Galloway was indeed of such a mind, but Franklin would hear none of it. He had brought with him the long letter he had written to William during his Atlantic crossing, which detailed his futile attempts at negotiating a reconciliation. Although Galloway had already heard portions of it, Franklin again read most of it aloud and told of the abuse he had suffered. Galloway volleyed with his own horror stories about how anonymous radicals had sent him a noose for proposing a plan to save the British union. A revolution, he stressed, would be suicidal.
William argued that it was best for them all to remain neutral, but his father was not moved. As Hutchinson later recorded, he “opened himself and declared in favor of measures for attaining to independence” and “exclaimed against the corruption and dissipation of the kingdom.” William responded with anger, but also with a touch of concern for his father’s safety. If he intended “to set the colonies in flame,” William hoped, he should “take care to run away by the light of it.”6
So William rode back to New Jersey, defeated and dejected, to resume his duties as royal governor. With him was his son, Temple. The one issue that Benjamin and William had settled at Trevose was that the boy would spend the summer in New Jersey, then return to Philadelphia to be enrolled in the college his grandfather had founded there. William had hoped to send him to King’s College (now Columbia) in New York, but Benjamin scuttled that plan because it had become a hotbed of English loyalism. Temple was soon to be caught in a tug-of-war between two men who vied for his loyalty. He eagerly sought to please them both, but he was fated to find that impossible.
Franklin the Rebel
It is hard to pinpoint precisely when America crossed the threshold of deciding that complete independence from Britain was necessary and desirable. It is even difficult to determine when that tipping point came for specific individuals. Franklin, who for ten years had juggled hope and despair that a breach could be avoided, made his own private declaration to his family during their summit at Trevose. By early July 1775, precisely a year before his fellow American patriots made their own stance official, he was ready to come out publicly.
There were many specific events that pushed Franklin across the line to rebellion: personal slights, dashed hopes, betrayals, and the accretion of hostile British acts. But it is also important to take note of the core causes of Franklin’s evolution and, by extension, that of a people he had come to exemplify.
When Englishmen such as his father had immigrated to a new land, they had bred a new type of people. As Franklin repeatedly stressed in his letters to his son, America should not replicate the rigid ruling hierarchies of the Old World, the aristocratic structures and feudal social orders based on birth rather than merit. Instead, its strength would be its creation of a proud middling people, a class of frugal and industrious shopkeepers and tradesmen who were assertive of their rights and proud of their status.
Like many of these new Americans, Franklin chafed at authority, which is why he had run away from his brother’s print shop in Boston. He was not awed by established elites, whether they be the Mathers or the Penns or the peers in the House of Lords. He was cheeky in his writings and rebellious in his manner. And he had imbibed the philosophy of the new Enlightenment thinkers, who believed that liberty and tolerance were the foundation for a civil society.
For a long time he had cherished a vision of imperial harmony in which Britain and America could both flourish in one great expanding empire. But he felt that it would work only if Britain stopped subju-gating Americans through mercantile trading rules and taxes imposed from afar. Once it was clear that Britain remained intent on subordinating its colonies, the only course left was independence.
The bloody Battle of Bunker Hill and the burning of Charleston, both in June 1775, further inflamed the hostility that Franklin and his fellow patriots felt toward the British. Nevertheless, most members of the Continental Congress were not quite as far down the road to revolution. Many colonial legislatures, including Pennsylvania’s, had instructed their delegates to resist any calls for independence. The captain of the cautious camp was Franklin’s long-time adversary John Dickinson, who still refrained from erecting a lightning rod on his house.
On July 5, Dickinson pushed through the Congress one last appeal to the king, which became known as the Olive Branch Petition. Blaming the troubles on the perfidies of “irksome” and “delusive” ministers, it “beseeched” the king to come to America’s rescue. The Congress also passed a Declaration of the Causes and Necessity for Taking Up Arms, in which it proclaimed “that we mean not to dissolve that union which has so long and so happily subsisted between us, and which we sincerely wish to see restored.”
Like the other delegates, Franklin agreed for the sake of consensus to sign the Olive Branch Petition. But he made his own rebellious sentiments public the same day. The outlet he chose was quite odd: a letter to his long-time London friend and fellow printer, William Strahan. No longer addressing him as “dear Straney,” he wrote in cold and calculated fury:
Mr. Strahan,
You are a Member of Parliament, and one of that Majority which has doomed my country to destruction. You have begun to burn our towns, and murder our people. Look upon your hands! They are stained with the blood of your relations! You and I were long friends: You are now my enemy, and I am, Yours,
B. Franklin.
What made the famous letter especially odd was that Franklin allowed it to be circulated and publicized—but he never sent it. Instead, it was merely an artifice for making his sentiments clear to his fellow Americans.
