PAINE ON SLAVERY

When he arrived in America 1774, Thomas Paine was 37 years old.  He may have been at what have been the low point of his life.  The voyage had made him so terribly ill he was delirious when he was carried off the ship; he spent the next six weeks recovering.   Moreover, he had left behind a shattered life.  He and his wife had separated.  He had lost his job and his business had gone bankrupt. 

What had Paine done?  Paine had devoted himself to a hopeless cause.  Paine was an excise officer, that is, a taxman.  His fellows had asked him to document their case for higher wages.   Not only did Paine document their case, he spent two years away from his job and his business promoting their cause.   But this venture too failed.

In America, the Lord blessed Thomas Paine with a second chance.  Paine discovered his calling.  In Philadelphia, then America’s greatest city, Paine became a writer, a very controversial writer.  Early in this new career, Paine took up the most troubling issues of the day.  For example, Paine wrote about what would eventually become the object of great conflict.  Paine wrote about slavery.  Here is an excerpt from his article in the Pennsylvania Journal and the Weekly Advertiser (published March 8, 1775). 

The Managers the Trade themselves, and others testify, that many of these African nations inhabit fertile countries, are industrious farmers, enjoy plenty, and lived quietly, averse to war, before the Europeans debauched them with liquors, and bribing them against one another; and that these inoffensive people are brought into slavery, by stealing them, tempting Kings to sell subjects, which they can have no right to do, and hiring one tribe to war against another, in order to catch prisoners. By such wicked and inhuman ways the English are said to enslave towards one hundred thousand yearly; of which thirty thousand are supposed to die by barbarous treatment in the first year; besides all that are slain in the
unnatural ways excited to take them. So much innocent blood have the managers and supporters of this inhuman trade to answer for to the common Lord of all!

Many of these were not prisoners of war, and redeemed from savage conquerors, as some plead; and they who were such prisoners, the English, who promote the war for that very end, are the guilty authors of their being so; and if they were redeemed, as is alleged, they would owe nothing to the redeemer but what he paid for them.

They show as little reason as conscience who put the matter by with saying – “Men, in some cases, are lawfully made slaves, and why may not these?” So men, in some cases, are lawfully put to death, deprived of their goods, without their consent; may any man, therefore, be treated so, without any conviction of desert? Nor is this plea mended by adding- “They are set forth to us as slaves, and we buy them without farther inquiry, let the sellers see to it.” Such man may as well join with a known band of robbers, buy their ill-got goods, and help on the trade; ignorance is no more pleadable in one case than the other; the sellers plainly own how they obtain them. But none can lawfully buy without evidence that they are not concurring with Men-Stealers; and as the true owner has a right to reclaim his goods that were stolen, and sold; so the slave, who is proper owner of his freedom, has a right to reclaim it, however often sold.  (from here)

In an era when Kings ruled, Paine spoke his mind and preached the gospel of reason.  In his own way and just as devout Christians do, Paine convicted the consciouses of his fellow men.  He left them no out, and many hated him for that. 

Such hatred is why there is a price to be paid for an honest heart.  So long as his target was the faraway King of England, Paine received the plaudits of his fellow Americans.  It is pleasant to contemplate the sins of others, particularly those who have sinned against us.  To examine our own conduct and our own beliefs gives much less pleasure.  So it is that when his targets became the beliefs of his fellow Americans, even Christianity in his last great work, the Age of Reason, the people who had once lauded Paine spurned him. 

In time, Paine’s fame be infamy.  After the end of his life, Paine’s few remaining friends buried him quietly.  On June 8, 1809, six people attended Thomas Paine’s funeral.  Two of them were black and probably freedmen.

Note that much of the above material was extracted from Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations by Nelson, Craig.