Thomas Paine’s Potential Role in the Declaration of Independence - the Sherman Copy

The inscription in the hand of John Adams, on the Sherman Copy (Thomas Paine Historical Association). "A beginning perhaps - Original with Jefferson - Copied from Original with T.P.s' permission."

By Olivia Pierson

When Thomas Paine arrived in Philadelphia from England in December 1774 as an immigrant, America was on the cusp of revolution.  Dr. Benjamin Franklin had seen something “of genius” in Paine when they’d met in London at Royal Society gatherings and they both had a common acquaintance in George Lewis Scott, the mathematician and man of letters, once a tutor to the princeling who became King George III.

Within a few months of arrival, and thanks to Franklin’s efficacious letter of introduction carried with him, Paine secured a salary as editor of the Pennsylvania Magazine, owned and operated by Robert Aitken.  Philadelphia, being the city of the illustrious Doctor Franklin, boasted a formidable print-culture and the city itself had become a hot-bed of patriotic fervour. But because of its century-deep Quaker influences, in government, institutions and cultural traditions, Philadelphia was also a stronghold for loyalists to British rule.

Fourteen months after setting foot on American soil, and noting that reconciliation with Great Britain - even after the battles of Lexington and Concord - was still the order of the day, Paine wrote and published his famous 46-page pamphlet Common Sense which had one goal in mind: to set forth in plain language for the common man the arguments for a permanent break with Britain in the name of American Independence.  The pamphlet was written under the signature of  “An Englishman” - and in January 1776, it hit the thirteen colonies like a thunderbolt, selling 120,000 copies within the first three months and half a million by the end of the Revolution. It was read in taverns, in coffeehouses, in schoolrooms, market-squares, busy streets and even from church pulpits (minus those of the Quakers).

Over the next three months, Paine was outed as "the writer," which catapulted him to instant fame - and not just in America, but also England and France. The pamphlet was a serious, beautifully reasoned tirade against monarchy and hereditary rule, offering up the boldest remedy “to create the world anew” through republicanism.  At a time when Americans, including most of the delegates serving in the Second Continental Congress, favoured reconciliation, Paine asserted that independence was inevitable and best be gotten-on with. It was the first open call for a Declaration of Independence to be undertaken.

The First Edition of Common Sense (there were to be 29) held these words:

TO CONCLUDE, however strange it may appear to some, or however unwilling they may be to think so, matters not, but many strong and striking reasons may be given to show, that nothing can settle our affairs so expeditiously as an open and determined declaration for independance… Were a manifesto to be published, and despatched to foreign Courts, setting forth the miseries we have endured, and the peaceful methods which we have ineffectually used for redress; declaring at the same time, that not being able any longer to live happily or safely under the cruel disposition of the British Court, we had been driven to the necessity of breaking off all connections with her;… These proceedings may at first seem strange and difficult, but like all other steps which we have already passed over, will in a little time become familiar and agreeable: and until an independance is declared, the Continent will feel itself like a man who continues putting off some unpleasant business from day to day, yet knows it must be done, hates to set about it, wishes it over, and is continually haunted with the thoughts of its necessity.
(Common Sense, Jan 10th 1776)

Paine was already well-connected, Franklin remained his life-long mentor, but he also enjoyed among his circle of friends Richard Bache (Franklin’s son-in-law), Dr. Benjamin Rush, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and his most envious frenemy, soon to become total enemy, John Adams.  When Common Sense was published there was great speculation in the American public as to the identity of the author. Many considered it to be the work of Franklin, who was now back from England, or John Adams who commented on the rumour to his wife, Abigail:  

It has been very generally propagated through the Continent that I wrote this Pamphlet. But altho I could not have written any Thing in so manly and striking a style, I flatter myself I should have made a more respectable Figure as an Architect, if I had undertaken such a Work. This Writer seems to have very inadequate Ideas of what is proper and necessary to be done, in order to form Constitutions for single Colonies, as well as a great Model of Union for the whole. 
(John Adams to Abigail Adams, March 1776)

Abigail was very taken with Common Sense:

