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 ...
I’m sorry, I do not know. There’s something about “Whigs” in there, too, but I have never had any idea what that was about. Sorry! “:o/
The hyphenated name may have been dropped by Jackson’s time but certainly after Jackson, they were the Democrats party.
Heh, so Jackson was the REAL father of the Democrat party!
Well, he at least had some stones, I will give him that.
Interesting. Thanks for posting. History/education BUMP!
Jackson’s inauguration was very much a common man affair.
More hoe down then inauguration. Stories of scruffy frontiersmen wiping the hands on the White House curtains, not wiping their feet and put them up on the furniture. Drunk disorderly a frat or rugby party!
Condelezza and fellow FRiends - posts like this is why I consider this place FR University.
+1000!
RE:”Interesting. Thanks for posting. History/education BUMP!”
Thanks! Yeah I agree. What I appreciate, is that these stories remind us of the complex forces that shaped both revolutions. (American and French) The two were not mirror images of the other as some too often simplify them being...
Not only that, but the story of Paine highlights the complex inter-mingling of the personal and the collective, the political AND religious...
Thomas Paine, was essentially 'exiled' for 'coming out' as atheist...
President Thomas Jefferson was willing to share the vicissitudes of his spiritual journey with friends like John Adams, but otherwise kept his skepticism in check in terms of what he was willing to reveal to the public...He knew how much contempt the general public would meet him with, which goes to show just how fiercely religious the early American environment really was.
I feel kinda sad for Tom Paine, but I have to read into his life story more to be honest...I mean his closest friends abandoned him. Were they right to?
I think America’s sharp political divide and toxic politics started at our founding. Maybe it was wishful thinking that our country would look beyond politics for the sake of the republic.
I have to admit...there is something very American about that!
I found myself grinning as I read your post...
It was considered very scandalous at the time.
Washington and others (Federalists) had gone to great lengths to try to establish in the minds of European governments that we were a respectable power. Not a nation of drunken, half naked savages and there the Jacksonians go and prove that we were.
The truth was we were both!
Still are in many ways!
So drink a brew, go to NASCAR or the opera its ok!
Its what Americans do!
:)
The Trump era is seen by some as the new Jackson era.
Probably some truth in that!
Thanks for the ping. I wasn’t aware of this.
To George Clinton May 4, 1807
NEW YORK,
RESPECTED FRIEND:
Elisha Ward and three or four other Tories who lived within the British lines in the Revolutionary war, got in to be inspectors of the election last year at New Rochelle. Ward was supervisor. These men refused my vote at the election, saying to me: "You are not an American; our minister at Paris, Gouverneur Morris, would not reclaim you when you were imprisoned in the Luxembourg prison at Paris, and General Washington refused to do it." Upon my telling him that the two cases he stated were falsehoods, and that if he did me injustice I would prosecute him, he got up, and calling for a constable, said to me, "I will commit you to prison." He chose, however, to sit down and go no farther with it.
I have written to Mr. Madison for an attested copy of Mr. Monroe's letter to the then Secretary of State Randolph, in which Mr. Monroe gives the government an account of his reclaiming me and my liberation in consequence of it; and also for an attested copy of Mr. Randolph's answer, in which he says: "The President approves what you have done in the case of Mr. Paine." The matter I believe is, that, as I had not been guillotined, Washington thought best to say what he did. As to Gouverneur Morris, the case is that he did reclaim me; but his reclamation did me no good, and the probability is, he did not intend it should. Joel Barlow and other Americans in Paris had been in a body to reclaim me, but their application, being unofficial, was not regarded. I then applied to Morris. I shall subpoena Morris, and if I get attested copies from the Secretary of State's office it will prove the lie on the inspectors.
As it is a new generation that has risen up since the declaration of independence, they know nothing of what the political state of the country was at the time the pamphlet Common Sense appeared; and besides this there are but few of the old standers left, and none that I know of in this city.
It may be proper at the trial to bring the mind of the court and the jury back to the times I am speaking of, and if you see no objection in your way, I wish you would write a letter to some person, stating, from your own knowledge, what the condition of those times were, and the effect which the work Common Sense, and the several members of the Crisis had upon the country. It would, I think, be best that the letter should begin directly on the subject in this manner: Being informed that Thomas Paine has been denied his rights of citizenship by certain persons acting as inspectors at an election at New Rochelle, etc.
I have put the prosecution into the hands of Mr. Riker, district attorney, who can make use of the letter in his address to the Court and Jury. Your handwriting can be sworn to by persons here, if necessary. Had you been on the spot I should have subpoenaed you, unless it had been too inconvenient to you to have attended.
