About the Sources
In addition to the archival documents, the historical and architectural studies, and the collections of writings of Paine and his contemporaries acknowledged in the notes that follow, I have drawn from Paine’s many biographies. The two most authoritative remain Moncure Conway’s The Life of Thomas Paine: With a History of His Literary, Political, and Religious Career in America, France, and England, 2 vols. (New York: G. P. Putnam and Sons, 1908); and John Keane, Tom Paine: A Political Life (New York: Grove Press, 1995). Also excellent are Jack Fruchtman’s Thomas Paine: Apostle of Freedom (New York: Four Walls, Eight Windows, 1994); and Craig Nelson Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations (New York: Penguin, 2006). Two other valuable biographical studies are Eric Foner’s classic Tom Paine and Revolutionary America, Updated with a New Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005); and Mark Philp’s brief life, Thomas Paine (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).
1. Jack Whitehead, The Growth of St. Marylebone and Paddington (London: J. Whitehead, 1989), 10.
2. Philip S. Foner, ed., The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine (New York: The Citadel Press, 1945), 2:1053–54 (hereinafter cited as CW).
3. Ibid., 2:1411–12.
4. Morris quoted in Foner, “Introductory Note,” ibid., 1:xviii; John Adams to Benjamin Waterhouse, October 29, 1805, in Worthington C. Ford, ed., Statesman and Friend: Correspondence of John Adams and Benjamin Waterhouse, 1784–1822 (Boston: Little Brown, 1927), 31; Jacques-Pierre Brissot de Warville, New Travels in the United States of America, 1788, ed. Durand Echeverria (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964), 258.
5. Adams to Waterhouse, October 29, 1805, in CW, 1:45, 50; Thomas Jefferson to Francis Eppes, January 19, 1821, in Paul Leicester Ford, ed., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 1816–1826 (New York: G. P. Putnam and Sons, 1899), 10:183.
6. L. H. Butterfield, ed., Adams Family Correspondence (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap/Harvard University Press, 1963), 1:363.
7. Bernard Bailyn, ed., The Debate on the Constitution: Federalist and Antifederalist Speeches, Articles, and Letters During the Struggle over Ratification (New York: Library of America, 1993), 171.
8. Jacob E. Cooke, ed., The Federalist (Middletown, Ct.: Wesleyan University Press, 1961), 86–87. On internal improvement, see also Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); John Lauritz Larson, Internal Improvement: National Public Works and the Promise of Popular Government in the Early United States (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001); and Carol Sheriff, The Artificial River: The Erie Canal and the Paradox of Progress, 1817–1862 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1996).
9. George Wilson Pierson, Tocqueville in America (repr., Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 592.
10. CW, 1:24.
Chapter 1: River City
1. Thomas Paine to Benjamin Franklin, March 4, 1775, in CW, 2:1130–31.
2. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. Kathryn Sutherland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), book 5, ch. 2, p. 452.
3. CW, 2:10, 5–6. On the Excise Service, see John Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money, and the English State, 1688–1783 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988); William J. Ashworth, Customs and Excise: Trade, Production, and Consumption in England, 1640–1845 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); Thomas P. Slaughter, The Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).
4. Franklin to Hugh Roberts, February 26, 1761, in The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, digital edition by the American Philosophical Society, Yale University and the Packard Humanities Institute, http://franklinpapers.org/franklin/framedVolumes.jsp.
5. Gottlieb Mittelberger, Journey to Pennsylvania, ed. and trans. Oscar Handlin and John Clive (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960), 37; John Hall to Mr. Lilley, January 27, 1768, in “John Hall Letter Book,” p. 71, courtesy of Ms. Polly Munson (transcription by Ms. Munson).
6. John Flexer Walzer, “Transportation in the Philadelphia Trading Area, 1740–1775,” (PhD diss., University of Wisconsin, 1968), 2–4.
