Thomas Paine: Apostle of Liberty
2021-10-11 · Guest: Harlow Unger (Historian and Author) · 52:10
Life and influence of Thomas Paine
Bob Zadek interviews historian Harlow Unger about the life and influence of Thomas Paine. They discuss how Paine’s writings, specifically Common Sense and The American Crisis, galvanized the common man and provided the intellectual and moral support necessary for the American Revolution to succeed.
Topics: Thomas Paine, American Revolution, Common Sense, The American Crisis, Harlow Unger, Founding Fathers, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, French Revolution, The Age of Reason, Divine Right of Kings
Speakers:
- Bob Zadek — Host
- Harlow Unger — Historian and Author
Introduction to Harlow Unger [00:17]
Bob Zadek: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Bob Zadek Show, the longest-running live libertarian talk radio show on all of radio. The show this Sunday, a show of ideas, never once the show of attitude. Thank you so much for listening this Sunday morning.
This morning, I’m happy to welcome back to the show one of my tutors. We’re going to be spending an hour with Harlow Unger. He is an accomplished American historian. He has written 27 books, including 10 biographies of the Founding Fathers, plus many other books on similar or related topics.
Harlow first visited with us about 10 years ago when he had just written a book on the Boston Tea Party. It was a book that caught my attention. I realized I hadn’t known much about the Boston Tea Party other than the fact that it happened and a lot of tea was thrown into Boston Harbor. Out of curiosity, I read the book. I found it to be a page-turner, one where I learned a lot, including, I discovered, that one of my heroes—without much factual support, just a hero because he was around that time—it was Samuel Adams, who I thought was one of the—he was certainly one of the founding generation. He was one of the founders, and he sort of stood in the aura of all the other founders who I admired, respected, and learned from. In reading the book, I discovered, well, maybe I gave him a little too much credit. I cut him a little too much slack, and my opinion of Sam Adams changed dramatically.
The point of my telling you the story is, even those of us who believe or who enjoy thinking that we understand the lessons of 240 years ago of the founding era, there is so much to be learned and so much original scholarship yet to be done on that much-written-about period in our history.
The Importance of Thomas Paine [03:01]
Bob Zadek: With that introduction, I’ll let you know this morning’s topic. We are going to be meeting, learning about, and perhaps adjusting our opinion of another very important member of the founding generation. Thomas Paine. Most of us know—what do we know about Tom Paine? We know about two sentences. We know that he wrote Common Sense. We know that—or we believe we know—a lot of people read Common Sense, and we know that it had an effect upon the times of the American Revolutionary era. That’s kind of what we know. Tom Paine is little more than a name because, for whatever reason—Harlow may help us understand it—Tom Paine has not gotten the attention of many historians. There’s much to know about Thomas Paine and much to learn, but he has been, for whatever reason, not written about as much as many of the other founders. And he was—his influence and his effect upon the Revolutionary era is quite profound, as we will learn.
In short, Thomas Paine is an interesting founder, one from whom we can learn even today. He is just plain interesting. And when you have an interesting character during the Revolutionary or any other era, it is wonderful to find a historian who can convey all that is interesting, all that is perhaps controversial about any subject of biography. And none is better at doing that than this morning’s guest, Harlow Unger. So Harlow, thank you so much for your book this morning and thank you so much for giving us an hour of your time to share with us what you have learned and what you would like us to understand about an important member of the founding generation, Thomas Paine.
And I’ll open up our discussion this morning, Harlow, with a question. Obviously, a leading question, one that I suspect you will enjoy responding to. Thomas Paine was self-taught, uneducated by certain standards. And Thomas Paine has, as a writer, wrote two books, one of which was incredibly controversial and, I’ll say to use a common phrase, disliked and held him in low regard among the public. So it wasn’t a very popular book. He has written two books and some pamphlets. One book was not popular at the time. So what is there about Thomas Paine, as we open up our discussion, that warranted your attention and warrants our attention as your audience?
