Monroe, in a letter of September 15th to his relative, Judge Joseph
Jones, of Fredericksburg, Virginia, after speaking of the Judge's son
and his tutor at St. Germain, adds:
"As well on his account as that of our child, who is likewise at St.
Germain, we had taken rooms there, with the intention of occupying for a
month or two in the course of the autumn, but fear it will not be in our
power to do so, on account of the ill-health of Mr. Paine, who has lived
in my house for about ten months past. He was upon my arrival confined
in the Luxembourg, and released on my application; after which, being
ill, he has remained with me. For some time the prospect of his recovery
was good; his malady being an abscess in his side, the consequence of a
severe fever in the Luxembourg. Latterly his symptoms have become worse,
and the prospect now is that he will not be able to hold out more than a
month or two at the furthest. I shall certainly pay the utmost attention
to this gentleman, as he is one of those whose merits in our Revolution
were most distinguished."*
* I am indebted to Mrs. Gouverneur, of Washington, for this
letter, which is among the invaluable papers of her
ancestor, President Monroe, which surely should be secured
for our national archives.
Paine's speech in the Convention told sadly on his health. Again he had
to face death. As when, in 1793, the guillotine rising over him, he had
set about writing his last bequest, the "Age of Reason," he now devoted
himself to its completion. The manuscript of the second part, begun in
prison, had been in the printer's hands some time before Monroe wrote
of his approaching end. When the book appeared, he was so low that his
death was again reported.
So far as France was concerned, there was light about his eventide.
"Almost as suddenly," so he wrote, "as the morning light dissipates
darkness, did the establishment of the Constitution change the face of
affairs in France. Security succeeded to terror, prosperity to distress,
plenty to famine, and confidence increased as the days multiplied." This
may now seem morbid optimism, but it was shared by the merry youth, and
the pretty dames, whose craped arms did not prevent their sandalled feet
and Greek-draped forms from dancing in their transient Golden Age. Of
all this, we may be sure, the invalid hears many a beguiling story from
Madame Monroe.
But there is a grief in his heart more cruel than death. The months have
come and gone,--more than eighteen,--since Paine was cast into prison,
but as yet no word of kindness or inquiry had come from Washington.
Early in the year, on the President's sixty-third birthday, Paine had
written him a letter of sorrowful and bitter reproach, which Monroe
persuaded him not to send, probably because of its censures on the
ministerial failures of Morris, and "the pusillanimous conduct of Jay
in England." It now seems a pity that Monroe did not encourage Paine to
send Washington, in substance, the personal part of his letter, which
was in the following terms:
"As it is always painful to reproach those one would wish to respect, it
is not without some difficulty that I have taken the resolution to write
to you. The danger to which I have been exposed cannot have been
unknown to you, and the guarded silence you have observed upon that
circumstance, is what I ought not to have expected from you, either as a
friend or as a President of the United States.
"You knew enough of my character to be assured that I could not have
deserved imprisonment in France, and, without knowing anything more
than this, you had sufficient ground to have taken some interest for my
safety. Every motive arising from recollection ought to have suggested
to you the consistency of such a measure. But I cannot find that you
have so much as directed any enquiry to be made whether I was in prison
or at liberty, dead or alive; what the cause of that imprisonment was,
or whether there was any service or assistance you could render. Is this
what I ought to have expected from America after the part I had acted
towards her? Or, will it redound to her honor or to your's that I tell
the story?
"I do not hesitate to say that you have not served America with more
fidelity, or greater zeal, or greater disinterestedness, than myself,
and perhaps with not better effect After the revolution of America had
been established, you rested at home to partake its advantages, and I
ventured into new scenes of difficulty to extend the principles which
that revolution had produced. In the progress of events you beheld
yourself a president in America and me a prisoner in France: you folded
your arms, forgot your friend, and became silent.
"As everything I have been doing in Europe was connected with my wishes
for the prosperity of America, I ought to be the more surprised at this
conduct on the part of her government. It leaves me but one mode of
explanation, which is, that everything is not as it ought to be amongst
you, and that the presence of a man who might disapprove, and who had
credit enough with the country to be heard and believed, was not
wished for. This was the operating motive of the despotic faction
that imprisoned me in France (though the pretence was that I was a
foreigner); and those that have been silent towards me in America,
appear to me to have acted from the same motive. It is impossible for me
to discover any other."
