Washington Crossing the Delaware, c. 1851

Thomas Paine

Common Sense

Common Sense Chapter 3

Thoughts on the present State of American Affairs.

Paine examines the hostilities between England and the American colonies and argues that best course of action is independence.

Paine proposes a Continental Charter (or Charter of the United Colonies) that would be an American Magna Carta.

Paine writes that a Continental Charter "should come from some intermediate body between the Congress and the people" and outlines a Continental Conference that could draft a Continental Charter.

Each colony would hold elections for five

representatives; these five would be accompanied by two members of the colonies assembly, for a total of seven representatives from each colony in the Continental Conference.

The Continental Conference would then meet and draft a Continental Charter that would secure “freedom and property to all men, and… the free exercise of religion.”

The Continental Charter would also outline a new national government, which Paine thought would take the form of a Congress.

Paine suggested that a Congress may be created in the following way:

Each colony should be divided in districts;

Each district would "send a proper number of delegates to Congress"

Paine thought ---

That each state should send at least 30 delegates to Congress,

And that the total number of delegates in Congress should be at least 390.

The Congress would meet annually, and elect a President.

Paine Thoughts on electing a President Each colony would be put into a lottery; the President would be elected, by the whole

Congress, from the delegation of the colony that was selected in the lottery.

After a colony was selected it would be removed from subsequent lotteries until all of the colonies had been selected, at which point the lottery would start anew.

Electing a President or passing a law would require 3/5 of the Congress.

Common Sense Chapter 4 Of the present Ability of America, with

some miscellaneous Reflections.

Paine was optimistic of America's military potential at the time of the Revolution.

For example, he spends pages describing how colonial shipyards, by using the large amounts of lumber available in the country, could quickly create a navy that could rival the Royal Navy.

Paine's arguments against British rule It was absurd for an island to rule a continent. America was not a "British nation"; it was

composed of influences and peoples from all of Europe.

Even if Britain were the "mother country" of America, that made her actions all the more horrendous, for no mother would harm her children so brutally.

More -----

Being a part of Britain would drag America into unnecessary European wars, and keep it from the international commerce at which America excelled.

The distance between the two nations made governing the colonies from England unwieldy.

If some wrong were to be petitioned to Parliament, it would take a year before the colonies received a response.

Remember when the shot was fired on Lexington, the King George did not hear about it until for about a year.

More ----

The New World was discovered shortly before the Reformation.

The Puritans believed that God wanted to give them a safe haven from the persecution of British rule.

Britain ruled the colonies for its own benefit, and did not consider the best interests of the colonists in governing them.

Paine has been described as a professional radical and a revolutionary propagandist without peer.

Born in England, he was dismissed as an excise officer (Tax collector) while lobbying for higher wages.

Impressed by Paine, Benjamin Franklin sponsored Paine's emigration to America in 1774.

In Philadelphia Paine became a journalist and essayist, contributing articles on all subjects to The Pennsylvania Magazine.

After the publication of Common Sense, Paine continued to inspire and encourage the patriots during the Revolutionary War with a series of pamphlets entitled, “The American Crisis.”

Eventually, Paine went on to write, “The Rights of Man and The Age of Reason.”

Observations and Comments

What do you think of Thomas Paine ?

His writings , his timing, his influence ?

Could his work/writings be timely for today?

Washington Crossing the Delaware

Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze (LOIT suh) was

born in Germany. When his father became ill Emanuel spent many hours sitting by his beside sketching.

After his father's death he decided he would continue with art.

He studied in Philadelphia, and in 1859 he moved to New York .

Emanuel Leutze: 1816 - 1868

Emanuel Leutze byThomas Worthington Whittredge c. 1856

A publisher saw some of his work and hired him to paint portraits of some of the leaders of the country, but he couldn't get them to sit for him.

He left dejected and spent some time in seclusion.

Compare his personality to Gilbert Stuart.

His first successful showing was a painting called Indian Contemplating the Setting Sun.

He traveled to Europe and in Dusseldorf, Germany became the pupil of Lessing, a fine painter there.

Also successful was his painting of Columbus Before the Council of Salamanca . It was so well received it was purchased by the Art Union of Dusseldorf.

He went to Munich and painted another great scene about the explorer, Columbus Before the Queen. We see him before Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand trying to get funding for his anticipated voyage.

Queen Isabella rejected Columbus’ plan several times over a period of about two years, but finally agreed to help him.

Leutze painted two versions of Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way. The 1861 version which we see here is in the Smithsonian Art Museum

The 1862 version is in the United States Capitol. It is a 20x30 foot mural which took him two years to paint. He received $20,000 for it.

