Thomas Paine wrote some 13 papers titled “The American crisis”. His editor, Moncure Daniel Conway wrote, “a number of political pamphlets had appeared in London, I775-I776, under general title of ” The Crisis.” By the blunder of an early English publisher of Paine’s writings, one essay in the London “Crisis ” was attributed to Paine, and the error has continued to cause confusion” — volume 1 of the Writings.
The word crisis itself comes from Ancient Greek, κρίσις, krísis, a power of distinguishing, decision; that from as olden a verb, κρίνω, krínō, to pick out, choose, decide, judge. My offer is not meant for a verdict, yet this is what I have had to do, pick and decide, making my translation of the Crises, so I have thought, I describe the process for those readers in English who might be interested.
It is enough to open Conway for the Common Sense, Rights of Man, or Age of Reason, and take a general look, for sentence length and shape, to tell the picture is persistently different in the Crises, hence the plural. Conway most probably worked with what he had, and I can be thankful to him as he was to Francois Lanthenas, the French translator of Paine, for preserving what there was.
I do not change this extant shape. I render it and mark my doubt in gray, for word and phrase sense. The reader may use own discernment.
Crisis 1
Conway 1, page 170
What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly:
it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.
Conway 1, p. 170.
It does not even seem likely that Thomas Paine would have had a slice of bread for more tasty if eaten with effort, and we may compare his Common Sense for the navy, where bountiful Nature or Providence are no object for suffering or grief.
We ought to view the building a fleet as an article of commerce, it being the natural manufactory of this country. ‘Tis the best money we can lay out. A navy when finished is worth more than it cost: And is that nice point in national policy, in which commerce and protection are united. (…) Africa is in a state of barbarism; and no power in Europe, hath either such an extent of coast, or such an internal supply of materials. Where nature has given the one, she has withheld the other; to America only has she been liberal to both.
Conway 1, p. 104.
Conway 1, page 170
Theory may be, some of the alterations were inspired with an idea as ■torque, a moment of rotational force, and the ■Spanish Inquisition, or ■Torquemada.
Britain, with an army to enforce her tyranny, has declared that she has a right (not only to TAX) but “to BIND us in ALL CASES WHATSOEVER,” and if being bound in that manner, is not slavery, then is there not such a thing as slavery upon earth. Even the expression is impious; for so unlimited a power can belong only to God.
Slavery to God does not occur in the ■Romans by Wycliffe; the ■Amplified Bible has the idea. Thomas Paine rejects Burke in the Rights of Man, Conway vol 2, page 280.
He has produced his clauses, but he must produce also his proofs that such a right existed, and shew how it existed. If it ever existed, it must now exist, for whatever appertains to the nature of man cannot be annihilated by man.
He invoked rotation in his Common Sense, to describe the English monarchy and weakness of its constitutional provisions, Conway vol 1, page 74.
… as the greater weight will always carry up the less, and as all the wheels of a machine are put in motion by one, it only remains to know which power in the
constitution has the most weight, for that will govern: and though the others, or a part of them, may clog, or, as the phrase is, check the rapidity of its motion, yet so long as they cannot stop it, their endeavors will be ineffectual. The first moving power will at last have its way, and what it wants in speed is supplied by time.
Before I continue, let me declare for myself on matters of belief, my favorite fable is of philosopher Honeybee, who has stated, it is plain to observation that a design from Heavens has meant for the human soul to belong within the human body on Earth; therefore, no austerity might be needed.
Conway 1, page 171
It is common knowledge that Joan d’Arc was not a military; we may read she “transcended gender roles” from ■Wikipedia, yet the use of the word “ravage” here would imply another “transcendence” — not possibly Thomas Paine’s attitude, who rejects revelation in his Age of Reason.
All that Howe has been doing for this month past, is rather a ravage than
a conquest (…); in the fourteenth [fifteenth] century the whole English army, after ravaging the kingdom of France, was driven back like men petrified with fear ; and this brave exploit was performed by a few broken forces collected and headed by a woman, Joan of Arc. Would that heaven might inspire some Jersey maid to spirit up her countrymen, and save her fair fellow sufferers from ravage and ravishment!
