Thomas Paine's Offhand Remark
Mariam Touba
[Reprinted from the
Bulletin of Thomas Paine Friends,
Vol. 12, no.1, Spring 2011]
Who wrote the Declaration of Independence? The question has a
nagging history as it is often accompanied by the suggestion that
Thomas Jefferson had a ghostwriter for at least part of the rough
draft of the document. Beginning in the 19th century, most of the
these doubters have pointed to Thomas Paine as the document's "real"
author, with a few, such as Joel Moody ( Junius Unmasked,
1872) and Joseph Lewis (Thomas Paine, Author of the Declaration
of Independence, 1947), employing a body of textual evidence to
make their case. Given the reluctance of historians of the modern
era to rely solely on literary evidence, the iconic nature of the
Declaration and its assigned author, and the insistent posture of
the skeptics, the controversy has created more rancor than
enlightenment.
Such contempt between these partisans seems unnecessary when one
recalls that it did not govern the relations between Thomas
Jefferson and Thomas Paine themselves. And for all this fervor, is
there one piece of evidence that even the most dedicated Paine
theorists have overlooked?
In 1802, Thomas Paine was visited in Paris by an old comrade, Henry
Redhead Yorke, an Englishman of West Indian descent and a one-time,
prosecuted "Rights of Man man." Yorke had mellowed in his
radicalism but was eager to spend time with his old friend and
mentor. He found a careworn, politically indifferent Paine living in
obscurity after a tumultuous fifteen-year sojourn in Europe that saw
him celebrated and denounced, outlawed in his native Britain,
imprisoned during Revolutionary France's Reign of Terror, and barely
emerge as a survivor of a lingering prison illness. Paine
biographers remain indebted to Yorke who, in Letters from France
in 1802 (London, 1804), published vivid and lengthy impressions
of a Thomas Paine absorbed by mechanical inventions, disillusioned
with Napoleonic France, and eager to return to the America that had
thrown out the Federalists and elected Thomas Jefferson President.
Earlier, Paine had asked Jefferson to facilitate his return by
allowing him to travel in a naval ship to avoid the real risk of
being taken from a commercial vessel by the "piratical John
Bulls" and brought to England as an outlaw. Jefferson's
gracious affirmative reply, "I am in hopes you will find us
returned generally to sentiments worthy of former times. In these it
will be your glory to have steadily labored, and with as much effect
as any man living. That you may long live to continue your useful
labors and to reap the reward in the thankfulness of nations, is my
sincere prayer," would become notorious fodder for his
Federalist detractors. The letter also contained news of Robert R.
Livingston's appointment as minister to France. Paine may have had
any number of reasons for ultimately not accepting Jefferson's offer
of passage, foremost being the signing of the Anglo-French Peace of
Amiens in 1802 that lessened the personal danger of such a voyage.
He likely was also eager to await Livingston's arrival in order to
buttonhole him with his own suggestions and impressions of France
under the First Consul. Nonetheless, the flattered Paine had
Jefferson's laudatory letter published and, as Yorke attests here,
clearly did not hesitate to show it to visitors:
As soon as I had finished the perusal of the letter, he
observed, that there now remained only four persons who had acted
in concert during the American revolution, John Adams, (the late
President) Jefferson, Livingstone [sic], and himself (vol. 2,
344-45).
Paine's extemporary remark is nothing if not cryptic. Jefferson and
Livingston were part of the conversation, but one would have to
wonder why he would single out John Adams as a comrade when the two
shared such stark political differences and a legendary antipathy.
Moreover, these men were far from being the sole surviving
Revolutionary collaborators of Thomas Paine: one thinks instantly of
Benjamin Rush, Samuel Adams, Charles Willson Peale, and nearly a
score of others. One could speculate that Jefferson, Adams,
Livingston, and Paine had all been engaged with foreign affairs for
the Continental Congress, but not at the same time or place.
Livingston and Paine did work together in secret in 1782, but
coordinating this project were Robert Morris and Gouverneur Morris,
both still alive in 1802. The other Revolutionary activity that
Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Robert R. Livingston had in
common was, of course, their service on the five-member committee to
draw up the Declaration of Independence in June 1776. The two
remaining committee members, Benjamin Franklin and Roger Sherman,
had died in 1790 and 1793, respectively, although Paine, enduring
imprisonment, illness, and isolation, would have learned of
Sherman's death considerably later. Could Paine have been suggesting
that he was not merely a literary influence but an unofficial
participant on this committee? If so, he would have been musing out
loud, with an offhand remark to an unsuspecting Englishman who
nonetheless took down his words and published them in 1804.
If that was the case, Paine otherwise kept his secret well. His own
account, published in a Philadelphia newspaper in 1805 is simply, "I
was myself among the first that proposed independence, and it was
Mr. Jefferson who drew up the declaration of it." Not being a
member of Congress, much less a member of the drafting committee,
Paine could have understood from the beginning that his role of
unofficial consultant would have to be concealed for his lifetime
and beyond. Such service "acting in concert" with the
others need not be viewed as a case of ghostwriting, a deliberate
deception by Jefferson, or a conspiracy of ingratitude toward Paine.
While Paine was frequent in expressing his grievances toward a
country that did not appreciate him, it was not, as his most recent
biographer Craig Nelson reminds us, an uncommon sentiment for the
founders in their last years. And Paine, in any case, always
maintained his esteem for Jefferson.
Considering the possibility, or even probability, of Paine's secret
role would also aid biographers in explaining a friendship between
Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson that seemed to develop overnight
and leave no traces. The time the two spent in the same place during
the Revolution does not exceed six months residence in Philadelphia
divided over a year and, if one limits it to the period after Paine
had emerged from obscurity as the author of Common Sense,
this time could be measured merely in the weeks between May and July
1776. Their relationship is not buttressed by a paper trail of
correspondence until Paine's arrival in Europe in 1787, by which
time Paine is telling Franklin that he is already on "exceeding
good terms with Mr. Jefferson." Could it have been the bond
formed by laboring secretly on a project of no small consequence?
This scenario would also explain Adams' hostile view toward Paine as
a perhaps necessary, but unwanted, interloper in the process. Then
again, John Adams never needed much of an excuse to hate anybody.
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