Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

Back of this trick was a great deal of serious study on the effects of pouring oil on troubled waters. In his youth he had read in Pliny how sailors of ancient Greece had smoothed a choppy sea in this manner. On one of his ocean crossings an old sea captain told him that Bermuda fishermen poured oil on rough waters so they could see the fish strike. Subsequently, he had made his own experiments, finding that one teaspoon of oil would calm a pond several yards across.

If such a minute bit of oil would still a pond, would not several barrels of oil level out the surf, making it possible for boats to land with less danger? He tried out this theory the next year at Portsmouth, England. With a local sea captain he took off on a barge one windy day, sprinkling oil on the waves from a large stone bottle. The experiment was only partially successful. Oil did not diminish the height or force of the surf on the shore, but he had the satisfaction of seeing that where the oil had spread, the surface of the water was not wrinkled by smaller waves or whitecaps.

His scientific and cultural interests were as varied as life itself. He was in turn occupied with the nature of mastodon tusks and teeth which a friend sent to London, with the transit of Venus, the causes of lead poisoning, population increase, geology, salt mines, Scottish tunes, whirlwinds and water-spouts, and the science of phonetics—the need of reforms to reduce the “disorderly confusion in English spelling”—and the curious fact that flies apparently drowned in a bottle of Madeira wine might sometimes be brought back to life.

His observations on all these matters were published in _Letters on Philosophical Subjects_, and added to the fourth edition of “Experiments and Observations on Electricity.” Barbeu Dubourg, a Parisian printer, issued a French translation in two handsome volumes, which included “The Way to Wealth,” under the French title, “_Le Moyen de s’Enricher_.”

Philadelphia, wrote Dubourg in his preface, was founded in the midst of the savages of America by William Penn, a man wiser than the Spartan hero Lycurgus. In less than a century the city had gone far beyond the ancient world in the practice of the purest virtues and the most useful arts. Benjamin Franklin, scientist, statesman, and sage, had now brought this heroic age to troubled Europe.

The legend of Benjamin Franklin, which would mount to greater heights in France than anywhere else in the world, was already in the making.

11
THE TERRIBLE HUTCHINSON LETTERS

At sixty-seven, Franklin had an expression at once benign, kindly, and humorous. His years in England had subtly altered his appearance and his manner. He dressed with elegance in a smooth wig and fashionable ruffles, and he was equally at ease with eleven-year-old Kitty Shipley or the King’s ministers. During the London season, he set out each afternoon in his coach, often with Temple, his lively grandson, to leave his card or pay calls on members of Parliament or other influential persons whom he wished to win over to the American cause.

In the year 1773, he was most concerned with the threat of the British troops still stationed in Boston three years after the “Boston Massacre.” Wherever he thought it might help, he argued the folly of treating Bostonians like troublesome children. “I am in perpetual anxiety lest the mad measure of mixing soldiers among a people whose minds are in such a state of irritation, may be attended with some sudden mischief,” he wrote his Boston correspondent, Thomas Cushing.

One day, during a conversation on this subject, a British “gentleman of character and distinction” told him that he was wrong to blame the English for the troops in Boston. They had been requested by some of his most respectable fellow countrymen.

Franklin was incredulous. The gentleman then turned over to him some letters written between 1767 and 1769 by two Massachusetts Crown officers, both native Americans, Thomas Hutchinson and Andrew Oliver. In effect, it was as Franklin had been told. Hutchinson, and Oliver too, pleaded of England “a firm hand,” even armed forces, to keep order. They demanded for Massachusetts “an abridgment of what are called English liberties.”

By the time Franklin read these letters, Oliver was lieutenant governor of Massachusetts and Thomas Hutchinson was governor. Hutchinson had as an excuse that his house had been ransacked during the Stamp Act furor. This did not alter that he had been undermining the work of colonial agents and betraying the very people he had been chosen to govern.

In his position as agent for Massachusetts, Franklin knew he must warn their Assembly. After some reflection, he sent the letters to Thomas Cushing, asking that they be returned to him after Cushing and members of the Assembly Committee of Correspondence, a small and trusted group, had studied them. He further explained that he could not reveal the source of the letters and that he was not at liberty to make them public. He had no scruples about showing the letters since they were political, not personal, but he had to protect the “gentleman of distinction” who had entrusted them with him.

In due time the letters reached Cushing, who followed Franklin’s instructions. Neither Cushing nor anyone else who saw the letters could prevent their being talked about. In June 1773, Samuel Adams, one of the most ardent of Boston patriots, read them to a secret session of the Massachusetts Assembly. Someone took the responsibility of having them copied and printed. In the public uproar that ensued, the Assembly prepared a petition to the King to remove both Hutchinson and Oliver from office.

Perhaps it was for the best, Franklin decided when the news reached him. Without reproaches, he wrote Cushing that he was grateful his own name had not been mentioned, “though I hardly expect it.” He only hoped that the letters’ publication would not “occasion some riot of mischievous consequence.”

He was continuing his own methodical and unrelenting pressure to bring reason to the English government. In September 1773, an anonymous and stinging satire appeared in the _Public Advertiser_ under the title “Rules by Which a Great Empire may be Reduced to a Small One.” Among the rules cited were:

Forget that their colonies were founded at the expense of the
colonists;

Resent their importance to the Empire;

Suppose them always inclined to revolt, and treat them accordingly;

Choose “inferior, rapacious and pettifogging” men for governors and
judges in the provinces;—and reward these men for having governed
badly.

