Thomas Paine Common Sense Summary
Education / Colleges Ranking Index by Rebellion Research
Thomas Paine was dying. The celebrated propagandist whose works had fueled the American Revolution lay fevered and slumped in his cell in Luxembourg Prison. A guard had just chalk-marked Paine’s cell door, which meant death that day by guillotine. He left the portal slightly ajar so that the prisoner could cool his fever before his imminent demise. A British-born participant in the French Revolution, Paine favored the fall of the monarchy but had pleaded to spare Louis XVI, thus antagonizing the “architects” of the Reign of Terror: the Committee of Public Safety. The Committee saw Paine as an antirevolutionary and imprisoned him, an honorary French citizen, under a law against “foreigners.” Now, seven months since his arrest, Paine prepared himself to never again see the light of day. But, as luck would have it, the executioner missed the chalk mark on Paine’s half-open door. Three days later, a mob overthrew Maximilien Robespierre, the Committee’s leader. This enabled Paine to live long enough for the new American ambassador to France, James Monroe, to personally rescue the writer from prison, without aid or instruction from the United States government.
While imprisoned, Paine had repeatedly begged his former ally and companion – the first US president George Washington – for aid and extradition. The two men, once intimate enough to sail and conduct scientific experiments together, had since grown apart, but Paine nevertheless trusted Washington to extend help in his hour of most desperate need. To Paine’s dismay, not only did the president remain wholly reticent, Washington’s appointed Minister to France, Gouverneur Morris, actively obstructed Paine’s path to political refuge in the US. Paine believed that Robespierre took Washington’s silence and Morris’s schemes as the American government’s “connivance and consent” concerning his execution, and he was unwilling to forgive their cold betrayals. Upon returning to safety, Paine issued a long diatribe against Washington and his Federalist compatriots, denouncing the president as an incompetent, Machiavellian hypocrite with a cabinet full of sycophants. When the letter received yet again no response nor acknowledgment, Paine published it in the General Advertiser and Aurora pamphlet, a vociferous Antifederalist rag. “The world will be puzzled to decide whether you are an apostate or an impostor; whether you have abandoned good principles or whether you ever had any,” Paine addressed Washington with overwhelming bitterness.
How did Paine and Washington, in those “times that tried men’s souls,” come to such incompatible positions? Upon close examination, while Paine’s expertise in propaganda supported the American Revolution, Washington found Paine’s radicalism incompatible with the Federalist agenda of avoiding conflict with France and Britain. Paine’s stubborn convictions proved too radical in Britain and too moderate in France during the Reign of Terror, leaving him in too precarious a position for Washington, the scrutinized president, to support or extradite. Yet by promoting strict US neutrality amid conflicts between Britain and revolutionary France at even the highest interpersonal cost, Washington arguably not only betrayed one of his closest companions and supporters, but even sowed the seeds for future wars with both European powers by failing to take a strong stand against either of them.
Paine and Washington’s Early Relationship
To qualify the full relationship between Paine and Washington, we must evaluate their long, collaborative history prior to the latter’s ascension to the presidency. During the revolutionary period, Paine’s work Common Sense presented to the American public two paths: that of continued discontent under tyrannical British rule, or that of happiness through the creation of an independent republic. The colonists, inspired to pursue the latter, took up arms in Washington’s Continental Army. Paine not only donated all his earnings from his bestseller to the war effort, but also personally traveled with Washington for a long time. When Washington’s Army crossed the Delaware River, Paine read aloud his American Crisis treatises which possibly motivated the dispirited militiamen to their decisive victory at the Battle of Trenton. When the Conway Cabal, led by Thomas Conway, wished to overthrow Washington as commander of the American Army, Paine defended Washington’s methods, tactics, and charisma, sometimes even resorting to fabricating data of battle casualties.
Their partnership carried into the first years of the new republic. From 1776 to 1778, the idealist Paine fell into conflict with Silas Deane, an American diplomat who lacked confidence in the American militiamen in the Revolutionary War and profiteered from financial fraud. In defending Deane, John Jay, then President of the Congressional Committee, labeled Paine as unpatriotic and destroyed his reputation among the commoners. When the Revolutionary War effort ended, Washington appealed to Virginia House delegate James Madison to offer Paine financial support. Washington wrote kindly of Paine and emphasized his contributions to the war: “His views are moderate; a decent independency is, I believe, all he aims at. Should he not obtain [an allowance from Congress]? If you think so, I am sure you will not only move the matter, but give it your support.” At this time, Washington did not see Paine as a disruptive revolutionary. He offered generous opportunities to his former ally, assisting him in applying for a well-paid position of “Historiographer to the Continent” in the Continental Congress.
Washington’s presidential inauguration on April 30, 1789, coincided with the start of the French Revolution later in May. The latter, a product of widespread social inequities, was motivated by the success of the American Revolution. The struggle rallied French commoners to strive for a more representative government. Girondins, who favored a constitutional monarchy, would exert dominance in the earlier years of the Revolution.
