Citizen Tom Paine (23 page)

The British, who considered the city worthless, since they already held New York and could not afford troops to garrison both towns, had evacuated it with as little attempt at defense as the Americans before them. Marching to reoccupy the place on the heels of the redcoats, the continentals were not happy or gentle. They wanted revenge, and some they took. The city was dirty, littered, houses in ruins, houses looted, the beautiful Philadelphia Chippendale, the pride of the colonies, hacked and ripped and broken. The Americans walked back into the city with their bayonets bared. Wayne, a hard knife-blade of a man, led the Pennsylvanians. “A Tory,” he said to a committee of important citizens, “is a son of a bitch with — inside of him.” They were used to strong language, but not that strong. They proclaimed their loyalty.

“As I understand loyalty,” Wayne said, “so I would make you understand it—”

But to untangle the Tory from the rebel was impossible. Of the thousands of citizens who had remained behind when the British came, who was to say which was loyal and which was not? Of informers, there were plenty, but even those most bitter shied away from the bloody terror that wholesale accusation would bring. The midlanders were hard men, but not that hard.

And Pennsylvania was a democracy. Of all the countries that made up the union, Pennsylvania was the nearest to a government of workers and farmers—militant workers and farmers who had framed their own liberal constitution, their own single-house form of government in the days when the war started. The backbone of this group were the leatherclad frontiersmen who had sworn that they would have a thing or two to say with their long rifles before the aristocrats took their land.

Into this brew was flung the Silas Deane affair—to split it wide open.

Roberdeau showed Paine a letter, addressed to Robert Morris, who had lately cornered the flour market of the midlands. The letter had come to Roberdeau through means he was not anxious to disclose; there were ways. The line he pointed out read, “It would be a good thing for the welfare of the gentle folk of the country if Mister Thomas Paine were dead.…”

“If they wish to, they can kill me,” Paine shrugged. “They've tried before—”

“Don't be a fool. The time is over when you can fight this thing alone.”

“What do you suggest?”

Roberdeau suggested that they show their hand. He offered his house for a meeting place. He knew a few who could be trusted, and Paine knew a few. Tomorrow night, he said.

“Tomorrow night,” Paine agreed. He was very tired; a man could take up a gun, preach revolution, write papers pleading with his fellow citizens to support the war, unearth plots, oppose factions, lose his reputation and his livelihood, be hated and despised, scream aloud that men fought and died, that Philadelphia did not exist for the sole purpose of raising the price of food, clothes, munitions, livestock—but a man reached his limits. It was not easy to know that people wanted to kill you; it made him afraid the way he had never been afraid on the battlefield; it made him afraid of dark streets, afraid to drink too much, afraid to sleep in his miserable two-shilling room without locking the door.

The last time he had looked in the mirror, it was with the sudden realization that he was growing old. A network of little lines picked out his eyes and cheeks. That was Paine, the staymaker. Irene Roberdeau was married and carrying a child. The world went on, but facing him in his mirror was Paine, the mendicant of revolution.

It was a good group that gathered at Roberdeau's house, Paine told himself. A solid group, each person picked, each to be depended on.

There was David Rittenhouse, the scientist and mechanic, a person of substance, but nevertheless one who had worked with his hands; there was Jackson Garland, who, before his forge had been destroyed by the British, had cast forty-nine cannon for Harry Knox. Garland was Scotch, thin and sour in appearance, but a man with a mind, one who had often explained to Paine his theory of the coming trade unions. There was Charles Wilson Peale, captain in the Continental Army, a painter of amazing skill, and completely devoted to Washington. There was Colonel Matlack, a Quaker who had decided that some things were worth fighting for, who had said publicly that he would die fighting his own brothers before he saw the Morris clique destroy the Pennsylvania constitution. And there were young Thomas Shany and Franklin Pearce, both captains and veterans of Wayne's Pennsylvania Line. In addition they could count on the active support of both Laurens and Jefferson, neither of whom was present.

