by Sally Cabot
For what came next was Elizabeth, the royal appointment, the royal oath. William had become who he’d become, and in the end, prudential algebra couldn’t solve that. For William, now, there was no choice. He was who he was. He picked up the columned sheet and tore it down the middle, tore it again, crumpled it. He pulled into place the letter he’d begun so many hours ago and read what he’d written thus far:
It has come to my attention that a secret delegation moves northward through New Jersey with plans to prevail on the Canadians to enter into the confederacy with the other colonies. The delegation consists of: Samuel Chase, Charles Carroll, John Carroll and
William picked up his pen, inked it, and carefully etched the last name into the paper: Dr. Franklin.
THE FIRST REAL THUNDERCLOUDS rolled toward William at the beginning of June, when a new, illegal Provincial Congress was formed, William’s own legitimate assembly declared void, and his salary stopped. The storm broke on June nineteenth at two in the morning, when someone began to pound violently against the thick doors of Proprietary House.
William was sitting at the small desk in his bedchamber writing a letter to his son, Temple, unwilling to leave Elizabeth to do his usual work in the library because of the increasingly poor state of her health. William began by confirming plans for the boy’s summer visit, and continued by inquiring after the health of Sally and her family. He paused. Went on. How fares the old man after his Canada travels? Was his health greatly impaired? Nothing ever gave me more pain than his undertaking that journey. Just remembering that pain had caused William to set the pen down, just as the pounding on the door commenced.
Elizabeth sat up in bed. “William! What is it? Who knocks at this hour?” But William was already at the window. A half-moon lit what was on most days an impeccably manicured lawn, but on this night fifty mounted and armed militiamen were churning it to mud.
“Nothing, my love. One of my father’s overly dedicated mail couriers. You know what they say of them—ride all night without a stop for a cup. Go back to sleep.” William crossed to the bed and kissed his wife’s forehead, already clammy, but he couldn’t afford her a second more.
He left the room and met his servant Hamilton at the top of the stairs, as white or whiter than Elizabeth.
“ ’Tis the rebel militia, sir! Come with an order from—”
“Shut your mouth,” William hissed. “Alarm her and you’ll be mucking out the stable.”
As William stepped off the last stair and saw the militiaman standing in the foyer, it gave him pause to consider how swiftly he’d chosen to blame a mail carrier—and indirectly, his father—for the early-hour disturbance, but he took care not to let any hint of that old bitterness reach his face for fear the obviously nervous militiaman at the foot of the stairs might find some courage in it.
William greeted the man by pointing to the dispatch he held in his hand, acknowledging neither his illegal rank nor his right to be standing in the royal governor’s house. The militiaman stepped forward and handed William the sealed and folded parchment. “From Colonel Sirling, First New Jersey Regiment.”
First New Jersey rebel regiment. William Franklin, who’d kissed the ring of King George himself, who was an appointed officer of the British Crown, William Franklin was to have his wife’s peace disturbed by this? William broke the seal on the document in disgust, read in disbelief. One of his couriers had been intercepted carrying “a treasonous letter” to the Crown, and William had been declared “an enemy to the liberties of this country.” Colonel Sirling had ordered William’s arrest, and he was to be transported to Burlington, to await the “will and pleasure of the Continental Congress.”
The will and pleasure of the Continental Congress. Good God, that it had come to this! That one of the king’s own royal governors must sit and wait on the whim of an illegal mob that dared to call itself a congress! It could only be considered proof of a world gone mad, proof that all William was and all he stood for was now to be tested to the utter limit. It was proof—and there it took William some time to even spell out the thought in his head—it was proof that the rift between William Franklin and his father, who now sat on the Continental Congress, was complete.
William worked to keep any hint of his mental disarray from his face, to focus on the document. He read it again, so enraged that the black letters turned red and wavered on the page; he waited till his vision cleared and read it a third time; this time he saw that he needed to swallow what he needed to swallow until he was able to marshal some support. He was not, after all, friendless.
“You will allow me to inform my wife?” Without waiting for an answer he turned for the stairs, making sure to take each one with an even, measured tread. They would not see him run. Not yet!
Elizabeth was at the window, gripping the sill, leaning forward as if to peer out, but William had long experience in identifying the nuances of posture and knew that she also leaned so in an effort to capture her fleeting breath.
“Soldiers, William!”
“Yes, my love.” William had already gone to his desk in the corner and begun to write furiously. “And I must go with them until the court clears the matter up, and so I must get this letter off at once to the chief justice. I promise you, it shall be resolved and I shall be back home almost before it’s been dispatched.”
“But, William! At night!”
“Hush, Elizabeth. Keep your breath.” William finished his letter to the chief justice. He grabbed another sheet and began to write, this one for the press, for his people.
