August 14, 2024 • 49 mins
In 1802, Thomas Paine was in France making plans to return to America when he received a call from the future…
In this episode, Paine talks about his wildly popular pamphlet Common Sense and how it united the Americans to fight for liberty. He talked about his history seizing enemy ships and their goods, and how that didn’t make him a pirate. And he’ll talk about his experience in France almost losing his head to the guillotine.
Start the episode now to join the conversation.
-----
I’m so thankful to Steve Gulick for never letting us forget Thomas Paine’s role in American Independence. The countless hours you put into learning the history and replicating Thomas Paine’s mannerisms and speech pattern creates an authenticity that makes this conversation unforgettable. Thank you for this amazing performance, Steve.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:28):
I'm Tony Dean.
And today we'll be calling historyto speak with Thomas Paine.
He'll be answering our call in 1802at the age of 65 on his way back to
the United States after nearly losinghis head during the French revolution.
In January of 1776, Thomas Painepublished a pamphlet called common sense.
Arguing for American independence at thetime many Americans were for this drastic
(00:53):
change, but many were also against it.
Common sense was read by nearlyevery American citizen at the time
selling more than 500,000 copies,
the extraordinary popularity of thispamphlet and the fact that it was
written in the common tongue withoutfancy language as Payne would say, gave
the American cause one United voice.
(01:14):
During the revolutionary war,George Washington needed a way
to motivate the soldiers thatwere tired and wanted to go home.
What did he do?
He read another pamphlet to themen by Thomas Paine called the
American crisis that inspired thetroops to keep fighting and fight.
They did.
After the American revolution,the French decided they wanted
(01:34):
to have their own revolution.
Somehow Thomas Paine ended up inFrance writing yet another pamphlet to
bring those revolutionaries together.
It's hard to say exactly what itis about his writings that motivate
people to work together, risktheir lives and fight for freedom.
But that's exactly what his simple,
plain spoken writings didthroughout his entire life.
(01:57):
Ladies and gentlemen, fellowhistory, lovers, and shapers of
portly gentlemen, everywhere.
I give you Thomas Paine.
Hello, is that you, Mr.
Payne?
. It is, sir.
Sir, I am so excited to speak with you.
My name is Tony Dean, and I'm talking toyou from the future, in the 21st century.
The device that you're holdingis called a smartphone.
(02:20):
It allows us to speak as if and I weresitting in the same room with one another.
And it also allows me to sharea record of our conversation with
people around the world and Mr.
Payne, you have lived this unbelievablelife and I was just hoping that I
could ask you some questions about it.
But before I do, I understandthis is a strange introduction.
Can I answer any questionsyou might have first?
(02:42):
Well, I am mystified by what you'vejust said of I've never talked
with anybody from a different time.
I'm guessing that you wouldn't besurprised to hear that every person that
I speak to says that exact same thing.
And nonetheless, it is, it'ssuch a wonderful time that I live
in that, that this is possible.
And I have to tell you, sir, as I lookat your history, the one thing that,
(03:07):
, I've always known about you, but didn'tunderstand really the relevance of it, was
this pamphlet that you wrote during theAmerican Revolution called Common Sense.
And I guess I would just like to hear,like, how that came about, because,,
I always thought Common Sense wasthis pamphlet, you know, and it was
interesting and got people fired up.
But , my understanding is that like,every in the Americas read this?
(03:31):
This really was the voice that gavethem the belief that maybe they deserved
freedom and maybe they should go after it.
Maybe they deserved rights.
, how did this come about?
What made you think I need to writethis and give all these people a voice?
fairly complicated how it came about.
You know, I, you know, Arrived inAmerica from England on a ship.
(03:53):
I was very sick.
I managed to throw off my sickness andI got a job working with a printer.
And in fact he had me become the editorof a a newspaper that he , printed , and.
He made me the editor, because hereally, he was a printer, not a writer.
(04:15):
So, I became engaged with that,and that's how other people
started to get to know me.
And I wrote , some articles inthe paper about, for example,
about rights for women.
Which, because of the power of , mymother in my life, and I wrote a
(04:35):
an article in the paper calling forthe possibility of women voting.
And you may be surprised to knowsome of the colonies allowed women
to vote, but only some of them.
I didn't know that.
Some of the colonies
allowed women to vote?
That's right, and however once theConstitution came into play, , those sorts
(05:02):
of things, those differences between andamong the colonies began to disappear.
, probably the most dramatic ofthat sort of thing that happened
was the whole issue of slavery.
But for, in terms of women, somewomen in fact had the ability to
(05:22):
vote and , that , became mootonce the constitution was in place.
And who were made up theContinental Congress could not
bring themselves to do two things.
One was.
to address the issue of slavery, and theother was to address the rights of women.
(05:46):
I should add that one of the things thatpropelled me , in considering all that,
and that I'm much more aware of now, is, years later I met, Mary Wollstonecraft,
and she wrote a pamphlet title to my.
rights of man pamphlet, he wrote apamphlet called the rights of women.
(06:10):
And one of those things that shewas very insistent on is that
women should be able to vote.
I'm not surprised to hear, , you'realready talking about slavery, and
you're already talking about the rightsof women, and women voting and it,
this seems like the cause of your life.
, it seems to me that you were unhappywith the monarchy in England, and then
(06:34):
when you got involved with the, Thenwhen you were involved with the French
Revolution it sounds like you were astrong proponent of the French Revolution.
, your whole life is about fightingfor other people's rights.
Where does that come from?
I suppose it comes to a certaindegree from the fact that my
mother, was an Anglican.
, my father He was one of the peoplecalled Quakers, and he felt very
(06:59):
strongly that the testimonies ofthe people called Quakers were the
right way for human beings to live.
And so that, that wasa big part of my life.
, I had to be apprenticed tomy father because in school
I was unable to learn Latin.
(07:20):
And in order for me to have a positionof some importance in society, I
needed to be able to learn Latin.
And I just couldn't.
I can handle the English languagebut, I've discovered that I'm
not very good at learning otherlanguages and Latin was one of them.
Well, you'll be glad to know thatLatin isn't really popular in our time.
(07:43):
In fact, nobody speaks Latin.
So maybe it's just too hardfor people to learn because
they gave up on it in our time.
Well, I don't know about your time in thatregard, but I do know that there are many
of us in my time who may be able to saya phrase or two in Latin but if someone
hands us a piece of writing writtenin Latin, we can't figure out a thing.
(08:10):
I find very distracting, quitefrankly, because I learned English
, with all the punctuation marks andall that, which I actually quite
enjoy doing the punctuation marks.
In Latin, you don't haveany of those things.
You write some words, and you stop,and then you write some more words.
(08:30):
And there's no point of changefrom one phrase to another.
Or one sentence, if you will, to another.
Which I find very strange.
Yeah, I find that very strange too.
So, when you're reading it, is it harderto determine what the writer is saying?
Because you don't know where hewas stopping to take a breath
(08:52):
I suppose, don't ask me.
I couldn't make head or tail of it.
And finally my schoolmaster reportedto my parents that I did fairly
well in things like science andall right in mathematics, but
.Forget about Latin.
Because my parents allowed to have mein the school because of the, fellow,
(09:16):
Lord Grafton, who was, of course, inmuch higher status than my father.
But he saw that I had Some skills andhe wanted to reward me and my father
who was the one who made stays for him,as you probably know, men in my time,
fancy people would men would wear daysor corsets as it's sometimes called.
(09:41):
, that was my father's trade.
And that's what I learned how to do.
Once I was taken out of the school and.
APRENTICE TO MY FATHER TOLEARN HOW TO MAKE CORSETS!
YOU'RE TALKING CORSETS FOR WOMEN,YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT THOSE, THINGS
THEY PUT AROUND THEIR WAISTS TOMAKE THEIR WAIST LOOK SMALL, RIGHT?
WELL , IT'S NOT JUST THAT , IT'SMORE LIKELY FOR WOMEN TO WANT TO HAVE
(10:03):
THE FAMOUS WASP WAIST, THAT, THATWOMEN HAVE not necessarily naturally
but because they're cinched in.
Lord Grafton became heavier andheavier through my childhood.
And so my father had to make.
larger and larger corsets so that hecould have enough ability to pinch the man
(10:26):
in so he wouldn't look quite so portly.
But he still looked portly.
that these were for men as well.
Do a lot of men wear them in your time?
People who were fancy people.
Yes.
And Lord Grafton was definitely that.
Are you a fancy person?
