, race equality, and more. The basic concepts of modern democracy, built on equality, and natural and civil rights, were the foundation of the movement, as established by the life and legacy of Thomas Paine. 

Starting in 1872 and completed in 1873, the Comstock Act brought the weapon of religion against these groups. It was named for Anthony Comstock, a zealous Christian anti-“vice”fanatic who was put in charge of using the Act against the democratic forces emerging to challenge the monopoly of wealth, and the repressive nature of society unfolding. To a large extent, this struggle continues. 

Anthony Comstock was a leader of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, whose purpose was to uphold “Christian morality”, which opposed obscene literature, abortion, contraception, masturbation, gambling, prostitution, and patent medicine.

Comstock worked through the Postal Department, using local police, on his authority alone, to enforce “morality.” Anyone sending literature through the mails that Comstock disliked was subject to arrest. 

In the same year, and most probably in response, The Truth Seeker magazine was established by D. M. Bennett, with these principles: 

Devoted to: science, morals, free thought, free discussions, liberalism, sexual equality, labor reform, progression, free education and whatever tends to elevate and emancipate the human race. 

Opposed to: priestcraft, ecclesiasticism, dogmas, creeds, false theology, superstition, bigotry, ignorance, monopolies, aristocracies, privileged classes, tyranny, oppression, and everything that degrades or burdens mankind mentally or physically. 

Bennett turned into Comstock’s prime target. In 1878, when Bennett published a piece on free-love, he was imprisoned for nearly a year, destroying his health. Bennett died four years later. (The Truth Seeker today carries on efforts to obtain a posthumous pardon for Bennett.) 

In 1878, eventual TPNHA founders Dr. E.B. Foote, T.B. Wakeman, E.A. Chamberlain, and others founded the National Defense Association (NDA) to organize against the Comstock Law. Formation of the NDA, a forerunner of the American Civil Liberties Union, led to dissension in the movement. 

The National Liberal League had been a unifying force in the formative period of progressive thinking, advocating its “Nine Demands of Liberalism.” The demands centered around the separation of church and state, opposition to favoritism shown to religious creeds in government functions. 

The Liberal League in 1884 split into factions over whether social and political issues other than freethought should be included in their agenda. 

A year after Bennett’s death, the Thomas Paine National Historical Association (TPNHA) was formed on January 29, 1884, the anniversary of Paine’s birth. A majority of the Board consisted of people tied to The Truth Seeker. Representing activists who were leading the reform movements, they chose Thomas Paine as the symbol of the democratic struggle, and they created an organization that could coordinate and collaborate on political struggles through one body. 

The leading force in TPNHA’s formation was Thaddeus Wakeman, President of the Liberal University in Oregon and later in Missouri, a leading activist in New York politics, a political philosopher, freethinker, publisher of activist literature.

Liberal League leaders became key leaders in founding the TPNHA. Foote, Wakeman and Chamberlain continued to advocate freethinking in such social issues as free speech. women’s rights, labor struggles, and social justice. Integral to this faction was The Truth Seeker, based in Manhattan. 

TPNHA’s formation triggered a split with the group led by secularist Robert Ingersoll, who formed the American Secular Union. More conservative Ingersoll never joined TPNHA, yet he was a lifelong Paine advocate. 

Formation of TPNHA was part of the developing 19th century drive to inform people about the issues of free speech, labor rights, women’s rights, education, prison reform, and freethought. Thomas Paine was the uniting figure in American history these organizations had in common. The re-establishment of Thomas Paine as a preeminent founding father was part of this public education movement, and that continues today. 

Comstock’s law is still on the books as a relic from the period of repression in 19th century America. The old law is now being revived by the latest movement to abolish women’s reproductive rights along with access to reproductive health information and services.

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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.

The post Thomas Paine’s Political Influence on Me  appeared first on Thomas Paine Historical Association.

By Frances Chiu 

An incorrigible Europhile for much of my youth, I was not terribly interested in Thomas Paine. The fact that Ronald Reagan was an admirer of Paine didn’t help either: Paine must be a conservative, right? But then I realized that to understand William Blake’s revolutionary sentiment, I had to read Rights of Man, Paine’s defense of the French Revolution. 

