The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin

by Gordon S. Wood

  Because Franklin did get along with Vergennes and refrained from vigorously pressing him for an alliance, Lee assumed that Franklin had been taken in by the French or, worse, had shifted his allegiance to France. Lee, of course, had been suspicious of Franklin back in London in the early 1770s, and thus he had his eye on the old man from the moment they got together in Paris.

  To complicate the situation further, Congress in July 1777 appointed Lee’s brother William as minister to Berlin and Vienna and Ralph Izard, a wealthy South Carolina planter, as minister to Tuscany. Because none of these European states wished to recognize the new republic—in a monarchical world, governments that did away with kings were not very welcome, especially if their rebellion did not succeed—William Lee and Izard had their credentials as ministers refused. Instead, the two disgruntled ministers settled in Paris and convinced themselves that they too should be members of the commission to France. They sniped and quarreled and made life miserable for Franklin. They complained that they could not get Franklin to attend meetings or sign papers, saying that the only thing he was punctual for was his dinner. They charged him with withholding information and ignoring them and with collaborating with Deane in a system of “disorder, and dissipation in the conduct of public affairs.” Finally, because Franklin was haughty and self-sufficient and “not guided by principles of virtue and honor,” they charged him with being “an improper person to be trusted with the management of the affairs of America.”80

  Although Izard thought Franklin was more dangerous than Deane, because “he had more experience, Art, cunning and Hypocricy,” Arthur Lee tended to mistrust Deane more.81 He thought that Deane had creamed off profits for himself during the time he was supplying arms for the American cause. With the aid of Richard Henry Lee, his brother in the Continental Congress, he launched a campaign against Deane that eventually resulted in Congress’s recalling the Connecticut merchant in November 1777 to answer the charges of embezzlement and other matters. The accusations against Deane divided the Congress between those zealous patriots like Richard Henry Lee and Samuel Adams, who saw wickedness and corruption everywhere, and those more worldly moderates like Robert Morris and John Jay, who realized that financing a revolution required that some people make money. Many of these kinds of important urbane people supported Deane, and Franklin was one of them.

  Franklin liked Deane, and he endorsed him in a letter to the Congress. He told Henry Laurens, the president of the Congress, in March 1778 that there must be some mistake in the Congress’s recalling of Deane, perhaps “the Effect of some Misrepresentation from an Enemy or two” in France. He had lived intimately with Deane for fifteen months, and he found him to be “a faithful, active and able Minister, who to my Knowledge has done in various ways great and important Services to his Country.”82

  Since Franklin got along so well with Deane, Lee assumed that Franklin had to be in cahoots with him. “I am more and more satisfied that the old doctor is concerned in the plunder,” he wrote to his brother Richard Henry Lee in Congress that September, “and that in time we shall collect the proofs.”83 Deane’s subsequent actions only deepened Lee’s suspicion of Franklin. Deane eventually became so angry at the shabby way he was being treated that he publicly denounced the Congress, repudiated the Revolution, and settled in England. Since Franklin had defended Deane, the Lees and other zealous patriots such as Samuel Adams had grounds for questioning Franklin’s patriotism.84

  Despite the Lee faction’s criticism, Franklin carried out his duties brilliantly. He bore his colleagues’ malice and abuse with silence and restraint. He sloughed off the charges that he was lazy and spent too much time dining and seeing people. He knew that diplomacy was not simply a matter of writing letters and shuffling papers. He knew too that the French feared that the Anglo-Saxons might get back together, and he skillfully played on these fears. He encouraged concessions from the British government and simply allowed these to spur Vergennes, who was always worried about a British-American rapprochement, into increased activity on behalf of the Americans. All the while Franklin charmed the French and put the best face he could on the course of events as he waited for an American victory. When told in the summer of 1777 that General William Howe had taken Philadelphia, he replied: “You mean, Sir, Philadelphia has taken Sir Wm. Howe.”85 With the news of the defeat and surrender of British troops at Saratoga that October, he at last had a substantial American victory to convince the French that the American cause was worth supporting with an open military alliance. With the prospect of France’s entering the war openly on behalf of the Americans, the alarmed British were now prepared to offer the colonists everything they had wanted short of independence.