Me?
No.
Not at all.
In fact, you may haveheard of Gouverneur Morris.
(10:51):
And Gouverneur Morris was really quite oneof the reasons I stayed in prison so long
in France was because he wasn't interestedin helping me get out of prison, he just
was happy to have me out of the way.
But one of the things he said aboutme in my life is that I didn't
even speak the King's English.
(11:12):
, I have a rough hewnlanguage, you might say.
Maybe that's why peopleliked your writing so much.
Well, I don't know.
I write what I think is trueand argue points that I think
are germane to the situation.
And I don't try to befancy in my writing.
(11:33):
, I try to speak the truth as I can.
Or, in this case, writethe truth as I can.
My experience being in, if you will,debates was when we were all in taverns
and we were having a pint or whateverand , we were arguing about some aspect
of our lives, for example, we were arguingabout whether people of higher status
(11:59):
deserve to have better things in life.
Then people , of modest status, and thatwas a big concern that people had and
I agreed that it just because . Yourlanguage is perhaps a little rough,
or you don't have all the fancy words,or you can't throw in sentences in
(12:20):
Latin to show off that you reallyknow what you're talking about.
Although I never saw that as a blessing, sometimes it's been a very difficult
place for me to be, especially when I'min the presence of people like General
Washington and Thomas Jefferson, , menwho were, if not as highly educated as
(12:42):
each other, they were groomed to be, ifyou will, gentlemen, instead of just men.
So you feel like you fit in thetavern crowd more than you did
the Washington Jefferson crowd.
Indeed.
And I always was very, , on the onehand amused and on the other hand
found it a kind of a blessing whenpeople of, as we would say, of a higher
(13:06):
class would take an interest in meand would actually take me seriously.
And as you probably know, CommonSense was originally gonna be
written by one of the other fellowswho was supportive of independency.
The person was Dr.
Benjamin Rush, but he had alreadywritten some articles for the
(13:30):
paper, , about topics that were sostrong in their opinion that he lost
some of his business, his patience.
They stopped coming to him becausethey thought he was too radical.
And so he was a little shy aboutwriting something like Common Sense
(13:50):
that he feared might lose him even more.
Of his patients.
Let's pause for a minute right there.
I wanna ask you specifically aboutcommon sense, because , when you
say that, , one of the other fellowswere gonna write this, I don't think
that just anybody can write this.
I think that this hadto be written by you.
, my understanding is that there were.
(14:12):
500,000 of these published andthat every person in the colonies
are, almost everybody read this.
, that's not the easiest thing to do,to get like every single person in
your state or country, whatever,to read what you've written.
And you did that my question is this.
What were you trying toaccomplish with Common Sense?
(14:34):
, what is the message thatyou're trying to get across?
, for somebody that, in our time,that, , maybe hadn't read it.
What are you trying to say?
What are you trying to do?
Well, a number of different things.
The most important is thepushing for independency.
Was right and rightly ordered andthat we should not shy away from
(14:55):
blaming our, if you will, birthrightand becoming an independent nation.
And it was urgent.
It seemed to us, to me, and, butalso to the others who were the
Philadelphia radicals, as we werecalled sometimes, it was urgent.
(15:16):
For us to encourage the averagepeople to take a position on this and
to actively push for independency.
Because a great many of the people whohad particular standing in society
were going to lose a great deal.
(15:38):
And , because they mightlose a great deal, they were
very hesitant, if you will.
Take a position of freedom andindependency and breaking off from the
crown and all of that, and setting upa government that was very different
from what Great Britain had beenclaiming for itself for centuries.
(16:02):
Not to put too big a, an importance onthat because it's as we know the chain
of, Kings and so on through time wasnot exactly continuous and healthy.
It often was broken apart and peopletook very different positions and you
have the James's, for example whenit came time for James the brother of
(16:29):
Charles the second, to become king,it was a panic for the English because
he was a Catholic and the English didnot want to have another Catholic.
So they had to hunt around whocan we find to be the king
because we need a king.
(16:50):
And they finally hit upon William,who , he was a Protestant,
but he wasn't even English.
He was Dutch.
It's amazing that they think thatthey can just plug people into there,
like the king isn't an important job.
They don't even have to consider merit.
They can just grab some guyand they're like, oh good, he's
not a Catholic, we're good.
(17:11):
We'll just throw Joe inthere and he's our guy.
That's right.
And it's amazing how much that hastaken over people's idea about
what makes for good government.
It's one thing if you have, let'ssay a blacksmith or something
who is amazing in his skill.
(17:33):
It's possible for that blacksmithTo teach his son, perhaps, to become
as good a blacksmith as he, butyou have to be trained in that way.
It's very much harder and becauseit's so much of a manual thing
it's not highly intellectual, whereaswith kings and so on, you have to have
(17:59):
some kind of sense of the world and it'snot going to work if it always has to be
the son of the king, it is dangerous, to change, and that's why kings are
so eager to have a son witness HenryVIII, who went through quite a number
of wives until finally he got a son.
(18:21):
And that son didn't last verylong and died, I believe when
he was about 15 years old.
So is this part of the message thatyou're trying to get across to everybody
that maybe the person who has the mostimportant job in the country maybe
isn't always a descendant and thatis going to lead to problems later.
Is that the message of common sense?
(18:42):
Well, Yes, in a sense that the message iswe the people, if you will, need to make
choices ourselves about who we want to be.
The, If you will, the head ofstate, not a king, but someone who
has talents and skills variouskinds of abilities that allow.
(19:07):
For clear thinking and clear decisionmaking, and of course it helps to have
other people around, which is why youhave , , according to the constitution,
you've got the president, and then you'vegot, not just one, but two congresses and
it's very important to have people around.
People of skill and talent and to acertain extent stature but you don't
(19:32):
have to all be of the same backgroundin order to have skill and stature.
, when you talk about you were tellingthe story just a second ago using
that comparison of the blacksmith.
If you were to imagine this blacksmith,you think of a blacksmith, you think
of a guy, kind of a strong, burlyguy, with big arms, swinging that
big hammer, and the fire, and theheat, and the soot on his face.
(19:55):
If you were to have a kid, Andthat kid weighed 75 pounds and
could barely lift the hammer up.
Just because you have thekid, he's not the guy to throw
into the blacksmith position.
Well, you're going to have that kid.
You know what I mean?
And that kid is an intellectual.
He doesn't need to be swinging a hammer.
And yet that's exactly whatthey did in the monarchy.
(20:16):
It didn't matter what the nextkid with doesn't matter how smart
he was or how talented he was.
It's just like, okay, you're the king.
Cause you're the son.
A lot of those guys couldn't swinga hammer, which is why that was, The
problem and I'm speaking metaphorically.
Okay, but I see what you're saying.
It makes it really makes a lot of sense.
It's absurd.
So tell me this.
What were you hoping to accomplishwhen common sense came out?
(20:36):
Were you trying to cause riots?
Were you trying to actuallychange the government?
Were you looking for violence?
Non violence?
What was your goal?
Well, often when governmentschange as you know, there is
a certain amount of turmoil.
Now the beauty of the constitutionis that it allowed for certain
(20:59):
things to happen that were notlikely to produce violence and so on.
So long as everybody was in agreementthat the process had worked properly.
And that's where we sometimes getinto trouble when one person claims
to have won, but it's not a real win.
(21:21):
That's why it's important for as manypeople as possible to be able to have
a vote, a choice, as to what they want.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Give people a voice so that wecan actually vote instead of
just hand power to somebody.
So, , now common sense Anddid you make a lot of money
(21:42):
from, 500, 000 copies being sold?
, well, it wasn't reallyme who did all of that.
And one of the reasons for that wasthat the first printing that happened in
Philadelphia with an agreement betweenthe printer whose name was Robert Bell,
And myself we agreed that any copiesthat sold, he would be able to hold
(22:09):
on to 50 percent and I would get 50%.
Now Now once the sales started,it became fairly clear that people
were eager to read this pamphlet.
They had heard about it, people hadmaybe discussed it some Common Sense
is really a fairly large pamphlet, wecall it a pamphlet, , depending on who's
(22:33):
been printing it it's at least 44 pages.
Now, some people printed it with veryfine type, and some people did it
larger , and the reason for that wasthere was no way that Robert Bell could
hundreds of thousands of copies or evenhundreds of copies over and over again.
(22:54):
The first run was, I believe, about2000, and those sold out fairly quickly.
