Dec. 9: Br'er Rabbit and Joel Chandler Harris

He was one of America’s earliest folklore authors, using the dialect and stories from the land he grew up on. His stories – while not widely circulated today – have characters who are still know and loved by Americans of all ages.

Joel Chandler Harris was born on December 9, 1848, at Eatonton – a small town that is the county seat of Putnam County, and is located near the middle of Georgia. His father was an itinerant Irish laborer who disappeared just before Harris was born. His mother – Mary Harris – was unwed, and could barely make a living as a seamstress to support herself and her son.

While his early education was spotty, Harris was an avid reader of American, English, and world literary works. Reportedly his favorite author and book while growing up was Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield.

Harris had to end his formal education at the age of thirteen so he could go to work in order to help the family finances. He was hired in March 1862 as an apprentice and typesetter, spending four years working for a weekly newspaper, The Countryman. The Countryman was published by Joseph Addison Turner at Turner’s Turnwold Plantation during the Civil War, and would issue its last publication in May 1866. The plantation was about nine miles north of Eatonton.

Harris would live on the Turnwold Plantation during this time, and several of the slaves who worked there would eventually became models for Uncle Remus, Aunt Tempy, and other characters of his Uncle Remus series of stories that he would start to write twenty years after he left the plantation. This work for Turner during his formative years influenced Harris by directing him to a long and successful career in the newspaper world.

Harris would work for a variety of newspapers – including the Macon Telegraph, the New Orleans Crescent Monthly, the Monroe Advertiser, and the Savannah Morning News – where he was an assistant editor when he married Esther LaRose in 1873. The Harris’s would have nine children, although three would die due to childhood illnesses.

In 1876 he took a position as assistant editor with the Atlanta Constitution, which would be his employer for the next quarter century. Harris had moved to Atlanta because of an epidemic of yellow fever in Savannah and was able to land the job with the Constitution. It was his time with the Atlanta Constitution that Harris introduced his Uncle Remus stories. In 1881 he would buy a Queen Anne Victorian style home in Atlanta – the Wren’s Nest – where he would live until his death in 1908. His great-great-great grandson works in the house today as it’s executive director.

The idea for the Uncle Remus stories have their roots in Harris’ formative years while he was growing up in the Antebellum South. Slavery was the norm in the South during this period of American history, and even after the Civil War the role of superiority for Southern whites and subservience for Southern African-Americans was the norm rather than the exception in the rural regions of the South.

Harris spent quite a bit of his time with the African-American slaves living and working the land of Turnwold Plantation and it is thought that Uncle Remus is patterned after one slave – Uncle Bob Capers – who told fantastic stories to entertain and delight his audience after a hard days work in the fields. Harris would preserve the stories – most of whom had their roots in Africa – as well as the dialect, thus becoming one of the first folklore authors in American history. The Uncle Remus stories were full of the wit and wisdom of the era that Harris had heard many years before. Harris stated that he began writing the stories of Uncle Remus to “preserve in permanent shape those curious mementoes of a period that will no doubt be sadly misrepresented by historians of the future." Some examples of wisdom from the Uncle Remus stories would include:

“Lazy fokes’s stummucks don’t git tired.”
From Plantation Proverbs
“Jay-bird don’t rob his own nes’.”
From Plantation Proverbs
“Licker talks mighty loud w’en it gits loose from de jug.”
From Plantation Proverbs
“Hungry rooster don’t cackle w’en he fine a wum.”
From Plantation Proverbs.
“Youk’n hide de fier, but w’at you gwine do wid de smoke?”
From Plantation Proverbs

In the books, Uncle Remus is a kindly old slave who is telling the stories to the children sitting around him. The story characters are animals, with the main character being Br’er (Brother) Rabbit, a likeable – though troublesome – trickster. Other major characters include Br'er Fox and Br'er Bear. The first Uncle Remus story, The Story of Mr. Rabbit and Mrs Fox as Told by Uncle Remus, was published in the Atlanta Constitution on July 20, 1879. Eventually the Uncle Remus stories would be compiled into three Uncle Remus books - Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings (1880); Nights with Uncle Remus (1883); and Told by Uncle Remus: New Stories of the Old Plantation (1905). The books achieved immense popularity in the United States and abroad.

In 1946 Disney created an animated production called Song of the South based on Uncle Remus. Disney was quoted as saying "The first books I ever read were the Uncle Remus stories. Ever since then, these stories have been my special favorites. I've just been waiting until I could develop the proper medium to bring them to the screen."

