Franklin

by Thomas Fleming

  Franklin said nothing. He had lent the prestige of his name to Deane, and the Connecticut man had obviously misused it. Deane’s judgment of men and events had been poor from the first, and that was another reason why Franklin had carefully withdrawn from his circle of commercial activities. But he always thought that Deane was basically a patriot, which he may well have been in his own erratic mind. Alas, historians digging through the British state papers have uncovered evidence that shortly before Deane went home he began doing business with the British, through Paul Wentworth. In return for information about American activities, George III had approved a shipment of British goods that would be sold in New York, and the profits slipped to Deane’s brother, Barnabas, in Connecticut. This compromise, whether born of Deane’s disgust with Arthur Lee’s poisonous politics or his desperate desire to become a great merchant, may well have been the reason for his reckless declamatory conduct before Congress. If there was genuine treachery involved, no one knows precisely what information Deane gave the British, not a little of the reason for Deane’s defection could be traced to Arthur Lee. No one has ever proved that Deane was dishonest on the vast million-dollar scale Arthur Lee righteously described. Franklin continued to defend Deane as a basically honest man, though after his outburst against Congress, he was cautious about giving him any broad endorsement as a politician or a diplomat.

  The wisdom of keeping as far away from the commercial side of the mission as possible became doubly clear to Franklin. When John Adams, at Arthur Lee’s rancorous instigation, recommended that Franklin’s nephew, Jonathan Williams, be barred from handling any of the government’s commercial business at Nantes, Franklin, to Adams’ surprise, agreed without a murmur of argument. But when Franklin was going through some back bills and came across a notation on one of them from Arthur Lee accusing Williams of peculating 100,000 livres, Franklin wrathfully told Lee to prove it or withdraw the charge. “A rogue living in a family is a greater disgrace to it than one hatted out of it,” he declared. As usual, Lee had no proof beyond the vaporings of his feverish imagination.

  The imbroglio over Deane created a tremendous conflagration in Congress, the Lee and Adams wing, determined to achieve an impossible purity in all aspects of the government, launched a bitter attack on the dominance of Robert Morris and the middle-states men around him who were handling the commercial affairs of the Revolution. The wrangling reached such violent proportions that one exasperated Congressman declared: “We are plagued to death . . . with our commissioners abroad; these men will involve the continent in perdition.” Inevitably, Arthur Lee’s brothers did their best to fan some of the flames in Franklin’s direction. They strove mightily to destroy him so that Arthur could reign in single splendor as the American ambassador in Paris. Richard Henry Lee called Franklin “that wicked old man” who had made his headquarters in France “a corrupt hotbed of vice . . . how long must the dignity, honor and interest of these United States be sacrificed to the bad passions of that old man under the idea of his being a philosopher?”

  They also attacked Franklin with a whispering campaign insinuating that Temple Franklin was disloyal. This was a low blow that struck home. The wound inflicted by William’s defection bled once more. Bitterly Franklin asked his son-in-law, Richard Bache, who had warned him that Temple was under attack, “It is enough that I have lost my son; would they add my grandson?” The patriarchal nature of Franklin’s family feeling flowed into his pen as he wrote. “I am continued here in a foreign country, where, if I am sick, his filial attention comforts me, and, if I die, I have a child to close my eyes, and take care of my remains.” To his daughter, Sally, Franklin added, “I should not part with the child, but with the employment.”

  Meanwhile, all three commissioners had advised Congress to resolve their quarrels by appointing one man as ambassador to France. Doughty John Adams, with that remarkably honest intellect which sometimes overcame his mean prejudices, made it clear that Franklin was the only possible choice. Franklin himself, of course, declined to recommend anyone.