7. Arthur L. Jensen, The Maritime Commerce of Colonial Philadelphia (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1963), 8. On the economy of colonial Pennsylvania, see also Clarence P. Gould, “The Economic Causes of the Rise of Baltimore,” in Essays in Colonial History Presented to Charles McLean Andrews by His Students (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1931), 224–51; James T. Lemon, The Best Poor Man’s Country: A Geographical Study of Early Southeastern Pennsylvania (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972); James W. Livingood, The Philadelphia–Baltimore Trade Rivalry, 1780–1860 (Harrisburg, Pa.: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1947); D. W. Meinig, The Shaping of America, vol. 1, Atlantic America, 1492–1800 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986).
8. Richard B. Sher, The Enlightenment and the Book: Scottish Authors and Their Publishers in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Ireland and America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 509–10.
9. Ibid., 531–35.
10. Lawrence A. Peskin, Manufacturing Revolution: The Intellectual Origins of Early American Industry (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 42–43, 47–48.
11. John Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1997), 142, 146.
12. CW, 2:1131; the essays mentioned appeared in the issues of vol. 1 (April 1775), 158; and vol. 1 (October 1775), 470, respectively.
13. The Pennsylvania Magazine 1 (January 1775): 9–11.
14. Ibid. 1 (May 1775): 215; 1 (July 1775): 305; and 1 (September 1775): 416.
15. Ibid. 1 (May 1775): 209.
Chapter 2: The Hazards of Competition
1. Israel Acrelius, A History of New Sweden: Or, the Settlements on the River Delaware, trans. and ed. William M. Reynolds (Philadelphia: Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1874), 165.
2. Gordon S. Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 336–37.
3. To the Merchants and Other Inhabitants of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1771); Samuel Rhoads to Benjamin Franklin, May 3, 1771, in The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, digital edition by the American Philosophical Society, Yale University and the Packard Humanities Institute, http://franklinpapers.org/franklin/framedVolumes.jsp.
4. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 1, no. 1 (Philadelphia: R. Aitken, 1789): 357–58; James M. Swank, Progressive Pennsylvania: A Record of the Remarkable Industrial Development of the Keystone State (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1908), 132–33; Rhoads to Franklin, May 3, 1771.
5. Quoted in Jack Rakove, Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America (New York: Mariner, 2010), 93.
6. CW, 2:20.
7. Benjamin Rush, A Memorial Containing Travels Through Life . . . (Philadelphia: Louis Alexander Biddle, 1905), 84.
8. CW, 1:13.
9. Richard Gimbel, A Bibliographic Check List of “Common Sense,” with an Account of Its Publication (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1956), 78–91; Rush, A Memorial Containing Travels, 85; Moses Coit Tyler, The Literary History of the American Revolution, 1763–1783 (New York: G. P. Putnam and Sons, 1897), 1:473; L. H. Butterfield et al, eds., Diary and Autobiography of John Adams (1961; repr., New York: Atheneum, 1964), 2:351; Robert A. Ferguson, “The Commonalities of Common Sense,” The William and Mary Quarterly 57 (July 2000): 465–504; Trish Loughran, “Disseminating Common Sense: Thomas Paine and the Problem of the Early National Bestseller,” American Literature 78 (March 2006): 1–28.
10. CW, 1:17.
Chapter 3: Years of Peril
1. Thomas Paine to Henry Laurens, January 14, 1779, in CW, 2:1164.
2. Ibid., 1:50.
3. Paine to Laurens, January 14, 1779.
4. Dorothy Twohig, ed., The Papers of George Washington: Revolutionary War Series (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1997), 7:397. More generally, on the crossing and its hazards, see David Hackett Fischer, Washington’s Crossing (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).
5. Horace Wells Sellers, “Charles Willson Peale, Artist—Soldier,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 38, no. 3 (1914): 276; Caesar A. Rodney, ed. Diary of Captain Thomas Rodney, 1776–1777 (Wilmington: Historical Society of Delaware, 1888), 1:22–23.
6. Paine to Benjamin Franklin, May 16, 1778, in CW, 2:1143–51.
7. William Spohn Baker, ed., The Itinerary of General Washington from June 15, 1775, to December 23, 1783 (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott,1892), 108.