As I turned the pages of Rights, I was pleasantly surprised. Wait, was he actually what we’d consider a liberal rather than a conservative? Paine challenged hereditary rule and privilege! He proposed welfare — along with progressive taxation, a prototype of Social Security, while sanctioning unions. I was blown away by his prescience, seeing that his words could as easily apply to 1993 as 1792:

When, in countries that are called civilized, we see age going to the workhouse and youth to the gallows, something must be wrong in the system of government. It would seem, by the exterior appearance of such countries, that all was happiness; but there lies hidden from the eye of common observation, a mass of wretchedness, that has scarcely any other chance, than to expire in poverty or infamy. 

Also appealing to me about Paine was his modern, accessible prose, so different from his 18th-century peers. He presents the most visionary ideas in the least pretentious language — for instance, this passage defending the rights of man: 

Though I mean not to touch upon any sectarian principle of religion, yet it may be worth observing that the genealogy of Christ is traced to Adam. Why then not trace the rights of man to the creation of man? I will answer the question. Because there have been upstart governments, thrusting themselves between, and presumptuously working to unmake man. 

Although the subject of my doctoral dissertation changed once I entered Oxford, I continued to study Paine. I admired him more when I read Age of Reason and articles from the Pennsylvania Magazine. 

In 2004, I gained a more complete picture of Paine as a man from reading John Keane’s biography of him. I almost fell head over heels in love with him. 

I was impressed that he donated all of his proceeds from Common Sense to the Continental Army. I was impressed that he walked from Trenton to Philadelphia one late December night to publish his first American Crisis paper. I was impressed that Paine didn’t just hang out with the wealthiest and most prominent men, but also appreciated the company of ordinary men. I was even more impressed by all his efforts to end slavery in America and his unusually appreciative views of Native Americans (or “Indians” as they were called). 

When I reached the end of the biography, I wept for him. How sad it was that Americans had forgotten his selfless efforts to win American independence and build the new country. How profoundly sad it was that only a mere handful of Americans — six people, including two Black youths — attended his funeral, given the tens of thousands who attended the public funerals of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. 

I became determined to remind other Americans of Paine’s contributions. I figured I would never get a chance to write academically about Paine since my PhD was in English literature, not history or political science, so I decided to teach the first class in the U.S. devoted to Paine and his contemporaries at The New School — 

“The Age of Paine: Religion, Revolution, and Radicalism” Three years later, shortly before Christmas, I organized a symposium there on Paine for the bicentenary of his death. I recall feeling astonished at the overflow crowd. Who would have imagined such a large turnout amid last-minute holiday shopping? 

Then the unimaginable happened: I was invited to submit a book proposal to Routledge on Paine’s Rights of Man, the very work that first made me a “Paineite.” I didn’t think it would ever happen because the majority of my publications had focused on the history of the Gothic novel. 

In writing a Routledge guide, I rediscovered why I admired Paine the way I do. In the wake of the financial crash of 2008, expansion of George W. Bush’s wars from two to seven, the crackdowns on freedom of the press and the right to protest, I realized Paine’s ideas within Rights of Man were quite possibly even more relevant today than when first published in 1792. 

Beyond Adams, Jefferson and Hamilton, Thomas Paine is the “founding father” we need to heed more than ever in these times that try our souls!

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By Gary Berton

The Beacon, a freethought journal by Gilbert Vale (1788-1866) was a pivotal, influential social and political publication in the mid-19th century, publishing 587 issues from 1836 to 1851.

In the mid-19th century, The Beacon helped to forge a movement against the age’s undemocratic, religious, anti-labor, anti-women cultural and political forces. The Beacon prepared society for the Progressive Era. The Beacon further played a central role in restoring the reputation and legacy of Thomas Paine.

A weekly print publication for its first 10 years, The Beacon voiced ideas from Paine and others from The Enlightenment, contributing freethinking to public conversations, as did the transcendentalists. The Beacon then published quarterly before going monthly for two years, closing as a bi-weekly called Sunday Beacon. 

In our era, 170 years after the last Vale edition, the Thomas Paine National Historical Association in 2021 relaunched The Beacon as its official member publication. Entering our third year as a bi-monthly, counting Vale’s 14 volumes, this edition is Vol. 17, No 1. 