  On September 14, 1778, Congress voted on a new ambassador to France. Franklin won, 12 states to 1, but the vote was far from unanimous within the state delegations. Franklin was stunned to discover that his own state, Pennsylvania, was the only one that had cast a majority against him. This was a tribute to the intensity of the battle over Deane which took place in Philadelphia, and thus had a more direct impact on Pennsylvanians. But this defection was for Franklin little more than a temporary pang. A twelve to one majority was, after all, an endorsement sweeping enough to satisfy any reasonable man, and Franklin was eminently reasonable. To his nephew, Jonathan Williams, be wrote, “This mark of public confidence is the more agreeable to me as it was not obtained by any solicitation or intrigue on my part, nor have I ever written a syllable to any person, in or out of Congress, magnifying my own services or diminishing those of others.”

  It is hard to believe that Franklin was able to suppress a chuckle at the discomfiture of the Lee brothers. “America has . . . struggled to a fine purpose to make a Ben. instead of a Geo. her absolute lord and master,” squawked William to Arthur Lee. Richard Henry Lee wrote from Philadelphia attempting to soothe Arthur’s scalded soul. “The Doctor is old and must soon be called to account for his misdeeds; therefore bear with him, if possible.”

  Franklin immediately called on Arthur Lee to deliver to him all the official papers in his possession. Lee haughtily replied that he had no papers relating to any business conducted by the sole plenipotentiary to the court of Versailles. As for papers relating to the previous three-man American mission, he intended to retain every scrap in his files. Only a few weeks later, Franklin found himself with a delicious opportunity to revenge this final effrontery from his defeated enemy.

  Patrick Henry, the governor of Virginia, wrote to the new ambassador, asking him what had happened to an order he had sent to William Lee, requesting him to buy arms and military stores for Virginia on credit. Franklin calmly reported that he had taken the matter into his own hands, because William Lee had been absent when the order arrived. He had immediately found three merchants who were all ready to sell the war materiel on credit. Then Arthur Lee had taken charge of the business, and all three merchants had immediately withdrawn. The merchants Lee finally selected quarreled with him and complained to Franklin. “But I cannot remedy them, for I cannot change Mr. Lee’s temper,” Franklin said. So a full year later, the order was unfilled. Thus Franklin demolished Lee’s standing with the most powerful politician in Virginia.

  Another task which Franklin took up with enthusiasm, even before he finally got rid of Arthur Lee and company, concerned Commodore John Paul Jones. This born sea warrior arrived in France early in 1778 and immediately sought Franklin’s help in obtaining command of a ship, and hopefully a squadron, to harry British commerce in home waters. Franklin threw all his influence and prestige behind him. Jones was vain, difficult, argumentative, and enormously ambitious. At one point he threatened to challenge the French Minister of Marine, Gabriel de Sartine, to a duel because he failed to give him the ship Jones wanted. The commodore was also a notorious ladies’ man. No sooner had he established himself in the household at Passy than he became Madame Chaumont’s lover. But Jones’ furious zeal to make the British squirm easily persuaded Franklin to forgive him all his personal foibles.

  In the summer of 1778, Jones boldly sailed his little sloop Ranger into the British port of Whitehaven and only bad luck prevented him from burning all 300 ships in the harbor. He then proceeded to scour the Irish Sea, capturing seven prizes and winning a fierce one-hour battle with the British sloop Drake. Franklin then wangled command of an old East Indian for him, and Jones, in gratitude for Franklin’s help, renamed the ship the Bon Homme Richard in his honor, On August 14, 1779, Jones put to sea commanding a flotilla of five ships, mostly manned by French seamen and officers.

  Before Jones sailed on this expedition, Franklin wrote out his instructions.
He cautioned Jones to be “particularly attentive” toward any prisoners which he might take, and “although the English wantonly burnt many defenseless towns in America,” he forbade Jones to follow the same example, unless a “reasonable ransom” was refused. Even then, he was ordered to give “sick and ancient persons, women and children” time to escape. Jones’ reply was a unique tribute to Franklin. “Your liberal and noble-minded instructions would make a coward brave.”

