Citizen Tom Paine (15 page)

For Paine, it was an almost mystical fulfillment, and he said to himself, “Who can measure the forces started here? Men of good will march together and know their own strength. With the power we have, what can stop us, or even slow us? What can't we achieve, what new worlds, what glories, what promises!”

But on the next day, their sublimity began to be more commonplace. A comrade is a comrade, but a blister on one's heel is not to be sneezed at. The glorious cause of independence remained a cause glorious, but the muskets grew no lighter. Most of the firelocks they carried were brand-new, the product of Anson Schmidt, a Front Street gunsmith whose theories were violently opposed to those of the back-country craftsmen. In the Pennsylvania hinterland, a slim, light, long-barreled rifle had been developed. It threw a lead slug the size of a large green pea with amazing accuracy and outranged by at least a hundred yards any other weapon known at the time. But Schmidt reasoned, and rightly, what was the use of such a rifle to a man who was not a marksman? He developed his own gun, the Patriot Lady, he called it, wide of bore, bound with iron, and heavy as a small cannon. It could be loaded with anything, shot, nails, glass, wire, stones, and at thirty yards it was brutally, effective. Its great drawback was that it required a strong man to carry it.

The militia were not strong. For several hours they carried their muskets, and then someone got the idea of heaving his weapon into a supply wagon. Soon the supply wagons were groaning with the weight of a hundred muskets, and Roberdeau, blue with rage, screamed what kind of an army was this marching without arms?

“Well enough for you on your horse, fatty,” a private told the general.

“God damn you, you'll have a hundred lashes for that!”

“And who'll lay them on?”

Roberdeau backed down, but assured the man that he would write a charge to the Continental Congress. The men were tired, begrimed with sweat, surly; and it was too early in the campaign to look for trouble. Since Paine was the secretary, Roberdeau put it to him, instructing him to write the following to the military committee:

“Whereas one, Alexander Hartson, indulged in treasonable talk—”

“I wouldn't say that,” Paine interrupted.

“No?”

“His talk wasn't treasonable. It would be better to have him whipped.”

“I think I know how to order my brigade,” Roberdeau said. “Write what I tell you to; that's why you're here. I don't need instructions in military ethics from any two-pence scrivener.”

“Very well,” Paine nodded.

There was a tall, loose-limbed man who took to walking alongside Paine. His name was Jacob Morrison, and he came from the wild and beautiful Wyoming Valley. His wife and child had died of smallpox, and he, sick of living alone in the dark woods, had come to Philadelphia, taken work as a hand in a flour mill, and there joined the Associators. Armed with a long rifle, clad in buckskin leggings and a hunting shirt, he almost alone in that motley group of militia appeared fitted for the business on which they were embarked. He took a liking to Paine, if for no other reason than that Paine continued to carry his own musket. He said to him once, in his slow, back-country drawl:

“Citizen, what do you think of our little war?”

“Things start slowly,” Paine said.

“Yes, but I reckon I seldom seen a seedier lot of fighting men.”

“Well, give them time—you don't make soldiers over night. And you don't make a new world in one day.”

“You're English, aren't you?” Morrison said. “What got you into this?”

Paine shrugged.

“For me, I don't give a damn,” the backwoodsman drawled. “I got nothing to lose. But, Lord, there's troubled times coming—”

That night Roberdeau took a new tack, changing from bullying to cajoling. He broke open an extra cask of rum, and announced to the men:

“We have with us here, citizens, a most illustrious patriot, the man who with words of fire wrote
Common Sense
. He has consented to say a few words to us concerning the cause for which we are determined to give our lives. Citizen Thomas Paine!”

