American Spring

by Walter R. Borneman

  The run-ins at Lexington and Concord had indeed shed blood between the mother country and its colonies, but many in the Continental Congress and throughout the colonies viewed those battles as defensive in nature—the natural reaction and right of the populace against armed incursion—a self-defense that the numerous affidavits given by rebel participants had gone to great lengths to claim.

  The capture of Ticonderoga, clearly His Majesty’s fort despite its disrepair, was, however, an entirely different matter. Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold’s cross-country dash—regardless of who was in command—was not an inadvertent clash of arms after someone discharged a weapon on a village green. If this overt act of aggression—tyranny, in the king’s eyes—were not renounced, any remaining hope for reconciliation would be extinguished.

  New England’s representatives, generally recognizing the importance of the Hudson–Lake Champlain corridor and the looming threat not only of British regulars but also of Indians and Canadians sailing or marching along it, took the hard line: occupy the post and rejoice in its armaments. But others prevailed, and the Continental Congress passed a resolution that disingenuously couched the actions of Allen and Arnold as “a just regard for the defence and preservation of themselves and their countrymen” from a threatened invasion from Canada.

  Without any mention of occupying the fort, the resolution went on to advise that the captured armaments should be removed from Ticonderoga, taken to the southern end of Lake George—a distance of some thirty-five miles—and kept in a secure post to be established there. “An exact inventory” was to be taken “of all such cannon and stores in order that they may be safely returned when the restoration of the former harmony between Great Britain and these colonies so ardently wished for by the latter shall render it prudent and consistent with the overruling law of self preservation.”18

  HAD COMMUNICATION BEEN TIMELIER, a howl of indignation would no doubt have echoed from the Green Mountains all the way to the Saint Lawrence even as President Randolph’s gavel fell that day in the Continental Congress. When Ethan Allen, sitting at Crown Point, read what the Continental Congress had resolved, he could not believe it. When he had invoked its name in demanding surrender, he had expected stouter stuff.

  By the time Allen put quill to parchment in response, he was calmer but no less outraged by the recommendation. Allen began by reiterating the facts to his advantage—as usual—and stating his belief that the Congress “approves of the taking the fortresses on Lake Champlain.” Actually, the resolution didn’t signal approval so much as reflect an effort to find a defensive excuse for actions already taken. Still, Allen charged onward: “I am nevertheless much surprised that your Honours should recommend it to us to remove the artillery to the south end of Lake George, and there to make a stand.” Doing so, Allen maintained, would leave his people in the New Hampshire Grants exposed to attack and give up the newly won control of Lake Champlain.

  Far from withdrawing from Ticonderoga and Crown Point, Allen urged an attack in force against St. John’s and claimed that had he had five hundred men with him on his abortive raid—mentioned as though it had occurred at the same time as Arnold’s successful capture of the George—he “would have advanced to Montreal.” Still singing the refrain of the longed-for Canadian support, Allen somehow concluded that an invasion of Canada would be agreeable to both Canadians and Indians there. As for the British, “it is bad policy,” Allen declared, “to fear the resentment of an enemy.”19

  Benedict Arnold expressed similar dismay in his own letter to the Continental Congress. Arnold strongly hinted that the congress was ignorant not only of his charge from the Massachusetts committee of safety but also of his success in taking total control of Lake Champlain. To reverse course now was unthinkable. “I must beg leave to observe, gentlemen,” Arnold wrote, “that the report of Ticonderoga’s being abandoned, have thrown the inhabitants here into the greatest consternation.”20

  Arnold also told the Massachusetts committee of safety that he was “equally surprised and alarmed” that the Continental Congress had recommended removing all the cannons and stores and evacuating Ticonderoga entirely. “You may depend, gentlemen,” Arnold had assured the committee in an earlier communication, “these places will not be given up unless we are overpowered by numbers, or deserted by Providence, which has hitherto supported us.”21 Benedict Arnold and Ethan Allen might have their differences, but they could both agree that they would never voluntarily surrender their hard-won prizes.