Gilbert Vale, “Citizen of the World,” made another crucial contribution to the Paine legacy — his vision for the Paine farmland in New Rochelle, a former Tory farm that New York State gifted to Paine in 1784. 

At the farm entrance, Vale in 1839 erected the Paine Monument, the nation’s first monument for any Founder of the Republic. The monument stands at North Avenue and Paine Avenue (once the main farm road). It’s 30 feet north of Paine’s long-empty gravesite, now under widened North Ave. 

An 1850 report says Vale,“legally holds title in the Paine farm but that the management of the farm is in the hands of the subscribers and that the cemetery is now being laid out.” Also,“subscribers to the Paine farm are now an incorporated body.” The three planned projects were a cemetery, industrial school and college, plus a rural retreat. None of the projects were realized, because Vale’s health began to weaken, and the following year he retired.

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By Gary Berton

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

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

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

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

The post Computer Text Analysis of Thomas Paine’s Writings appeared first on Thomas Paine Historical Association.

By Gary Berton

Our Association was founded in 1884, and the founders were from various organizations, all of which were opposed to the Comstock Act. The Comstock Act was created to combat “obscenity”, dodging the idea that the Comstock Act was in itself obscene to democracy. It is now a weapon again against women, common sense, and decency, and in support of feudalist ideology. This law is still on the books. It was a religious-based law denying the ability to talk about and mail material related to contraception, or anything related to it. 

The Board of TPNHA was formed to unite these groups into one place to coordinate their activity, with Thomas Paine as the symbol for these progressive causes, including women’s rights, especially women’s health rights and access to health information. 

The Comstock Act of 1773 is in the news today! being used to suppress all support for women’s abortion rights. See how far we have progressed! 

The editor of the Truth Seeker, D.M. Bennett was jailed based on this Act. Members of the Board of TPNHA were threatened for opposing the Act, and so they founded the groups that eventually led to forming the American Civil Liberties Union, groups like the National Defense Association. Thaddeus Wakeman, the main organizer of our Association and the first President, ran for governor of New York on a platform opposing the Comstock Act. Far ahead of his time, he lost. 

For complete coverage of the history of TPNHA see here.

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Beacon #3 January 1, 2022

By Gary Berton

When our Association was formed, it was on January 29, 1884, on Paine’s birthdate. The people involved had gathered every year on Paine’s birthdate, to meet at the Liberal Club in New York City. Rod Bradford at The Truth Seeker has discovered that the physical location was at the German Masonic Temple in New York City, (see article on next page), and we were called the Paine Historical Society, soon to be changed to Paine Historical Association, and then to the present name.

It was a regular occurrence across the country for groups to celebrate Paine on his birthday. The first recorded celebration was in 1825 in New York City, then it spread to Boston, Cincinnati, and Rochester. Soon it was commonplace to hold Paine Birthday events across the country.

The first celebrations were hosted by both labor groups and freethought groups, and attended by the leading progressives, such as Frances Wright, “the female Thomas Paine,” who toured the country as the first female orator, the first feminist activist and freethinker in the 1830s and 40s. All of these celebrations ran counter to a culture of racism, religious fanaticism, and suppressed speech. And they endured on and off for the last nearly 200 years.

Celebrations in New York City in the post WWI era were held at dining rooms in NYC’s largest hotels, and hundreds attended, and organized by TPNHA. After moving to New Rochelle in 1925, and after most of the leading men and women of the TPNHA founders had died, the celebrations became sporadic, but were revived in the late 1990s. Since then the tradition has reestablished the original practice of giving toasts to Paine and what he stood for and accomplished.

The post A History of Paine Birthday Events appeared first on Thomas Paine Historical Association.

The Beacon #1 September 1, 2021

By Gary Berton

The Thomas Paine National Historical Association was founded in 1884 by political activists and freethinkers. It united the leaders of progressive political groups of the time into one body – socialists, anarchists, ex-abolitionists, activists for women’s voting, health and reproductive rights, labor unionists, free speech advocates against the Comstock Act, and advocates for human rights of all kinds. All of them freethinkers. Our Association continued this activism with people like Leonard Abbott, a leader of the Socialist Party, T.B. Foote and E.B. Wakeman, who ran for office with the People’s Party, several Board members had ties to Emma Goldman, and James Morgan, organizer of NAACP and friend of W.E.B. DuBois. The founders of our Association saw Paine as the symbol of the fights of their day, which remain the fights of today. 

