The First American

by H. W. Brands

  Franklin could not help being encouraged. Chatham’s opposition to government policies was no secret, but after a season of merely grumbling in his den, the old lion indicated he might roar once more. And so he did, after making a point of honoring Franklin by escorting him on his arm into the House of Lords. This created a stir, for none had known of the communications between the American and the earl. On that day Chatham moved that General Gage withdraw his troops from Boston as a gesture of goodwill and a first step toward reconciliation. “I was quite charmed with Lord Chatham’s speech in support of his motion,” Franklin recorded. “He impressed me with the highest idea of him as a great and most able statesman.” Others joined Chatham, speaking ably on behalf of reason and moderation.

  Unfortunately, however, the lords as a group were unreceptive. “All availed no more than the whistling of the winds,” Franklin observed. The motion was defeated.

  Yet Chatham did not give up, nor did Lord Howe. During January and February of 1775 Franklin met regularly with them, and with a number of other peers. He advised them in word and writing what America required to feel secure in its rights and how far America would defend those rights against continued usurpation. His interlocutors had somehow gained the impression he was in a position to bargain for the colonies, that if he could be persuaded to make a concession on this point or that, a deal might be struck. Howe in particular hinted that the Crown would be most grateful of any help Franklin could provide, and could be counted on to render material proof of its gratitude.

  Diplomatically but firmly Franklin rejected the very idea. “My Lord,” he said, “I shall deem it a great honour to be in any shape joined with your lordship in so good a work. But if you hope service from any influence I may be supposed to have, drop all thoughts of procuring me any previous favour from ministers. My accepting them would destroy the very influence you propose to make use of; they would be considered as so many bribes to betray the interest of my country.”

  Gradually Franklin realized that the men he was talking to, for all their distinction, lacked the power to pull the British government back from the brink. A telling moment occurred in a subsequent session of the House of Lords. Chatham, after extended discussion with Franklin—including one meeting at Franklin’s Craven Street residence, which caught the eye of the neighbors and the attention of political London—presented a comprehensive plan for settling the troubles. Dartmouth, representing the government, treated the proposal courteously, saying it deserved serious consideration. Franklin, again in the gallery, described what happened next.

  Lord Sandwich arose, and in a petulant vehement speech opposed its being received at all, and gave his opinion that it ought to be immediately rejected with the contempt it deserved. That he could never believe it the production of any British peer. That it appeared to him rather the work of some American; and turning his face towards me, who was leaning on the bar, said he fancied he had in his eye the person who drew it up, one of the bitterest and most mischievous enemies this country had ever known.

  Chatham came to Franklin’s defense, and his own. He said he resented the insinuation that any bill he presented was another man’s work, but if he were prime minister he would deem it no disgrace—indeed quite the opposite—to rely on one so distinguished in the eyes of all Europe as Dr. Franklin.

  Chatham’s motion failed miserably, even Dartmouth changing his initial neutrality to opposition. Franklin concluded that no hope remained. A final visit to the House of Lords sealed the verdict. Lord Camden, one of those with whom he had discussed a possible settlement, spoke favorably of the Americans. As with Chatham, he was hooted down. Franklin recorded:

  I was much disgusted from the ministerial side by many base reflections on American courage, religion, understanding, &c., in which we were treated with the utmost contempt, as the lowest of mankind, and almost of a different species from the English of Britain; but particularly the American honesty was abused by some of the Lords, who asserted that we were all knaves and wanted only by this dispute to avoid paying our debts; that if we had any sense of equity or justice we should offer payment of the tea &c.

  Franklin by this time had already made plans to leave for America. As a parting gesture he gave vent to his anger in a memorial he drafted to Dartmouth. Far from owing Britain anything for the tea, he declared, Massachusetts was owed by Britain for the damage incurred as a result of the British blockade. “I, the underwritten, do therefore, as their agent, in behalf of my Country and the said town of Boston, protest against the continuance of the said blockade. And I do hereby solemnly demand satisfaction for the accumulated injury done them beyond the value of the India Company’s tea destroyed.”

  Aside from the fact that he had no instructions from Massachusetts to make this demand, Franklin realized on second thought that such a piece of impertinence might simply confirm the ministers in their collective misjudgment. He decided to consult his friend (and land-seeking ally) Thomas Walpole. “He looked at it and me several times alternately,” Franklin recorded, “as if he apprehended me a little out of my senses.” Franklin asked Walpole to take the letter to Lord Camden and see what he thought. Camden agreed that Franklin must not deliver it. Walpole returned to Franklin’s lodgings to warn him in writing and in person that delivery would be interpreted as a “national affront” that might produce “dangerous consequences to your person.” Franklin reluctantly acceded, and dropped the matter.

