Franklin

by Thomas Fleming

  Franklin’s doubts about Shelburne increased drastically when Oswald returned on the fourth of May with a letter from the colonial secretary which said nothing whatsoever about peace terms beyond vagaries about “a happy conclusion of all our public differences.” Oswald was still functioning as nothing more than a confidential messenger, with no official commission from the British government. Verbally he conveyed to Franklin a reiteration of Shelburne’s confidence in his “character for open and honest dealings.” Then, more significantly, Oswald added, “It was also generally believ’d” that Franklin had “still remaining some part of [his] ancient affection and regard for Old England.”

  To add to the confusion, Oswald informed Franklin that a second peace emissary was on his way to Paris. He represented Charles James Fox, who was functioning as foreign secretary in the Rockingham cabinet. Although they had been fellow politicians in Opposition, Fox and Shelburne disliked each other intensely. Fox claimed the right to send his own ambassador to do business with France, which was outside the bounds of Shelburne’s Colonial Department. There was no doubt that Fox was bidding to take over the peace negotiations. But in his choice of an emissary, he demonstrated that lack of judgment which was ultimately to wreck his career as a Parliamentary politician. Fox chose Thomas Grenville, son of Franklin’s old archenemy, George Grenville, whose stamp tax had begun the quarrel between England and America.

  Inevitably, young Grenville had mental reservations about Franklin, and Franklin had even more about him. Fox strove to overcome this obstacle by giving Grenville a letter to Franklin in which he said, “I know your liberality of mind too well to be afraid, lest any prejudices against Mr. Grenville’s name may prevent you from esteeming those excellent qualities of heart and head, which belong to him.” Franklin invited young Grenville to dinner and with “a good deal of general conversation” probed his mind and opinions, and the next day escorted him to Versailles to meet Vergennes. There, as Franklin had anticipated, the new peace emissary made his first move. In return for granting America independence, he coolly informed Vergennes that Great Britain expected the return of all the captured British islands.

  Vergennes gave Grenville a diplomatic smile and said he did not think the independence of America was something Britain possessed to trade. “America,” he said, “does not ask it of you: there is Mr. Franklin, he will answer you as to that point.”

  “We do not consider ourselves as under any necessity of bargaining for a thing that is our own,” Franklin informed the discomfited envoy, “and which we have bought at the expense of much blood and treasure, and which we are in full possession of.”

  Feebly Grenville protested that the war had been provoked by the encouragement France had given to the American Revolution. With one eye on Franklin, Vergennes indignantly denied that any such encouragement had ever been given. “The breach had been made, and independence declared, long before America received the least encouragement from France,” declared the French foreign minister. He defied the world to give the smallest proof to the contrary. “There sits Dr. Franklin,” he said, “who knows the facts, and can contradict me if I do not speak the truth.”

  Franklin, who had conferred with French agents in Philadelphia a year before independence was declared, solemnly nodded his assent. Between these two seasoned professionals, beginner Grenville was like a shuttlecock in a championship badminton game. Back in Passy, Franklin wryly noted in his journal, “Mr. G. express’d himself as not quite satisfy’d with some part of the Count de Vergennes discourse, and was thoughtful.”

  Simultaneously, while he backed Vergennes in his diplomatic confrontation with the enemy, Franklin was listening and thinking for himself. Vergennes had done more than reject American independence as a bargaining point. He had also candidly revealed the self-interest which had led France into the war in the first place. France wanted a drastic revision of the humiliating treaty of 1763 and hoped to break the British stranglehold on India and sought better guarantees of French fishing rights off Newfoundland’s Grand Banks. There were also the war aims of Spain, which was seeking to wrest Gibraltar from the English. Holland too was going to want some compensation for the damage Britain had wreaked on her possessions in the West Indies. Even a man with one-third of Franklin’s sagacity could see, in Vergennes’ own testimony, the indubitable fact that self-interest was a major motivating force among all the allies.

  The next day, Grenville paid Franklin a visit and tried far more vigorously than Oswald to detach him from the French alliance. Franklin replied with a swatch of logic that left the fledgling diplomat gasping. It was nothing less than a little sermon on the nature of international obligations, couched in those personal terms that Franklin loved. “A, a stranger to B, sees him about to be imprison’d for theft by a merciless creditor; he lends the sum necessary to preserve his liberty,” Franklin said. If B later repays the money, has he discharged the obligation that he owes to A? “No,” Franklin said, “he has discharged the money debt but the obligation remains, and he is a debtor of a kindness of A, in lending him the sum so seasonably.” Even if B later lent A money in the same circumstances, he would still only have discharged a part of the obligation of gratitude he owed to A.

  France, of course, was A and America was B, and Franklin was saying that America should stand by France even after she achieved her independence and repaid her loans. Grenville protested desperately that this was “carrying gratitude very far” and reiterated his argument that France was the one who was profiting most from the war by separating America from England. Franklin told him bluntly that “the generous and noble manner” in which France had given America help “without exacting or stipulating for a single privilege or particular advantage to herself” made it impossible for him, and he hoped “and indeed did not doubt . . . my countrymen,” to listen to such an argument. Thus Grenville “gain’d nothing of the point he came to push,” Franklin noted in his journal.