They also, Got mailed around andso people like, Franklin, for
example, , who knew people elsewhereand new printers elsewhere.
He was able to send a copy and thena printer in, say, Charleston or , in
(23:18):
New York would take that and resetthe type for that addition most of
them were fairly consistent in whatthe wording was, not every one of
them but most of them , didn't tryto change what the document was.
However, they sometimes wereon cruder paper and larger
(23:43):
typeface and that sort of thing.
But most of the copies were notprinted anywhere near Philadelphia.
Charleston was a big placewhere printing happened.
And New York and Boston.
Lots of, lots of other placeswere printing basically the same
(24:04):
document over and over again.
But you weren't getting paid on it,
right?
, we had a struggle Robert Bell and I,and once he saw that it was gonna be
profitable, he started to say, well,actually, I had to spend a lot more
money than I thought on getting thepaper originally, and he basically
(24:27):
was trying to steal from me, and itwas hard for me to push back against
him on what amount I was gonna get.
However, I had already promisedmyself and promised others that.
Anything I was paid for the printing that,especially that first printing in January
(24:51):
of 1776 that, those funds would go tobuy mittens for the Continental Army.
Is that right?
You agreed that the proceeds from thesale of that would go to help the Army?
That's right, because it was winterand the Army was already in the field.
(25:11):
Well, well before the ContinentalCongress that worked on the Constitution.
So after this is published andeverybody is reading this and they're
developing their voice for We NeedFreedom, how does your life change?
Do you become popular?
, do people know who youare everywhere you go?
No, not necessarily.
(25:32):
The first few printings of the pamphletdid not have my name on it at all.
I refer to myself as theauthor in the introduction.
And did not put a name on it.
Now, a lot of people fairlyquickly, especially in Philadelphia,
knew that I was the author.
(25:54):
But it was not necessarily well knownalthough once people started reprinting
not in pamphlet form, but , in newspaperform, as it was fairly often reprinted
that way my name began to appear in someway indicating that I had written it.
(26:15):
Now, a lot of people didn't know my name.
So, , it was not necessarilysomething that made me famous,
everybody reads it.
And so few people know where it came from.
. , so now let me.
Go a little bit into the future, ? , younow are involved with , the way I
see it, giving people a voice for therevolution, and then there is another
(26:38):
document, or pamphlet that you printcalled the American Crisis, and it is my
understanding that, This, that, I thinkthis is the one that Washington read to
the troops to keep the troops inspired.
And the American crisis, I think,is the one that starts with, These
are the times that try men's souls.
(27:00):
That's just the first of, I believeit was 16 different pamphlets,
and that was just the first one.
And you're right, it was very importantat that moment, and Washington actually
asked me if I would write it, because hewas afraid because of , it being winter
(27:21):
and men being cold and they wanted tosee their families again and that sort
of thing, he was afraid that, especiallyafter the success at Trenton, he was
afraid that they would say, Oh, I'm tired.
I'm going to go home and some did,but he really wanted them to stay.
And so this was a way of tryingto encourage them not to give up
(27:47):
at that point, but to keep going.
So that is true.
Washington read it to the troops.
And of course, we now know, well, I
don't know that he readit, but he had it read.
Yes,
he had it read.
Okay.
And so this is why I'mso amazed by your story.
So here we've got the AmericanRevolution, , kind of, simmering, right?
(28:10):
Not quite boiling over.
, we got the Stamp Act in 64, we gotthe Townsend Act in 67, , people are
writing things, people are speaking.
And then common sense comes out,and common sense comes out and
unites the people's voice untilthe point where they're fighting.
And then when they're fighting, nextthing you know, the troops need a voice.
(28:34):
They need some sort of unity.
And then you become the voice of that.
And I just, I find that miraculous , canyou even imagine if you hadn't written
common sense and you hadn't writtenthe American crisis, I mean, what
do you think would have happened tothe army if you, if they had not had
the American crisis to unite them?
What do you think?
(28:55):
Well, , don't know how many of thesoldiers in the army actually read that.
They did have it read to thembefore crossing the Delaware to
attack the Hessians in Trenton.
But I suppose it hadsome good effect on them.
I was not present.
(29:16):
I was in Philadelphia.
And which is where I wrote it and thepamphlet and sent it on to Washington.
But yes, you're right.
It's not enough to, Have one pamphlet,say common sense, and stop there.
You have to keep, addingfuel to the fire, so to speak.
(29:37):
That is interesting that you say itthat way, because , it does appear
that as you go through your life,when these different fires needed to
be fueled, you were the guy carryingthe logs , which would make me want to
ask you about the French revolution,because then you got involved in that.
But.
Hold on, I don't want to go quite to thatyet, because I feel like you're being
(29:58):
a little humble right now, because whenI read the first part of the American
Crisis, and the one where it starts whereit says these times will try men's souls,
And it talks about tyranny is hell, noteasily conquered, and yet, the harder the
conflict, the more glorious the triumph.
When I get done reading justthe opening to this, I'm
(30:20):
looking for somebody to fight.
I'm looking for a cause.
I mean, I would be inspiredif I was a soldier.
And, I just think that, I can'timagine that not existing.
It's incredible to me.
, So now we got the French revolution.
So now the French revolution needssomebody to write and get behind that.
So then you wrote somethingon that, didn't you?
(30:42):
Well, I wrote a number ofthings while I was in France.
, the first important thing that Iwrote in France was the rights of man.
And the whole point of that was tosay to the French,, the Americans were
separating themselves from a monarchy.
But it wasn't quite the same as theFrench, who were basically overthrowing
(31:06):
the XVI was right there and in France.
And they were able to capture him and tobasically begin the process of dealing
with , an oppressive system, whichinvolved not only the monarchy, but it
(31:26):
involved the church in France, which wasnot the case really in America, as you
know, there were each of the colonieseither had A strong base , in some form
of religion, since people seem to feela need for religion perhaps the least
strong over time was Pennsylvania becausePennsylvania was started, , by Quakers
(31:51):
and they, among other things, refusedfor very many years to set up a militia.
And the militia was there to defend thecolony so that there'd be some kind of
violence, and avoiding having a militiasometimes got very scary to Pennsylvanians
(32:13):
because they were out in the frontier andthey were being attacked by the French
and the Native peoples because of whatthe French and the Native people saw
as English invading Which is not quitethe way the colonists tended to see it.
(32:34):
So, now it is time for you toget involved with the the French.
And you went to France.
And what was the receptionthat you got there?
When you start the rights of man and thatgets published, what is the response?
I understand, you did some jail time.
(32:54):
Did they put you in jail right away?
No,
no it's, actually fairlycomplicated, all this business
about my going to France.
And I wasn't just goingto France initially.
What I was doing in 1787 was I haddeveloped a Design for a single
(33:15):
span bridge that could be builtacross the school to the river.
To the west of Philadelphia, thatwould allow for people to transport
goods without having to Put themon a ferry , the Schuylkill
was a very, and swift river.
(33:39):
And it, especially in seasonsof storms and snow and ice it
became very dangerous to try totransport things across the river.
So having a bridge Would make it mucheasier for the goods from Philadelphia
(33:59):
that were manufactured, , in Philadelphiato be transported to the West and
for crops and things like that fromthe West to come to Philadelphia
without having to take your life inyour hand every time you wanted to
load stuff onto a ferry going across.
So my vision was to have this bridge.
(34:24):
I turned to Franklin because Franklin hassome good sense about this sort of thing.
And he urged me to go to Europe,to go to England and to France and
talk with the Royal Society and theFrench society who dealt with such
things and to get their approvalbecause the Pennsylvania Assembly.
(34:48):
Was unwilling to provideany funds for this bridge.
I thought it was too expensive.
And I did my best to try to convincethem that an iron bridge going across
the river would last a good, bit longerthan either a stone bridge or a wooden
(35:09):
bridge, both of which would take abeating, especially in the harsh weather.
So then what happened?
Well, what happened was, various thingsstarted happening in France, and I got
distracted from my bridge, if you will.
(35:29):
I didn't have much luckpromoting my bridge.
Sometime later, a fella actuallytook my plan and had it built
across the Severn River in England.
Of course they did.
But I had nothing to do with that.
Yeah,
I mean they basically, you writesomething, they print it wherever
they want and don't pay you for it.
You make a bridge, they're likeno thanks, and then later on
(35:51):
they copy your bridge as well.
From the way of the world.
Well, I it appears from a distance herethat people that are trying to make
things and accomplish things are verythankful for all your ideas, even though
they don't wanna pay you for them.