Within a decade of its release the civil rights movement of the 1950s – 1960s matured, and the portrayal of the heavy dialect used in the movie that was so evident in the South during the 19th century was viewed as a racist stance that was portraying subservience of the African Americans of the 20th century.

While Harris is best known for his Uncle Remus stories, he did publish other works. He published six children’s books, short stories, and novels – most of which were based on plantation life or life in antebellum Georgia.

Harris died of acute nephritis and cirrhosis of the liver on July 3, 1908, in the Westview Cemetery, Atlanta, Georgia.

WEB RESOURCES:

Documenting the American South
Find A Grave
National Park Service
New Georgia Encyclopedia
The Wren’s Nest
University of North Carolina
University of Virginia
Wikipedia

PHOTO SOURCES:

Portrait of Joel Chandler Harris, Wikipedia
Portrait of Joel Chandler Harris in 1873, Wikipedia
The Wren’s Nest, Inside Access
Uncle Remus from cover of 1881 Harris book, Wikipedia
Joel Chandler Harris standing, Find A Grave
Gravesite of Joel Chandler Harris, Find A Grave
-

July 15: Clement Moore’s “Trifle” That Became A Masterpiece

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse…”

With these words an obscure scholar from penned a work for his children that became a classic piece of literature read to children generation after generation.

Clement Clarke Moore was born on July 15, 1779, the only son of Benjamin and Charity Clarke Moore. The Moore family was a family of wealth and education. His father was a professor, then president, of Columbia College as well as an Episcopal bishop in New York City and the rector of Trinity Church.

Moore was home schooled during his early years, with his father tutoring him and both of his parents encouraging his natural tendency toward languages and music. Later he would attend Columbia College, and would graduate first in his class in 1798. At Columbia he would earn a BA and in 1801 a M.A.

He was thirty-four when he married nineteen-year-old Catharine Elizabeth Taylor in 1813, settling at Chelsea, in a country estate in Manhattan. They would have 9 children. Catharine would pass away in 1830 and leaving Moore with seven children between the ages of three and fifteen. Moore would not remarry, and would be solely responsible for his children’s upbringing and education.

The Moore family owned extensive land in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. Moore’s gift of sixty acres of land in 1819 made possible the establishment of the General Theological Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal Church in 1819. In 1821 Moore was made a professor at the Seminary, a position he would hold until 1850. While at the Seminary he taught Oriental languages, biblical learning, and the interpretation of scripture. Ten years before his helping to establish the Seminary, he would compile a two-volume Hebrew dictionary in 1809 to assist in the translation and understanding of the Old Testament titled “A Compendious Lexicon of the Hebrew Language”. Volume I contained "an explanation of every word which occurs in the Psalms"; while volume 2 was "a lexicon and grammar of the whole language." The Preface offers a mode of study which will enable "any person acquainted with the general principles of language, without the aid of a teacher, to read and understand the Holy Scriptures in the original Hebrew."

Moore is also considered as the savior of Greenwich Village in New York. When the state government was planning to extend a grid of streets into the Village, Moore anonymously authored a sixty-page pamphlet that contained such persuasive arguments against the plan that the street network never entered the Village, preserving its unique culture and atmosphere.

In 1822 Moore penned a story as a Christmas gift for his children. “A Visit From Saint Nicholas”, which later became recognized and popularly known from its first line “Twas The Night Before Christmas”, was intended for his family, and might never had been shared with the world if not for one of Moore’s relatives, a Miss Butler, who copied the poem and who would take the copy to the Troy Sentinel. There it would be published anonymously in the Sentinel on December 23, 1823, with Moore accepting credit of authorship in 1837. He did not want the poem published because he felt, as an academician, that the poem was a mere trifle, and it was beneath his professional dignity to have it published. Yet, the poem when published anonymously a year later, it was an overnight sensation. The Troy Sentinel would hint that Moore was the author in 1829. Moore would reluctantly include his poem in a book of poetry that he wrote in 1844.

An anecdote on the origin of the poem goes as follows:

“On Christmas Eve 1822, Reverend Clement Moore’s wife was roasting turkeys for distribution to the poor of the local parish, a yearly tradition discovered that she was short one turkey, she asked Moore to venture into the snowy streets to obtain another. He called for his sleigh and coachman, and drove “downtown” to Jefferson Market, which is now the Bowery section of New York City, to buy the needed turkey. Moore composed the poem while riding in his sleigh; his ears obviously full of the jingle of sleigh bells. He returned with the turkey and the new Christmas poem. After dinner that evening, Moore read the new verses to his family, to the evident delight of his children.”