Conway 1 page 173
If Thomas Paine gave character references, it was in his Common Sense, about people who wanted to come to terms with England, after English hostilities caused deaths and injuries in America; or about Broglio, in his Rights of Man. Moses received his adjectives with mention on his order to murder men, women, boys, and girls, unless some of the girls would have been wanted for private pleasures. In short, Thomas Paine never joked with the regard, and therefore afforded honestly to praise La Fayette.
Voltaire has remarked that king William never appeared to full advantage but in difficulties and in action; the same remark may be made on General Washington, for the character fits him.
He always marked the Lewis, therefore he would have noted “the 3rd”, or “III”, in the passage above. For parallels in conduct, there is yet a piece in his Common Sense, about William the Conqueror, where the English monarchy continued to derive:
A French bastard landing with an armed Banditti and establishing himself king of England against the consent of the natives, is in plain terms a very paltry rascally original, Conway 1, p. 80.
More, there is nowhere to seek Thomas Paine having gone “psychanalytical”, in order to recommend mind care to a commander.
There is a natural firmness in some minds which cannot be unlocked by trifles, but which, when unlocked, discovers a cabinet of fortitude; and I reckon it among those kind of public blessings, which we do not immediately see, that God has blessed him with uninterrupted health, and given him a mind that can even flourish upon care.
It may be doubted if people get to be generals when the straits are dire, if there is no fortitude in the person as naturally own self, without any special “unlocking”. In translation therefore, it catches the eye, the “cabinet” renders into a liquor stand as well, where you might have a glass or cup “for good health”.
Conway 1, page 174
Thomas Paine was always adequate about measures, and a child of that age weighs about 30 kilograms. He never condemned family life.
I once felt all that kind of anger, which a man ought to feel, against the mean principles that are held by the Tories: a noted one, who kept a tavern at Amboy, was standing at his door, with as pretty a child in his hand, about eight or nine years old, as I ever saw, and after speaking his mind as freely as he thought was prudent, finished with this unfatherly expression, “Well, give me peace in my day”.
Conway 1, page 174
Not a place upon earth might be so happy
as America.
There may have been conjectures about Thomas Paine’s use of the grammatical article. It is everyday use to say, “the sun is up”, where the experience is local.
The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth… Conway 1, page 84.
Moncure Conway noted, even printers would change Paine’s spelling sometimes. “I had made the tour of the creation, and paid a regular visit to almost every country under the sun”, say the Anecdotes of Alexander the Great; Conway 1, page 26.
Conway 1, page 175
♦ During all my translation so far, Thomas Paine never mistook the definite article and the possessives — as to give up the country?
♦ He never was as self-contradictory as to say that someone brings a problem, but the people would not have it — if they were not.
♦ His Age of Reason says he was rebelling against Christianity already when a child.
♦ So far as well, he never repeated himself unless to develop an idea, which is not the case with the names of the Whig and the Tory here, which close his Common Sense (it would be more of a forger idea, to invoke associations with the author).
♦ He capitalized the Continent as the American territory, because he did not take Canada for granted.
♦ Finally, the Christian devotion would have boiled down to taking property over for the sake of those who are just not so well-to-do.
♦ He capitalized the Congress.
I consider Howe as the greatest enemy the Tories have; he is bringing a war into their country, which, had it not been for him and partly for themselves, they had been clear of. Should he now be expelled, I wish with all the devotion of a Christian, that the names of Whig and Tory may never more be mentioned; but should the Tories give him encouragement to come, or assistance if he come, I as sincerely wish that our next year’s arms may expel them from the continent, and the congress appropriate their possessions to the relief of those who have suffered in well-doing.
The below might actually resemble an inquisitor’s note. There never was a singular battle to resolve all for America, because the people were not about law at the point of the sword (Common Sense). Ruin may make a person “disaffected”, but it does not mean he or she is an enemy; whereas expulsion is just as feudal banishment.
A single successful battle next year will settle the whole. America could carry on a two years war by the confiscation of the property of disaffected persons, and be made happy by their expulsion.
I have translated, without looking to author chronology, because I believe language has its semantic fields and books are individual volumes, so things have to work for word sense, whatever the order the author wrote his things — the Common Sense, the Rights, some of the Age, the Abbe, the Agrarian, and all the Age. The Crisis is the last, and maybe this is what does not happen to other people, who get the reads as with a curriculum or a list. To my perception, the works are by one author, where the Crisis looks compromised semantically.
