Part 6: Paine, Penn, and the Revolutions of Philadelphia
The story of Thomas Paine and the impact of his bestselling Common Sense upon the course of the American Revolution, while familiar, retains its dramatic power. Beginning in early 1776, this pamphlet and the popular debates that followed helped push the Continental Congress toward independence in July and the state of Pennsylvania to its republican Constitution in September. There is also another, lesser-known story about Paine and the development of his radical reflections, and it centers around the College.
When Paine arrived, nearly unknown, in Philadelphia late in 1774, he rented a dwelling at Front and Market Streets, across from the London Coffee House in the heart of the busy city. He roomed next door to printer Robert Aitken and wrote articles for Aitken’s Pennsylvania Magazine in 1775.[1] Paine also connected with a group of freethinking artisans, laborers, teachers, doctors, and artists.
Among this group, whom historian Eric Foner has labeled the “Philadelphia radicals,” several were closely connected with the university:
- Benjamin Rush, doctor and Professor in the Medical School
- James Cannon, Mathematics Professor in the College
- David Rittenhouse, clockmaker and astronomer, who constructed the monumental Orrery for the College in the 1770s, and was later professor and trustee of the University
Others who were part of this circle were Timothy Matlack, a brewer; Christopher Marshall, a pharmacist; Thomas Young, a doctor; Owen Biddle, a clockmaker; and Charles Wilson Peale, the portraitist.[2] Rush would later claim that he worked closely with Paine on the text of Common Sense; Rittenhouse and others may have read a draft of the text.
Regardless of who authored which words, these conversations were the substance of the independence movement. Far from the salon exchanges fostered by Provost William Smith in the 1750s, these were, doubtless, intense debates over monarchies, republics, social structures, and moral responsibility. Although records are limited, it is tempting to imagine these fervent arguments taking place in and near the College grounds, and perhaps in some classes.
Paine and the “radicals” would lead an independence movement that turned Pennsylvania from a conservative colony into one of the most politically progressive new states on earth. That process played out around the Declaration debates of 1776 and produced the Pennsylvania Constitution, which many considered, in the words of Penn historian Sophia Rosenfeld, “a marvel” of republican thinking and which others thought a shocking and risky experiment.
This scrappy, well-handled copy of Common Sense suggests the text’s wide reach: it was printed in Norwich, Connecticut and is one of perhaps 21 editions from 1776. We can see how it looked to its first readers: it is “stab-stitched” with thread, as pamphlets typically were (most surviving copies were later rebound). Someone named Gershom Breed has written his name on the title page and the date, “1776.” This “best-seller”[3] went into 32 editions in less than four months.[4]
Paine’s tone is unlike that of the “scurrilous” pamphlet debates of the 1750s and 1760s. Instead, the text reads, rhetorically, more like an academic disquisition of the kind that could have been taken place at the College. After refuting historical arguments sustaining monarchical theory, Paine rejects reconciliation with Britain and, using what he calls “simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense,” argues that the only path forward is “an open and determined declaration for independence.”
Paine would emerge as an important figure in the University’s history in 1779 and 1780. He signed the executive decree establishing the new “University of the State of Pennsylvania,” and in 1780 the new leaders recognized him with an honorary degree.
A hastily composed note by Clement Biddle, a militia leader about to depart the city with his company, suggests how quickly Paine impacted Philadelphia life. Biddle, from an old and prosperous Philadelphia family, introduces Paine to his correspondent, telling him, likely with intended irony, that Paine is “the reputed author of the Pamphlet Common Sense & is very sensible.”
“In This Crisis . . .”
Paine launched himself into the military campaigns of the Revolution. He was an aide-de-camp to Nathaniel Greene, retreating with the Continental Army across New Jersey to Trenton. He produced the first, most famous of his American Crisis essays upon returning to Philadelphia, and Washington had it read aloud to troops before their Delaware crossing on Christmas Eve.[5]
“He seems to have drank deep of the cup of independency”
Benjamin Rush later claimed that he had suggested the title “Plain Truth” to Paine for his pamphlet. Here, the author of a harsh critique of Paine, writing as “Candidus,” adopted it in this attempt to show Paine’s “scheme of Independence” to be “ruinous, delusive, and impracticable.” The identity of “Candidus” was never certain during the period: Jefferson suspected it to be Alexander Hamilton. Some modern critics proposed Provost William Smith, but Thomas R. Adams established its author as Chalmers, a Marylander.[6] Smith does have a contribution here, though, in an excerpt from one of his “Cato” newspaper articles. The excerpt includes Smith’s famous put-down of Paine: “He seems to have drank deep of the cup of independency; to be inimical to whatever carries the appearance of peace; and too ready to sacrifice the happiness of a great continent to his favorite plan.”
Several ironies surround the publication of this piece. Its printer was Robert Bell, a freethinking republican printer who had issued the first edition of Common Sense and then quarreled with Paine about ownership and royalties. And London printers reprinted both works together: thus in Britain, perhaps more than in America, readers would have been able to evaluate both set of arguments. Shown here is a Dublin printing.
Paine had probably intended his essay to appear as a series of newspaper articles, a common strategy, but its length, and Rush’s advice, led him to turn to Bell and pamphlet publication. It was the newspapers, though, in which the public debate over his arguments would take place.
For the following five months, newspaper printed a long series of articles by Paine, his allies, and his enemies. All used pseudonyms. Paine himself was “Forester”; James Cannon was “Cassandra”; and Thomas Young was “Elector.” William Smith led the opposition, as “Cato.”
These debates went far beyond the words of Common Sense to take on all aspects of colonial politics, such as the possibilities of true “equality,” the privileges of elites, and the nature of a future government.[7]
On Aitken, artisan solidarity, and Pennsylvania Magazine: Foner, Tom Paine, 38, 72–73. ↑
Foner, Tom Paine, 109–116. ↑
Green, “Part One: English Books and Printing…,” The Colonial Book in the Atlantic World, 296. ↑
Green, in The Colonial Book. Personal communication with JP. Paine himself claimed that 120,000 copies had been printed between January and April: see Gimbel, Bibliographical Checklist of Common Sense, 57, quoting Forester in the Pennsylvania Journal, April 10, 1776. ↑
Foner, Tom Paine, 139. ↑
Adams, “The Authorship and Printing of ‘Plain Truth’ by ‘Candidus’” ↑
Foner, Tom Paine, 123–127. Nash, Revolutionary Founders, 73. ↑