Roberdeau had wine and cake served, and then called the meeting to order. The group was quiet, grave, and somewhat bewildered; vaguely they sensed the possibilities and results of an open split in the Continental Party, and for that reason they felt they were treading on gunpowder. Organized revolt was still a very new thing in the world; organized radicalism, splitting from the rightists within the body of the revolution, was entirely new.

Roberdeau, his fleshy face red and excited, suggested that Paine take the floor and explain the purpose of the meeting. To which Paine pointed out anxiously:

“I don't want to intrude myself. It might be said that I am the least of the company here. I feel—”

“Damn it, no! This is no time for hedging nor politeness,” Matlack said. “You know what this is, and go ahead and speak, Paine.”

Paine looked around at the others; heads nodded. Paine said, speaking quietly but swiftly, “I don't need much of a preamble. A time was when revolution was new to all of us, but we've lived with it a good many years now—perhaps not long enough to understand it completely, to know the whole devil in this broth we're brewing, but long enough to have some comprehension of its structure. Revolution is a method of force by a party not in power, as we understand it by the party of the people, which has never been in power in the history of this earth. When the thirteen states of our confederation aroused themselves to seize the power, the confederation as a whole was in revolt against the British Empire. That we recognize, and the confederation as a whole is now engaged in war with the sovereign state of Great Britain.

“That is one thing. But the same method of revolution was singularly applied in each of the states of the confederation, and in each of the states the party of the people fought for the power. In some states, the people won; in others they lost, but in no case was the issue clear-cut. The act of revolution goes on in thirteen lands on this continent; there is civil war everywhere; in New York a man takes his life in his hands if he dares travel alone through Westchester County. In Massachusetts, the Tories are so powerful that they openly paint their chimneys with bands of black to identify themselves. In the lake country the Tories and the Indians have allied themselves, in such power as to engage our armies in force. In the Carolinas brother fights brother, and whole families have been wiped out by this civil strife. No one who traveled through the Jerseys in the retreat of seventy-six will ever forget how the whole countryside rose against us, shot at us from behind their shuttered windows, let us starve, just as they let us starve in Valley Forge a year later.

“In only one place did the revolution triumph, instantly, decisively, and without doubt, and that is here in Pennsylvania, the wealthiest land on this continent, perhaps the most loyal, certainly the most powerful. If the midlands fall, then the revolution falls; and if the midlands go up in smoke, who will say that the Pennsylvania line will not desert Washington and march back to defend their homes?

“Though I don't have to remind you, let me briefly reconsider the revolutionary enactments of Pennsylvania. You remember how, even before Concord and Lexington, the working men of Philadelphia formed themselves into an armed citizenry. Alone, unskilled as they were in any sort of warfare, they might not have triumphed, but fortunately they were joined by several thousand hunters and home-steaders from the back country. It was by the long rifle and the buckskin as well as by the musket that we overthrew the anticonstitutionalists. The aristocrats gave way when we threatened them with civil war and when they saw our guns. We won a constitution and we won a democratic state legislature, and then, loyal to the confederation, we sent our men by the thousands to fight with General Washington. I saw that myself. I was at Newark when the Pennsylvanians held the rear, at Valley Forge when they lay in the snow and starved, but held; at Monmouth our buckskin men broke the British backs. And, gentlemen, I was at the Delaware in seventy-six, when Washington fled across to the poor safety of the west bank, when he ordered a count and there were eight hundred men—eight hundred to defend the future of men of good will and make a nation out of this suffering of ours—and then I saw something that I will not forget if I live a hundred years, I saw the working men of Philadelphia, twelve hundred strong, march up from the city and hold the Delaware line until Sullivan joined with Washington. Six months before, the Associators ran away, and that was to the shame of no one; it takes six months of hell to put iron into a man's soul, and when they marched up out of Philadelphia again, the clerks and masons and smiths and millers, weavers, mercers—they were different. Pennsylvania gave freely, and now we have our deserts.