Conway volume 1, pages 174-175
A man can distinguish himself between temper and principle, and I am as confident, as I am that God governs the world, that America will never be happy till she gets clear of foreign dominion.
The theory that there would be a constant watch over this world might make a dramatic difference between the roles, passive or active, ■patiens or ■agens. It could be easy to say that God is looking, when you are affluent, powerful, and believing; impoverished or sick, the human being would not invoke Godly minding eagerly, and this fragment is the only such occurrence in all four volumes of Conway.
Thomas Paine’s idea for God governing the world would be closer to the Greek κύρβεις, used about celestial bodies and their movement too. His idea clearly invokes Aristotle:
The only idea man can affix to the name of God, is that of a first cause, the cause of all things (Age of Reason, Conway vol 4, page 47).
On earthly matters, he does not agree there would be a “higher hand”, refuting a sermon
by Watson, Bishop of Llandaff:
It is wrong to say, God made rich and poor; he made only male and female; and he gave them the earth for their inheritance (Agrarian Justice, Conway vol. 3, page 327).
There are pieces that look consistent with Thomas Paine, troops on the move in cold weather.
THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed, if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated. Britain, with an army to enforce her tyranny, has declared that she has a right (not only to TAX) but “to BIND us in all cases WHATSOEVER”, and if being bound in that manner is not slavery, then is there not such a thing as slavery upon earth.
I shall not now attempt to give all the particulars of our retreat to the Delaware; suffice it for the present to say, that both officers and men, though greatly harassed and fatigued, frequently without rest, covering, or provision, the inevitable consequences of a long retreat, bore it with a manly and martial spirit. All their wishes centered in one, which was, that the country would turn out and help them drive the enemy back.
I call not upon a few, but upon all: not on this state or that state, but on every state: up and help us; lay your shoulders to the wheel; better have too much force than too little, when so great an object is at stake. Let it be told to the future world, that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet and to repulse it. Say not that thousands are gone, turn out your tens of thousands; throw not the burden of the day upon Providence, but “show your faith by your works”, that God may bless you.
With those troops, while they were collected, we were able to set bounds to the progress of the enemy, and, thank God, they are again assembling. I always considered militia as the best troops in the world for a sudden exertion, but they will not do for a long campaign. Howe, it is probable, will make an attempt on this city (Philadelphia); should he fail on this side the Delaware, he is ruined: if he succeeds, our cause is not ruined. He stakes all on his side against a part on ours; admitting he succeeds, the consequence will be, that armies from both ends of the Continent will march to assist their suffering friends in the middle states; for he cannot go everywhere, it is impossible.
There are persons, too, who see not the full extent of the evil which threatens them; they solace themselves with hopes that the enemy, if he succeed, will be merciful. It is the madness of folly, to expect mercy from those who have refused to do justice; and even mercy, where conquest is the object, is only a trick of war; the cunning of the fox is as murderous as the violence of the wolf, and we ought to guard equally against both. Howe’s first object is, partly by threats and partly by promises, to terrify or seduce the people to deliver up their arms and receive mercy.
Ye men of Pennsylvania, do reason upon these things! Were the back counties to give up their arms, they would fall an easy prey to the Indians, who are all armed.
As I was with the troops at Fort Lee, and marched with them to the edge of Pennsylvania, I am well acquainted with many circumstances, which those who live at a distance know but little or nothing of. Our situation there was exceedingly cramped, the place being a narrow neck of land between the North River and the Hackensack. Our force was inconsiderable, being not one fourth so great as Howe could bring against us. We had no army at hand to have relieved the garrison, had we shut ourselves up and stood on our defense. Our ammunition, light artillery, and the best part of our stores, had been removed, on the apprehension that Howe would endeavor to penetrate the Jerseys, in which case fort Lee could be of no use to us; for it must occur to every thinking man, whether in the army or not, that these kind of field forts are only for temporary purposes, and last in use no longer than the enemy directs his force against the particular object, which such forts are raised to defend. Such was our situation and condition at fort Lee on the morning of the 20th of November, when an officer arrived with information that the enemy with 200 boats had landed about seven miles above: Major General (Nathanael) Greene, who commanded the garrison, immediately ordered them under arms, and sent express to General Washington at the town of Hackensack, distant by the way of the ferry = six miles. Our first object was to secure the bridge over the Hackensack, which laid up the river between the enemy and us, about six miles from us, and three from them. General Washington arrived in about three quarters of an hour, and marched at the head of the troops towards the bridge, which place I expected we should have a brush for; however, they did not choose to dispute it with us, and the greatest part of our troops went over the bridge, the rest over the ferry, except some which passed at a mill on a small creek, between the bridge and the ferry, and made their way through some marshy grounds up to the town of Hackensack, and there passed the river. We brought off as much baggage as the wagons could contain, the rest was lost. The simple object was to bring off the garrison, and march them on till they could be strengthened by the Jersey or Pennsylvania militia, so as to be enabled to make a stand.