8. Samuel Hazard, ed., Colonial Records of Pennsylvania (Harrisburg, Pa.: Theo. Fenn & Co., 1852), 11:305.
9. Nathanael Greene to George Washington, December 7, 1776, in The Papers of George Washington, 7:269; Washington to John Mercereau, April 27, 1777, in ibid, 8:288.
10. Marquis de Lafayette to Washington, December 3, 1777, in ibid., 12:526.
Chapter 4: The Trials of the Republic of Pennsylvania
1. CW, 2:1183.
2. Thomas Paine to Nathanael Greene, September 9, 1780, in ibid,, 2:1189.
3. Paine to George Washington, November 30, 1781, in ibid., 2:1203–4.
4. Ibid., 1:171–85; Paine to Robert Morris, January 24, 1782, in ibid., 2:1205.
5. Eric Foner, ed., Thomas Paine: Collected Writings (New York: Library of America, 1995), 312, 310. Also see Alfred Owen Aldridge “Some Writings of Thomas Paine in Pennsylvania Newspapers,” The American Historical Review 56 (July 1951): 832–38; E. James Ferguson, The Power of the Purse: A History of American Public Finance, 1776–1790 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1961); Stephen Mihm, “Funding the Revolution: Monetary and Fiscal Policy in Eighteenth-Century America,” in The Oxford Handbook of the American Revolution, ed. Edward G. Gray and Jane Kamensky (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), ch. 18, 327–51.
6. Paine to Daniel Clymer, September 1786, in CW, 2:1255–56.
7. The Independent Gazetteer (Philadelphia), March 12, 1787, p. 3.
8. CW, 1:400; An Historical Account of the Rise, Progress and Present State of the Canal Navigation in Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: Zacharian Poulson, 1795), iii.
9. Findley quoted in Bray Hammond, Banks and Politics in America: From the Revolution to the Civil War (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1957), 54–55; The Freeman’s Journal: or, North-American Intelligencer (Philadelphia), March 2, 1785, p. 2; Alfred Owen Aldridge, “Why Did Thomas Paine Write on the Bank?” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 93 (September 1949): 309–15.
10. CW, 2:434.
Chapter 5: The Schuylkill and Its Crossings
1. The Columbian Magazine 3 (May 1789): 3-5; Kenneth Silverman, A Cultural History of The American Revolution (1976; repr., New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 604–5.
2. Richard B. Morris, Government and Labor in Early America (1946; repr., New York: Harper & Row, 1965); Fred Perry Powers, “The Historic Bridges of Philadelphia,” in Philadelphia History: Consisting of Papers Read Before the City History Society of Philadelphia (Philadelphia: The Philadelphia History Society, 1917), 267–316; James M. Swank, Progressive Pennsylvania: A Record of the Remarkable Industrial Development of the Keystone State (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1908); and John Flexer Walzer, “Colonial Philadelphia and Its Backcountry,” Winterthur Portfolio 7 (1972): 161–73. On public works and economic development in postrevolutionary and early national Pennsylvania, see Ralph D. Gray, “Philadelphia and the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, 1769–1823,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 84 (October 1960): 401–23; Lee Hartman, “Pennsylvania’s Grand Plan of Post-Revolutionary Internal Improvement,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 65 (October 1941): 439–57; Louis Hartz, Economic Policy and Democratic Thought: Pennsylvania, 1776–1860 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1948); Diane Lindstrom, Economic Development in the Philadelphia Region, 1810–1850 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978); Wilbur C. Plummer, “The Road Policy of Pennsylvania” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1925).
3. Pennsylvania Packet, and General Advertiser, April 13, 1784, p. 3; John Hall to Mrs. Capner, January 29, 1786, in “John Hall Letter Book,” pp. 63–64, courtesy of Ms. Polly Munson (transcription by Ms. Munson); Jacques-Pierre Brissot de Warville, New Travels in the United States of America, 1788, ed. Durand Echeverria (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964), 152, fn. 2.
4. G. D. Scull, ed., The Montresor Journals: Collections of the New York Historical Society, 1881 (New York: New-York Historical Society, 1882), 471.
