Franklin

by Thomas Fleming

  The meeting was a commentary on the state of suspended animation in which England and America were poised, during the first six months of 1776. Thomas Paine’s denunciation of kings and two-house Parliaments was sweeping the continent, and the King had declared the colonies outside his protection, forbidden all nations to trade with them and authorized the seizure of American ships on the high seas. Yet all these events were words, not actions. Franklin, who was probably doing more than any other man except George Washington to turn the words into acts, saw no conflict in transferring the idea of a western colony from the sovereignty of England to the sovereignty of the United States. He was probably skeptical about its chances, and he certainly no longer had any vision of himself or his son presiding over it. At seventy, he obviously looked upon the project as part of the inheritance he hoped to leave his grandchildren. He arranged to have his son-in-law, Richard Bache, made one of the company’s three trustees.

  A few days later he departed for Canada with the two Maryland Carrolls and Samuel Chase. The two Catholics must have wondered how they would be treated by Dr. Franklin, who had, like most other eighteenth-century men of science, a reputation as a freethinker. They soon found out that Franklin was the last man in the world to feel, much less exhibit, any kind of religious prejudice. When he heard from Chase the stirring story of Charles Carroll’s role in spurring Maryland’s spirit of resistance (which included burning a tea ship, something not even Boston had dared to do, and which, to Maryland’s chagrin, is rarely mentioned in Revolutionary histories), they became instant friends. Soon Charles Carroll was writing home to his father, “Docr. Franklin is a most engaging and entertaining companion of a sweet, even and lively temper, full of facetious stories and always applied with judgment and introduced apropos. He is a man of extensive reading, deep thought and curious in all his inquiries: his political knowledge is not inferior to his literary and philosophical. In short, I am quite charmed with him: even his age makes all these happy endowments mere interesting, uncommon and captivating....”

  The good talk and abundant Irish wit provided by Franklin’s traveling companions were the only pleasant aspect of the trip. Otherwise, for Franklin it was a nightmare from the day they began plowing up the Hudson in a cramped sloop, a chill northeast wind blowing cold gusts of rain in their faces. Near present-day Tarrytown, a particularly violent gust split the mainsail, and they had to spend a day and a half huddling below decks in Thunder Hill Bay. It took five weary days to reach Albany, where Major General Philip Schuyler greeted them and offered them the hospitality of his handsome town house. The sight of the general’s two daughters, Betsy and Peggy, described by Charles Carroll as “lively, agreeable, black-eyed girls,” revived Franklin momentarily, but the following day the general insisted on dragging the commissioners thirty-six miles in a wagon over unbelievably wretched roads to his country home in Saratoga. Already worn down by his dawn-to-dusk schedule during the past six months on the Pennsylvania Committee of Safety, and in Congress, Franklin all but collapsed with exhaustion at Saratoga. For a few days he thought he was dying and wrote letters of farewell to old friends, such as Josiah Quincy, Sr., of Boston. A stopover of seven days and the constant attention of the charming Mrs. Schuyler restored his strength somewhat. But a few days before they resumed the journey, no less than six inches of April snow fell, and it was still lying thick on the hills when they slogged forward on horseback for two days to reach the shores of Lake George. There they boarded thirty-foot open boats, fitted with awnings, and began a fifteen-day trip up Lake George and Lake Champlain through waters that were frequently thick with ice. Not until April 29 did they arrive in Montreal, the last day spent in jolting local carriages known as calèches.

  “I never traveled through worse roads or in worse carriages,” Charles Carroll wrote in his journal.

  The man who greeted them on behalf of the American Army was Benedict Arnold, recently made a brigadier general. After several pleasant hours of tea-drinking and an elegant supper which the commissioners were too weary to appreciate, they retired to the home of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Walker, ardent advocates of America’s cause.