The mission of the Association was to correct the false propaganda that historians used to marginalize, dismiss and mis-characterize Paine’s life, works, and legacy, which persists to this day, as lazy historians just pass on the tropes as established fact. Our Association is embarking on the ultimate realization of our mission to educate the world about Paine this Fall, when we will begin the official collected works of Thomas Paine, with an editorial board of the leading Paine scholars in the world led by our Association. This Building will be the center of that work, here in New Rochelle. 

The importance of Thomas Paine to New Rochelle, the country, and the world can be seen in his final writing as he lay dying in Greenwich Village – it was a letter to President Jefferson and he wrote it under the guise of being A Slave , in order to disguise his authorship from Jefferson (who would have known from his interactions with Paine anyway), but mainly to provide a greater emotional impact. Paine and Jefferson were friends since they sat down together in Philadelphia to create the Declaration of Independence.* This letter written by Paine to Jefferson unleashed the decades of fury Paine harbored against slavery and Jefferson’s hypocrisy. Paine only wrote and organized against it anonymously. No one had been able to identify the author of the letter, until now. It is appropriate that we announce the author here on the celebration of Juneteenth. It was the first call for reparations to slaves as part of the demand for completely annihilating the barbarous practice of slavery and make amends to some degree. 

A challenge was presented by a benefactor of history, Mr. Lapidus, to discover who the author was, and the Institute for Thomas Paine Studies (ITPS) at Iona College took up the challenge after other historians failed to do so. I was part of that team. The letter was written on Nov 30, 1808, and the original can be found in the Jefferson Papers online at the Library of Congress by just entering that date. Why Paine chose that date is unknown, other than he landed in America on Nov. 30 (but in 1774), and late 1781 was the approximate time Jefferson’s “Notes on Virginia” and the peace agreement to end the Revolutionary War occurred. 

When Michael Crowder and I, both of us from ITPS, first read it, we both had the same reaction – this sounds like Paine. It was a strong, perhaps the strongest, denunciation of slavery ever written, culminating in a demand for reparations for all slaves immediately freed going back to 1781, 27 years, and anyone continuing the practice of slavery are “a set of inhuman scoundrels, and ought to be tar’d and feather’d and tyed to the tale end of a dung cart, and horse-whipt throughout the country, from state to state, and forever after banished from human society.” (from the Letter) 

An article for a book from Cornell U Press has been completed and it will be published later this year presenting the proof of authorship. The content points to Paine: he addresses William Duane, editor of the Aurora newspaper and close ally of the Jefferson presidency, and to Jefferson. The letter takes to task Duane’s hollow praise of America while he ignored slavery, and Jefferson’s complacency by ignoring the utter corruption and inhumanity of creating the wealth of America through torture and brutality. The author had intimate knowledge as well as a history with both men. The context of the letter is that the author was disguised, it is not in Paine’s handwriting, and it was sent anonymously pretending to be a slave. The handwriting was that of Paine’s caretaker Mde. Bonneville, whose first language was French, so she misspelled many basic words as you will see. 

The computer text analysis of the letter, developed over 10 years at ITPS, overwhelmingly points to Paine when compared to all the abolitionist writers of the day. This methodology has far outpaced other author attribution software, by increasing accuracy to 90% plus, compared to the standard of 65%. 