5. [Thomas Anburey], Travels Through the Interior Parts of America. In a Series of Letters . . . (1789; repr. Cambridge, Mass.: Riverside Press, 1923), 2:170; Samuel Hazard, ed., Colonial Records of Pennsylvania (Harrisburg, Pa.: Theo. Fenn & Co., 1851), 7:107, 152; Barr Ferree, ed., Year Book of the Pennsylvania Society, 1908 (New York: The Pennsylvania Society, 1908), 175–77.
6. The Pennsylvania Packet or the General Advertiser, April 10, 1779, p. 3; Colonial Records of Pennsylvania, 8:618.
7. Timothy Dwight, Travels in New England and New York, ed. Barbara Miller Solomon and Patricia M. King (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969), 1:358–59; Brissot de Warville, New Travels in the United States, 94, fn 27.
8. Chi Ho Sham, Richard W. Gullick, Sharon C. Long, and Pamela P. Kenel, Operational Guide to AWWA Standard G300: Source Water Protection (Denver: American Water Works Association, 2010), 124; Annual Report of the Water Supply Commission of Pennsylvania for 1914 (Harrisburg, Pa.: Wm. Stanley Ray, 1915), 62; Charles River Watershed Association (www.crwa.org/cr_history.html); Theodore Steinberg, Nature Incorporated: Industrialization and the Waters of New England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 21.
9. Stanley I. Kutler, Privilege and Creative Destruction: The Charles River Bridge Case (1971; repr., Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 15.
Chapter 6: The Schuylkill Permanent Bridge Company
1. Minutes of the Philadelphia Society for the Promotion of Agriculture . . . (Philadelphia: John C. Clark, 1854), 25–28; Brooke Hindle, The Pursuit of Science in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1956).
2. The full name of the legislation was “An ACT to incorporate the Subscribers to the Plan for erecting a permanent Bridge over the river Schuylkill, at the western extremity of the High street of the city of Philadelphia.” The public debates over a permanent bridge in postwar Philadelphia are treated in “A Statistical Account of the Permanent Bridge, Communicated to the Philadelphia Society of Agriculture, 1806” (Philadelphia: Jane Aitken, 1807), especially 5–18 and 20–21, bound in Memoirs of the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture . . . (Philadelphia: Jane Aitken, 1808), vol. 1; The Founders’ Constitution, vol. 3, article 1, section 8, clause 7, document 1, available at http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_7s1.html. Before the war, there were at least two proposals to build a permanent bridge, using an iron-chain suspension system, across the Schuylkill near Philadelphia: see Eda Kranakis, Constructing a Bridge: An Exploration of Engineering Culture, Design and Research in Nineteenth-Century France and America (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1997), 28–34.
3. CW, 2; 1051–52; Thomas Paine to Benjamin Franklin, June 6, 1786, in ibid., 2:1027.
4. Andrea Palladio, The Four Books of Architecture (1738; repr., New York: Dover, 1965), 69. A concise guide to structural principles is David Blockley, Bridges: The Science and Art of the World’s Most Inspiring Strutures (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). Bridge building in Paine’s Britain is comprehensively treated in Ted Ruddock, Arch Bridges and Their Builders, 1735–1835 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979). Also see, J. G. James, “Thomas Paine’s Iron Bridge Work, 1785–1803,” Transactions: Newcomen Society 59 (1987–1988): 189–222; “Iron Arched Bridge Designs in Pre-Revolutionary France,” History of Technology 4 (1979): 63–69; “Thomas Wilson’s Cast-Iron Bridges, 1800–1810,” Transactions: Newcomen Society 50 (1978–1979): 55–72; “The Eighteenth Dickinson Memorial Lecture: Some Steps in the Evolution of Early Iron Arched Bridge Designs,” Transactions: Newcomen Society 59 (1987–1988): 153–85.
5. R. J. B. Walker, Old Westminster Bridge: The Bridge of Fools (Newton Abbot, England: David and Charles, 1979).
6. CW, 2:1052.
7. Ibid., 2:1032.
8. “Diaries of John Hall,” no. 13, February 24, 1787, the Library Company of Philadelphia (hereinafter cited as DJH). James N. Green, “Report of the Librarian,” in The Annual Report of the Library Company of Philadelphia for the Year 1990 (Philadelphia: The Library Company of Philadelphia, 1991), 8–12.
