Franklin

by Thomas Fleming

  Inside the house, which had been plundered and wrecked by the Hessians, the delegation found one room hung with moss and branches and a table spread with a cold meal of ham, tongue, mutton, and claret. Lunch was all good-natured small talk, and only after the table had been cleared did Lord Howe turn to the somber subject that brought them together. He began by declaring that he felt for America “as for a brother, and if America should fall, I should feel and lament it like the loss of a brother.”

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

  Howe’s face darkened, and for a moment he almost lost his temper. “I suppose you will endeavor to give us employment in Europe.”

  This was an obvious bit of fishing, in pursuit of Franklin’s remark in his letter about making foreign alliances. Franklin was much too smart to say anything. He just kept on smiling. With a visible effort, Lord Howe tried to regain his tone of compassionate moderation. He told them how he had sought out his peace commission, hoping to “proceed straight to Philadelphia and meet the Congress face to face.” But the King and his ministers had declined to recognize Congress, and even now, Howe confessed considerable nervousness that he was not exceeding his powers if they insisted on considering themselves as a committee of the Congress. “I hope you will not, by any implication, commit me upon that point.”

  “Your Lordship may consider us in any view you think proper,” Franklin replied. “We, on our part, are at liberty to consider ourselves in our real character. But there is, really, no necessity on this occasion to distinguish between members of Congress and individuals. The conversation may be held as among friends.”

  John Adams, with his inimitable talent for ruffling tempers, said that he agreed. In fact, he would be willing “to consider myself for a few moments in any character which would be agreeable to you, Your Lordship, except that of a British subject.”

  “Mr. Adams is a decided character,” said his Lordship, swallowing hard. Howe begged the three Americans to consider the possibility, at least, of giving up the Declaration of Independence. In an eloquent description which contained considerably less truth than poetry, he said his powers were “to restore peace and grant pardons, to attend to complaints and representations, and to confer upon the means of a reunion upon terms honorable and advantageous to the colonies and to Great Britain.” Almost plaintively he added, “You know, gentlemen, that we expect aid from America; our dispute seems only to be concerning the mode of obtaining it.”

  “Aid we never refused upon requisition,” Franklin shot back.

  “Your money, let me assure you, is the smallest consideration. America can confer upon Great Britain more solid advantages; it is her commerce, her strength, her men that we chiefly want.”

  “Aye, my Lord,” said Franklin, delighted to have this opportunity to beat his favorite drum, “we have in America a pretty considerable manufactory of men.”

  But he was totally serious when Howe asked him to comment on the situation. Franklin repeated what he had already said in his letter. “All former attachments are obliterated. America cannot return to the domination of Great Britain, and I imagine that Great Britain means to rest it upon force.” Adams and Rutledge concurred, both of them pointing out that Congress had declared independence in response to an overwhelming demand by the American people. They could not repeal the Declaration, even if they were inclined to do so.

  Lord Howe was crushed by this intransigence. “I have not the authority, nor do I ever expect to have, to treat with the colonies as states independent of the Crown of Great Britain,” he said.

  Franklin suggested writing home to England to get it. It would take the same length of time for his Lordship to do that as it would for the Americans to find out from their thirteen state legislatures whether they would consider a repeal.

  Howe gloomily shook his head. “It is vain to think of my receiving instructions to treat upon that ground.”

  There was a mournful silence. Then Franklin said, “Well, my Lord, as America is to expect nothing but upon unconditional submission.”

  “No, Dr. Franklin,” Lord Howe said, “Great Britain does not require unconditional submission. I think that what I have already said proves the contrary, and I desire, gentlemen, that you will not go away with such an idea.”

  Franklin declined to argue with him. Instead he asked his Lordship if he was authorized to receive propositions from Congress to Great Britain.

  Howe, wary of the trap into which Franklin was trying to lead him, recognizing Congress, zigzagged and said, “I do not know that I could avoid receiving any papers that should be put into my hand, though I am doubtful of the propriety of transmitting them home. Still, I do not say that I would decline doing so.”

  Two days later, Franklin, Adams, and Rutledge turned in a report of their conversation to Congress. It dismissed the poetry in Lord Howe’s description of his peace commission, and declared that his only authority was to grant pardons and declare “the King’s peace,” in various parts of America, “upon submission.” Congress collectively shuddered at this more or less expected news.

  In the next few days, dispatches, letters, and rumors pouring in from New York made the possibility of submission loom large. Admiral Howe’s brother, informed of the failure of the peace commission, unleashed his redcoats on George Washington once more. On September 15, 1776, they swept ashore at Kip’s Bay behind a curtain of fire from Admiral Howe’s ships: The raw Americans panicked and ran, leaving a thunderstruck Washington practically alone on the battlefield. Congress, for that matter, looked as decimated as Washington’s army. The dispute over the confederation had emptied numerous seats. Some states were not even represented. In this atmosphere of military and political disarray Franklin found himself faced with a loyalist uprising within his own family.