In all, the “Rules” encompassed every fault and folly of which England was guilty in its treatment of the American colonies. Ministers and members of Parliament could not doubt that the piece came from the quill pen of Benjamin Franklin. It was followed by an even more devastating attack on British policy: “Edict by the King of Prussia.”

Frederick the Great of Prussia, the “Edict” announced, was now taking up his claims on the province of Great Britain, which had been settled originally by German colonists and had never been emancipated. Hence the Prussian government had the right to exact revenue from its “British colonies,” to lay duties on all goods they exported or imported, to forbid all manufacturing in these “colonies.”

From now on, should the British need hats, they must send raw materials to Prussia, which would manufacture the hats and let the British purchase them. (This was exactly the manner in which the British were preventing American manufacture.) Next, Prussia planned to ship to “the island of Great Britain” all the “thieves, highway and street robbers, housebreakers, and murderers” whom they “do not think fit here to hang.” (Here Franklin returned to an old grievance—Britain’s using the colonies as a dumping ground for convicts. In 1751 he had proposed tongue-in-cheek to send American rattlesnakes to England in exchange.)

He was visiting Lord Le Despencer when a servant brought to the breakfast table the newspaper which had printed the “Edict” hoax. A fellow guest named Paul Whitehead read the first paragraphs and exploded:

“Here’s the King of Prussia claiming a right to this kingdom.... I dare say we shall hear by next post that he is upon his march with one hundred thousand men to back this.”

Franklin kept a straight face. Whitehead read on until, as absurdities piled up, it dawned on him that he had been taken:

“I’ll be hanged, Franklin, if this is not some of your American jokes upon us.”

They admitted he had made his point very cleverly and all had a good laugh.

But neither the “Rules” nor the “Edict” persuaded Parliament and the ministry to change their ways. Colonial resentment focused on the tax on tea, which small as it was, remained a “splinter in the unhealed wound.” In Boston, on December 16, 1773, fifty citizens, dressed as Mohawk Indians, defiantly dumped 342 chests of British tea into the ocean. Parliament, when the news reached London, acted swiftly. Until restitution was made for the tea, the port of Boston was to be closed. Four more regiments under General Thomas Gage were sent to keep order. Boston became an occupied city, unable to conduct its commerce and faced with financial ruin.

Pay for the tea, Franklin urged his Boston colleagues. The Boston Tea Party was an act of lawlessness which could only harm the cause of the colonies. Just as the colonists were unaware of the problems that faced him daily in England, so he was too far away to appreciate the fire of indignation that was sweeping America.

In the meantime a scandal had erupted in London as a result of the publication of Governor Hutchinson’s letters. Two gentlemen, William Whately and John Temple, had each accused the other of making the letters public. They carried the argument to the newspapers, and then Temple challenged Whately to a duel. It was fought at Hyde Park on December 11, with pistols and swords. Whately was wounded. Neither party was satisfied.

Franklin was out of town when the duel took place. After he heard about it, he realized what he had to do. On Christmas Day, a letter signed by him appeared in the _Public Advertiser_, which said that both Whately and Temple were “ignorant and innocent” of the publication of the Hutchinson letters, that he was the one who had obtained them and sent them to Boston. The entire blame was his. He did not give the name of the man who had turned the letters over to him. This secret he carried to his grave.

How many high-placed persons in England were waiting to get something on this imperturbable Philadelphian! How many resented the way, like Socrates’ gadfly, he forced them to admit what they did not want to admit, and pestered them eternally with his troublesome colonies. Now they would have their revenge. Franklin knew his admission would bring wrath on his head. He had not long to wait.

On January 29, 1774, he was summoned to the Cockpit Tavern, to a meeting of the King’s Privy Council for Plantation Affairs. The subject given was the petition of the Massachusetts Assembly for the removal from office of Andrew Oliver and Governor Hutchinson. Franklin’s friends had informed him already that the petition was to be denied. There were even rumors that his papers might be seized and himself thrown in prison. He was prepared for the worst.

He arrived on time, dressed in a suit of figured Manchester velvet, wearing an old-fashioned curled wig, and carrying the same cane with which he had once quieted the ripples on the stream at Lord Shelburne’s estate.

Thirty-six members of the Privy Council were seated around a large table. Among them were the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, the Duke of Queensberry, Lord Dartmouth, whom he had found sympathetic; Lord Hillsborough, who hated and feared him; and the Earl of Sandwich (from whom the word “sandwich” was derived); the London head of the post office, a conceited individual who disliked everything that Franklin stood for. Among them, Franklin could be positive of only one friend—Lord Le Despencer.

A few spectators had been admitted, including Joseph Priestley, the scientist, and Edmund Burke, the Irish peer. They stood behind the table since there were no extra chairs. No one offered Franklin a chair either. For the entire hearing he stood by the fireplace, facing the councilors.

It opened with a reading of the Massachusetts petition and of the Hutchinson and Oliver letters. Franklin’s lawyer, John Dunning, appealed to the King’s “wisdom and goodness” to favor the petition and remove the two men from their posts, as a gesture to quiet colonial unrest. Then Alexander Wedderburn, lawyer for Hutchinson, took over.

His speech, which lasted an hour, was from beginning to end a tirade against Franklin. Franklin could have got hold of the controversial letters only by fraudulent or corrupt means, he said. His own letter, clearing Whately and Temple of blame, was “impossible to read without horror.” Franklin was “a receiver of goods dishonorably come by.” He had duped the “innocent, well-meaning farmers” of the Massachusetts Assembly.