Challenging the Divine Right of Kings [06:26]
Harlow Unger: Well, first of all, thank you for inviting me on your show. It’s always a pleasure to talk to you and your listeners. Thomas Paine wrote two books, as you said, but one was at the end of his life and the other was at his most productive years and made him one of the most popular figures in the Western world among ordinary people. He was everyman’s hero.
A number of great writers—John Locke in England, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire in France—had written profound works that had aroused intellectuals and literate political leaders in their works. This was the Age of Enlightenment in which people began to realize that they had certain rights, as the Declaration of Independence summed up: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. So Locke, Rousseau, and Voltaire had aroused intellectuals and literate political leaders.
But Thomas Paine was an ordinary fellow. He grew up in the working class, and when he learned to write, he wrote for everyman—literate or not, poor, rich, noble or ignoble. And the question he asked many questions to them: Why, he asked, should someone rule over us simply because he is someone else’s child? So that was the first bubble he tried to burst: the idea of divine right of kings, which he said dated from the time of William the Conqueror, nothing more than a thug from France who sailed over to England and browbeat a bunch of laborers along the shore and said he’s going to be king. That was the first king, and he made a deal with the Anglican Church, which was also seeking power in England. And they created this idea of divine right of kings, that God appointed William the king and therefore his offspring were entitled to rule.
Tom Paine went the opposite direction and asked in his books, why should someone rule over us simply because he is someone else’s child? And of course, he called the notion absurd. It defied common sense. And Common Sense became the title he used in his first widely read pamphlet that really firmed up in the minds of Americans—of ordinary Americans as well as the more educated Americans—why the Americans should seek independence from Britain. To that idea of divine right of kings, he added the subsequently absurd notion: Why should people on a little tiny island across an ocean govern a huge continent? That too seemed absurd to him, and of course, he put that in the minds of Americans and really pulled Americans together at the beginning of the War of Independence.
The Common Man and the Revolution [10:01]
Harlow Unger: The War of Independence had already started, of course. The shots had been fired at Lexington, and Patrick Henry had exploded the air with his famous speech, “Give me liberty or give me death.” But the idea of independence did not capture the minds of all Americans. Most Americans were perfectly happy to work. First of all, most Americans did not own any land. They were perfectly happy to get a job and earn their bed and board. The rich people, on the other hand, were quite up in arms about independence because England was starting to tax them, and that had not been the deal that England had made with the original settlers. England had made a deal with the original settlers: You go over to America to the wilderness, you clear the wilderness, plant the things we need, ship them over here, and we’ll buy everything you ship over here, and everything we pay you will be tax-free.
Well, after a seven years’ war from 1756 to 1763, England was broke and needed money. They tried taxing their own farmers, and their farmers rebelled. There were farmers’ riots all across England. So they stopped taxing their own farmers and decided they’d better tax Americans who were paying no taxes. And that’s when the rebellion in America really at first was led by very, very wealthy people who were affected by the taxes. After all, the laborer wasn’t affected by the taxes. The taxes only affected the goods being shipped to England, and under the deal, Americans could not ship their goods anywhere else. They had to put their goods on British ships, and the British ships carried their goods to England.
So that was the real thrust of the elite. And it was Thomas Paine who gave the American people other ideas—commoners—gave them other ideas that were eventually included in the preamble of the Declaration of Independence: that all men are created equal and that they’re entitled to certain inalienable rights, including life, liberty, and as it was finally written, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The original words in the rough draft were life, liberty, and property, because the rough draft was made to rally the rich people. Most people did not own property, so they changed the words to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to engage the common man in the fight for independence.
Bob Zadek: And I want to just emphasize that, if I may. It’s not so generally understood that at its inception, there was clearly such a concept of the elites. And the elites had the power, had the wealth, had the education. They were elites in every sense of the word. And at its origins—and there’s wonderful books written about the origin of the American Revolution, Bernard Bailyn wrote a wonderful book on that, it’s fascinating reading—at the origin of the revolution, it did not capture the common man, the yeoman. The common men had come to America and they were enjoying an enormous amount of freedom as compared to what they left behind, and they were quite content. And they considered themselves to be British citizens of England, governed by the king. That was the natural order of things. And they were unaffected by the taxation because, as Harlow said, they weren’t taxed. So they couldn’t really get their arms around the need to break from England. They didn’t feel any of the negative aspects that others with wealth and power might have felt.