As often happens, claims arose that Moore was not the author of the famous poem. In 2000 – nearly 180 years after the fact, Vassar professor Don Foster published a book claiming that “The Night Before Christmas” was actually written by a different New Yorker, Major Henry Livingston Jr. For details you can read the article here and arrive at your own conclusion. Despite the rise of other claimants, scholars in general still attribute the poem to Moore.

Moore would pass away at his summer residence in Newport, Rhode Island, on July 10, 1863 – just five days before his eighty-fourth birthday. He was buried at the Trinity Church Cemetery, Manhattan. Oddly enough, as much as he regarded his poem as a trifle, it is his poem that he is remembered – not for his academic works.

LOCAL LIBRARY RESOURCES:

There are no Clement Moore biographies at our local library.

WEB RESOURCES:

Jewish Virtual Library
New York Institute for Special Education
The Night Before Christmas
Urban Legends
Virtualogy
Wikipedia

PHOTO SOURCES:

01. Handwritten copy of Twas the Night
02. Portrait of a young Moore
03. Portrait, Wikipedia

04. Cover by Mary Clement Ogden, Moore’s daughter
05. Gravestone, Find-a-Grave by Erik Lander

-

March 20: “King of the Dime Novelists”

Do you know who this is?
-He survived a hanging.
-He challenged seven sailors to a duel that was held on the same day.
- He once wrote a 610-page book in 62 hours.

He led a life as adventurous as the people that he wrote about in his stories. His life was one of contradictions – he had work published in literary journals and wrote lyric poetry, yet mad his money in sensational writing; he was a heavy drinker who gave temperance lectures; he was a moral reformer who exposed gamblers, yet would blackmail men he met while gambling to keep their names out of the newspaper.

He was born on March 20, 1823, in Stamford, New York, as Edward Zane Carroll Judson. He would become widely known under a pen name adopted for his stories: Ned Buntline. Levi Carroll Judson, Ned’s father, had been a writer on Revolutionary War themes and agricultural experiments. When the elder Judson moved to Philadelphia to study law, he required his young son to do the same. Ned would run away to sea as a cabin boy.

Ned was appointed a midshipman in the U.S. Navy by the time he was fifteen – and would fight a total of seven duels with other midshipmen who refused to eat meals with him because he had risen through the ranks. He had been appointed midshipman by President Martin Van Buren for ‘meritorious conduct’ in rescuing fellow seamen after a ferry hit the boat Ned and seventeen men were in. The men – Ned included – were being punished for arguing with an officer. They had been ordered to row across the East River to Staten Island to pick up some supplies. It was dark by the time they finished, and on the way back to their base they were hit by the ferry. The sailors were thrown from their boat, and it was Ned who kept his head, bringing the sailors to their capsized boat.

He would fight in the Second Seminole War as a midshipman serving on the Otsego, a revenue cutter assigned to the ‘mosquito fleet’ commanded by Lieutenant Commander J. T. McLaughlin. On board the Otsego, Ned would patrol the coast and inland waterways around Key Biscayne, Florida. It was during his tour in the Navy that Ned wrote his first story, titled The Captain’s Pig. He used a pen name to protect himself – a very wise decision as the story was not a complementary one for the Captain, who offered a $100 reward for the name of whoever had written the story. His pen name: Ned Buntline. He used the naval term buntline, which is the nautical term for the rope at the bottom of a square sail to keep it taut when furled.

He left the Navy in 1842 and went to the Yellowstone River region of the West as a fur trapper, working for two years for the Northwest Fur Company. He then took his experiences from the Navy and the mountains of the West to Cincinnati where, in 1844, and advertisement for Ned Buntline’s Magazine appeared in the Cincinnati Daily Enquirer. The magazine was a 32-page monthly magazine that contained serious article on the West, and would be short-lived, lasting for about six months.

Ned then started The Western Literary Journal - where he began including articles that he authored that were a combination of fact and fantasy; historical fiction touched with romance, exaggeration, and adventure. He would move to Nashville, rename the magazine the Southwestern Literary Journal, and close the magazine down a few months later. He again moved, this time back to Cincinnati, where he started a newspaper called Ned Buntline’s Own, which also would soon fail.