I am charmed with the Sentiments of Common Sense; and wonder how an honest Heart, one who wishes the welfare of their country, and the happiness of posterity can hesitate one moment at adopting them; I want to know how those Sentiments are received in Congress? I dare say their would be no difficulty in procuring a vote and instructions from all the Assemblies in New England for independancy. I most sincerely wish that now in the Lucky Minuet it might be done.
(Abigail Adams to John Adams, March 2, 1776)

A month later Abigail writes to John to ask:

Who is the writer of Common Sense?
(Abigail Adams to John Adams, April 14, 1776)

And Adams replies:

The Writer of Common Sense, and the Forrester, is the same Person. His Name is Payne, a Gentleman, about two Years ago from England, a Man who General Lee says has Genius in his Eyes.
(John Adams to Abigail Adams, April 28, 1776)

Adams references “the Forrester,” a pseudonym Thomas Paine wrote under to answer his loyalist detractors in William Bradford’s  Pennsylvania Journal - most especially the Tory, “Cato.”  This public back-and-forth, read up and down the American colonies, is how he came to be outed as "the writer" of Common Sense.

The crucible of revolution was boiling. That same month, April 1776, Adams received a letter from a colleague, John Winthrop of Watertown, Massachusetts, writing of Washington’s army breaking the Siege of Boston  (thanks to the cannons and gunpowder fetched from Fort Ticonderoga by the 25-year-old Henry Knox). Winthrop adds a postscript:

P.S. I hope Common Sense is in as high estimation at the Southward as with us. Tis universally admired here. If the Congress should adopt the sentiments of it, it would give the greatest satisfaction to our people.
(John Winthrop to John Adams, April 1776)

Men teemed into Cambridge, Massachusetts, the headquarters of Washington’s Continental Army, to “join or die.” The army swelled, prompting Washington, during the Siege of Boston, to write to his friend Colonel Joseph Reed that the pamphlet’s “sound doctrine and unanswerable reasoning” for independence “is working a powerful change in the Minds of many Men. Few pamphlets have had so dramatic an effect on political events.”

Later Paine and Washington were to become friends. Paine’s words, originally pseudonymous, became gospel in the best sense of that phrase, i.e., good news.  He read the times of this New World he saw “burning around his ears” and gifted his earnest fellow-patriots and kindred spirits the words to unify themselves for a serious, civilisational cause, putting their bodies on the line.  America responded with resounding courage and commitment - in the beginning, indeed, was the Word.

The next major benchmark of the revolution that year, was the Declaration of Independence being drafted and signed - and Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Rush, Paine, John Hancock, Patrick Henry and many other Founding Fathers were deeply at work in Philadelphia, arriving as best they could between May and June. The war was being prosecuted and they needed the help of France, for ships and treasure, but nothing formal had yet been agreed upon.  Independence, as Paine had prophesied, became inevitable. Congress tasked the Committee of Five: Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Roger Sherman, Benjamin Franklin and Robert. R. Livingston to produce a written manifesto dissolving all allegiance to the Crown of Great Britain and her government, forever.
 
It is reasonable to speculate that Thomas Paine had a direct hand in this monumental process, perhaps as a confidential, typically anonymous consultant, advisor, or writer alongside Franklin and Jefferson. Franklin was indisposed at home with gout but only lived a block away from where Jefferson secluded himself to write his famous "rough draft," which has been preserved. These were the months where Paine and Jefferson became friends for life. However, beyond the spirit of inspiration — by which I mean the power that good writing can have on interested minds — no definitive evidence ever linked Paine to the Declaration’s drafting, until 2018.

In 2018, a new document of an early draft of the Declaration’s preamble was found in Georgia, now known as the Sherman Copy.

It was folded in an estate agent booklet owned by General Hugh Lowrey White, a Brigadier General from the War of 1812. It was hidden among a pile of discarded papers from an amateur historian in Georgia. That manuscript was brought to the Thomas Paine National Historical Association (TPNHA) for a closer look at authentication and provenance. They ran analyses on the paper, the ink, the chemicals, the handwriting and the fold marks, concluding that it was written in the hand of John Adams, had the initials of Roger Sherman on the top right of page 2 (“R.S.”) and the initials of Dr. Benjamin Franklin (“B.F.”) underneath a curious inscription - also in the hand of John Adams.  The inscription reads:

A beginning perhaps -
Original with Jefferson -
Copied from Original
with T.P.’s permission.

