Sunday, April 4, 1790. Today, Vice President Adams writes his friend Benjamin Rush:
The History of our [American] Revolution will be one continued Lye from one end to the other. The essence of the whole will be that Dr. Franklin’s electrical Rod smote the Earth and out sprung General Washington. That Franklin electrified him with his rod—and thence forward these two conducted all the Policy, Negotiations, Legislatures and War … If this Letter should be preserved, and read in an hundred years hence, the Reader will say “the envy of this J. A. could not bear to think of the Truth …” …
Limited Monarchy is founded in Nature. No Nation can adore more than one Man at a time. It is a happy Circumstance that the object of our Devotion [George Washington] is so well deserving of it …
If I said in 1777 that “we should never be qualified for Republican Government till we were ambitious to be poor” I meant to … say that No Nation under Heaven ever was, now is, or ever will be qualified for a Republican Government, unless you mean … resulting from a Ballance of three powers, the Monarchical, Aristocratical, and Democratical. I meant more, and I repeat more explicitly, that Americans are particularly unfit for any Republic but the Aristo-Democratical-Monarchy …1607
Tuesday, April 13, 1790. Today, Benjamin Rush writes John Adams:
In my notebook, I have recorded a conversation that passed between Mr. Jefferson and myself on the 17th of March, of which you were the principal subject. We both deplored your attachment to monarchy and both agreed that you had changed your principles since the year 1776…1608
Saturday, April 17, 1790. Today, at his home in Franklin Court, Dr. Benjamin Franklin dies at the age of eighty-five. His twenty-year-old grandson, Benjamin Franklin Bache, is at his side.1609 Benny Bache:
He has left us, I hope, to live in a happier Country. If he only sleeps, he has forgotten his pain & sleeps quietly.—After an illness of about two Weeks added to his old Complaint he expired … [H]e could not resist; he struggled with death, however, longer than his Friends could wish.
Ten Days before his Death, when the Disorder was near its Height, he called me to his Bedside … From that day he grew worse & worse, and took but little Food.—In the morning of the 17th of April he refused all sustenance by shaking his head, for the Day before he spoke for the last time.—Whenever I approached his Bed, he held out his hand & having given him mine, he would take & hold it for some time … He did not change his Position that Day. And at a quarter before eleven at Night, his breathing was quicker & more feeble … This alarmed me and occasioned my calling my Father … but he came too late. My Grand Father gave a Sigh, breathed a few seconds & died without Pain.1610
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 21, 1790
The Pennsylvania Gazette
On Saturday night last departed this life, in the 85th year of his age, Dr. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, of this City. His remains will be interred THIS AFTERNOON, at four o’clock, on Christ-Church burial-ground.
Many years ago, Ben Franklin wrote his own epitaph:
The body of B.
Franklin Printer
(Like the Cover of an Old Book
Its Contents torn out
And stript of its Lettering & Gilding)
Lies here, Food for Worms
But the Work shall not be lost;
For it will, (as he believ’d) appear once more,
In a new and more elegant Edition
Revised and corrected
By the Author.1611
Thursday, April 22, 1790. Today, in the U.S. House of Representatives, the Annals of Congress report:
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Mr. MADISON rose and addressed the House as follows;
Mr. Speaker: As we have been informed, not only through the channel of the newspapers but by a more direct communication, of the decease of an illustrious character whose … patriotic exertions have contributed in a high degree to the independence and prosperity of this country … I therefore move …
“The House being informed of the decease of BENJAMIN FRANKLIN … that the members wear the customary badge of mourning for one month.”
Which was agreed to.1612
Tuesday, April 27, 1790. Today, Thomas Jefferson writes William Short, American chargé d’affaires in Paris:
You will see, in the newspapers which accompany this, the details of Dr. Franklin’s death. The house of representatives resolved to wear mourning and do it. The Senate neither resolved it nor do it.1613
Under the leadership of Vice President John Adams (who presides as Senate president), the U.S. Senate (the aristocratic branch of government that Benjamin Franklin opposed) refuses to mourn Franklin’s death. President Washington also refuses to let the executive branch mourn.1614 Only the “People’s House” (the House of Representatives) and the people themselves will mourn the loss of their champion.
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 28, 1790
The Pennsylvania Gazette
[O]n Wednesday last, at the funeral of our late learned and illustrious citizen Dr. FRANKLIN …
The concourse of spectators was greater than ever was known on a like occasion, it is computed that not less than 20,000 persons attended and witnessed the funeral. The order and silence which prevailed, during the procession, deeply evinced the heartfelt sense entertained by all classes of citizens, of the unparalleled virtues, talents and services of the deceased.