On October 16, Paine sent his belated congratulations concerning Washington’s presidency. In the same letter, Paine informed his friend that he would soon depart for France to participate in their Revolution:
I need not tell you how much I rejoice at the prosperous accounts from America, or how happy I feel that you have relinquished the temptations of quiet retirement for the busy scenes of Public Good. Had the opportunity of your coming once more forward not have offered itself you might have [e]njoyed retirement with serenity; but retirement would have lost its felicity, had it been haunted, as would have been the case, with the impression of having declined, for the sake of ease, a station in which you could be so publicly useful… In the mean time I am going over to France—A Share in two revolutions is living to some purpose—I shall be exceedingly happy to see a line from you, which if addressed…will find me any where.
Clearly, Paine saw Washington as the best president for the US at this critical moment when the nation needed to make sense of its newly earned independence. Paine further demonstrated his trust of Washington when he shared that he would visit France. His excited tone in the letter suggests that he believed Washington would support his choice and recognize Paine as a purposeful and heroic revolutionary.
Unbeknownst to Paine, Washington had begun to reevaluate the 1778 Treaty of Alliance, the document which, until then, had bound the US and France together. This formal defensive alliance, with no explicitly stated expiration date, mandated that the two parties “aid each other mutually with their good Offices, their Counsels, and their forces” and “make all the efforts in [their] Power” in doing so. To Washington, this spelled trouble; should the French Revolution succeed in overthrowing its monarchic government, warfare between France and Britain might ensue. The US, only a fledgling nation, would soon be forced to confront the limitations of revolutionary ideals and find its place on the international scene.
Controversies Over Neutrality
As Washington predicted, ideological differences between revolutionary France and monarchic European nations like Britain reached the tipping point in late 1792. The French, largely fueled by the fervor of their revolution, wished to export the gift of representative government. The opposing coalition, threatened by the precedent of constitutionality and popular sovereignty in France, fought to justify the strength of absolute monarchy and thereby dampen the Revolution. The war in France posed a moral and political conundrum to the Washington administration: should the US, an emergent nation who had allied with France and shared the revolutionary struggle, join in the war in Europe? The question drew a rift in Washington’s cabinet and between Washington and Paine.
Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, who looked to Paine’s ideals of direct democracy, saw the American Revolution as an “awakening” and “enlightening” model for European nations to follow. He contended that Americans had the moral and political responsibility to support the French Revolution, if only in return for French aid during the American Revolution and the standing Treaty of Alliance. In his letter to French Duchess Madame d’Enville on April 2, 1790, Jefferson wrote in the hopes that the US and France would remain “faithful to all engagements and under all circumstances be open & generous [to] promote in the long run even the interests of both.” Jefferson alluded to his desire to uphold the alliance, which would closely tie American and French interests. His belief that a “change in your [French] government would approximate us to one another” reveals that he saw the objectives of the French Revolution as synonymous to the American cause – freedom from a tyrannical monarchy.
On the other hand, Secretary of Treasury Alexander Hamilton advocated for neutrality. To him, upholding the Franco-American alliance would prove too fraught with danger and unpredictability. This Federalist only once conceded, in private to Washington, that the French Revolution might hold its merits, that it “may inspire, may be a substitute for the energy of a good administration, and the spring of great exertions.” Yet even in that relatively generous account, Hamilton believed that the French Revolution was inherently immature. To Hamilton, a neutral position would help the US avoid unnecessary war with Great Britain and delay the nation’s involvement in conflicts between European powers until the nation was able to influence the outcomes of such conflicts with advantage.
Gouverneur Morris, another staunch Anglophile who had Washington’s ear, used his residence in France, and thus proximity to the events of the French Revolution, to add credence to his opinionated accounts of the French people’s new government. In his letter to Washington on October 23, 1792, Morris expressed sympathy for the dethroned Louis XVI and insinuated that the Revolution was unjust, for the King “wished sincerely for this Nation the Enjoyment of the utmost Degree of Liberty which their Situation and Circumstances will permit.” In other words, Morris suggested that France under King Louis XVI had already enjoyed its full capacity for freedom and independence, indirectly undermining the validity of the French Revolution. He further cautioned Washington against extending America’s alliance with France, citing the French people’s supposedly fickle nature:
The Characters of Nations must be taken into Consideration in all political questions, and that of France has ever been an enthusiastic Inconstancy. They soon get tird of a Thing. They adopt without Examination and reject without sufficient Cause. Furthermore, they are now agog of thier Republic, and may perhaps adopt some Form of Government with a Huzza. However, that they will adopt a good Form or having adopted adhere to it, that is what I do not beleive.
Five months later (as was the norm, due to the sluggishness of overseas correspondence), Washington thanked Morris for his assessment and commentary. Washington would later accredit Morris with helping him make the decision to avoid the “contests of European Nations, where [the American] weight could be but Small—tho’ the loss to [America] would be certain.”