  Jones sailed around the British Isles, up the west coast of Ireland, around Scotland, and down to the coast of Yorkshire, capturing seventeen ships and throwing the kingdom into a wild panic. As Franklin gleefully reported it to his sister Jane, “We have occasioned a good deal of terror & bustle . . . as they imagined our Commodore Jones had 4000 troops with him for descent.” The climax of this voyage was the famous battle between the Bon Homme Richard and the British frigate Serapis, watched by thousands of British on the shore. With his ship battered and sinking, Jones uttered his historic defiance: “I have not yet begun to fight.” Combining sheer guts and magnificent seamanship, he forced the British captain to strike his colors, and sailed the captured Serapis into port, leaving the shattered Richard to sink at sea.

  Although Jones did little more fighting for Franklin, the Ambassador was by no means through playing admiral. His prime motivation, aside from inflicting wounds on English commerce, was the American prisoners still in British jails. Jones had brought more than 500 prisoners into Holland, but the arrogant English declined to exchange Americans for Britons held in a neutral country. They were betting on the probability that Holland would expel Jones and his captives, and British warships waiting off the Dutch coast could easily repossess them. But Franklin worked out a chess player’s solution to this trap. He arranged for Jones to turn his prisoners over to the French ambassador in Holland, and he exchanged them for Frenchmen the British were holding. Meanwhile, in France, Vergennes arranged to turn over 500 British prisoners to Franklin. Nevertheless, the delays were maddening, and while he was plowing through the red tape, Franklin decided to add to his supply of Englishmen. So, he commissioned two Irish smugglers, Luke Ryan and Edward McCatter, as privateers under the American flag. Sailing out in the Black Prince and Black Princess, and once in a ship called the Fearnot, these doughty Gaels accounted for 114 British vessels captured, burned, scuttled, or ransomed. They brought 161 prisoners into French ports and accounted for five times that number aboard ships which they captured and then paroled. The British refused to count the paroled sailors as valid for exchange, but the dividend in captured and destroyed British ships more than made up for the disappointment on the score of prisoners. In the course of this business, Franklin had to spend endless hours functioning as an admiralty judge, worrying over the disposition of prize money between captains, privateer owners, and crews, dickering endlessly with the French court, and port and admiralty officers of the French government. It was wearisome, exhausting work, and Franklin, grappling with the thousand and one other details of his job as minister plenipotentiary, frequently wished that he had never heard of Luke Ryan or the Black Prince or Black Princess. Yet he grimly applied himself to thickets of French and English legal verbiage, for only one reason, which he concisely stated to Vergennes: “I have no other interest in those armaments than the advantage of some prisoners to exchange for my countrymen.”

  A note of desperation became visible in the continued efforts of various Englishmen to tempt the Americans into returning to the imperial fold. One of the strangest approaches was a letter tossed into Franklin’s doorway early in the summer of 1778 signed by a certain Charles de Weissenstein. The missive offered reconciliation to the Americans based upon virtual independence. The names of the American leaders, including Washington and Franklin, were listed, and there was a space left blank beside them, in which they could fill in the price for which they were prepared to sell out their country, On July 6 between 12 and 1 P.M., there would be a messenger waiting beside the iron gates of the choir of the cathedral of Notre Dame, ready to pick up Franklin’s reply. He would be wearing a rose in his hat or buttonhole. The language of the letter, which exuded an air of total assurance, there was no talk of obtaining the King’s permission or the government’s approval, convinced Franklin that the author was George III himself. He therefore went out of his way to make his reply as brutally insulting as possible.

  Franklin dug out of a library a book on government which he knew the King had studied as a young man, and read him a lesson from it about a tricky King who encouraged his subjects to revolt prematurely, knowing he had the strength to suppress them. “These are the principles of your nation,” Franklin said, and that is why be considered it “vain to treat with you.” As for trusting in reconciliation based on an act of Parliament, Franklin sneered, “Good God, an act of Parliament! This demonstrates that you do not yet know us, and that you fancy that we do not know you.” He was even less impressed with the “places, pensions and peerages” which Weissenstein offered. “These, judging from yourselves, you think are motives irresistible.” Then, in a typical Franklinesque touch, he added that as things now stood in America, no one could accept a King’s pension “without deserving, and perhaps obtaining, a SUS-pension.”