Wedderburn’s accusations grew wilder as he warmed to his subject. Franklin wanted to become governor himself, he stated categorically. That was why he had taken on himself “to furnish materials for dissensions; to set at variance the different branches of the legislature; and to irritate and incense the minds of the King’s subjects against the King’s governor.”

While Wedderburn continued to spew forth his poisonous invective, Franklin stood stoically, his face impassive, seemingly unaware either of the triumphal smirks of his enemies or the compassionate glances of his friends. People agreed later that his silence, in face of the screams of his adversary, showed him the stronger man. When the hearing was over, he went quietly home alone.

He made no answer to Wedderburn, nor even to those closest to him did he indicate that the attack rankled. To Thomas Cushing he wrote, “Splashes of dirt thrown upon my character I suffered while fresh to remain. I did not choose to spread by endeavouring to remove them, but relied on the vulgar adage that they would all rub off when they were dry.”

The day after the hearing he was notified of his dismissal as deputy postmaster-general of the colonies. This was a severe blow, for he had prided himself on the efficient work he had done in this service. Then, on February 7, 1774, the King formally rejected the Massachusetts Assembly petition to remove Hutchinson and Oliver.

Seemingly Franklin’s usefulness as a provincial agent was ended. He thought of going home but decided against it. Critical days were ahead. He felt he might still, in spite of his disgrace, find ways of helping his country.

Except that he had no direct dealings with the ministry or Parliament, his life went on as before. He discussed scientific matters with Joseph Priestley, among them the phenomenon of marsh gas. When Polly Hewson’s husband died, leaving her with three children, he grieved with and for her. He worried lest William be removed from the governorship of New Jersey as further punishment to him, but this did not happen.

In September 1774, a dark-haired youngish man, who spoke in the Quaker manner, paid him a visit. His name was Thomas Paine, he said. He was fascinated by Franklin’s work in electricity and gave evidence of being well informed himself on scientific matters. He had also done a bit of writing, particularly a quite eloquent petition to Parliament on the plight of the excisemen, a petition that had cost him his own job in the excise service.

He had a dream of going to America, Paine confided. Would Dr. Franklin be good enough to give him some advice?

Franklin rarely refused such requests. In this case, he was sufficiently impressed to write a note of recommendation to his son-in-law Richard Bache. He could not guess the enormous favor he was doing his homeland by sending Thomas Paine to America’s shores.

Massachusetts had rejected Franklin’s advice to pay for the Boston Tea Party. Other colonies were coming to the rescue of beleaguered Boston. Connecticut sent flocks of sheep. From Virginia came flour. South Carolina gave rice. Franklin was delighted; at last the colonies were helping each other, nearly twenty years after he had proposed a union at the Albany conference.

When the First Continental Congress met in Philadelphia in May 1774, he was full of praise for “the coolness, temper, and firmness of the American proceedings,” and he was all in favor of a strong boycott of British manufacturers. “If America would save for three or four years the money she spends in fashions and fineries and fopperies of this country she might buy the whole Parliament, ministers and all.”

At last his beloved colonies were learning the value of concerted and dignified action, so much more effective, in his thinking, than mob actions.

As the crisis deepened, one by one important statesmen sought him out and almost humbly asked his advice as to what they should do. The great William Pitt summoned him in August. Did he think the colonists would go as far as to ask for independence? Franklin assured him, truthfully, that he “never had heard in any conversation, from any person drunk or sober, the least expression of a wish for a separation or hint that such a thing would be advantageous to America.”

He received an invitation to play chess with the sister of Admiral Lord Richard Howe. At their second session, Miss Howe pressed him to tell her what should be done to settle the dispute between Great Britain and the colonies. “They should kiss and be friends,” he said lightly. Nor would he be more explicit when she brought Admiral Lord Howe to talk with him. In his heart he knew it was now too late to repair the many blunders on the part of Parliament and the King.

On December 18, 1774, he received the Declaration of Rights and Grievances, a petition from the First Continental Congress to George III. The King, who was having the first of those attacks which would end in insanity, ignored it completely. With William Pitt, Admiral Lord Howe, and other of the more reasonable officials, Franklin spent long hours trying to work out a compromise that would keep the peace. It was all in vain.

In the midst of these labors, word reached him that his faithful Debby had died of a stroke on December 19—the day after the arrival of the petition.

There would be no more of her warm and loving and atrociously spelled letters to keep him informed about his relatives: “I donte know wuther you have bin told that Cosin Benney Mecome and his Lovely wife and five Dafters is come here to live and work Jurney worke I had them to Dine and drink tee yisterday....”

Or to lament the lack of news from him: “I have bin verey much distrest a bout [you] as I did not [get] oney letter nor one word from you nor did I hear one word from oney bodey that you wrote to so I muste submit and indever to submit to what I am to bair.”

Letters which she might sign “Your afeckshonet wife,” or when she was less careful “Your ffeckshonot wife.” He would miss them, but above all he would miss the assurance that she was there waiting for him, loyal and cheerful, to greet him whenever he returned from his long voyage.

He stayed on in England only a few months longer. His last day in London he spent with Joseph Priestley. Together they read papers from America, and now and then tears ran down Franklin’s cheeks. He was sure America would win if there were a war, he told Priestley, but it would take at least ten years.