IUP suppose I suppose that's true.
I mean, I did get some compensationfor all my efforts but it.
(36:14):
It wasn't necessarily in a timely way,so there were times when I was walking
around with nothing in my pocketsto speak of and had to rely on the
the courtesy of my friends who wouldtreat me to a pint and a pot of stew.
Well that's how you know who yourfriends are when they'll treat you to a
pint when you're down, that's for sure.
(36:35):
me
this, a lot of times when people, have acause that they feel as passionately about
as you do, it appears to me that thosepeople aren't so concerned about making
money and that's part of the reason why,, maybe contracts aren't handled properly.
It's because it's justnot your, first goal.
, is making money from what you'rewriting your number one goal or
(36:58):
is the cause the number one goal?
I never, it never even occurredto me, really, by writing,
I could actually make money.
My understanding of making money was,well, if you were a privateer, you'd
go out and you'd stop let's say,friendships during The Seven Years War,
(37:19):
for example, and you'd seize the goodson the ship, and then you'd be able to
sell them when you got back to port.
And everyone on the shipwould get a share of that.
In fact, that was the only time thatI really had money in my pockets is
after I served as a cabin boy onboard a ship called the Terrible.
(37:43):
Actually, no, I didn'tgo on the Terrible first.
My father found out that I wasabout to enlist on the Terrible.
And he came, and he forced me tocome back with him to Thetford,
where we lived in in north of London.
But he couldn't stop me completely, andI was able to go back and reenlist on a
(38:06):
ship that was called the King of Prussia.
And the King of Prussia turned outto be very lucrative for the owner
of the ship and for all of thecrew, including people like me who
were at the bottom of the barrel.
But I got paid fairly well for themonths that I was on the ship and
(38:30):
helping to do the work of the ship.
So are you a pirate?
Privateer?
Is the word
, is that what pirates say when they're doing it legally?
? No, it's a privateer.
The big difference between a pirateand a prier is that a privateer.
Is working for a government, , and itusually happens in times of conflict and
(38:55):
war and so on, and the privateers aregiven license by the government to go out
and capture the ships of the enemy andto seize goods and to bring those goods
back to the country that's hired them.
In the name of the war?
Well, usually in the nameof the king , oh, okay.
(39:16):
Okay.
I see.
The British privateers werenot the actual Navy, but An
adjunct, , to the navy itself.
And the goal was not todestroy the other ship.
You, if you were lucky, you managed tonot only seize the goods on the ship,
but you might even be able to seize theship itself and bring it back and turn it
(39:39):
over to , whoever was in charge of that,. depends on what their your system is,
but if it's the king, then it's the king.
I never had so much money in my pocket aswhen I was 19, 20, 21 years old, having
sailed on the King of Prussia and hada lot of money jingling in my pockets.
(40:00):
it seems like you had a lot of jobsthroughout your life, and I don't see
any connection between any of them.
I mean, you're a privateer,you're a writer, you're making
corsets for portly men didn't youwork in tobacco at some point?
Well,
that was just when I was, thatwas just when I was a youngster.
Actually, later on, when I was havingtrouble in England, I tried to take up
(40:24):
making stays again, and it was a disaster.
I was in the wrong place.
The nice thing about the placewhere my father lived in Thetford,
was he was the only clay maker.
So that if someone wanted a set ofstays to be made, they went to him.
Whereas if you were in London,there was a lot of competition.
(40:47):
And stays are what we would call, Ithink we call them corsets in our time.
I don't know.
That's what they are.
It's the things you put around your waist.
. Yes.
Both men and women wear them.
They do slightly differentthings for men and women.
Men just don't want tolook partly and unfit.
So if you try to pull yourselfin a bit, then you look like a
(41:08):
burly man and not a fat man.
Got it.
Will you be doing anything elseover the next couple of years?
Are you going to be buildinghouses or ships or anything?
Well, I do have some ideas aboutships because of my experience
sailing aboard the King of Prussia,but I've never been able to think
about that as a part of a trade.
(41:31):
I seem to be caught upin the writing business.
And I don't mind that.
I've written quite a number ofpamphlets and some of them are
large enough you might even callthem books, and more recently I've
been writing to important people.
I consider important peopletrying to argue certain
(41:51):
things , for example, one of the.
Things that I've tried to do isto try to encourage people of some
status in society to really thinkclearly about who should be involved
in, the running of a government,should it only be the fancy people?
(42:12):
Mostly the continentalCongress was relatively
well to do people.
Not people a lower status in society.
Do you think that there should be moreof the lower citizens in government?
Should there be street sweepersand horse cleaners and, , people
that are not as educated?
(42:33):
Should they be in those positions?
Absolutely.
. You don't have to be highly trainedfor many jobs, you just need to have
an ability to learn how to do things,and then to do them, and it doesn't
hurt if the powers that be decidethat your work is worth paying for.
(42:55):
Unfortunately, if you're at thebottom of the barrel, you're less
likely to have a strong argument forsaying, , why don't you pay me more
?had to push with Robert Bell to try to get as much money as I could, but , in
effect, he held the purse strings becausehe was a printer and he got the money.
(43:16):
The money for theprinting of the pamphlets.
And then he had to share it with me.
, which he didn't sound likehe did a very good job doing.
He, no he didn't.
And I was especially distressed because asI said earlier spent enough time out in
the field with the Continental Army thatI knew that if it was winter time One of
(43:38):
the things you need to have, if you're asoldier, you need to have a way of keeping
your hands warm, because how are yougoing to fight if your hands are frozen?
So mittens seem to be theright thing for me to pay for.
I did my best.
, I feel like we got sidetrackeda little bit , I don't feel like
I heard , how do you almost getexecuted in being in prison in France?
(44:01):
So you went over to build thebridge and, yeah, what am I missing?
So, well, here's what happened.,my mission , to build the
bridge turned out to be.
A failure and then the French of theirown accord, it had nothing to do with me.
They were very happy to begin a processthat they themselves had already started.
(44:27):
I didn't start it , to throw overLouis the 16th and have something
more like was happening in America.
They were inspired by whathad happened in America.
That was what therights of man was about.
It was arguing that, yes, human beingsshould be able to be responsible for
(44:51):
their own decision making and their owndecision about what sort of government
do we want and that sort of thing.
Um, the problem for me with theFrench was twofold, at least.
One is, just as I'd had no successin learning Latin, I had very little
(45:12):
success learning any French., and theFrench decided that they were, admired
me enough because of common sense, thatthey wanted me to be part of their new
government now that I had I imprisoned,I XVI and Marie Antoinette, and then
ultimately they were executed, butwithin the group of revolutionaries,
(45:36):
there were really several factions andthey didn't get along very well And
ultimately, , I was imprisoned becauseOne side decided that I was favoring the
other side, and that I was a danger totheir revolution, and so I was jailed.
(46:01):
In a pretty fearsome prison.
It wasn't really a prison, but it wasa place you could easily lock somebody
in and keep them there for a long time.
I was in the prison for 10 months.
And let me tell you, you don't wantto be in prison for 10 minutes,
much less 10 months, becausenobody , pays much attention.
(46:21):
The only person who paid me muchmind was one of the guards who
was stationed outside my doorwho spoke a little English.
So he and I could communicate and we did.
We had some very interesting discussions.
And he didn't help me get outor anything, but was friendly
(46:42):
enough that I felt sort of secure.
Um, and He felt secure enoughthat he was not afraid, partly
because I got quite sick.
, he was not afraid thatI would try to escape.
And so I would sit in my cell, hewould open the door my cell so we
could talk with each other withouthaving to shout through the door.
(47:06):
And we'd have some interestingconversations in as much as we
could both speak English together.
And at one point They decided thatit was time for me to be executed,
so , that part of the operation theycame through the prison, putting big
X marks on the doors as they went by.
(47:28):
Well, the door to my cell was pushedback against the wall because it
was open because , the guard andI were having a conversation.
And when the, um, came aroundto mark my door as being someone
who would be executed the nextday, they marked the door.
(47:52):
But then when he closed the doorat the end of our conversation,
the mark was on the inside andnot visible from the hallway.
So they passed me up.
And I was not executed.
I don't really believe in miracles,but it felt a little like that.
, just because the door had been opened,that I was spared having my head severed.
(48:19):
Not only was Thomas Paine, anextraordinary writer, able to motivate
people to fight for the cause of freedom.
But apparently after listening tothe story about the X on the inside
of the door, he was also very lucky.