  Franklin was much too shrewd to deliver this letter personally. As he pointed out, he was “one of the most remarkable [well-known] figures in Paris’ and it would be difficult for him to appear at Notre Dame where he could not have “any conceivable business” without attracting a great deal of attention. So he forwarded Weissenstein’s letter and his answer to Vergennes, obviously hoping that the foreign minister would contrive to deliver it to London. But Vergennes was too much the professional diplomat to indulge himself, as Franklin occasionally did, in the release of personal emotion. He turned the letter over to the French Secret Service, who sent some operatives to Notre Dame on the appointed day and did in fact find a British agent with a rose in his buttonhole strolling up and down, hoping in vain to see Ambassador Franklin enter with a letter in his hand.

  To further frustrate George III, Franklin cheerfully continued his personal publicity campaign on behalf of his country. Houdon, the greatest sculptor of the age, executed his bust and the great economist, Turgot, titillated the French appetite for epigrams with a Latin classic:

  “Eripuit cuelo fultnen sceptruinque tyrannis,

  He snatched the lightning from the sky and the scepter from tyrants.”

  When Voltaire, the greatest living French author and the father of the French Enlightenment, returned to Paris to die, after an exile of twenty-eight years, Franklin immediately arranged an interview. He took with him Temple Franklin, and soon all Paris was buzzing with the news that the dying sage had given the young American his blessing in two momentous words, “God and liberty.” When Voltaire was initiated into the influential Nine Sisters Masonic Lodge, it was Franklin, not Turgot or some other leading French intellectual, who had the honor of escorting him. Still later, they met once more at the Academy of Sciences and in this unlikely place, there were wild shouts, “Il faut s’embrasser, a la française --You must embrace French fashion.” So the two old men (Voltaire was eighty-four) walked to the center of the room and put their arms around each other and kissed each other’s cheeks. Once again, the French went into raptures of emotion about the spectacle of “Solon and Sophocles embracing.”

  Although Adams accused Franklin of being motivated by a swollen ego, there is ample evidence that Franklin never lost his perspective on what he was doing. Writing to his sister late in 1779, he referred to “the vogue I am in here.” This popularity, he said, “has occasioned so many paintings, bustos, medals & prints to be made of me, and distributed throughout the kingdom, that my face is now almost as well-known as that of the moon. But one is not to expect being always in fashion.” Franklin also knew where to draw the line. One artist created an allegorical picture called L’Amerique Independante which showed Franklin in a toga with a laurel wreath on his he
ad and a wand in his hand, standing between symbolical America and France, while their enemies lay prostrate before them. Franklin instantly wrote the artist, ordering him to change the identity of the figure in the toga to “The Congress.” Attributing to Benjamin Franklin the chief responsibility for the conduct of the war, “would be unjust to the numbers of wise and brave men, who by their arms and counsels have shared in the enterprise and contributed to its success (as far as it has yet succeeded) at the hazard of their lives and fortunes.”

  Perhaps the most amazing aspect of this popularity was the fact that Franklin had achieved it in a country where he could barely speak or write the language. Although he could read French well enough, he never learned to use it fluently, and if more than two or three people began speaking in a group, he admitted that his impression of what was being said was a blur. More than once, this lack of facility was responsible for some rather amusing gaffes. Once, at a large gathering, a lady arose to make an impromptu speech. Again and again the audience burst into applause, and Franklin cheerfully joined them. Later, Temple Franklin told him that he had been applauding praise of himself.

  “If you Frenchmen would only talk no more than four at a time, I might understand you and would not come out of an interesting party without knowing what you were talking about,” he complained to one French friend. In large groups, Franklin made it a policy to remain silent, a tactic which the voluble French immediately elevated into another Franklin virtue.