Robert Treat Paine was an American lawyer and politician. He was a signer of the Declaration of Independence.
Background
Robert Treat Paine was born on March 11, 1731 in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. He was the son of Reverend Thomas and Eunice (Treat) Paine, counted among his ancestors several leaders, ecclesiastical and political, of early New England. Robert was a direct descendant of Major Robert Treat, a colonial governor of Connecticut, and of Reverend Samuel Treat, one of the stalwart pioneers of Cape Cod. Other notable forebears were Stephen Hopkins, a signer of the Mayflower Compact, and Reverend Samuel Willard, acting president of Harvard College. A great-uncle, Josiah Willard, was for thirty years secretary of the province of Massachusetts Bay. The first of the Paine family known to be in America was Thomas Payne, who was admitted freeman of Plymouth Colony in 1639. Reverend Thomas Paine, Robert's father, left the pulpit to engage in mercantile affairs at Boston and Halifax, Nova Scotia. At the time of Robert's birth the Paine family lived at Boston in School Street on Beacon Hill, at the foot of which stood Old South Church, where the child was duly christened.
Education
Robert Treat Paine was dedicated to the ministry in accordance with family tradition. After taking highest rank at the Latin School, he entered Harvard College with the class of 1749 and was domiciled at the home of Reverend Nathaniel Appleton, college chaplain.
Career
After graduating Robert Treat Paine taught for a while, then turned to the study of theology. To repair frail health he took to the sea, sailing first to Carolina, then to the Azores, Spain, and England, and concluding with a whaling voyage to Greenland. Paine came upon the New England stage during the transition from an ecclesiastico-centric to a politico-centric form of government. As his forebears had upheld the best Puritan traditions under the old régime, he, true to his heritage, assumed similar responsibilities under the new order. By this time anxiety was subsiding in religious minds over the question as to whether or not the law was a holy calling, and in accordance with the trend of the period Paine gravitated quite naturally toward the Court House. Even while pursuing his theological studies he had begun to read law, and after a course with Benjamin Pratt was admitted to the bar in 1757.
He first hung out his shingle at Portland, but in 1761 moved his law books to Taunton. His zeal in the rising Patriot cause resulted in his selection as associate prosecuting attorney in the celebrated "Boston Massacre" trial. His argument with regard to the underlying issue, whether Parliament had a right to quarter a standing army in a town without its consent--carried his name throughout the closely attentive colonies.
He was elected to represent Taunton in the provincial assembly (1773, 1774, 1775, 1777, and 1778). When the call came in 1774 for a Continental Congress to meet at Philadelphia, he was chosen one of the five Massachusetts delegates. The fact that his name was known beyond local boundaries because of his part in the "Massacre" case, his ecclesiastical ancestry and classical education, his travels in the Carolinas, Pennsylvania, New York, and England, and his geographical eligibility as a representative of the foremost town of southern Massachusetts, all contributed to his choice.
At the first Congress he was appointed to the committees for drafting rules of debate and for fasting and prayer. In the second Congress, after the battle of Bunker Hill, when the creation and support of an army became the chief concern of Congress, he was appointed chairman of a committee charged with providing gunpowder. He was also a member of a committee to reorganize the militia. At first he was favorable toward the choice of Artemas Ward, a college-mate, for commander-in-chief of the army, but eventually, under the leadership of John Adams, he voted for Washington. In later years he used this vote for Washington as an argument in favor of a desired federal appointment. The final appeal to the Crown (July 1775) to preserve amity and good will with the Colonies, known as the Second Petition to the King or the "Olive Branch Petition, " bears the signature of Paine, who was one of the few to sign both the "Olive Branch Petition" and the Declaration of Independence.
He was reelected to the Congress in 1776 and served throughout that year. In recognition of his services at Crown Point, he was sent with a commission to negotiate a treaty with the Indians of upper New York; he also served on a committee to establish a hospital. Though elected to the Congress of 1777, he did not go to Philadelphia, but remained in Massachusetts, where he served as speaker of the assembly. He continued, however, to experiment in the manufacturing of gunpowder and served on the committee appointed by Congress in December 1777 to inquire into the failure of the Rhode Island Expedition. In this same year he was elected first attorney-general of Massachusetts. In 1775 he had declined appointment to the Massachusetts supreme court.
Robert Treat Paine was a member in 1778 of the committee of the legislature to prepare a draft of a state constitution and in 1779-1780 played an important part in drafting that document. He was also concerned with confiscating the estates of departed Loyalists and with suppressing the rebellion led by Daniel Shays of impoverished Revolutionary soldiers. Governor John Hancock, a life-long friend, twice appointed Paine to the new supreme court of Massachusetts. The first of these appointments (1783) he declined, preferring to continue as attorney-general because of the larger salary, but the second (1790) he accepted as becoming the dignity of his advancing years. The extensive area of Maine (then a part of Massachusetts) necessitated tedious travels into remote regions for a justice-in-eyre.
On one occasion Paine was arrested for traveling upon the Sabbath and roundly fined by a cross-roads court for violating a law he himself had been instrumental in framing. After fourteen years of service, increasing deafness hastened his retirement from the bench in 1804. He had moved his family to Boston in 1780, establishing a residence in the present Post Office Square, where a tablet indicates its site, and here he passed his sunset years, in daily converse with aristocratic fellow Federalists. Contemporary estimates of him usually remark upon his tendency to drollery, and his letters often display a whimsical extravagance of language. His life-long interest in science, especially in astronomy, led him to become a founder (1780) of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Achievements
Robert Treat Paine helped draft the state constitution in 1780 and found the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Religion
Paine participated actively in affairs of the church. He broke away from the old moorings of Calvinism under the rising tide of "Rationalism, " and found shelter in the harbor of Unitarianism.
Membership
Robert Treat Paine was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Connections
On March 15, 1770, Paine married Sally Cobb, sister of General David Cobb, a lieutenant-governor of Massachusetts. Of their eight children, Robert Treat Paine, 1773 - 1811, originally christened Thomas, became widely known as a poet.