Today, April 28th, the Gazette of the United States publishes the first of thirty-two articles to appear through next April under the title “Discourses on Davila.”1615 In these articles, Vice President of the United States John Adams resumes his attack on Franklinian democracy which the Marquis de Condorcet (who is an honorary citizen of New Haven, Connecticut) has championed in his recently published Letters from a Common Citizen of New Haven to a Citizen of Virginia on the Uselessness of Dividing Legislative Power between Several Bodies.1616 In this work, Condorcet urges France to adopt a single-chamber legislature with a plural executive chosen by and accountable to that legislature. In today’s “Discourse on Davila,” Vice President Adams answers Condorcet:
[I]f the common people are advised to aim at collecting the whole sovereignty in single national assemblies, as they are by the Duke de la Rochefoucauld and the Marquis of Condorcet; or at the abolition of the regal executive authority; or at a division of the executive power, as they are by a posthumous publication of the Abbé de Mably, they will fail of their desired liberty … [I]t is a sacred truth, and as demonstrable as any proposition whatsoever, that a sovereignty in a single assembly must necessarily, and will certainly be exercised by a majority, as tyrannically as any sovereignty was ever exercised by kings or nobles.1617
If the people have not the understanding and public virtue enough, and will not be persuaded of the necessity of supporting an independent executive authority, an independent senate, and an independent judiciary power, as well as an independent house of representatives, all pretensions to a balance are lost, and with them all hopes of security to our dearest interests, all hopes of liberty.1618
Saturday, May 1, 1790. Today, from London, Tom Paine writes President George Washington:
Our very good friend, the Marquis de Lafayette, has intrusted to my care the key of the Bastille, and a drawing handsomely framed, representing the demolition of that detestable prison, as a present to your Excellency … I feel myself happy in being the person through whom the Marquis has conveyed this early trophy of the spoils of despotism, and the first ripe fruits of American principles transplanted into Europe …
I returned from France to London about five weeks ago; and I am engaged to return to Paris, when the Constitution shall be proclaimed, and to carry the American flag in the procession. I have not the least doubt of the final and complete success of the French Revolution. Little ebbings and flowings, for and against, the natural companions of revolutions, sometimes appear, but the full current of it is, in my opinion, as fixed as the Gulf Stream …1619
Saturday, May 22, 1790. Today, in th
e French Constituent Assembly, as I write in my history,
it was decreed that the right of peace and war belonged to the nation, and that war could not be declared but by a decree of the national assembly …1620
Friday, June 11, 1790. Today, Vice President John Adams writes,
The great and perpetual distinction in civilized societies has been between the rich who are few and the poor who are many … The inference of wisdom is that neither poor nor the rich should ever be suffered to be masters. They should have equal power … The French must finally become my disciples …
In this country the pendulum had vibrated too far to the popular side, driven by men without experience or judgment, and horrid ravages have been made upon property by arbitrary multitudes or majorities of multitudes. France has severe trials to endure from the same cause. Both have found, or will find, that to place property at the mercy of a majority who have no property is “committere agnum lupo.” My fundamental maxim of government is never to trust the lamb to the wolf.1621
Today, in Paris, on the floor of the French Constituent Assembly, the Comte de Mirabeau announces Franklin’s death:
Franklin is dead. He has returned to the bosom of the Divinity, the genius who freed America and shed torrents of light upon Europe …
The sciences owe Franklin their tears, but it is Liberty—it is the French people who should mourn him most deeply; the liberty that we enjoy he aided us to attain, and the sparks of his genius glow in the Constitution that is our boast …
Congress has ordered in the fourteen confederated states a mourning period of two months …
Would it not be worthy of you, gentlemen, to … participate in this homage rendered before the entire world to the rights of man and to the philosopher who has contributed most to spreading them throughout the world … Free and enlightened Europe owes at least a token of remembrance and regret to one of the greatest men who have ever served philosophy and liberty.
