The First American

by H. W. Brands

  The British government, although inclined to respond, did so diffidently. Each man to be released had to receive a pardon for his treason from the king, which took time. During this time recruiters for the Royal Navy attempted to persuade the Americans to defect, painting a grim picture of America’s prospects generally and a dire one of theirs personally in the event they were captured again. But finally the exchanges began. One hundred Americans were sent to France, and one hundred Britons returned to Britain. Franklin was encouraged. “This is to continue till all are exchanged,” he assured the Congress.

  It did not continue nearly that long. The British government, apparently believing that the Americans lost more from having seamen detained than Britain did, threw additional hurdles in the way of the exchanges. It refused to trade Americans for British captured by French vessels or captured in America. After Franklin ran out of qualifying British prisoners, the exchanges clanked to a halt.

  So Franklin adopted other—unsanctioned—methods. Escape from English prisons was hardly impossible, especially for Americans who spoke the language and looked like the locals. Sometimes all it took was money to bribe the guards. One successful escapee described how, after “oiling the sentry’s conscience,” he simply strolled out of prison in a cleric’s garb. Franklin funded such ruses, often after the fact.

  He also reimbursed sympathizers who helped the escapees get to France. Thomas Digges, a Maryland merchant living in London, frequently took in the fugitives—and frequently wrote Franklin for money. “I cannot describe to you the trouble I have with these people,” Digges declared. “And the expence is so heavy on me at times that even with my curtailed and economic mode of living I am put to extreme difficulties. It is not trifles that will do for men who come naked by dozens and half dozens, and it is harder still to turn one’s back upon them.”

  Such was just how Franklin felt, and why he spent the time he did on relatively small numbers of people. Those who solicited his aid discovered he had a soft place in his heart for those in distress. When that distress involved matters of the heart, his own heart was softer still. A young captain named John Lock, who claimed to be an American, was taken from a British vessel by a French ship and imprisoned at Nantes. His fiancée, a fair young Frenchwoman, visited Passy and poured out her feelings. Franklin comforted her and promised to write to French naval minister Sartine. “By the letters that have passed between this Captain and the lady,” Franklin explained, “and by her earnestness in her solicitations, I perceive they are passionate lovers, and cannot but wish the obstacles to her union removed, and that there were a great many more matches made between the two nations, as I fancy they will agree better together in bed than they do in ships.”

  In this case Franklin’s sympathies outran his judgment. The damsel’s lament was genuine—but woefully ill informed. Her lover was not an American after all, but British. This discrepancy grieved her less than it embarrassed Franklin; what upset her was the fact that her handsome captain was already married.

  Franklin’s face reddened in another instance as well—but from anger more than embarrassment. Although Thomas Digges for a time did honest service on behalf of American escapees, that time terminated well before Franklin’s funding did. In 1781 Digges disappeared with £400 Franklin had forwarded for prisoner relief. Franklin could hardly contain himself.

  He that robs the rich even of a single guinea is a villain; but what is he who can break his sacred trust by robbing a poor man and a prisoner of eighteen pence given charitably for his relief, and repeat that crime as often as there are weeks in a winter, and multiply it by robbing as many poor men every week as make up the number of 600? We have no name in our language for such atrocious wickedness. If such a fellow is not damned, it is not worth while to keep a Devil.

  Franklin’s correspondence with David Hartley involved more than prisoner exchanges. A skeptic regarding the war, Hartley continued the pacifying efforts he had begun with Franklin in London in 1775. Hartley communicated confidentially with Lord North, who authorized Hartley to sound Franklin out. The terms offered were not insignificant, starting with what Hartley characterized—certainly with North’s approval—as “a tacit cession of independence to America.” For now the acknowledgment of independence must remain tacit; Parliament did have its pride. But the bridge from tacit to formal was plausible: a suspension of hostilities for a period of from five to seven years, during which time, presumably, minds as subtle as Franklin’s ought to be able to find the language to satisfy all parties. The one real hitch for the Americans was Britain’s insistence that they abandon their alliance with France.

  Hartley made a compelling case for the plan. He quoted Franklin (circa 1775) back to Franklin: “A little time given for cooling might have excellent effects.” He pointed out that the proposal committed no one to anything permanent. Should the transition from tacit to formal independence fail, “We can but fight it out at last. War never comes too late.” Yet even then something would have been gained—namely, five years of peace. “Peace is a bonum in se, whereas the most favourable events of war are but relatively lesser evils.” Besides, he could not believe that war would resume once halted. “If the flames of war could be but once extinguished, does not the Atlantic Ocean contain cold water enough to prevent their bursting out again?”

  Hartley acknowledged that America’s French connection complicated things. Yet Franklin ought to consider carefully the French interest in the affair. Doubtless the French did. “There is a certain point, to France, beyond which their work would fail and recoil upon themselves: If they were to drive the British ministry totally to abandon the American war, it would become totally a French war.” For now the French alliance might serve America, but not forever—and perhaps not to the point of American independence.