  Neither, as it turned out, would the colonial legislatures of Connecticut, New York, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts. Fight though they might among themselves over land claims, these colonies exchanged a flurry of letters designed to recruit troops, defend the posts, and keep control of the Hudson–Lake Champlain corridor. They would stand united in this mission as well as in their opposition to the recommendations of the Continental Congress. If nothing else, their independent resolve showed how far away those delegates assembled in Philadelphia were from crafting a strong central government that wielded any real power.

  Massachusetts, having stirred the pot by sending Benedict Arnold north in the first place, also now sent a three-man commission to Ticonderoga, purportedly to investigate the Arnold-Allen feud and the general nature of Arnold’s administration. This panel was given broad authority not only to review how well Arnold had “executed his Commission and instructions” but also, if necessary, to discharge him and order his return to Massachusetts. The man who moved the most aggressively to bestow these powers on the inquiry panel was the same person who had signed Arnold’s commission in the first place—none other than Dr. Benjamin Church.

  All of Massachusetts was increasingly preoccupied with events around Boston. Church twisted the facts somewhat and assured his fellow committee of safety members that Connecticut, about to march hundreds of its own troops to Ticonderoga, had demanded that one of its officers command the combined forces. This was not entirely true—command of its own troops, yes, but not of the combined force—and why Church took this position causes some speculation. He may have done so simply to rid Massachusetts of the distraction of a major role in a campaign so far afield from Boston, but quite possibly he had a more sinister motive.

  Amid the whispers of a British spy inside the inner circle of the committee of safety, Dr. Church had always been above reproach. But was he? Benedict Arnold, despite what later shame would come to his name and despite his rows with Ethan Allen, had heretofore been highly effective at what he had attempted. By checking Arnold’s authority, was Church trying to deprive the rebels of his leadership?

  The three Massachusetts officials arrived at Crown Point on June 22, and rather than waste time observing Arnold’s methods and evaluating his successes they rather unceremoniously informed him in his cabin onboard the Enterprise that he was immediately to turn over his command to Colonel Benjamin Hinman of Connecticut. Arnold, who had been planning a full-scale invasion of Canada, was dumbfounded.22

  Benedict Arnold might well have stayed on as Hinman’s deputy, but he was greatly upset and declared he would not be second in command to any person. The end result was that Arnold resigned his Massachusetts commission on June 24, taking from Ticonderoga a bad taste and a discontent that would only grow in the future. By the time he reached Massachusetts, he received more unwanted news. His thirty-year-old wife, Margaret, had died suddenly of unknown causes the same week as his dismissal, leaving him a widower with three young sons under the age of eight.

  Ethan Allen, meanwhile, was faring only slightly better. Before Arnold’s encounter with the Massachusetts investigators, Allen had left Ticonderoga in the company of his cousin and erstwhile lieutenant, Seth Warner, and headed for Philadelphia. He was determined to convince the Continental Congress of the wisdom of holding the Lake Champlain posts and present his own plan for invading Canada. The bustling city of Philadelphia would be a shock to Allen, who was more accustomed to New Hampshire villages.23
/>
  Chapter 19

  Ben Franklin Returns

  As Ethan Allen and Seth Warner rode south with their frustrations, the Second Continental Congress had been meeting since May 10 in the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia. Fired by the events on Lexington Green and at Concord’s North Bridge, this gathering was to prove more assertive than the plodding session John Adams had bemoaned the previous fall. Still, there were far more questions than answers about the course to be taken, and some of the uncertainty was directed toward the oldest head in the room. It had been a long time, but Ben Franklin was home.

  Revered though he was by many on both sides of the Atlantic, Benjamin Franklin was nonetheless something of an unknown quantity to the younger generation of rebels who now gathered around him. At sixty-nine, he was far and away the oldest delegate. Despite his reputation as a stalwart proponent of colonial rights, Franklin had been away from the colonies for most of the last two decades. Some couldn’t help but wonder if the years in London had softened his resolve. Especially among the most ardent of this crowd of young Turks, who knew where Franklin’s true loyalties lay?