Indeed, Washington had shared a similar view as Hamilton, Morris, and their Federalist compatriots since the American Revolution and the dawn of the Franco-American alliance. In 1778, Washington told Anglophile Henry Laurens,
Men are very apt to run into extremes, hatred to England may carry some into an excess of confidence in France, especially, when motives of gratitude are thrown into the scale—Men of this description would be unwilling to suppose France capable of acting so [disingenuously]. I am heartily disposed to entertain the most favourable sentiments of our New Ally, and to cherish them in others, to a reasonable degree…
This letter illustrates Washington’s distrust of the American radicals whose love for France had surpassed what he saw as a “reasonable degree.” Eleven years before the onset of the French Revolution, he already feared that the feverish antagonism against Britain, a remnant of the American Revolution, would encourage the public to blindly rally behind French grievances. In 1789, he wrote to a private French correspondent with the same doubts: “Revolution is of too great a magnitude to be effected in so short a space, and with the loss of so little blood…great temperance, firmness, and foresight are necessary [to avoid] a higher-toned despotism than the one which existed before.” This astute prediction came true: in June 1793, Jacobins, revolutionaries who advocated for a secular centralized republican state and abetted anarchy to achieve their goals, overthrew the moderate Girondins. The ensuing Terror followed a narrower, more extreme definition of revolution; the Montagnard, a group of the most radical Jacobins including Robespierre, guillotined innocent luminaries, the original proponents of the Revolution, along with the monarchs. For example, Marie-Olympe de Gouges, one of modern France’s first feminists, was publicly beheaded for her Girondin sympathies on November 3, 1793. Washington’s proven fears likely contributed to a deep-rooted trust in his early biases, which defined many of his policies during his administration.
However, Paine, a perennial radical, disputed Washington’s views on the matter of neutrality. Paine envisioned harnessing the success of the American Revolution to influence the organization of government in Britain and France, and he refused to cower when met with diplomatic pressures. In 1780, Paine planned to write American propaganda in Britain to incite the crowds to cast out King George and establish a British Republic. In Paine’s letter to Nathanael Greene, he wrote:
Perhaps with me a little degree of literary pride is connected with principle — for as I had a considerable share in promoting the Declaration of Independence in this Country I likewise wish to be a means of promoting the acknowledgment of it in that; and were I not persuaded that the measure I have proposed would be productive of much essential service I would not hazard my own safety, as I have every thing to apprehend should I fall into their hands — but could I escape in Safety till I could get out a publication in England my apprehensions would be over because the manner in which I mean to treat the subject would procure me protection.
In this letter, Paine cast himself as an emblem of independence and liberty and maintained that fellow proponents of these ideals would rally behind him and guarantee his safety. Paine also weighed his mission next to the value of his own life, demonstrating the extent of his confidence in his progressive schemes. At the time, the Pennsylvania Assembly and Greene dissuaded him, but Paine’s convictions did not change.
One of the exchanges between Paine and Washington that demonstrated an early divergence of values occurred at the Fall of Bastille, when revolutionary war hero Marquis de Lafayette sent the key of the Bastille to Paine for him to pass it on to Washington as a symbol of the strong union between the US and France. In Paine’s letter to Washington, he announced the momentous news. Paine described the key as the “early trophy of the Spoils of Despotism and the first ripe [fru]its of American principles transplanted into [Eur]ope to his great Master and Patron.” The rejoicing tone in his letter suggests that Paine continued to hold Washington in high esteem. It also highlights Paine’s assumption that Washington, like him, supported the French Revolution as an extension of its American counterpart. However, Paine overstepped when he asked the president to congratulate the French royals and National Assembly “on the[ir] happy example,” a measure which would certainly have set the precedent to marginalize Federalists. Surviving records of their correspondence do not include a reply from Washington, perhaps a prelude to the two politicians’ disconnection.
Paine’s influence seemed to spiral out of Washington’s control when his ideas stirred anti-federalism on American soil. Working-class western Pennsylvanians quoted Paine’s Common Sense and American Crisis while rejecting federal finance plans and Hamilton’s central banking system. Paine was also not a passive enabler; in 1790, Paine celebrated the French National Assembly’s replacement of the monarchy and considered the “present violence as a passing phase” – a sentiment shared by Jefferson. In defense of “liberte, egalite et fraternite” (liberty, equality, and fraternity), Paine wrote Rights of Man, a manifesto that supported “hyper-democratic moods in France and attacked England for tyranny.” The book sold for around a million copies worldwide. The British, in response, charged Paine with “seditious libel,” a hanging offense.