We staid four days at Newark, collected our out-posts with some of the Jersey militia, and marched out twice to meet the enemy, on being informed that they were advancing,
though our numbers were greatly inferior to theirs. Howe, in my little opinion, committed a great error in generalship, in not throwing a body of forces off from Staten Island through Amboy, by which means he might have seized all our stores at Brunswick, and intercepted our march into Pennsylvania.
It is great credit to us, that, with a handful of men, we sustained an orderly retreat for near a hundred miles, brought off our ammunition, all our field pieces, the greatest part of our stores, and had four rivers to pass. Once more we are again collected and collecting; our new army at both ends of the continent is recruiting fast, and we shall be able to open the next campaign with sixty thousand men, well armed and clothed. This is our situation, and who will, may know it.
Common Sense
December 23, 1776
Crisis 2, extracted extant
(My extants do not have anything added; everyone is welcome to check on the phrases and paragraphs too, with the ■first volume of Conway: it is enough to use the search field. I have only put the pieces into a flow, as Benjamin Franklin exercised with the Spectator.)
To Lord Howe
America, for your deceased brother’s sake, would gladly have shown you respect, and it is a new aggravation to her feelings, that Howe should be forgetful, and raise his sword against those, who at their own charge raised a monument to his brother. As a military man your lordship may hold out the sword of war, and call it the “ultima ratio regum”: the last reason of kings; we in return can show you the sword of justice, and call it “the best scourge of tyrants”. He that in defense of reason rebels against tyranny, has a better title to a “Defender of the Faith”, than George the Third.
Your friends announced your coming, with high descriptions of your unlimited powers; but your proclamation has given them the lie, by showing you to be a commissioner without authority.
“And we (lord Howe and general Howe) do command (and in his majesty’s name forsooth) all such persons as are assembled together, under the name of general or provincial congresses, committees, conventions or other associations, by whatever name or names known and distinguished, to desist and cease from all such treasonable actings and doings.”
The Congress have as much right to command the King and Parliament in London to desist from legislation, as they or you have to command the Congress. Only suppose how laughable such an edict would appear from us, and then, in that merry mood, do but turn the tables upon yourself, and you will see how your proclamation is received here.
You introduce your proclamation by referring to your declarations of the 14th of July and 19th of September. I shall state the circumstance: by a verbal invitation of yours, communicated to Congress by General Sullivan, then a prisoner on his parole, you signified your desire of conferring with some members of that body as private gentlemen. Your request was complied with; the interview ended as every sensible man thought it would, for your lordship knows, as well as the writer of the Crisis, that it is impossible for the King of England to promise the repeal, or even the revisal of any acts of parliament; wherefore, on your part, you had nothing to say, more than to request, in the room of demanding, the surrender of the entire Continent.
Soon after your return to New York, you published a very illiberal and unmanly handbill against the Congress; for it was certainly stepping out of the line of common civility, first to screen your national pride by soliciting an interview with them as private gentlemen, and in the conclusion to endeavor to deceive the multitude by making a handbill attack on the whole body of the Congress; you got them together under one name, and abused them under another. You say in that handbill, that “they, the Congress, disavowed every purpose for reconciliation not consonant with their extravagant and inadmissible claim of independence”.
The Congress were authorized by every state on the Continent to publish it to all the world, and in so doing are to be considered heralds.