The Sherman Draft also carries the date:  “June 24, 1776/R. Sherman’s Copy/Page 1.”

The TPNHA’s detailed essay, authored by Jonathan Scheick, provides a fascinating analysis of the Sherman Copy for those interested in the Declaration’s evolution. Scheick writes:

The Jefferson rough draft resides in the Library of Congress collection and demonstrates numerous edits made by the Committee of Five Congressional members selected to draft the Declaration. John Adams’ draft copy, referred to as a fair copy because of its neat penmanship and organization, resides in the Massachusetts Historical Society collection. Roger Sherman’s draft copy appears to have been shared first with Benjamin Franklin, then passed to fellow committee member Roger Sherman for his review and approval. Chronologically, the order of creation of the known working drafts of the Declaration of Independence is as follows: the lost, original draft (referenced by Boyd); the fragment in the Library of Congress collection; the newly-discovered Roger Sherman copy; the John Adams fair copy; the Thomas Jefferson rough draft.

The Sherman Copy and John Adams’ fair copy both state: “We hold these truths to be ‘Self evident.’” In contrast, the Jefferson rough draft originally reads: “We hold these truths to be ‘sacred and undeniable,’” with those words visibly crossed out and replaced with “Self evident.” If Jonathan Scheick's chronology of the drafts is correct, this suggests that the original draft’s author initially used “Self evident,” which Jefferson later changed to “sacred and undeniable” before reverting back to “Self evident" after the Committee of Five and Congress made their edits.

This discovery raises momentous questions. Could Thomas Paine have written the original (lost to scholars) preamble to the Declaration of Independence? He was certainly intellectually capable of doing so with an uncanny knack for elucidating high-minded ideas through plain, forthright and simplified language. Why would John Adams note “with T.P.’s permission” as he copied it to share?  The inscription indicates Paine’s involvement, possibly as the author of an initial draft or as a significant contributor whose permission was required to copy the document. While the Sherman Copy does not conclusively prove Paine authored the preamble, it strongly implies that his influence extended far beyond Common Sense to the Declaration’s early drafting process.

Thomas Paine’s Common Sense shaped the intellectual and emotional climate that made the Declaration of Independence an immediate necessity. His open call for a manifesto to itemise America’s grievances prefigured the Declaration’s purpose. The 2018 discovery of the Sherman Copy, with its reference to “T.P.’s permission,” indicates that Paine may have played a very direct role in drafting the preamble than ever acknowledged by anyone before. While more definitive proof remains scant, this evidence points to Paine as a pivotal figure whose words ignited a revolution and may have helped shape history’s most consequential document.

Paine became the greatest pamphleteer the world has ever seen, even unto this day. His loyalty to Washington was legendary through all the devastating military losses and deaths the Continental Army suffered, and it was Paine's regular pamphlets titled "the Crisis" which turned the tide of morale toward final victory, especially "Crisis I." When Paine later wrote his even more famous pamphlet titled the Rights of Man, it would've seen him hanged, drawn and quartered while he was back in Britain were it not for his friend William Blake urging him to immediately flee to France. Paine dedicated Rights of Man to George Washington with the words:

SIR,
I present you a small treatise in defence of those principles of freedom which your exemplary virtue hath so eminently contributed to establish. That the Rights of Man may become as universal as your benevolence can wish, and that you may enjoy the happiness of seeing the New World regenerate the Old, is the prayer of

Your much obliged, and
Obedient humble Servant,
THOMAS PAINE

But in 1793, when his fellow-patriots failed to claim him as an American citizen, while he was marked for the guillotine by Robespierre and was ailing and sick in a French prison during the Jacobin Reign of Terror, he completely lost faith in his former friends, Washington most spectacularly. Paine penned a public polemic against President Washington (and Vice President Adams) which was fierce, brutal and understandably bitter since he'd been forgotten to die in a hell-hole. Washington was lionized by then, and America never forgave Paine for criticising him so powerfully. Whether Washington knew the details of his former friend's suffering in Luxembourg prison or not, his appointed Ambassador to France, Goeverneur Morris, hated Paine with a vengeance nurtured since Philadelphia days, and Morris was the conduit of  information about Paine to the President's desk.