Paine’s confidence in Rights of Man, again, drew from misperceived support from his old friend, the American president. Indeed, Paine dedicated the text to Washington and even sent him fifty copies, with a cover letter boasting of its sales and their continued belief in the “ardor of seventy-six.” This, to a president who actively sought to avoid extremism. Washington, likely annoyed by Paine’s political insensitivity, did not respond to his gifts until almost a year later, when he sent his last recorded letter to Paine. The president offered obliging thanks for the books but no apology for his late response as “my friends, those who know my occupations” would understand that “the duties of my Office require an unremitting attention…more pressing towards the close of it.” The letter’s emphasis on Washington’s position as president strongly suggested to Paine a reevaluation of their relationship. Clearly, as compared to previous correspondence, Washington stripped his friendliness and supportiveness down to mere courtesy.
Washington clarified his stance on the international scene on April 22, 1793, when he announced the Neutrality Proclamation and formally deserted America’s 1778 Treaty of Alliance with France, effectively abrogating the new nation’s loyalties to the French government. To justify his position, Washington invoked “a maxim founded on the universal experience of Mankind”:
… no Nation is to be trusted farther than it is bound by its interest, And no prudent Statesman or politician will venture to depart from it. In our circumstances, we ought to be particularly cautious for we have not yet attained sufficient vigor and maturity to recover from the shock of any false step, into which we may unwarily fall…I would wish as much as possible, to avoid giving a foreign power new claims of merit for services performed to the United States, and would ask No assistance that is not indispensible.
Washington maintained that France would act in her own self-interest and implied that he would opt to do the same on behalf of the US. To Washington, only neutrality, caution, and equivocation could protect the budding nation. Hamilton, on behalf of the Federalists, added legal justifications to Washington’s Proclamation in a series of articles under the pseudonym Pacificus. First, he argued that the overthrow of the French monarchy should “dictate that the party whose government had remained stationary,” the US, to “have a right under a bona fide conviction…to declare the connection dissolved.” Hamilton insinuated that the French people compromised this alliance and its respectability with its “crimes and extravagancies,” and that Americans were not to blame for the dissolution. Moreover, Hamilton asserted that all debts the US owed to the French government must be paid to the governing power of France which initially drew the treaty, not the revolutionaries, seeing that the former would likely refuse to recognize any payment made to the latter should the Bourbons be restored. Likewise, the gratitude America owed France and the political support America promised France were to be suspended until a monarch following Louis XVI would be restored. Met with cogent arguments, Jefferson requested his friend and Virginian colleague James Madison to “select the most striking heresies, and cut him to pieces in the face of the public.” Madison, under the name Helvidius, would debate with Hamilton on the boundaries of executive power, which seemed ever-increasing, with Hamilton and Washington sharing a united front in that regard. Madison also did not relinquish the claim that the Federalists, using the facade of legal necessities, had betrayed a revolutionary friendship.
The Federalist agenda for neutrality faced yet more daunting resistance which tested the boundaries of non-intervention. Two months prior to the Neutrality Proclamation, French Girondins dispatched envoy Edmond Charles Genet to the US to “obtain a high degree of American support” for France’s war against Britain. Genet’s superiors did not understand the new American Constitution; they assumed that the president held no real power in the sphere of foreign policy. As such, arriving in the US, Genet defied American diplomatic policies. He hired privateers, raised funds, and recruited American soldiers for the French cause. Genet also armed himself with the support of Antifederalist papers and pamphlets and “insinuated that Washington had succumbed to British influence.” To Washington, Genet’s rashness was a product of groundless and immature dissatisfaction among the Democratic Republicans. Washington believed that Antifederalists were not interested in the cause of France or liberty; rather, they stridently pushed to “involve [America] in war (no matter with whom) and disgrace,” and then rose as “the first and loudest of clamorers against the expense and impolicy.”
Genet’s flagrant defiance of Washington’s foreign policy reinforced the idea that Girondin and Federalist interests were inherently misaligned. The president feared that proximity to a meddlesome French propagandist would justify a British naval attack on the seas, where Americans were weakest. He also needed to contain the ‘ardor of seventy-six’ and demonstrate his administration’s authority, if only to defeat the Republicans. From July to October 1793, Washington demanded Genet’s recall. “Delicacy towards his nation has restrained doing it hitherto,” he wrote. On Genet’s recall, as with many other issues, both the Democratic Republicans and Federalists used arguments that pertained to American freedom. The former warned that Genet represented a Franco-American tie that Washington continued to undermine. The latter insisted that Genet and the Republicans were threatening American sovereignty by challenging the president’s authority over foreign policy.
Unfortunately for Genet, his recall coincided with the beginning of the Terror under the Jacobin leader Robespierre. If Genet were recalled, Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety would have surely executed the envoy for alienating France from the US. Despite Genet’s rashness and his many insults directed at the president and his administration, Washington decided to save him by granting him political asylum in January 1794.