In the next episode, he's going totalk about how some of his religious
beliefs got him in trouble, hisdealings with the Polian and the
(48:39):
impact of some of his other writings.
I'm glad you're enjoying this podcast.
If you haven't yet subscribed now.
And we'll see you at the next episodeof the calling history of podcasts
with part two of Thomas Payne.
I'm Tony Dean.
And today we'll be calling historyto speak with Thomas Paine.
He'll be answering our call in 1802at the age of 65 on his way back to
the United States after nearly losinghis head during the French revolution.
In January of 1776, Thomas Painepublished a pamphlet called common sense.
Arguing for American independence at thetime many Americans were for this drastic
(00:53):
change, but many were also against it.
Common sense was read by nearlyevery American citizen at the time
selling more than 500,000 copies,
the extraordinary popularity of thispamphlet and the fact that it was
written in the common tongue withoutfancy language as Payne would say, gave
the American cause one United voice.
(01:14):
During the revolutionary war,George Washington needed a way
to motivate the soldiers thatwere tired and wanted to go home.
What did he do?
He read another pamphlet to themen by Thomas Paine called the
American crisis that inspired thetroops to keep fighting and fight.
They did.
After the American revolution,the French decided they wanted
(01:34):
to have their own revolution.
Somehow Thomas Paine ended up inFrance writing yet another pamphlet to
bring those revolutionaries together.
It's hard to say exactly what itis about his writings that motivate
people to work together, risktheir lives and fight for freedom.
But that's exactly what his simple,
plain spoken writings didthroughout his entire life.
(01:57):
Ladies and gentlemen, fellowhistory, lovers, and shapers of
portly gentlemen, everywhere.
I give you Thomas Paine.
Hello, is that you, Mr.
Payne?
. It is, sir.
Sir, I am so excited to speak with you.
My name is Tony Dean, and I'm talking toyou from the future, in the 21st century.
The device that you're holdingis called a smartphone.
(02:20):
It allows us to speak as if and I weresitting in the same room with one another.
And it also allows me to sharea record of our conversation with
people around the world and Mr.
Payne, you have lived this unbelievablelife and I was just hoping that I
could ask you some questions about it.
But before I do, I understandthis is a strange introduction.
Can I answer any questionsyou might have first?
(02:42):
Well, I am mystified by what you'vejust said of I've never talked
with anybody from a different time.
I'm guessing that you wouldn't besurprised to hear that every person that
I speak to says that exact same thing.
And nonetheless, it is, it'ssuch a wonderful time that I live
in that, that this is possible.
And I have to tell you, sir, as I lookat your history, the one thing that,
(03:07):
, I've always known about you, but didn'tunderstand really the relevance of it, was
this pamphlet that you wrote during theAmerican Revolution called Common Sense.
And I guess I would just like to hear,like, how that came about, because,,
I always thought Common Sense wasthis pamphlet, you know, and it was
interesting and got people fired up.
But , my understanding is that like,every in the Americas read this?
(03:31):
This really was the voice that gavethem the belief that maybe they deserved
freedom and maybe they should go after it.
Maybe they deserved rights.
, how did this come about?
What made you think I need to writethis and give all these people a voice?
fairly complicated how it came about.
You know, I, you know, Arrived inAmerica from England on a ship.
(03:53):
I was very sick.
I managed to throw off my sickness andI got a job working with a printer.
And in fact he had me become the editorof a a newspaper that he , printed , and.
He made me the editor, because hereally, he was a printer, not a writer.
(04:15):
So, I became engaged with that,and that's how other people
started to get to know me.
And I wrote , some articles inthe paper about, for example,
about rights for women.
Which, because of the power of , mymother in my life, and I wrote a
(04:35):
an article in the paper calling forthe possibility of women voting.
And you may be surprised to knowsome of the colonies allowed women
to vote, but only some of them.
I didn't know that.
Some of the colonies
allowed women to vote?
That's right, and however once theConstitution came into play, , those sorts
(05:02):
of things, those differences between andamong the colonies began to disappear.
, probably the most dramatic ofthat sort of thing that happened
was the whole issue of slavery.
But for, in terms of women, somewomen in fact had the ability to
(05:22):
vote and , that , became mootonce the constitution was in place.
And who were made up theContinental Congress could not
bring themselves to do two things.
One was.
to address the issue of slavery, and theother was to address the rights of women.
(05:46):
I should add that one of the things thatpropelled me , in considering all that,
and that I'm much more aware of now, is, years later I met, Mary Wollstonecraft,
and she wrote a pamphlet title to my.
rights of man pamphlet, he wrote apamphlet called the rights of women.
(06:10):
And one of those things that shewas very insistent on is that
women should be able to vote.
I'm not surprised to hear, , you'realready talking about slavery, and
you're already talking about the rightsof women, and women voting and it,
this seems like the cause of your life.
, it seems to me that you were unhappywith the monarchy in England, and then
(06:34):
when you got involved with the, Thenwhen you were involved with the French
Revolution it sounds like you were astrong proponent of the French Revolution.
, your whole life is about fightingfor other people's rights.
Where does that come from?
I suppose it comes to a certaindegree from the fact that my
mother, was an Anglican.
, my father He was one of the peoplecalled Quakers, and he felt very
(06:59):
strongly that the testimonies ofthe people called Quakers were the
right way for human beings to live.
And so that, that wasa big part of my life.
, I had to be apprenticed tomy father because in school
I was unable to learn Latin.
(07:20):
And in order for me to have a positionof some importance in society, I
needed to be able to learn Latin.
And I just couldn't.
I can handle the English languagebut, I've discovered that I'm
not very good at learning otherlanguages and Latin was one of them.
Well, you'll be glad to know thatLatin isn't really popular in our time.
(07:43):
In fact, nobody speaks Latin.
So maybe it's just too hardfor people to learn because
they gave up on it in our time.
Well, I don't know about your time in thatregard, but I do know that there are many
of us in my time who may be able to saya phrase or two in Latin but if someone
hands us a piece of writing writtenin Latin, we can't figure out a thing.
(08:10):
I find very distracting, quitefrankly, because I learned English
, with all the punctuation marks andall that, which I actually quite
enjoy doing the punctuation marks.
In Latin, you don't haveany of those things.
You write some words, and you stop,and then you write some more words.
(08:30):
And there's no point of changefrom one phrase to another.
Or one sentence, if you will, to another.
Which I find very strange.
Yeah, I find that very strange too.
So, when you're reading it, is it harderto determine what the writer is saying?
Because you don't know where hewas stopping to take a breath
(08:52):
I suppose, don't ask me.
I couldn't make head or tail of it.
And finally my schoolmaster reportedto my parents that I did fairly
well in things like science andall right in mathematics, but
.Forget about Latin.
Because my parents allowed to have mein the school because of the, fellow,
(09:16):
Lord Grafton, who was, of course, inmuch higher status than my father.
But he saw that I had Some skills andhe wanted to reward me and my father
who was the one who made stays for him,as you probably know, men in my time,
fancy people would men would wear daysor corsets as it's sometimes called.
(09:41):
, that was my father's trade.
And that's what I learned how to do.
Once I was taken out of the school and.
APRENTICE TO MY FATHER TOLEARN HOW TO MAKE CORSETS!
YOU'RE TALKING CORSETS FOR WOMEN,YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT THOSE, THINGS
THEY PUT AROUND THEIR WAISTS TOMAKE THEIR WAIST LOOK SMALL, RIGHT?
WELL , IT'S NOT JUST THAT , IT'SMORE LIKELY FOR WOMEN TO WANT TO HAVE
(10:03):
THE FAMOUS WASP WAIST, THAT, THATWOMEN HAVE not necessarily naturally
but because they're cinched in.
Lord Grafton became heavier andheavier through my childhood.
And so my father had to make.
larger and larger corsets so that hecould have enough ability to pinch the man
(10:26):
in so he wouldn't look quite so portly.
But he still looked portly.
that these were for men as well.
Do a lot of men wear them in your time?
People who were fancy people.
Yes.
And Lord Grafton was definitely that.
Are you a fancy person?
Me?
No.
Not at all.
In fact, you may haveheard of Gouverneur Morris.
(10:51):
And Gouverneur Morris was really quite oneof the reasons I stayed in prison so long
in France was because he wasn't interestedin helping me get out of prison, he just
was happy to have me out of the way.
But one of the things he said aboutme in my life is that I didn't
even speak the King's English.