Paine wasn't prepared. He stood up sheepishly, stumbled into the light of a fire, and began to talk, very haltingly at first—“We are embarked on a deed of small men, and that's what we are, small men, citizens, common people. We are going to find it hard, and grumble and complain, and some of us will go home. I think that's how a revolution starts—”

Their permanent bivouac was at Amboy, close to where the Raritan River flows into lower New York Bay. Across the river were the hills of Staten Island, and beyond, on Manhattan, a terrible drama was being enacted. Washington's orders were to hold New York with the rabble of militia he had under his command, twenty thousand in number, but none of them trained soldiers—New England Yankee farmers for the most part, some Pennsylvanians, some Jersey troops, a good many Virginians, and several brigades of Maryland troops, the latter the best of the lot. But to hold New York with that raggle-taggle mob was as absurd as it was impossible. Each day, more British transports and ships of the line sailed into the harbor, disgorging thousands and thousands of trained regulars and Hessians onto Staten Island. Meanwhile, Washington had split his army, placing half his men in Brooklyn to stave off a flank attack that might isolate him on the slim ridge of Manhattan. To counter this move, the British shifted part of their army to Long Island, and on the night of August 27, General Howe launched his attack. They found a weak spot in the American lines, captured a few sleeping sentries, flanked half of Washington's army, and then, holding it in pincer jaws, proceeded methodically to destroy it.

Only through his own cool courage and the aid of a brigade of Marblehead fishermen was Washington able to evacuate what was left of his shattered army to New York. And there, almost before he had time to reorganize, the British attacked again, this time determined to destroy what was left of the colonial army.

They came near to accomplishing that purpose. Landing on Manhattan both from the East River and the Upper Bay, they again attempted to close the pincers, driving the routed, panic-stricken colonials before them. It became a wild footrace, in which an utterly demoralized mob of militia threw away their weapons and ran like rabbits for the fortified line which the Americans still held where One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street is today. Whole brigades were cut off by the Hessians, ripped to pieces with cold steel, made prisoner; men cowered in barns, haylofts, thickets; others drowned themselves trying to swim across the Hudson and reach the Jersey shore. Only through a miracle did a good part of the troops which had held lower New York escape. In a few weeks the twenty thousand had been reduced to less than fifteen thousand.

And during this time, the Philadelphia Associators made themselves very small at Amboy. More than enough news of what was happening in New York filtered into their lines, and the only concrete result was desertion. It was a thing of the past to call one's neighbor comrade, and as for citizen—

Paine had pleaded with General Roberdeau, with Colonel Plaxton, “What are we doing here? Over there in New York, the whole good hope of mankind is being smashed, and what are we doing here?”

“Our duty, which is to garrison Amboy.”

“Christ, no! We could march up through Jersey and cross over at Fort Lee and join Washington. Better yet, we could cross the Raritan and attack the British where they're weakest, in Staten Island. Or we could raid over into Bayonne—”

Roberdeau smiled condescendingly. “You're a writer, Paine, a dreamer, shall we say. The hard military facts—”

“God damn it, sir, what do you know about military facts?”

Plaxton blew up with rage, but Roberdeau only pouted and spread his arms helplessly. “First the others, now you, turning against me, talking treason.”

“Treason! My God, sir, is everything treason? Isn't it treason to sit here on our behinds?”

“Orders—”

“From whom? Did the orders take into account that Washington's army would be shattered, that we should lose New York? Has any man in your command fired a gun yet or faced an enemy?”

Fat, his face jelly-like in its impotence, Roberdeau blubbered his appeal to Plaxton, the slim, dandified gentleman, one of the Penn family, sneering and bored at the two of them:

“Is my duty my duty? Tell me? Am I to blame that Washington's army is driven from New York? Am I to blame that instead of soldiers they give me shop clerks?”

Then there were the desertions; Philadelphia was not far enough away, and each night a few of the militia slipped out of camp. Almost no discipline was left, and for the most part the officers were drunk; if the general objected, they laughed in his face. Paine stormed, pleaded, exhorted; and strangely, the militia did not take offense at him; rather, they became like schoolboys being scolded. When he sat by a fire and read to them from
Common Sense
, they listened, fascinated, intrigued, and then for a moment he could fill them with passion:

“Do you understand, this is for us, for you and me, for our children! We are the beginning, and we are making a new world!”

But it didn't take; they were homesick, frightened, bewildered by the reports from New York. If the British had cut to pieces Washington's great army, which had already been under fire at Boston, what would happen with raw, untried militia?