9. Quoted in Samuel Timmins, “The Industrial History of Birmingham,” in The Resources, Products, and Industrial History of Birmingham and the Midland Hardware District (Birmingham: The Local Industries Committee of the British Association, 1865), 216. Burke’s comment is from a 1777 Parliamentary speech in support of a bill licensing a theater for Birmingham. The world of the toy-maker is explored in Jenny Uglow, The Lunar Men: Five Friends Whose Curiosity Changed the World (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2002).
10. John Hall to Joseph Capner Lindley, October 24, 1785, in “John Hall Letter Book,” p. 31, courtesy of Ms. Polly Munson (transcription by Ms. Munson); Hall to Lindley, December 31, 1785, in ibid., pp. 50 and 53.
Chapter 7: The Magical Iron Arch
1. Peter Kalm, Travels into North America; Containing Its Natural History and a Circumstantial Account of Its Plantations, and Agriculture in General (London: T. Lowndes, 1771), 2:177.
2. DJH, no. 5, January 14–15, 1786. See also Thomas Paine to Benjamin Franklin, June 6, 1786, in CW, 2:1026–28.
3. www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/coalbrookdale-iron-bridge; Neil Cossons and Barrie Trinder, The Iron Bridge: Symbol of the Industrial Revolution, 2d ed. (Chichester, England: Phillimore, 2002).
4. DJH, nos. 8–9, June 16–September 16, 1786.
5. CW, 2:1033.
6. DJH, no. 11, especially November 27–December 22, 1786.
7. Stevenson Whitcomb Fletcher, The Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture, 1785–1955, rev. ed. (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture, 1976), 25; DJH, no. 10, October 28 and November 8, 1786; Thomas Paine to George Clymer, November 19, 1786, in CW, 2:1258.
8. John Hall to Mary Hall Capnerhurst (his sister), January 1, 1787, in ”John Hall Letter Book,” pp. 157–58, courtesy of Ms. Polly Munson (transcription by Ms. Munson).
9. DJH, no. 14, April 20, 1787.
Chapter 8: American Architect
1. Thomas Paine to Benjamin Franklin, June 22, 1787, in CW, 2:1262–63; Franklin to the Duc de La Rochefoucauld, April 15, 1787, in The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, digital edition by the American Philosophical Society, Yale University and the Packard Humanities Institute, http://www.franklinpapers.org/franklin/framedVolumes.jsp.
2. Marc-Antoine Laugier, An Essay on Architecture in Which the True Principles Are Explained (London: T. Obsborne and Shipton, 1755), 238–39.
3. William Chambers, A Treatise on Civil Architecture (London: J. Haberkorn, 1759), ii.
4. Quoted in Andrew Saint, Architect and Engineer: A Study in Sibling Rivalry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 297; Antione Picon, L’Invention de l’ingénieur moderne: l’Ecole des Ponts et Chaussées, 1747–1851 (Paris: Presses de l’École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées, 1992); and Claude Vacant, Jean Rodolphe Perronet (1708-1794): “premier ingénieur du roi” et directeur de l’École des Ponts et Chaussées (Paris: Presses de l’École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées, 2006).
5. M. Vincent de Montpetit, Prospectus d’un pont de fer d’une seule arche, proposé, depuis vingt toises jusqu’à cent d’ouverture, pour être jeté sur une grande riviere: présenté au roi le 4 mai 1783 (Paris: Chez l’Auteur, 1783); J. G. James, “Iron Arched Bridge Designs in Pre-Revolutionary France,” History of Technology 4 (1979): 68; Paine to Franklin, June 22, 1787; Paine to George Clymer, August 15, 1787, in CW, 2:1262–64.
6. Académie des Sciences, Les Procès Verbaux, Folio 333–340, August 29, 1787, J. G. James Papers, Library, Institution of Civil Engineers, London.
7. Minutes of the First Session of the Thirteenth General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: Hall and Sellers, 1778), 24–29.
