Walter Isaacson Great Innovators e-book boxed set: Steve Jobs, Benjamin Franklin, Einstein

by Isaacson, Walter

  Oswald coyly noted that Grenville was “a very sensible young gentleman,” and he was perfectly willing to leave it to him to conduct the negotiations in concert with France. However, if Franklin thought it would be “useful” to have Oswald deal directly with the Americans, he was “content to give his time and service.”

  Franklin was happy to accept. Oswald’s “knowledge of America,” he noted, meant that he would be better than Grenville “in persuading the ministry to things reasonable.” Franklin asked Oswald whether he would prefer to negotiate with all the countries, including France, or to negotiate with America alone. Oswald’s answer, obviously, was the latter. “He said he did not choose to be concerned in treating with the foreign powers,” Franklin noted. “If he accepted any commission, it should be that of treating with America.” Franklin agreed to write Shelburne secretly recommending that course.31

  Partly, Franklin was motivated by his affection for Oswald, who was his age, and his lack of affection for the younger Grenville, who had annoyed Franklin by leaking to the London Evening Post an inaccurate account of one of their meetings. “Mr. Oswald, an old man, seems now to have no desire but that of being useful in doing good,” Franklin noted. “Mr. Grenville, a young man, naturally desirous of acquiring a reputation, seems to aim at that of being an able negotiator.” Franklin, though still ambitious at 76, now believed in the moderating effects of old age.

  Although Franklin had made a great show of insisting that the French be involved in all negotiations, he had come to believe that it was now in America’s interest to have its own separate and private channel with Britain. So, when he went to Versailles in mid-June, a week after his momentous meeting with Oswald, he was less candid than usual with Vergennes. “We spoke of all [Britain’s] attempts to separate us, and the prudence of holding together and treating in concert,” he recorded. This time, however, he held back some information. He did not detail Oswald’s offer to have a private negotiating channel or his suggestion that Britain cede Canada to America.

  Nor was Franklin fully candid with the Congress, which had instructed its peace commissioners, with Franklin’s approval, not to do anything without France’s full knowledge and support. In a letter in late June to Robert Livingston, the new American foreign secretary, Franklin reported that Britain had sent over two envoys, Oswald and Grenville, and he claimed that he had rejected their attempts to split America from France. “They had at first some hopes of getting the belligerent powers to treat separately, one after another, but finding that impracticable, they have, after several messages sent to and fro, come to a resolution of treating with all together for a general peace.” The very next day, however, he reiterated his desire for a separate channel in a letter he wrote for Oswald to give to Shelburne: “I cannot but hope that it is still intended to vest you with [authority] respecting the treaty with America.”

  Britain was likewise engaging in back-channel intrigue. In addition to holding informal discussions with the French, it sent envoys directly to the Congress trying to urge members to accept some form of dominion status for America that would permit separate parliaments loyal to a common king. When Franklin heard of these overtures, he wrote another letter to Livingston warning that they must be forcefully resisted. “The King hates us most cordially,” he declared. If he were allowed “any degree of power or government” over America, “it will soon be extended by corruption, artifice, and force, until we are reduced to absolute subjection.”32

  Franklin’s Peace Plan

  At the beginning of July, the negotiating situation was simplified by the death of Lord Rockingham. Shelburne took over as prime minister, Fox resigned as foreign secretary, and Grenville was recalled. The time was right for Franklin to make an informal, but precise, peace offer to Oswald, which he did on July 10.

  His proposal was divided into two parts, “necessary” provisions and “advisable” ones. Four fell into the former category: independence for America that was “full and complete in every sense,” the removal of all British troops, secure boundaries, and fishing rights off the Canadian coast. In the advisable category were four suggested provisions: payment of reparations for the destruction in America, an acknowledgment of British guilt, a free trade agreement, and the ceding of Canada to the United States.