  The next day the commissioners had a conference with General Arnold and his staff, and it was instantly apparent that they had traveled over five hundred miles in vain. The French-Canadians were daily growing more hostile, and the appearance of a Congressional committee sporting a leading Catholic layman and a Catholic priest was not going to change their minds. Bishop Jean Briant, the ruling Catholic prelate, had remained inside Quebec throughout the American siege, issuing strident pastorals forbidding the sacraments to any Catholic who sided with the Bostonnais, his favorite term for the American rebels. The Bishop repeatedly told his people that the Americans were traitors and religious hypocrites. The actions of more than a few Americans had done nothing to erase this accusation. General David Wooster of Connecticut had closed Montreal’s churches on Christmas Eve and informed the committee of Catholics who called on him, “I regard you all as enemies and rascals.” Bishop Briant had forbidden any priest to show the slightest courtesy to Father John Carroll. He had a letter of introduction to the Reverend Pierre Floquet, who had, along with Carroll, been a member of the recently abolished Jesuit order. Floquet invited Father Carroll to dinner and permitted him to say Mass in his house. The French priest was instantly suspended by the bishop, which meant that he was unable to say Mass or hear confessions, because of his “Bostonnais heart.”

  Franklin donated 353 pounds of his own money in gold to the starving American Army. But they needed something more in the order of 20,000 pounds. The men were in rags, shivering in the harsh cold of the wintry Canadian spring. Franklin himself found the cold almost unbearable. He bought a marten fur hat to replace his tricorne, but it did him little good. His sturdy old body began to show signs of breaking down under the physical and mental stress. His legs swelled alarmingly, and boils broke out in a number of places. Twelve days after he arrived, he acknowledged the total hopelessness of the situation by deciding to go home. His two younger cohorts, Samuel Chase and Charles Carroll, could stay behind and make whatever decisions needed making to rescue the American Army from disaster.

  Sick as he obviously was, Franklin nevertheless left Montreal immediately to make the exhausting journey back down the lakes and the Hudson, alone. The next day, while he was waiting in acute misery at the American-held fort of St. John’s, at the head of Lake Champlain, Father John Carroll arrived and quietly asked Franklin if he could accompany him home. The affection he had won from these two Catholics had, one suspects, not a little to do with this decision. Father Carroll acted as nurse as well as companion as the open boats beat their way down Lake Champlain and Lake George to Saratoga. At Albany the hospitality of the Schuyler family restored Franklin again. He and Father Carroll finally reached New York on May 27, 1776. He wrote the commissioners they had left behind in Canada, “I . . . think I could hardly have got along so far, but for Mr. Carroll’s friendly assistance and tender care of me.”

  He continued to be tormented by boils, but the swelling in his legs began to disappear, to be replaced by an attack of the gout. However, he was not too sick to have tea with an old friend in New York, a Mrs. Barrow, whose husband had joined the loyalists aboard the King’s ships in the harbor. Franklin had paid her a visit on the way to Canada, and she had told him that she feared her house and person might be abused by the Americans because of her husband’s politics. Franklin had interceded with George Washington to make sure she was not molested, and now he called again to ask “how our people had behaved to her.” She told him everyone had treated her with the utmost decorum and respect.

  “I’m glad of that,” said Franklin “Why, if they had used you ill I would have turned Tory.”

  “In that case,” she said, with a twinkle in her eye, “I wish they had.”

  In Philadelphia, Franklin could only reiterate to Congress what he had already told them in a letter from Canada, that
unless the army got money immediately, it would have either to “starve, plunder, or surrender.” Although in his exhausted condition, and with his gouty feet, he could do little in Congress, he undoubtedly listened with enthusiasm to the news of what had been happening there. On April 6, Congress had taken a major step toward independence by opening American ports to the commerce and ships of all nations, except those of Great Britain and her dependencies. On May 10, they had passed an even more significant resolution, one that was to have special consequences for Franklin. After more than a year of warfare, Congress declared “it was absolutely irreconcilable to reason and good conscience for the people of these colonies now to take the oaths and affirmations necessary for the support of any government under the Crown of Great Britain, and it is necessary that the exercise of every kind of authority under the said Crown should be totally suppressed, and all the powers of government exerted under the authority of the people of the colonies . . .” This swept away with one breath every vestige of royal government, from governors to Assemblies, because all of them required an oath of loyalty to the King. From all over the continent, Tom Paine’s propaganda and the unyielding menaces of Great Britain were producing a “torrent” (in John Adams’ words) of letters calling on Congress to declare America’s independence.

