THOMAS PAINE'S "LETTER TO GEORGE WASHINGTON."

Background and introductory notes.

The full letter will appear in the next post. For those unfamiliar with Paine’s biography, though, some background is in order. Philip Foner’s note to the letter’s inclusion in his Paine collection and a few comments of my own follow:

Letter to George Washington: Editor’s Note.
”The background which led to the sending of this celebrated Letter to George Washington must constantly be kept in mind in reading the document. For ten months, from December 28, 1793, until November 4, 1794, Paine remained in the Luxembourg prison, living in daily fear of being executed. To every appeal for his release he received the reply that he was considered an Englishman, not an American citizen, by the French officials, and that the government of the United States refused to regard him as citizen and authorize his release. Unaware of the role Gouverneur Morris was playing in conspiring to keep him in prison and at the same time leading the government of the United States to believe that he had done everything possible to help him, Paine grew more and more bitter toward Washington and interpreted the American President’s silence as the most brutal type of ingratitude. He had ample time, moreover, to recall his past services to Washington, and especially remembered that in the fifth Crisis he had leaped to the defense of the commander-in-chief of the Continental army when he was attacked by enemies in Congress and in danger of losing his command. The more he brooded on the subject, the more Paine was determined to expose Washington. James Monroe urged Paine not to write the letters, and dissuared him from sending the one date February 25, 1795. But on July 30, 1796, Paine sent the document to the United States.”
From: The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine
New York: The Citadel Press, 1945. Volume II, p. 690.

Most historians have, like Foner, tried to absolve Washington in part or in whole from the well-documented machinations of Morris in Paris. Morris, a thorough-going Federalist who treated Paine cordially to his face and detested him behind his back, plotted to put and keep him in prison. Paine watched as virtually all of his closest revolutionary friends and colleagues were marched before his prison door and guillotined outside his window. By nature a sensitive and kind man, imagine his shock and heart-break. He fell gravely ill; delirious and unconscious. When the order for his execution was issued by Maximillian Robespierre, the jailor came down at night to chalk-mark the doors of those to be taken to the yard and beheaded the next morning. Two of Paine’s cell-mates meanwhile were able to pay to have a physician visit him in his cell. When the doctor was treating him, the door was opened against the wall so that when the soldiers came down in the morning to drag away the prisoners, Paine’s door was still against the wall, the mark hidden from sight. The death-march passed him by. The next day, Robespierre himself was beheaded and Paine survived although deathly ill. When future President James Monroe was sent to replace Morris who had fled France with his belongings, he learned of Paine’s predicament and immediately set about to arrange for his release. In the confusion of the time, it took Monroe a full month, but he demanded Paine’s release as an American citizen - something Morris never did - and received it. The claim of citizenship was legitimate. When Paine enlisted in the Continental Army as aide-de-camp of General Nathaniel Green, he had renounced allegiance to the King of England and swore loyalty to America.

Monroe and his wife took Paine into their own home and attempted to restore his health. There is a letter from Monroe at this time that states they did not expect “poor Paine” to live out the winter. But he did.

Was Washington innocent of the betrayal that Paine alleged? Most historians have attempted to exonerate him. There is, however, a case to be made to the contrary and its seems to me that the attempt overlooks the greater context in which these events occurred. Gouveneur Morris was Washington’s closest associate and friend. Washington personally ordered Morris’ appointment as Minister Plenipotentiary to France. Morris certainly acted the part and carried out the wishes of his bosom-friend Washington who, while pretending to neutrality in the upswell of partisanship in his newly liberated and now federal United States, had actually gone fully over to the Federalist side in league with his protegé Hamilton, John Adams, John Jay, and others. If he didn’t take a frontal part in the jailing of Paine, as did Morris, he is culpable for his appointment of Morris, an enemy to Paine and to the democratic-republicans. The British historian Duff Cooper summed him up: while Morris "… had warmly espoused the cause of the colonists in the American War of Independence, he retained a cynically aristocratic view of life and a profound contempt for democratic theories” [Duff Cooper, Alfred. Talleyrand. New York: Grove Press. p. 43]. Morris believed that mankind, incapable of self-government, must be governed by the elite; himself, of course. His love of ostentation, elitism, and privilege necessitated his flight from France, leaving the way for Monroe to pick up the pieces and correct the injustice done to Paine and others by Morris.

Whatever the primary or secondary part Washington played in Paine’s mistreatment in France, Washington played a central role in the Federalist counter-revolution in America. The Jay Treaty under his adminstration and the Alien and Sedition Acts under John Adams were two primary elements, along with the Federal Constitution itself, of the counter-revolutionary reaction. Paine covers all of these issues in his blistering letter to the now sainted Washington. His letter is a scathing attack on the Federalist project at large and Washington in specific. Try to put aside your prejudice and indoctrination about the “father of our country.” This is REAL history. Paine’s letter is a sort of time-machine that can transport the reader back to the Revolutionary Era. It ILLUMINATES the American Revolution, the counter-revolution that followed it, and the struggle under way in the Federal Period (1789 to 1801) for the destiny of the American project.