Review of the Book
Thomas Paine and the American Revolution
by Vikki J. Vickers
Klara Rukshina
[Review of the book by Vikki J. Vickers. Reprinted from
the
Bulletin of Thomas Paine Friends, Vol.7, No.4, December,
2006]
In my opinion, the first book of a young historian, Vikki J.
Vickers, is the best of all works published about Thomas Paine
during the last two decades (2006, New York & London:
Routledge). Her only outstanding rival is Eric Foner, the famous
author of Tom Paine and Revolutionary America (1976, London:
Oxford University Press). Vickers appreciates Foner's book as a "brilliant
work," but to her mind, "it is not a biography of Paine;
in many ways it is more significant as a micro history of
Revolutionary Philadelphia." She states: "Foner did issue
an important challenge to historians; the challenge of producing a
complete study to explain how Paine's beliefs developed and their
significance." (pp. 10-11) Vickers accepted the challenge.
The purpose of her study is "to investigate who Thomas Paine
was, what he believed, how those beliefs motivated him to political
action and how those actions helped to found the United States of
America." She calls her work "the first intellectual
biography" of Thomas Paine . (p.11)
Vickers is the first who applied consistently an interdisciplinary
investigation into Paine's politics, religion, and rhetoric. As
Paine was an exceedingly reticent person, the lack of reliable data
of his life is always in the way of his biographers.[1] In order to
deal with the problem properly, Vickers works out and strictly keeps
to the following rules: "Circumstantial evidence may be
employed-but carefully. Far too often scholars state as facts what
can best be termed conjecture, and conjecture should never give way
to suppositions." She is most careful while choosing her
arguments and right in the confession: "in the end what evolves
can only be a rough portrait of a very public yet very private man."
(p. 62)
What are, in my opinion, Vickers' main results ?
(1) First and foremost, Vickers is a pioneer in investigating
Paine's religious beliefs in-depth and their influence on his
political ideas. She managed to reject the scholarly tradition of
considering separately "Paine as a political figure
investigating his career as a political pamphleteer and Paine as the
author of The Age of Reason, dealing with his religious
beliefs." The historian traces the evolution of Paine's
religious beliefs from his birth until the publication of The
Age of Reason in 1794 when "he opened his mind to the
world." (p. 144)
In Vickers opinion, Paine's God differs from the widely spread
notion of God during the period of Enlightenment. As she puts it: "Paine's
deist God connected with the need for humanitarian philanthropy
should not be confused with a theistic God who is completely
transcendent, utterly unknowable, and completely independent of His
creation. So the principal difficulty with the theistic deity is
that there is no incentive to pray or worship God. In contrast,
Paine's deist God was knowable, at least to the point of
establishing God's benevolent nature. More importantly, Paine's God
both watches and judges mankind and has an active role in His
creation. Humanitarianism in Paine's system, therefore, was not only
logical, but necessary." (p. 123) "He envisioned nations
(in particular Great Britain) that took responsibility for the
welfare of its citizens." (p. 8)
As Vickers reasonably asserts, Paine would never be tolerant to
atheists. "Paine's championing of the cause of religious
freedom did not extend to atheists. Moreover, Paine's career as a
pamphleteer (in which he tried to convert the world to deism) is
strong evidence that what Paine really advocated was religious
tolerance -- not freedom " (p. 123)
Vickers' analysis of Common Sense from the point of view of
Paine's religious beliefs is original. She offers evidence that "at
times Paine ... forced his fellow countrymen to choose between
paradise and purgatory." For example, Vickers demonstrates that
Paine's arguments against monarchy and his appeal to replace "George
III with a government based on equality and reason assured Americans
not only of freedom from British but freedom from God's vengeful
grasp." (p. 51) Vickers is the first who investigated
thoroughly the origin of Paine's arguments against monarchy and
biblical citations to the point in Common Sense. She
suggests that Paine took all these ideas from John Milton's "A
Defence of the People of England" (1658). Milton presented
monarchy as "an evil, blasphemous institution" and Paine's
argument against monarchy "is practically a carbon copy"
of Milton's ideas, (p. 49)
Vickers' summary on the interrelation of Paine's political and
religious beliefs runs as follows: "God's 'benignity',
according to Paine, required reciprocation. Man's duty to God was
simple: as God was benevolent to mankind, so should mankind be
benevolent to one another. Ultimately Paine came to the conclusion
that political revolution was the most benevolent act of all.