In fact, Franklin wrote Strahan a much mellower letter two days later, which he actually sent. “Words and arguments are now of no use,” he said in tones more sorrowful than angry. “All tends to a separation.” Just as he had not mailed the angrier version, Franklin did not keep a copy of the milder letter in his papers.7
(Franklin ended up remaining close friends with Strahan, who four years earlier had declared that “though we differ we do not disagree.” The very day Franklin wrote his unsent note, Strahan wrote one from London lamenting the possibility that the looming war would lead to “the ultimate ruin of the whole of the most glorious fabric of civil and religious government that ever existed.” They continued to correspond throughout 1775, with Strahan begging Franklin to return to England “with proposals of accommodation.” Franklin responded in October by suggesting that Strahan “send us over fair proposals of peace, if you choose it, and nobody will be more ready than myself to promote their acceptation: for I make it a rule not to mix personal resentments with public business.” He signed the letter, as Strahan had signed his, “your affectionate and humble servant.” A year later, when he arrived in Paris as an American envoy, Franklin would receive a gift of Stilton cheese that Strahan sent over from London.)8
Franklin wrote his two other close British friends on July 7 as well. To Bishop Shipley, he railed against England’s tactics of stirring up slaves and Indians against the colonists, and then he apologized for the angry tone of his letter. “If a temper naturally cool and phlegmatic can, in old age, which often cools the warmest, be thus heated, you will judge by that of the general temper here, which is now little short of madness.”9
To Joseph Priestley, he lamented that the Olive Branch Petition was destined to be rejected. “We have carried another humble petition to the crown, to give Britain one more chance, one opportunity more of recovering the friendship of the colonies; which however I think she has not sense enough to embrace, and so I conclude she has lost them for ever.” The letter to Priestley also offered a glimpse into Franklin’s workday and the mood of relative frugality in the colonies:
My time was never more fully employed. In the morning at 6, I am at the committee of safety, appointed by the assembly to put the province in a state of defense; which committee holds till near 9, when I am at the congress, and that sits till after 4 in the afternoon…Great frugality and great industry are now become fashionabl
e here: Gentlemen who used to entertain with two or three courses, pride themselves now in treating with simple beef and pudding. By these means, and the stoppage of our consumptive trade with Britain, we shall be better able to pay our voluntary taxes for the support of our troops.10
Liberated by his private break with his son and his public break with Strahan, Franklin became one of the most ardent opponents of Britain in the Continental Congress. He served on a committee to draft a declaration to be issued by General Washington, and the result was so strong that the Congress was afraid to pass or publish it. The document clearly came from Franklin’s pen. It contained phrases he had used before to refute Britain’s claims of having funded the defense of the colonies (“groundless assertions and malicious calumnies”), and it even concluded by seriously comparing the American-British relationship to the one between Britain and Saxony (“her mother country”), a comparison he had earlier made facetiously in his parody “An Edict by the King of Prussia.” In an even more strongly worded preamble to a congressional resolution on privateering that he drafted but never submitted, Franklin accused Britain of “the practice of every injustice which avarice could dictate or rapacity execute” and of “open robbery, declaring by a solemn act of Parliament that all our estates are theirs.”11
No longer was there any doubt, even among his detractors, where Franklin stood. Ever eager, like many Virginians, to hear about Franklin, Madison wrote to Bradford to see if the rumors of his ambivalence persisted. “Has anything further been whispered relative to the conduct of Dr. Franklin?” Bradford confessed that opinions had changed. “The suspicions against Dr. Franklin have died away. Whatever was his design at coming over here, I believe he has now chosen his side and favors our cause.”
Likewise, John Adams reported to his wife, Abigail, that Franklin was now squarely in their revolutionary camp. “He does not hesitate at our boldest measures, but rather seems to think us too irresolute.” The jealous orator could not suppress a slight resentment that the British believed that American opposition was “wholly owing” to Franklin, “and I suppose their scribblers will attribute the temper and proceedings of this Congress to him.”12
Franklin’s First Articles of
Confederation Plan
For the colonies to cross the threshold of rebellion, they needed to begin conceiving of themselves as a new nation. To become independent of Britain, they had to become less independent of each other. As one of the most traveled and least parochial of colonial leaders, Franklin had long espoused some form of confederation, beginning with his Albany Plan of 1754.
That plan, which was never adopted, envisioned an intercolonial Congress that would be loyal to the king. Now, in 1775, Franklin put forth the idea again, but with one big difference: although his plan allowed for the possibility that the new confederation would remain part of the king’s empire, it was designed to work even if the empire broke apart.
The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union that he presented to the Congress on July 21, like his Albany Plan, contained the seeds of the great conceptual breakthrough that would eventually define America’s federal system: a division of powers between a central government and those of the states. Franklin, however, was ahead of his time. His proposed central government was very powerful, indeed more powerful than the one eventually created by the actual Articles of Confederation that the Congress began to draft the following year.
Much of the wording in Franklin’s proposal was drawn from New England confederation plans that stretched back to one forged by settlements in Massachusetts and Connecticut in 1643. But the scope and powers went far beyond anything previously proposed. “The Name of the Confederacy shall henceforth be The United Colonies of North America,” Franklin’s detailed thirteen articles began. “The said United Colonies hereby severally enter into a firm League of Friendship with each other, binding on themselves and their posterity, for their common defense against their enemies, for the security of their liberties and properties, the safety of their persons and families, and their mutual and general welfare.”13
Under Franklin’s proposal, the Congress would have only a single chamber, in which there would be proportional representation from each state based on population. It would have the power to levy taxes, make war, manage the military, enter into foreign alliances, settle disputes between colonies, form new colonies, issue a unified currency, establish a postal system, regulate commerce, and enact laws “necessary to the general welfare.” Franklin also proposed that, instead of a single president, the Congress appoint a twelve-person “executive council” whose members would serve for staggered three-year terms.