  Hartley did not ask Franklin for any commitment, which he supposed Franklin was not, by himself, in any position to give. He asked only for some encouraging sign. And let it come soon. “Peace now is better than peace a twelve-month hence, at least by all the lives that may be lost in the mean while and by all the accumulated miseries that may intervene by that delay.”

  Franklin refused to oblige. This was a better offer, because more authoritative, than the vague hints brought by Paul Wentworth a year earlier. The alliance with France was serving its purpose. Yet the offer was not good enough. Franklin assured Hartley that he remained as devoted to peace as ever. “But this is merely on motives of general humanity, to obviate the evils men devilishly inflict on men in time of war, and to lessen as much as possible the similarity of Earth and Hell.” Britain had brought the war upon itself by bringing it on America, and America was not going to abandon the fight on some indefinite promises. The war would continue “till England shall be reduced to that perfect impotence of mischief which alone can prevail with her to let other nations enjoy peace, liberty and safety.” With equal adamance Franklin rejected abandonment of the treaties

  with France. America owed France a debt of gratitude and justice for taking America’s part in time of need. The American alliance with France reflected a general appreciation of this fact; for this reason the alliance would last. “Though it did not exist, an honest American would cut off his right hand rather than sign an agreement with England contrary to the spirit of it.”

  Reconciliation had once been possible, but no longer. Reminding Hartley of the story of Roger Bacon’s mythical brazen head, which held the secret of building a wall around England to defend against invaders but was ignored till too late, Franklin declared that the British government was now in the same situation. “It might have erected a wall of brass round England if such a measure had been adopted when Friar Bacon’s brazen head cried out, ‘Time is!’ But the wisdom of it was not seen till after the fatal cry of ‘Time’s past!’”

  Franklin’s defiant mood was easier to maintain in 1779 than it would be for some time thereafter. That spring Spain joined the war. Although the Congress failed to win an
alliance, much money, or even recognition of American independence from the court of King Carlos, the fact that Britain now had another fleet to contend with buoyed American hopes.

  But things began to go wrong again. Admiral d’Estaing grew tired of guarding General Clinton at New York and sailed away, whereupon Clinton escaped by sea for the American south, to exploit Loyalist sympathies there. He landed in the Carolinas at the beginning of 1780, laying siege to Charleston, the only real city of the entire region. In May, Charleston surrendered, along with an American army of 5,000 and four ships. Morale among the Americans in the neighborhood drooped badly; many availed themselves of Clinton’s offer of amnesty in exchange for allegiance to King George. In August, British General Cornwallis routed American troops at Camden, South Carolina, raising the prospect of unraveling the American confederation from the bottom up.

  In September even worse news arrived from the north. One of the American heroes of the war had turned coat. Benedict Arnold felt ill treated by the Congress, which jumped several junior officers over him in promotion, and he felt betrayed by the alliance with France, which married America to a bunch of murdering papists (Arnold had fought in the French and Indian War, and although he rejected the rigid Puritanism of his Connecticut youth, he drew the line well short of Rome). He also felt short of cash, having married—after the death of his first wife, while he was fighting the British in 1775—the belle of Philadelphia society (the crowd into which Sarah Bache despaired of fitting without lace and feathers from Paris). Britain offered a remedy for his resentments and his debts, and in the summer of 1779 he began selling secrets to General Clinton. Included was vital information on troop movements and the operations of the French fleet. The following year he obtained command of West Point on the Hudson—“a post in which I can render the most essential services,” he informed John André, his British contact. Arnold offered to deliver West Point to Clinton, but the plot was discovered when André was captured with incriminating documents. Arnold fled downriver on a British warship, leaving André to the noose, and Mrs. Arnold, who apparently knew of his treachery and may have assisted in it, to fend for herself. At New York City he was greeted with congratulations and a commission as brigadier general in the British army.

  The blow to the patriot cause was profound. “Arnold’s baseness and treachery is astonishing!” Franklin declared upon hearing the news.

  Nor was that the end of the evil tidings. The winter of 1779–80 had been even worse than the trial at Valley Forge, provoking a springtime mutiny after six weeks of one-eighth rations. In the winter of 1780–81 the mutiny came in January—followed by another three weeks later, and yet another in May. Amid the distress, Franklin received letters from Lafayette and Washington lamenting the lack of basic necessities. “We are naked, shockingly naked, and worse off on that respect than we have ever been,” Lafayette wrote. “No cloth to be got. No money…. You have no idea of the shocking situation the Army is in.” The marquis implored Franklin—“for God’s sake, dear Friend”—to find something, anything, for his men to wear.

  Washington was less emotional, but his words were the more ominous for that. “I doubt not you are so fully informed by Congress of our political and military state that it would be superfluous to trouble you with any thing relating to either,” he told Franklin—before continuing, “If I were to speak on topics of the kind it would be to shew that our present situation makes one of two things essential to us: a peace, or the most vigorous aid of our allies, particularly in the article of money.”