Unwilling as all are to admit anything disparaging to Washington,
justice requires the fair consideration of Paine's complaint There were
in his hands many letters proving Washington's friendship, and his great
appreciation of Paine's services. Paine had certainly done nothing to
forfeit his esteem. The "Age of Reason" had not appeared in America
early enough to affect the matter, even should we suppose it offensive
to a deist like Washington. The dry approval, forwarded by the Secretary
of State, of Monroe's reclamation of Paine, enhanced the grievance. It
admitted Paine's American citizenship. It was not then an old friend
unhappily beyond his help, but a fellow-citizen whom he could legally
protect, whom the President had left to languish in prison, and in
hourly danger of death. During six months he saw no visitor, he heard no
word, from the country for which he had fought. To Paine it could appear
only as a sort of murder. And, although he kept back the letter, at his
friend's desire, he felt that it might yet turn out to be murder. Even
so it seemed, six months later, when the effects of his imprisonment,
combined with his grief at Washington's continued silence (surely Monroe
must have written on the subject), brought him to death's door. One must
bear in mind also the disgrace, the humiliation of it, for a man who had
been reverenced as a founder of the American Republic, and its apostle
in France. This, indeed, had made his last three months in prison, after
there had been ample time to hear from Washington, heavier than all the
others. After the fall of Robespierre the prisons were rapidly
emptied--from twenty to forty liberations daily,--the one man apparently
forgotten being he who wrote, "in the times that tried men's souls," the
words that Washington ordered to be read to his dispirited soldiers.
And now death approaches. If there can be any explanation of this long
neglect and silence, knowledge of it would soothe the author's dying
pillow; and though there be little probability that he can hold out so
long, a letter (September 20th) is sent to Washington, under cover to
Franklin Bache.
"Sir,--I had written you a letter by Mr. Letombe, French consul, but, at
the request of Mr. Monroe, I withdrew it, and the letter is still by
me. I was the more easily prevailed upon to do this, as it was then my
intention to have returned to America the latter end of the present year
(1795;) but the illness I now suffer prevents me. In case I had come, I
should have applied to you for such parts of your official letters (and
your private ones, if you had chosen to give them) as contained any
instructions or directions either to Mr. Monroe, to Mr. Morris, or
to any other person, respecting me; for after you were informed of my
imprisonment in France it was incumbent on you to make some enquiry
into the cause, as you might very well conclude that I had not the
opportunity of informing you of it. I cannot understand your silence
upon this subject upon any other ground, than as connivance at my
imprisonment; and this is the manner in which it is understood here,
and will be understood in America, unless you will give me authority for
contradicting it. I therefore write you this letter, to propose to you
to send me copies of any letters you have written, that I may remove
this suspicion. In the Second Part of the "Age of Reason," I have given
a memorandum from the handwriting of Robespierre, in which he proposed a
decree of accusation against me 'for the interest of America as well as
of France.' He could have no cause for putting America in the case, but
by interpreting the silence of the American government into connivance
and consent. I was imprisoned on the ground of being born in England;
and your silence in not inquiring the cause of that imprisonment, and
reclaiming me against it, was tacitly giving me up. I ought not to have
suspected you of treachery; but whether I recover from the illness I now
suffer, or not, I shall continue to think you treacherous, till you give
me cause to think otherwise. I am sure you would have found yourself
more at your ease had you acted by me as you ought; for whether your
desertion of me was intended to gratify the English government, or to
let me fall into destruction in France that you might exclaim the louder
against the French Revolution; or whether you hoped by my extinction to
meet with less opposition in mounting up the American government; either
of these will involve you in reproach you will not easily shake off.
"Thomas Paine."