  Benjamin Franklin had arrived in Philadelphia on board the Pennsylvania Packet on Friday evening, May 5. Ever the inquisitive scientist, Franklin, with his fifteen-year-old grandson, Temple, had recorded the differing water temperatures in the Atlantic to bolster his theory of the Gulf Stream during their crossing from London. The very next day, the Pennsylvania assembly voted to add Franklin’s name and those of two others to the list of Pennsylvania delegates already approved the prior December.1

  “Dr. Franklin is highly pleased to find us arming and preparing for the worst events,” a private observer wrote in a letter that was given wide circulation in rebel newspapers. “He thinks nothing else can save us from the most abject slavery and destruction.”2 But in practice, during those first weeks in what would come to be known as Independence Hall, Franklin was far more reserved. John Adams recalled him “sitting in silence, a great part of the time fast asleep in his chair.”3 Others were more skeptical. Some of the delegates, Philadelphia printer William Bradford wrote James Madison, “begin to entertain a great Suspicion that Dr. Franklin came rather as a spy than as a friend, & that he means to discover our weak side & make his peace with the minister [Lord North] by discovering it to him.”4

  Madison did not give Franklin the benefit of the doubt. “Indeed it appears to me,” Madison responded to Bradford, “that the bare suspicion of his guilt amounts very nearly to a proof of its reality. If he were the man he formerly was, & has even of late pretended to be,” Madison continued, “his conduct in Philada. on this critical occasion could have left no room for surmise or distrust.”5

  Part of Franklin’s reticence to engage in these early debates was a matter of style. He had always been one to brood and contemplate privately before uttering what in retrospect would appear as profound observations. But since he had missed the gathering of so many of these same men the prior fall, Franklin was also taking his time—in between naps—to be certain he understood the depth of their individual commitments.

  By now the moderates, it appeared, had largely been sent packing. Even Franklin’s friend and longtime ally in Pennsylvania politics, Joseph Galloway, had been swept aside. Despite his election as a delegate to this congress, Galloway asked that he be excused from serving. His moderation had failed, and even Franklin had criticized his compromise plan for a junior-level Parliament in North America. Galloway would soon take his place in the loyalist camp, and his friendship with Franklin would run its course.

  But most trying to Franklin during these days was the matter of loyalties within his own family. Even as Franklin landed in Philadelphia, his son, William, was still the royal governor of New Jersey and going to great lengths to proclaim his loyalty to the king. With family confrontation quite likely, grandson Temple became a pawn between the grandfather he adored and the father he barely knew. (Siring illegitimate sons—such as William and Temple—was something of a Franklin family tradition.) Ironically, it was Joseph Galloway, with whom William Franklin had once studied law, who made a last-ditch effort to broker a family truce.

  Galloway hosted the three generations of Franklins at Trevose, his magnificent country home just north of Philadelphia. To all appearances, Galloway had long been the lord and master of Trevose, but the vast estate was legally part of his wife’s inheritance, a situation that would come to weigh heavily on Galloway’s own family relationships as the divide widened between rebels and loyalists. But for now, his attention was focused on the Franklins.

  Their reunion was cordial, but rather stiff and without mention of politics until a few glasses of Madeira managed to loosen their tongues. “Well, Mr. Galloway,” the senior Franklin asked his host, “you are really of the mind that I ought to promote a reconciliation?” Galloway affirmed that he was, but Franklin had already heard that much and more from Lord Howe back in England. He responded with a litany of colonial complaints, which Galloway answered with his own list of affronts that included anonymous rebels sending him a noose: evidently his moderation in proposing to save the British union was intolerable to some of his countrymen.