Yet only days earlier, across the Atlantic on December 28, 1793, the same Jacobins who threatened to guillotine Genet imprisoned Paine. Though Paine had held honorary French citizenship, a distinction matching that of figures like Washington himself, Jacobins expelled Paine from his roles in the French government and arrested him as a “foreigner,” indicating that the new government had rescinded his naturalized status. Much to Paine’s dismay, at this moment of peril, Washington did not extend him the same courtesy as he did Genet. Instead, the president turned a blind eye.
The Final Deterioration of Paine and Washington’s Friendship
If both Genet and Paine had blurred the line of American neutrality and jeopardized the fragile Anglo-American relationship, why did Washington only decide to save the former? In truth, the president’s choices concerning Genet’s dismissal and Paine’s extradition must be examined through careful contextualization. In the case of Genet, though a majority of historians including Eugene R. Sheridan of Princeton University and the editors of Founders Archive ascribe Washington’s decision to “magnanimity,” a series of ulterior motives might be at play. Washington and Hamilton likely saved Genet to use him as living proof of a spiraling French Revolution – the act of saving an envoy that obviously vexed Washington would not only help paint the president in a benevolent and merciful light, but further discredit the Democratic Republicans, who from the very beginning supported a revolution that yielded more bloodshed and chaos than liberty. Had Genet been shipped back to France only to fall under the guillotine, Jefferson and Paine would have surely characterized the envoy as a martyr. At the same time, the Antifederalist press would have denounced Washington as a begrudged man who favored the Federalists.
On the other hand, Paine’s arrest on December 28, 1793, coincided with a time of even greater sensitivity between the British, who still indicted Paine for treason, and the Americans. Washington dispatched John Jay to Britain in early 1794 to negotiate Jay’s Treaty of Amity and Commerce in exchange for American neutrality in the brewing warfare in Europe. The correspondence between Washington and Jay between late 1793 and February 1796, when the Treaty finally took effect, suggests that the two Federalists anxiously watched over anti-British sentiments among Americans. Washington assured Jay that he would “endeavor to keep things in status quo” until Jay could complete his negotiations, but that there were “many hot heads and impetuous spirits among us who with difficulty can be kept within bounds.”
If Paine did not already appear to Washington as one such “hot head,” Gouverneur Morris took it upon himself to paint such an impression. After the Jacobins imprisoned Paine, his close friend Joel Barlow and seventeen other Americans petitioned for the writer’s release. In response, the President of the Committee of General Security Marc-Guillaume Alexis Vadier first applauded their “generous movement,” which, to him, demonstrated the “happy alliance” between America and France, their “tree of liberty” and “its fruitful branches.” However, Vadier also immediately denied the petition’s legitimacy; he maintained that Paine would be imprisoned as a natural-born British citizen until “authority from the American government” would suggest otherwise. This implicitly indicated the necessity of American diplomatic intervention in any effort to rescue Paine.
At this time, an order from the Committee had discontinued all communication between French prisoners and the outside world, depriving Paine of access to his advocates. Historians like Moncure Daniel Conway suspected Morris’s involvement in this maneuver, which isolated Paine. Conway’s argument rested on contextual evidence: the Committee granted Morris the exclusive right to continue correspondence with Paine, a privilege he would use to fabricate information about Paine’s confinement, trials, and pleas for extradition, and a privilege never extended to his successor, James Monroe.
Hostility between Paine and Morris was well-founded. The two held diametrically opposite views on foreign policy and the outcome of the French Revolution, among other political subjects. In 1779, Morris proclaimed in Congress that “[Paine was] a mere Adventurer from England, without Fortune, without Family or Connections, ignorant even of Grammar.” The strict emphasis on Paine’s origins suggests that Morris saw Paine as an unworthy outsider. Later, in his private diary, Morris amused himself thinking “Paine as being a little mad” with “an indifferent head to think.” When Paine published the second volume of Rights of Man, which detailed a series of possible progressive reforms under a representative government, Morris wrote in his private diary that he had warned Paine that “his work excites but little emotion, and rather raises indignation… [that] the disordered state of things in France works against all schemes of reformation.” In Morris’s account, “[Paine seemed to laugh at this, and relies on the force he has in the nation. He seems to become every hour more drunk with self-conceit… He declares that the riots and outrages in France are nothing at all.”
To Morris, Paine’s stay at the Luxembourg Prison was his own reckoning, and so he did not support Paine’s truthful claim to American citizenship. To justify his inaction to Paine’s sympathizers in the US, Morris portrayed Paine as a pitied but irredeemable captive, a lost cause. On January 21, 1794, he wrote to Jefferson:
I incline to think that if he is quiet in prison he may have the good luck to be forgotten. I believe he thinks that I ought to claim him as an American citizen; but considering his birth, his naturalization in this country, and, the place he filled, I doubt much the right, and I am sure that the claim would be, for the present at least, inexpedient and ineffectual.”