With the money he moved his family back to America and settled in Washington D.C.

How do the pictures differ and how are they alike?

He traveled around Europe but returned to Dusseldorf, married and remained there fourteen years.

When he returned to the United States he opened a studio in New York. He had been away for eighteen years.

Leutze became famous for his paintings of American historical scenes.

The featured painting Washington Crossing the Delaware is the one for which he is remembered.

The painting itself is quite large, 12 feet high and 21 feet long.

George Washington

Columbus

Grant at the Capture of Mexico City

Battle of Monmouth, NJ.

As you recall Paul Revere and others made their midnight ride on April 19, 1775 to warn Boston area that the British were coming by sea.

Thomas Paine published Common Sense in January 1776.

The Declaration of Independence was signed July 4, 1776 in Philadelphia, PA.

The Battle of Trenton, New Jersey December, 1776

Emanuel Leutze’s painting of Washington Crossing the Delaware The commander of the Continental Army

against Great Britain stands boldly near the prow of a crowded boat and navigates the treacherous Delaware River on Christmas night, 1776.

Through the sobering months General

Washington led an army of dwindling numbers, with defeats mounting and morale sinking.

Soundly beaten in New York, Washington was pursued through New Jersey into Pennsylvania by British General William Howe who fully expected to take Philadelphia, the seat of the Continental Congress.

However, in his retreat across the Delaware River, Washington shrewdly seized all the available boats to ferry his men from New Jersey banks to the Pennsylvania side.

A confident General Howe, certain the war was all but won, had already returned to New York in mid-December, leaving his British and Hessian mercenary troops in the Trenton, NJ area.

The commanders left in charge plotted a river crossing as soon as the Delaware iced over.

Washington acted immediately when his spies uncovered the plan.

With the same boats used to flee the British, he and his men recrossed the river at Trenton, found the enemy, killed several officers, and captured more than 900 prisoners.

The surprise attack not only checked the British advance but helped restore morale to the rebels.

The victory confirmed Washington’s leadership and the brilliance of his military strategy, both vital to reinvigorating the American cause.

After this scene, Washington marched his

men quickly to Trenton to attack the surprised Hessian army.

They captured 900 Hessians and ferried them back across the treacherous river to Pennsylvania.

Although no Americans were killed in the battle, two froze to death on the march to battle. This victory greatly boosted the Continental army’s morale.

The painting is a record of a notably historical

event which took place on Christmas Day 1776. The powerful picture features a calm,

determined George Washington who commands the troops.

They landed on the New Jersey shore at 4 A.M. on December 26th and then marched nine miles to Trenton.

The British troops were taken by surprise and the Americans won a decisive battle.

The Hessians lost 80 men and 900 were captured.

The Americans lost four men, two in the fighting and two men froze during the crossing. The battle at Princeton, also followed the landing.

Emanuel Leutze [1816-1868]

Leutze grew up sharing the democratic ideals of the American Revolution and frequently represented them in his historical and literary paintings.

The December battle at Trenton, a turning point in the war, appealed to the German-born painter, who had immigrated to the United States as a child decades after the Revolution.

His works are combinations of carefully

researched information presented in a meticulously rendered dramatic style.

Leutze’s theatrical interpretations of historical events brought him private and governmental commissions.

Leutze grew up in Philadelphia and likely visited the place where the crossing took place.

He made the painting in Dusseldorf, Germany. It took him two years to paint it.

At one point there was a fire that partially destroyed the first canvas he started.

He used the Rhine River as his model for the Delaware River.

He had visited America many times and had studied paintings of Washington and had looked at his uniform in the museum.

The sheer size of Leutze’s canvas, twelve by twenty-one feet, pulls anyone standing before it into the scene.

The viewer is nearly the same size as the painted figures and the action seems only a few feet away.

Washington stands fast in the lead boat as his men struggle to maneuver the craft through the choppy, ice-filled waters.

Other boats follow, crowded with soldiers and jittery horses.

We can feel Washington’s resolve and courage in facing the battle ahead as he leans forward into the blustering wind.

As his men strain to pull the oars through the water, one deflects the ice while another at the back of the boat uses a paddle like a rudder to steer the course.

Dawn glimmers below the troubled sky, and the American flag, blown and knotted by the winds, rises to a peak behind the General.

Composition

Leutze arranged the figures in a triangular composition. The main triangle extends from the top of the flag to the boat’s bow and back to its stern.

Other triangles are in the figure groupings. One extends from Washington’s head to the bow and back to the extended arms of the red shirted figure.