This is a bitter letter, but it is still more a sorrowful one. In view
of what Washington had written of Paine's services, and for the sake
of twelve years of _camaraderie_, Washington should have overlooked the
sharpness of a deeply wronged and dying friend, and written to him what
his Minister in France had reported. My reader already knows, what the
sufferer knew not, that a part of Paine's grievance against Washington
was unfounded. Washington could not know that the only charge against
Paine was one trumped up by his own Minister in France. Had he
considered the letter just quoted, he must have perceived that Paine was
laboring under an error in supposing that no inquiry had been made into
his case. There are facts antecedent to the letter showing that his
complaint had a real basis. For instance, in a letter to Monroe
(July 30th), President's interest was expressed in two other American
prisoners in France--Archibald Hunter and Shubael Allen,--but no word
was said of Paine. There was certainly a change in Washington towards
Paine, and the following may have been its causes.
1. Paine had introduced Genet to Morris, and probably to public men in
America. Genet had put an affront on Morris, and taken over a demand for
his recall, with which Morris connected Paine. In a letter to Washington
(private) Morris falsely insinuated that Paine had incited the actions
of Genet which had vexed the President.
2. Morris, perhaps in fear that Jefferson, influenced by Americans in
Paris, might appoint Paine to his place, had written to Robert Morris in
Philadelphia slanders of Paine, describing him as a sot and an object of
contempt. This he knew would reach Washington without passing under the
eye of Paine's friend, Jefferson.
3. In a private letter Morris related that Paine had visited him with
Colonel Oswald, and treated him insolently. Washington particularly
disliked Oswald, an American journalist actively opposing his
administration.
4. Morris had described Paine as intriguing against him, both in Europe
and America, thus impeding his mission, to which the President attached
great importance.
5. The President had set his heart on bribing England with a favorable
treaty of commerce to give up its six military posts in America. The
most obnoxious man in the world to England was Paine. Any interference
in Paine s behalf would not only have offended England, but appeared as
a sort of repudiation of Morris' intimacy with the English court.
The (alleged) reclamation of Paine by Morris had been kept secret by
Washington even from friends so intimate (at the time) as Madison, who
writes of it as having never been done. So carefully was avoided the
publication of anything that might vex England.
6. Morris had admonished the Secretary of State that if Paine's
imprisonment were much noticed it might endanger his life. So conscience
was free to jump with policy.
What else Morris may have conveyed to Washington against Paine can be
only matter for conjecture; but what he was capable of saying about
those he wished to injure may be gathered from various letters of his.
In one (December 19, 1795) he tells Washington that he had heard from a
trusted informant that his Minister, Monroe, had told various Frenchmen
that "he had no doubt but that, if they would do what was proper here,
he and his friends would turn out Washington."
Liability to imposition is the weakness of strong natures. Many an Iago
of canine cleverness has made that discovery. But, however Washington's
mind may have been poisoned towards Paine, it seems unaccountable that,
after receiving the letter of September 20th, he did not mention to
Monroe, or to somebody, his understanding that the prisoner had been
promptly reclaimed. In my first edition it was suggested that the letter
might have been intercepted by Secretary Pickering, Paine's enemy, who
had withheld from Washington important documents in Randolph's case.
Unfortunately my copyist in the State Department sent me only Bache's
endorsement: "Jan. 18,1796. Enclosed to Benj. Franklin Bache, and by him
forwarded immediately upon receipt." But there is also an endorsement by
Washington: "From Mr. Thomas Paine, 20 Sept. 1795." (Addressed outside:
"George Washington, President of the United States.") The President was
no longer visited by his old friends, Madison and others, and they could
not discuss with him the intelligence they were receiving about Paine.
Madison, in a letter to Jefferson (dated at Philadelphia, January 10,
1796), says:
"I have a letter from Thomas Paine which breathes the same sentiments,
and contains some keen observations on the administration of the
government here. It appears that the neglect to claim him as an American
citizen when confined by Robespierre, or even to interfere in any way
whatever in his favor, has filled him with an indelible rancor against
the President, to whom it appears he has written on the subject
[September 20, 1795]. His letter to me is in the style of a dying one,
and we hear that he is since dead of the abscess in his side, brought on
by his imprisonment. His letter desires that he may be remembered to
you."