Replacing false systems with true ones, encouraging mankind to use
their reason to discover not only the truth about politics, but also
the truth about God-this was his mission." (p. 107) Vickers
concludes: "Paine's dual mission to spread both political
revolution and deism throughout the western world is a prime example
of the information that can be gleaned by approaching Paine's work
with a fresh, interdisciplinary perspective. The confluence of his
religion and concomitant political ideology created a rhetorical
style that was both recognizable and immutable. Paine's mission led
him to a degree of success unparalleled in his day." (p. 130)
It seems that Vickers has fruitfully solved a most urgent problem
-- interrelation and interaction of religion and politics in Paine's
beliefs which clarified his double mission and "revealed a
significance previously missed by historians." (p. 130)
(2) Common Sense "catapulted America towards
Independence" (p. 59), as Vickers aptly expressed its immediate
effect. Why not any of famous Americans, but "Thomas Paine --
an absolute nobody from nowhere" (p. 57) happened to write the
trailblazing pamphlet? This is another most complicated problem
Vickers tries to examine. She defines the starting point of her
approach to the enigma: "The fact that Paine was reared and
educated in England is crucial, because it gave the future author of
CS a more immediate knowledge of King and Parliament which
most Americans were not privy to" (p. 61). Vickers presents a
detailed and well-grounded description of Paine's life in England
and "the influence his tune there had on his political
ideology." The appropriate context of eighteenth-century
England is skillfully and professionally applied.
As an innovator, Vickers studies Paine's writings before Common
Sense. In her opinion, the Case of the Officers of Excise
(1772) served as a warning for Paine, who at that time "sees
only trees instead of the whole forest." So whether Paine "did
it consciously or not but Common Sense is an absolute
contrast to the Case. It was as if Paine recognized how
poorly executed his first political work was and made every attempt
to do exactly the opposite" (pp. 56-57)
Paine's contribution to The Pennsylvania Magazine
(February-August, 1775) has likewise been considered from a new
approach. Vickers states that "scholars will never know with
any degree of certainty what Paine wrote. There simply is no
concrete evidence to link him conclusively to any of these essays.
To be sure, many of those written by "Atlanticus" and
others do closely resemble Paine's style. But to say definitively
that Paine wrote this essay or that poem would not be good
scholarship." As an historian she prefers "a broader
analysis and the larger significance of Paine's time in me magazine."
Vickers makes a comparative study of Paine's editorship versus that
of Aitken, the owner, and "reveals that clearly Paine brought a
radical political voice to The Pennsylvania Maga/zine --
whether or not one of those voices was his own is irrelevant."
Vickers comes to the conclusion that "during Paine's editorship
the magazine was rarely explicitly political" (pp. 30-31)[2]
(3) A most remarkable feature of Vickers' book is that it
stimulates new research by Paine's scholars and historians. Here are
some of my "hints" to the point.
a) Vickers presents an original investigation of Paine's writings
before 1776 with an obvious aim: to find out any background or roots
to explain the sudden and overwhelming success of Common Sense.
But the purpose has not been achieved. Paine was about forty when he
wrote his Common Sense, a work of genius. And this work has
almost nothing in common with Paine's previous writings. Great works
of genius, especially a political writing, cannot appear that way.
So Paine's case still seems to be unique in the world history. In my
opinion, the mystery of Common Sense's appearance has not
yet been solved.
b) Vickers deals with the problem of Paine's contribution to the
Declaration of Independence. In her opinion, the claims that
it was Paine, not Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of
Independence, "once in abundance, have now rightfully been
dismissed as false" (p. 136) "There is no evidence that
Paine had any part in the actual drafting of the Declaration,
and a great deal of evidence that proves that Jefferson acted alone."