  On September 16, William Temple Franklin wrote to his grandfather, asking permission to take a trip to Connecticut to see his father. The ostensible reason was Elizabeth Franklin’s desire to send a letter to her husband. She declined to trust it to the American post office, fearing it would be opened. Franklin refused to give the boy his permission and suggested that Elizabeth write to William care of Governor Trumbull of Connecticut instead. Temple answered with considerable warmth, accusing his grandfather of distrusting him, vowing that he was not going to carry “dangerous intelligence” to his father.

  Franklin immediately replied, telling Temple he was talking nonsense. Even if he could carry dangerous intelligence to his father, “while he remains where he is, he could make no use of it.... You would have been more in the right if you could have suspected me of a little tender concern for your welfare, on acct of the length of the journey, your youth and inexperience, the number of sick returning on that road with the infectious camp distemper, which makes the beds unsafe, together with the loss of time in your studies, of which I fear you begin to grow tired.” He could not believe that Elizabeth really wanted to risk her stepson’s life on such a journey, merely because she did not want to ask Governor Trumbull the small favor of forwarding a letter. “I rather think the project takes its rise from your own inclination to a ramble, & disinclination for returning to college, join’d with a desire I do not blame of seeing a father you have so much reason to love.” He offered to send Elizabeth some franked letters addressed to Governor Trumbull which would enable her to correspond with her husband, free of charge.”

  In Congress, Franklin was involved in a far different and more momentous debate. After long months of silence, the embattled Americans had finally heard from someone in Europe. Barb Dubourg had written Franklin a long letter assuring him that the French government and the French people were sympathetic to the American cause, but among the King’s ministers, “none will espouse it with warmth.” France was “overhead and ears in debt.” Moreover, Dubourg sadly admitted that his best friend in the Cabinet, the economist Turgot, had just been fired. The
only really good news Dubourg sent was the ease with which he was recruiting French artillerymen and engineers for the American Army.

  At the rate things were going, there might not be an American Army for them to serve in, or a Congress to pay them. From their other emissaries in Europe, Congress had not heard a word in months. Silas Deane was totally silent. The only information they had had from Arthur Lee was the fact that he did not trust two members of the secret committee, John Jay and Benjamin Franklin. The debacle in Canada, and the signs of an even worse debacle in New York, made it clear that America needed help massive amounts of help, fast. This kind of talk was painful to Franklin, who had been so confident that America could and would defend herself successfully. He reiterated his dislike of pleading for help. America, he said, was a virgin state and “a virgin state should preserve the virgin character, not go about suitoring for alliances, but wait with decent dignity for the application of others.”

  Congress declined to take this advice. It may have been sound diplomacy, but from where they sat, the finer points of the diplomatic art would have to be ignored. It was time to seek France’s help, with the utmost urgency. In an atmosphere of intense secrecy, the depleted Congress voted to send a major embassy to France. On the first ballot, they unanimously chose the American most likely to impress the Old World: Benjamin Franklin.

  The decision filled Franklin’s mind with gloom. It meant a winter voyage across the Atlantic, which, for a man his age, might be a death sentence in itself. The Atlantic also swarmed with British cruisers, and if one captured him on such a mission, a traitor’s death at the end of a Tyburn rope would be a certainty. But his total commitment to the American cause spoke when he turned to young Dr. Benjamin Rush, who sat next to him. “I am old and good for nothing; but, as the storekeepers say of their remnants of cloth, am but a fag end, and you may have me for what you please,’ just so my country may command my services in any way they choose.”

  His profound, intense paternalism was also still very much alive. His first thoughts, as he planned his voyage, were of William Temple Franklin. If he left him behind in America, the boy would almost certainly drift into his father’s and stepmother’s loyalist orbit, with possibly fatal consequences. Grimly Franklin decided to take Temple with him. Even if they were captured, the British would not harm the boy, and numerous friends in England would care for him and see that he completed his education. Franklin dashed off a note to Temple, urging him to return to Philadelphia immediately. “I hope … that your mother will make no objection to it, something offering here that will be much to your advantage if you are not out of the way.” Temple was back in Philadelphia by October 3, and he talked no more of visiting his father, or even bothered to answer letters from his stepmother. We can be sure that Franklin, with his talent for words, made a sojourn in France sound like a fabulous adventure to this high-spirited seventeen-year-old.

  More extraordinary was another family decision Franklin made, to take his six-year-old grandson, Benjamin Franklin Bach; with him. It was apparently based on the boy’s obviously high intelligence and the probability that the war would disrupt his education if he stayed behind in Philadelphia. Young Benny was already writing letters under his grandfather’s benevolent eye. Earlier in September, he had addressed one to Temple that his grandfather humorously decided not to send. He said it was “too full of pothooks & hangers, and so unintelligible by the dividing words in the middle and joining ends of some to beginnings of others, that if it had fallen into the hands of some committee it might have given them . . . a suspicion of its containing treason, especially as directed to a Tory house.”