“Listen to me, comrades!”

Now they hated the word. What did words mean when words led only to death. The revolution was a farce; and it was doubtless true that the British hanged all rebels—or gave them to the mercy of the Hessians.

As Jacob Morrison said, there should be at least twenty who could be counted on; he had been sounding them out, and he told Paine, “In this cursed Jersey, there must be at least a few hundred others we could pick up, enough to make a raiding party. I seen too many like Roberdeau, who is no good, and in a little while he'll go home—mark my word.”

“I suppose he'll go home,” Paine shrugged.

“Then what's to hold us back? The Continental Congress?” asked Morrison derisively. Paine sat down and put his face in his hands; his head ached. He told Morrison:

“It's mutiny, you know.”

Morrison asked him if he wanted to get drunk.

“All right.”

There was no longer a pretense made of guarding the rum. They had a quart each, and staggered around the camp, roaring obscene songs at the top of their lungs. Like a helpless schoolmarm, Roberdeau called them names until Morrison ran at him with a bayonet. Paine stood on a supply cart, swaying, exhorting the militia, who were not entirely sober themselves, moving them and himself to maudlin tears, watching out of the corner of his eyes how Morrison staggered around, brandishing the bayonet, finally falling off the cart.

But when it came down to facts, the next day, they could not find twenty in the camp who would join them, not ten and not even one. Roberdeau, Plaxton, and a few other militia officers held a council of war, the outcome of which was a decision to march back to Philadelphia; and when the Associators heard the decision read, they cheered for a full fifteen minutes. Paine and Morrison sat on a fallen tree trunk, their firelocks on their knees, and watched the camp break up. It didn't take long, nor did Roberdeau speak to them; only when the Associators began to march did a few militiamen glance back and wave. Morrison began to hum softly, and Paine sighed and studied his rusty musket as if he had never seen it before.

“Not that I give a damn,” Morrison said, “and I suppose they have something to go back for. The little man, Tom, is a timid rabbit—don't let it stick in your throat.”

“No—”

“Do you want a drink?”

Paine nodded, and silently Morrison passed him a leathern flask of rum. They rocked it back and forth for a little while, and then when it was empty, they threw it away. “Ye that love mankind,” Paine quoted, and Morrison said, “Shut up!”

“Ye that dare oppose not only the tyranny but the tyrant, stand forth!”

“God damn you, shut up!”

“All right,” Paine nodded. “Only let's get out of here—let's get out of this damned place and not see it again.”

They crossed the Raritan and set out to walk to Fort Lee on the west bank of the Hudson River, some thirty miles to the north. There was a garrison and there was a place in Washington's army for two men who held onto their guns. They took the old pike to Elizabethtown, trudging along through the cool September days, their guns over their shoulders, two left from all the Philadelphia militia, a tall backwoodsman and a slope-shouldered, broad-necked Englishman, profession: revolutionist, but just two of all the raggle-taggle that drifted along the road—deserters, farmers, cowboys, milkmaids, and even a British patrol now and then to send them diving into the underbrush. They had no money, but the weather was good, and they could sleep in a field and roast sweet corn over a fire.

For Tom Paine, there was a quality of relief in the disbanding of the Philadelphians; the weak went and a few of the strong were left, and he had never had a comrade before like this tall, slow-spoken Pennsylvanian. He read to him from
Common Sense
, and respect became a bond between them. Morrison told how his wife and child had died, leaving him alone in the dark forest, and trudging along they shared their loneliness and knew each other's thoughts. In those times, the flatlands of Jersey were not covered with smoking factories and an endless maze of railroads, but between the pine barrens, the sulphur swampland stretched for miles and miles, inhabited only by flocks of whirring birds, by snakes and frogs, desolate by daytime, but shining with an unearthly beauty at dawn and twilight.

Once they passed Elizabethtown, they walked for hours through this silent, stretching plain, for Paine so reminiscent of the British fens. He spoke to Morrison of the things he had seen as a boy in the gin hell of London; hope which had been so low in them rose higher, and the calm spaces of the swamps gave them new courage. Now they laughed at Roberdeau.