“Congress fled and gave our city to the British and Tories. We have it back so that it can become the speculator's dream, so that Deane can fleece us, so that Morris can corner flour, so that Graves can run up the price of tobacco twenty-two dollars a barrel, so that Jamison can pile up his wool on the river front while the army freezes, so that Mr. Jamie Wilson, whom you know as well as I, can corner a million dollars' worth of back-country land—easy enough with the woodsmen away fighting—and not content with that, attack everything the people of this state have fought for through his rotten and seditious paper, the
Packet
. And he has as his good ally, the equally vicious
Evening Post
. All this, gentlemen, is not a matter of chance, but a concerted attack against the revolution in Pennsylvania. The so-called Republican Society of Mr. Robert Morris is about as much republican as George the Third; its sole purpose, as far as I can see, is to destroy the constitution in which lies the power of the people.

“I think I have talked too much, gentlemen. There is the situation which I was trying to fight alone, and which General Roberdeau thinks we can fight better together. I leave the rest to you—”

No applause; he sat down in silence, all of them watching him. He was very tired, and his head ached. Matlack said thoughtfully, thinking aloud more than anything else:

“Whatever we do, we will need the means of force. Washington—”

“I think he'll be with us,” Rittenhouse nodded.

“Will he, though?”

Paine said yes. Peale said direct action: if men were profiteering, they would be brought before a tribunal, judged, punished. The constitution would be defended by force—

“Then that's civil war.”

“So be it. They've asked for it.”

“Support?”

“Bring this out in the open and people will declare themselves. Then we'll know.”

Roberdeau sighed; he was growing old; peace was a dream now. Worried, Rittenhouse said they must move cautiously, cautiously.

“To hell with that!”

“Bloodshed—”

“They've asked for it,” Garland said harshly. Most of them took that stand; they had been with the army; when campaigning started, they would be with the army again. But, Paine pointed out, this thing must come of the people. Peale suggested a mass meeting, and Roberdeau said he would organize it. A vote was taken, and the others agreed to the method.

They shook hands and each went home. No one smiled. It was something a long time coming, and now that it was here, they were not happy.

The meeting was held at the State House, in the court yard. Several hundred people attended, and both Paine and Roberdeau spoke. Matlack moved for the establishment of a Committee of Inspection, and an open vote was taken. Paine was the first elected, then Colonel Smith, a solid supporter of the Constitution, a militiaman and therefore from the people. Rittenhouse, Matlack, and Peale finished the roster. The crowd was grim and earnest. The Republican Society had tried heckling, but the crowd was too somber for that, and it was only by the efforts of Rittenhouse and Roberdeau that violence was avoided.

The next day Peale and Paine dined with Captain Hardy, in command of a company of Pennsylvania regulars, temporarily bivouacked in the city. Peale explained what was coming. “I'm afraid of the mob,” he said. “If your men support us—”

At first, Hardy refused. It was not in his province. If Wayne agreed—

“But there's no time for that!”

They argued for an hour, and then Hardy agreed to put it up to the men. Both Paine and Peale spoke, and the troops, after some consultation among themselves, agreed to support them.

In a way, war had been declared in Philadelphia.

The city knew. It was like an armed camp. Men kept their muskets at hand; mobs roamed the streets; there was work for Peale's company of troops. The Committee of Inspection set up its tribunal, and merchant after merchant was hauled before it, ordered to explain their business, ordered to produce books and vouchers. A Mr. Donny was found to have thirty-six hundred pairs of shoes in his warehouse, purchase price averaging eleven dollars, asking price, sixty dollars. Paine prepared the evidence carefully. A Mr. Solikoff, a mysterious gentleman of Baltimore, was found to be Morris's partner in cornering the flour market. Indictments were drawn up.

The
Philadelphia Post
had a rush of courage and attacked Paine more scathingly and filthily than ever before. Paine would have let the matter pass. “It's not the first time,” he explained.

But they were out in the open now. Matlack had the
Post
building surrounded by soldiers, and Towne, the publisher, was asked whether he would like to hang by the neck for a while. The warning was enough.