8. Paine to Thomas Jefferson, September 9, 1788, in CW, 2:1269; Paine to George Clymer, December 29, 1787, in ibid., 2:1266–67.
9. Ibid., 2:632, 641–42, 650.
10. Ibid., 2:332.
Chapter 9: An Architect and His Patrons
1. On Somerset House, see John Summerson, Georgian London, rev. ed. (London: Penguin, 1978). Paine’s relationship with Burke is treated in Thomas W. Copeland, Our Eminent Friend Edmund Burke (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1949); and Yuval Levin, The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of the Right and Left (New York: Basic Books, 2014).
2. Edmund Burke to French Laurence, August 18, 1788, in Holden Furber and P. J. Marshall, eds., The Correspondence of Edmund Burke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), 5:412; Thomas Paine to Thomas Jefferson, September 9, 1788, in CW, 2:1270.
3. Paine to Burke, August 7, 1788, Library of the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia.
4. “Specifications of Thomas Paine,” CW, 2:1031–32; Paine to Thomas Jefferson, September 9, 1788, in ibid., 2:1269.
5. W. H. G. Armytage, “Thomas Paine and the Walkers: An Early Episode of Anglo-American Co-operation,” Pennsylvania History 18 (January 1951): 16–30; Paine to Jefferson, February 26, 1789, in CW, 2:1281.
6. Samuel Walker & Co. Business Journal, (1741–1792), p. 25, Institution of Mechanical Engineers, London; Paine to George Washington, May 31, 1790, in CW, 2:1305. On weight, see John Keane, Tom Paine: A Political Life (New York: Grove Press, 1995), 281.
7. “Address to Addressers,” CW, 2:497–98.
8. Paine to Thomas Walker, August, 8, 1790, and Paine to Thomas Walker, September 25, 1790, in Armytage, “Thomas Paine and the Walkers,” 24–29.
Chapter 10: The Great Rupture
1. Public Advertiser (London), September 15, 1790; Thomas Paine to Thomas Jefferson, September 28, 1790, in CW, 2:1315.
2. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, ed. Frank M. Turner (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 66.
3. Quoted in F. B. Lock, Edmund Burke, vol. 2, 1784–1797 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 339.
4. Burke, Reflections, 68, 42.
5. CW, 1:279.
6. Ibid., 1:339.
7. Ibid., 1:326–27.
8. Quoted in Mark Philp, “Introduction,” in Thomas Paine: Rights of Man, Common Sense, and Other Political Writings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), xxiii.
9. Quoted in E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (1963; repr., New York: Vintage, 1966), 103.
10. Public Advertiser, March 28, 1791; Wyvill quoted in H. T. Dickinson, “Thomas Paine and His British Critics,” Enlightenment and Dissent 27 (2011): 27.
Chapter 11: The Specter of Paine
1. Diary, or Woodfall’s Register, April 11, 1791; General Evening Post, April 23–26, 1791. See also General Evening Post, April 14–16, 1791.
2. Thomas Paine to Samuel Walker and company, August 30, 1791, Library of the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia; Paine to John Hall, November 25, 1791, in CW, 2:1321.
3. Paine to Messieurs Condorcet, Nicolas de Bonneville, and Lanthenas, June 1791, in CW, 2:1315.
4. Ibid., 1:355, 449, 454.
5. Ibid., 1:405, 2:459.
6. Ibid., 2:464.
7. William Theobald Wolfe Tone, ed., Memoires of Theobald Wolfe Tone (London, 1827), 2:172–73.
8. Moncure Conway, The Life of Thomas Paine: With a History of His Literary, Political, and Religious Career in America, France, and England (New York: G. P. Putnam and Sons, 1908), 1:341.
9. The European Magazine and London Review 30 (November 1796): 356; translated from the original Latin.
10. True Briton (London), July 29, 1796. On Rowland Burdon, see “The History of Parliament: British Political, Social and Local History” (www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1790-1820/member/burdon-rowland-1757-1838); Maberly Phillips, A History of Banks, Bankers, and Banking in Northumberland, Durham, and North Yorkshire (London: E. Wilson, 1894).
