by Ron Carter
Again Franklin paused and looked at John Jay. “Are you at peace with this, sir?”
For a moment Jay hesitated. It was he and Franklin who had argued that all such debts had been more than counterbalanced by the American properties seized or destroyed by the British in the course of the war. It was Adams and Laurens who had taken the view that debts incurred in good faith should be paid, regardless of the ravages of American property by the British during the terrible war years.
“Yes,” Jay finally answered, and Franklin went on.
“And finally, gentlemen, we have the very unpleasant issue of whether or not the United States shall pay compensation to the Loyalists whose property was seized or destroyed when they refused to stand with us and fled to safety elsewhere.” He shook his head. “I can think of a great number of alternative solutions to the Loyalist problem, most of which include giving them something far removed from compensation.”
John Jay cracked a wry smile, and John Adams spoke hotly. “Would some of those solutions include a rope?”
Franklin grinned. “I drafted at least six such solutions, but didn’t have the heart to deliver them to our worthy opponents. Besides, it was obvious we had to make some concessions to Mr. Strachey. He had to return to London with at least one bone to throw to King and Parliament. After all, we doubled our size, got the Mississippi, and can fish the Grand Banks forever. Giving the Loyalists some token compensation for loss of their property will be a pittance compared to the profits we will reap from those gains.”
He pursed his mouth for a moment before continuing. “So. Are we agreed that the United States will not pay; however, we will request the separate states to provide some form of compensation for property confiscated by the states?”
He waited until all heads had nodded agreement.
Everyone in the room recognized the signs when Franklin cleared his throat, leaned back in his chair, and adjusted his spectacles; something profound, or enigmatic, or both, was coming. The room fell silent as Franklin leaned forward and spoke with measured tones.
“Gentlemen, do any of you have unspoken reservations on any part of this treaty?”
There was movement and a thoughtful silence in the room for a time while each man considered the question.
Franklin continued, and there was iron in his voice. His eyes were flat, expressionless. “Now is the time to commit yourselves. It would be a disaster to reach the day of the formal signing and discover there are terms yet to be decided. Or that there are yet differences among us concerning those terms already agreed.”
Adams recognized they had just heard the real reason Franklin had called the meeting. He started to speak, but remained silent as he realized the trap had already been sprung. He could not object without contradicting the commitments he had made but moments earlier, a thing his vanity and pride would not allow.
Franklin started with John Jay, and met the eyes of every man in turn, asking the silent question, and receiving the silent answer.
They were agreed.
Franklin drew and released a great breath, and his expression changed in an instant. Once again he was the sagacious, sometimes amiable, sometimes offensive, sometimes jocular, always unpredictable, Franklin.
“My thanks to you all. My sense of it is that history will pay homage to each of you for your contribution. I know of no treaty that embraces such profound possibilities as the one you have helped create.”
He drew his watch from his pocket and studied it for a moment, then turned to his grandson.
“William, it’s five minutes before noon. Would you be so kind as to go to the kitchen and ask my housekeeper if lunch is ready? Mrs. Fontaine promised she would have something suitable for this occasion by twelve o’clock sharp.” He smiled as the young man left the library. “Gentlemen, this sort of thing gives me a ravenous appetite. Will you join me in the dining room?”
Notes
The persons described in this chapter, their appearance, personal characteristics, background, experience, and participation in the process of negotiating the peace treaty between the United States, France, and Britain, are all accurately set forth. The places the negotiations took place are correctly named. The hot confrontation between John Adams and the French Comte de Vergennes is accurate. The letters sent by Vergennes, Franklin, and Adams are as described, and parts are quoted verbatim herein. John Adams did leave Paris for Holland, where he secured a two million dollar (five million Dutch guilders) loan for the United States. He returned to Paris thereafter, discovered the letters sent by Vergennes and Franklin to the American Congress, was infuriated, but finally passed it off as being the product of Franklin’s base jealousy of Adams. The British delegation, Richard Oswald and Henry Strachey, are accurately described. Strachey was sent by Lord Shelburne, First Lord of the Treasury, to bolster Oswald, a one-eyed, wealthy Scot, who was felt to be too lenient with the Americans. The basic terms of the treaty are as discussed herein. The interplay between Franklin, Adams, Jay, and Laurens is correctly described. Henry Laurens, once vice president of South Carolina, was captured by the British en route to Europe to join in the negotiations, tried for high treason, convicted, and sentenced to be imprisoned in the Tower of London, with orders that he was to speak with no one whosoever. He was later exchanged for the British prisoner, General Charles Cornwallis, and despite poor health was sent on to Paris for the last portion of the peace treaty negotiations (Bernstein, Are We to Be a Nation?, pp. 33–34; McCullough, John Adams, pp. 239–80; Leckie, George Washington’s War, p. 228; Mackesy, The War for America, 1775–1783, see the chart of the British Cabinet found following page xxvi in the forepart, showing Lord Shelburne as First Lord of the Treasury).