I propose that it be decreed that the National Assembly for three days wear mourning for Benjamin Franklin.1622
The Duc de La Rochefoucauld seconds Mirabeau’s motion. The French Constituent Assembly will notify the U.S. Congress of its decision to mourn Franklin’s death.1623 Thomas Jefferson:
No greater proof of his estimation in France can be given than the late letters of condoleance on his death from the National assembly of that country and the community of Paris, to the President of the U.S. and to Congress, and their public mourning on that event. It is I believe the first instance of that homage having been paid by a public body of one nation to a private citizen of another.1624
This year, the Marquis de Luchet publishes a list of those responsible for the French Revolution. He writes:
FRANKLIN. It is impossible to give the tableau of a revolution without including this immortal name. This philosophical republican enlightened the heroes of liberty. Before him, the majority of publicists had reasoned like educated slaves of their masters; like Montesquieu [who argued for checks and balances in government] they used all their wit to justify the status quo and to coat our institutions with deceptive poison; he alone, studying the natural rights of man, sweeping away the dust and sand, that is, the external circumstances of weakness and poverty, of inequality, of all kinds of aristocracy, discovered the foundations of society; he demonstrated that the edifice was unsound wherever it was not based on the common accord of men and reciprocal agreements. No, one may never speak of liberty without paying a tribute of homage to this immortal defender of human nature.1625
Sunday, June 13, 1790. Today, in France, in an address before the Society of 1789, the Duc de La Rochefoucauld pays tribute to Benjamin Franklin:
[T]he world has not [adequately] reflected on Franklin’s bold legislative effort. Having declared their independence and placing themselves in rank of nations, each of the different colonies, today the United States of America, chose a new structure of government. Maintaining their old admiration for the British constitution, nearly all of these new states composed their governments with the same British elements, variously modified. FRANKLIN alone, ridding the political machine of its numerous wheels, of the admired counterweights which complicated it, proposed to reduce it to the simplicity of a single legislative body. This grand idea frightened the Pennsylvania legislators, but the philosopher reassured half and caused the adoption of this principle, which THE FRENCH NATIONAL ASSEMBLY has made the basis for the French constitution.1626
Saturday, June 19, 1790. Today, in France, the Journal de la Société de 1789 publishes the Duc de La Rochefoucauld’s explanation of why he prefers a single-chamber legislature:
Franklin was the first to propose to put the idea into practice: the respect the Pennsylvanians bore him made them adopt it, but it alarmed the other states and even the constitution of Pennsylvania has since been changed. In Europe this opinion has had more success … I dare admit that I was one of the small number of those who was struck by the beauty of the simple plan which he had delineated and that I did not need to change my opinion when the judgment of the profound thinkers and eloquent orators who have treated the subject before the National Assembly led that body to establish as a principle of the French constitution that the legislation shall be entrusted to a single body of representatives … France will not retrogress toward a more complicated system, and doubtless she will have the glory of maintaining the one she has established.1627
Other leaders of the French Revolution testify to their admiration for Franklin’s Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776. Ben Franklin’s friend,1628 Jacques-Pierre Brissot de Warville:1629
I regard the Constitution of Pennsylvania as the model of an excellent government …
The code of Pennsylvania will prove that America had philosophers and statesmen when she threw off the yoke of Great Britain …
There they exclude forever the authority of a single person. There they confine the power to make laws to a general assembly of the representatives of the state and give the right to enforce the laws to a removable council …1630
Today, the French Constituent Assembly abolishes all titles and coats of arms in France.1631 As I write in my history,
While titles and distinctions remained … the constitution and its preamble appeared but an unsubstantial theory … M. Foucault opposed the motion, as tending to destroy the most powerful motives to emulation—“What he asked would you do with the man whose brevet recited—that he was created a count for saving the state?” M. La Fayette instantly replied, “I would omit the word ‘created a count’ and insert only that he had saved the state.” … [T]he viscount of Noaille concurred … “We do not speak of … the marquis Franklin, but of Benjamin Franklin …” … Thus in one moment were three hundred thousand persons torn from those proud titles inherited or acquired which had monopolized into their hands all the places of trust and honor of a great nation …1632
Saturday, July 24, 1790. Today, in France, the Journal de la Société de 1789 attacks the idea of a hereditary hierarchy in France by publishing Ben Franklin’s letter against George Washington’s “Order of the Cincinnati.” In the coming years of the French Revolution, other French journals will also cite and translate Franklin’s letter.1633
Thursday, August 12, 1790. Today, Benny Bache turns twenty-one years old. He is now of age. He will preside over the printing house his grandfather built. He has already announced plans to publish a newspaper.1634
Saturday, October 2, 1790. Today, Benny Bache publishes the first issue of the Philadelphia Aurora.1635
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
PUBLISHED DAILY, BY BENJ. FRANKLIN BACHE …
It has been the wish of a number of the Editor’s friends to see a Paper established on a plan differing in some respects from those now in circulation …
These wishes, coinciding with the advice which the publisher has received from his late Grand Father, suggested the idea of the present work …
The Freedom of the Press is
the Bulwark of Liberty … [T]he Publisher can safely promise that no consideration whatever shall induce him blindly to submit to the influence of any man or set of men: His PRESS SHALL BE FREE.
Friday, December 10, 1790. Today, U.S. Senator William Maclay of Pennsylvania writes in his journal:
This day was unimportant in the Senate …
A packet arrived a few days ago from France, directed to the President and members of Congress … It contained a number of copies of the eulogiums delivered on Dr. Franklin by order of the [French] National Assembly. Our Vice-President [John Adams] looked over the letter some time and then began reading the additions that followed the President [of the French National Assembly]’s name. These appellations of office he chose to call “titles” and then said some sarcastic things against the [French] National Assembly for abolishing titles. I could not help remarking that this whole matter was received and transacted with a coldness and apathy that astonished me; and the letter and all the pamphlets were sent down to the [House of] Representatives as if unworthy of our body [the Senate].1636
American Aurora Page 68