  THE FRENCH ALLIANCE

  Although some Americans were suspicious of Franklin’s devotion to the cause, in fact no one was more committed to American independence than Franklin. Whatever loyalty Franklin had earlier felt for the British Empire was gone. He was now completely dedicated to the success of what he called “a miracle in human affairs” and “the greatest revolution the world ever saw.”86 Consequently, he initially ignored all British efforts to talk about ending the war short of American independence. At several points he even destroyed or refused to pass on to America offers from the British government for reconciliation, out of fear that some wobbly Americans back home might have second thoughts about continuing the struggle for complete independence. Only when the French kept hesitating about openly allying with America did he, in January 1778, finally agree to meet with Paul Wentworth, ostensibly an emissary from the British government but actually the chief British spy in France. He knew that the French would learn of this meeting and would perhaps be goaded into an alliance.

  Wentworth, according to his own account, opened the two-hour conversation with some compliments, to which, he said, Franklin was “very open.” Wentworth reminded Franklin that the doctor had formerly favored imperial union rather than American independence. But Franklin said that was then; circumstances were different now. When Wentworth read him a letter from someone in England promising unqualified independence, Franklin replied: “Pity it did not come a little sooner.” In the process of recalling the various negotiations he had been involved in during the early 1770s, Franklin, according to Wentworth, “worked Himself into passion and resentment.” Wentworth tried to tell him “that His resentments should be lost in the Cause of his Country; that His [cause] was too great to mix private quarrells with.” Although Franklin replied that “His warmth did not proceed from a feeling of personal Injuries” alone, Wentworth was not mistaken in observing the way the highly agitated Franklin lost his breath in describing “the burning of Towns, the neglect or Ill treatment of Prisoners,” and the other “Barbarities inflicted on His Country.” Wentworth had never known Franklin to be so discombobulated; normally Franklin was succinct and pointed, “but He was diffuse and unmethodical to day.” As much as Wentworth tried, he could not get Franklin to calm down and stop talking about English savagery.87

  But, angry as he was, Franklin was no fool. He knew that this meeting between himself and a British agent would arouse Vergennes to act. Ver-gennes and his king, the young Louis XVI, finally decided that they had better pin down the Americans in an alliance before they reached terms with the English. In February 1778 France signed two treaties with the United States—one a commercial agreement, the other a military alliance pledged to American independence.

  Franklin had not originally wanted a formal alliance with any foreign state, but he now willingly participated in the greatest diplomatic triumph in American history. During the ceremonial signing of the treaties Franklin wore an old blue velvet coat. When Deane asked why he was wearing that particular coat, Franklin replied, “To give it a little revenge. I wore this Coat on the day Widderburn abused me at Whitehall.”88

  THE MISCHIEVOUS MADMAN, JOHN ADAMS

  John Adams of Massachusetts, Deane’s replacement, arrived that April, too late to participate in making
the treaties with France. Compared with Franklin, Adams was a babe in the woods. Where Franklin was reserved and impenetrable, Adams was impulsive and open. He was awkward and anything but diplomatic. He knew nothing of European politics, he had never laid eyes on a king or queen or the foreign minister of a great power, and he had never been in a city larger than Philadelphia. Still, he had been one of the firmest advocates for American independence, and he had a strong sense of his own worth, which most called vanity.

  He soon became irritated that Franklin, “the old Conjurer,” was getting all the credit when he was doing all the work. In a 1779 letter to the chief justice of Pennsylvania, Thomas McKean, Adams conceded that Franklin was “a Wit and Humourist.... He may be a Philosopher, for what I know, but he is not a sufficient Statesman, he knows too little of American affairs or the Politicks of Europe, and takes too little Pains to inform himself of Either. He is too old, too infirm, too indolent and dissipated, to be sufficient for the Discharge of all the important Duties” he had to fulfill.89 Franklin, Adams complained, seemed to spend all his time with women and never deigned to meet with him.