  Franklin was playing an extremely delicate, crucially important game. Without betraying Vergennes, he was attempting to tease the British into conceding American independence, and after that concession begin the bargaining that would maneuver Shelburne into surrendering Canada. Reports from both Oswald and Grenville to their chiefs in London emphasized Franklin’s hints that once independence was granted, America might be tempted to make some kind of separate peace. But the more Franklin talked with Grenville, the more convinced he became that he was the wrong tool to execute this subtle operation. At twenty-six, he was too eager to make a name for himself as a diplomat by driving the hardest possible bargain. Oswald, on the other hand, was too old to have such personal ambitions, and there was some basis for believing him when he said he wanted nothing more than peace. So Franklin calmly proceeded to eliminate Grenville.

  Franklin became convinced that Grenville had to go when he discovered from the Marquis de Lafayette, who was acting as a liaison man between Versailles and Passy, that Grenville’s instructions from London empowered him to treat only with France. Vergennes confirmed this, telling Franklin, “They want to treat with us for you. But this the King will not agree to. He thinks it not consistent with the dignity of your state. You will treat for yourselves: and every one of the powers at war with England will make its own treaty. All that is necessary to be observ’d for our common security is, that the treaties go hand in hand, and are sign’d on the same day.” These were welcome words for Franklin. They not only authorized him to do what he had already been doing, they gave him another weapon to use against the hapless Mr. Grenville.

  Franklin made an appointment with the already jittery young diplomat at Passy and challenged him on the validity of his powers to negotiate with America. Grenville swore that he would get his commission reworded to include America as soon as possible, and informed Franklin confidentially that he had instructions from Fox to acknowledge the independence of America previous to the commencement of negotiating a treaty. Desperately Grenville loaded Frankli
n with compliments, vowing that all of England believed that Franklin was the only living man who could reconcile the two countries. He damned North and his ministers in vivid terms, in effect condemning his own father, whose American policies the North ministry had generally followed. Franklin practically yawned in his face. “Such flattering language from great men” might have affected him in his younger days, he confided to his journal. But now he was too old to worry about anything but leaving behind him “the tolerably good character [reputation]” he had thus far achieved.

  Events suddenly made Grenville’s removal from the scene all the more urgent. From the West Indies came the dismaying news that Admiral de Grasse, the keystone of the allied victory at Yorktown, had been badly thrashed by a revived British fleet off the Saints Islands. The Admiral himself and his hundred-gun flagship had been captured, along with four other ships. Although Grenville insisted that the victory did not alter Britain’s desire for peace, Franklin sensed potential foul play in the involved instructions that Grenville obtained from London. The most he could get his diplomatic masters to state was an authorization for him to treat with France and her allies. This was not good enough for Franklin, and he bluntly insisted on the specific mention of America as one of these allies. Almost curtly, he refused to give Grenville any assurance that, when independence was granted, America would not make any exertions on behalf of the claims of Spain or Holland.

  The frustration in Grenville’s letters to Fox, reporting his conversations with Franklin, make it clear that the American Ambassador had read the young diplomat’s mind. He was getting nowhere, Grenville moaned, revealing the ambition that the somewhere he wanted to get was a promise from Franklin that independence was a tradable item, which America was prepared to buy at the expense of her allies. Meanwhile, Franklin was writing to Shelburne, urging him to send Oswald back to Paris with powers to negotiate with America. On June thirtieth, the old Scot returned and put on a plaintive performance, obviously intended to touch Franklin’s heart. Great Britain was bankrupt, sighed Oswald. They were even considering a decision to stop paying interest on their national debt. “Our enemies may now do what they please with us,” he cried. “They have the ball at their foot.” All the thinking people of England looked only to one man to extricate the nation from its present desperate situation, Benjamin Franklin. Never before in history had a single man an opportunity to do so much good. Whether or not this was true, it must have been at least amusing to Franklin to hear himself being proclaimed a savior by the nation that had spent the last seven years reviling him.

  Oswald showed Franklin a memorandum from Shelburne which empowered Franklin to write Oswald’s commission, with an automatic stamp of approval guaranteed from the colonial secretary. Oswald then proceeded to stand there agreeing with Franklin, while the Doctor repealed his original hint of compensating the loyalists. He did not even object when Franklin went so far as to offer the opinion that neither England nor America owed them anything since it “was by their misrepresentations and bad counsels” that the war had begun. Cheerfully Oswald informed Franklin that he had also recommended surrendering Canada, and “Mr. Fox appeared to be startled at the proposition.”

  Oswald was almost too good to be true. A few days later, one of the periodic packets of London papers arrived and gave Franklin the weapon he needed to give Grenville the coup de grace. There was a story in the London Evening Post of May 30, 1782, in which Grenville was purported to claim that he had “gained a considerable point of information” from Franklin about the possibility of America concluding a separate peace. It made a great deal of the fact that Franklin had shown Grenville a copy of the 1778 Treaty of Alliance, which had been printed in the London newspapers when Grenville was a lad of twenty-two.

