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Washington did not rescue Paine from French imprisonment
Real Clear History ^ | Dec 28, 2017 | William Hogeland

Posted on 04/16/2019 11:59:39 AM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege

George Washington refused to come to the rescue when the pamphleteer who put him on his high horse faced the guillotine...

Citizen Thomas Paine, whose pamphlet Common Sense helped ignite the American Revolution, was an enthusiastic early supporter of the French Revolution. He received a hero’s welcome when he arrived in Paris in 1792 and was even granted honorary French citizenship and a seat in the National Convention, the body charged with writing a constitution for the new republic. But Paine angered Maximilien Robespierre and other Jacobin extremists when he urged the Convention to spare the life of the deposed French king, Louis XVI. Instead, Jacobins brandished the king’s severed head in front of a cheering crowd. Then they proceeded to round up thousands of suspected counterrevolutionaries who, Paine observed, fell “as fast as the guillotine could cut their heads off.” Now they’d come for him, too.

Paine believed two lucky circumstances might help him keep his own head: He was still officially an American citizen, and he was an old friend of President George Washington. Immediately after his arrest he penned a letter by candlelight to Gouverneur Morris, Washington’s envoy in Paris. Morris refused to intervene...

The president had little patience for revivals of the moods of 1776. He and members of his Cabinet believed that otherwise tractable Americans were being infected with dangerous French ideas about liberty and equality. The administration’s foreign policy leaned toward England and excoriated French extremism.

Paine would not return to the United States until nearly a decade later, after Jefferson was elected president and the Republican Party was in ascendancy. But he had long since become a potential liability to any party in power, and his book The Age of Reason (written in part during his imprisonment) drew accusations of scandalous atheism.

(Excerpt) Read more at realclearhistory.com ...


TOPICS: History
KEYWORDS: foundingfathers; frenchrevolution; paine; theageofreason; thomaspaine; washington
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Washington’s reputation grew more glowing with time while Paine remained an outcast in the republic his collaboration with Washington had helped bring about. Paine’s later years were marked by poverty, alcoholism and neglect: Only six locals attended his funeral in New Rochelle in 1809. “One by one most of his old friends and acquaintances had deserted him,” Robert G. Ingersoll, a popular orator of the era, subsequently proclaimed. “Even those who loved their enemies hated him, their friend—the friend of the whole world—with all their hearts.”
1 posted on 04/16/2019 11:59:39 AM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
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To: CondoleezzaProtege

This part is incorrect.

“Paine would not return to the United States until nearly a decade later, after Jefferson was elected president and the Republican Party was in ascendancy.”

The Republican Party was formed in the 1850s...no?


2 posted on 04/16/2019 12:14:43 PM PDT by reed13k (For evil to triumph it is only necessary that good men do nothing)
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To: CondoleezzaProtege
American politics became very complex as a result of the French Revolution. Factions aligned themselves a pro-Revolution or Anglophile as the politics suited them.

Just one example, Google the Citizen Genet Affair.

Poor ol' Tom didn't foresee the dark and violent turn the Revolution would take or the landmines it created in American politics.

3 posted on 04/16/2019 12:18:04 PM PDT by colorado tanker
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To: CondoleezzaProtege
Watched a short British documentary series called "The Bloody Past of a Tiny Town." It's about the history of the town of Lewes, England.

I didn't know until I watched the program that Thomas Paine had lived for 6 years in the English town of Lewes, and it is said Lewes is where he formed his political views.There's a Thomas Paine Society UK, the house he lived in, in Lewes is a historical site, and there's also a statue of him in Lewes.

4 posted on 04/16/2019 12:18:44 PM PDT by mass55th ("Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway." ~~ John Wayne)
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To: reed13k

Right...The Republicans replaced the Whigs, IIRC.


5 posted on 04/16/2019 12:20:46 PM PDT by rlmorel (Leftists: Can't control their emotions. Can't control their actions. Deny them control of anything.)
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To: mass55th
I didn't know until I watched the program that Thomas Paine had lived for 6 years in the English town of Lewes, and it is said Lewes is where he formed his political views.There's a Thomas Paine Society UK, the house he lived in, in Lewes is a historical site, and there's also a statue of him in Lewes.

from article:

Washington and Paine were unlikely comrades from the outset. In 1776, Washington was a Virginia planter with deep roots in America, august in manner if not yet experienced in military achievement. Paine was an English urbanite, a refugee from failure as tobacco shop owner and excise officer who had arrived in Philadelphia in 1775 and found a last-ditch vocation as writer and activist. Washington was reserved; Paine talked constantly. Washington was fastidious about clothes and cleanliness; Paine was not noted for hygiene. But during the War for Independence they became close allies and fast friends.

6 posted on 04/16/2019 12:21:35 PM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
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To: colorado tanker

Jefferson was all on board with the French Revolution, and people were trying to warn him it wasn’t all it was cut out to be and that he was making a mistake to support it.


