Citizen Tom Paine (14 page)

Now he was Common Sense.

One night, walking alone in the cool evening, trying one street of Philadelphia and then another, wanting nothing at the moment, not the warmth and companionship of a coffee house, not the hot sustenance of drink, not a woman or a man, but only himself in a proper perspective, Tom Paine turned over in his mind what he had done.

Not abruptly can a small man reach for the stars. Christ was a carpenter, and he, Paine, was only a staymaker, an exciseman, a cobbler, a weaver. “Paine, Paine, be humble,” he told himself, and in his thoughts going back to the speech of his childhood:

“Thee are nothing, dirt thee are, dirt, dirt, and both cheeks have been slapped. Thee have been humbled, thee face in the filth—” And he found himself laughing and praying, “God, O my God, how thou hast exalted me.” Love inside of him was without measure, and his strength too without measure. Again and again, he clenched and unclenched his hands. Men were brothers. “Oh, my brothers, my brothers,” he whispered.

He said, “No, I'm not going mad—”

Benjamin Rush had pointed out to him, “Revolution, Paine, is a technique which we must learn with no history. We are the first, and that's why we blunder so. We have no precedent, but only a theory, and that theory is that strength lies in the hands of the armed masses. I am not speaking of ideals, of right and wrong, of good and bad, not even of a morality, for in the last analysis all those things are catchwords and the only implement is strength.”

Paine nodded. Slowly and painfully, he had been coming around to the same point of view. “The strength was always with the people,” he said.

“Of course—firearms don't change that. But there was never, in this world, a technique for revolution. There was a technique for tyranny and strength implemented it, but always the strength of a few. The strength of many is revolution, but curiously enough mankind has gone through several thousand years of slavery without realizing that fact. The little men have pleaded, but when before have they stood up with arms in their hands and said, This is mine!”

“There were never the circumstances before.”

“Perhaps. It's true that we have here a nation of armed men who know how to use their arms; we have a Protestant tradition of discussion as opposed to autocracy; we have some notion of the dignity of man; and above all we have land, land enough for everyone. Those are fortunate circumstances, but now we must learn technique. The man with the iron glove has held this world for God knows how many thousands of years, and in how short a time do you suppose we can take it back from him—not to mention holding it?”

“I don't like to think about that.”

“You must. We are learning a bloody, dreadful business, this technique of revolution, but we must learn it well. You wrote a little book, and because of that men will know why they fight. You wanted independence, and we're going to have it, mark my word. Six months ago you were rolled in the dirt because people knew what you were writing; two weeks ago a man in New York was almost tarred and feathered because he planned to publish an answer to
Common Sense
. That's not morality; that's strength, the same kind of strength the tyrants used, only a thousand times more powerful. Now we must learn how to use that strength, how to control it. We need leaders, a program, a purpose, but above all we need revolutionists.”

Paine nodded.

“What are you going to do?”

“Join Washington,” Paine said.

“I think you're right. Keep your eyes open, and don't be discouraged. We are a free people, but we are only a few generations away from the slaves. We will whimper and cry and groan, and we will want to give up. We are not an orderly people, Paine, and I don't think we will make good soldiers. In a little while we may forget what we are fighting for and throw away our muskets. Remember that—always remember that.”

Fame sat uneasily on his shoulders, and suddenly Philadelphia was repugnant to him, a fat, satisfied town that talked eternally, criticized vehemently, and did almost nothing at all. On the streets and in the coffee houses, where Paine's book was fast becoming another Bible, talk of independence was free and easy, but in the Assembly the eastern delegates still held out against it. The frontier delegates stalked the streets with black faces, but there was nothing they could do.

A banquet was given for Paine; he did not have the money for a new coat, for lace cuffs, and he would neither beg nor borrow. He came as he was, shabby, without even a wig, sitting glumly at the table, thinking, “I told Franklin I was going, I told Rush—why don't I go?” But it didn't matter so much; the armies were sitting idle. Of course, give a thing a chance and it will blow over. On the table, as a centerpiece, was a monster pasteboard replica of
Common Sense
.

“Oh, the glory that this stranger has given our cause!” said Thaddeus Green, the toastmaster. “Oh, words of his that are fire, live forever!” Green had come in his militia uniform, blue and yellow. “Will not freemen lay down their lives gladly?” he cried.

Paine was getting drunk. He drank thirty-two toasts, and lay with his head in his plate, his mouth drooling. Almost everyone else was drunk, snoring, telling dirty stories, pawing the waitresses, dirtying their fine and fanciful uniforms, their lace and silk, shouting suddenly:

“God damn King George!”

“Liberty forever.”

“Like this,” Paine muttered. “Here the glory of free men.”

Jefferson had asked him to come. He sat there in a corner of the room, feeling like a fool, his hands on his knees, while Jefferson explained how Washington had reacted toward reading the book.

“You've done a great thing for your country—” Jefferson said.

Paine could not help thinking how empty and stupid words were. What was his country? What was he to these suave, aristocratic, lace-draped intellectual democrats? Why did he always feel like a fool?

“Naturally, you said what we've all been thinking,” Jefferson went on. “What we've been saying too. Yet you have to say a thing so men will understand it and comprehend it, even a man like Washington, and he's no fool, you understand. Your book says it—and to everyone. Now we're committed to independence.”

“I was waiting,” Paine said. “I was never really certain.”

“And what will you do now that you are satisfied—and I trust you are?”

“Join the army.”

“Is that wise?”

Paine shrugged; to have his decision weighed so, back and forth, with the supercilious attitude that no man could serve this movement by taking a gun in his hand, but only by sitting here in Philadelphia and mouthing words, was breaking down both his nerve and his determination. Slowly, he was becoming aware that these great and important men of the colonies, even Jefferson, whose reason was a creed and a religion, looked upon him as a sort of performing animal, a peasant to represent the numberless peasants who would make up the army of rebellion, a clever rabble rouser to be used for their purposes.