Morris understood the weight of his own words. To establish the situation as one outside of his control, however, Morris chose to use the complexity of legal technicalities to deceive Jefferson. For example, Morris insinuated that Paine’s supposedly naturalized status in France would yield him a more amenable trial and spare him of his “intemperate use of ardent spirits,” a reference to his authorship of Age of Reason. Morris insisted that Paine’s American citizenship, if substantiated, could instead jeopardize him. He employed similar fabrications to discourage any form of American intervention and left Paine to rot.
Ironically, Paine saw Morris as much of a detriment to his safety as Robespierre, if not more. In Paine’s letters to Monroe, Paine described the “discordant” Morris as no different in intentions from the Committee of Public Safety: “the former wished to prevent my return to America, that I should not expose his misconduct; and the latter lest I should publish to the world the history of its wickedness.” Conversely, Robespierre’s respect for the delicate Franco-American alliance actually contributed to the delay in Paine’s trial and execution and indirectly saved the captive. Conway emphasized that Robespierre himself never spoke ill of Paine, often consulted him, and even exempted him from punishments others arrested for foreign birth received.
Morris’s diplomatic insouciance became the subject of Paine’s ire. Later in Paine’s published diatribe against Washington, the author denounced Morris as a “reproachable, imprudent, rash, and profligate man” who “profess[ed] an indifference of moral principles.” Paine would also later publish tirades that vehemently attacked Morris’s character. In 1804, at Hamilton’s funeral, Morris praised Hamilton’s “purity of heart” and claimed that his work preserved the nation from Anarchy and Despotism. This expectedly ignited Paine’s anger, who penned an article in the Aurora regarding Morris as a “very injudicious and unfortunate appointment…who ha[s] conceits instead of principles, and vanity instead of wisdom.” Paine’s anger towards Washington could be seen as an extension of his hatred toward Morris, as Morris often boasted that Washington continued to hold him in high esteem. To Paine, the friendship of two self-proclaimed patriots who betrayed him only attested to their conspiracy.
Meanwhile, from 1793 to 1794, Morris’s negative portrayal of Paine fed into Washington’s growing anxieties surrounding the negotiation of Jay’s Treaty in Britain. Without prominent figures like Paine speaking out against the ongoing deliberations, Jay and Washington already struggled to convince the British of their sincerity. In a letter to the president in March of 1795, Jay recounted a business dinner with British merchants, whose interests the prospective Jay’s Treaty would undermine. Jay was asked for a Toast: “I gave a neutral one. ‘a safe & honorable Peace to all the belligerent powers[.]’ You cannot concieve how coldly it was recieved, and ’tho’ civility induced them to give it three cheers, yet they were so faint and single, as most decidedly to shew that Peace was not the thing they wished—these were merchants.” Jay’s account illustrated the disadvantages that came with neutrality. The British merchants appeared unwilling to sacrifice trading privileges and to pay for compensations, as specified in the Treaty, only to maintain a salutary relationship with a neutral America. Subtle clues like the half-hearted cheer therefore undermined his confidence in the Anglo-American relationship.
Jay and Washington carefully monitored the influences of these societies and publications, but often failed to sway public opinion as the societies discredited the Federalists. Notably, many of the protests, literary or otherwise, seemed to trace back to Paine’s undying influence in America. It is highly probable that Paine’s connections, both personal and indirect, with the outspoken rioters further alienated the jailed writer from a stressed, busy, and aloof president. For example, on July 1, 1794, Paine’s friend Benjamin Franklin Bache published a leaked Jay’s Treaty in a pamphlet in the Aurora, selling them for 25 cents apiece. Even though the Senate had already ratified the Treaty, Bache’s violation of the terms of secrecy was still a direct assault on the executive’s authority. This became the trend – the societies challenged Washington in practice and attacked his personal conduct. In mid- and late-1794, Republicans disparaged the president for using state militiamen to silence agrarian protesters when they were unsatisfied with a federal whiskey excise tax; their rhetoric, once again inspired by Paine’s Common Sense, compared Washington’s service to British tyranny. This prompted Jay, still in Britain, to go as far as to ask Washington to “operate the Extinction of these mischievous associations in [A]merica.” In the surviving correspondence, Washington did not address this proposal.
In July of 1795, Washington gave his second and last speech to the Boston selectmen, an address that revealed his true attitude towards Paine’s conception of liberty:
I will then, gentlemen, observe, that altho’ the government of the United States is a popular government, yet it is not a simple democracy; but a representative government: that it is as impossible in practice, as absurd in theory, to conduct their affairs by the voices of the citizens individually given: that for this reason, the people of the United States have constituted another mode of managing their interests: that the affairs of a nation do not admit of the same easy decision as those of a town, with whose concerns its inhabitants may be familiarly acquainted: that the formation of laws and treaties demands much deliberate consideration, of which, it is no reproach to my fellow citizens to say, that a numerous and promiscuous assembly is incapable.