11. Thomas Sanderson to Rowland Burdon, January 28, 1793: HO 42/24/119 f. 289–90, National Archives, Kew, England. On the keelmen strikes, see Joseph M. Fewster, The Keelmen of Tyneside: Labour Organisation and Conflict in the North-East Coal Industry, 1600–1830 (Woodbridge, England: Boydell Press, 2011); Edward Raymond Turner, “The Keelmen of Newcastle,” The American Historical Review 21 (April 1916): 542–45.
12. “Observations and Remarks on the Bridge Proposed to Be Built over the River Wear at or near Sunderland,” 79/1/57A, Drawings Archive and Research Library, Sir John Soane Museum, London. For Burdon’s friendship with Soane, see Gillian Darley, John Soane: An Accidental Romantic (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000).
13. A Tour Through the Northern Counties of England, and the Borders of Scotland (London, 1802), 1:308; Soane Lecture Draft, dated June 1811, MBiii/11/1, Drawings Archive and Research Library, Sir John Soane Museum, London; Edward Cresy, An Encyclopedia of Civil Engineering, Historical, Theoretical, and Practical (London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longman, 1847), 1:495.
14. Rev. John Burdon, Letter to the Wearmouth Bridge Committee (Sunderland, England: James Williams, 1859), 8, 5; Sunderland Daily Echo and Shipping Gazette, September 27, 1879, p. 3. In an indication that the controversy continued, a rebuttal to Picton’s claim was published in the Sunderland Daily Echo on September 29, 1879, p. 3.
15. CW, 2:1054–55; Paine to Thomas Jefferson, October 1, 1800, in ibid., 2:1411.
Chapter 12: Citizen Paine
1. “Reasons for Preserving the Life of Louis Capet” and, “Shall Louis XVI Be Respited,” CW, 2:554; 556–58.
2. Edmund Burke to Lord Loughborough, January 27, 1793, in P. J. Marshall and John A. Woods, eds., The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, vol. 7, January 1792–August 1794 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), 344.
3. Thomas Paine to Georges-Jacques Danton, May 6, 1793, in CW, 2:1335.
4. Anne Cary Morris, ed., The Diary and Letters of Gouverneur Morris: Minister of the United States to France; Member of the Constitutional Convention, etc. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1888), 1:359–60; Paine to Samuel Adams, March 6, 1795, in CW, 2:1376.
5. James Monroe to Paine, September 18, 1794, in Thomas Paine, A Letter to George Washington: on the Subject of the Late Treaty Concluded Between Great Britain and the United States (London: T. Williams, 1797), 11.
6. R. Barry O’Brien, ed. The Autobiography of Theobald Wolfe Tone (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1893), 2:189.
7. Morning Post and Gazetteer (London), October 15, 1798; The Times (London), October 16, 1798; Mirror of the Times (London), October 13, 1798; Evening Mail (London), October 15, 1798; Henry Redhead Yorke, Letters from France, in 1802 (London: H. D. Symonds, 1804), 2:365–66.
8. CW, 2:715.
9. “Of Paine’s Letter to Washington,” Massachusetts Mercury 13 (January 13, 1797), quoted in Simon P. Newman, “Paine, Jefferson, and Revolutionary Radicalism in Early National America,” in Simon P. Newman and Peter S. Onuf, eds., Paine and Jefferson in the Age of Revolutions (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2013), 81.
10. CW, 1:474, 480.
11. Telford quoted in Samuel Smiles, Lives of the Engineers (London: John Murray, 1861), 2:327; Joseph Walker to Thomas Telford, April 14, 1801, and Telford to the Walker brothers, April 21, 1801, both in Thomas Telford Papers, T/LO.23 and T/LO.29, Archives, Institution of Civil Engineers, London.
12. St. James Chronicle or the British Evening Post (London), October 23, 1800; Suzanne Francis Brown and Peter Francis, The Old Iron Bridge: Spanish Town, Jamaica (Kingston: Faculty of the Built Environment, Caribbean School of Architecture and Technology, 2005).
