Citizen Tom Paine by Howard Fast

firms of dealers, selling their poor peasant graces to all comers for three shillings, sixpence of which was supposed to go for their freedom. Yet somehow none of them got their freedom, but became hard, painted, vile-tongued tarts. For Paine, there was no relief in those places, and even when he bought freedom for two of the girls, his conscience was not eased.
    Rum was a way out. He went back to the bottle, and was drunk more and more frequently. Deep in his cups, he had a run-in with Ben Frady, the Tory mouthpiece, and they were both dragged off before the magistrate.
    Aitken said, “Yer dirt, and back to the dirt ye go.”
    â€œGod damn you, shut up!”
    â€œBe none too certain with yer damn Whiggish way. That pound more will no’ go on yer salary.”
    â€œGo to hell!” Paine yelled.
    Then, one night, he sat in front of his candles and wrote and wrote. It came from the heart and now he had no trouble with words. All his hatred for slavery poured onto the paper, all his pent-up fury. And not able to print it himself, he went out in the morning and posted it to a rival magazine. A week later it was printed, and that same day Aitken rushed in holding it in his hand.
    â€œBe this yours?” he cried.
    â€œThat it is,” Paine nodded.
    â€œThen out ye go and back to the dirt!”
    â€œDo you have another editor for a pound a week?” Paine smiled.
    â€œI give ye a month’s notice!”
    â€œMake it two months,” Paine said, “or by God, I’ll make it two weeks.”
    And that night, for the first time in a long while, Tom Paine slept quietly and easily without the benefit of drink.
    It was the twenty-fourth of April, seventeen seventy-five, the slow end of a cool, bright spring afternoon. Long, rich shadows lay over the cobbled streets, and on the air, blowing from the inland hills, was the tangy smell of growing things, new leaves, turned dirt. On that quiet afternoon, the streets of Philadelphia rang with hard-driven hoofbeats, and a lathered rider on a lathered horse drove to a halt in front of the City Tavern. He yelled that he had news, big news, mighty news, and from every side people came running. Then the rider refused to talk until he had finished off a mug of beer, and as a good horseman should, seen his horse wiped and watered. While he drank, the word spread like wildfire, and the crowd became larger and larger. Paine, who was at his shop, heard men shouting, and ran along with the rest.
    â€œIt’s war,” the rider said, wiping his lips. “It’s bloody damn war!”
    Someone gave him a pinch of snuff; others kept back the crowd.
    â€œOf course, they knew that Hancock and Adams were at Lexington,” he said.
    Coherency was asked for: dates, details, background.
    â€œThat was April eighteenth,” he said.
    There was a sudden hush; news went slowly, but events moved fast, and with startled, pale faces the men and women in the crowd looked at each other.
    â€œThey were at Pastor Clark’s house,” the messenger went on. “That was all right. Men went out of Boston to warn them, and there was time enough, since the redcoats went on foot and our boys rode like hell. And Pastor Clark kept a cool head; he sent them away.”
    â€œThey weren’t captured, Hancock and. Adams?”
    â€œThey got away.”
    Again the hush; the journalists scribbled furiously, but the rest waited, and the only sound was the shrieking of children who scurried like hares on the outside of the crowd. The rider called for another mug of beer, and it was rushed through the crowd.
    â€œHe couldn’t send the whole town away,” the messenger said. “They were all awake, and most of them stayed awake—” There was more talk, more beer, more questions. Bit by bit the whole story came out, haltingly some of it, some with a rush, sometimes a long break when the rider just stared and attempted to comprehend the