Washington argued that the public expectations of a wholly democratic government making wholly democratic decisions was unachievable, and that sacrifices in what Democratic Republicans called “liberty” were necessary in the best interest of the nation. He asked the people to trust the governmental officials he had appointed and to honor their decisions, implying that those who complained failed to understand the challenges the country faced.
To the reasonings of any of my fellow citizens on questions affecting the interests of our common country, I shall ever lend a willing ear: but resolutions purporting to express the opinions of a multitudinous assembly, on numerous questions of magnitude and intricacy, where the time and circumstances render calm debate and mature deliberation impracticable, will never influence my determinations.
The president chose to honor the people’s freedom to opine, but publicly declared that he would reject the opinions he deemed self-important and ignorant, a policy diametrically opposite to Paine’s conception of a healthily functioning government. Though Paine believed in a consolidated federal administration, he had always heavily advised against an executive with excessive power. Paine once trusted Washington, but now the executive’s ‘deaf ears’ to what Paine saw as constructive criticism realized his greatest fear: that “one man [stood] at the head of a party” and that, in all debasement, a country “obe[yed] to…one individual.”
Paine was living under Monroe’s roof in France at the time of Washington’s speech. Monroe had just barely released Paine eight months earlier, unaided by the American government. According to Paine’s account in his later diatribe, “the man who lighted the lamps in the prison,” who should “put the character of Mr. Washington to shame,” had delivered his plea for help to Monroe. Monroe then employed all his connections to liberate Paine, who recovered from his fevers at the news of imminent help from the new Minister to France. Washington’s comments on democracy and representative government illustrated to Paine the extent by which he and Washington differed on foundational ideas of not only foreign policy, but government at large, only twelve years since the end of the American Revolution. Their irreconcilable political visions likely amplified Paine’s disappointment and bitterness.
The Repercussions of Washington’s Policies
Reviewing Paine’s accusations against Washington, it may be shown that the propagandist’s claims held some merit. To begin with, the president indeed behaved with “injustice” toward his friend “under the pretense of faith,” and the American government truly failed Paine, a benefactor to the nation, when the writer had only “endeavor[ed] to spread…the American principle of government in Europe.” Paine felt rightly insulted that Washington never chose to acknowledge, alleviate or cut short his sufferings in Luxembourg Prison, while the likes of Genet had been spared in a timely fashion. Robespierre’s “decree of accusation against [Paine], ‘for the interests of America as well as of France’” was the final straw. Paine justifiably believed that Washington was “tacitly giving [him] up.”
Though Washington never issued a response to Paine’s diatribe, one may find subtle answers to Paine’s grievances in various letters with other correspondents as well as Washington’s famous Farewell Address. To justify his desertion of Paine, Washington resorted to a denigration of Paine and his Democratic Republican sympathizers in his final speech as president. “Real patriots who may resist the intrigues of the favored are liable to become suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people to surrender their interests,” Washington proclaimed. The president branded himself, falsely accused of being “odious,” as the “real patriot” and insinuated that Paine and the Republicans were ultimately shortsighted in their blind belief in France. In other words, Paine had brought his fate in prison upon himself, and, as president, Washington had sacrificed a former friend’s interests out of necessity for the nation. He warned that demagogues who conflated American liberty with the dangerous ideals promulgated by foreign influences were the true threats to the nation, a jab perhaps directed at revolutionaries like Paine.
Paine additionally reminded Washington of his betrayal of the Franco-American alliance in his bitter letter, another charge with much truth behind it. To Paine, Washington’s game of neutrality exhibited his talent for “a sort of nondescribable, chameleon-colored thing called prudence.” The president’s alleged prudence allowed him to walk the precarious line of appeasing both the French and the British, but he abandoned many of his revolutionary principles in the process. Federalists – who Paine termed “the Washington faction” – “amused France with professions of friendship contrived to injure her” until the alliance outlived its purpose for the US. Paine contradicted his own pamphlets, which glorified Washington’s military acumen during the Revolution, to say that the president had merely held the nominal rank of “Commander-in-Chief.” According to Paine’s account, the president never controlled or directed armies in the most crucial battles during the Revolution and should more than anyone have understood the necessity of French aid. To renounce the alliance was to discredit their role in the American Revolution, an act Paine could not forgive.
Naturally, Washington combated this argument by insisting upon the absolute necessity of neutrality during the early years of the republic. In the Farewell Address, Washington carefully framed neutrality and isolationism not only as the means to peace and prosperity, but also as the means to freedom: “the nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest.” To Washington, refusing to align with other countries could help the US evade overly burdensome responsibilities and attachments, and thereby liberate the country from the pull of “insidious wiles of foreign influence.” Yet Washington’s disapproval of those who shared an “excessive partiality for one foreign nation” rang false. If neutrality was the Federalist foreign policy and antipathetic to the pro-French Democratic Republicans, Washington’s speech was an outright call of support for the Federalists, whose neutrality stood against French interests.