In 1846, Ned would have another life-challenging adventure. After killing a man in a duel, a mob broke Ned out of jail and hanged him. Fortunately for Ned, the rope broke, and he fell to the ground – to be taken back to jail by the Sheriff. He was later acquitted in a trial.

He became involved as a writer for the Eastern newspapers in the 1850s, riding a crest of social reform movements. He wrote in support of reform, and also worked on perfecting his style of adventure stories. During this time he also became involved in the American Nativist Movement, blaming immigrants for the problems of the country, and was a supporter of the Know Nothing Party.

In 1848 he was living in New York, and returned to sensationalist journalism and resurrected Ned Buntline’s Own – which lasted 36-weeks and attacked gambling, prostitution, drinking – and the other New York newspapers. The following year he was accused of starting the Astor Place Riot, which was a nativist reaction to William Charles Macready, a British actor who had displaced American actor Edwin Forrest as Macbeth. The riot resulted in 25 dead and over a hundred injured. Ned was found guilty of instigating a riot and sentenced to a year in prison.

Ned would try several other publications – all of which failed. However, he was working at the same time on perfecting the style of writing that created the genre called Dime Novels, which were low-price action thrillers. His first successful story was a serialized novel that appeared in the New York Mercury titled Stella Delorme – The Comanche’s Dream.

His articles kept appearing in the Mercury until he joined the First New York Mounted Rifles in 1862, where he soon became a sergeant and was made the regimental scout. He was in and out of trouble while in the military, but received an honorable discharge in 1864. He had a picture taken of him in a colonel’s uniform, and began spreading the word that he had served as a Colonel – chief of scouts.

While in the military, Ned had observed the wide-spread use of dime novels by the troops and public. He decided that to become successful, he had to write ‘trash’.

“I found that to make a living I must write trash for the masses, for he who endeavors to write for the critical few, and do his genius justice, will go hungry if he has no other means of support.”

In 1869, Ned went west to Omaha to find out more about the Indian wars that were being fought on the western frontier, with the intend of writing adventure thrillers about the Indian wars. But – he needed a white-American hero. In Omaha Ned met frontier scout William F. Cody, gave him the name “Buffalo Bill”, and began writing – using Cody’s frontier experiences combined with his own imagination to create a potent storyline for story after story – ultimately producing Buffalo Bill: King of the Border Men. More stories would follow, eventually making Ned the premier dime novelist of the era – and a wealthy man. He would also write a play starting Buffalo Bill – and Ned Buntline.

He continued writing dime novels, creating characters and situations – most of which were set in the West. His stories created a vision of larger than life characters taming a larger than life land that was later used in movies, which – in turn – continued and enlarged the mythology of the western heroes.

He settled into his home in Stamford, New York, where he died of congestive heart failure on July 16, 1886, at the age of 63. Although he was once the wealthiest author in America, his wife had to sell his beloved home "The Eagle's Nest" to pay the bills.

LOCAL LIBRARY RESOURCES:
There are no books on Ned Buntline in our local libraries.

WEB RESOURCES:

Catskill Mountain Foundation
Dime Novels
Ned Buntline Biography
Wikipedia

PHOTO RESOURCES:

01. Portrait of Ned Buntline: Wikipedia

02. Broadside advertising Ned Buntline's Own: Library of Congress

03. Buckskin Sam Cover: the Forum

04. Dashing Charlie Cover: The Forum

February 12: Clergyman, Author, and Witch Hunter

Do you know who this is?
-He had a speech impediment (stuttering)
-He survived three wives and 13 of his 15 children
-He was a prolific writer, authoring over 400 books and pamphlets

He was the son and grandson of a clergyman and was born in Boston, Massachusetts on February 12, 1663. He himself would become noted not only as a clergyman recognized in is own right, but also a prolific author and – perhaps most notably – as one of the judges in the Salem Witch Trials.

Cotton Mather was the eldest child of Increase and Maria Mather. He was given his first name after the family name of his mother, who was the daughter of John Cotton who, in turn, was one of the most recognized American religious theologians of the day. Cotton knew as a child that he was expected to follow in his father’s footsteps. His father was the minister of the Second Church in Boston, an respected and loyal agent of England in the colonies, as well as the non-resident President of Harvard College. This expectation created a very serious child, dedicated to his studies, and whose fear of failing his parents showed up in a speech impediment: a stutter when he spoke. It would take years of practice before Cotton overcame his speech problem.

