Franklin

by Thomas Fleming

  Listening to this carnage described in vivid terms to the assembled Congress on June 26, Franklin was filled with a wrath and disgust beyond anything he had felt thus far. Yet he was forced to remain silent while his old enemy John Dickinson brought forward a humble petition to the King. As the spokesman for the pivotal state of Pennsylvania, Dickinson had a weight and power that made it essential for Congress to listen to him. Franklin must have writhed in frustration as he watched the performance, thinking what he could have accomplished if William Franklin were sitting beside him as the head of New Jersey’s delegation, and Galloway were on hand to rally Pennsylvania. Between them they could have created a bloc of influence that radiated into Maryland, Delaware, and New York, and dominated the Congress with results far different from what Dickinson’s muddleheaded, wishful-thinking leadership was achieving.

  If Franklin had been Pennsylvania’s leader there would have been no “olive branch petition” to the King. The same day that Congress adopted this second plea for reconciliation; Franklin went home to Market Street and wrote a letter to his old friend William Strahan.

  Philadelphia, July 5, 1775

  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

  The letter was never mailed. Probably Franklin never intended to mail it, but he made sure it was widely reprinted throughout America and Europe.

  Two days later he wrote a bitter letter to his friend, Bishop Shipley, describing the battle and the burning of Charlestown. “In all our wars from our first settlement in America to the present time, we never received so much damage from the Indian savages as in this one day.... Perhaps ministers may think this a means of disposing us to reconciliation. I feel and see everywhere the reverse.... I am not half so reconcilable now as I was a month ago. The Congress will send one more petition to the King which I suppose will be treated as the former was, and therefore will be the last.... You see I am warm; and if a temper naturally cool and phlegmatic can, in old age, which often cools the warmest, be thus heated, you will judge by that of the general temper here, which is now little short of madness.”

  After Bunker Hill, Franklin had no doubt whatsoever that all-out war had begun. It was time to form a nation out of the thirteen colonies. As the man who had created the original idea for an American union, Franklin was ideally qualified to draft the master plan. So, a full year before the Congress took the fateful step, Franklin wrote a declaration of independence.

  Whereas the British nation, through great corruption of manners and extreme dissipation and profusion, both private and public, have found all honest resources insufficient to supply their excessive luxury and prodigality, and thereby have been driven to the practice of every injustice, which avarice could dictate or rapacity execute; And whereas, not satisfied with the immense plunder of the East, obtained by sacrificing millions of the human species, they have lately turned their eyes to the West, and, grudging us the peaceable enjoyment of the fruits of our hard labour and virtuous industry, have for years past been endeavouring to extort the same from us, under colour of laws regulating trade, and have thereby actually succeeded in draining us of large sums, to our great loss and detriment; And whereas, impatient to seize the whole, they have at length proceeded to open robbery, declaring by a solemn act of Parliament, that all our estates are theirs, and all our property found upon the sea divisible among such of their armed plunderers as shall take the same; And have even dared in the same act to declare, that all the spoilings, thefts, burnings of houses and towns, and murders of innocent people, perpetrated by their wicked and inhuman corsairs on our coasts, previous to any war declared against us, were just actions, and shall be so deemed, contrary to several of the commandments of God (which by this act they presume to repeal), and to all the principles of right, and all the ideas of justice, entertained heretofore by every other nation, savage as well as civilized; thereby manifesting themselves to be hostes humani generis; And whereas it is not possible for the people of America to subsist under such continual ravages without making some reprisals; Therefore, Resolved, etc.”

  Franklin was keenly aware that the crucial issue was not independence but union. British barbarism might create a mood of alienation, but only American statesmanship could create a union out of the thirteen diverse colonies, whose sharply different lifestyles were obvious from the moment the blunt, plainly dressed puritans of New England sat down beside the subtle, laced and ruffled planters of Virginia and South Carolina. So, as an integral part of his declaration of independence, Franklin added “Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union” for “the United Colonies of North America.” Thirteen in number, the articles created a “confederacy” in which each colony retained “its own present laws, customs, rights, privileges and peculiar jurisdictions” within its own limits but surrendered to Congress the power to wage war and make peace, enter into alliances and regulate such matters of general concern as the post office, currency and the army and navy. Congress would also have the responsibility for settling disputes among the colonies, and “the planting of new colonies when proper.” Franklin had not forgotten the potential riches of the Ohio Valley. Representation in the general Congress was to be proportionate, based on one delegate for every 5000 votes.