On March 25, 1775, he and his grandson Temple embarked on the _Pennsylvania Packet_. The crossing took six weeks and the weather was pleasant. In the first half of it, he wrote out the complicated story of his recent dealings with the ministry in his last futile and desperate efforts to prevent war. The last part of the journey he devoted to studying the nature of the Gulf Stream, taking its temperature two to four times a day, and noting that its water had a special color of its own and “that it does not sparkle in the night.”

Thus he was able to enjoy a brief interlude in the world of nature between the bitter disputes he left behind and the struggle that lay ahead.

12
BEGINNING OF A LONG WAR

He reached Philadelphia on May 5, 1775—an elderly widower, nearly seventy, grave and saddened by the loss of his wife, by the crisis to his country which his many years of negotiations could not forestall. Sally and Richard Bache took him to the house on Market Street which he had designed but never occupied. Two small grandchildren whom he had never seen, Benjamin and William Bache, were waiting to embrace him and to greet their youthful English cousin, Temple. Franklin’s friends of the Junto and political companions were on hand to give him the big news.

On April 19, while he was on the high seas, that was when it had happened. General Sir William Howe (another brother of the chess-playing Miss Howe), who was now stationed in Boston, had sent some 800 British soldiers to Concord, where the Massachusetts Committee of Safety had a store of arms and ammunition. The Massachusetts Minutemen, forewarned by Paul Revere, had tried to stop them at Lexington. The Redcoats, who claimed that the colonials fired first, had killed eight and left ten wounded, then pushed onwards. It was at Concord where for the first time in America the King’s subjects shot at the King’s troops. The return of the Redcoats was a rout, with farmers and tradesmen firing behind every barn and haystack. General Howe announced 73 of his men slain and 174 wounded.

A rebellion was under way and there was no turning back.

On his second day home, Franklin was chosen as a Pennsylvania delegate to the Second Continental Congress. It opened on May 10 in the Philadelphia State House; delegates from all the colonies attended. In both years and experience, Franklin was the senior member.

Colonel George Washington, a big quiet man of forty-three, wore his colonial uniform, as if guessing the heavy responsibility ahead of him as Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Armies. On the day he left for Cambridge to assume his post, word came of the valiant fight at Breed Hill (which history would call the Battle of Bunker Hill). Another tall Virginian joined the Congress, red-haired Thomas Jefferson, thirty-two years old, lawyer and college graduate and of a wealthy and cultured family. In spite of differences in age and background, Franklin found him a kindred spirit. Jefferson, like himself, was a scientist, inventor, man of letters.

In July, Congress voted to send another petition to their “gracious sovereign,” asking for a redress of grievances. Franklin knew in advance that this “olive branch” petition was a waste of paper, but he did not voice his objections. Let these impulsive young men of Congress find out for themselves that the weak and stubborn George III was not on their side. They would likely not have taken his word anyway.

In sessions of Congress he spoke less than any man present. In his school days he had learned a jingle: “A man of words and not of deeds / Is like a garden full of weeds.” Better to show one’s patriotism in action than talk.

Congress did its work largely by committees. Franklin served on a committee for the making of paper money, on committees to protect colony trade, to investigate lead ore deposits, and to study the cheapest and easiest way to procure salt. He was on another committee which considered, and turned down, a reconciliation plan submitted by Lord North. He was one of three commissioners appointed to handle Indian affairs in Pennsylvania and Virginia.

On July 25, the Congress voted him postmaster-general of the colonies. The postal system which he set up with his son-in-law Richard Bache was so efficient and comprehensive that it served as a model to modern times, giving Franklin right to the title, “Father of the American Post Office.”

For local defense, the Pennsylvania Assembly set up a Committee of Safety, appointing Franklin as president. Among his duties were the reorganizing of the Philadelphia militia, selecting officers for armed boats, obtaining medicines for the soldiers. He designed a special pike—a long wooden pole with pointed metal head—to be used in hand-to-hand fighting as a substitute for bayonets, which the colonists did not have. Half-seriously, he proposed use of bows and arrows, in lieu of more powerful weapons. To keep British warships from coming within firing range of Philadelphia, he had built huge contraptions of logs and iron, called _Chevaux de Frise_, to be sunk in the Delaware River.

On his papers and plans he worked late night after night. He met with the Committee of Safety at six each morning. From nine to four he sat in Congress. It was small wonder that delegate John Adams would catch him napping during the hot and often wearisome sessions. No one knows how he found time for his postmaster duties.

Could anything more be expected of old Ben Franklin who twenty-eight years before had decided to retire, since he had enough money to live on, and no man needed more than enough? In all those years he had continued to work for his city, his province, the thirteen colonies. His greatest services still lay ahead.

He was sure America would win—eventually. He had no illusions about the hardships involved. England was the most powerful country in the world, swollen with the glory of its victories over France and Spain. Its superb navy was rivaled by none. Its army was well-trained, well-armed, disciplined, and numerous. The Americans had to start from scratch.

The embargo against English goods had boomeranged sadly. America was still an agricultural country with little manufacturing of its own. There were shortages of necessities and of luxuries. That year Abigail Adams sent a tearful request to her husband, John, to buy her a box of pins in Philadelphia—even if it cost ten dollars.

The most urgent need was for arms and ammunition. From General Washington at Cambridge came letter after letter, pleading for them. One note, confessing that he had no more than half a pound of gunpowder per soldier, fell into the hands of General Howe—who thought it was a trick. (It was not until March 1776 that Henry Knox brought down guns captured at Ticonderoga and Washington could frighten Howe and his troops from Boston.)