The Disconnected Colonies [14:44]
Harlow Unger: Well, there’s another element too. Most of the workers in America, skilled tradespeople like Paul Revere, could earn their own living independently because they were craftsmen. But most workers, most who were employed, were indentured workers. So they weren’t thinking of independence on a national scale. They were, in effect, bought for a period of at least seven years by their employers. And they were not independent in any sense of the word. So they weren’t thinking outside the household in which they lived. They were glad to have enough to eat and housing, and they were trying to work off their own independence from their employers who owned them. And of course, the Black population was completely enslaved. So ordinary man really wasn’t thinking in global terms in any sense of the word.
Plus, in America, the provinces, as they were called, that later became states—the provinces were all independent politically. They had nothing to do with each other. Until the First Continental Congress, the governors and rulers of each of these provinces didn’t know each other, had no connections with each other. They were 13 independent political units with very, very little—very few ties to each other. Occasionally there were some trade ties necessitated by the need to import and export via a neighboring state’s ports. James Madison said that New Jersey, when they were talking about the Constitution, they were debating the terms of the Constitution, said New Jersey is like a man bleeding from both arms because New Jersey had no ports. So they had to export and import via either New York’s port or Philadelphia’s port. And both of those provinces taxed the goods that came and went through their ports. They had duties on them. So this was not a cohesive society here that pulled together until Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense and that circulated across the country—across what would become the country.
Paine’s Early Life and Quaker Influence [19:35]
Bob Zadek: Now, just to answer the question I started the show with. Thomas Paine wrote two books. One wasn’t very—didn’t make people very happy or very happy with him or with the subject matter. So one true bestseller, if you will, to use a contemporary term, not a term that was used at the time. But the importance of Common Sense was, as we had said earlier, the revolution, while it certainly had momentum at the time, it didn’t have the mass acceptance of the population. They were less interested in this dramatic change in their lives, breaking from what was called and Paine kind of ridiculed the term, the “mother country.” He made good use of that in a somewhat sarcastic and cynical way, showing they were hardly a mother, they didn’t behave very motherly. So Paine used that concept. But breaking with the mother country, Paine made it a popular concept. And after all, who was going to serve in the army? Who was going to provide foods for the military to fight the battles? Well, it was going to be the common people, the people who needed to be behind the revolution but were not 100%.
Harlow, I remember reading at one time and it sounded kind of right to me, that during the revolutionary period, certainly during the early stages, about only a third of the country—although statistics are very rough, obviously—was firmly behind the revolution. A third were neutral, whoever seemed to be winning, that cohort favored. And a third were Tories or loyalists and supported remaining subject to English rule. So there was only, if those statistics are kind of right, it was only about a third of the—not Americans, they weren’t Americans at the time—but those who lived in the colonies, only a third supported the revolution at the beginning. So we needed a battle to be successfully waged for the hearts and minds of the common residents of the colonies. And that missing piece was supplied primarily, I think it’s fair to say, by Thomas Paine and his writing.
Now, give us some statistics. How popular was Common Sense? And after all, as you point out in your book, only I think you mentioned 5% of the population were literate. So the concept of a book being very popular that so many people couldn’t even read is kind of strange. So tell us about—give us a perspective of how popular and therefore influential the book was.
Harlow Unger: Remember, it wasn’t a book. It was a thin pamphlet. And the way printers distributed their pamphlets or newspapers or whatever they published to the general public was to put these broadsheets—in other words, the big piece of paper that comes off the press—inside their windows, pasted inside the windows. And crowds would gather, and somebody who was literate would start reading it to the crowd that was gathering around the windowpane of the publisher, of the printer. So that’s how it got distributed.