To be represented as an enemy to the liberties of my country merely for doing my duty to their future happiness and safety is sufficient to rouse the indignation of any man not dead to human feelings. I appeal to every individual in the province to vouch for me. Let me exhort you to avoid, above all things, the traps of independency and republicanism now set before you, however tempting they may be baited. No independent state ever was, or ever can be, so happy as we have been, and still might be, under the present government . . .
He sealed and addressed both papers, went to the landing where the other servants were hovering, and handed Hamilton the pair of envelopes, peppering him with instructions he’d no doubt forget by the time he reached the stairs. He returned to Elizabeth, folded her into his arms, began the circles against her back.
“I do not—”
“Hush, now. Hush.”
Elizabeth fell silent, but the breath came no easier under his hand; it didn’t matter, he couldn’t wait. Already, here came the steps on the stairs, and he would not allow them to upset Elizabeth by arresting him in her presence. His Elizabeth. Dear God, what was to become of Elizabeth? But as he tore down the stairs that question had already become supplanted with another: Had his father, from his seat on the congress, sanctioned this illegal act, or had he stood as a lone dissenting voice of reason amid a pack of rabid wolves howling for the arrest of the only American-born governor on the continent?
William reached the bottom of the stairs just as sixteen soldiers with guns and bayonets drawn charged through the doors, but down the stairs behind him hurtled Elizabeth.
“William! Dear God in heaven! What do they do to you?”
“You mustn’t fret, love. ’Tis all show. They won’t dare harm an officer of the Crown.”
“But, William, tell me, what shall I do? Shall I send word to your father?”
“Yes, write to my father,” William answered, but only to ease her, for of course his father already knew of it.
53
THE JOURNEY TO BURLINGTON, to the seat of the Provincial Congress, was long, exhausting, and mortifying; William was paraded under guard past the laughing, spitting crowds of farmers and shopkeepers who’d once cheered his arrival in a colony he’d done nothing but better. The Brunswick inn where they stopped for the night only heaped more humiliation on William; he was confined to a filthy room and so rigidly guarded he was forced to relieve himself into a bucket in public
view. At daylight he was kicked awake and without food or drink thrust back into the carriage and delivered to another filthy inn at Burlington.
But William was not yet defeated; when the guard came to bring him before the tribunal the next day he said, “I have no legal business with your congress,” and refused to leave his room.
The guards didn’t trouble to argue with him; they left and returned with thirty more soldiers who carted him off at gunpoint, and at gunpoint he was brought before the tribunal.
IT WAS LIKE A play, thought William, or a puppet show, these supposed five “justices” acting out their impostor roles in neat wigs and shined buttons, simpering drivel to one another only to make him wait and seethe and wait more. At length the central figure on the stage took his first good look at William, and William returned it evenly.
“Mr. Franklin, is it true that you tried to convene an illegal assembly during this month of June?”
“I know of no illegal assembly beyond this one. And on the grounds of its illegality, I have nothing further to say. You may do as you please.”
The puppets looked at one another in such perfect unison William was more than ever convinced of sticks pushed, strings pulled; one puppet in particular grew red faced as William continued to sit in composed silence.
The lead player resumed. “A letter of yours has been intercepted, sir, written in March of this year, addressed to Lord Dartmouth at the Crown Office. It names certain gentlemen, diplomats on an official mission. Do you recall this letter and who it named?”
So this was the intent—not to elicit already known facts but to humiliate William by making him say his father’s name, by making him repeat the words by which he’d been accused of convicting his father of treason and by doing so convicting himself of the same.
William felt the old rage first, but next the oily sweat of fear. Say nothing. He held himself straight and still, and it proved to be all that was needed to bring the red-faced inquisitor leaping to his feet.
“How dare you! How dare you sit before us with your fine airs and pretend yourself a gentleman when everyone knows out of what baseness you were got!”
There all semblance of due process fell away. Several other justices rose from their seats, someone called for quiet, another called for the guard; a third attempted to insert a motion into the pandemonium ordering William’s return to the inn to await his verdict, and someone managed to holler a second. William laughed out loud. Had these fools not heard? The verdict had been delivered. He was his father’s base-born bastard. There was nothing more to be said.
BY NIGHTFALL WILLIAM HAD become ill, fevered. When he was told to expect no word till the tribunal reconvened in four days, he begged for paper and pen to write to Elizabeth, couching his words in careful terms that he hoped would slip past those who vetted it.
My dearest Elizabeth,
I am well; do not be concerned. I am held at the Burlington Sword and Shield, my room tight and cozy under the northeast eaves, kept company by a half-dozen cheerful and attentive guards. As I shall be here four days more at the least I should like you to inform Hamilton to cancel my meeting on the twenty-fifth.
I am ever your loving,
W. Franklin
If the letter got through, Elizabeth would know what to do; she would alert William’s friends and they would know where William was and under what kind of guard and that they had four days to effect an escape.