Franklin included an escape provision: in the event that Britain accepted all of America’s demands and made financial reparation for all of the damage it had done, the union could be dissolved. Otherwise, “this confederation is to be perpetual.”
As Franklin fully realized, this pretty much amounted to a declaration of independence from Britain and a declaration of dependence by the colonies on each other, neither of which had widespread support yet. So he read his proposal into the record but did not force a vote on it. He was content to wait for history, and the rest of the Continental Congress, to catch up with him.
By late August, when it was time for Temple to return from New Jersey to Philadelphia, William tentatively suggested that he could accompany the boy there. Franklin, uncomfortable at the prospect of his loyalist son arriving in town while the rebellious Congress was in session, decided instead to fetch Temple himself.14
Temple was lanky, fun-loving, and as disorganized as most 15-year-olds. Much correspondence was spent reuniting him with personal items he had left in the wrong place. As his stepmother noted, “You are extremely unlucky in your clothes.” William tried hard to keep up the pretense of family harmony and included kind words about Franklin in all his letters to Temple. He also tried to keep up with Temple’s frequent requests for more money; in the tug-of-war for his affections, the lad got fewer lectures about frugality than other members of his family had.
Once again, Franklin surrounded himself with the sort of domestic menagerie he found so comfortable: his daughter and her husband, their two children (Benny, 6, and William, 2), Temple, and eventually Jane Mecom, his sole surviving sibling. In none of the letters we have from that time is Deborah mentioned; life on Market Street seemed to go along without her.
For the time being, Franklin was able to close out his accounts, literally and symbolically, with his counterpart family back in London. He sent Mrs. Stevenson a £1,000 payment for his back rent, and stiffly warned her to invest it in a piece of land instead of stocks. “Britain having begun a war with us, which I apprehend is not likely soon to be ended,” he wrote, “there is great probability of these stocks falling headlong.”
For her part, Mrs. Stevenson sunk into “weak spirits” pining for his return. “Without the animating hope of spending the remainder of life with you,” a friend of hers wrote Franklin, “she would be very wretched indeed.” In his jovial way, Franklin once again proposed an arranged marriage, this time between his grandson Benny and Polly Stevenson’s daughter, Elizabeth Hewson.15
A Trip to Cambridge
Franklin had been serving his country, as it headed toward revolution, in roles befitting a man of his age: diplomat, elder statesman, sage, and dozing delegate. But he still had the inclination and talent for hands-on management, organizing things and making them happen in a practical way.
He was the obvious choice to chair a committee to figure out how to replace the British-run postal system and then become, as he did in July, America’s new postmaster general. The job paid a handsome £1,000 per year, but Franklin’s patriotism overwhelmed his frugality: he donated the salary to care for wounded soldiers. “Men can be as diligent with us from zeal for the public good as with you for thousands per annum,” he wrote Priestley. “Such is the difference between uncorrupted new states and corrupted old ones.” His penc
hant for nepotism, however, remained intact. Richard Bache became the financial comptroller of the new system.
Franklin was also put in charge of establishing a system of paper currency, one of his long-standing passions. As usual, he immersed himself in many of the details. Using his botanical knowledge of the vein structures of different types of leaves, he personally drew the leaf designs for the various notes to make them harder to counterfeit. Once again, Bache benefited: he was one of those Franklin selected to oversee the printing.
Franklin’s other assignments included heading up the effort to collect lead for munitions, devising ways to manufacture gunpowder, and serving on committees to deal with the Indians and to promote trade with Britain’s enemies. In addition, he was made president of Pennsylvania’s own defense committee. In that capacity, he oversaw construction of a secret system of underwater obstructions to prevent enemy warships from navigating the Delaware River and wrote detailed proposals, filled with historical precedents, for using pikes and even bows and arrows (reminiscent of the suggestions he had made in 1755 for using dogs) to compensate for the colonial shortage of gunpowder. The idea of using arrows might seem quirky, but he justified it in a letter to Gen. Charles Lee in New York. Among the reasons he offered: “A man may shoot as truly with a bow as with a common musket…He can discharge four arrows in the same time of charging and discharging one bullet…A flight of arrows, seen coming upon them, terrifies and disturbs the enemies’ attention to their business…An arrow striking in any part of a man puts him hors du combat till it is extracted.”16
Given his age and physical infirmities, Franklin might have been expected to contribute his expertise from the comfort of Philadelphia. But among his attributes was a willingness, indeed an eagerness, to be involved in practical details rather than detached theorizing. He was also, both as a teen and as a septuagenarian, revitalized by travel. Thus, he would find himself embarked on missions for the Congress in October 1775 and the following March.
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