7 posted on 04/16/2019 12:22:03 PM PDT by rlmorel (Leftists: Can't control their emotions. Can't control their actions. Deny them control of anything.)
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To: CondoleezzaProtege

Eh. I appreciate what Paine did with “Common Sense”, and it is true he may have “saved the revolution”, but he didn’t put Washington on his “high horse”.


8 posted on 04/16/2019 12:24:30 PM PDT by rlmorel (Leftists: Can't control their emotions. Can't control their actions. Deny them control of anything.)
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To: reed13k

I think they meant the whigs. Jefferson was a Democrat.


9 posted on 04/16/2019 12:26:37 PM PDT by Vermont Lt (If we get Medicare for all, will we have to show IDs for service? Why?)
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To: reed13k
"The Republican Party was formed in the 1850s...no?"

The party of Jefferson and Madison was called the Democrat Republican party.
10 posted on 04/16/2019 12:27:30 PM PDT by Old Teufel Hunden
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To: reed13k
He is referring to the Democrat-Republican party of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, formed in 1792 and peaked in power from 1801 to 1825 (roughly Jefferson's and Madison's administrations).

-PJ

11 posted on 04/16/2019 12:29:15 PM PDT by Political Junkie Too (The 1st Amendment gives the People the right to a free press, not CNN the right to the 1st question.)
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To: reed13k; Vermont Lt; rlmorel
I'm thinking that when the author uses "Republican" in this context and this era, he's talking about the "Democratic Republicans."

Which would correspond to neither of the major parties in Lincoln's time nor in ours.

12 posted on 04/16/2019 12:32:54 PM PDT by Mrs. Don-o (Department of Redundancy Department.)
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To: reed13k

Yes, you are correct...the Republican Party came much later as a result of the abolitionist movement within the Whigs.

There was a Democratic-Republican Party early on, though:

” The Democratic-Republican Party was the political party organized by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in 1791-93. It stood in opposition to the Federalist Party and controlled the Presidency and Congress, and most states, from 1801 to 1824, during the First Party System.” — www.definitions.net/definition/democratic-republican%20party


13 posted on 04/16/2019 12:33:39 PM PDT by piasa (Attitude adjustments offered here free of charge.)
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To: zot; The Shrew

Ping.


14 posted on 04/16/2019 12:40:15 PM PDT by Interesting Times (WinterSoldier.com. SwiftVets.com. ToSetTheRecordStraight.com.)
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To: reed13k

Jefferson’s party which we know today as the Democrat-Republican was often just called the Republican party. (Modern historians call it Democrat-Republican I doubt if they used the hyphenated moniker!) After Jackson it was pretty much the Democrat party, the use of the word Republican as a party label didn’t occur until a coalition of Free Soilers, Northern Whigs, & others picked up the name and formed the Republicans in Ripon Wisconsin roughly 1856.

Party names\labels come and go but its always the Federalist vs non-Federalist argument. How much central government is enough, how much is too much!


15 posted on 04/16/2019 12:40:59 PM PDT by Reily
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To: reed13k

Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans later had their name shortened to Democratic, the forerunners of today’s Democrats. The Republican name remained unused until the Republican Party was created as an abolitionist party in 1854.


16 posted on 04/16/2019 12:41:12 PM PDT by reg45 (Barack 0bama: Gone but not forgiven.)
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To: CondoleezzaProtege
I read a letter of Paine's from 1807 that is on display at the Thomas Paine House in New Rochelle, NY. In this letter, Paine pleads with Vice-President George Clinton to testify on his behalf to a local election board that refused to allow Paine to vote, claiming that he was not a citizen.

Paine wrote:


"As it is a new generation that has risen up since the declaration of independence, they know nothing of what political state of the country was at the time the pamphlet Common Sense appeared; and besides this there are but few of the old standards left, and none that I know of in this city."

-PJ

17 posted on 04/16/2019 12:42:36 PM PDT by Political Junkie Too (The 1st Amendment gives the People the right to a free press, not CNN the right to the 1st question.)
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To: CondoleezzaProtege
British authorities indicted Paine for seditious libel, a hanging offense...

Can you imagine the number of public hangings today for that same offense?

Great post by the way. I love reading the histories of these characters and what eventually became of them. It's very sobering.
18 posted on 04/16/2019 12:43:20 PM PDT by farming pharmer
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The Democratic-Republicans only lasted about 30 yrs but according to Britannica they did refer to themselves as “republicans” for short.
But they were not the same as the 1857 Republicans of the GOP, which were founded in the upper Midwest.


19 posted on 04/16/2019 12:44:43 PM PDT by piasa (Attitude adjustments offered here free of charge.)
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To: Mrs. Don-o

I admit, that always confuses me.

I tend to think of Jefferson Republican-Democrats onward as Democrats...at some point, they stopped being the Republican-Democrats and became the Democrats.

Was that in 1830 or 1850, or some other time? Do you know?


20 posted on 04/16/2019 12:45:41 PM PDT by rlmorel (Leftists: Can't control their emotions. Can't control their actions. Deny them control of anything.)
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