But the letter didn’t pass. It was returned to William in half-inch shreds, accompanied by a good deal of cursing and slamming about of swords. In his fevered sleep he dreamed of Elizabeth pinned at the end of a militiaman’s musket, gasping for air, shouting at him between gasps, “Bastard! Bastard!”—a word she’d never once used, despite having double the cause.
ANOTHER OFFICER, A CAPTAIN in the rebel militia, arrived at the inn bearing the answer from congress, which he read aloud. “ ‘As the said William Franklin by this and his former conduct, in many instances, appears to be a virulent enemy to this country and a person that may prove dangerous, therefore, it is unanimously resolved, that the said William Franklin be confined in such place and a manner as the honorable Continental Congress shall direct.’ ”
“Such place” proved to be a gaol in Hartford, Connecticut, a place as far away from William’s friends—and Elizabeth—as the Continental Congress could get him. William was carried on the rough, two-hundred-mile journey and displayed along the route to jeers and catcalls like a caged bear. Perhaps the worst moment came as they entered the outskirts of Hartford, and one of his guards decided to taunt him by handing him a local newspaper. William was described as “a noted Tory and ministerial tool exceedingly busy in perplexing the cause of liberty.”
Ministerial tool. William looked at the top of the paper to make note of the date: July the fourth, 1776. The date could never signify anything to anyone but William, but to him it would forever mark the day he’d been robbed of his freedom and his reputation. Of everything.
54
Philadelphia, July 8, 1776
THEY WERE ALL THERE, gathered at the steps of the State House—the Germans, the Scots, the Irish, the Quakers, the free Negroes, the English. The Americans. Toward the front of the crowd stood Franklin and four others, one of them extraordinarily tall, with the kind of peppered skin that didn’t like the sun; the other three were so easily lost in the crowd that Anne couldn’t remember one of their faces the minute she turned away. Later, she discovered that they were the members of the committee that had drafted the extraordinary document that was now being read aloud from the balcony above. Anne had come to hear the declaration, but she’d also come to speak to one of these now-famed authors of liberty about his incarcerated son. She reached again into her skirt pocket and withdrew the bit of paper she’d torn from the Gazette but hours before.
William Franklin, a noted Tory and ministerial tool exceedingly busy in perplexing the cause of liberty, has been arrested; he is the son of Doctor Benjamin Franklin, the great patron of American liberty . . .
The unknown orator had begun to read what he billed as a unanimous declaration of the thirteen united states of America. Anne folded her bit of newspaper into her palm and gave her best effort to attending the spoken words, words she could once have believed in, and yet how blackened they were now by the printed words she held in her hand!
Separate and equal station . . . with William in gaol. Life, Liberty . . . with William in gaol. All experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable . . . But when a long train of abuses and usurpations evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government . . .
To throw off William.
The list of royal abuses rolled on.
For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments, for suspending our own legislatures . . .
But how could William not be one of “ours,” born not a half dozen streets away, born to one of the crafters of this noble document, born to Anne?
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled . . . do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States . . . And for the support of this Declaration . . . we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
At the cost of William’s life, William’s fortune, William’s honor? This, then, was the question that Anne had come to ask. As the crowd cheered, roared, raged in that bloodlust way only a declaration of war could bring on, Anne pushed through the bodies to the front, running afoul of elbows, knees, mouths. To her surprise, Franklin looked more somber than most; to her even greater surprise, before she could reach him he detached himself from the tall man and began to make his way down the street toward the water, alone. He
moved at a good pace; Anne took after him as soon as she could free herself from the entangling crowd, but she couldn’t catch him up without breaking into a conspicuous run. She followed behind him; to her amazement, he turned at Christ Church and entered the graveyard.
Anne might have given Franklin his moment to make his peace, or to do whatever it was he’d come to do there, but her shoe crunched over a stick and he turned and discovered her. So there they were, and Anne saw no sense in pretending they weren’t. She drew closer.
“We think the same once again, I see,” Franklin said. “A day to share with them, is it not? In my case, to ask forgiveness, to ask if she might agree that it was worth the sacrifice. And what do you plan to say to Mr. Hewe?”
Anne thrust the crumpled bit of newspaper at Franklin. “How can you do this to your own son?”
Franklin glanced at the paper, and all that had been solemn and vulnerable in his features the minute before hardened into a thunderous black mask. “He is not my son.”
“He is your son.”
“He is a son who would have stolen his father’s life, his livelihood, his good name!”
“And so you steal his.”
“I! I! ’Tis the business of Congress. Nay, nay, ’tis William’s business. He was warned again and again and yet he goes ahead in disregard of the consequences, accusing his own father of traitorous acts. And you come here and stand before my wife’s grave, my wife who tried day in and out to make something honorable out of our vile spawn—” He stopped, trembling. He held up his hands to keep Anne from speaking—or to keep himself from speaking; he breathed in and out, gathering himself.