  Adams was shocked at the way Franklin flirted with women, especially with his wealthy and beautiful neighbor, Anne-Louise de Harancourt Brillon de Jouy, who openly showed her affection for Franklin even in the presence of her elderly husband. Madame Brillon used to call Franklin “Cher Papa” while sitting on his lap. Adams was surprised to learn that a “very plain and clumzy” woman who was often present in the company was not the friend of Madame Brillon as he had assumed, but was actually the mistress of Monsieur Brillon. “I was astonished,” recalled Adams, “that these People could live together in such apparent Friendship and indeed without cutting each others throats. But I did not know the World.”

  When Adams did get to know the French world that Franklin moved in, he did not at all like it. He particularly resented all the attention Franklin received from the French. Every day, as soon as Franklin finished his breakfast, Adams recounted sarcastically, he was surrounded by his many admirers who came “to have the honour to see the great Franklin, and to have the pleasure of telling Stories about his Simplicity, his bald head and scattering strait hairs, among their Acquaintances.” Adams never appreciated Franklin’s contribution to the American cause. Adams advised his cousin Samuel Adams that the mission ought to be in the hands of a single minister, namely himself.90

  Franklin himself suggested to the Continental Congress that France had more ambassadors than it needed. Three were already too many, he told James Lovell, a member of its foreign affairs committee. Izard regarded himself as a fourth, said Franklin, “and is very angry that he was not consulted in making the Treaty which he could have mended in several Particulars.” William Lee, who was returning from a trip, would soon make a fifth.91 In September 1778 Congress finally recalled all the other commissioners and made Franklin sole minister plenipotentiary, largely because France insisted upon it. Adams was mortified and returned to America to participate in the writing of the Massachusetts Constitution; but Izard and the Lees stayed on for another year, making more trouble for Franklin.

  Not only were the Lees and Ralph Izard sure that Franklin was too lazy, too partial to France, and unable or unwilling to do his job as representative of America, but they were also convinced that Franklin had been Deane’s partner in corruption and was continuing to make money out of his position as minister. They even suggested that Franklin’s loyalties might not really be with America. After all, his grandson, Temple Franklin, worked as his secretary, and wasn’t his grandson the son of the notorious loyalist William Franklin, the former royal governor of New Jersey? In fact, one of Pennsylvania’s congressional delegates charged that from these connections “much evil might ensue to the United States."92

  These charges stirred up the Congress and resulted in days of debate in April 1779 over whether or not to recall Franklin, along with the other commissioners. The Congress even spent a day debating Franklin’s character.93 Largely because France insisted on Franklin’s continued presence as minister and lobbied the Congress to that end, Virginia and North Carolina were ultimately the only states to support Franklin’s recall. Nonetheless, many members of Congress continued to question whether the old man was up to being minister. Ralph Izard repeatedly told Congress that “the political salvation of America depends upon the recalling of Dr. Franklin.”94

  Much to Franklin’s chagrin, the Congress even sent Henry Laurens’s twenty-six-year-old son, John, to negotiate a new loan from the French. Franklin suppressed his anger at this insult, and in a letter to the president of the Congress in March 1781 he, in effect, asked for a vote of confidence. He suggested that his age had caught up with him, that the press of business was too heavy, and that perhaps the United States would like another person to replace him. He assured the Congress that he had no dissatisfaction with it or any doubts about the success of “the glorious Cause.” But he did warn that, if replaced, he would remain in France at least until the peace and perhaps for the remainder of his life.95

