Tad Stoermer on the mythological retro-fitting of Thomas Paine

Brilliant summary here. This year, the 250th anniversary, there's going to be a lot of myth-reinforcement. Few will be interested in challenging the two and a half centuries of nationalistic baggage with which the American revolution has been subsequently packaged. Challenging orthodoxy is tricky when reinforcing orthodoxy pays the bills. 

There's been a bit of highly selective Paine-worship over the past week, marking the 250th anniversary of his pamphlet Common Sense. Here's a corrective dose of reality –

 

John Dickinson's writings were more influential than Paine (see previous post here), and had put in place a decade of thought and philosophy, grounded in the previous Glorious Revolution; Paine arrived very late to the party, in November 1774, and only publishing from spring 1775 - as Stoermer correctly says here "most of the real American revolution had already happened before Paine ever set foot on America's shores", between 1765-1775.

So, as Tad Stoermer explains above, the myth of Paine began almost at day one, when John Page selectively extracted the politically useful parts of Common Sense, and printed it in newspapers which had a far wider readership than the print run of the complete pamphlet itself. 

The Scots-Irishman poet, David Bruce, refers unfavourably to Paine in his 1801 collection. Check out Brother Tamie, A Song. 

• A more substantial Common Sense is the philosophy that emerged as part of the 1700s Scottish Enlightment (which sounds a bit fluffy as a term anyway) - Scottish Common Sense Realism. That's a subject for another day...

Revolutionary Psalms – Isaac Watts, the Glorious Revolution and the American Revolution

Isaac Watts' The Psalms of David was first published in 1719. His father, also called Isaac, had been a local 'nonconformist' church pastor in Southampton, who was imprisoned at least twice during the regime of King Charles II. When James II became monarch in 1685, the public executions of his Bloody Assizes included two locations along the south coast not very far from Southampton; 12 men at Weymouth and five men at Wareham were sliced and diced by order of his majesty. Isaac junior had just turned 11 years old when the hanging, drawing and quartering began.

"... The trials of the parents made, as may be conceived, a deep impression upon the mind of the son; the adversities of his early years were remembered by him in after life ; and doubtless here originated that ardent attachment to civil and religious liberty which marked his character, and which led his muse to hail its establishment with exultation, when the dynasty of the tyrannical Stuarts was driven from the throne..."*

 

So, when Isaac published his The Psalms of David, he added a dedication to Psalm 75 which read:

Power and Government from God Alone 

Apply'd to the Glorious Revolution of King William, 

or the Happy Accession of King George to the Throne

 

Watts' The Psalms of David was probably the most-used sacred song book in the English-speaking Atlantic World; the first edition to be printed in America was by Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia in 1740. The Psalm 75 dedication remained throughout an estimated 39 editions that were printed on both sides of the ocean.

After the American Revolution, with America newly independent, the first edition of Watts to be printed was in Newburyport, Massachussetts in 1791. The printer, John Mycall, revised the intro to Psalm 75 to reflect the new era –

 

Power and Government from God Alone 

Apply'd to the glorious revolution in America, 

 July 4th, 1776 

 

Ezra Stiles, the President of Yale, wrote this summary in his diary:

"This year has been published the fortieth Edition of Dr. Watts's Psalms: it was printed at Newburyport in Massachusetts by Mr. Mycall, Printer. He with the Advice & Assist of neighbors ministers & others, has made some Alterations in Psalms where G. Britain is mentioned, & references to the King of Gt. Britain as in the 75th Psalm. At first it may seem as if these alterations were many: however they really are but few. Thus the Ps. Book is well adapted to the Ch in America"

• * The Life, Times and Correspondence of the Rev. Isaac Watts, D.D. by Thomas Milner (1834) is online here

• The American Revisions of Watts's Psalms, by Louis F. Benson (1903) is online here.

Below: The American edition with the revised dedication

John Adams on David Hume – "varnishing over the crimes of the Stuarts" (King Charles II and King James II)

Most people today have little or no idea about the 'Stuart' kings' tyrannies of the 1600s. It is easier to promote the concept of loyalty (or, as we'll see below, passive obedience) if the evils of all monarchs are airbrushed away, or "varnished over" as John Adams says in the quote below, which is from this famous and sparkling letter of 1818.

Adams takes aim at the mega-history that had been published before the Revolution, at the key moment when King George III settled onto the throne in 1760, written by the Scottish writer David Hume.

The rewriting of history is nothing new. History is often appropriated, not to inform about the past, but to recruit in the present. Here is Adams' own copy, sold a while ago at Christies.

