Walter Isaacson Great Innovators e-book boxed set

by Walter Isaacson

  Realism and Idealism

  France’s foreign minister, the Comte de Vergennes, was a dowdy professional diplomat, portly and lacking in pretense, but in the words of Susan Mary Alsop, whose book Yankees at the Court is a delightful portrayal of the period, “he was a human and affectionate man and a shrewd judge of character.” He would, indeed, be both affectionate and shrewd in his dealings with Franklin. He was never fully accepted socially at the court of Louis XVI because his wife was bourgeois, but he admired those sensible middle-class qualities in her and presumably found them agreeable in Franklin as well.17

  Vergennes was very much a realist in his view of international relations, an outlook he summarized pithily in 1774, when he declared that “the influence of every power is measured by the opinion one has of its intrinsic force.” He was also ardently anti-British, which helped make him sympathetic to the American cause.

  In the spring of 1776, just before Franklin’s arrival, Vergennes had composed for the king a set of proposals that argued in unvarnished terms what France’s policy should be: “England is the natural enemy of France; and she is an avid enemy, ambitious, unjust, brimming with bad faith; the permanent and cherished object of her policy is the humiliation and ruin of France.” America, he said, needed French support to prevail. It was in France’s interest, economically and politically, to try to cripple England by embracing the new nation. He presented these proposals to Louis XVI and his cabinet—which included the comptroller of finances, Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, who was to become Franklin’s friend and fan—in the gold-gilded Council Chamber of Versailles.

  Turgot and the other ministers were worried about France’s tight finances and lack of preparedness, so they urged caution. The king approved a compromise: France would lend some support to America, but only secretly. Vergennes’s letters on the subject, it was decided, would be dictated to his 15-year-old son, whose handwriting would not be identifiable if they fell into the wrong hands.18

  Franklin first met Vergennes later that year, on December 28, 1776, at a secret session in Paris, just days after his arrival. With Deane and Lee at his side, Franklin pushed forcefully, and perhaps a bit too quickly, for a French alliance. The foreign minister complimented Franklin on his knowledge and wit, but he made no commitments other than to say that he would consider a memo on the subject if Franklin wished to write one. In his notes that evening, he described Franklin as “intelligent but circumspect,” and in a letter to his ambassador in London he noted, “His conversation is gentle and honest, he appears to be a man of much talent.”19

  Franklin accepted Vergennes’s suggestion that he write a memo, and in it he emphasized the realistic balance-of-power calculus that he knew the French minister would appreciate. If France and her ally Spain joined the American cause, Britain would lose her colonies, her possessions in the West Indies, and the “commerce that has rendered her so opulent,” thus reducing her to a “state of weakness and humiliation.” America would be willing to “guarantee in the firmest manner” that France and Spain could keep any of the West Indian islands Britain lost. But if France balked, then America might be “reduced to the necessity of ending the war by an accommodation” with Britain. “Delay may be attended with fatal consequences.”20

  But Franklin realized that appealing to a cold calculus of interests was only part of the equation. Better than most other diplomats in the nation’s history, he understood that America’s strength in world affairs would come from a unique mix that included idealism as well as realism. When woven together, as they would later be in policies ranging from the Monroe Doctrine to the Marshall Plan, they were the warp and woof of a resilient foreign policy. “America’s great historical moments,” writes historian Bernard Bailyn, “have occurred when realism and idealism have been combined, and no one knew this better than Franklin.”21

  As he would prove in France, Franklin not only knew how to play a calculated balance-of-power game like the best practitioner of real-politik, but he also knew how to play with his other hand the rousing chords of America’s exceptionalism, the sense that America stood apart from the rest of the world because of its virtuous nature. Both the hard power that came from its strategic might and the soft power that flowed from the appeal of its ideals and culture would, he realized, be equally important in assuring its influence. In his diplomacy, as in his personal business, he was “a man who believed in the power of reason and the reality of virtue,” declared the writer and mathematician Condorcet, who became one of his best French friends.

  So, after writing Vergennes a memo infused with classic diplomatic realism, Franklin settled down in Passy to pursue the gambit of drawing power from America’s idealism. He arranged for the inspiring documents coming out of America—including the constitution he had written for Pennsylvania—to be translated and published as a way of winning hearts and minds in France and elsewhere. “All Europe is for us,” he wrote the Committee of Secret Correspondence in a letter that explained his rationale for publishing those documents. Then he went on to give a classic formulation of the lure of America’s ideals: “Tyranny is so generally established in the rest of the world that the prospect of an asylum in America for those who love liberty gives general joy, and our cause is esteemed the cause of all mankind.” He ended by echoing the shining “city upon a hill” metaphor used by the great American exceptionalists from John Winthrop to Ronald Reagan. “We are fighting for the dignity and happiness of human nature,” he proclaimed. “Glorious it is for the Americans to be called by Providence to this post of honor.” A few weeks later, he wrote in a similar vein to a Boston friend, concluding, “It is a common observation here that our cause is the cause of all mankind, and that we are fighting for their liberty in defending our own.”22

  Franklin’s public diplomacy strategy puzzled Vergennes. “I really do not know what Franklin has come to do here,” he wrote. “At the beginning we thought he had all sorts of projects, but all of a sudden he has shut himself up in sanctuary with the philosophes.” The French minister rejected America’s proposal for an immediate alliance, deflected requests for further meetings, and kept his distance from Franklin for a few months, waiting to see how the war evolved. He did, however, quietly offer some aid: France would make another secret loan to America and allow its ports to be used by American merchant ships.