  Franklin was pleased when Congress reaffirmed his appointment as minister plenipotentiary—again largely because France had let Congress know in no uncertain terms that it wanted Franklin as minister. But Franklin sensed that Congress was full of doubts about him, and he was not at all happy with its lack of gratitude. Franklin reminded the wealthy merchant Robert Morris, who had just become superintendent of finance, what he might expect from serving the American public. First of all, he told Morris, the public office would take so much time and attention that his private interests would inevitably be injured. But worse: “the Publick is often niggardly even of its Thanks, while you are sure of being censured by malevolent Criticks and Bug Writers, who will abuse you while you are serving them and wound your Character in nameless Pamphlets.” Such critics, he said with uncharacteristic bitterness, resembled “those little dirty stinking Insects, that attack us only in the dark, disturb our Repose, molesting & wounding us while our Sweat & Blood is contributing to their Subsistence.”96

  In the meantime John Adams had returned to Paris with the authority to negotiate peace with Britain. But since Britain was not ready to negotiate peace, Adams, “having nothing else here wherewith to employ himself,” as Franklin ruefully told the Congress, had decided to try “supplying what he may suppose my Negociations defective in.” Adams thought that Franklin was entirely wrong in the deferential way he approached the French. “He thinks as he tells me himself,” reported Franklin in August 1780, “that America has been too free in Expressions of Gratitude to France; for that she is more obliged to us than we to her: and that we should shew Spirit in our Applications.”97

  Unfortunately, Adams in a series of undiplomatic letters said many of the same things directly to Vergennes, much to Franklin’s embarrassment. Vergennes became so angry with Adams’s bumptious manner that he ceased communicating with him and asked Franklin to send Adams’s letters to Congress in order for it to decide whether Adams ought to be entrusted with any important mission. Ultimately, Congress in June 1781 decided to assign the peace negotiations to a commission composed of Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John Jay, Henry Laurens, and Franklin.98 According to Arthur Lee, it was Franklin whom Congress almost left out. The only reason Franklin was included, said Lee, was “because France wills it.”99

  Although Jefferson declined the appointment and Laurens was captured at sea and imprisoned in the Tower of London, the other three commissioners were on hand in Paris by the fall of 1782. Jay and Adams were nearly as suspicious of their colleague’s partiality to France as Arthur Lee had been. They also thought their French ally was not to be trusted. According to Franklin, Adams especially thought that Vergennes was “one of the greatest Enemies” of the United States. For Americans “to think of Gratitude to France,” said Adams, “is the greatest of Follies,” and “to be influenced by it, would ruin us.” Franklin told the American foreign secretary, Robert R. Livingston, that Adams was begu
iled by conspiratorial notions. Adams believed that Vergennes and Franklin were “continually plotting against him and employing the News writers of Europe to depreciate his Character, &ca.” And worse: Adams said all this publicly, in “extravagant and violent Language,” even in front of English officials. What could be done with such a man? Perhaps Franklin was too generous in his famous summary of the man from Massachusetts, when he said that Adams “means well for his Country, is always an honest Man, often a Wise One, but sometimes and in some things, absolutely out of his Senses.”100

  Franklin hoped that “the ravings of a certain mischievous Madman here against France and its Ministers, which I hear every Day will not be regarded in America.”101 But Adams was not alone in his views; many Americans at home shared Adams’s suspicions that Franklin was too attached to France. Franklin’s “Enemies” in Congress, his friend Robert Morris warned him, were spreading the word “that a sense of Obligation to France seals your Lips when you should ask their Aid.”102

  Franklin was sorry to hear such criticism of America’s connection with France. He wanted his critics to know that they were doing America “irreparable harm” by destroying “the good understanding that has hitherto so happily subsisted between this court and ours.” America’s connection with France was what gave the United States weight with England and the respect of Europe. Therefore Franklin believed that “the true political interest of America consists in observing and fulfilling with the greatest exactitude the engagements of our alliance with France.”103 He was grateful to France for its aid in the Revolution, and he thought all of America ought to be too.