  Oswald immediately sent Shelburne all the details, but Franklin kept the proposals private and never recorded them. Nor did he consult with, or even inform, Vergennes about the offer he had made to Oswald.33

  Thus, with clear vision and a bit of conniving, Franklin had set the stage for the final negotiations that would end the Revolutionary War. Shelburne promptly informed Oswald that the suggestions were “un-equivocal proofs of Dr. Franklin’s sincerity.” Britain was willing, he said, to affirm America’s independence as a preliminary to negotiations, and it should “be done decidedly so as to avoid future risks of enmity.” If America would drop the “advisable” provisions, Shelburne said, and “those called necessary alone retained as the ground of discussion,” then he was confident that a treaty could be “speedily concluded.” Although it would take a few more months, that is in essence what happened.34

  The final resolution was delayed, however, when Franklin was struck by “cruel gout” and kidney stones, which incapacitated him for much of August and September. John Jay, who had finally arrived in Paris, took over as the lead negotiator. The flinty New Yorker objected that the wording of Oswald’s commission, which authorized him to negotiate “with the said colonies and plantations,” was not much better than Grenville’s had been, and he demanded that Oswald get a clear statement that he was dealing with an independent nation before talks proceeded further.

  When Jay and Franklin went to call on Vergennes, the French minister advised that it did not seem necessary to insist that Oswald’s commission contain a clear declaration of America’s sovereignty. Franklin, who likewise gave his opinion that Oswald’s commission “would do,” was thrilled by Vergennes’s tacit approval for the British-American negotiations to proceed, which he interpreted as a magnanimous and supportive gesture showing France’s “gracious goodwill.”

  Jay’s interpretation, more sinister but more correct, was that Vergennes did not want Britain to recognize American independence except as part of a comprehensive peace settlement involving France and Spain. “This Court chooses to postpone an acknowledgment of our independence by Britain,” Jay reported to the Congress, “in order to keep us under their direction” until all the demands of France and Spain were met. “I ought to add that Dr. Franklin does not see the conduct of this Court in the light I do.”35

  Jay’s skepticism about France’s motives led to a heated argument with Franklin when they returned to Passy from Versailles that evening. Jay was especially angry, he told Franklin, that Vergennes had brought up Spain’s desire to claim some of the land between the Allegheny Mountains and the Mississippi River. Franklin fully agreed that Spain should not be permitted to “coop us up,” but he gave Jay one of his gentle lectures about the wisdom of assuming that a friend like France was acting in good faith until there was hard evidence to the contrary. France was not trying to hold up negotiations, as Jay kept angrily insisting; instead, Franklin argued, Vergennes had shown a willingness to speed them along by not objecting to the wording of Oswald’s commission.

  But Jay’s suspicions were reinforced when he learned that Vergennes had sent a deputy on a secret mission to London. Trusting neither the French nor Franklin, Jay joined in the back-channel fandango by dispatching a secret envoy of his own to London. What made this especially intriguing was that the man he sent was Benjamin Vaughan, Franklin’s longtime friend and publisher, who had come to Paris to visit Franklin and do what he could to promote peace.

  Jay asked Vaughan to tell Lord Shelburne that Oswald’s commission needed to state unambiguously that he was to negotiate with “the United States.” Such an explicit acknowledgment of American independence at the outset, Jay promised, would help �
��cut the cords” that bound America to France. Shelburne, eager to conclude a peace before his government toppled, was willing to go far enough to satisfy Jay. In mid-September his cabinet granted Oswald a new commission “to treat with the commissioners appointed by the colonies under the title of 13 united states,” and it reaffirmed that American independence could be acknowledged as a preliminary to further discussions.

  So, on October 5, with Jay and Franklin both satisfied and back in harmony, official negotiations began. Oswald presented his formal new commission, and Jay presented a proposed treaty that was very similar to the one Franklin had informally offered in July. The only addition to Franklin’s four “necessary” points was a provision that was sure to please Britain, though not France or Spain: that both Britain and America would have free navigation rights on the Mississippi.