In a folio general-order book belonging to Col. Rhal’s battalion, taken at Trenton, and now in the possession of the council of safety for this state, the following barbarous order is frequently repeated, “His excellency the commander-in-chief orders, that all inhabitants who shall be found with arms, not having an officer with them, shall be immediately taken and hung up”. Your treatment of prisoners, in order to distress them to enlist in your infernal service, is not to be equaled by any instance in Europe.
I come now more particularly to your proclamation of the 30th of November last. Had you gained an entire conquest over all the armies of America, and then put forth a proclamation, offering (what you call) mercy, your conduct would have had some specious show of humanity; but to creep by surprise into a province, and there endeavor to terrify and seduce the inhabitants from their just allegiance to the rest by promises, which you neither meant nor were able to fulfill, is both cruel and unmanly: because, unless you can keep all the ground you have marched over, how are you, in the words of your proclamation, to secure the “enjoyment of their liberties and properties”?
What is to become either of your new adopted subjects in Burlington, Bordentown, Trenton, Mount Holly, and many other places, where you proudly lorded it for a few days, and then fled with the precipitation of a pursued thief? What is to become of those who went over to you from this city and state? What more can you say to them than “shift for yourselves”? You may tell them to take their leave of America, and all that once was theirs. Recommend them, for consolation, to your master’s court. A traitor is the foulest fiend on earth.
By what means, may I ask, do you expect to conquer America? If you could not effect it in the summer, when our army was less than yours, nor in the winter, when we had none, how are you to do it? In point of generalship you have been outwitted, and in point of fortitude outdone; your advantages turn out to your loss, and show us that it is in our power to ruin you by gifts: like a game of drafts, we can move out of one square to let you come in, in order that we may afterwards take two or three for one; and as we can always keep a double corner for ourselves, we can always prevent a total defeat.
Were you to obtain possession of this city, you would not know what to do with it more than to plunder it. To hold it in the manner you hold New York, would be an additional dead weight upon your hands: and if a general conquest is your object, you had better be without the city than with it.
In all the wars which you have formerly been concerned in, you had only armies to contend with; in this case you have both an army and a country to combat with. In former wars, the countries followed the fate of their capitals; Canada fell with Quebec, and Minorca with Port Mahon or St. Phillips; by subduing those, the conquerors opened a way into, and became masters of the country: here it is otherwise; if you get possession of a city here, you are obliged to shut yourselves up in it, and can make no other use of it, than to spend your country’s money in. This is all the advantage you have drawn from New York; and you would draw less from Philadelphia, because it requires more force to keep it, and is much further from the sea.
In every town, nay, every cottage in the Jerseys where your arms have been, is a testimony against you. How you may rest under this sacrifice of character I know not; but this I know, that you sleep and rise with the daily curses of thousands upon you.
You lived in a little country, where an army might run over the whole in a few days, and where a single company of soldiers might put a multitude to the rout; you expected to find it the same here. It is plain that you brought over with you all the narrow notions you were bred up with, and imagined that a proclamation in the King’s name was to do great things; but Englishmen always travel for knowledge, and your lordship I hope will return, if you return at all, much wiser than you came.
It has been the folly of Britain to suppose herself more powerful than she really is; her strength, of late, has lain in her extravagance; but as her finances and credit are now low, her sinews in that line begin to fail fast. ’Tis the unhappy temper of the English to be pleased with any war, right or wrong, be it but successful; but they soon grow discontented with ill fortune, and it is an even chance that they are as clamorous for peace next summer, as the King and his ministers were for war last winter. In this natural view of things, your lordship stands in a very critical situation: your whole character is now staked upon your laurels; if they wither, you wither with them.
Your King, in his speech to parliament last spring, declared, “That he had no doubt but the great force they had enabled him to send to America, would effectually reduce the rebellious colonies”. The King and his ministers put conquest out of doubt, but I consider independence as America’s natural right and interest.
Our independence with God’s blessing we will maintain against all the world; but as we wish to avoid evil ourselves, we wish not to inflict it on others, and I have some notion that, if you neglect the present opportunity, it will not be in our power to make a separate peace with you afterwards, for whatever treaties or alliances we form, we shall most faithfully abide by; wherefore you may be deceived, if you think you can make it with us at any time. A lasting independent peace is my wish, end and aim.
Common Sense
Philadelphia, Jan. 13, 1777.
(Work in progress.)
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