Chapter 13: No Nation of Iron Bridges
1. CW, 2:1056.
2. The Republican or, Anti-Democrat (Baltimore), July 7, 1802, and November 4, 1802; Virginia Gazette, November 17, 1802.
3. New York Evening Post, November 4, 1802; Providence Gazette, November 13, 1802; New York Gazette, November 17, 1802.
4. Thomas Paine to Thomas Jefferson, January 12, 1803, in CW, 2:1439.
5. Benjamin Rush quoted in Moncure Conway, The Life of Thomas Paine: With a History of His Literary, Political, and Religious Career in America, France, and England (New York: G. P. Putnam and Sons, 1908), 2:318; Paine to John Inskeep, February 1806, in CW, 2:1480.
6. Charles Willson Peale, An Essay on Building Wooden Bridges (Philadelphia: Francis Bailey, 1797), iii. See also Carl W. Condit, American Building: Materials and Techniques from the Beginning of the Colonial Settlements to the Present, 2d ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982); Lola Bennett, “From Craft to Science: American Timber Bridges, 1790–1840,” APT Bulletin 35 (2004): 13–19; George Danko, “The Evolution of the Simple Truss Bridge, 1790–1850: From Empiricism to Scientific Construction” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1979); Robert Fletcher and J. P. Snow, “A History of the Development of Wooden Bridges,” Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers 99 (1934): 314–408.
7. Thomas Pope, A Treatise on Bridge Architecture: In Which the Superior Advantages of the Flying Pendant Lever Bridge Are Fully Proved (New York: Alexander Niven, 1811), 274–75.
8. Anonymous, “On the Architecture of America” (1790), excerpted in Steven Conn and Max Page, eds., Building the Nation: Americans Write About Their Architecture, Their Cities, and Their Landscape (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 10; Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. J. P. Mayer (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor, 1969), 468.
9. Palmer quoted in George B. Pease, “Timothy Palmer, Bridge-Builder of the Eighteenth Century,” Essex Institute Historical Collections 83, no. 2 (April 1947): 104; Owen Biddle, The Young Carpenter’s Assistant. Or, A System of Architecture, Adapted to the Style of Building in the United States (Philadelphia: Benjamin Johnson, 1805), 52. Angelo Maggi and Nicola Navone, John Soane and the Wooden Bridges of Switzerland: Architecture and the Culture of Technology, from Palladio to the Grubenmanns (Mendrisio, Switzerland: Academia di Architettura, 2003).
10. Michel Chevalier, Society, Manners, and Politics in the United States (Boston: Weeks, Jordan, and Company, 1839), 271; J. S. Buckingham, America, Historical, Statistic, and Descriptive (London: Fisher, Son, & Co., 1841), 2:46; James Fenimore Cooper, Notions of the Americans: Picked Up by a Travelling Bachelor (Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1843), 1:304–5; “Travels of a Tin Pedlar. No. VIII,” The New England Galaxy and United States Literary Advertiser, January 11, 1828, p. 2; Charles Dickens, American Notes and Pictures from Italy (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1898), 168.
11. Frances Anne Butler [Kemble], Journal of a Residence in America (Paris: Galignani and Co., 1835), 187; Public Ledger (Philadelphia), September 3, 1838; Lee H. Nelson, The Colossus of 1812: An American Engineering Superlative (New York: ASCE, 1990).
12. CW, 1:610. Also see Gertrude Himmelfarb, The Idea of Poverty: England in the Early Industrial Age (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983); and Gareth Stedman Jones, An End to Poverty: A Historical Debate (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004).
13. CW, 1:617.
14. Conway, The Life of Thomas Paine, 2:455.
Epilogue
1. CW, 1:408–9.
2. Morton J. Horowitz, The Transformation of American Law, 1780–1860 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977), 112; Andrew M. Schocket, Founding Corporate Power in Early National Philadelphia (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2007), 71.
3. Minutes of the Grand Committee of the Whole Convention of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: Zachariah Poulson, 1790), 89–90; The Proceedings Relative to Calling the Conventions of 1776 and 1790 . . . (Harrisburg, Pa.: John S. Wiestling, 1825), 138.