  22

  Rebel

  1775–76

  When Franklin left London at the vernal equinox of 1775 he believed he would never return. For most of eighteen years London had been his home; he knew London now better than he knew Philadelphia. But the London he left by coach to catch the Pennsylvania packet at Portsmouth was not the London he had known just a few years earlier. Corruption had always troubled its politics, yet corruption now overwhelmed all else. The placemen, the toadies, the cynics had triumphed; honest seekers after the welfare of the empire as a whole had no place. For eighteen years he had resisted returning to America, for the last eleven successfully; he resisted no more.

  What he was returning to he could only guess. When he had left America in 1757 he was fifty-one, in the prime of his adult life. Now he was sixty-nine, an old man by anyone’s reckoning. Few of his contemporaries survived; for a decade or more his associates had been primarily of a younger generation.

  The latest, and most poignant, reminder of mortality was the death of Deborah. After her stroke six years earlier she had never been the same. He could read in her letters that she was slipping from this earthly sphere. If it pained him he did not say—neither in letters nor in comments recorded by friends. Nor did he mention feeling guilty at having essentially abandoned her in her old age. “Her death was no more than might reasonably be expected after the paralytic stroke she received some time ago, which greatly affected her memory and understanding,” William wrote on Christmas Eve 1774, conveying the sad news. “She told me, when I took leave of her on my removal to Amboy [several months earlier] that she never expected to see you unless you returned this winter, for she was sure she should not live till next summer.” When Franklin read this, did it hurt more to know that Debbie felt this way, or that she had not told him? “I heartily wish you had happened to have come over in the fall, as I think her disappointment in that respect preyed a good deal on her spirits,” William concluded. Did Franklin need his son—who was not even her son—to tell him this?

  If he felt any regrets about Deborah, he could comfort himself that she was now beyond whatever pain he might have caused her. William was another matter. The atrocious treatment Franklin received from the British government appeared not to have moved William at all. He had not protested; if anything, his relocation to Amboy, against his father’s advice, indicated a decision to make his future with Britain, whatever happened. The governor appeared a more dutiful servant to his king than son to his father. Did Franklin feel betrayed? Again, he did not say.
But he had to sense that he and William were near a parting of the ways. Having just lost his wife, he was about to lose his son. Perhaps at this time, certainly at others, he must have reflected that however competent he might be at other aspects of human life, he fell short when it came to family.

  Yet all was not lost in this regard. If he started to feel regretful during his westerly voyage that spring, he had only to look across the deck to where young Temple was conversing with the sailors or throwing a line over the side, for his spirits to revive. The lad was fifteen—bright, capable, curious. Franklin could not help seeing himself in the boy, or seeing William as he had been at that age, or seeing what Franky might have been. Then he would sigh, but the sigh would include a breath of hope.

  The line Temple was tossing over the side had one of his grandfather’s instruments attached to the end. Franklin spent much of the voyage recording the final failure of his efforts at imperial reconciliation, but between pages he made what he described to Joseph Priestley as “a valuable philosophical discovery” regarding the Gulf Stream, which remained almost as mysterious as on his first Atlantic crossing in 1724. He and Temple took regular measurements of the water through which their ship was sailing. The changes were striking as they entered the stream; the water was as much as nineteen Fahrenheit degrees warmer than water to the side. It also had a different color, Franklin thought, and did not sparkle at night the way water outside the stream did. And it carried what the sailors called “gulf weed.”

  Though he learned much about the Gulf Stream, he did not yet understand its mechanism nor its actual consequences. The question that prompted his investigations in the first place was the venerable one of why ships sailing from America to England made better time than ships sailing the reverse route. At this point he speculated that it had to do with the excess angular momentum of bodies (including ships) farther from the earth’s axis of rotation. Simple geometry revealed that a ship at latitude 40 degrees traveled 120 miles per hour faster about the earth’s axis than a ship at 50 degrees. “This motion in a ship and cargo is of great force; and if she could be lifted up suddenly from the harbour in which she lay quiet, and set down instantly in the latitude of the port she was bound to, though in a calm, that force contained in her would make her run a great way at a prodigious rate. This force must be lost gradually in her voyage, by gradual impulse against the water, and probably thence shorten the voyage.”

  This explanation was inadequate, as Franklin himself subsequently recognized. But it was no less ingenious for its inadequacy, and it demonstrated that whatever else his disillusionment with imperial politics accomplished, it did not dampen his interest in the world around him.

  Franklin’s arrival in America in early May was treated throughout the colonies as an event of great moment. A broadside posted on the streets of New York relayed a letter from Philadelphia:

  Yesterday evening Dr. Franklin arrived here from London in six weeks, which he left the 20th of March, which has given great joy to this town. He says we have no favours to expect from the Ministry; nothing but submission will satisfy them. They expect little or no opposition will be made to their troops…. Dr. Franklin is highly pleased to find us arming and preparing for the worst events. He thinks nothing else can save us from the most abject slavery and destruction; at the same time encourages us to believe a spirited opposition will be the means of our salvation.

  This was a fair summary of Franklin’s feeling, although it presupposed some critical knowledge Franklin did not possess until reaching American waters. On April 19 the war he had feared for many months began in earnest.

