When Paine left Bordentown, on March 1st 1803, driving past placards of the devil flying away with him, and hooted by a pious mob at Trenton, it was with hope of a happy reunion with old friends in more enlightened New York. Col. Few, formerly senator from Georgia, his friend of many years, married Paine's correspondent, Kitty Nicholson, to whom was written the beautiful letter from London (L, p. 247). Col. Few had become a leading man in New York, and his home, and that of the Nicholsons, were of highest social distinction. Paine's arrival at Lovett's Hotel was well known, but not one of those former friends came near him. "They were actively as well as passively religious," says Henry Adams, "and their relations with Paine after his return to America in 1802 were those of compassion only, for his intemperate and offensive habits, and intimacy was impossible."* But Mr. Adams will vainly search his materials for any intimation at that time of the intemperate or offensive habits.
* "Life of Albert Gallatin." Gallatin continued to risk
Paine. 360
The "compassion" is due to those devotees of an idol requiring sacrifice of friendship, loyalty, and intelligence. What a mistake they made! The old author was as a grand organ from which a cunning hand might bring music to be remembered through the generations. In that brain were stored memories of the great Americans, Frenchmen, Englishmen who acted in the revolutionary dramas, and of whom he loved to talk. What would a diary of interviews with Paine, written by his friend Kitty Few, be now worth? To intolerance, the least pardonable form of ignorance, must be credited the failure of those former friends, who supposed themselves educated, to make more of Thomas Paine than a scarred monument of an Age of Unreason.
But the ostracism of Paine by the society which, as Henry Adams states, had once courted him "as the greatest literary genius of his day," was not due merely to his religious views, which were those of various statesmen who had incurred no such odium. There was at work a lingering dislike and distrust of the common people. Deism had been rather aristocratic. From the scholastic study, where heresies once written only in Latin were daintily wrapped up in metaphysics, from drawing-rooms where cynical smiles went round at Methodism, and other forms of "Christianity in earnest," Paine carried heresy to the people. And he brought it as a religion,—as fire from the fervid heaven that orthodoxy had monopolized. The popularity of his writing, the revivalistic earnestness of his protest against dogmas common to all sects, were revolutionary; and while the vulgar bigots were binding him on their rock of ages, and tearing his vitals, most of the educated, the social leaders, were too prudent to manifest any sympathy they may have felt.**
* When Paine first reached New York, 1803, he was (March
5th) entertained at supper by John Crauford. For being
present Eliakira Ford, a Baptist elder, was furiously
denounced, as were others of the company.
** An exception was the leading Presbyterian, John Mason,
who lived to denounce Channing as "the devil's disciple."
Grant Thorbura was psalm-singer in this Scotch preacher's
church. Curiosity to see the lion led Thorburn to visit
Paine, for which he was "suspended." Thorburn afterwards
made amends by fathering Cheetham's slanders of Paine after
Cheetham had become too infamous to quote.
It were unjust to suppose that Paine met with nothing but abuse and maltreatment from ministers of serious orthodoxy in New York. They had warmly opposed his views, even denounced them, but the controversy seems to have died away until he took part in the deistic propaganda of Elihu Palmer.' The following to Col. Fellows (July 31st) shows Paine much interested in the "cause":
"I am glad that Palmer and Foster have got together. It will greatly help the cause on. I enclose a letter I received a few days since from Groton, in Connecticut The letter is well written, and with a good deal of sincere enthusiasm. The publication of it would do good, but there is an impropriety in publishing a man's name to a private letter. You may show the letter to Palmer and Foster.... Remember me to my much respected friend Carver and tell him I am sure we shall succeed if we hold on. We have already silenced the clamor of the priests. They act now as if they would say, let us alone and we will let you alone. You do not tell me if the Prospect goes on. As Carver will want pay he may have it from me, and pay when it suits him; but I expect he will take a ride up some Saturday, and then he can chuse for himself."
The result of this was that Paine passed the winter in New York, where he threw himself warmly into the theistic movement, and no doubt occasionally spoke from Elihu Palmer's platform.
The rationalists who gathered around Elihu Palmer in New York were called the "Columbian Illuminati." The pompous epithet looks like an effort to connect them with the Columbian Order (Tammany) which was supposed to represent Jacobinism and French ideas generally. Their numbers were considerable, but they did not belong to fashionable society. Their lecturer, Elihu Palmer, was a scholarly gentleman of the highest character. A native of Canterbury, Connecticut, (born 1754) he had graduated at Dartmouth. He was married by the Rev. Mr. Watt to a widow, Mary Powell, in New York (1803), at the time when he was lecturing in the Temple of Reason (Snow's Rooms, Broadway). This suggests that he had not broken with the clergy altogether. Somewhat later he lectured at the Union Hotel, William Street He had studied divinity, and turned against the creeds what was taught him for their support.
"I have more than once [says Dr. Francis] listened to Palmer; none could be weary within the sound of his voice; his diction was classical; and much of his natural theology attractive by variety of illustration. But admiration of him sank into despondency at his assumption, and his sarcastic assaults on things most holy. His boldest phillippic was his discourse on the title-page of the Bible, in which, with the double shield of jacobinism and infidelity, he warned rising America against confidence in a book authorised by the monarchy of England. Palmer delivered his sermons in the Union Hotel in William Street."