Yours in friendship,
THOMAS PAINE.
One day earlier, Paine sent a letter to James Madison seeking documents supporting his description of events relayed in the original post.
To James Madison May 3, 1807
NEW YORK,
SIR:
When Mr. Monroe came Minister from the United States to the French Government I was still imprisoned in the Luxembourg by the Robespierre party in the convention. The fall of Robespierre took place a few days before Mr. Monroe reached Paris, and as soon as Mr. Monroe could make his own standing good, which required time on account of the ill conduct of his predecessor Gouverneur Morris, he reclaimed me as an American citizen, for the case was, I was excluded from the convention as a foreigner and imprisoned as a foreigner. I was liberated immediately on Mr. Monroe's reclamation.
Mr. Monroe wrote an official account of this to the secretary of state, Mr. Randolph, and also an account of what he had done for Madame LaFayette who was also imprisoned, distinguishing the one to be done officially, and the other, that for Madame LaFayette, to be done in friendship. In Mr. Randolph's official answer to Mr. Monroe's letter, he says as nearly as I recollect the words, "The President [Mr. Washington] approves what you have done in the case of Mr. Paine." My own opinion on this matter is, that as I had not been guillotined Washington thought it best to say what he did.
I will be obliged to you for an attested copy of Mr. Monroe's letter and also of Mr. Randolph's official answer so far as any parts of them relate to me. The reason for this application is as follows,
Last year 1806 I lived on my farm at New Rochelle, State of New York; a man of the name Elisha Ward was supervisor that year. The father of this man and all his brothers joined the British in the war; but this one being the youngest and not at that time old enough to carry a musket remained at home with his mother.
When the election (at which the supervisor for the time being presides) came on at New Rochelle last year for Members of Congress and Members of state assemblies, I tendered my tickets separately distinguishing which was which, as is the custom; each of which Ward refused, saying to me "You are not an American Citizen." Upon my beginning to remonstrate with him, he replied, "Our minister at Paris, Gouverneur Morris, would not reclaim you as an American Citizen when you were imprisoned in The Luxembourg at Paris, and General Washington refused to do it."
I accordingly commenced a prosecution against him last fall and the court will set the 20th of this May. Mr. Monroe's letter to the secretary and the secretary's official answer are both published by Mr. Monroe in his views of the conduct of the executive printed by Benjn Franklin Bache. But as a printed book is not sufficient evidence an attested copy from your office will be necessary.
As to Gouverneur Morris, the fact is, that he did reclaim me on my application to him as Minister, but his reclamation of me did me no good, for he could hardly keep himself out of prison, neither did he do it out of any good will to me.
THOMAS PAINE.
-PJ
The Whigs were basically an anti-Jackson party. The Federalists died out after the War of 1812 and for a time the Democratic-Republicans were the only party in town—”The Era of Good Feelings”. But Jackson and his policies rubbed a lot of people the wrong war and so the Whigs were organized to opposed him.
After Jackson’s Presidency, Jackson was still politically very powerful and acted as a kingmaker. But when he died, Whigs’ reason for existence died as well. Slavery vs Anti-Slavery became the issue and the modern Republican party arose from the ashes of the northern part of the Whig party.
Gouverneur Morris was the younger half-brother of Lewis Morris (a Signer of the Declaration of Independence) and a member of one of the wealthiest families in New York. Gouverneur was his mother's maiden name. He was a signer of the Constitution and is credited with the actual phrasing of the document. No wonder he did not feel inspired to rescue Paine from prison.
Paine, as a member of the Convention, voted in favor of sparing the life of Louis XVI because of his help to the United States during the Revolutionary War.
I’m not sure I trust this website’s version of history.
I think they are referring to the Democratic-Republican Party, which later became the Democrat Party. The other party at the time of Jefferson was the Federalist Party.
Somehow I missed class that day, a snowstorm or something?
This is the Thomas Paine I remember:
The Crisis
by Thomas Paine
THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated. Britain, with an army to enforce her tyranny, has declared that she has a right (not only to TAX) but “to BIND us in ALL CASES WHATSOEVER” and if being bound in that manner, is not slavery, then is there not such a thing as slavery upon earth. Even the expression is impious; for so unlimited a power can belong only to God....
http://www.ushistory.org/paine/crisis/c-01.htm
Victory or Death!
And I believe Mr Paine’s writing helped, big time!
However, as he grew older, he moved too far left for his compatriots to follow. He ended up a bitter, lonely man.
-PJ
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