  It did so for the reasons that were fully apparent in Franklin’s final weeks in England. The British government was determined to have matters out with the Americans. “The die is now cast,” George III declared. “The colonies must either submit or triumph.” Shortly thereafter the monarch made his point more forcefully: “The New England governments are in a state of rebellion. Blows must decide whether they are to be subject to this country or independent.”

  On April 14 Governor Gage in Boston received orders from London to preempt the increasing strength of the Massachusetts militia. These “minutemen” and their slower comrades were training regularly, caching arms and ammunition, and growing more dangerous by the day. Though Dartmouth, the author of Gage’s latest instructions, was not advocating war per se, he was entirely prepared for it—and preferred that it come on the government’s terms and timing rather than those of the rebels. “It will surely be better that the conflict should be brought on, upon such ground, than in a riper state of rebellion.”

  During the next four days Gage prepared a preemptive strike. Informers indicated that the militia had stockpiled weapons at Concord, twenty miles from Boston. Gathering his grenadiers and light infantrymen, he devised a plan for an operation to be launched in the dead of night with strictest secrecy. The strike force would embark by boat for Cambridge, whence they would march overland to Concord.

  But the rebels had spies too. Paul Revere arranged a simple signal scheme: one lantern in the steeple of the North Church meant a march by land, over the neck of the peninsula and around Back Bay; two lanterns meant a shortcut across the water. Almost before the British troops mustered on the Common for their rowboat ride to Cambridge, Revere had two lanterns hung in the church tower and splashed off in a boat of his own to Charlestown, where he mounted and tore away toward Concord. He dodged a British patrol that had orders to intercept messengers—especially any riding breathlessly through the night. At Lexington he roused Sam Adams and John Hancock, who expected to be arrested whenever Gage’s soldiers could catch them. With other riders he resumed his journey to Concord. But he never reached that destination. Stopped by another British patrol, he was dehorsed and detained. (Later he was released to walk home.)

  The alarm was abroad, however, and the minutemen mobilized. When the British reached Lexington at sunup, some seventy soldiers had arrayed themselves on the green at the side of the Concord road. The commander of the British force ordered the Americans to disarm and disperse. Counting red coats and concluding that in a skirmish they would be beaten, the Americans began to walk away—taking their guns with them. The British commander repeated his order for them to drop weapons; this time his tone was more insulting. Someone fired—an American, according to the British; a Briton, by the Americans. The shot triggered a volley by the British, then another, then a charge with bayonets. In five minutes the British had routed the Americans, who lost eight dead and ten wounded. One British soldier was nicked in the leg.

  In high spirits the soldiers in the scarlet coats and the white breeches set off for Concord. By now all chance of surprise had evaporated; the drums beat the British march and the fifes pierced in the morning air. At Concord they encountered a larger group of militia—the Concord company plus several from the surrounding villages. For a few hours the two sides postured, marching and countermarching, not knowing whether this was war, peace, or something in between. The British began searching houses for guns, balls, and powder, finding little but provoking little resistance. Only when the courthouse and a smithy caught fire did the militiamen react strongly. “Will you let them burn the town?” demanded one of the American officers. To prevent it a group of the Americans began shooting at the British.

  The British troops had no more experience than the Americans—the last war having ended a dozen years earlier, and these being young men. As it became clear the Americans were serious about resisting, the British fell back. They retreated down the road to Concord, with the Americans close behind. The rest of the day was a nightmare for the British; all the way to Boston they encountered snipers hiding behind the trees and rock walls at the side of the road, and were harassed at their rear by the advancing militiamen. Only after sunset did they reach the safety of the city. A tally of the losses showed some 270 killed or wounded. The American losses were a little over a third as many.

  By the measure o
f men lost and mission unaccomplished, the British foray was a disaster. The Americans had reason to feel proud, and many did. But at the same time the reality of war was sobering. Jane Mecom wrote her brother with a personal account. In his last letter Franklin had told her to keep up her courage, as the current stormy weather could not last forever; she now replied:

  I believe you did not then imagine the storm would have arisen so high as for the General [Gage] to have sent out a party to creep out in the night and slaughter our dear brethren for endeavouring to defend our own property. But God appeared for us and drove them back with much greater loss than they are willing to own. Their countenances as well as the confession of many of them shew they were much mistaken in the people they had to deal with, but the distress it has occasioned is past my description. The horror the town was in when the battle approached within hearing, expecting they would proceed quite in to town, the commotion the town was in after the battle ceased by the parties coming in, bringing in their wounded men, caused such an agitation of mind I believe none had much sleep. Since which we could have no quiet, as we understood our brethren without were determined to dispossess the town of the [British] regulars; and the General shutting up the town, not letting any pass out, but threw such great difficulties as were almost insupportable.

  In other words, it was war, with all the terrors, trials, and uncertainties war entailed. For her part, Jane Mecom fled the city; she informed her brother she was taking refuge with his old friend Catherine Ray Greene and her husband, William, in Warwick, Rhode Island.