(11:12):
, I have a rough hewnlanguage, you might say.
Maybe that's why peopleliked your writing so much.
Well, I don't know.
I write what I think is trueand argue points that I think
are germane to the situation.
And I don't try to befancy in my writing.
(11:33):
, I try to speak the truth as I can.
Or, in this case, writethe truth as I can.
My experience being in, if you will,debates was when we were all in taverns
and we were having a pint or whateverand , we were arguing about some aspect
of our lives, for example, we were arguingabout whether people of higher status
(11:59):
deserve to have better things in life.
Then people , of modest status, and thatwas a big concern that people had and
I agreed that it just because . Yourlanguage is perhaps a little rough,
or you don't have all the fancy words,or you can't throw in sentences in
(12:20):
Latin to show off that you reallyknow what you're talking about.
Although I never saw that as a blessing, sometimes it's been a very difficult
place for me to be, especially when I'min the presence of people like General
Washington and Thomas Jefferson, , menwho were, if not as highly educated as
(12:42):
each other, they were groomed to be, ifyou will, gentlemen, instead of just men.
So you feel like you fit in thetavern crowd more than you did
the Washington Jefferson crowd.
Indeed.
And I always was very, , on the onehand amused and on the other hand
found it a kind of a blessing whenpeople of, as we would say, of a higher
(13:06):
class would take an interest in meand would actually take me seriously.
And as you probably know, CommonSense was originally gonna be
written by one of the other fellowswho was supportive of independency.
The person was Dr.
Benjamin Rush, but he had alreadywritten some articles for the
(13:30):
paper, , about topics that were sostrong in their opinion that he lost
some of his business, his patience.
They stopped coming to him becausethey thought he was too radical.
And so he was a little shy aboutwriting something like Common Sense
(13:50):
that he feared might lose him even more.
Of his patients.
Let's pause for a minute right there.
I wanna ask you specifically aboutcommon sense, because , when you
say that, , one of the other fellowswere gonna write this, I don't think
that just anybody can write this.
I think that this hadto be written by you.
, my understanding is that there were.
(14:12):
500,000 of these published andthat every person in the colonies
are, almost everybody read this.
, that's not the easiest thing to do,to get like every single person in
your state or country, whatever,to read what you've written.
And you did that my question is this.
What were you trying toaccomplish with Common Sense?
(14:34):
, what is the message thatyou're trying to get across?
, for somebody that, in our time,that, , maybe hadn't read it.
What are you trying to say?
What are you trying to do?
Well, a number of different things.
The most important is thepushing for independency.
Was right and rightly ordered andthat we should not shy away from
(14:55):
blaming our, if you will, birthrightand becoming an independent nation.
And it was urgent.
It seemed to us, to me, and, butalso to the others who were the
Philadelphia radicals, as we werecalled sometimes, it was urgent.
(15:16):
For us to encourage the averagepeople to take a position on this and
to actively push for independency.
Because a great many of the people whohad particular standing in society
were going to lose a great deal.
(15:38):
And , because they mightlose a great deal, they were
very hesitant, if you will.
Take a position of freedom andindependency and breaking off from the
crown and all of that, and setting upa government that was very different
from what Great Britain had beenclaiming for itself for centuries.
(16:02):
Not to put too big a, an importance onthat because it's as we know the chain
of, Kings and so on through time wasnot exactly continuous and healthy.
It often was broken apart and peopletook very different positions and you
have the James's, for example whenit came time for James the brother of
(16:29):
Charles the second, to become king,it was a panic for the English because
he was a Catholic and the English didnot want to have another Catholic.
So they had to hunt around whocan we find to be the king
because we need a king.
(16:50):
And they finally hit upon William,who , he was a Protestant,
but he wasn't even English.
He was Dutch.
It's amazing that they think thatthey can just plug people into there,
like the king isn't an important job.
They don't even have to consider merit.
They can just grab some guyand they're like, oh good, he's
not a Catholic, we're good.
(17:11):
We'll just throw Joe inthere and he's our guy.
That's right.
And it's amazing how much that hastaken over people's idea about
what makes for good government.
It's one thing if you have, let'ssay a blacksmith or something
who is amazing in his skill.
(17:33):
It's possible for that blacksmithTo teach his son, perhaps, to become
as good a blacksmith as he, butyou have to be trained in that way.
It's very much harder and becauseit's so much of a manual thing
it's not highly intellectual, whereaswith kings and so on, you have to have
(17:59):
some kind of sense of the world and it'snot going to work if it always has to be
the son of the king, it is dangerous, to change, and that's why kings are
so eager to have a son witness HenryVIII, who went through quite a number
of wives until finally he got a son.
(18:21):
And that son didn't last verylong and died, I believe when
he was about 15 years old.
So is this part of the message thatyou're trying to get across to everybody
that maybe the person who has the mostimportant job in the country maybe
isn't always a descendant and thatis going to lead to problems later.
Is that the message of common sense?
(18:42):
Well, Yes, in a sense that the message iswe the people, if you will, need to make
choices ourselves about who we want to be.
The, If you will, the head ofstate, not a king, but someone who
has talents and skills variouskinds of abilities that allow.
(19:07):
For clear thinking and clear decisionmaking, and of course it helps to have
other people around, which is why youhave , , according to the constitution,
you've got the president, and then you'vegot, not just one, but two congresses and
it's very important to have people around.
People of skill and talent and to acertain extent stature but you don't
(19:32):
have to all be of the same backgroundin order to have skill and stature.
, when you talk about you were tellingthe story just a second ago using
that comparison of the blacksmith.
If you were to imagine this blacksmith,you think of a blacksmith, you think
of a guy, kind of a strong, burlyguy, with big arms, swinging that
big hammer, and the fire, and theheat, and the soot on his face.
(19:55):
If you were to have a kid, Andthat kid weighed 75 pounds and
could barely lift the hammer up.
Just because you have thekid, he's not the guy to throw
into the blacksmith position.
Well, you're going to have that kid.
You know what I mean?
And that kid is an intellectual.
He doesn't need to be swinging a hammer.
And yet that's exactly whatthey did in the monarchy.
(20:16):
It didn't matter what the nextkid with doesn't matter how smart
he was or how talented he was.
It's just like, okay, you're the king.
Cause you're the son.
A lot of those guys couldn't swinga hammer, which is why that was, The
problem and I'm speaking metaphorically.
Okay, but I see what you're saying.
It makes it really makes a lot of sense.
It's absurd.
So tell me this.
What were you hoping to accomplishwhen common sense came out?
(20:36):
Were you trying to cause riots?
Were you trying to actuallychange the government?
Were you looking for violence?
Non violence?
What was your goal?
Well, often when governmentschange as you know, there is
a certain amount of turmoil.
Now the beauty of the constitutionis that it allowed for certain
(20:59):
things to happen that were notlikely to produce violence and so on.
So long as everybody was in agreementthat the process had worked properly.
And that's where we sometimes getinto trouble when one person claims
to have won, but it's not a real win.
(21:21):
That's why it's important for as manypeople as possible to be able to have
a vote, a choice, as to what they want.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Give people a voice so that wecan actually vote instead of
just hand power to somebody.
So, , now common sense Anddid you make a lot of money
(21:42):
from, 500, 000 copies being sold?
, well, it wasn't reallyme who did all of that.
And one of the reasons for that wasthat the first printing that happened in
Philadelphia with an agreement betweenthe printer whose name was Robert Bell,
And myself we agreed that any copiesthat sold, he would be able to hold
(22:09):
on to 50 percent and I would get 50%.
Now Now once the sales started,it became fairly clear that people
were eager to read this pamphlet.
They had heard about it, people hadmaybe discussed it some Common Sense
is really a fairly large pamphlet, wecall it a pamphlet, , depending on who's
(22:33):
been printing it it's at least 44 pages.
Now, some people printed it with veryfine type, and some people did it
larger , and the reason for that wasthere was no way that Robert Bell could
hundreds of thousands of copies or evenhundreds of copies over and over again.
(22:54):
The first run was, I believe, about2000, and those sold out fairly quickly.
They also, Got mailed around andso people like, Franklin, for
example, , who knew people elsewhereand new printers elsewhere.
He was able to send a copy and thena printer in, say, Charleston or , in
(23:18):
New York would take that and resetthe type for that addition most of
them were fairly consistent in whatthe wording was, not every one of
them but most of them , didn't tryto change what the document was.
However, they sometimes wereon cruder paper and larger
(23:43):
typeface and that sort of thing.
