The Transatlantic Republican: Thomas Paine and the Age of Revolutions (Amsterdam Monographs in American Studies 12)

187 Pages·2004·1.1 MB·English

by  Bernard Vincent

The Transatlantic Republican
Thomas Paine
and the Age of Revolutions
AMSTERDAM MONOGRAPHS IN AMERICAN STUDIES
12
General Editor
Rob Kroes
Amerika Instituut
University of Amsterdam
The Transatlantic Republican
Thomas Paine
and the Age of Revolutions
Bernard Vincent
Amsterdam - New York, NY 2005
The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO
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ISBN: 90-420-1614-0
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Acknowledgments

Various parts of this book have appeared previously in other versions, as follows:

Chapter 1 originally appeared in French as “La stratégie du temps dans Common
Sense,” in Autre temps, autre espace: essais sur l’Amérique pré-industrielle, ed. Élise
Marienstras and Barbara Karsky (Nancy: Presses Universitaires de Nancy, 1986).
Chapter 2 originally appeared as “Thomas Paine, Freemasonry and the American
Revolution,” in Bulletin of the Thomas Paine Society (UK) 1 (spring 1988).
Chapter 3 originally appeared as “Myth and Reality: Americans in Paris during the
French Revolution,” in Les Américains et la Révolution française (Paris: Editions de
la Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1989).
Chapter 4 originally appeared as “Thomas Paine and the French Revolution.,” in the
Huguenot-Thomas Paine Historical Association Pamphlet (New Rochelle) (summer-
fall 1989 and winter-spring 1990).
Chapter 5 originally appeared in Plantation Society in the Americas 3, no. 2 (1993).
Chapter 6 originally appeared as “A National Hero in Transit: The Problem of
Thomas Paine's American Citizenship,” in Prospero (Rivista di culture anglo-
germaniche (Trieste) 2 (1995).
Chapter 7 originally appeared in Qwerty (Pau) (October 1995).
Chapter 8 originally appeared as “Thomas Paine’s Agrarian Justice: A Prophecy for
our Times,” in Sources (Orléans) 6 (fall 1998).
Chapter 9 originally appeared in The Red Badges of Courage: Wars and Conflicts in
American Culture, ed. Biancamaria Pisapia, Ugo Rubeo & Anna Scacchi (Rome:
Bulzoni Editore, 1998).
Chapter 11 originally appeared in Predecessors: Intellectual Lineages in American
Studies, ed.. Rob Kroes (Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1999).
These contributions are hereby reprinted, with minor changes, by permission of the
publishers.

The author wishes to express special thanks to Rob Kroes for his unremitting support
and encouragement, as well as to John Goulet and Marc Niemeyer, who accepted to
read the manuscript with a critical eye.
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Contents

Introduction
Storming the “Bastille of Words”: Tom Paine’s
Revolution in Writing 1

Part I. Paine, America and France
I The Strategy of Time in Common Sense 21
II Thomas Paine, the Masonic Order, and the American
Revolution 35
III From Fact to Myth: The Americans in Paris during
the French Revolution 65
IV Paine’s “Share” in the French Revolution 85
V Thomas Paine, the Louisiana Purchase,
and the Rights of Man 97
VI A National of Nowhere: The Problem of Thomas
Paine’s American Citizenship 109

Part II. Paine and the Enlightenment
VII Thomas Paine and the Issue of Universal Suffrage 117
VIII Paine’s Agrarian Justice and the Birth
of the Welfare State 125
IX A Quaker with a Difference: Tom Paine’s Republican
Rhetoric of War and Peace 137
X From the Rights of Man to the Rights of God: Thomas
Paine’s Ultimate Challenge 143
XI A Pioneer with a Difference: Thomas Paine and Early
‘American Studies’ 155
Bibliography 167
Index 173
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Introduction

Storming the “Bastille of Words”:
Tom Paine’s Revolution in Writing

Thomas Jefferson considered Thomas Paine (1737-1809) as the only
man of letters of his own generation that wrote better than he did.
Commenting on Common Sense, he had this remark: “No writer has
exceeded Paine in ease and familiarity of style, in perspicuity of
expression, happiness of elucidation, and in simple and unassuming
language. In this he may be compared with Dr. Franklin, and indeed
his Common Sense was, for a while, believed to have been written by
Dr. Franklin.”1 Franklin himself added: “Others can rule, many can
fight, but only Thomas Paine can write for us the English tongue.”2
Yet Paine would not practice art for art’s sake. Everything in him
was focused on action, on the possibility of changing the established
order of things. He believed in the subversive virtue and historical
function of writing. His only purpose as a writer was to help public
opinion evolve, convinced as he was that a change in the minds of
people would sooner or later result in a transformation of society.
Such was, to a large extent, the destiny of his first pamphlet Common
Sense, whose outright plea in favor of independence brought about “a
wonderful change . . . in the minds of men” (George Washington) 3,
and was even deemed by General Charles Lee powerful enough, “in
concurrence with the transcendent folly and wickedness of the
[English] ministry,” to give “the ‘coup-de-grace’ to Great Britain.” 4
Similarly, when the French Revolution broke out, Paine viewed the
event as the result of what pre-Revolutionary authors had
prophetically expressed in their writings. As he put it in Rights of

1 Andrew A. Lipscomb, ed., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (Washington, 1903-
1907), 15: 305.
2 Quoted in Bulletin of Thomas Paine Friends 4, no. 3 (August 2003): 3.
3 Jared Sparks, ed., The Writings of George Washington (Boston, 1833-37), 3: 347.
4 Jared Sparks, ed., The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution
(Boston, 1829–30), 1: 136.