Cotton attended the Boston Latin School under its most famous 17th century headmaster, Ezekiel Cheever. He would enter Harvard College at the age of twelve, and would graduate from Harvard in 1678 at the age of 15. His father would hand him his first degree. At the age of nineteen Cotton would receive his master’s degree, and in 1690 was made a fellow of Harvard College and was involved in the affairs of the college throughout his life. He would begin studying theology, but because of his stuttering he was forced to give it up. He began studying medicine instead. Later he would conquer his stuttering, and would finish his preparation for the ministry. In 1681 he was elected the assistant pastor of his father’s church. In 1688, at the age of twenty-five, he was left in charge of the largest congregation in New England when his father went to England as an agent for the colony. Cotton would become the full minister of the Second (or North) Church of Boston upon the death of his father in 1723.

Cotton would marry several times during his life, each marriage ending in sadness. In 1686 he married Abigail Philips, having nine children by her before her death in 1702. A year later he married a widow, Mrs. Elizabeth Hubbard, by whom he had six additional children before her death in 1713. He married a third time in 1715 to another widow, Mrs. Lydia George. She would go insane. Of his fifteen children, only six lived to adulthood, and only two outlived him.

Perhaps Cotton is best known for his involvement in the Salem witchcraft trials.

During the 17th Century, the idea that New England occupied what was known as the Devil’s land established a deep-set fear and concern among the English Puritan settlers that the Devil would fight back against the invaders. They also feared a divine retribution from God over an apparently increasing lack of faith and piety among New Englanders.

This was the climate that existed in New England when the Goodwin children incurred a strange illness. Cotton saw this as an opportunity to explore the spiritual world and treated the children with fasting and prayer, writing a detailed account of the illness in a booklet titled Memorable Providences, Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions. In 1692 the same strange illness the Goodwin children had began appearing in others, and the cry of witchcraft surfaced. Massachusetts governor Sir William Phips established a court to try the suspected witches that had recently been arrested in Salem, Massachusetts. Cotton would not be a judge at the trials, although his influence, sermons, investigations, and writings had – in effect – caused the trials to be held, and he would attend several of the trials. However, his voice on the existence of witchcraft was heard through his sermons and his writings. Still, although he had urged strong punishment of the devil's work, he suggested much milder punishment than death for those found to be guilty of witchcraft (the use of magic). His approach was both religious and scientific. He separated himself from the trials as such and in fact warned the judges against "spectral [ghostlike] evidences". However, the judges did not heed his advice. In his Magnalia Christi Americana (1702) Mather declared his disapproval of the methods used in the trials, even though he did not join the public protest while the trials were being held. Later criticism of the trials would fall in part on Cotton because of his beliefs and stands on the spiritual world and his early involvement with the unusual occurrences in Salem.

Despite a loss in popularity after the trials, Cotton would continue to contribute positively to the New England colonies. He received a doctorate in divinity from the University of Glasgow in 1710, and was honored in 1713 by being elected to the Royal Society of London. He advocated the use of vaccinations against smallpox, and was threatened for doing so – with a bomb being thrown through the window of his house. He regularly wrote letters to various men of learning around the world, was active in church and community, and continued to pastor the North Church. He continued to write and publish, and many later American writers, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Thoreau, Harriet Beecher Stowe, James Russell Lowell, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow all acknowledged their debt to him. Even American icon Benjamin Franklin noted the influence of some of Cotton’s writings on his life and his beliefs.
Cotton Mather died on February 13, 1728, in Boston and was interred in Copps Hill Burying Ground, Boston.

LOCAL LIBRARY RESOURCES:
No biographries are available locally

WEB RESOURCES:
1911 Encyclopedia
Cotton Mather Homepage
NNDB
Notable Biographies
Wikipedia

PHOTO RESOURCES:
Library of Congress

Jan. 29th: Firebrand of the Revolution

Do you know who this is?
-Published the best selling work of the 18th century America.
-Invented a smokeless candle.
-Was imprisoned in Luxembourg Prison during the Reign of Terror

Originally he was a Pain, changing his name to Paine when he immigrated to America in 1774.

Thomas Paine was born on January 29, 1737, in the small market town of Thetford, Norfolk, England. His parents were Joseph and Frances Pain. Joseph earned his living as a master corset maker who took on his son as an apprentice when Thomas was thirteen. After a brief stint as a privateer, Thomas would return to the corset making industry, becoming a master corset maker, would marry, and then lose his wife during childbirth.

Thomas held several different occupations following the collapse of his business in 1761: Excise officer; stay maker, servant, applied to become an ordained minister of the Anglican Church; schoolteacher; and manager of a tobacco shop. In 1771, at the age of thirty-four, he married Elizabeth Ollive, the daughter of his landlord.