Boston
October 1783
CHAPTER XVI
* * *
Following the tumultuous upheavals in England leading up to the year 1629, the despotic King Charles I granted a royal charter to an insistent group of Puritans determined to seek a new life in the wilds of a vast, unexplored, primeval land far to the west, across the barrier of the wild Atlantic Ocean. The charter included those lands on the new continent from three miles south of the Charles River to a point three miles north of the Merrimac River, and extending from the Atlantic Ocean westward to the Pacific Ocean.
Therein Charles made two seemingly insignificant mistakes that eventually changed the history of the world.
First, the language of the charter omitted the usual ironclad rule that the seat of government for the newly formed colony would remain in England. The result was simple. The seat of government was with the new colony, in the new land. In short, the Pilgrims and Puritans were given a free hand to govern themselves, independent of British control. Thus, by simple oversight, King Charles I had planted the tiny seed that blossomed into the American Revolution, for once those Pilgrims and Puritans tasted the sweetness of self-rule, they would never again willingly submit to a foreign authority, including their own Mother Country.
Second, at that time, the world thought the Pacific Ocean was but a short distance from the Atlantic Ocean; most assuredly not three thousand miles away. King Charles had no way to know that in granting claim to all the land west of the tiny colony he had given away hundreds of millions of acres of some of the richest land on the face of the earth.
The small band of Puritans crossed the stormy Atlantic, titled themselves “The Massachusetts Bay Company,” and chose John Winthrop, a just and goodly man of wealth and education, to be their first governor, with Thomas Dudley the deputy governor. Within days of his arrival in the colony, Governor Winthrop toured the grant of land, and found himself on a peninsula called Shawmut by the Indians. With access to the Atlantic Ocean on three sides, Winthrop saw at once that the peninsula offered unparalleled access for sea-going commerce and trade. When he discovered a spring of clear, sweet, running water on the peninsula, the matter was settled. It was here that he would build his own estate and the town that would become the center of
the new colony.
The name of the town would be Boston.
Through the shifting winds of politics, the Salem witch trials, conflicts with angry Indians, the radical views of the zealots Roger Williams, Anne Hutchinson, and Henry Vane, harsh winters, hot summers, a failed attempt to impose taxes, and an abandoned effort by King Charles I to revoke their charter, the fledgling town prospered and grew. By the turn of the seventeenth century it was a major seaport in the new world. By 1750, it was among the leading cities in the thirteen colonies. On the eighteenth day of April, 1775, it witnessed the march of eight hundred British regulars from the Boston Commons across the Back Bay to Lexington and Concord, and their return the night of the nineteenth day of April, an army shattered and defeated by rebellious American country-folk. By 1782, the city had survived the ravages of the war and seen the British abandon America. By September of 1783, it was a frightened, dying town, with bankruptcies rampant, and too many desperate unemployed walking the streets, willing to take any work that would pay even pennies a day.
In the afterglow of a sun already set, Billy Weems stood waiting at the backdoor of the large stone home of Erastus Pembroke, near the Boston Commons, wiping at the sweat on his face with a damp shirtsleeve. His ax was leaned against the door frame, and to his left, stacked against the back wall beneath a sheltering overhang, were six cords of split kindling, half soft pine, half hard oak, stockpiled against the cold of oncoming fall and winter. Beside the kindling was a huge covered box, half filled with the burned ashes Billy had carefully swept from the two great fireplaces in the mansion. Sometime in November, when the box was full, Billy would spend two days mixing the ash with lye and hot water to make soap for the winter.
Erastus Pembroke, bent with age, white-haired, had inherited the home, and a fortune, from the Pembroke estate, and rumor held that despite the war and the destitution that now gripped the United States, he still had most of the original coin from the wealth of his forebears. Because he was never seen frequenting a bank, it was whispered that the family treasure was buried, either on the grounds surrounding the home or in a secret vault behind the tons of stones and cement that formed the two massive fireplaces. Erastus, a childless widower for thirty-three years, conducted his business of investments from his library, used servants to shop for all household needs, avoided direct contact with the world whenever he could, and paid for everything in coin, some of them Spanish dollars bearing dates in the late seventeenth century.
Rapid footsteps sounded inside the mansion, and Billy waited while the heavy-hinged door swung open. A portly man with a face devoid of emotion held out his thick hand.
“One half-dollar.”
One half-dollar for cleaning two large fireplaces and splitting six cords of wood, three of them oak hardwood, was less than half a fair price. Billy reached for the coin, and the house servant avoided his eyes as he dropped it into Billy’s open palm.
Billy spoke as he pushed the money into his pocket. “Thank you. Will you have need for more wood?”
“You will receive word.”
“The soap? In November?”
“One dollar.”
“Thank you.”
The door closed firmly as Billy shouldered his ax and walked the narrow path that led from the servants’ entrance to the street. He turned to his right and strode steadily west into the onset of dusk, head down, preoccupied, struggling with the fear that now gripped half the town: how would he put food on the family table during the winter? Pay the taxes?
He walked, oblivious to the nearly indiscernible change that spoke of the storms of fall and the snows of winter that were coming. He did not notice the first tints of yellow and red that had touched some of the leaves on the trees lining the Boston streets. Squirrels already showing the beginnings of their winter hair darted, curled tails cocked over their backs, as they scolded the few passersby, but Billy did not hear them. He came to the white picket fence that still needed paint he could not buy, pushed through the gate, and walked into the small home.