  The next time Grenville showed up at Passy, excitedly informing Franklin that he had finally obtained from London a new commission which gave him full powers to treat with both France and America, Franklin finished him off. He told Grenville that he was very much unimpressed with the new commission, which merely added that Grenville was empowered to treat with any other state besides France. Thus far, he pointed out, the British had not been in the habit of referring to America as a state, preferring to consider the thirteen colonies as thirteen separate groups of rebellious subjects. Then Franklin showed him the London paper and curtly declared that when his conversations were so badly misrepresented, it would be “hazardous” to make any further propositions to Mr. Grenville.

  Completely discomfited, Grenville conferred with Oswald, who until now he had been grandly disregarding. Oswald, perhaps deliberately, and perhaps even at Franklin’s suggestion, told Grenville how thoroughly he agreed with the propositions Franklin had made him, including the cession of Canada. Grenville rushed to his writing table and dashed off a furious letter to Fox, telling him that Oswald was giving away everything but George Ill’s throne to Franklin. Once and for all, Grenville demanded that Fox resolve the division of authority between himself and Shelburne, or he, Grenville, was giving up.

  On June 17, 1782, Parliament passed “the Enabling Act,” which gave the ministry power to negotiate “a peace or truce” with America. Fox, impulsive as always, promptly challenged Shelburne’s right to conduct the negotiations. The cabinet declined to eliminate Shelburne. A few days later, the head of the government, Lord Rockingham, died of influenza. With Fox in disarray, there was only one logical man to succeed him, Lord Shelburne. The disgruntled Fox quit the cabinet, and Shelburne became the new First Minister. Grenville went home to London to nurse his diplomatic wounds, and Mr. Oswald was swiftly confirmed as the commissioner in charge of negotiating peace with America. Once more, Franklin’s insider’s knowledge of English politics had won a breakthrough victory.

  Unfortunately, Shelburne the Prime Minister was even more of a double talker than Shelburne the colonial secretary. In a speech in the House of Lords shortly after he took office, he declared himself still a follower of Lord Chatham, who had opposed American independence from the first day he heard the word. Shelburne called it “a dreadful blow to the greatness of this country” and “a fatal necessity” to which he might be forced to yield. But “nothing short of necessity” would extract it from him. Franklin immediately began warning Congress and other American correspondents to keep up their guard against “our insidious enemies.” He told Robert R. Livingston, current secretary for foreign affairs, that absolute and total independence was America’s only real safeguard. “The King hates us most cordially . . . once admitted to any degree of power and government among us,” George would continue his war against liberty “by corruption, artifice and force, until we are reduced to absolute subjection.”

  To Franklin’s relief, John Jay finally arrived in Paris, giving him a colleague whom he thought he could trust. But Jay, little more than a week after he had arrived, was prostrated by the influenza that had killed Lord Rockingham and was epidemic throughout Europe. Franklin had had a bout with the bug in the latter part of June, but his sturdy constitution had thrown off the disease in only a few days. Poor Jay was flattened for much of the summer, and once more Franklin found himself the sole negotiator.

  On July 10, he again demonstrated his ample independence from French influence by meeting with Oswald and in a two-hour session, sketching out virtually an entire peace treaty. There were four necessary terms. At the top of the list was full and complete independence and the withdrawal of all British troops from America. Next came a settlement of the boundaries. Third was a specific insistence on a return of the Canadian boundary to the old Great Lakes line. Although he was no longer contending for a private company, Franklin had never lost his vision of those rich western lands, which the Quebec Act of 1774 had swallowed by extending the Canadian border south to the Ohio. The fourth necessary point was the right of Americans to fish in freedom and safety on the Newfoundland Grand Banks.

  Then, in a highly unorthodox diplomatic move, which attempted to utilize the noble sentiment
s Shelburne and Oswald had uttered about reconciliation, Franklin added four “advisable” articles. First, the British ought to make some gesture of reparation to towns such as Norfolk, Virginia, and Falmouth, Massachusetts, which they had burned. Second, Parliament ought to issue nothing less than an apology for its barbarous conduct of the war. “A few words of that kind,” Franklin assured Oswald, “would do more good than people would imagine.” Next, the treaty ought to include total reciprocity in import and export duties and shipping privileges, explicitly abandoning the old colonial system by which England had attempted to maintain monopolistic advantages in trading with America. Finally, Franklin recommended once more the cession of Canada, which would remove once and for all the threat of hostile British troops on American borders.”

  Franklin said that the advisable articles were not “absolutely demanded,” but speaking “as a friend,” he urged Oswald and Shelburne to take his advice if they really wanted America’s friendship. Their reward would not only be permanent peace, but a healthy, profitable share of America’s trade, and perhaps even, in some unspecified future decade, a federal union of some sort between the two countries. All this, of course, made Oswald salivate. Franklin even showed him the exact accounting of the aid America had received from France and, doing a complete about face from the position he had taken with Grenville, hinted that once these debts were paid, America owed France nothing “except gratitude.”