  Franklin also waged his public relations campaign, as he had in England, with some anonymous pieces in the press. The most powerful was a brutal parody, along the lines of “An Edict by the King of Prussia,” that he wrote shortly after his first meeting with Vergennes. It purported to be a letter to the commander of the Hessian troops in America from a German count who got paid a bounty for the death of each of the soldiers he sent over. Because Britain had decided not to pay for any wounded soldiers, only for those who died, the count encouraged his commander to make sure that as many died as possible:

  I do not mean by this that you should assassinate them; we should be humane, my dear Baron, but you may insinuate to the surgeons with entire propriety that a crippled man is a reproach to their profession, and that there is no wiser course than to let every one of them die when he ceases to be fit to fight…You will therefore promise promotion to all who expose themselves; you will exhort them to seek glory in the midst of dangers.

  He also used his wit to parry the propaganda reports being spread by the British ambassador, Lord Stormont. Asked about one of these reports, Franklin retorted, “It is not a truth; it is only a Stormont.” After that, he and fashionable Paris began using the ambassador’s name as a verb, “stormonter,” a weak pun on the French verb mentir, meaning “to lie.”23

  Wild rumors began to circulate about Franklin’s various strategies and schemes in France. One British spy (not Bancroft) reported that Franklin was preparing “a great number of reflecting mirrors” that would be placed on the Calais coast to focus the heat from the sun on the British navy, thus destroying it. That would be followed by an electric
shock sent over a cross-channel chain that would disrupt the entire British island. The New Jersey Gazette went further: Franklin was inventing an electrical apparatus that could shift landmasses and a method of using oil that could still the waves in one place while stirring up tempests in another.24

  Alas, what he was actually doing was more mundane, such as coping with European supplicants who sought commissions to serve as officers in the American army. His collected letters are clogged with requests, more than four hundred in all, some valiant and others vain. “Not a day passes in which I have not a number of soliciting visits, besides letters,” he complained. “You can have no conception how I am harassed.” There was the mother who offered up three of her flock of sons, the Dutch surgeon who wanted to study bodies that had been blown apart, and the Benedictine monk who promised to pray for America if it would pay off his gambling debts. Franklin’s favorite was a less than effusive recommendation he received from a mother, which began: “Sir, If in your America one knows the secret of how to reform a detestable subject who has been the cross of his family…”

  The case of one such supplicant showed how Franklin’s difficulty in saying no made him an easy mark. An Irishman living in Paris named William Parsons wrote Franklin a pitiful letter describing his unfortunate plight and begging for a commission to join the American army. Franklin did not offer him a recommendation, but he did lend him fifteen guineas, which Parsons then absconded with to England, leaving his poor wife behind. When the wife wrote Franklin a sad letter accusing him of causing her husband to leave, Franklin denied that he had given him any encouragement, wrote off the fifteen-guinea loan, and sent along another guinea to help the wife buy food. For the next three months, she peppered him with pleas for even more relief.

  Not all the supplicants were vagabonds. Franklin was able to find, among those seeking commissions, a few great officers to recommend: the Marquis de Lafayette, Baron von Steuben (whose rank in the Prussian army Franklin inflated in his eagerness to get General Washington to take him), and Count Pulaski, a famed Polish fighter who became a heroic brigadeer general for America. Nevertheless, Washington quickly grew testy about the number of aspiring officers Franklin was sending his way. “Our corps being already formed and fully officered,” he wrote, “every new arrival is only a source of embarrassment to Congress and myself and of disappointment and chagrin to the gentlemen who come over.”

  So Franklin tried as best he could to reject most of the commission seekers or provide them only with letters that used such phrases as “goes over at his own expense, contrary to my advice.” To cope with the constant flood of requests, or perhaps merely to make fun of them, Franklin even composed a form letter which he had printed up. “The bearer of this, who is going to America, presses me to give him a letter of recommendation, though I know nothing of him, not even his name,” it read. “I must refer you to himself for his character and merits, with which he is certainly better acquainted than I can possibly be.”25

  In September 1777, Franklin and his fellow commissioners went to press Vergennes again for French recognition and, as if to conceal the weakness of their position, to request seven times more aid than had already been given. It was an inauspicious meeting for two reasons. Before it even happened, the spying Bancroft had leaked details of the planned request to Ambassador Stormont, who protested it to Vergennes, who then chided the Americans for being so unguarded. In addition, shortly after the meeting, news arrived that British General Howe had captured Philadelphia.