Composition

The figures look to the left of the painting showing the progressive movement towards their objective.

The figures are clad in dull muted colors except for the accents of bright red.

Leutze unifies the composition by overlapping figures and repeating various shades of blue through out the painting.

Light and shadows show the depth and form of the figures.

Composition

The painting is notable for its artistic composition.

General Washington is emphasized by an unnaturally bright sky, while his face catches the upcoming sun.

The colors consist of mostly dark tones, as is to be expected at dawn, but there are red highlights repeated throughout the painting.

Composition

Foreshortening, perspective and the distant boats all lend depth to the painting and emphasize the boat carrying Washington.

Foreshortening refers to the visual effect or optical illusion that an object or distance appears shorter than it actually is because it is angled toward the viewer.

Symbolism Twelve diverse, determined soldiers, including

Washington, crowd the main boat. They wear clothing distinctive to their region.

In addition to Washington, another Virginian and future president, who may represent Lieutenant James Monroe holds the flag.

Western frontiersmen guide the boat, a man wearing a Scotch hat rows. Is he a recent immigrant?

An African American man rows on the far side. He could represent one of the Massachusetts seamen who played an important role in ferrying the army back and forth across the river. Leutze was an ardent abolitionist.

Symbolism in Painting The people in the boat represent a cross-section

of the American colonies. A man in a Scottish bonnet A man of African descent facing backward Next to each other in the front, western riflemen at

the bow and stern Two farmers in broad-brimmed hats near the

back (one with bandaged head) An androgynous rower in a red shirt, possibly

meant to be a woman in man's clothing There is also a man at the back of the boat that

looks to be Native American.

Symbolism A hatless figure in a man’s red shirt is rowing.

There were women on Washington’s ration list and some historians guess that this figure could be a woman.

Farmers huddle in blankets and broad-brimmed hats. One holds a double-barreled rifle. By this time in the war, many of Washington’s army no longer had shoes and wrapped their bleeding, freezing feet in rags.

Leutze dressed models in colonial clothing to pose for his painting.

The man standing next to Washington and holding the flag is Lieutenant James Monroe, future President of the United States.

Also, General Edward Hand (commanding general at siege of Yorktown) is shown seated and holding his hat within the vessel.

Leutze, a passionate abolitionist,

included an African American as the third boatman from the front whose name was Prince Whipple.

Although Whipple has been identified by some as the African American figure in the familiar painting of Washington crossing the Delaware River, it is doubtful he was present on Christmas Eve, 1776.  

Fully one-third of Patriot soldiers at the Battle

of Bunker Hill were African Americans. Census data also reveal that there were slaves and free Blacks living in the North in 1790 and after.

What do we know about African-American communities in the North in the years after the American Revolution?

Prince Whipple Prince Whipple fought at the battles of Saratoga

and in Delaware during the War for Independence.  He was also one of twenty enslaved men who petitioned the New Hampshire legislature for freedom in 1779. 

His owner, General William Whipple, was a signer of the Declaration of Independence and an aide to General George Washington. 

Prince Whipple was brought from the coast of Africa to the colonial trading center of Portsmouth, New Hampshire in 1760 when he was ten. 

He grew into manhood enslaved, a body servant to one of the colony’s most influential leaders.  Because of his expertise and refinement, Whipple also served as major-domo at the most elegant social events in the city.  

In 1779, Prince Whipple was one of 20 petitioners who identified themselves as African men who were taken from their native lands “while but children and incapable of self-defense” now making a plea to the New Hampshire legislature for manumission and for the abolition of slavery in the state.

The petition was tabled without legislative action. While the author of the document is unknown, Whipple was literate, as were most of the other petitioners.  Literacy was not unusual for New Hampshire slaves who had grown up within households of educated owners. 

For instance, Whipple’s wife, Dinah, who later ran a school for African children, had been raised in the household of a prominent local minister.  

Prince married Dinah on her 21st birthday, which also was the date of her manumission, February 22, 1781. 

Whipple, was not freed until 1784.  When William Whipple died the following

year, his widow honored the General’s promise to provide a lifetime home for his servants.  She allowed Prince Whipple to move a house onto her property where he and Dinah raised their seven children. 

They shared this house with another former Whipple slave and his family.

Prince Whipple died on November 21, 1796 at the age of 46 and is buried with his wife and at least one daughter and a granddaughter near the tomb of his former owner at North Cemetery in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.  

Hoping for a government commission, Leutze

put the painting on pubic exhibit in New York in 1851.

Within four months, fifty thousand people had paid to see it.