  But in New Jersey, William Franklin, still under what amounted to house arrest, declined to agree with either Congress or the American people. Instead, on May 13, he issued a call for the New Jersey Assembly to meet in Perth Amboy on June 20. He had received word from the new colonial secretary, Lord George Germain, that commissioners empowered to negotiate a peace were en route from England. Playing the old game of divide and conquer, Germain did not bother to inform the Continental Congress, but instead hoped that each colony would negotiate with the commissioners separately. Unfortunately for Governor Franklin, the third Provincial Congress of New Jersey convened on June 10 and promptly resolved that the “late Governor’s proclamation was null and void.” The following day they resolved that William’s proclamation was “in direct contempt and violation of the resolve of the Continental Congress.” This meant he was “an enemy of the liberties of this country” and should be placed under arrest His salary which, astonishingly, he was still being paid by New Jersey was ordered “from henceforth to cease.” Then, shifting to a more humane tone, Congress urged the arresting officers to conduct themselves “with all the delicacy and tenderness which the nature of the business could possibly admit.” If Governor Franklin agreed to sign a parole, guaranteeing his good conduct, he would be permitted to live unmolested on his farm at Rancocas Creek below Burlington.

  But Governor Franklin was totally uncooperative. He told the militia officer who arrested him that he rejected the parole “with the contempt such an insult deserved from one who has the honor to represent His Majesty.” The militia men took him to Burlington for a hearing before a committee of the Congress. He warned his escort that they were acting “at their peril,” and refused to answer questions before this “illegal assembly which had usurped the government of the King.” He told the committee of the Assembly, chaired by the Reverend John Witherspoon, president of Princeton, that they could “do as you please and make the best of it.” The assemblymen informed the Continental Congress that William was “a virulent enemy to this country” and described his “gross and insolent” behavior in detail. On Monday, June 24, the Continental Congress resolved that “William Franklin be sent under guard to Governor Trumbull [Connecticut].” By this time, William, though still defiant, was physically sick. The New Jersey Congress refused to admit that he was too ill to travel, and the governor wrote a bitter letter to his son Temple, telling the boy that their “low mightinesses with great difficulty were persuaded by some friends of mine to postpone my departure till tomorrow morning, when I must go (I suppose) dead or alive. Two of their members, who are doctors, came to examine me to see if my sickness was not feigned. Hypocrites always suspect hypocrisy in others.

  “God bless you, my dear boy; be dutiful and attentive to your grand-father, to whom you owe great obligations. Love Mrs. Franklin for she loves you, and will do all she can for you if I should never return more. If we survive the present storm, we may all meet and enjoy the sweets of peace with greater relish.”

  The governor was obviously still fighting for Temple’s allegiance, and there is considerable evidence that he was winning, even before his arrest. While Benjamin Franklin was in Canada, Temple complained to his father that numerous people in Philadelphia, including Franklin’s son-in-law, Richard Bache, treated him with something less than cordiality. Apparently Temple had made the mistake of expressing some support for his father’s stand. The boy had spent the spring recess in Perth Amboy with William and Elizabeth, and thereafter sent them a steady stream of letters from Philadelphia, as well as newspapers and pamphlets arguing both sides of the crisis.

  Throughout the last two weeks in June, while William was being arrested and transported to Connecticut, Benjamin Franklin used his gout as a good excuse to avoid attending Congress. He took little or no part in the strenuous politicking that raged throughout that month, as pro-independence men, led by John Adams, struggled to line up the votes needed to pass a declaration. On June 7, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia had introduced a resolution declaring “that these united colonies are and of right ought to be, free and independent states.” But after two days of argument, it was evident that there was still no unanimity on the issue, and further debate was postponed until July 1. In the meantime, a committee was directed to prepare a declaration of independence. Franklin was named one of the members of that committee, and because of his worldwide reputation, both as a scientist and an author, he might, at first glance, seem to have been the logical man to write it. But the embarrassment of his Tory son seriously damaged his appeal as a revolutionary spokesman. So the committee members decided it made more political sense to give the job to thirty-three-year old Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, the largest of the thirteen colonies, and a delegate without personal liabilities.