  Howe’s success was a personal blow for Franklin. His house on Market Street was commandeered by a British captain named John André, who, as the Baches took refuge in the countryside, stole his electrical equipment, books, musical instruments, and an elegant portrait of him that had been painted by Benjamin Wilson in 1759. (It was returned from England in 1906 and now hangs on the second floor of the White House.)

  For America, it threatened to be an even worse blow. Howe was in Philadelphia and General Burgoyne was heading down the Hudson; if and when the two British armies linked, New England would be cut off from the rest of the colonies.

  Nonetheless, Franklin kept his equanimity. Told of Howe’s triumph, he replied, “You mistake the matter. Instead of Howe taking Philadelphia, Philadelphia has taken Howe.” On one level it seemed a flippant bon mot. On another, it was a shrewd assessment. If Burgoyne was slowed in his move down the Hudson, and if Howe did not press northward to reinforce him, both could end up isolated.

  Arthur Lee wanted to use America’s precarious position to present an ultimatum to the French: either they join America in a military alliance immediately or else America would be forced to reconcile with Britain. “Dr. Franklin was of a different position,” Lee recorded in his journal. “The effect of such a declaration,” Franklin argued, “might make them abandon us in despair or anger.” He felt that America would eventually gain a position that would make it in France’s own interest to want an alliance.

  He was right. Shortly before noon on December 4, a messenger from America galloped into the courtyard of Passy bearing a message from the front. Franklin asked if, as he had already heard, Philadelphia had fallen. “Yes, sir,” said the messenger. Franklin turned his back.

  “But, sir, I have greater news than that,” said the messenger. “General Burgoyne and his whole army are prisoners!” Burgoyne had been defeated at the Battle of Saratoga, and now Howe was indeed isolated.26

  The very dramatic dramatist Beaumarchais, who happened to be at Passy at the time, was eager to use the inside news to speculate in the stock markets; he raced back to Paris at such a high speed that his cabriolet overturned, fracturing his arm. Bancroft also immediately scurried off, heading for London to consult with his spymasters (he would also have speculated, but the news reached London before he did).

  Franklin, far calmer than his odd friends, wrote up a news release filled with little details and large exaggerations: “Mail arrived from Philadelphia at Dr. Franklin’s house in Passy after 34 days. On October 14th General Burgoyne was forced to lay down his arms, 9200 men killed or taken prisoner…General Howe is in Philadelphia, where he is imprisoned. All communication with his fleet is cut off.”

  Howe was not in fact trapped, nor was America on the verge of victory. Still, the British surrender at Saratoga was a great turning point on the battlefield and—because Franklin knew that power on the battlefield correlated to power at the bargaining table—it was a great turning point for his diplomatic efforts. The note he wrote to Vergennes that afternoon was more restrained than his news release. “We have the honor to acquaint your Excellency,” it began, “with advice of the total reduction of the force under General Burgoyne.”

  Two days later, Louis XVI from his chamber at Versailles put his royal assent on a gilt-edged paper, prepared for him by Vergennes, that invited the Americans to resubmit their request for a formal alliance. In delivering the message, Vergennes’s secretary added that “it could be done none too soon.”27

  The Treaties of Friendship

  and Alliance

  After a full year of deflecting requests for an alliance, the French were suddenly impatient as 1777 drew to a close. They were prodded not only by America’s success at Saratoga and the completion of their own naval rearmament program, but also by a new gambit by Franklin. He began to play the French and British off against one another and to let each side discover—and here is where he relied on the spies he knew were in his midst—how eager the other side was for a deal.

  Franklin wrote a renewed proposal for a French-American alliance on December 7, Temple delivered it the next day, and within a week the three American commissioners were meeting with Vergennes. The French quickly agreed to full recognition of America and treaties of trade and alliance. There was one caveat: France needed the approval of Spain, as the two countries had pledged in the Bourbon family pact of 1761 to act in concert. Vergennes sent his courier to Madrid and promised the Americans they would have a resp
onse in three weeks.

  In the meantime, the British sent to Paris the most trusted envoy they could muster, Paul Wentworth, their able spymaster. At the time, Wentworth was angry with his secret agent Bancroft for sending inside information to his stock speculating partner before sending it to Wentworth, who also was a speculator. King George III, upset by the bad news that his spies were giving him, denounced them all as untrustworthy stock manipulators, but he reluctantly approved Wentworth’s secret peace mission.

  Wentworth arrived in Paris in mid-December, just as the Americans were meeting with Vergennes, and sent a missive to Silas Deane that was worthy of a British spy: a gentleman who wished to meet him, it said, could be found the next morning in a coach at a specified place on the road to Passy, or later at an exhibition in the Luxembourg Gallery, or at the public baths on the Seine, where Deane would find a note giving the room number to use. Deane sent a reply worthy of an American: he would be in his office, where he would be happy to see anyone who wanted to come by.28

  At dinner with Deane, Wentworth proposed a plan for reconciliation between Britain and her colonies. America would have its own Congress, would be subject to Parliament only in matters of foreign policy and trade, and all the offensive acts passed since 1763 would be repealed. He also offered personal inducements—knighthoods, peer-ages, jobs, money—to Deane or any American who helped secure such a peace.