Future President James Monroe, succeeded Morris as Washington's Ambassador to France and was shocked to find that Paine, and other Americans, were left in prison, managing to secure their release only after Robespierre's sudden and dramatic fall. These prisoners included the wife of revolutionary hero of both continents, the Marquis de Lafayette; Madame Adrienne de Lafayette was imprisoned by the Jacobins for two years.

After Paine wrote The Age of Reason, his great work on Deism underscoring his personal belief in a God - Nature's God (the language of the Declaration of Independence) - Paine claimed to have penned it in order to rescue God from atheism, after watching France fall headlong into complete spiritual unbelief and violent collapse. This work helped to single him out as the most hated man in America because Americans could see no difference between an atheist and a Deist. John Adams was particularly vicious and vocal in his criticisms of Paine, calling him an "atheistic drunk" etc, a common smear and falsehood that Paine was to endure for the rest of his life. But when Jefferson became President in 1801, he formally invited Paine back to America, and Paine accepted. Jefferson made sure he was seen by all the public, strolling around the capital city with Paine arm-in-arm, as the old friends they were.

Before his death in New York, 1809, Paine was turned away from a voting booth by an officious scrutineer who had the gall to claim to Paine's face that he was "not an American citizen" else Morris and Washington would've aided him in France. The ceaseless smear campaigns against him during his lifetime had done their job well. Thomas Paine became the most cancelled man in American history - and when one reads the autobiography of his peer, John Adams, recalling his thoughts on Paine's influence, one can easily see how thickly the high-handed condescension was laid on; here's an excerpt:

It has been a general Opinion, that this Pamphlet [Common Sense] was of great Importance in the Revolution. I doubted it at the time and have doubted it to this day. It probably converted some to the Doctrine of Independence, and gave others an Excuse for declaring in favour of it. But these would all have followed Congress with Zeal: and on the other hand it excited many Writers against it, particularly Plain Truth, who contributed very largely to fortify and inflame the Party against Independence, and finally lost us the Allens, Penns, and many other Persons of Weight in the Community.... Notwithstanding these doubts, I felt myself obliged to Paine for the Pains he had taken and for his good Intentions to serve Us, which I then had no doubt of. I saw he had a capacity and a ready Pen, and understanding he was poor and destitute, I thought We might put him into some Employment where he might be useful and earn a Living.
(John Adams, Autobiography, 1807)

Two years earlier, Adams showed the scathingly contemptuous set of his mind toward  Paine, who seemed to forever occupy an important place in his thoughts. He wrote to Benjamin Waterhouse in 1805:

I am willing you Should call this the Age of Frivolity as you do: and would not object if You had named it the Age of Folly, Vice, Frenzy Fury, Brutality, Daemons, Buonaparte, Tom Paine, or the Age of The burning Brand from the bottomless Pitt: or any thing but the age of Reason. I know not whether any Man in the World has had more influence on its inhabitants or affairs for the last thirty years than Tom Paine. There can be no Severer satyr in the Age. For Such a mongrel between Pigg and Puppy, begotten by a wild Boar on a Bitch Wolf; never before in any Age of the World was suffered by the Poltroonery of mankind, to run through Such a Career of Mischief. Call it then the Age of Paine. He deserves it much more, than the Courtezan who was consecrated to represent the Goddess in the Temple at Paris, and whose name, Tom has given to the Age. The real intellectual faculty has nothing to do with the Age the Strumpet or Tom.
(John Adams to Benjamin Waterhouse, 29 October, 1805)

No good deed ever goes unpunished. I'd wager that as a lapsed Quaker-turned-Deist, the devastatingly sincere soul of Thomas Paine, the greatest writer of the revolutionary period and beyond, would've understood that adage to be a truly odd quirk in the course of human events, and it would've irked him. 

Thank goodness Jefferson did not succumb to the scruples of his peers by also turning his back on Paine, else we may never have heard of him if the pious snobs and dynasties of that period had gotten their way by rendering Paine a merely irritating footnote who didn't have the decency to die in France.