  As Galloway and Ben Franklin volleyed back and forth, William offered that it might be best for them all to remain neutral. To his father, such a course smacked of timidity rather than resolve, and one senses that Franklin would have had more respect for his son had William firmly staked out his position then and there, no matter how opposed it was to Franklin’s own views. By the time they all parted, there could be no question in Galloway’s mind or that of William where Benjamin Franklin stood. There could be no middle ground. He was for independence.

  The one family matter that the Franklins resolved at Trevose was to agree that young Temple would spend the summer with his father in New Jersey before returning to Philadelphia to enroll in the University of Pennsylvania in the fall. William lobbied to send the lad to King’s College (later Columbia College, then Columbia University) in New York City instead, but grandfather Benjamin vetoed that plan because New York had become “a hotbed of English loyalism.” Poor Temple remained caught in the middle between his father and grandfather.6

  Joseph Galloway would go on to assist the British in their administration of Philadelphia during the war. Years later, particularly bitter from the defeat of his moderate plan at the First Continental Congress, Galloway would claim that the rebel leaders had used “every fiction, falsehood, and fraud to incite the ignorant and vulgar to arms.”7

  When Galloway finally slunk away to England in exile as the British abandoned Philadelphia in 1778, his wife, Grace Growden Galloway, stayed behind to fight for her inheritance of Trevose even though she had two strikes against her—she was a woman and a loyalist. William Franklin continued to serve as the royal governor of New Jersey until the New Jersey Provincial Congress finally declared him “an enemy to the liberties of this country” and had him arrested. Later exchanged for a rebel prisoner, he then offered his services to the British in administering New York City.8 Meanwhile, Benjamin Franklin went about building a new nation.

  AMONG FRANKLIN’S FELLOW DELEGATES AT the Second Continental Congress were a high number of reappointees from the first session, held the previous September. The new man in the Massachusetts delegation was John Hancock, never one to shrink from any prominent role. Hancock’s short-lived experience as president of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and his habit of leading in any venue in which he found himself would stand him in good stead.

  One of Samuel Adams’s preoccupations upon arriving in Philadelphia was to outfit himself with new clothes befitting his role—perhaps at the dapper Hancock’s urging. Adams had arrived in Philadelphia straight from Lexington with “only the Cloaths on my back, which were very much worn.” With his customary casual approach to monetary matters, it was almost two years before Adams got around to billing the Massachusetts legislature for what he considered “a Necessity, of bei
ng at an extraordinary Expense, to appear with any kind of Decency for Cloathing & Linnen after my Arrival in this City.”9

  The five South Carolina delegates who had sailed so gaily from Charleston had arrived in Philadelphia in time, as had John Jay of New York and Caesar Rodney of Delaware. An assembly in Savannah, Georgia, declined to certify a slate of delegates, but St. John’s Parish took exception and dispatched Dr. Lyman Hall on his way nonetheless. Hall was seated with the understanding that he would not vote upon matters “when the sentiments of the Congress were taken by colonies.” Once the delegates had assembled, Peyton Randolph of Virginia was again elected president of the congress.10

  Aside from an inordinate amount of fussing with parliamentary procedure and credentials, the Continental Congress addressed three issues of major and continuing importance during its first few weeks: publicity, money, and an army. John Hancock’s first action as a delegate was to lay before the congress resolutions passed by Massachusetts in the wake of Lexington and Concord, along with the depositions taken from participants and Joseph Warren’s fiery letter to British inhabitants, which had been sent to England aboard the Quero. Recognizing the importance of disseminating the rebel version of events throughout the colonies, the Continental Congress ordered that the same be published in as many newspapers as possible.11

  Other requests from Massachusetts could not be accommodated so readily. Joseph Warren’s most critical communication from the Massachusetts Provincial Congress proudly reported Massachusetts’s “unanimous Resolve” to raise its own force of 13,600 men, but made clear that in the face of British reinforcements this would not be enough. The rest of New England was arming itself in similar proportions, but Warren warned that “a powerful Army, on the side of America” and under the direction of the Continental Congress, was the only means left “to stem the rapid Progress of a tyrannical Ministry.”12