“Is that you, Billy?” Dorothy called from the kitchen.
“Yes. Has Matthew been here?” he answered, as he passed through the archway into the kitchen. He opened the cupboard above the window and drew out a jar from the top shelf, dropped the half-dollar into it, then replaced it.
Dorothy watched and turned her head at the pittance Billy had earned for a full day’s hard work.
“Yes,” she answered, “he’ll be back in half an hour. Get washed. Trudy and I have already had supper.”
Minutes later he sat down at the dining room table to boiled cabbage and the remains of a mutton roast from the previous Sunday. He said a hasty grace, and in pensive silence mechanically ate his supper. Dorothy saw his need to be alone and quietly busied herself and Trudy in the kitchen. Billy finished, stacked his dishes, and brought them to the kitchen cupboard. He was reaching for the dish washing tub when Matthew’s knock came at the door. Thirty seconds later the two were seated at the dining table, with Dorothy and Trudy standing in the kitchen, arms folded, heads bowed, listening intently. Matthew wasted no time or words.
“The British and Americans signed the peace treaty September ninth.”
Billy came to instant focus. “How do you know?”
“A schooner just arrived from Calais.”
“Just the British and Americans? What happened to the French?”
“The Americans signed without them. Franklin and Adams and Jay thought we needed to assert ourselves independent of France. It offended the French.”
Billy started. “After what France did for us? Without them we’d have lost the war!”
Matthew threw one hand in the air. “It’s done. Franklin went so far as to ask France to loan us more money. Six million livres. They didn’t answer. There is no more money coming from Europe to help us, at least not right now. And even if France does relent and loan us the six million livres, it’s not enough to make a difference.”
Billy shook his head in shocked amazement but remained silent.
Matthew took a heavy breath and leaned forward, eyes narrowed. “That’s not the worst of it. July second—nearly a month before the treaty was signed—the British issued an Order of Council that prohibits absolutely all American ships from trade with the West Indies.”
Matthew stopped and watched Billy’s eyes widen, and then Billy straightened and leaned back in his chair.
“The West Indies? How much of American shipping trade has been to the West Indies? Half?”
“More than half. Salt, fish, timber, rice, indigo, meat, cloth, whale oil, nails, shipbuilding—there’s hardly an end to it. Now it’s all illegal. Finished as of July second.”
Billy’s mind was leaping ahead. “How will the West Indies get—” He stopped, then exclaimed, “Smuggling! They’ve thrown the whole thing open to smugglers! The fools! The entire British navy isn’t big enough to stop the smuggling that’s going to start!”
“It’s coming.”
“Why? What’s the gain for the British?”
Matthew shook his head. “Only the British know. I think this is partly their way of hurting us because we won the war, and partly a way to get the profits of dealing with the West Indies.”
Billy shook his head. “What profits? Do they think they can ship goods from England as cheaply as we can from here? Or even from Nova Scotia? Wait until the traders in the West Indies find out the cost of freight from England or Canada. They won’t survive. Can’t the British see that?”
“I don’t know. I think they’ll make short-term gains that will hurt us, but in the long-term . . . disaster.”
For a time the two sat in stony silence, stretching their minds beyond what had been for all their lives, to the horrendous shock of what had come to pass.
Matthew wiped at his mouth. “One more thing. Until now all ships built in American shipyards were considered British. They could use all ports that admitted British ships, both here and in Europe.” He s
hook his head. “No more. Now we’re an independent nation, and all our commercial ships have to make new agreements with all ports.”
Billy was incredulous. “That’ll take years.”
“And millions of dollars.”
For a moment Billy’s shoulders sagged, then squared once again, and he quietly asked the foundation question. “Is there any reason to think we can feed our families by going into the carrying trade?”
In the kitchen, Dorothy and Trudy raised their heads, focused, waiting.
“Eight years ago, the answer would have been no. But now, with things the way they are, the real question isn’t about the carrying trade. The real question is, what else is there? Businesses, farms, banks, shops—closing everywhere, bankruptcies, good men begging for work.”
He stopped, and the house was filled with dead silence for a time, and then Matthew continued, his voice filled with the desperate, angry sound of a man left with no way to survive.
“Do you know of anything that will be better than a shipping firm? Farming? Manufacturing? Mercantile? They’re in worse condition than shipping. What do you know better than keeping business accounts? What do I know better than the sea?”
Billy began to slowly rub his palms together, probing for a ray of light in the blackness, and there was none.
Matthew went on. “There are a few things in favor of shipping.”
Billy stopped rubbing his palms and looked at Matthew, waiting. In the kitchen, Dorothy and Trudy were barely breathing.
“There are a half dozen shipping firms that can be bought for just about nothing. Take over the debts.”
Billy said nothing.
“There are good crews on the docks that will go to work for nothing but a promise to pay them if you make a profit. They’d rather take the risk of having something later than knowing there will be nothing at all.”
Billy asked, “Customers? You said the British and most European ports are closed. Who will buy?”
“Don’t go to Europe. Trade up and down our own coast. New England manufacture for Southern rice and tobacco.”