Let me read one paragraph from the 24 page letter: Paine is speaking to Jefferson as a slave, the first part refers to the Slavery Clause taken out of the Declaration by Congress without any objection from Jefferson, and knowledge of that Clause was not publicly known, only someone close to the Committee who produced it: 

“What your reasons can be for keeping open that execrable market where MAN shall be bought and sold, which you wrote so warmly against in the year ’76, and condemn’d as a mark of disgrace, of the deepist dye in the Christian king of G. Britain, I cannot conceive. Is a crime of this execrable nature any more criminal in the Christian Crown of Britain, than in the Christian Executive of America? If not, what are your reasons, sir, for suffering us since 30th. Nov. ’81 to be troden under foot & abused in such an inhuman & bruital manner? Are not Our rites as well secured to us by every law of natures God as any man’s in the universe? we think so; therefore, sir, we consider ourselves, intitled to our yearly wages from that very hour, and no man in the government (except a tyrant) can dispute our demand a single moment. And you may depend on this sir, that we shall never be recconciled to this government till we git it, & our freedom with it.—I think sir, you can’t do yourself & your country a greater honour, nor your unfortunate country men a greater piece of justice and mercy, then by freeing your slaves & paying them their yearly wages from ’81 to this day. And then, if any slave-holder in America shall here after refuse or neglect so to do, let him or them be made an example of, and their heads be hung in gibbets for an everlasting monument; & a terror to tyrants & evil doers. O! Thomas, you have had a long nap, and spent a great number of years in ease & plenty, upon our hard earned property, while we have been in the mean time, smarting under the cow-hide and sweating in the fields to raise provision to nurse tyrants to cut our throat and perpetuate our own bonds.” 

Thomas Paine is the benchmark, the inspiration, the guide, the inspirer of the secular democratic trend in world history. His legacy is all around us: in Black Lives Matter, in separation of church and state, in the sanctity of government for, of and by the people, in civil and human rights. 

The bible of these first principles is in the writings and political struggles of Thomas Paine. 

And New Rochelle is the center of this legacy: 

• it is here that the recognition of his services to the Revolution was awarded, 
• here that the first monument to an American Founder was erected, 
• here that the only structure where Paine lived and wrote in America is still standing, 
• here that the headquarters of the Association that corrected the important legacy of Paine sits, 
• here that the resulting Institute for academic work should raise Paine to the level of vast importance, 
• and here that the official Collected Works of Thomas Paine will be produced for the first time.

It is not arcane historical curiosity that we look to Paine, but the inherent values unseen in the world before Paine, that remain today as the values we fight to establish still. His imprint on the movement for real democracy, not democracy in name only, is indelible and foundational, as is his blueprint for a rational society free of superstition. 

* The creation of Paine’s position of authority in the Committee of Five to draft the Declaration is proved by the discovery in 2012 of an early draft with a note from Adams testifying that Paine gave “permission” to have that copy made. See www.thomaspaine.org main page for a link to the article.

The post Speech at the Juneteenth Event at the Thomas Paine Memorial Building June 19, 2021 appeared first on Thomas Paine Historical Association.

The Beacon #1 September 1, 2021

By Gary Berton

In 1882, two years before the Thomas Paine National Historical Association was formed, a statuette was created by David Richards celebrating Thomas Paine. It is probably the first sculpture of Paine. The creation of the statuette shows the growing atmosphere in support of Paine which led to the formation of TPNHA soon after. 

One of the dozens of copies of the statuette was part of the TPNHA Collection, but it went missing in the 1980s. All attempts to retrieve it were unsuccessful. If anyone in the New Rochelle area has any knowledge of this statuette, please contact our Association. The present holder may have honestly purchased it, not knowing it was stolen. All information will remain confidential. 

Here is Robert Ingersoll’s letter to Richards at the time. Ingersoll was a great orator, lawyer, and freethinker of the time, and was Paine’s leading advocate: 

LAW OFFICE OF Robr. G. INGERSOLL, 

DAVID RICHARDS, Esq.: 

WASHINGTON, D. C., 

Dec. 30, 1882. 

MY DEAR FRIEND — 

Your Statuette is incomparably the best I have ever seen. It is in perfect taste. The position, the drapery, the surroundings, are all admirable. You have given to PAINE a noble, a reflective and kind face. The whole work’ shows MERIT OF THE HIGHEST ORDER, and I am delighted with it. 

I thank you more than I can express—not only for presenting me with the statuette—but for having made it. 

I feel under a certain personal obligation to every man who in any way assists in rescuing the name of that great thinker – a disinterested patriot, and an intellectual hero – from the malice of superstition and from the calumnies of those who have enjoyed, and who are now enjoying, the fruits of his labors. Thanking you again and again, I remain, 

Yours always, 

R. G. INGERSOLL

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