  Their momentum, however, was slowed for a few weeks after Britain succeeded in beating back a French-Spanish attack on Gibraltar, thus emboldening their ministers. To stiffen Oswald’s backbone, Shelburne sent over Henry Strachey, a cabinet officer who had served as Admiral Howe’s secretary. Just as he arrived, so did John Adams, yet again, to assume his role as a member of the American delegation.

  Adams was as blunt as ever, filled with suspicions and doubting everyone’s character but his own. Even Lafayette, who had become Franklin’s close confidant, was immediately slammed by Adams as a “mongrel character” of “unlimited ambition” who was “panting for glory.” Adams also displayed, in a public and undiplomatic way, his personal distrust of Vergennes by not calling on him for almost three weeks, until the minister “caused him to be reminded of” his duty to do so. (Vergennes, who was as smooth as Adams was rough, baffled the wary Adams by laying on a lavish dinner and plying him with fine wines and Madeira.)36

  Adams likewise initially balked at paying a courtesy call on Franklin, who was pretty much confined to Passy with the gout and kidney stones, even though they had managed to exchange civil letters during Adams’s mission in Holland. “He could not bear to go near him,” Matthew Ridley, an American merchant in Paris, recorded in his diary. Ridley, who was a friend of both men, finally convinced Adams that it was necessary.

  Adams felt particularly spiteful because he had recently learned about the letter Franklin had written to the Congress, at the behest of Vergennes, which had led to his earlier recall. Franklin had been motivated by “base jealousy” and “sordid envy,” Adams told a friend. That was a complete misreading of Franklin, who had acted more out of annoyance than jealousy and whose occasional vices did not include an excess of envy.

  Whatever the cause, Adams was filled with anger by the time he arrived back in Paris. “That I have no friendship for Franklin I avow,” he wrote. “That I am incapable of having any with a man of his moral sentiments I avow.” In his diary, Adams had even more to say: “Franklin’s cunning will be to divide us. To this end he will provoke, he will insinuate, he will intrigue, he will maneuver.”37

  So it was a great testament to Franklin’s charm that, as it turned out, he got along rather well with Adams once they settled down to work. When Adams bluntly told him, during the visit he finally made to Passy, that he agreed with Jay’s tougher attitude toward France, “the Doctor heard me patiently, but said nothing.” And at a meeting of the three commissioners the next day, Franklin serenely agreed with Adams and Jay that it made sense to meet with the British negotiators without coordinating with the French. Turning to Jay he said, “I am of your opinion and will go on with these gentlemen in the business without consulting this [France’s] Court.”

  Franklin’s willingness to negotiate without consulting France was not new; he had begun pursuing that approach before Jay and Adams arrived in Paris. But he made it seem that he was doing it partly in deference to the views of his two fellow commissioners, which served to soften Adams’s attitude. Franklin “has gone on with us in entire harmony and unanimity,” Adams happily recorded in his diary, “and has been able and useful, both by his sagacity and his reputation, in the whole negotiation.”

  For his part, Franklin continued to feel the same mixture of admiration and annoyance toward Adams that he had long held. As he would put it to Livingston a few months later, once the negotiations were over, “He means well for his country, is always an honest man, often a wise one, but sometimes and in some things, absolutely out of his senses.”38

  On October 30, Adams’s forty-seventh birthday, the American negotiators and their British counterparts launched an intense week of negotiations, which started at eleven each morning and continued through late suppers most evenings. The British readily accepted the four “necessary points” that Franklin had proposed back in July, but not the “advisable points,” such as the ceding of Canada. The main disputes they faced that week were:

  Fishing rights off Newfoundland: This was a major issue for Adams, who, as David McCullough points out, was eloquent in his sermons on “New England’s ancient stake in the sacred codfish.” Franklin was likewise firm on the point, and he provided an economic argument: the money that Americans made from fishing would be spent on British manufactures once friendship was restored. “Are you afraid there is not fish enough,” he asked, “or that we should catch too many?” The British conceded the point, to the dismay of France, which was hoping to win special fishing rights of its own. (When Franklin was accused by his enemies in America of favoring the French position and opposing a demand for American fishing rights, he wrote Jay and Adams asking them to attest to his firmness; Jay graciously complied, and Adams did so more grudgingly.)39

  Prewar debts still owed by Americans to British merchants: Franklin and Jay felt they should be renounced, because Britain had taken or destroyed so much American property. Adams, however, insisted that such debts be honored, and his view prevailed.