  Before he introduced his proposal Franklin attempted to do some preliminary politicking. He showed the Declaration and Articles to several delegates. Among them was Thomas Jefferson, a tall redheaded young Virginian, also a newcomer to Congress. Already a vigorous defier of British pretensions, Jefferson gave the plan his enthusiastic approval. But he noted that “others were revolted at it.” Franklin soon found that the proposal had no hope of passing. Most of the delegates were so antagonistic to the idea that they warned Franklin not to propose it from the floor. They did not want such a revolutionary item entered in the Congressional journal. Franklin was reduced to asking for permission to present his paper, not as a finished plan, but only as food for thought which the Congressmen might digest and use at some later date. On July 21, 1775, Franklin made this feeble gesture, with the understanding that the Articles were accepted as a purely informal individual offering, and no reference was made to them in the regular journal. It was painful evidence of Franklin’s political isolation, and his Pennsylvania enemies, John Dickinson and the other members of the old Proprietary Party, must have chortled that night over Franklin the political cipher.

  Franklin was simply not in intimate contact with the majority of Congress, the way stumpy, contumacious John Adams of Massachusetts was. Only a few days after Bunker Hill, he was writing to a friend in Massachusetts, “Secret and confidential, as the saying is, the Congress is not yet so much alarmed as it ought to be.... You will see a strange oscillation between love and hatred, between war and peace, preparations for war and negotiations for peace....” Adams was wholeheartedly with Franklin in favor of independence and confederation. Three days after Congress unofficially accepted, and totally disregarded, Franklin’s call for independence and union, Adams was writing to that same friend in Massachusetts, “We ought to have had in our hands a month ago the whole legislative, executive and judicial of the whole continent, and have completely modeled a constitution; to have raised a naval power, and opened all our ports wide....” But Adams added another suggestion which Franklin would have found harder to accept. Congress should, Adams said, “. . . have arrested every friend to [British] government on the continent and held them as hostages for the poor victims in Boston.”

  Franklin was still hoping that the escalation of violence would force William to abandon his unrealistic middle position, and choose the side of his country in the impending struggle. No doubt he was able to understand a little better William’s refusal to mak
e the leap toward independence when a majority of the Continental Congress were still following John Dickinson and his olive branch. There was also a more and more pressing personal reason to avoid a break, if it was humanly possible. William Temple Franklin was spending the summer with his father and stepmother in Perth Amboy and was enjoying himself immensely. William had apparently found no difficulty inducing his wife Elizabeth to welcome Temple as a son. The motherless boy had responded with deep affection to her kindness, and he swiftly became a full-fledged member of his father’s family. William was delighted with his son, and made it clear to his father that he was deeply grateful for the care and attention the elder Franklin had shown Temple during his years in London.

  A lively well-to-do society clustered around the governor in his fine new house. The move from Burlington was, as Benjamin Franklin no doubt knew, in itself a political gesture. William had deserted New Jersey’s western capital and the fine 500 acre farm he had purchased in its vicinity, to settle in Amboy, with its heavy concentration of Tories.

  Franklin was obviously more than a little worried about the impact of this society on Temple’s young mind. When several letters from Temple finally arrived, Franklin replied almost immediately. “I wonder’d it was so long before I heard from you. The [mail] packet, it seems, was brought down to Philadelphia, and carry’d back to Burlington before it came hither. I am glad to learn by your letters that you are happy in your new situation, and that tho’ you ride out sometimes, you do not neglect your studies.” He added that he had a letter from Mrs. Stevenson who “sends her love to her dear boy.... Mr. & Mrs. Bache send their love to you. The young gentlemen [the Bache grandsons] are well and pleas’d with your remembering them. Will has got a little gun, marches with it, and whistles at the same time by way of fife.”

  It was a quiet, by no means ineffective way of reminding Temple that there were others who loved him too, and even toddlers were aware that war was brewing.

  In other letters, Benjamin discussed Temple’s future with William. They finally decided to enroll him in the university at Philadelphia in the fall. But even when the subject was something as innocent as Temple, the underlying political tension could not be concealed. Regarding Temple’s return, William wanted to know “whether you approve of my coming [with him] to Philad.” or “if I may expect you here.”

  With congressmen such as John Adams already talking about arresting loyalists, the sight of William in Philadelphia would only make Franklin’s political influence in Congress even smaller than it already was. He quickly told William that he preferred to come to Perth Amboy. Late in August, Franklin made the trip. As he jogged across New Jersey, he must have recalled with something close to bewilderment the triumphant journey he and William had made little more than a decade ago to install him as the royal governor. Incredible, that twelve years could turn a whole world upside down. How could he make William see that this revolution in the order of things was right and just, a natural process as inevitable as the growth of a child and his departure from the home? Alas, shrewd as he was in understanding men and motives, Franklin, with the limited psychology of his century, simply did not comprehend the drives that were forcing William to oppose his father in this, the greatest crisis of both their lives.

  At such critical turning points, the totality of a man’s life and nature rushes into the narrow moments of his decision, and his freedom to choose is reduced to the vanishing point. In the seclusion of the governor’s house at Perth Amboy, the two men confronted each other in a final test of strength.