But most of the copies were notprinted anywhere near Philadelphia.
Charleston was a big placewhere printing happened.
And New York and Boston.
Lots of, lots of other placeswere printing basically the same
(24:04):
document over and over again.
But you weren't getting paid on it,
right?
, we had a struggle Robert Bell and I,and once he saw that it was gonna be
profitable, he started to say, well,actually, I had to spend a lot more
money than I thought on getting thepaper originally, and he basically
(24:27):
was trying to steal from me, and itwas hard for me to push back against
him on what amount I was gonna get.
However, I had already promisedmyself and promised others that.
Anything I was paid for the printing that,especially that first printing in January
(24:51):
of 1776 that, those funds would go tobuy mittens for the Continental Army.
Is that right?
You agreed that the proceeds from thesale of that would go to help the Army?
That's right, because it was winterand the Army was already in the field.
(25:11):
Well, well before the ContinentalCongress that worked on the Constitution.
So after this is published andeverybody is reading this and they're
developing their voice for We NeedFreedom, how does your life change?
Do you become popular?
, do people know who youare everywhere you go?
No, not necessarily.
(25:32):
The first few printings of the pamphletdid not have my name on it at all.
I refer to myself as theauthor in the introduction.
And did not put a name on it.
Now, a lot of people fairlyquickly, especially in Philadelphia,
knew that I was the author.
(25:54):
But it was not necessarily well knownalthough once people started reprinting
not in pamphlet form, but , in newspaperform, as it was fairly often reprinted
that way my name began to appear in someway indicating that I had written it.
(26:15):
Now, a lot of people didn't know my name.
So, , it was not necessarilysomething that made me famous,
everybody reads it.
And so few people know where it came from.
. , so now let me.
Go a little bit into the future, ? , younow are involved with , the way I
see it, giving people a voice for therevolution, and then there is another
(26:38):
document, or pamphlet that you printcalled the American Crisis, and it is my
understanding that, This, that, I thinkthis is the one that Washington read to
the troops to keep the troops inspired.
And the American crisis, I think,is the one that starts with, These
are the times that try men's souls.
(27:00):
That's just the first of, I believeit was 16 different pamphlets,
and that was just the first one.
And you're right, it was very importantat that moment, and Washington actually
asked me if I would write it, because hewas afraid because of , it being winter
(27:21):
and men being cold and they wanted tosee their families again and that sort
of thing, he was afraid that, especiallyafter the success at Trenton, he was
afraid that they would say, Oh, I'm tired.
I'm going to go home and some did,but he really wanted them to stay.
And so this was a way of tryingto encourage them not to give up
(27:47):
at that point, but to keep going.
So that is true.
Washington read it to the troops.
And of course, we now know, well, I
don't know that he readit, but he had it read.
Yes,
he had it read.
Okay.
And so this is why I'mso amazed by your story.
So here we've got the AmericanRevolution, , kind of, simmering, right?
(28:10):
Not quite boiling over.
, we got the Stamp Act in 64, we gotthe Townsend Act in 67, , people are
writing things, people are speaking.
And then common sense comes out,and common sense comes out and
unites the people's voice untilthe point where they're fighting.
And then when they're fighting, nextthing you know, the troops need a voice.
(28:34):
They need some sort of unity.
And then you become the voice of that.
And I just, I find that miraculous , canyou even imagine if you hadn't written
common sense and you hadn't writtenthe American crisis, I mean, what
do you think would have happened tothe army if you, if they had not had
the American crisis to unite them?
What do you think?
(28:55):
Well, , don't know how many of thesoldiers in the army actually read that.
They did have it read to thembefore crossing the Delaware to
attack the Hessians in Trenton.
But I suppose it hadsome good effect on them.
I was not present.
(29:16):
I was in Philadelphia.
And which is where I wrote it and thepamphlet and sent it on to Washington.
But yes, you're right.
It's not enough to, Have one pamphlet,say common sense, and stop there.
You have to keep, addingfuel to the fire, so to speak.
(29:37):
That is interesting that you say itthat way, because , it does appear
that as you go through your life,when these different fires needed to
be fueled, you were the guy carryingthe logs , which would make me want to
ask you about the French revolution,because then you got involved in that.
But.
Hold on, I don't want to go quite to thatyet, because I feel like you're being
(29:58):
a little humble right now, because whenI read the first part of the American
Crisis, and the one where it starts whereit says these times will try men's souls,
And it talks about tyranny is hell, noteasily conquered, and yet, the harder the
conflict, the more glorious the triumph.
When I get done reading justthe opening to this, I'm
(30:20):
looking for somebody to fight.
I'm looking for a cause.
I mean, I would be inspiredif I was a soldier.
And, I just think that, I can'timagine that not existing.
It's incredible to me.
, So now we got the French revolution.
So now the French revolution needssomebody to write and get behind that.
So then you wrote somethingon that, didn't you?
(30:42):
Well, I wrote a number ofthings while I was in France.
, the first important thing that Iwrote in France was the rights of man.
And the whole point of that was tosay to the French,, the Americans were
separating themselves from a monarchy.
But it wasn't quite the same as theFrench, who were basically overthrowing
(31:06):
the XVI was right there and in France.
And they were able to capture him and tobasically begin the process of dealing
with , an oppressive system, whichinvolved not only the monarchy, but it
(31:26):
involved the church in France, which wasnot the case really in America, as you
know, there were each of the colonieseither had A strong base , in some form
of religion, since people seem to feela need for religion perhaps the least
strong over time was Pennsylvania becausePennsylvania was started, , by Quakers
(31:51):
and they, among other things, refusedfor very many years to set up a militia.
And the militia was there to defend thecolony so that there'd be some kind of
violence, and avoiding having a militiasometimes got very scary to Pennsylvanians
(32:13):
because they were out in the frontier andthey were being attacked by the French
and the Native peoples because of whatthe French and the Native people saw
as English invading Which is not quitethe way the colonists tended to see it.
(32:34):
So, now it is time for you toget involved with the the French.
And you went to France.
And what was the receptionthat you got there?
When you start the rights of man and thatgets published, what is the response?
I understand, you did some jail time.
(32:54):
Did they put you in jail right away?
No,
no it's, actually fairlycomplicated, all this business
about my going to France.
And I wasn't just goingto France initially.
What I was doing in 1787 was I haddeveloped a Design for a single
(33:15):
span bridge that could be builtacross the school to the river.
To the west of Philadelphia, thatwould allow for people to transport
goods without having to Put themon a ferry , the Schuylkill
was a very, and swift river.
(33:39):
And it, especially in seasonsof storms and snow and ice it
became very dangerous to try totransport things across the river.
So having a bridge Would make it mucheasier for the goods from Philadelphia
(33:59):
that were manufactured, , in Philadelphiato be transported to the West and
for crops and things like that fromthe West to come to Philadelphia
without having to take your life inyour hand every time you wanted to
load stuff onto a ferry going across.
So my vision was to have this bridge.
(34:24):
I turned to Franklin because Franklin hassome good sense about this sort of thing.
And he urged me to go to Europe,to go to England and to France and
talk with the Royal Society and theFrench society who dealt with such
things and to get their approvalbecause the Pennsylvania Assembly.
(34:48):
Was unwilling to provideany funds for this bridge.
I thought it was too expensive.
And I did my best to try to convincethem that an iron bridge going across
the river would last a good, bit longerthan either a stone bridge or a wooden
(35:09):
bridge, both of which would take abeating, especially in the harsh weather.
So then what happened?
Well, what happened was, various thingsstarted happening in France, and I got
distracted from my bridge, if you will.
(35:29):
I didn't have much luckpromoting my bridge.
Sometime later, a fella actuallytook my plan and had it built
across the Severn River in England.
Of course they did.
But I had nothing to do with that.
Yeah,
I mean they basically, you writesomething, they print it wherever
they want and don't pay you for it.
You make a bridge, they're likeno thanks, and then later on
(35:51):
they copy your bridge as well.
From the way of the world.
Well, I it appears from a distance herethat people that are trying to make
things and accomplish things are verythankful for all your ideas, even though
they don't wanna pay you for them.
IUP suppose I suppose that's true.
I mean, I did get some compensationfor all my efforts but it.
(36:14):
It wasn't necessarily in a timely way,so there were times when I was walking
around with nothing in my pocketsto speak of and had to rely on the
the courtesy of my friends who wouldtreat me to a pint and a pot of stew.
