-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
It was brutally cold in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, on 23 December 1776 when Thomas Paine released the first in a series of sixteen papers entitled The American Crisis. The first paper, which starts out “These are the times that try men’s souls,” inspired a despondent George Washington who ordered it read to his entire army on Christmas night. Later that night the army crossed the Delaware River and the next day won a small but psychologically important victory at the Battle of Trenton. This was the first time Washington’s forces had defeated a regular army in the field and the victory helped secure Washington’s command.
Paine spent the 1790’s in Europe where he embroiled himself in the French Revolution. In 1801, First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte invited Paine to dinner. Napoleon claimed he slept with a copy of Rights of Man under his pillow and went so far as to say to Paine that “a statue of gold should be erected to you in every city in the universe.” The respect was not mutual. Paine reported said that Napoleon was “the completest charlatan that ever existed.” It was during this time that Paine published the first two parts of Age of Reason.
In 1802 President Thomas Jefferson convinced Paine hold off publishing the third part and invited Paine to return to America. Jefferson, much to the chagrin of the Federalists, also invited Paine to the White House. It was Paine who encouraged Jefferson to offer Napoleon money for the French-controlled territory of Louisiana. In May 1803, Napoleon sold the Louisiana territory to the United States for $15 million.
Paine returned to the 277 acre farm in New Rochelle, which the state of New York awarded to him in 1784. However, due to his views on religion and a vindictive letter Paine sent to George Washington, he was ostracized and moved to New York City in 1805. In 1807, Paine published part three of Age of Reason. While the first two parts sold well in American, the third part did not.
Paine died in New York City in 1809 at the age of 72. Although Paine wished to be buried in the Quaker cemetery, this request was refused because of his views on religion. Paine’s burial was denied by all Christian cemeteries. Paine was interred in a corner of his New Rochelle farm. His funeral was attended by six people, one of them the casket maker, hoping to get paid.
After Paine’s death numerous Christian sects set about to impeach his sincerity and intellectual honesty. Since Paine’s father was a Quaker, the Quakers were very active in creating calumnies. One such statement involved Mary Hinsdale, a servant of Willet Hicks, a Quaker merchant and preacher. Hinsdale claims to have visited Paine’s room and engaged him in conversations and heard Paine utter “‘Oh! Lord!’ ‘Lord God!, or ‘Lord Jesus, have mercy upon me!.”
However, Nicholas Bonneville and his wife, friends who accompanied Paine on his 1802 trip from France, tell a different story. It was the Bonneville house at 59 Grove Street, New York City, where Paine spent his final days. Madame Bonneville, who was present during that time, wrote:
When he was near his end, two American clergymen came to see him, and to talk with him on religious matters. ‘Let me alone,’ said he, ‘good morning.’ He desired they should be admitted no more.
As with other recantation calumnies, the lie quickly spread and was believed. The famous English writer and admirer of Paine, William Cobbett wrote a detailed refutation to little effect. It was Cobbett who, in September 1819, traveled to America and dug up Paine’s coffin. Cobbett hastened the coffin on board a ship and took the coffin back to England where he planned to build a shrine to Paine where his body could rest in honor.
Paine’s views on the monarchy helped make him unpopular in England and found Cobbett with few supporters. Upon Cobbett’s death, his son assumed possession of Paine’s remains. The whereabouts of Paine’s remains has been lost to history.
H/T: John E. Remsburg, NY Times, Time, Donald R. McClarey, The History Guide, The Libertarian Heritage.
mespo,
I neglected to mention that no dinner party would be complete without
Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain).
OS:
Voltaire is sitting next to me at my dinner party. Much funnier than Payne.
“I should like to know which is worse: to be ravished a hundred times by pirates, and have a buttock cut off, and run the gauntlet of the Bulgarians, and be flogged and hanged in an auto-da-fe, and be dissected, and have to row in a galley — in short, to undergo all the miseries we have each of us suffered — or simply to sit here and do nothing?’
That is a hard question,’ said Candide.”
~Candide
We have all played the game of, “If you could only invite six historical people to dinner, who would they be?”
Thomas Payne would be at the top of that list. A towering intellect, and the guy Diogenes was looking for, but never found.
“I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.
“All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
“I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine. But 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.
I”t is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime. He takes up the trade of a priest for the sake of gain, and in order to qualify himself for that trade, he begins with a perjury. Can we conceive any thing more destructive to morality than this?”
Age of Reason, Part 1, Section 1
That last paragraph, sounds a lot like Repubican leaders.
Although Mr. Paine was born into a Quaker family and espoused many of the Quaker views, he also claimed that if the Almighty were a Quaker there would be no color in flowers blooming and no songs for birds to sing.
The man was a diamond in the rough.
It really matters little where you are buried, if your works gave instruction to many. Two hundred years beyond his barely noticed death Paine remains an intellectual immortal, which is a far better “epitaph” than the biggest stone monument.
This proves that morality, honesty, generousity,fighting for injustice, caring for humanity are not the religious traits but the human ones.
Religions teach repression, suppression, submission and anything else to enslave the followers with a bait called soul.
Thomas Payne was too honest for the religion.
Single revolutionaries have seldom succeeded. Only he who adapts to the true reality in which he works, exploits it and guards his tongue will succeed. Opposition to this idea is welcome, and even hoped for.
