About Today’s Title

Other than Yankee Doodle I’d be hard pressed to name any song that came out of America’s Revolutionary War (Are you humming that tune now that I’ve put it into your head?) But another song captured the imagination of many in the American colonies in the midst of their fight for freedom from the British crown.

The song I’m referring to was called Johnny Has Gone for a Soldier. In the song a young woman laments that her lover has gone off to war. For many during the Revolution it voiced their concerns for their own fighting men. Based on an Irish folk tune called Siúl a Rún, it was popular throughout the Revolutionary War.

Performers have returned to the tune over the years. In modern times, Pete Seeger covered the song on an album of American ballads in 1961. And a version of the song was featured in the end credits of each episode of the 1997 PBS documentary about the war - Liberty! The American Revolution - with vocals by James Taylor and featuring Mark O’Connor playing the haunting tune on violin. For the documentary Taylor performs the tune in the third person rather than from the young woman’s perspective as it was sung traditionally. You can find the PBS documentary performance by Mark O’Connor and James Taylor in this video posted by O’Connor to Vimeo.

Historian and author Jack Kelly’s newest book takes on the story of a hero of the American Revolutionary War. His previous book was a biography of Benedict Arnold, a traitor and villain of the same war. I called that an “excellent” book in my review two years ago and said it was “well written and easy to read.”

One difference between that book and this one is how much I knew or thought I knew about the subject of the story. Benedict Arnold features prominently in a lot of books on the American Revolution. His is a story of action, drama and tragedy that is almost irresistible for historians. The story of Thomas Paine, in my estimation, is less well told, even if held in higher estimation by those same historians. Kelly has set out to right that wrong.

The book focuses on Paine’s influence on and participation in the Revolutionary War. Born in England, Paine did not even emigrate to America until 1774 but went on to become the author of several pamphlets that solidified revolutionary feeling and helped to move public opinion in the colonies toward the inevitability of independence from the Mother Country.

His first pamphlet to sweep the nation (to go viral as we would say today) was called Common Sense. In plain language easily understood by the common man Paine laid out the argument for independence. The pamphlet hit at a time when such ideas were brewing but few would dare to talk about them openly. But the timing was perfect, and the influence of his ideas can be seen in the Declaration of Independence itself which echoes some of the language Paine used.

Later, when things looked pretty grim for the revolutionaries, and many feared that the British soldiers would triumph, Paine produced a series of pamphlets under the title American Crisis. The first of that series begins with words many still know by heart - “These are the times that try men’s souls.”

Tom Paine’s War tells the story of Thomas Paine, his early life, his two marriages, his career failures, and his blossoming as a “barroom debater” all while still in England. Then, his friendship with Benjamin Franklin, then residing in England, his emigration to America, his success there in magazine publishing, his friendship with George Washington, and the influence his words had on both the start of the revolution and it’s continuing momentum. The subtitle of the book is “The Words that Rallied a Nation”, and for once the subtitle is right on the money.

RATING: Four Stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐

RATING COMMENTS: Another excellent book by Jack Kelly. Thomas Paine’s words really did rally our nation at its birth.

WHERE I GOT MY COPY: I read an advance reviewer’s copy of the ebook from NetGalley and the publisher, St. Martin’s Press.