  Four days after Congress had voted to send Franklin to France, supposedly under a double bond of absolute secrecy (all deliberations of Congress were supposed to be secret, but about Franklin’s mission an absolute silence was enjoined), a friend of Robert Morris stopped him in the street and asked whether Dr. Franklin and other ambassadors were really going to France. That same day, Thomas Story, an American who had carried the secret committee’s letters to Arthur Lee a year ago, returned to Philadelphia with hopeful information from Lee. He had been in touch with a French agent in London who informed him that the French were prepared to ship 200,000 pounds’ sterling worth of arms and ammunition to their islands in the West Indies, where American ships could pick them up. Franklin and Robert Morris, the only two members of the secret committees in town, instantly drew up a memorandum recording this good news, but decided, with the concurrence of one or two other congressmen whom they trusted, to keep it a secret for the time being. Only if an “unexampled misfortune should befall the states of America so as to depress the spirits of Congress” would Morris take the risk of cheering them up with the news before the goods were safely in American hands.

  This was the only hopeful note in a month of otherwise mounting gloom. Washington was forced to evacuate New York and retreated to White Plains with the British Army in pursuit, moving in, so it seemed, for the kill. Franklin, as a last gesture of defiance and dedication, pledged his valuable property in Philadelphia and raised all the money he could borrow — some 4000 pounds, which he lent to Congress, in the hope that other men, would do likewise. Knowing that Philadelphia would almost certainly be a prime British target, Franklin had a last conference with his old friend Joseph Galloway. Where did he stand now? The wary Galloway told Franklin that he was rapidly becoming a convert to the Revolutionary cause. In fact, he was about to raise a regiment and offer his services to Washington’s army. Delighted by the news, Franklin asked him if he could store his personal papers, the records of his lifetime, at Trevose. Galloway readily consented, and wished Franklin Godspeed on his mission.

  The following day, Franklin said what he probably thought was his last goodbye to his daughter and son-in-law, and rode with his two grandsons to Chester, where they stayed overnight. The next morning they rode another three miles down the river to Marcus Hook, where boats took them aboard the sloop Reprisal. It was a perfect name for the ship that was to carry Franklin toward that “bright point” with which he longed to end his life. The realist who could write, “In the affairs of this world men are saved, not by faith, but by the want of it,” was acting now out of a faith in the destiny of this new breed of men, called Americans, which he in so many ways personified.

  It was as yet a frail vessel, this infant republic, as frail as the tiny Reprisal, with her sixteen pitiful guns, sailing out onto an Atlantic patrolled by Lord Howe’s 1,200-gun fleet. Like Franklin himself, the Americans at this point seemed to have little on which to rest this faith in their destiny, beyond an inner conviction that free men, and a nation committed to freedom, have a special mission in this world, and the creator of the universe would somehow stretch forth his sheltering hand to them. This was Franklin’s prayer, as the little Reprisal weighed anchor and thrust its bow into the gray swells of the wintry Atlantic. In a letter he wrote the day before he sailed, he put this faith into unforgettable words. “I hope our people will keep up their courage. I have no doubt of their finally succeeding by the blessing of God, nor have I any doubt that so good a cause will fail of that blessing.”

  The Reprisal was small but she was a lean, full-rigged ship, in that daring tradition which would eventually spawn the mighty American clipper ships that ruled the seas of the nineteenth century. She breasted the cold billows of the Atlantic with a speed that considerably lessened the danger of Franklin’s suffering an ignominious end at Tyburn. More than once British cruisers appeared on the horizon. Grim-eyed, taciturn Captain Lambert Wickes beat to quarters, and the hundred-man crew turned out with a military precision that Franklin thought “equal to anything of the kind in the best ships of the King’s fleet.” A Marylander who had given up a profitable career in privateering to join the infant U.S. Navy, Captain Wickes was a fighting sailor whom Franklin filed in his ample memory for future use.

  Otherwise the voyage contained little in the way of amusement or consolation.
The food was terrible, nothing but salt beef and ship’s biscuits. The seas were mountainous, confining Franklin to his cramped cabin most of the time. Once a day he braved wind and waves to take the temperature of the Gulf Stream. This was an almost pathetic gesture. For the rest of the time all he could do was suffer. Shivering in the raw cold he took to wearing the fur hat he had acquired in Canada. But it did little good. The boils that had tormented him in Canada broke out again and he felt himself growing more and more feeble. His only hope was the assurance from Captain Wickes that they were making remarkably good time.

  One day, toward the end of the fourth week, Wickes burst into Franklin’s cabin and asked with considerable excitement if he would come on deck. There was a ship coming toward them and it was obvious from the cut of her sails and the slow, wallowing gait that she was not a man-of-war. Wickes was under orders from Congress to take no prizes and avoid all encounters with the enemy until he had deposited Franklin safely in France. But this plodding merchantman was a tempting plum. The captain did not have to plead. Franklin nodded and moments later the crew of the Reprisal was racing to quarters. The British ship, a brigantine out of Bordeaux heading for Cork, surrendered without a shot. A prize crew was swiftly put aboard her. The same day they repeated the performance with another brig from Hull. Dangerous as such forays were Franklin could not resist the opportunity to strike a blow at England the moment he got within range.