Whatever the explanation may be, no answer came from Washington. After
waiting a year Paine employed his returning strength in embodying the
letters of February 22d and September 20th, with large additions, in a
printed _Letter to George Washington_. The story of his imprisonment
and death sentence here for the first time really reached the
American people. His personal case is made preliminary to an attack on
Washington's whole career. The most formidable part of the pamphlet was
the publication of Washington's letter to the Committee of Public
Safety, which, departing from its rule of secrecy (in anger at the
British Treaty), thus delivered a blow not easily answerable. The
President's letter was effusive, about the "alliance," "closer bonds of
friendship," and so forth,--phrases which, just after the virtual
transfer of our alliance to the enemy of France, smacked of perfidy.
Paine attacks the treaty, which is declared to have put American
commerce under foreign dominion. "The sea is not free to her. Her right
to navigate is reduced to the right of escaping; that is, until some
ship of England or France stops her vessels and carries them into port."
The ministerial misconduct of Gouverneur Morris, and his neglect of
American interests, are exposed in a sharp paragraph. Washington's
military mistakes are relentlessly raked up, with some that he did not
commit, and the credit given him for victories won by others heavily
discounted.
{1796}
That Washington smarted under this pamphlet appears by a reference to it
in a letter to David Stuart, January 8, 1797. Speaking of himself in the
third person, he says: "Although he is soon to become a private citizen,
his opinions are to be knocked down, and his character reduced as low
as they are capable of sinking it, even by resorting to absolute
falsehoods. As an evidence whereof, and of the plan they are pursuing,
I send you a letter of Mr. Paine to me, printed in this city
[Philadelphia], and disseminated with great industry." In the same
letter he says: "Enclosed you will receive also a production of Peter
Porcupine, alias William Cobbett. Making allowances for the asperity of
an Englishman, for some of his strong and coarse expressions, and a
want of official information as to many facts, it is not a bad thing."*
Cobbett's answer to Paine's personal grievance was really an arraignment
of the President. He undertakes to prove that the French Convention was
a real government, and that by membership in it Paine had forfeited
his American citizenship. But Monroe had formally claimed Paine as an
American citizen, and the President had officially endorsed that claim.
That this approval was unknown to Cobbett is a remarkable fact, showing
that even such small and tardy action in Paine's favor was kept secret
from the President's new British and Federalist allies.
* "Porcupine's Political Censor, for December, 1796. A
Letter to the Infamous Tom. Paine, in answer to his letter
to General Washington."
For the rest it is a pity that Washington did not specify the "absolute
falsehoods" in Paine's pamphlet, if he meant the phrase to apply to
that. It might assist us in discovering just how the case stood in his
mind. He may have been indignant at the suggestion of his connivance
with Paine's imprisonment; but, as a matter of fact, the President had
been brought by his Minister into the conspiracy which so nearly cost
Paine his life.
On a review of the facts, my own belief is that the heaviest part of
Paine's wrong came indirectly from Great Britain. It was probably one
more instance of Washington's inability to weigh any injustice against
an interest of this country. He ignored compacts of capitulation in the
cases of Burgoyne and Asgill, in the Revolution; and when convinced
that this nation must engage either in war or commercial alliance with
England he virtually broke faith with France.*
* In a marginal note on Monroe's "View, etc.," found among
his papers, Washington writes: "Did then the situation of
our affairs admit of any other alternative than negotiation
or war?" (Sparks' "Washington," xi., P- 505). Since writing
my "Life of Randolph," in which the history of the British
treaty is followed, I found in the French Archives ( Etats-
Unis, vol. ii., doc. 12) Minister Fauchet's report of a
conversation with Secretary Randolph in which he (Randolph)
said: "What would you have us do? We could not end our
difficulties with the English but by a war or a friendly
treaty. We were not prepared for war; it was necessary to
negotiate." It is now tolerably certain that there was
"bluff" on the part of the British players, in London and
Philadelphia, but it won.
