The First American

by H. W. Brands

  This last activity may have been what cemented Franklin’s friendship for Bancroft and inclined him to trust Bancroft with sensitive information regarding American affairs. When the Committee of Secret Correspondence appointed Silas Deane its agent in Europe, Franklin drafted instructions directing Deane to Bancroft. “From him you may obtain a good deal of information of what is now going forward in England,” Franklin wrote, cautioning Deane to be as circumspect as Franklin was sure Bancroft would be.

  Bancroft was circumspect, all right, but not in the manner Franklin anticipated. Bancroft was one of that middling group that saw little to choose between the colonies and the mother country in their escalating quarrel, and when the quarrel became a war he determined that whichever side won, he would too. Perhaps it was his association with Deane that alerted him to the prospect of profiting from the war; perhaps the provincial in the great city simply developed expensive tastes. But in either case, even while he was furnishing information to Deane—and after Franklin and Lee joined Deane in France, to the three commissioners together—about affairs in England, he supplied intelligence to the British ministry about the doings of the American commissioners. He later claimed that the role of the double agent was “as repugnant to my feelings as it had been to my original intentions,” but the stipends he received from both sides evidently assuaged his distaste. The British paid better, for while Franklin supplied him only a secretary’s salary, the British added a premium for the risk he was running; he ultimately received £1,000 per annum, with a promise of a permanent pension of £500.

  In a postwar memorandum to the British government, Bancroft described his activities.

  I went to Paris, and during the first year, resided in the same house with Dr. Franklin, Mr. Deane etc., and regularly informed this Government of every transaction of the American Commissioners; of every step and vessel taken to supply the revolted colonies with artillery, arms etc.; of every part of their intercourse with the French and other European courts; of the powers and instructions given by Congress to the Commissioners; and of their correspondence with the Secret Committees etc.

  When the Franco-American treaties were signed, Bancroft sped the news to London. When Admiral d’Estaing left Toulon with the French fleet, bound for America, London learned through Bancroft. After Yorktown, as Franklin and the other American peace commissioners devised strategy for dealing with the French and the British, the attentive Bancroft sent back reports that supplemented those of Oswald and Grenville.

  Bancroft delivered his information by various means. Because Franklin and the other Americans thought he was spying for them, they did not begrudge his frequent visits to England, where he communicated directly with government officials. While in Paris he sometimes met with Paul Wentworth, Franklin’s interlocutor and Britain’s European spymaster. On other occasions he left messages in a sealed bottle secreted in the hollow of a tree on the south side of the Tuileries.

  The British were pleased with Bancroft’s work. They raised his stipend; as the peace negotiations neared a close, one of Bancroft’s British handlers called him “a valuable treasure to government” both as a source of intelligence regarding the Americans and as an indirect and unacknowledged means of influencing the American negotiating position.

  For this reason the British ignored the fact that Bancroft had a third employer he served at least as diligently as he did the Americans and the British: himself. The value of various issues on the London stock exchange rose and fell, often sharply, on news from the battle front. Bancroft was uniquely placed to anticipate such news, and he used it to his advantage. Learning early of the travails of Burgoyne in the forests of New York in the autumn of 1777, he wrote to a speculator friend who evidently bet on a drastic drop in share prices, which duly followed. Although Bancroft did not volunteer information about his profits, Wentworth noted he had grown suddenly rich.

  Arthur Lee suspected Bancroft of disloyalty to the American cause, but Franklin did not (perhaps partly because the paranoid Lee did). Franklin blithely confided in Bancroft information that doubtless damaged the American cause. Yet the damage could not have been especially great, for Franklin adopted a characteristic attitude regarding the possibility of espionage. Early in his stay at Paris he received a letter from an Englishwoman once resident in Philadelphia, now living in France. She apparently shared his politics, for she warned him against those who did not. “You are surrounded with Spies, who watch your every movement, who you visit, and by whom you are visited,” she wrote. “Of the latter there are who pretend to be friends to the cause of your country but that is a mere pretence.” She said her own security prevented her from being more explicit. “But of the truth of what I inform you, you may strictly rely.”

  Franklin responded diplomatically—and philosophically—to her advice.

  As it is impossible to discover in every case the falsity of pretended friends who would know our affairs; and more so to prevent being watched by spies, when interested people may think proper to place them for that purpose, I have long observed one rule which prevents any inconveniences from such practices.

  It is simply this: to be concerned in no affairs that I should blush to have made public, and to do nothing but what spies may see and welcome. When a man’s actions are just and honourable, the more they are known, the more his reputation is increased and established. If I was sure, therefore, that my valet de place was a spy, as he probably is, I think I should probably not discharge him for that, if in other respects I liked him.