Thomas became interested in politics when he joined The Society of Twelve, which was a local intellectual group that met regularly to discuss politics. This would be a springboard for Thomas, making him aware of a diverse group of thoughts on politics and reasoning.

In 1772 Thomas would join the Excise Officers in petitioning Parliament for improvements in wages and working conditions. He penned his first political work in support of this effort, a twenty one page article titled: The Case of the Officers of Excise. In 1774 he was fired from his post as Excise Officer; his tobacco store failed; he sold his possessions to pay his debts; he separated from his wife; he moved to London; and – most significantly for Americans – he met Benjamin Franklin, who encouraged him to emigrate to the colonies. Thomas arrived in Philadelphia on November 30, 1774, sick with fever incurred on the voyage.

Thomas would make his home in Philadelphia and would take up journalism, contributing articles to the Pennsylvania Magazine. As tensions grew – then armed conflict began – between the colonials and the British troops stationed in America, Thomas sided with the cause of American independence. He opposed any reconciliation with the British, and attacked the British monarch (George III). Thomas began advocating an immediate declaration of independence and the establishment of a republican constitution, as well as an abolition of slavery.

In January 1776, a pro-independence pamphlet was anonymously published by Thomas. Common Sense would sell 100,000 copies in three months in colonies where there were only 2 million free citizens. It became the best selling work in America of the 18th century. The popularity of this work was in the fact it took complex ideas and presented them in the language of the common man, so everyone could understand them. Thomas’ original title was Plain Truth, but Benjamin Rush encouraged a change to Common Sense. No matter what the title, the pamphlet truly began people throughout all of the colonies thinking and talking about British abuses. While many were shocked at it’s approach – it even labeled King George III as “the Royal Brute of Great Britain”, they did read, discuss, and begin to see a need for full independence.

Thomas would put a musket where his ideals were, serving with General Nathaniael Greene at Fort Lee, NJ; then went back to writing, releasing the first of sixteen Crisis papers in December 1776. The first Crisis paper contains the immortal words:

“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 thanks of man and woman”.

In 1777 Thomas continued writing the Crisis installments, and was appointed by the Continental Congress as its Secretary to Committee on Foreign Affairs. He also was appointed to help commissioners for an Indian treaty. He also wrote in Crisis IV:

“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the
fatigues of supporting it. And near the close, it states, We fight not to
enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest
men to live in.”

Thomas continued to write and to support the war effort as the Revolutionary War ground its way steadily south. In appreciation for his efforts, New York presented Thomas wit a farm at New Rochelle in 1784 for his services in the cause of independence. As the war drew to a close, Thomas began to write on domestic issues, including the need for a Bank of North America and called for Virginia to cede it’s claim to the western lands to the new government. He also worked on two inventions: a single arch iron bridge and a smokeless candle.

No longer at the center of affairs in American politics, Thomas went to Europe in 1787 to try to raise funding for his prototype bridge, and would soon be immersed in the French Revolution because of his work as a revolutionary propagandist. While in England he wrote the Rights of Man, Parts I and II, urging political rights for all men and proposing social legislation to deal with the poor. As a result he was forced to leave Britain and fled to France in 1792, condemned in his absence, and declared an outlaw. He was a made a French citizen and elected to the National Convention, where he alienated many extremists by opposing the execution of Louis IV. Eventually he was imprisoned for a year during the Reign of Terror, but released through the intervention of the US minister to France – James Monroe.

Eventually Thomas would wear out his welcome in Paris. He had become anti-Christian, denying the Bible, and making bitter attacks on the Church. He returned to the United States in October 1802 where he was well-received by President Thomas Jefferson.

But, his era of influence was over. His last years were marked by poverty, poor health, and alcoholism. He died in New York on June 8, 1809.

Thomas Paine, failed businessman and husband, poor in finances. But, his marvelous ability with a pen arrived on the shores of America at the right time to provide the grounds for discussing, then implementing, the risky step of independence.

LOCAL LIBRARY RESOURCES:
Michael Burgan; Thomas Paine: Great Writer of the Revolution
Craig Nelson; Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations
Harvey J. Kaye; Thomas Paine and the Promise of America Harvey J. Kaye; Thomas Paine: Firebrand of the Revolution (juvenile)

WEB RESOURCES:
History Guide Lecture
US History Biography
Wikipedia