  Peace or money—after nearly six years of war it had come to that. Washington was not the only one thinking peace; the Congress had appointed John Adams to pursue precisely the kind of cues Franklin had rejected from David Hartley. So far Adams had nothing to show for his efforts, but if the strains on the army continued to increase, he might be forced to find something.

  Franklin, believing that a permanent peace would follow only upon a crushing British defeat, opted for the other horn of Washington’s dilemma. He appealed once more to Vergennes for money. Franklin had kept the French court apprised of the British overtures lest Louis learn to doubt America’s good faith, and also lest Louis forget that America had other suitors; now Franklin prefaced his appeal with a protestation of his country’s continued devotion to the common cause. Speaking for the Congress, he declared that it was “the unalterable resolution of the United States to maintain their liberties and independence, and inviolably to adhere to the alliance at every hazard and in every event.” Moreover, the misfortunes lately encountered by American arms, far from dampening American ardor, had redoubled it. This said, certain facts were undeniable. He cited the letter he had received from Lafayette about the troops’ want of clothing; he quoted Washington about needing either peace or money.

  “I am grown old,” he explained to Vergennes. His gout had been plaguing him again; he could not say how long he would hold his current office. “I therefore take this occasion to express my opinion to your Excellency that the present conjuncture is critical; that there is some danger lest the Congress should lose its influence over the people if it is found unable to procure the aids that are wanted; and that the whole system of the new Government in America may thereby be shaken.” The next several months might determine the fate of America for generations. “If the English are suffered once to recover that country, such an opportunity of effectual separation as the present may not occur again in the course of ages.” And on the fate of America hung the fate of Europe. “The possession of those fertile and extensive regions and that vast sea coast will afford them [the British] so broad a basis for future greatness by the rapid growth of their commerce, and breed of seaman and soldier, as will enable them to become the terror of Europe, and to exercise with impunity that insolence which is so natural to their nation, and which will increase enormously with the increase of their power.”

  Was this what France wanted? It was not what America wanted. But it was what America—and France—would get if French aid failed. “In the present conjuncture, we can rely on France alone.”

  Franklin asked Vergennes for 25 million livres. He eventually received a promise of 6 million—and a lecture on the difficulty Louis himself was having raising money for France’s campaigns. Vergennes also hinted that France was considering a negotiated settlement.

  It was a most trying period. While Louis pondered his latest plea for money, Franklin wrote to John Adams, then in Holland similarly trying to raise funds. Franklin said he had made his most forceful presentation to the French court, and could only wait. “I have, however, two of the Christian graces: faith and hope. But my faith is only that of which the Apostle speaks, the evidence of things not seen. For in truth I do not see at present how so many bills drawn at random on our ministers in France, Spain and Holland are to be paid, nor that any thing but omnipotent necessity can excuse the imprudence of it.” Franklin for one was willing to bow to that omnipotent necessity. “I think the bills drawn upon us by the Congress ought at all risques to be accepted.” He would use his best endeavors to scrape together funds to pay the bills as they came due. “And if those endeavours fail, I shall be ready to break, run away, or go to prison with you, as it shall please God.”

  Franklin was half-joking; at his age he was in no position to break and run. Other days—when his gout, which had been gnawing his toes most of the winter, bit with particular energy—a half joke was more than he could manage. “I have passed my 75th year,” he wrote to the Congress, “and I find that the long and severe fit of the gout which I had the last winter has shaken me exceedingly, and I am yet far from having recovered the bodily strength I before enjoyed. I do not know that my mental faculties are impaired; perhaps I shall be the last to discover that. But I am sensible of a great diminution in my activity, a quality I think particularly necessary in your minister for this court. I am afraid therefore that your affairs may some time or other suffer by my deficiency.”

  Since
middle age he had maintained his health by summer vacations; but these he had not been able to take since the war started. Business barred other concessions to advancing years that might have made his existence more bearable.

  His time had come. “I have been engaged in public affairs, and enjoyed public confidence in some shape or other during the long term of fifty years, an honour sufficient to satisfy any reasonable ambition, and I have no other left but that of repose, which I hope the Congress will grant me by sending some person to supply my place.”

  Though his tone belied his words, Franklin disclaimed any doubt regarding the ultimate success of what he called “the glorious cause.” But he said the members of the Congress should not expect to see him soon after his replacement arrived. “As I cannot at present undergo the fatigues of a sea voyage, the last having been almost too much for me, and would not again expose myself to the hazard of capture and imprisonment in this time of war, I purpose to remain here at least till the peace, perhaps it may be for the remainder of my life.”

  He asked one thing of the Congress beyond relief from his duties—one favor to which he thought his service entitled him.

  It is that they will be pleased to take under their protection my grandson William Temple Franklin. I have educated him from his infancy, and brought him over with an intention of placing him where he might be qualified for the profession of the law. But the constant occasion I had for his service as a private secretary during the time of the commissioners, and more extensively since their departure, has induced me to keep him always with me.