Nonetheless, it became the best-selling printed item in the Western world outside of the Bible at that time. Nothing sold more. It was sold all over the colonies, it was sold in Canada, it was sold in France, in Britain. It was hailed as much in France as it was in America because they too were living under the rule of a divinely appointed king, and they too were faced with hunger, they too were faced with taxation. So they were faced with many of the same problems that we were. And it was read across the Western world where people just realized that what he said was indeed common sense. And that’s what pulled Americans together so that when the local landowners—and they were responsible for raising an army, the Continental Army—there was really no such thing. It was Washington that pulled different militias from the different states together. Each state had to raise its own army, and within each state, the governor would turn to landowners who had indentured workers working for them. But they had to be paid to serve, and they gladly served because they’d make more money doing that without losing their money as indentured servants. But they only had to serve for usually three months at a time because they had to get back to the farms and do their work on the farms.
The Crisis of 1776 [35:29]
Harlow Unger: So there was enough interest in the revolution now to warrant organizing an army, and there were enough volunteers at first. And at first, it was a disaster. The British landed in New York, they absolutely massacred Washington’s army in Brooklyn. They crossed into Manhattan, which was called New York Island at that time, sent Washington’s troops racing in retreat. They were retreating so quickly and so haphazardly that the British buglers were playing the hunting call to mock the soldiers who were fleeing. Washington was just beyond belief in anger that these were the troops the different states had sent him to try to fight for independence. So he again had to retreat, left New York Island into Westchester County to the north. There again, a terrible defeat at White Plains. Crossed the Hudson River into New Jersey. Terrible defeat there. Early winter storms began to break out in the autumn of that year, and his army had retreated to the south and then to the west across Jersey and finally across the Delaware River to Pennsylvania—to the Pennsylvania shore of the Delaware River, where it looked like the end of the war.
The British and the Hessians, their Hessian mercenaries, would have crossed and massacred them, but Washington had the good foresight to tell his troops as they were retreating to take every rowboat they could find along the bank and take it over with them to the west bank so that the pursuing troops wouldn’t have any way to cross the river. So there they were camped on the west bank of the Delaware River. Washington was preparing an attack on Trenton, but morale was so low he didn’t know how he would do it.
And Tom Paine showed up with a rough draft of an essay that he called American Crisis and showed it to Washington. Washington loved it, as did his adjutant. And Paine galloped down to Philadelphia to the printer, had it printed up, and galloped back up north to the Delaware River encampment. It was distributed among the troops. The officers were told to read it to all the troops. And it began with stirring words to these really bedraggled, discouraged troops and so encouraged them with the words, so inspired them that they crossed the Delaware River on Christmas night. There were ice floes, it was snowing, bitter cold. They crossed and they won the great battle of Trenton, which really turned American morale around because it showed that our—these farmers could fight and defeat this brilliantly trained and equipped organized army from Britain and Germany.
That first essay, that first American Crisis, began with the famous words, “These are the times that try men’s souls.” And it went on from there to inspire the troops. And it became the first of 31 essays that Paine would write during the course of the Revolutionary War. They were each entitled American Crisis, American Crisis Number 1, American Crisis Number 2, and each carried a number after it. It was always as morale began to fall that he would write one of these essays to lift and boost morale. And each one was signed “Common Sense” so that it appealed to the ordinary soldier on the ground who was often hungry, ill-clad, badly armed. It picked up his morale and made him feel that he could win, that we could win as a nation.
Financial Sacrifice and the French Revolution [42:16]
Harlow Unger: And Thomas Paine could have made a lot of money from these essays. He turned every penny over to Washington to send to Congress to buy food and supplies and everything for the war effort. And at the end of the war, Thomas Paine was broke. He was as broke as he was when he first landed in America. So much so that Washington invited him to camp, to Washington’s army camp, to stay where he could at least have food and shelter until he picked himself up. And Washington then wrote to the governors of each state and to the President of Congress saying, “We’ve got to do something for Thomas Paine. He refused all the money he could have made and gave it to the war effort.” And so James Madison arranged for Congress to give Paine a sum of money, I think $200 or $300. Some states did nothing, but some of the states did do something. Most notably, New York State gave Paine a 250-acre farm just north of New York City in New Rochelle, New York, a farm that had been owned by a Tory farmer who had fled and left the United States. So that farm became Thomas Paine’s first owned home and his last one. That was the only home he ever owned. The cottage he lived in is still there, and it’s the site of the Thomas Paine National Association, which maintains it today.