  The western boundary: With his lifelong vision of American expansion, Franklin insisted that no other nation should have rights to the land between the Alleghenies and the Mississippi. As Jay recorded, “He has invariably declared it to be his opinion that we should insist on the Mississippi as our Western boundary.” Again, this is not something that France or Spain would have supported at a general peace conference. But Britain was happy to accept the river as the western boundary along with free navigation rights for both nations.

  Compensation for the British loyalists in America whose estates had been confiscated: This was the most contentious issue, and Franklin made it even more so. He justified his implacable stance on moral grounds. The loyalists had helped cause the war, and their losses were far less than those suffered by American patriots whose property had been destroyed by the British. But his stubbornness also had a personal component. Among the most visible loyalists were his former friend Joseph Galloway and, more notably, his estranged son, William. Franklin’s anger toward his son, and his desire to prove it publicly, had a major impact on his attitude toward the loyalist claims, and it added a painful personal poignancy to the final weeks of negotiations.

  William, who had been released from his Connecticut captivity through a prisoner exchange in September 1778, had been living in British-occupied New York, where he served as the president of the Board of Associated Loyalists. In that capacity, he had encouraged a series of small but brutal raids on American forces. One of these resulted in the lynching murder of an American captain, and General Washington had responded by threatening to hang one of his British prisoners, a young and very well-connected officer named Charles Asgill, if the perpetrators were not brought to justice.

  Asgill’s friends and family used their great influence to try to save his life, and Shelburne sent a personal appeal to Franklin to intercede. Franklin sharply refused. Washington’s aim was “to obtain the punishment of a deliberate murderer,” he replied. “If the English refuse to deliver up or punish this murderer, it is saying that they choose to preserve him rather than Captain Asgill. It seems to me therefore that the application should be made to the English minist
ers.”40

  The issue became more personal for Franklin when a British court-martial acquitted the accused British soldier on the grounds that he was merely following orders. That prompted outraged Americans to demand the arrest of the person who had issued those orders: William Franklin. So, in August 1782, twenty years after his arrival in America as New Jersey governor, William prudently fled back to London, where he arrived in late September, just as his father’s final round of peace negotiations with Oswald were beginning.

  The meddlesome Vaughan further complicated matters by urging Shelburne to be solicitous toward William. He informed the prime minister that Temple Franklin had, when Vaughan discussed it with him in Passy, “intimated hopes to see something done for his father,” and Vaughan later added his own belief, very mistaken, that doing so would have a “seasonable effect” on Benjamin Franklin’s disposition toward Britain. So Shelburne met with William and promised to do all he could to help both him and the loyalists. Franklin was chagrined when he learned of all this, and was especially angry when he discovered that Vaughan’s misguided interference had come at the behest of young Temple, who had interceded on his father’s behalf without telling his grandfather.41

  Franklin expressed his sentiments, as he often did, in a short fable. There was once, he wrote, a great lion, king of the forest, who “had among his subjects a body of faithful dogs.” But the lion king, “influenced by evil counselors,” went to war with them. “A few of them, of a mongrel race, derived from a mixture of wolves and foxes, corrupted by royal promises of great rewards, deserted the honest dogs and joined their enemies.” When the dogs won their freedom, the wolves and foxes of the king’s council gathered to argue for compensation to the mongrels who had remained loyal. But a horse arose, “with a boldness and freedom that became the nobleness of his nature,” and argued that any reward for fratricide was unjust and would lead only to further wars. “The council had sense enough,” Franklin concluded, “to resolve that the demand be rejected.”42