One of Franklin’s many Congressional committees was formed to promote the manufacture of saltpeter for gunpowder. Progress was slow. Throughout the war, the colonies produced only about fifty tons of gunpowder. Obviously home manufacture was not the answer.

In July, Congress had a visitor from Bermuda, Colonel Henry Tucker, who headed the island’s local militia. Tucker was sympathetic to the Americans as were many Bermudians. There was for a time talk of Bermuda being the fourteenth colony to revolt against British domination. It had previously been dependent on America for foodstuffs, but as it was a British possession shipments had been stopped. Colonel Tucker had come to plead that the ban be lifted.

Franklin found occasion to talk with Tucker privately and one thing the Bermudian told him interested him greatly. At the Royal Arsenal at St. George, there was a large stock of gunpowder—and no guard.

On Franklin’s recommendation, Congress put through a blanket order to exchange food for guns with any vessel arriving on the American coast, an order which evaded the controversial point of trading with an enemy. Bermuda was promised not only food, but candles, soap and lumber. There was another deal with Colonel Tucker, about which only those intimately concerned were informed.

In August, two ships set sail for Bermuda—the _Lady Catherine_ from Virginia and the _Savannah Pacquet_ from South Carolina. At Mangrove Bay, their crews disembarked, to be welcomed by friendly Bermudians, including the son of Colonel Tucker. Bermudians and American seamen boarded small boats and sailed along the coast to St. George, where, on the estate of Bermuda’s Governor James Bruere, the Royal Arsenal was located.

The raiders waited until the governor, his fourteen children, and his numerous watchdogs were all asleep. They proceeded so stealthily that not even a dog was wakened. A sailor, lowered into the arsenal through a vent in the roof, unlocked the doors from inside. Barrels of powder were rolled to the waiting boats. Then the party took off.

Twelve days later the _Lady Catherine_ arrived at Philadelphia with 1,800 pounds of gunpowder, while the _Savannah Pacquet_ delivered its cargo at Charleston.

This was Franklin’s first victory in his battle for ammunition. Although Governor Bruere, on discovering his loss, promptly sent for British warships to patrol the island, Bermudian sloops continued to get through to America, and American ships managed regularly to maneuver around the patrol. The trade continued for the benefit of both Americans and Bermudians.

In the midst of this hectic summer, Franklin spent one long and miserable evening with William, the son whom he had made part of his life as much as any father ever had. He had hoped his flesh and blood would share his burning indignation at English oppression. The most bitter disillusion of his life now faced him. The governor of New Jersey haughtily denied any sympathy for the “American rabble.” His loyalty was to the Crown, and that was that.

Franklin continued to write affectionately to Temple, who had gone to stay with his father, but the breach between him and his first-born son remained deep.

The Bermuda raid was Franklin’s first step toward a larger plan. The Secret Committee to further importation of war supplies was set up on September 18, 1775. Among those serving with him was Robert Morris, the prosperous merchant who became the financial genius of the American Revolution. The Committee was granted substantial sums of money and wide powers. It made contracts with American merchants who, with permits issued by Congress, took cargoes to the West Indies, Martinique, Santo Domingo, and even Europe, bringing back arms and ammunition.

Part of the Committee’s work was to get in touch with merchants from many countries. England was no exception. The friendships Franklin had formed among English merchants when he was seeking repeal of the Stamp Act now proved their value. These merchants knew they could trust him and were not adverse to giving a helping hand to the Americans and making a profit at the same time.

There was in the West Indies a tiny island no more than seven or eight miles square called St. Eustatius, a dependency of Holland and an international free port. Statia, as the Americans called it, had long been a market for smuggled goods from every corner of the globe. Now it became an arsenal to which merchants from Holland, France, England, and other nations brought war materials to be picked up by American vessels. The British government, through its excellent espionage system, knew what was happening but could not prevent it.

“Powder cruises,” these ventures were called. They were only one phase of American sea activity. There was in time a Continental Navy, which was never very effective. Individual colonies had their own navies. There were also the romantic privateers, privately owned vessels with commissions from Congress, which by the first twenty months of the war had captured over 700 English vessels—and made fortunes for their owners and crews. The powder cruises alone were planned for the sole purpose of getting war materials for the fighting forces.

They were a long-range project. It took time to fit and man and load the ships, more time for them to make their journeys and return. Not for two years would the Americans have enough ammunition to win a major engagement. Before this happened, there were hard days ahead.

On October 4, Franklin rode off to visit Washington’s camp at Cambridge, on a Congressional mission with Thomas Lynch of South Carolina and Benjamin Harrison of Virginia. If he was a little flabbergasted at the motley assembly of backwoodsmen, farmers and teenage youths to whom Washington was trying to teach military discipline, he did not say so. These were his people. He was proud of them and what they had set out to do.

On his return, he stopped in Warwick, Rhode Island, where his sister Jane Mecom, an old woman now, had taken refuge from British-occupied Boston with their old friends, the Greenes. Besides himself, she was the only one of Josiah Franklin’s seventeen children who was still living. Happily, she did not yet know that her Boston home was being looted in her absence.

“Sorrows roll over me like the waves of the sea,” she had written Franklin a few years before on the death of her adored daughter Polly. She was worried now about her son Benjamin, who was unable to hold a job and whose wife and children were destitute (the same whom Debby had written her husband that she had had to tea). Only a few months later, his mind completely gone, Benjamin wandered out in the dark, never to be seen again.