  Other things were happening in Pennsylvania that Franklin must have watched with the greatest interest. Knowing his penchant for working behind the scenes, it is almost impossible to believe that he did not, in fact, have something to do with these local events. Mass meetings and other forms of public pressure had battered the Pennsylvania Assembly throughout the month of June, until John Dickinson lost complete control and on June 14, the Assembly resolved to permit Pennsylvania’s Congressional delegates to vote as they saw fit on independence. But by this time, independence-minded Pennsylvanians were so disgusted with the Assembly that they began organizing a movement for a Constitutional Convention to meet in July.

  This upheaval swept away almost the entire base of John Dickinson’s political support, and when he rose in Congress on July 1 to give a fervent speech against a vote for independence at this time, everyone was keenly aware that the Assembly, which had sent him and his hand-picked delegation (except for Franklin) to Congress, was practically abolished, and most Pennsylvanians had shown themselves to be wholeheartedly in favor of independence. On the morning of July 2, when it became apparent that the Pennsylvania delegation to Congress was the only group still in opposition (New York abstained because it had no instructions from its Assembly), Dickinson conceded his political impotence by staying home, and Robert Morris, one of his followers, did likewise. Meanwhile, Franklin had persuaded staid John Morton, an old acquaintance who had served many years in the Pennsylvania Assembly with him, to swing his vote to join him and James Wilson and declare Pennsylvania for independence by a majority of three to two. Ironically, Morton had, only a month before, written a letter which contained a reference to Benjamin Franklin’s personal situation. “The contest is horrid. Parents against children, children against parents.” But now, under the weight of Franklin’s example, and the arguments of John Adams, he voted, in a voice tight with anguish, for independence.

  Ne
xt Congress turned to the Declaration that Thomas Jefferson had been preparing. Jefferson had shown his draft of the Declaration to the other members of the committee. Franklin had made only a few minor changes in the wording. Perhaps the most important was where Jefferson had said, “We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable.” Franklin crossed out “sacred and undeniable” and substituted “self-evident.”

  Franklin made several other changes, equally brief and effective, but most of these were eliminated in the ruthless editing job Congress performed on Jefferson’s masterpiece. A long passage condemning the slave trade was struck out at the insistence of the Deep South, and an even longer diatribe against the British people was excised because it was deemed impolitic to alienate American supporters in England. A sharp rebuke aimed at the use of “Scottish mercenaries” was eliminated when several Scottish-Americans in Congress expressed their indignation. Franklin happened to be sitting beside Jefferson while this verbal surgery was being performed, and he could see that the sensitive young Virginian was undergoing severe mental anguish over what seemed to him crass mutilation of his document.

  When it was over, and the final, considerably shortened version, had won a vote of approval, Franklin tried to console the mortified Jefferson. “I have made it a rule,” he said, “whenever in my power to avoid becoming the draftsman of papers to be reviewed by a public body.” To explain why, he told Jefferson a story from his journeyman printer days. One of his friends, an apprentice hatter, had decided to open a shop for himself. “His first concern was to have a handsome signboard with a proper inscription. He composed it in these words: John Thompson, hatter, makes and sells hats for ready money, with a figure of a hat subjoined. But he thought he would submit it to his friends for their amendments.” The first man he showed it to thought the word “hatter” was superfluous because it was followed by the words “makes hats.” Thompson agreed and struck it out. The next friend observed that the word “makes” might as well be omitted, because the customers would not care who made the hats, as long as they were good ones. Thompson agreed and struck it out. A third friend suggested eliminating “for ready money” because none of the local merchants sold on credit. Again Thompson bowed to the will of the majority, and now he had a sign which said: “John Thompson sells hats.” “Sells hats,” said his next friend, “why nobody will expect you to give them away. What then is the use of that word?” Again poor Thompson conceded. Moments later, the word “hats” went into oblivion when another friend pointed out that there was one painted on the board. And so he was left with a sign that said: “John Thompson” beneath the painted hat.