(p. 171, note 17) The historian offers her own version of Paine's
contribution to the Declaration of Independence: "By
rallying the American people to the cause of Independence, Paine did
in fact create a support base which Continental Congressmen could
use to urge the matter forward. Those in Congress who had
consistently ignored the minority radical faction were no longer
able to do so after Common Sense; the American people
demanded revolution and their representatives were forced to
respond. That response led, ultimately, to the Declaration of
Independence." (p. 137) Surely one may consent with her
view. Nevertheless, Vickers' assertion that in this way "by
studying the political context of America, the nagging question of
Paine's role in the Declaration of Independence has also
(hopefully) found resolution" (p. 130) is at least dubious.
None of the well-known Paine scholars has ever tried to solve such
an enigma: How does it happen that the Declaration of
Independence corresponds exactly (only the introductory part
excluded) to the plan of it laid out in Common Sense. Here
is the extract: "Were a manifesto to be published, and
dispatched to foreign courts, setting forth (1) the miseries we have
endured, (2) and the peaceful methods which we have ineffectually
used for redress; (3) declaring at the same time, that not being
able any longer to live happily or safely under me cruel disposition
of the British court, we had been driven to the necessity of
breaking off all connections with her; (4) at the same time assuring
all such courts of our peaceful disposition towards them, (5) and
of our desire of entering into trade with them. .."[3]
Jefferson's Declaration of Independence keeps to Paine's
plan in strict sequence. This is an unexplained phenomenon up to the
present, and still leaves open whether Paine had a specific role in
the drafting.
c) The following is one more specification to the point concerning
Paine's input to the cause of Independence. To Vickers' regret, "Paine
never had a chance to write his history of American Revolution"
(p. 130), and therefore we would never know "what he considered
significant about his contribution to the cause of Independence."
(p. 131) But Paine did have a clear view of his input to the great
cause. In his address "To the Citizens of the United States"
in 1805 he clarified the problem: "The independence of America
would have added but little to her own happiness, and been of no
benefit to the world, if her government had been formed on the corrupt
models of the old world. It was the opportunity of beginning
the world anew, as it were; and of bringing forward a new system
of government in which the rights of all men should be preserved
that gave value to independence. The pamphlet Common
Sense … embraced both those objects. Mere
independence might at some future time, have been effected and
established by arms, without principle, but a just
system of government could not. In short, it was the principle,
at that time, that produced the independence; for until the
principle spread itself abroad among the people, independence was
not thought of, and America was fighting without an object. Those
who know the circumstances of the times I speak of, know this to be
true." (Italics-Paine)[4]
Here Paine formulates the "principle" that makes the core
of modern democracies: "a new system of government in
which the rights of all men should be preserved" and
proclaims himself the forerunner of the "system"
that begins "the world anew." In my opinion, this
extract is of great importance and deserves more attention of
historians and Paine scholars.
Conclusion
Vickers' book is that of a genuine historian. Through her
painstaking analysis of Paine's life, works and the voluminous
literature on the subject in the broad interdisciplinary context,
the pivot of Paine's mentality has been distinguished, his
intellectual personality is adequately presented.
Her book stands out for its depth, originality, academic
preciseness. As she puts it, her study is "an attempt to
finally bring closure to the way studies of Paine had proceeded in
the past in order to encourage a more accurate, interdisciplinary
approach in the future. Hopefully new avenues of Paine's role in
history may be explored as the old questions need no longer occupy
scholars' attention." (p. 129) I agree with the author. The
first intellectual biography of Thomas Paine by a talented young
historian Vikki J. Vickers is an evident success.
NOTES AND REFERENCES
- See: Vickers. pp. 68,
155-156. where she writes that recent evidence has been reported
by Australian researcher. Hazel Burgess, that Paine had a
daughter Sarah who died on September 12, 1761; she was nine
months old. (Thetford Magazine, 22: 15. Summer 2000)
- My remark concerns the
section "Montly Intelligence" of The Pennsylvania
Magazine that still remained a political one even after
Paine left his job as a contributing editor in September 1775.
- Th. Paine, The Complete
Writings of Thomas Paine, edited by Philip S. Foner, 1969,
New York: Citadel Press, I: 39
- Th. Paine, "To the
Citizens of the United States," Leter VIII, June 5, 1805;
In: P. Foner, The Complete Writings, 1969, II:956.
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