In spite of the repeated blows of a cruel fate, Jane had remained warmhearted and thoughtful. Franklin, who had the tenderest affection for her, brought her back to Philadelphia, where she stayed with him for the next year. Always he had humored her, given her and her inevitably needy family material help, written her long and loving letters—and occasionally fretted at her constant solicitude.

On this same trip he distributed a hundred pounds, sent by English friends to aid the wounded of Lexington and Concord and the widows and orphans of those who had been killed. It is possible that one of the generous donors was Joseph Priestley, to whom Franklin wrote about this time:

“Britain, at the expense of three millions, has killed one hundred and fifty Yankees in this campaign, which is twenty thousand pounds a head.... During the same time sixty thousand children have been born in America.”

His letter was quoted throughout England, where the hearts of many lay not with their own corrupt Parliament, but with those who had the courage to oppose it.

13
THE SPLENDID WORD INDEPENDENCE

As Franklin had foreseen, the King paid no heed to the “olive branch” petition of the Second Continental Congress. By Royal proclamation all Americans were declared Rebels. The British had burned Charlestown in June and Falmouth in October 1775. It was hinted they were buying mercenaries from German princes. That foreigners should be paid by the English to kill English subjects seemed the greatest insult of all.

Franklin composed a short letter to William Strahan, his English printer friend:

Mr. Strahan:

You are a member of Parliament, and one of that majority which has
doomed my country to destruction. You have begun to burn our towns and
murder our people. Look upon your hands! They are stained with the
blood of your relations. You and I were long friends. You are now my
enemy, and I am

Yours,
B. Franklin.

He did not send this cruel note, but instead wrote Strahan a warm and cordial letter which Strahan answered in kind. Perhaps he had written the first one to see how it sounded and when he read it over did not like it. Throughout the conflict he found ways of carrying on a correspondence with those he cherished in England.

On November 29, 1775, the Congressional Committee of Secret Correspondence was formed with five members—Benjamin Franklin and John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, Benjamin Harrison of Virginia, Thomas Johnson of Maryland, and John Jay of New York. Its assignment was to establish closer relations with foreign nations, and where possible to make allies of those nations. With these duties, the Committee of Secret Correspondence became the predecessor of the United States Department of State.

As a member of the new committee, Franklin wrote his friend Charles Dumas, a Swiss journalist with many political connections: “We wish to know whether, if, as seems likely to happen, we should be obliged to break off all connection with Britain, and declare ourselves an independent people, there is any state or power in Europe, who would be willing to enter into an alliance with us for the benefits of our commerce.” In a similar vein he sounded out Barbeu Dubourg, his Paris printer, who had, as he knew, friends high in the French government.

The French were already watching America with interest. The harsh terms of the 1763 treaty with Great Britain still rankled. They welcomed any struggle that would involve England’s military forces, particularly if it could be prolonged to seriously weaken her.

In December 1775, a certain Monsieur Achard de Bonvouloir, allegedly an Antwerp merchant, arrived in Philadelphia. Through a French bookseller he arranged to meet Franklin, to whom he admitted that he had connections at the Court of Versailles. In truth he was a French agent, sent by Louis XVI’s foreign minister, Count Charles Gravier de Vergennes, to appraise the American situation.

Franklin arranged for Bonvouloir to meet with the Committee of Secret Correspondence at a quiet house in the outskirts of Philadelphia. It turned out to be a very crucial meeting. The French government did not object to American ships coming into her ports to pick up cargoes, Bonvouloir said. If the British complained of the presence of these ships as a breach of neutrality, the government would simply plead ignorance of what was going on. But in return for this welcome assurance of free trade, the French wanted to make sure that America intended to declare its independence from England.

Independence was a word as yet heard rarely. Though Franklin had mentioned its possibility in his letter to Dumas, he knew that few other members of Congress, much less the American people, were ready for such a drastic step. The urgent need for French cooperation made him speak out boldly.

Certainly the Americans were going to separate from England, he told Bonvouloir blandly. The country was behind the war to a man. Everything was going splendidly. General Washington’s army was growing.

There was exaggeration in his statements. Not only was talk of independence rare, but America was peppered with Loyalists, those who, like Franklin’s own son, were opposed to action against the British Crown. While new recruits were joining Washington, many simply walked off when their time of service was up, and some were deserting outright. But Franklin’s words were a magnificent prophecy. He was speaking from his own profound faith in his countrymen, and his confidence was contagious. Bonvouloir sent back a glowing report to the French minister Vergennes; France’s secret alliance with America began from that time.

If Americans were not more solidly behind the rebellion, it was that their emotions had not been deeply aroused. Was not the chief dispute a matter of taxes? No one likes to pay taxes, but though people were ready to parade and protest against them, not all were willing to risk their lives rather than pay them. It took the protégé of Franklin, Thomas Paine, to point out that the rebellion was for something much more important than taxes.

Paine had settled in Philadelphia, taken a job with the _Pennsylvania Magazine_, and had, in the few months he had been in America, written some fine articles, among them one of the first attacks on slavery to appear in the American press. Franklin saw him in October and proposed that he write “a history of the present transactions,” an account of events that had led to the present crisis. Paine had only looked mysterious, saying that he was working on something.