But again, he earned nothing from his writings. And it was shortly after the war that he began writing his first true book, which was called The Rights of Man. And that upset kings and queens all over the world. It upset the royalties. In effect, it took the words of the Declaration of Independence, the spirit of the American Revolution, turned it into a book that inspired the French. It set off some rioting in England. It was the first book that he ever wrote, and it made him a good sum of money that allowed him to live comfortably after that point. And it inspired the French Revolution so much that when the revolutionary government of France took control and overthrew the king, they named him an honorary citizen of France and a member of the French National Assembly. That’s how inspiring he was to the French. And he couldn’t speak a word of French, so everything had to be translated, but they loved him.
The Age of Reason and Paine’s Legacy [46:39]
Bob Zadek: Now, I should mention, it should be mentioned, of course, although we haven’t got time to get into it in detail, but this is like a teaser to further induce or invite the audience to purchase and read the book, is that of course he was made an honorary citizen and invited to participate in the French Assembly and then came within an eyebrow of being guillotined, saved only by I think the death of Robespierre. But the story of that, we haven’t got time for it, but he then had to leave France in a hurry because he was in danger and then returned ultimately to the United States and away from France where the revolution had run away from many people and he was in danger of being killed.
Now, Thomas Paine, we haven’t got time regretfully to get into the furor which The Age of Reason caused, which was a polemic against organized religion. He was not a fan of organized religion, and that book did not endear him to the American public at large and certainly not to many in the American elite. So he did not enjoy overwhelming popularity in the later years of his life after he wrote The Age of Reason, which he was most proud of. So he had—his life was checkered. He didn’t just live in glory from his arrival at the shores of Philadelphia till his death. And he didn’t have a lot of friends. Indeed, I think Washington remained a strong supporter of his. Isn’t that true through most of his life? Washington did not forget, as Washington’s loyalty was very important, and he did not forget.
Harlow Unger: Washington died long before Age of Reason. Washington died in 1799. In effect, Thomas Paine—his Age of Reason was widely read. First he wrote The Rights of Man, which was widely circulated. It helped trigger the French Revolution. The French Revolution started out as a democracy with a constitution that he and Jefferson helped write with Lafayette. But then radicals took over the revolution, and he then was sentenced to die because he fought the idea of executing the king, saying the king was very popular in America and that they were endangering the friendship with America by executing the man who had sent the army to help free the American people. It was while he was in prison that he started writing The Age of Reason, in which he pointed out—which he saw Christianity as simply a continuation of the age of mythology, that the Greeks had had Zeus as their god, the Romans came with their group of gods, Jupiter, the Jews came with Moses, and then the Christians came with Christ three centuries after he allegedly lived. And he was—obviously devout Christians and especially royalists hated The Age of Reason. But Jefferson, Madison, most of the founders—Washington as I say was dead by then—most of the founders thought it was terrific.
Bob Zadek: Harlow, I’m sorry that we’re going to have to interrupt. I don’t want the music to cut you off before I get a chance to thank you. We’re going to run out of time. And I wanted to remind our audience we’ve been speaking with Harlow Unger, who has just written a wonderful biography of Thomas Paine. It’s Harlow’s 27th book. I commend all of his books. Harlow has selected many founders who have been under-recognized in American history writing—James Monroe and many others. His list of books that he has written will give you insights into the founding era that are not, in my opinion, otherwise available. I commend all of those books to our audience, and they will place you in the times of the founding era. It’s a wonderful way to remain loyal to the founding era and to learn from it for the present. So Harlow, thank you so much for your scholarship and for sharing your insights on Thomas Paine, quite an important and interesting fellow. And the history of the founding era is incomplete unless you study the life and writings of Thomas Paine. Thank you.
Harlow Unger: Just mention that the title of the book is Thomas Paine and the Clarion Call for American Independence, and that you can see all my books on my website, harlowungerbooks.com.
Bob Zadek: Thank you so much, Harlow. Thank you for your work, and thank you to my friends out there for sharing an hour with us this Sunday morning. Have a good rest of the week.