As one implied, Paine’s vision will be long in reaching realization in this world.
Myth driven? The next step is religion which embodies the myths and forcibly enforces them.
Jesus was but a product of his time, unsuccessful among his own folk, and stolen from them to found an unworthy copy decisively pointed at enslavement, not freedom of your own wisdom to be tested against reality.
Interesting article David. Thomas Paine should have a statue in every city as Napolean suggested, but instead his good works and good life were marred because of his views on mainstream religion. It is so sad that his remains appear to have been lost due to people being afraid to buck their systems.
I was engrossed for over an hour writing a comment, losing in hole, and re-writing it in briefer form.
If I thereby have repeated points made by others in this time.ít was not intentional.
Wouldn’t it be a pleasure if everyone that has read Paine lived his acts in deed…… Nah, too far fetched…..
Thanks nal, did you and Mike S get together before you published….
Nal,
Enlightening, Inspiring, and much more.
Great minds and spirits are not always given a place in the pantheon.
I suggest that we take 15 million spent for the Louisiana Purchase and erect a monument to Paine, adding a million for each year since that we have enjoyed the fruits of its acquisition. Placement in Wahington, on the mall below the Congressional steps.
Is it ironic that we used virtual genocide of the native population, contrary to the noble words in our founding documents, to fulfill the exploitation??
And his fate is proof that being outstanding does not have much effect, contrary to our convictions about the effects of the “Rugged Individual” and the rugged’s importance to our progress. Paine, a giant, was derisively denied in his lifetime and since, as to being a factor of progress. Or of influence.
Our souls and our nation are poorer for it.
Special thanks for the links.
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A short thought was given the form of the monument, especially in light to the others to our FFs. It came to mind the pyramid with the all-seeing eye at its top, which is found on our currency. Can’t you see the massive monolith crowned with shining neon eye rotating at the top.
Fortunately, I recalled how well this could be a symbol of our monolithic surveillance police state, and its all-seeing eye. But perhaps an appropriate tribute to Paine and his fight for mankind, That we failed is not his fault.
Beverelliee:
” Religion is not bad, people are.”
**********************
Who created religion?
BTW here’s why Paine was a Quaker:
“Could the peaceable principle of the Quakers be universally established, arms and the art of war would be wholly extirpated: But we live not in a world of angels…I am thus far a Quaker, that I would gladly agree with all the world to lay aside the use of arms, and settle matters by negotiation: but unless the whole will, the matter ends, and I take up my musket and thank Heaven He has put it in my power.”
― Thomas Paine
The man was a fount of wisdom. Not just a national treasure, but rather one for all of humanity.
“He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.” – Thomas Paine
Why did he want to be buried in a Quaker cemetery if he was not religious? I don’t quite understand. Perhaps he could never come to terms with a religion that he loved but was forced upon him as a child. I believe children should be exposed to religion but never have it forced upon them. I always made it clear to my daughter that while I was raised without religion I wanted to raise her within religion. What religion she decides to follow, if any, as an adult is up to her. Religion is not bad, people are…
“The opinions I have advanced … are the effect of the most clear and long-established conviction that the Bible and the Testament are impositions upon the world, that the fall of man, the account of Jesus Christ being the Son of God, and of his dying to appease the wrath of God, and of salvation, by that strange means, are all fabulous inventions, dishonorable to the wisdom and power of the Almighty; that the only true religion is Deism, by which I then meant, and mean now, the belief of one God, and an imitation of his moral character, or the practice of what are called moral virtues – and that it was upon this only (so far as religion is concerned) that I rested all my hopes of happiness hereafter. So say I now – and so help me God.” (regarding his views as expressed in The Age of Reason)
On the Bible being an allegorical myth describing astrology, Mr Paine wrote:
“The Christian religion is a parody on the worship of the sun, in which they put a man called Christ in the place of the sun, and pay him the adoration originally payed to the sun.”
The speculation put forward by many historians down through the centuries is that Thomas Paine’s steadfast opposition to slavery also led to his unpopularity with influential leaders of the American revolution. Further, his dim views of Washington, published in an open letter, caused many of the common folk to turn against him.
When he died, every single religious organization refused permission for his burial and thus he was buried on his farm. Only 6 people attended the funeral and one of them is said to be the casket maker looking to be paid. Two other attendees were identified at the time as “grateful freedmen”.
I’m going to hazard a guess that things would not be much different for Mr. Paine if he lived today for he would still be a man ahead of his time.
“The world is my country,
all mankind are my brethren,
and to do good is my religion.”
~ Thomas Paine
Amen, Brother Payne.
“The whereabouts of Paine’s remains has been lost to history.”
Except for his writings.
When I croak I want to be cremated and my ashes scattered off the Mississippi River bridge. If everyone is a sinner then why would I want even partial sinners praying for my sould. Where can I buy The Age of Reason?
When you die and are in the grave on the day of the burial you dont look up through the dirt to see how many people are standing up there praying for you. If the dogs come around and pee you dont know that either.
If this guy was alive he would be mad about the news from Indiana where the nurse of 21 years tenure gets fired from the hospital for refusing a flu shot on religious and other grounds. As a person in a prior life I contracted polio from a polio shot. I would like to take a shot at the school principal who set up the polio vacinne program. I got over it. Many did not.