Then in January 1776, Franklin received the first copy off the press of a pamphlet titled “Common Sense.” Though it was published anonymously, “written by an Englishman,” he guessed easily who had written it.

“Common Sense,” written simply and clearly, was a passioned and reasoned plea for secession from England. It showed Americans how much they had to gain from independence and how little there was to lose. It made them hold up their heads with the pride of being American and convinced them they were fighting for the most precious thing in the world—their freedom. There is no estimating the enormous service done by “Common Sense” in uniting the colonies in a common cause.

In February, Franklin sent in his resignation to the Pennsylvania Assembly and its Committee of Safety: “Aged as I am, I feel myself unequal to do so much business....” At the same time he accepted another arduous assignment from Congress, to head a delegation to Canada to try and win French Canadians to the side of the colonies.

Two expeditions had already been sent to wrest Quebec from the British, one under General Richard Montgomery, the other under Colonel Benedict Arnold. Both had failed. Montgomery had been killed. Arnold, severely wounded, had retreated with his battered army to Montreal.

Franklin, aged seventy, set out on his mission the last week of March 1776. There were stops in New York, Albany, and in Saratoga where the snow was still six inches deep. From there they rode horseback across to the Hudson and proceeded up the river in rowboats to Fort Edward. “I began to apprehend that I have undertaken a fatigue that at my time of life may prove too much for me,” Franklin wrote Josiah Quincy.

They sailed along the coast of Lake George in open flatboats, fighting their way through ice. When the cold grew too bitter, they stopped to make fires, thaw out, and brew tea. By April 25 they had reached Lake Champlain, and in clumsy wagons drove over bad roads to the St. Lawrence, where they again took to boats. Their hard journey ended at Montreal on the 29th. Benedict Arnold, now a general, came to meet them, and there was a cannon salute to the “Committee of the Honourable Continental Congress,” and to the “celebrated Dr. Franklin.”

The conferences the next day proved what Franklin had doubtless suspected. The Canadians for the most part found British rule preferable to French rule and were not dissatisfied. The majority were Catholic and as such hostile to the colonies because of unpleasant things that had been said about their faith.

General Arnold and his men were penniless. Franklin loaned them about 350 pounds of his own money in gold. On May 6, word came that the British were sending reinforcements from England. Franklin guessed that the Americans would be driven from Canada; it happened just a month later. He stayed on until May 11, then, realizing nothing more could be done, set out for home.

He was in New York by the 27th, as worn out and ill as though the vain mission had drained the last bit of his strength. His health returned slowly. From Philadelphia, on June 21, he wrote Washington that gout had kept him from “Congress and company”—that he knew little of what had passed except that “a declaration of independence was in the making.”

To this development, the magic of “Common Sense” deserved credit. On April 12, North Carolina had instructed its delegates to Congress to vote for independence. Other colonies followed suit. On June 7, Richard Henry Lee introduced a resolution that “these colonies are, and of a right ought to be, free and independent states.” Three days later Congress appointed Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Robert Livingston of New York, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, and Benjamin Franklin, as a committee to prepare the declaration.

Jefferson produced the first draft. John Adams and Franklin made only a few alterations before it was submitted to Congress on June 18.

Congress nearly drove the Committee out of its mind with demands for extensive changes. One clause which attacked slavery was deleted altogether. When nerves grew tense, Franklin told a story.

There was a hatter he had once known who built a handsome signboard reading, “John Thompson, hatter, makes and sells hats for some ready money,” adorned with a picture of a hat. He submitted it to his friends for approval. One thought the word “hatter” unnecessary. Another that “makes” was not needed. A third thought “for ready money” useless, since no one then sold for credit. His next friend insisted “sells hats” be omitted; no one expected him to give them away. All that was left, when his friends were through with him, was his name “John Thompson” and the drawing of the hat.

The moral lesson implied may have speeded up the Congressional process. At length, the Declaration met with approval. John Hancock, in big black writing, affixed his signature first. According to legend, Hancock said, “We must be unanimous; there must be no pulling different ways; we must all hang together.” To which Franklin allegedly replied, “We must indeed all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

The ideas in the Declaration were not new. Many of them had been said by others, specifically by Thomas Paine, in phraseology not too different from Jefferson’s. The document, adopted by Congress on July 4, 1776, remained the greatest charter of freedom of all time.

In the midst of the wonder of independence, the New Jersey Assembly ordered the arrest of its governor, William Franklin, as a Loyalist, another sad blow for his father. He was first held under guard at his home, then taken to Connecticut, where he was kept for two years in the Litchfield jail or on parole. Temple came to live with his grandfather, attending the Pennsylvania Academy which Franklin had started so many years before.

The Declaration of Independence, splendid as it was, still was only words on paper. The reality was far in the future and the present looked very dark.

On and around Long Island was gathered the greatest British expeditionary force in history. Some 32,000 men (including German mercenaries whom the Americans called Hessians) and 500 vessels were there in command of General Sir William Howe who, after leaving Boston, had gone to Halifax for reinforcements. And in the harbor, a mighty fleet under his brother Admiral Lord Richard Howe. And in Manhattan, General George Washington with less than half as many men, ill-clad and hungry and a good portion too sick to fight.

To get a foothold on Long Island, Washington took half his army to Brooklyn Heights. The results were disastrous—a surprise attack by the British on August 27, brought American casualties, killed and wounded, to nearly two thousand. It was to the credit of Washington, and John Glover’s Marbleheaders and former Salem sailors, that boats were found to carry the survivors back to Manhattan under the cloak of night.

