Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 43.djvu/77

 to Jefferson, and is supposed by Mr. Conway to have written the suppressed clause against the slave trade in the declaration of independence. He resigned his magazine, and joined the provincial army in the autumn of 1776. After a short service under Roberdeau, he was appointed in September a volunteer aide-de-camp to General Nathaniel Greene, then at Fort Lee on the Hudson. In November the fort was surprised, and Paine was in the retreat to Newark (his journal is printed in Almon's ‘Remembrancer,’ 1777, p. 28). At Newark Paine began writing his ‘Crisis.’ It appeared, 19 Dec., in the ‘Pennsylvania Journal,’ and began with the often-quoted words, ‘These are the times that try men's souls.’ It was read at every corporal's guard in the army, and received with enthusiasm. (In the London edition of Paine's ‘Political Works,’ 1819, a paper with which Paine had nothing to do is erroneously printed before this as the first ‘Crisis.’)

On 21 Jan. 1777 Paine was appointed secretary to a commission sent by congress to treat with the Indians at Easton, Pennsylvania; and on 17 April he was made secretary to the committee of foreign affairs. On 26 Sept. Philadelphia was occupied by the British forces, and congress had to seek refuge elsewhere. On 10 Oct. Paine was requested to undertake the transmission of intelligence between congress and Washington's army. A letter to Franklin of 16 May 1778 (given in, i. 102–13) describes his motions at this time. Paine, after sending off his papers, was present at several military operations, and distinguished himself by carrying a message in an open boat under a cannonade from the British fleet. He divided his time between Washington's headquarters at Valley Forge and York, where the congress was sitting. He published eight ‘Crises’ during 1777 and 1778. The British army evacuated Philadelphia in June 1778, and Paine returned thither with the congress. The ‘Crises,’ vigorously written to keep up the spirits of the Americans, had additional authority from his official position.

In January 1779 Paine got into trouble. The French government had adopted the scheme suggested by Beaumarchais for supplying funds to the insurgents under cover of an ostensible commercial transaction. The precise details are matter of controversy. The American commissioners, Silas Deane, Franklin, and Arthur Lee, had written from Paris stating that no repayment would be required for the sum advanced. Beaumarchais, however, sent an agent to congress demanding payment of his bill; and Deane was thereupon recalled to America to give explanations. Deane was suspected of complicity with Beaumarchais, and made an unsatisfactory statement to congress. He published a paper, appealing to the people, and taking credit for having obtained supplies. Paine, who had seen the official despatches, replied in the ‘Pennsylvania Packet’ of 15 Dec. 1779, declaring (truly) that the matter had been in train before Deane was sent to France, and in a later letter intimated that the supplies were sent gratuitously by the French government. This was to reveal the secret which the French, although now the open allies of the Americans, desired to conceal. The French minister, Gérard, therefore appealed to congress, who were bound to confirm his statement that the alliance had not been preceded by a gratuitous supply.

Paine, ordered to appear before congress, was only permitted to say ‘Yes’ in answer to the question whether he was the author of letters signed ‘Common Sense.’ He offered his resignation (6 Jan. 1779), and applied for leave to justify himself. He desired to prove that Deane was a ‘rascal,’ and had a private ‘unwarrantable connection’ with members of the house. The letters were suppressed; and though a motion for dismissing him was not carried, the states being equally divided, he resigned his post. Gérard, according to his despatches (, i. 134), fearing that Paine would ‘seek to avenge himself with his characteristic impetuosity and impudence,’ offered to pay him one thousand dollars yearly to defend the French alliance in the press. Paine, he adds, accepted the offer, and began his functions. Afterwards, however, Paine's work proved unsatisfactory, and Gérard engaged other writers. Paine stated in the following autumn that Gérard had made him such an offer, but that he had at once declined to accept anything but the minister's ‘esteem’ (see Paine's letter to Pennsylvania Packet, reprinted in Remembrancer for 1779, p. 293, &c.). Paine's conduct in the affair was apparently quite honourable, though certainly very indiscreet. Deane was dishonest, and Paine was denouncing a job. The revelation was not inconsistent with the oath which he had taken to disclose nothing ‘which he shall be directed to keep secret;’ but it showed a very insufficient appreciation of the difference between the duty of a journalist and of a public official. Discretion was never one of Paine's qualities.

Paine, who had published his ‘Crises,’ like his ‘Common Sense,’ at prices too low to be