Moreover, Washington’s most immediate work in “neutrality” and “patriotism,” Jay’s Treaty, proved to hurt American standings in trade relations in the long term. The success of Jay’s Treaty in early 1796 and the perceived harmony between Britain and the US provoked the French; when negotiations failed, France precipitated the two-year Quasi War and initiated a series of naval harassments and assaults. Jay’s Treaty also set the precedent for restrictive trade agreements with England, which contributed to growing tensions with the British until it culminated in the war of 1812. Though a principle of neutrality successfully delayed warfare, it failed to sustainably settle diplomatic disputes, paving the way for wars with both powers rather than one shortly after Washington left office.
However, Washington himself never seemed to doubt the effectiveness of his policies and decisions. On July 29, 1795, raving about the “heap[s] [of] obloquy… and malice” directed at him, Washington maintained that for as long as America would be constrained by British and French influences, many policies would come at the favor of one party and the cost of another, but he would balance them against each other as best he could. In other words, not any one decision was strictly neutral, but as a whole Washington strived to strike a balance. Washington continued to lay out his argument to the second Secretary of State Edmund Randolph, two days later:
…when no stone has been left unturned that could impress on the minds of the people the most arrant misrepresentation of facts—that their rights have not only been neglected, but absolutely sold—That there are no reciprocal advantages in the treaty—that the benefits are all on the side of G. Britain—and, what seems to have had more weight with them than all the rest & most pressed is that the treaty is made with design to oppress the French, in open violation of our treaty with that nation, and contrary too to every principle of gratitude and sound policy. In time when passion shall h⟨ave⟩ yielded to sober reason the current may possibly turn; but in the meanwhile this government in relation to France & England may be compared to a ship between the rocks of Sylla & charibdas—If the Treaty is ratified the partisans of the French (or rather of War & confusion) will excite them to hostile measures, or at ⟨least⟩ to unfriendly Sentiments.
Washington once more demonstrated his distrust of Democratic Societies and disdain for their sympathizers. He tried to discredit their arguments, then equated support of France to “passion” rather than “sober reason.” In comparing England and France to Scylla and Charybdis, Greek mythical sea monsters, Washington tried to gain some sympathy for his painstaking efforts in balancing the scales between two unpleasant forces, who appropriately also roamed the seas. If Washington foresaw any future conflicts with the European nations, he blamed the inefficacy of neutrality on the hot-headed attitudes of the American public. Yet a more consistent position in favor of one nation or another might have saved the nation of a poor and disorderly reputation and better won the trust of either Britain or France.
Finally, though Paine’s accusations of Washington’s monarchic tendencies may appear far-fetched, one should refrain from dismissing them entirely. During the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Hamilton had proposed a government reminiscent of the British monarchy, after which he learned “it impossible to secure the union by any modification of fœderal government.” Given the closeness between Hamilton and Washington, it is not inconceivable that Hamilton made this proposal with his patron’s connivance. Hamilton wrote in the notes for his address: “The advantage of a monarch is this—he is above corruption—he must always intend, in respect to foreign nations, the true interest and glory of the people…[whereas] Republics [like Holland and Athens were] liable to foreign corruption and intrigue.” The monarch he described calls to mind many of Washington’s self-descriptions. Furthermore, though Washington receives praise as the American Cincinnatus for his retirement after a second term, his peaceful transfer of power may be a direct result of the censures targeting him in the press, discouraging him from seeking a third term. Paine’s letter and the unpopularity of Jay’s Treaty reinforced the antipathy of the Democratic Societies toward him, and all the drama after a lifetime of adulation perhaps became too intolerable for the sixty-four-year-old man.
Paine’s radical ideas at the untimely intersection between the Genet affair and Jay’s Treaty resulted in Washington’s exasperation, and they precipitated the president’s calculated abandonment of a past ally. Whether the president’s unfaithfulness to his friend – a friend to America and the revolution – was truly justified by ‘national good’ must remain an open question. Washington’s commitment to neutrality successfully postponed the new republic’s involvement in European conflicts, but it also steered the country toward more unnecessary wars in the future between more parties. Yet Washington would show neither doubt in his decisions nor remorse over deserting Paine. No, within months of his retirement to Mount Vernon, he addressed a letter to Virginian delegate David Stuart concerning, once again, the efforts of Republicans to besmirch his name during his tenure. This time, he explicitly dismissed Paine’s diatribe as “exaggerated and odious” propaganda “resorting to absolute falsehoods.” Yet as we have seen, there was much more truth to Paine’s allegations than the aged statesman might have had the humility or self-awareness to admit, undermining the Washington administration’s reputation as an oasis of infallibility in the founding myths of the American Republic.
From Thomas Jefferson to George Washington, 4 December 1788 (archives.gov)
George Washington’s views on the French Revolution (1789) (alphahistory.com)
Citizen Genêt and Political Struggle in the Early American Republic on JSTOR