When in the newspapers someone attacked the revolutionary movement, the conception of an independent America, and Paine answered hoarsely and vehemently, there was a chorus of polite handclapping.

“We're in committee now,” Jefferson said, “Franklin, Adams, Sherman, Livingston—I am making the draft of the declaration, purely and simply for Independence. I want you to know that I am using
Common Sense
, that I am proud to.”

“But not proud enough to include me in committee,” Paine thought, yet with a sort of satisfaction that he was out of that, that he could use himself according to his own desires. And he said, “When do you expect to have a vote on it?”

“In July, perhaps.”

“And then it will be the United States of America?”

This time Jefferson smiled and shrugged. “We owe a great deal to you,” he nodded.

“Nothing.”

Handling the future with assurance, Jefferson said easily, “Remember, Paine, if out of this comes something real and concrete, a republican state, you will not find it ungrateful.”

Then it was done, and the bright new world was made, and in the teeming, excited city of Philadelphia there were few who doubted that the people would rise to support this grandiloquent, rhetorical, generalized declaration of independence. Glory is born in July, 1776, they told each other. They paraded, singing that fantastic bit of doggerel that had attached itself to the army of the revolution, Yankee Doodle went to London Town—and who knew but that they would all be there? Invade Canada? Why not? And why not England? And why not the world, to make this the new Christianity? Of course, when Jefferson's first draft of the declaration had been submitted to the Continental Congress, Benjamin Harrison leaped up and roared, “There is but one word in this paper which I approve, and that is the word Congress.” But on the other hand, hadn't Caesar Rodney ridden eighty miles in twelve hours, killing horses, just to be on the floor of the house on July fourth and sign the document?

Paine was honored; hurt and honored, when a few days before the presentation of the document Jefferson had come to him with a sudden tenderness and said:

“Let me read you this.”

“Read it if you want to,” Paine said.

“It's at the end, the summing up, and you did it. My God, Thomas, we don't know our debt to you. History is like bad housekeeping entered into an account book.”

“Why don't you get on with it?” Paine thought.

“We, therefore,” Jefferson read, “the representatives of the United States of America—” He glanced up at the slope-shouldered, unkempt man who had given him that phrase. “How does it sound?”

“Read it!”

“—in general Congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare that these united colonies are, and of good right ought to be, free and independent States; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and that all political connection between them and the states of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved; and that, as free and independent States, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.…”

“Well, it's done,” Paine said.

“Yes—”

Paine was thinking that now there was nothing left to keep him here, he could go away.

Roberdeau, general of Pennsylvania militia, was a portly man with a face as red as a beet, a huge pair of haunches, and a glorious uniform of blue and yellow. A successful merchant, he was quite sure he would be an even more successful soldier, and once he had decided to lead a detachment to Amboy, south and west of Staten Island, he was satisfied that General Washington's troubles were over. He offered Paine the post as his personal secretary. The Associators, as the militia called themselves, had drilled for a good many months now, and Roberdeau pointed out to Paine that to be with this brigade was something of a signal honor.

“I'll come,” Paine said. “I don't want any commission. If I can serve you as a secretary, well enough.”

“Such things as commissions can be arranged. I would, personally, prefer to see you as a major. More dignity in such a post than as a captain or a lieutenant. Aside from that, have you a uniform?”

Paine confessed that he hadn't.

“Important, my boy, important. Only with uniformity can we inject into the ranks a certain military tradition, such as gleamed like a halo around the great Marlborough and Frederick of Prussia.”

“I'll do without one,” Paine said, thinking of how those who had seen Washington's army reported that there was not a uniform to a brigade.

“If it's a matter of money …”

“It's not a matter of money,” Paine said.

Bell had given him fifty copies of
Common Sense;
that, with his rusty old musket, powder, shot, a water bottle, and a bag of cornmeal, made up Paine's luggage. He trudged with the rest, partly out of desire, partly because he could not afford a horse. Roberdeau, who took Paine's abasement as a personal affront, did not talk to him for hours at a time; Paine hardly noticed that. Nothing else mattered but that now, after long last, he was marching shoulder to shoulder with his own kind, the shopkeepers, the clerks and mechanics, the weavers, carpenters, craftsmen. For the time, it was entirely emotional; they had met no enemy, seen nothing of war. And they knew nothing of it except what they had heard from New England. And in Massachusetts, hadn't American losses been fantastically small?

The night of the first bivouac, Paine sat at the fire, heating his corn gruel, tensely aware of himself, unable to speak, tears of joy in his eyes. The voices of the militiamen were loud, somewhat self-conscious, bright. It was:

“Comrade, a light!”

“Share my gruel—porridge for bacon?”

“The devil with that, comrade, I have enough for both of us.”

“Citizen, how about a toast?”

There was a wagon full of rum in iron-bound casks. Roberdeau, patting his huge paunch, had one broken open. They toasted the Congress, Washington, Lee, Jefferson, who had written it all down so prettily, old Ben Franklin. A clear, youthful tenor began to sing:

“
Oh, the pretty skies of Pennsylvania
,

Oh, the meadows sylvan green
,

Oh, the bluebird and the nightingale
,

Oh, the countries, 'mong the countries
,

Our sylvania is the Queen
.”

Paine could hardly carry a tune, but he sang with the rest. The artillery men sat on their brace of cannon, swaying back and forth, keeping time with their ramrods. The fires trailed a curtain of sparks toward the sky, and a sweet, cool wind blew from the west. This was all Paine had ever thought of or dreamed of, the common men of the world marching together, shoulder to shoulder, guns in their hands, love in their hearts.