To the new alliance he sacrificed his most faithful friends Edmund
Randolph and James Monroe; and to it, mainly, was probably due his
failure to express any interest in England's outlaw, Paine. For this
might gain publicity and offend the government with which Jay was
negotiating. Such was George Washington. Let justice add that he
included himself in the list of patriotic martyrdoms. By sacrificing
France and embracing George III. he lost his old friends, lost the
confidence of his own State, incurred denunciations that, in his own
words, "could scarcely be applied to a Nero, a notorious defaulter,
or even to a common pickpocket." So he wrote before Paine's pamphlet
appeared, which, save in the personal matter, added nothing to
the general accusations. It is now forgotten that with one
exception--Johnson--no President ever went out of office so loaded with
odium as Washington. It was the penalty of Paine's power that, of the
thousand reproaches, his alone survived to recoil on his memory when
the issues and the circumstances that explain if they cannot justify
his pamphlet, are forgotten. It is easy for the Washington worshipper
of to-day to condemn Paine's pamphlet, especially as he is under no
necessity of answering it. But could he imagine himself abandoned to
long imprisonment and imminent death by an old friend and comrade, whose
letters of friendship he cherished, that friend avowedly able to protect
him, with no apparent explanation of the neglect but deference to an
enemy against whom they fought as comrades, an unprejudiced reader
would hardly consider Paine's letter unpardonable even where unjust. Its
tremendous indignation is its apology so far as it needs apology. A man
who is stabbed cannot be blamed for crying out. It is only in poetry
that dying Desdemonas exonerate even their deluded slayers. Paine, who
when he wrote these personal charges felt himself dying of an abscess
traceable to Washington's neglect, saw not Iago behind the President.
His private demand for explanation, sent through Bache, was answered
only with cold silence. "I have long since resolved," wrote Washington
to Governor Stone (December 6, 1795), "for the present time at least,
to let my calumniators proceed without any notice being taken of
their invectives by myself, or by any others with my participation or
knowledge." But now, nearly a year later, comes Paine's pamphlet, which
is not made up of invectives, but of statements of fact. If, in this
case, Washington sent, to one friend at least, Cobbett's answer to
Paine, despite its errors which he vaguely mentions, there appears no
good reason why he should not have specified those errors, and Paine's
also. By his silence, even in the confidence of friendship, the truth
which might have come to light was suppressed beyond his grave. For such
silence the best excuse to me imaginable is that, in ignorance of
the part Morris had acted, the President's mind may have been in
bewilderment about the exact facts.
As for Paine's public letter, it was an answer to Washington's
unjustifiable refusal to answer his private one. It was the natural
outcry of an ill and betrayed man to one whom we now know to have been
also betrayed. Its bitterness and wrath measure the greatness of the
love that was wounded. The mutual personal services of Washington and
Paine had continued from the beginning of the American revolution to the
time of Paine's departure for Europe in 1787. Although he recognized, as
Washington himself did, the commander's mistakes Paine had magnified
his successes; his all-powerful pen defended him against loud charges
on account of the retreat to the Delaware, and the failures near
Philadelphia. In those days what "Common Sense" wrote was accepted
as the People's verdict. It is even doubtful whether the proposal to
supersede Washington might not have succeeded but for Paine's fifth
_Crisis_.*
* "When a party was forming, in the latter end of seventy-
seven and beginning of seventy-eight, of which John Adams
was one, to remove Mr. Washington from the command of the
army, on the complaint that he did nothing, I wrote the
fifth number of the Crisis, and published it at Lancaster
(Congress then being at Yorktown, in Pennsylvania), to ward
off that meditated blow; for though I well knew that the
black times of seventy-six were the natural consequence of
his want of military judgment in the choice of positions
into which the army was put about New York and New Jersey, I
could see no possible advantage, and nothing but mischief,
that could arise by distracting the army into parties, which
would have been the case had the intended motion gone on."--
Paine's Letter iii to the People of the United States
(1802).
The personal relations between the two had been even affectionate. We
find Paine consulting him about his projected publications at little
oyster suppers in his own room; and Washington giving him one of his
two overcoats, when Paine's had been stolen. Such incidents imply many
others never made known; but they are represented in a terrible epigram
found among Paine's papers,--"Advice to the statuary who is to execute
the statue of Washington.
"Take from the mine the coldest, hardest stone,
It needs no fashion: it is Washington.
But if you chisel, let the stroke be rude,
And on his heart engrave--Ingratitude."
Paine never published the lines. Washington being dead, old memories may
have risen to restrain him; and he had learned more of the treacherous
influences around the great man which had poisoned his mind towards
other friends besides himself. For his pamphlet he had no apology to
make. It was a thing inevitable, volcanic, and belongs to the history of
a period prolific in intrigues, of which both Washington and Paine were
victims.