  Franklin pointed to the steady escalation of the conflict, and its continental nature. George Washington of Virginia was now in Massachusetts, in command of the “Grand American Army” besieging Boston. Franklin described the burning of Charlestown, the cruelty and venality with which the British were treating the Americans inside occupied Boston, the latest news from Europe, that the British were hiring troops in Germany to bolster their army. While William shook his head in disagreement, Franklin told him that it was impossible for Britain to conquer America. The most they could do was establish a few enclaves on the coasts. They would never penetrate into the interior. What did it matter if the British blockaded every port on the continent, a task which would require an immense fleet? They could deprive a farming nation such as America of nothing essential. America would hold out for twenty years. Lord North and his ministers would not last a year, once Parliament saw what the war was costing.

  But the heart of Franklin’s argument was the importance of William acting now. Timing was all-important. In the next few months, Congress would be appointing numerous generals to George Washington’s Army. As one of the few Americans who had some military experience, one of these posts was William’s for the asking. Congress had appointed Benjamin Postmaster General. He had already appointed William’s brother-in-law, Richard Bache, his chief deputy. There were dozens of other jobs in the department, and the other branches of this new government where his services would be welcomed and valued.

  Once more William Franklin shook his head and argued back. He contended with passionate conviction that most of the people were not for independence. Only a small faction were in favor of this drastic, treasonous step and they were beguiling and hoodwinking the mass of the people, while simultaneously their war-like insurrectionary acts were forcing the British government into acts of war on their side, which, William freely admitted, worsened the situation. To bolster his argument about the majority of the people disdaining independence, the governor offered his father evidence from the last two meetings of the New Jersey Assembly. To prove that the British government was not the aggressor, ruthlessly ignoring every hope of conciliation, William flourished instructions from Lord Dartmouth ordering him to place Lord North’s conciliatory proposal before the New Jersey Assembly. Dartmouth’s letter was full of expressions of hope that war could be averted. Finally, if war did come, it was absurd to think that America, a country that could barely find enough money to pay its governors’ salaries, could hope to conduct a war that would cost millions, against the richest, most powerful nation in the world. It was madness to think that raw provincials, untrained militiamen, could stand up against British regulars in a protracted war. They had fought well from entrenchments at Bunker Hill. But wars were not won by fighting from entrenchments. In the authoritative tone of a semiprofessional soldier, William lectured his father about battle strategy and British invincibility.

  It was a hopeless debate from the start. Both men rested their cases on what they had seen and heard in the past ten years. But beneath this arraignment of evidence there was a fundamental difference between father and son, a difference of spirit. Franklin was a living embodiment of the free, risking, venturing spirit that had brought men to America in the first place. His life had been a series of new beginnings, and the bold self-discipline of his open, experimental mind found it easy to contemplate one more, even at the age of seventy. William Franklin’s experience had been totally opposite. Alienated from a sense of belonging in America by the accident of his birth (for which unconsciously he could not help blaming his father) he had found genuine acceptance and a new sense of achievement in England. He could not escape England’s grip upon him, because he did not want to escape it. It was his emotional home, this stamp of royalty, this title which he bore at the King’s pleasure. This old man, confronting him across the wine bottles, could not compete with it. Although his father’s vigor must have amazed him, William insisted upon seeing him as old. In a year or two he would be dead. What then with Galloway gone and Dickinson in charge in Pennsylvania, what sort of future was there for a man of forty-four with no profession beyond a law degree which he had never exercised? Politics was not for William Franklin an avocation, practiced out of a sense of gratitude to a nation that had given him so much. Politics was William’s profession, his livelihood, and it was simply too late, too risky to make a fresh beginning in a new political order, among men who had more re
ason to suspect him than trust him.

  Finally there was, for William, the golden gleam of the western colony, which still beckoned, and simultaneously sharpened his resentment against his father, who had done so much to wreck it. In the letter he wrote a few weeks before Benjamin came down to Perth Amboy for their climactic confrontation he commented bitterly on a letter which Benjamin had received from Thomas Walpole and his associates in the Ohio Company. “I . . . observed that since you left England they have received the strongest assurances that as soon as the present great dispute is settled our grant shall be perfected.”

  William did his own underlining, and the two sets of words comprise a cry of anguish and anger. On his part, Benjamin Franklin obviously rejected with contempt the hint that he should lend his prestige and talents to settling the “great dispute” in order to make himself and his son rich.

  Wearily, after their long night of argument, father and son parted. Franklin rode back to Philadelphia with Temple. A few days later, William sent him the minutes of the New Jersey Assembly’s last two meetings and those official papers from London which he found so hopeful. Mournfully, he signed the letter “Your ever dutiful and affectionate son.”

  A month later, Franklin was a member of a committee sent to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to confer with George Washington on reorganizing and supporting the American Army. In a letter he wrote to Richard Bache, from Cambridge, there is a hint of the conflict which the argument with William was creating in Franklin’s spirit. “I am not terrified by the expense of this war should it continue ever so long,” he grimly avowed. But a few lines later he admitted that he wished “most earnestly for peace, this war being a truly unnatural and mischievous one.”