 

"...Another gentleman who had great influence in the commencement of the Revolution, was Doctor Jonathan Mayhew, a descendant of the ancient Governor of Martha's Vineyard. This Divine had raised a great reputation, both in Europe and America by the publication of a volume of seven sermons in the reign of King George the Second, 1748, and by many other writings, particularly a sermon in 1750, on the thirtieth of January, on the subject of Passive Obedience and Non Resistance, in which the saintship and martyrdom of King Charles the First are considered, seasoned with witt and satyre, superior to any in (Jonathan) Swift or (Benjamin) Franklin. It was read by everybody, celebrated by friends, and abused by enemies. (see previous post on the Boston pastor Mayhew here).

During the reigns of King George the First and King George the Second, the reigns of the Stewarts – the Two Jameses, and the two Charleses – were in general disgrace in England. In America they had always been held in abhorrence. The persecutions and cruelties suffered by their ancestors under those reigns, had been transmitted by history and tradition, and Mayhew seemed to be raised up to revive all their animosity against tyranny, in church and state, and at the same time to destroy their bigotry, fanaticism and inconsistency or David Hume's plausible, elegant, fascinating and fallacious apology in which he varnished over the crimes of the Stewarts had not then appeared (Hume's multi-volume history was published from 1754-1761).

To draw the character of Mayhew would be to transcribe a dozen volumes. This transcendant [by choices] threw all the weight of his great fame into the scale of his country in 1761, and maintained it there with zeal and ardour till his death in 1766..."

• Adams was of course creating a narrative too. His thinking and justification for the 1776 revolution in America leaned heavily upon the 1688 revolution in Europe. It doesn't matter that there was a revolution - what matters is why there had to be one. Or two.

"and can speak broad Scotch" – from Magheralin to Maryland, escaping with a man from Madagascar - 1739

St Mary's County on the western shore of Maryland is just across the Chesapeake Bay from Somerset County, the location of the first major Ulster-Scots community settlement in America, where the renowned Francis Makemie from Donegal became the minister in 1683.

Thomas Macoun was (very likely) from Magheralin / Maralin. He spoke “broad Scotch” and went to America as an indentured servant. In 1739 he, and a Black slave from Madagascar known as Robin, escaped together from their master’s plantation on the banks of the Potomac River, in a stolen boat with a pile of flamboyant clothes and a silver hilted sword.

This notice appeared in a few newspapers - if anyone in Pennsylvania found the two of them, Benjamin Franklin the printer was to be informed.

• the famous scientist John Macoun emigrated to Canada; his autobiography tells of the family's Scottish roots and of how they joined the resistance against King James II's army at The Break of Dromore in 1689. 

It would be worth fact-checking this interesting summary, from The Days of Makemie –

Much is said of his fairness in dealing with the Indians, but it is a fact, about which there has been no boasting, that our own province is nearly a half century ahead of Penn in setting the example. At St. Mary's no land was taken but was paid for, and the pleasantest relations of amity were established between the two races. The village of Yowacomaco was sold to the whites and became their capital, and there the English and Indians lived side by side in the rude huts constructed by savage hands, the one teaching the art of hunting the deer and planting the maize and preparing the succotash and hominy, the other teaching the lessons of civilized life and religion.

Prof. Gordon S. Wood on how 1776 was born in 1688 - "a revolt on behalf of the English Constitution"

Professor Gordon S Wood is one of the world's foremost experts on the Declaration of Independence. In this new podcast clip he summarises some of how the 1776 American Revolution was based upon the 1688 Glorious Revolution, at 20 minutes in –

 

 "... They talk in terms of 'we're the defenders of the English Constitution'. It's a curious Revolution in that sense. It's undertaken on behalf of the uncorrupted English Constitution, that they are a free people just as the English used to be. But now 'we are the free Englishmen. We're saving you from your own corrupt system'.

And so they don't see themselves until the very end as needing to be independent. They're defending themselves as Englishmen. And in fact, you could you make a case and they understood the irony of this, that we're revolting on behalf of the English Constitution. And it's a curious kind of thing ...

... they're talking about English rights, all of their rights. And the English had this tremendous tradition of rights. The first Bill of Rights that we talk about is in the 1688 Glorious Revolution, they get a Bill of Rights against the Crown.

The only thing that's unique about American rights is the right of religion because the English keep an Established Church, but all the other rights - jury trial, all that stuff that's in the 10 amendments, The Bill of Rights - are English rights..."