Not long after, a private collector bought the work for ten thousand dollars, a stupendous sum at the time.

Engraved reproductions, popular in nineteenth-century American homes, expanded the fame of the work even further.

The attention and high praise Leutze received helped the artist obtain the commission for his mural Westward The Course of Empire Takes Its Way, which now occupies a stairway in the US Capitol.

Originally, Leutze’s painting of Washington Crossing the Delaware was held in a carved and gilded wooden frame.

Along the top of the work’s original frame was a twelve-foot carved eagle holding a banner with the famous words eulogizing George Washington: “First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.”

Other artists who have painted the crossing are Thomas Sully and George Caleb Bingham.

They each show Washington on horseback.

The black man, Prince Whipple, appears in both the Leutze and Sully rendition.

Leutze's painting is the most dramatic of all the works done of the event.

Thomas Sully

George Caleb Bingham

Each painting of the crossing contains inconsistencies.

The flag shown is not accurate. The Continental Congress did not

officially adopt the flag shown in the painting until June 14, 1777.

According to tradition, that particular design, the Betsy Ross flag with 13 stars and 13 stripes was actually created six months later, late May or early June of 1776 at the request on George Washington and two other members of Congress.

The Grand Union Flag The historically accurate flag would have been the Grand Union

Flag, officially hoisted by Washington himself on January 2, 1776 at Cambridge, Massachusetts, as the standard of the Continental Army and the first national flag.

Artistic concerns motivated further deviations from historical (and physical) accuracy.

For example, the boat (of the wrong model) looks too small to carry all occupants and stay afloat, but this emphasizes the struggle of the rowing soldiers.

The actual boat was a Durham Boat.

There are phantom light sources besides the

upcoming sun, as can be seen on the face of the front rower and shadows on the water, to add depth.

The crossing took place in the dead of night, so there ought to have been little natural light, but this would have made for a very different painting.

A powerful nor’easter pelted snow and sleet,

blocking out the sky. The crossing began in late afternoon as the

sun sank and continued until about 4 a.m. Darkness covered Washington’s advance to

Trenton. The painting is much lighter than the actual

event. Leutze’s dawn promises a new day and bright future for the new nation.

Since the painting was done in Germany The river is modeled after the Rhine, where

ice tends to form in crags as pictured, not in broad sheets as is more common on the Delaware.

However, it is speculated that the Delaware River really was frozen over as depicted because of the Little Ice Age that was occurring at the time.

Also, the Delaware River at what is now called Washington Crossing is far narrower than the river depicted in the painting.

It was also raining during the crossing.

Next, the men did not bring horses across the river in the boats.

Distant small indistinct light figures of men and horses in the background suggest the size of Washington’s army.

2400 men with horses and cannon crossed the river from Pennsylvania to attack 1500 Hessians in Trenton, NJ.

The horses and cannon were probably loaded onto flat ferries rather than Durham boats.

The rearing horses and disarray of oars suggest the excitement of the moment.

Finally, consider Washington's stance, obviously intended to depict him in a heroic fashion, would have been very hard to maintain in the stormy conditions of the crossing with so many people in the boat.

Debunkers of the painting's historical accuracy have traditionally said that Washington would have been sitting down;

Historians have argued, however, that everyone would have been standing up to avoid the icy water in the bottom of the boat (the actual boats used have higher sides).

Geographically, they are also heading in the opposite direction of their historical destination.

The Durham Boat

Leutze also painted portraits. The portrait of Nathaniel Hawthorne was

painted in Washington D.C. when he was working on the Westward mural at the Capitol.

Hawthorne was a prominent writer in the 1800's.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Amber Necklace

Another portrait painting The Amber Necklace shows a mother and child.

In European countries amber necklaces are put on babies and supposedly the effect of the amber as it is warm on the skin helps to ease the pain of teething and soothes the baby.

George Washington at Dorchester Heights, Massachusetts 

Late in life, he became a member of the National Academy of Design.

He was also a member of the Union League Club of New York, which has a number of his paintings.

Emanuel Leutze was a warm and giving person, always ready to lend a hand to new artists.

He helped financially and gave them a place to work.

He died in Washington, D.C., in his 53rd year, of heatstroke.

At the time of his death, a painting, The Emancipation of the Slaves, was in preparation.

Quiz

Using your worksheet from today’s class,

make sure that all the blanks are completed.

Thomas Paine – Using complete sentences and paragraphs

What do you think of Thomas Paine ?

His writings , his timing, his influence ?

Could his work/writings be timely for today?

Have a great week !