Under that cloud, by Washington's side, was silently at work the force that lifted it Marching by day, listening to the consultations of Washington and his generals, Paine wrote by the camp fires; the winter storms, the Delaware's waves, were mingled with his ink; the half-naked soldiers in their troubled sleep dreaming of their distant homes, the skulking deserter creeping off in the dusk, the pallid face of the heavy-hearted commander, made the awful shadows beneath which was written that leaflet which went to the Philadelphia printer along with Washington's last foreboding letters to his relatives in Virginia. It was printed on December 19th,* and many copies reached the camp above Trenton Falls on the eve of that almost desperate attack on which Washington had resolved. On the 23d December he wrote to Colonel Joseph Reed:
* The pamphlet was dated December 23rd, but it had appeared
on the 19th in the Pennsylvania Journal, the pen none have
achieved such vast results as Paine's "Common Sense" and
his first Crisis, Before the battle of Trenton the half-
clad, dis-heartened soldiers of Washington were
called together in groups to listen to that thrilling
exhortation.
"Christmas-day, at night, one hour before day, is the time fixed upon for our attempt on Trenton. For Heaven's sake keep this to yourself, as the discovery of it may prove fatal to us; our numbers, sorry I am to say, being less than I had any conception of; but necessity, dire necessity will, nay must, justify any attempt."
America has known some utterances of the lips equivalent to decisive victories in the field,—as some of Patrick Henry's, and the address of President Lincoln at Gettysburg.
The opening words alone were a victory.
"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: what we obtain too cheap we esteem too lightly; 't is dearness only that gives everything its value. 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."
Not a chord of faith, or love, or hope was left untouched. The very faults of the composition, which the dilettanti have picked out, were effective to men who had seen Paine on the march, and knew these things were written in sleepless intervals of unwearied labors. He speaks of what Joan of Arc did in "the fourteenth century," and exclaims: "Would that heaven might inspire some Jersey maid to spirit up her countrymen, and save her fair fellow sufferers from ravage and ravishment!" Joan was born in 1410, but Paine had no cyclopaedia in his knapsack. The literary musket reaches its mark. The pamphlet was never surpassed for true eloquence—that is, for the power that carries its point. With skilful illustration of lofty principles by significant details, all summed with simplicity and sympathy, three of the most miserable weeks ever endured by men were raised into epical dignity. The wives, daughters, mothers, sisters, seemed stretching out appealing hands against the mythically monstrous Hessians. The great commander, previously pointed to as "a mind that can even flourish upon care," presently saw his dispirited soldiers beaming with hope, and bounding to the onset,—their watchword: These are the times that try men's souls! /Trenton was won, the Hessians captured, and a New Year broke for America on the morrow of that Christmas Day, 1776.*
* Paine's enemy, Cheetham, durst not, in the face of
Washington's expression of his "lively sense of the
importance of your [Paine's] works," challenge well known
facts, and must needs partly confess them: "The number was
read in the camp, to every corporal's guard, and in the army
and out of it had more than the intended effect. The
convention of New York, reduced by dispersion, occasioned by
alarm, to nine members, was rallied and reanimated.
Militiamen who, already tired of the war, were straggling
from the army, returned. Hope succeeded to despair,
cheerfulness to gloom, and firmness to irresolution. To the
confidence which it inspired may be attributed much of the
brilliant little affair which in the same month followed at
Trenton." Even Oldys is somewhat impressed by Paine's
courage: "The Congress fled. All were dismayed. Not so
our author."
Paine's Trenton musket had hardly cooled, or the pen of his first Crisis dried, before he began to write another. It appeared about four weeks after the battle and is addressed to Lord Howe. The Thetford mechanic has some pride in confronting this English lord who had offered the Americans mercy. "Your lordship, I find, has now commenced author, and published a Proclamation; I have published a Crisis." The rumors of his being a hireling scribe, or gaining wealth by his publications, made it necessary for Paine to speak of himself at the conclusion:
"What I write is pure nature, and my pen and my soul have ever gone together. My writings I have always given away, receiving only the expense of printing and paper, and sometimes not even that. I never counted either fame or interest, and my manner of life, to those who know it, will justify what I say. My study is to be useful, and if your lordship loves mankind as well as I do, you would, seeing you cannot conquer us, cast about and lend your hand towards accomplishing a peace. 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. I am never over-inquisitive into the secrets of the cabinet, but 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."