 | Washington and his generals, or, Legends of the Revolution |  |
X.—THE AUTHOR-SOLDIER.
Now let us follow this man in the brown coat, this Thomas Paine,
through the scenes of the Revolution.
In the full prime of early manhood, he joins the army of the Revolution;
he shares the crust and the cold, with Washington and his men—he is with
those brave soldiers on the toilsome march—with them by the camp-fire—
with them in the hour of battle!
And why is he with them?
Is the day dark—has the battle been bloody—do the American soldiers
despair? Hark! That printing press yonder, that printing press that
moves with the American host, in all its wanderings—is scattering pamphlets
through the ranks of the army!
Pamphlets written by the author-soldier, Thomas Paine, written sometimes
on the head of a drum—or by the midnight fire, or amid the corses
of the dead—Pamphlets that stamp great Hopes and greater Truths in Plain
words, upon the souls of the Continental Army!
Tell me, was not that a sublime sight, to see a man of Genius, who might
have shone as an Orator, a Poet, a Novelist, following with untiring devotion,
the footsteps of the Continental army?
Yes, in the dark days of '76, when the soldiers of Washington tracked
their footsteps on the soil of Trenton, in the snows of Princeton—there,
first among the heroes and patriots, there, unflinching in the hour of defeat,
writing his “Crisis,” by the light of the camp-fire, was the Author-Hero.
Thomas Paine!
Yes, look yonder—behold the Crisis read by every Corporal in the army
of Washington, read to the listening group of soldiers—look what joy, what
hope, what energy, gleams over those veteran faces, as words like these
break on their ears:
“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 his country;
but he that stands it NOW, deserves the love and thanks of man and
woman. Tyranny like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this
consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the
triumph!—”
Do not words like these stir up the blood?
Yet can you imagine their effect, when read to groups of starved and
bleeding soldiers, by the dim watch-fire, in the cold air of the winter dawn?
Such words as these stirred up the starved Continentals to the attack on
Trenton, and there, in the dawn of glorious morning, George Washington,
standing sword in hand, over the dead body of the Hessian Ralle, confessed
the magic influence of the Author-Hero, Thomas Paine!
—The lowest libeller that ever befouled a pen, a vulgar and infamous
fellow,—we need not name him—who has written a Lie of some 347
pages, and called it, “The Life of Thomas Paine,” this libeller, who spits
his venom upon the memory of Franklin and Jefferson—in fact, combines,
in his own person, more of the dirty in falsehood—the disgusting in obscenity—the
atrocious in perjury—than any penster that ever wrote for
British Gold, at the dictation of a British Court—this Biographer, I say,
who after the object of his spite was dead, sought out for something eneffably
disgusting, with which to befoul the dead man's memory, and finding
nothing so foul as his own base soul, poured out that soul, in all its native
filth, upon the dead man's bones—this creature, whom it were a libel upon
human nature to call—Man—Atheist, Blasphemer, libeller of the dead as
he was—even He confessed, that “the Pen of Tom Paine was as formidable
to the British, as the cannon of Washington!”
| Washington and his generals, or, Legends of the Revolution | |