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Thomas Paine Calls President George Washington a Hypocrite and All Federalists Traitors to the Principles of the Revolution
Thomas Paine Calls President George Washington a Hypocrite and All Federalists Traitors to the Principles of the Revolution
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Paine Thomas

Thomas Paine Calls President George Washington a Hypocrite and All Federalists Traitors to the Principles of the Revolution

 

“It is time, Sir, to speak the undisguised language of historical truth.”

 

In this bitter open letter to President Washington, Paine denounces the Federalists and Washington as their leader. He attacks Washington personally as an incompetent general and an aristocratic president who had betrayed Paine.

 

THOMAS PAINE, A Letter to George Washington, President of the United States of America, from Thomas Paine. London: Daniel Isaac Eaton, 1797. Letter dated “Paris, August, 1796.” 56 pp., 5.25" x 8.5".  Front cover missing; back cover worn on edges and surface; interior intact and clear with some foxing.

 

Excerpts

“As censure is but awkwardly softened by apology, I shall offer to you no apology for this letter. The eventful crisis to which your double politics have conducted the affairs of your country, requires an investigation uncramped by ceremony. There was a time when the fame of America, moral and political, stood fair and high in the world. The lustre of her revolution extended itself to every individual; and to be a citizen of America gave a title to respect in Europe. Neither meanness nor ingratitude had been mingled in the composition of her character. Her resistance to the attempted tyranny of England left her unsuspected of the one, and her open acknowledgment of the aid she received from France precluded all suspicion of the other. The politics of Washington had not then appeared.” (p1)

 

“Monopolies of every kind marked your administration almost in the moment of its commencement. The lands obtained by the revolution were lavished upon partizans; the interest of the disbanded soldier was sold to the speculator; injustice was acted under the pretense of faith; and the chief of the army became the patron of the fraud. From such a beginning what else could be expected than what has happened? A mean and servile submission to the insults of one nation; treachery and ingratitude to another.” (p3-4)

 

“If I have any resentment, you must acknowledge that I have not been hasty in declaring it, neither would it now be declared (for what are private resentments to the public) if the cause of it did not unite itself as well with your public as with your private character, and with the motives of your political conduct.” (p6)

 

“The part I acted in the American Revolution is well known; I shall not here repeat it. I know also that had it not been for the aid received from France, in men, money and ships, that your cold and unmilitary conduct (as I shall show in the course of this letter) would in all probability have lost America; at least she would not have been the independent nation she now is. You slept away your time in the field, till the finances of the country were completely exhausted, and you have but little share in the glory of the final event. It is time, Sir, to speak the undisguised language of historical truth.” (p6)

 

“John Adams is one of those men who never contemplated the origin of government, or comprehended anything of first principles. If he had, he might have seen that the right to set up and establish hereditary government never did, and never can, exist in any generation at any time whatever; that it is of the nature of treason; because it is an attempt to take away the rights of all the minors living at that time, and of all succeeding generations. It is of a degree beyond common treason. It is a sin against nature. The equal right of every generation is a right fixed in the nature of things. It belongs to the son when of age, as it belonged to the father before him. John Adams would himself deny the right that any former deceased generation could have to decree authoritatively a succession of governors over him, or over his children; and yet he assumes the pretended right, treasonable as it is, of acting it himself. His ignorance is his best excuse.” (p7)

 

“Could I have known to what degree of corruption and perfidy the administrative part of the Government of America had descended, I could have been at no loss to have understood the reservedness of Mr. Washington toward me, during my imprisonment in the Luxembourg. There are cases in which silence is a loud language.” (p8)

 

“Immediately upon my liberation, Mr. Monroe invited me to his house, where I remained more than a year and a half; and I speak of his aid and friendship, as an open-hearted man will always do in such a case, with respect and gratitude.” (p17)

 

“The injury which Mr. Washington's Administration has done to the character as well as to the commerce of America is too great to be repaired by him. Foreign nations will be shy of making treaties with a government that has given the faithless example of perverting the liberality of a former treaty to the injury of the party with whom it was made. In what a fraudulent light must Mr. Washington's character appear in the world, when his declarations and his conduct are compared together!” (p34)

 

“When the British treaty, and the ratification of it by Mr. Washington, was known in France, all further declarations from him of his good disposition as an ally and friend passed for so many ciphers; but still it appeared necessary to him to keep up the farce of declarations.” (p36)

 

“I have had, and still have, as much pride in the American revolution as any man, or as Mr. Washington has a right to have; but that pride has never made me forgetful whence the great aid came that compleated the business. Foreign aid (that of France) was calculated upon at the commencement of the Revolution. It is one of the subjects treated of in the pamphlet Common Sense, but as a matter that could not be hoped for, unless independence was declared. The aid, however, was greater than could have been expected.” (p42)

 

“If there is sense enough left in the heart to call a blush into the cheek, the Washington Administration must be ashamed to appear. And as to you, sir, treacherous in private friendship (for so you have been to me, and that in the day of danger) and a hypocrite in public life, the world will be puzzled to decide, whether you are an APOSTATE, or an IMPOSTER? Whether you have abandoned good principles, or whether you ever had any?” (p44)

 

Historical Background

On December 28, 1793, French Jacobin leaders arrested Thomas Paine and charged him with support of the Girondist opposition to the execution of King Louis XVI. From December 1793 to November 1794, Paine remained in a Luxembourg prison, daily fearing he would be executed. The French officials regarded him as an Englishman, not an American, and the Washington administration in the United States refused to regard him as a citizen and to authorize his release. Meanwhile, U.S. Minister to France Gouverneur Morris conspired to keep Paine in prison while telling the American government that he had done everything to secure Paine’s release. Paine grew more and more bitter toward President Washington. Morris’s successor James Monroe secured Paine’s release and urged Paine not to write letters attacking Washington. Monroe convinced Paine to recall one dated February 22, 1795, but on July 30, 1796, Paine sent this letter, harshly critical of Washington, to America.

 

The publication of the letter in newspapers and in pamphlets like this one raised a political firestorm in America. Federalists saw in it an example of the French revolutionaries’ attempt to overthrow the American government by using Paine to attack the president. They also implicated the Jeffersonians, because Paine wrote the letter at the home of James Monroe, a leading Jeffersonian. The ferocity of the Federalist attack roused sympathy for Paine, whom many considered justified in criticizing Washington’s ingratitude for Paine’s services.

 

 

Thomas Paine (1737-1809) was an English-born intellectual, inventor, and radical pamphleteer who influenced both the American and French Revolutions. He lived and worked in England until 1774, when he migrated to Philadelphia, joining the radical artisan community there. His powerful pamphlet, Common Sense (1776), was the best-selling original work published in eighteenth-century America and had a pronounced impact on the Revolution by making the case for complete independence from Great Britain. He also published a pamphlet series, The American Crisis (thirteen in 1776-1777; three more to 1783), which helped inspire American revolutionaries. General Washington even ordered the first number to be read aloud to his men. Paine later moved to France, published the liberal Enlightenment treatise Rights of Man (1791), and won election to the French National Assembly in 1792. A Girondin, he was arrested in 1793 and narrowly escaped the guillotine during the Reign of Terror. While in prison, he continued to work on The Age of Reason (1794-1807). Paine believed that the American ambassador to France, Federalist Gouverneur Morris, somehow engineered his arrest. Diplomat James Monroe arranged for Paine’s release in November 1794, and Paine turned against George Washington and wrote a scathing public letter to Washington in 1796. Paine remained in France until 1802, when, at President Jefferson’s invitation, he returned to New York.

 

 

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

 

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