Well that's how you know who yourfriends are when they'll treat you to a
pint when you're down, that's for sure.
(36:35):
me
this, a lot of times when people, have acause that they feel as passionately about
as you do, it appears to me that thosepeople aren't so concerned about making
money and that's part of the reason why,, maybe contracts aren't handled properly.
It's because it's justnot your, first goal.
, is making money from what you'rewriting your number one goal or
(36:58):
is the cause the number one goal?
I never, it never even occurredto me, really, by writing,
I could actually make money.
My understanding of making money was,well, if you were a privateer, you'd
go out and you'd stop let's say,friendships during The Seven Years War,
(37:19):
for example, and you'd seize the goodson the ship, and then you'd be able to
sell them when you got back to port.
And everyone on the shipwould get a share of that.
In fact, that was the only time thatI really had money in my pockets is
after I served as a cabin boy onboard a ship called the Terrible.
(37:43):
Actually, no, I didn'tgo on the Terrible first.
My father found out that I wasabout to enlist on the Terrible.
And he came, and he forced me tocome back with him to Thetford,
where we lived in in north of London.
But he couldn't stop me completely, andI was able to go back and reenlist on a
(38:06):
ship that was called the King of Prussia.
And the King of Prussia turned outto be very lucrative for the owner
of the ship and for all of thecrew, including people like me who
were at the bottom of the barrel.
But I got paid fairly well for themonths that I was on the ship and
(38:30):
helping to do the work of the ship.
So are you a pirate?
Privateer?
Is the word
, is that what pirates say when they're doing it legally?
? No, it's a privateer.
The big difference between a pirateand a prier is that a privateer.
Is working for a government, , and itusually happens in times of conflict and
(38:55):
war and so on, and the privateers aregiven license by the government to go out
and capture the ships of the enemy andto seize goods and to bring those goods
back to the country that's hired them.
In the name of the war?
Well, usually in the nameof the king , oh, okay.
(39:16):
Okay.
I see.
The British privateers werenot the actual Navy, but An
adjunct, , to the navy itself.
And the goal was not todestroy the other ship.
You, if you were lucky, you managed tonot only seize the goods on the ship,
but you might even be able to seize theship itself and bring it back and turn it
(39:39):
over to , whoever was in charge of that,. depends on what their your system is,
but if it's the king, then it's the king.
I never had so much money in my pocket aswhen I was 19, 20, 21 years old, having
sailed on the King of Prussia and hada lot of money jingling in my pockets.
(40:00):
it seems like you had a lot of jobsthroughout your life, and I don't see
any connection between any of them.
I mean, you're a privateer,you're a writer, you're making
corsets for portly men didn't youwork in tobacco at some point?
Well,
that was just when I was, thatwas just when I was a youngster.
Actually, later on, when I was havingtrouble in England, I tried to take up
(40:24):
making stays again, and it was a disaster.
I was in the wrong place.
The nice thing about the placewhere my father lived in Thetford,
was he was the only clay maker.
So that if someone wanted a set ofstays to be made, they went to him.
Whereas if you were in London,there was a lot of competition.
(40:47):
And stays are what we would call, Ithink we call them corsets in our time.
I don't know.
That's what they are.
It's the things you put around your waist.
. Yes.
Both men and women wear them.
They do slightly differentthings for men and women.
Men just don't want tolook partly and unfit.
So if you try to pull yourselfin a bit, then you look like a
(41:08):
burly man and not a fat man.
Got it.
Will you be doing anything elseover the next couple of years?
Are you going to be buildinghouses or ships or anything?
Well, I do have some ideas aboutships because of my experience
sailing aboard the King of Prussia,but I've never been able to think
about that as a part of a trade.
(41:31):
I seem to be caught upin the writing business.
And I don't mind that.
I've written quite a number ofpamphlets and some of them are
large enough you might even callthem books, and more recently I've
been writing to important people.
I consider important peopletrying to argue certain
(41:51):
things , for example, one of the.
Things that I've tried to do isto try to encourage people of some
status in society to really thinkclearly about who should be involved
in, the running of a government,should it only be the fancy people?
(42:12):
Mostly the continentalCongress was relatively
well to do people.
Not people a lower status in society.
Do you think that there should be moreof the lower citizens in government?
Should there be street sweepersand horse cleaners and, , people
that are not as educated?
(42:33):
Should they be in those positions?
Absolutely.
. You don't have to be highly trainedfor many jobs, you just need to have
an ability to learn how to do things,and then to do them, and it doesn't
hurt if the powers that be decidethat your work is worth paying for.
(42:55):
Unfortunately, if you're at thebottom of the barrel, you're less
likely to have a strong argument forsaying, , why don't you pay me more
?had to push with Robert Bell to try to get as much money as I could, but , in
effect, he held the purse strings becausehe was a printer and he got the money.
(43:16):
The money for theprinting of the pamphlets.
And then he had to share it with me.
, which he didn't sound likehe did a very good job doing.
He, no he didn't.
And I was especially distressed because asI said earlier spent enough time out in
the field with the Continental Army thatI knew that if it was winter time One of
(43:38):
the things you need to have, if you're asoldier, you need to have a way of keeping
your hands warm, because how are yougoing to fight if your hands are frozen?
So mittens seem to be theright thing for me to pay for.
I did my best.
, I feel like we got sidetrackeda little bit , I don't feel like
I heard , how do you almost getexecuted in being in prison in France?
(44:01):
So you went over to build thebridge and, yeah, what am I missing?
So, well, here's what happened.,my mission , to build the
bridge turned out to be.
A failure and then the French of theirown accord, it had nothing to do with me.
They were very happy to begin a processthat they themselves had already started.
(44:27):
I didn't start it , to throw overLouis the 16th and have something
more like was happening in America.
They were inspired by whathad happened in America.
That was what therights of man was about.
It was arguing that, yes, human beingsshould be able to be responsible for
(44:51):
their own decision making and their owndecision about what sort of government
do we want and that sort of thing.
Um, the problem for me with theFrench was twofold, at least.
One is, just as I'd had no successin learning Latin, I had very little
(45:12):
success learning any French., and theFrench decided that they were, admired
me enough because of common sense, thatthey wanted me to be part of their new
government now that I had I imprisoned,I XVI and Marie Antoinette, and then
ultimately they were executed, butwithin the group of revolutionaries,
(45:36):
there were really several factions andthey didn't get along very well And
ultimately, , I was imprisoned becauseOne side decided that I was favoring the
other side, and that I was a danger totheir revolution, and so I was jailed.
(46:01):
In a pretty fearsome prison.
It wasn't really a prison, but it wasa place you could easily lock somebody
in and keep them there for a long time.
I was in the prison for 10 months.
And let me tell you, you don't wantto be in prison for 10 minutes,
much less 10 months, becausenobody , pays much attention.
(46:21):
The only person who paid me muchmind was one of the guards who
was stationed outside my doorwho spoke a little English.
So he and I could communicate and we did.
We had some very interesting discussions.
And he didn't help me get outor anything, but was friendly
(46:42):
enough that I felt sort of secure.
Um, and He felt secure enoughthat he was not afraid, partly
because I got quite sick.
, he was not afraid thatI would try to escape.
And so I would sit in my cell, hewould open the door my cell so we
could talk with each other withouthaving to shout through the door.
(47:06):
And we'd have some interestingconversations in as much as we
could both speak English together.
And at one point They decided thatit was time for me to be executed,
so , that part of the operation theycame through the prison, putting big
X marks on the doors as they went by.
(47:28):
Well, the door to my cell was pushedback against the wall because it
was open because , the guard andI were having a conversation.
And when the, um, came aroundto mark my door as being someone
who would be executed the nextday, they marked the door.
(47:52):
But then when he closed the doorat the end of our conversation,
the mark was on the inside andnot visible from the hallway.
So they passed me up.
And I was not executed.
I don't really believe in miracles,but it felt a little like that.
, just because the door had been opened,that I was spared having my head severed.
(48:19):
Not only was Thomas Paine, anextraordinary writer, able to motivate
people to fight for the cause of freedom.
But apparently after listening tothe story about the X on the inside
of the door, he was also very lucky.
In the next episode, he's going totalk about how some of his religious
beliefs got him in trouble, hisdealings with the Polian and the
(48:39):
impact of some of his other writings.
I'm glad you're enjoying this podcast.
If you haven't yet subscribed now.
And we'll see you at the next episodeof the calling history of podcasts
with part two of Thomas Payne.
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com