Why did not the Howe brothers pursue them then and there? They needed only to send a force up the Hudson or Long Island Sound to trap the Rebels and cut to pieces America’s principal army. Yet they dawdled a while. Why?

The truth was that Admiral Lord Howe, whom Franklin had first met at the home of his sister, had come in a dual role of warrior and peace ambassador. He was empowered to offer full pardon to all Rebels (with the secret exception of John Adams) and on his arrival had sent Franklin a flattering and friendly letter making a proposal for reconciliation—which Franklin, with the sanction of Congress, had turned down in an equally cordial missive.

Soon after the Battle of Long Island, Lord Howe sent another request to Philadelphia, by a paroled prisoner, General John Sullivan, for delegates to come and discuss a settlement of hostilities. Franklin, John Adams, and Edward Rutledge of South Carolina were chosen. They met Lord Howe and his staff on September 11, at a neglected house on Staten Island, in a room hung with moss and branches. Americans and British dined on cold ham, tongue, mutton, bread, and claret, all the while making polite conversation. Then they got to business. Lord Howe did most of the talking.

He felt for America as for a brother, he said, and should lament, as a brother, should America fall.

“My Lord, we will use our utmost endeavors to save your lordship that mortification,” Franklin said with a guileless smile.

“The King’s most earnest desire” was to make his American subjects happy, Howe continued. They would redress any real grievances. It was not money they wanted. America’s solid advantage to Great Britain was “her commerce, her strength, her men.”

“Aye, my Lord,” Franklin said, chuckling, “we have a pretty considerable manufactory of men.” He was referring not, as Howe’s secretary presumed, to the growing army, but to America’s rapidly increasing population.

Howe continued to plead for a resumption of the old relationship with England. Franklin told him firmly that was impossible. Had not their defenseless towns been burned in the midst of winter, Indians encouraged to massacre their farmers, and slaves to murder their masters—and now foreign mercenaries brought to deluge their settlements with blood? Ah no, after these atrocious injuries, there could be no return to their previous status.

The conference ended on this impasse.

Following this meeting, the British drove Washington north to Harlem Heights and on to White Plains. During the evacuation, New York caught fire and a third of it burned. No one ever knew who was responsible. The situation looked hopeless—unless substantial aid could be had from outside. And where could they go for such aid if not to France?

Congress chose three commissioners to represent America at the French court—Jefferson, Franklin, and Silas Deane of Connecticut, who was already in Paris. When Jefferson declined because of his wife’s health, Arthur Lee, cousin of “Light-Horse Harry” Lee of Virginia, was chosen in his place.

Before he left, Franklin appointed Richard Bache as deputy postmaster and turned over to Congress all the money he could raise as a loan—around 4,000 pounds. To his friend Joseph Galloway, he entrusted his trunk, containing his correspondence from the years he had spent in England, as well as the only existing manuscript of his _Autobiography_. He took with him two grandsons, eighteen-year-old Temple Franklin, and Benjamin Franklin Bache, age seven. They left on the sloop _Reprisal_, October 27, 1776.

Did the two youths know what a perilous journey they were making, with the English Navy prowling the seas in search of just such prizes as the _Reprisal_? Temple at least must have realized that if they were captured, his gray-haired grandfather would be considered a prize more valuable than any ship, and would certainly be hanged as a traitor. Not only was the crossing made safely but within two days of landing, the passengers had the thrill of witnessing their captain take two British “prizes,” which the _Reprisal_ on December 3 brought to Auray on the coast of Brittany.

14
FRANCE FALLS IN LOVE WITH AN AMERICAN

“The carriage was a miserable one,” Franklin wrote of the trip from Auray to the French town of Nantes, where the _Reprisal_ would have brought them had it not been for the two prizes. “With tired horses, the evening dark, scarce a traveler but ourselves on the road; and, to make it more comfortable, the driver stopped near a wood we were to pass through, to tell us that a gang of eighteen robbers infested that wood who but two weeks ago had murdered some travelers on that very spot.”

The Nantes townspeople were expecting the celebrated American and were waiting to greet him as he descended from his carriage.

Instead of a curled and powdered wig, he wore a fur cap over his thin gray straight hair, which he had adopted on shipboard for reasons of comfort. His costume was of brown homespun worsted, with white stockings and buckled shoes. He wore spectacles, because at seventy vanity was less important to him than seeing clearly. He carried a plain crabtree cane, such as any man could have cut for himself.

“A _primitive_!” people exclaimed. His simple attire delighted them all.

For his few days in Nantes he stayed with a commercial agent, Monsieur Gruet. A string of visitors appeared afternoon and evenings to pay their respects. He spoke little, knowing his French was imperfect, and his silence made him seem all the wiser. Everyone was filled with admiration. The women of the town paid him their greatest tribute in a _Coiffure à la Franklin_, dressing their hair in a high curly mass to resemble his fur cap.

His welcome at Nantes was only a preview of what attended him in Paris. His printer, Barbeu Dubourg, had prepared the populace by distributing circulars about his visit. For two days before his arrival, he was the sole subject of conversation in Paris cafés. Wherever he went, admiring citizens surrounded him, remarking on the simplicity of his costume and his unaffected manners. Silas Deane, who had received no such attention on his arrival, was amazed. But then, Deane had little love for the French people, had made no effort to learn their language, and was obviously unhappy in this foreign environment.