  Franklin remarked elsewhere that when rascals proliferated, honest men might prosper. “If the rascals knew the advantage of virtue, they would become honest men out of rascality.” For himself, speaking the truth served admirably. “That is my only cunning.”

  Although Bancroft was an inadvertent link to London, others were deliberate. Even during the worst of the war Franklin had not severed all ties to England. He exchanged letters, of course, with David Hartley regarding prisoners and peace prospects. He communicated occasionally with William Strahan—a communication strained by the political rift that separated these erstwhile intimate friends.

  In 1781 Franklin resumed a correspondence with Edmund Burke that had been briefly interrupted. Burke wrote in this instance on behalf of his friend General Burgoyne, who had been paroled to England after Saratoga but subsequently had his parole revoked. The general was liable to be returned to America. Burke did not deny that Burgoyne had prosecuted the war vigorously and capably. But in doing so, he said, the general had simply been following the king’s directives and the soldier’s code. Acknowledging the irregular character of his request, Burke nonetheless asked that Franklin intercede. “If I were not fully persuaded of your liberal and manly way of thinking,” he wrote, “I should not presume, in the hostile situation in which I stand, to make an application to you. But in this piece of experimental philosophy, I run no risque of offending you. I apply, not to the Ambassador of America, but to Doctor Franklin the Philosopher; my friend; and the lover of his species.”

  Franklin answered in like tone. “Since the foolish part of mankind will make wars from time to time with each other, not having sense enough otherwise to settle their differences, it certainly becomes the wiser part, who cannot prevent those wars, to alleviate as much as possible the calamities attending them.” As it happened, Franklin had just received authorization from the Congress to offer Burgoyne’s freedom in exchange for that of Henry Laurens. Lacking formal relations with the appropriate ministers in London, Franklin forwarded the offer to Burke. “If you can find any means of negotiating this business, I am sure the restoring another worthy man to his family and friends will be an addition to your pleasure.”

  Unfortunately for Burgoyne—and Laurens—the ministry in London was not ready for the swap. “Difficulties remain,” Burke replied in February 1782. But the growing Parliamentary opposition to the war gave Burke, a leader of that opposition, hope that the prisoner issue might soon
become moot. “I trust it will lead to a speedy peace between the two branches of the English nation, perhaps to a general peace; and that our happiness may be an introduction to that of the world at large.”

  Other Franklin connections to England were unrelated to the war. Benjamin Vaughan was a young admirer and casual acquaintance; in 1779 he published in London a collection of Franklin’s works. On the title page he violated British usage, if not British law, in identifying Franklin as the minister at the court of Paris of “the United States of America.” Vaughan lamented England’s folly in letting Franklin—and America—slip away. “Can Englishmen read these things [that is, Franklin’s works], and not sigh at recollecting that the country which could produce their author was once without controversy their own!”

  Franklin kept loose touch with the Royal Society. He sent the group an occasional paper and read their transactions. In the summer of 1782 he took time from the peace negotiations to reply to a letter from the president of the society. “Be assured that I long earnestly for a return of those peaceful times when I could sit down in sweet society with my English philosophical friends,” Franklin wrote. The memory of those days filled him with delight. “Much more happy should I be thus employed in your most desirable company than in that of all the grandees of the earth projecting plans of mischief, however necessary they may be supposed for obtaining greater good.” In this letter Franklin allowed himself a fond hope. “If proper means are used to produce, not only a peace, but what is much more interesting, a thorough reconciliation, a few years may heal the wounds that have been made in our happiness, and produce a degree of prosperity of which at present we can hardly form a conception.”

  Franklin’s sentiments were not always so elevated. His press at Passy may have produced humorous and moral essays, but it also produced propaganda, occasionally of the most virulent and scurrilous sort. In the spring of 1782 Franklin began circulating a “Supplement to the Boston Independent Chronicle.” Complete with local notices and advertisements, the publication carried readers straight to the streets of the Massachusetts capital.

  But what really got their attention was a letter from Albany, written by a captain of militia named Gerrish. The alert officer related his interception of a shipment from the Seneca Indians to the British governor of Canada. “The possession of this booty first gave us pleasure,” Gerrish wrote, “but we were struck with horror to find among the packages 8 large ones, containing SCALPS of our unhappy country-folks.” There were hundreds of the grisly items, inventoried in a bizarre missive from the chief of the Senecas to the Canadian governor (helpfully transcribed by a British trader).

  No. 1. Containing 43 scalps of Congress soldiers, killed in different skirmishes…. Also 62 of farmers killed in their houses … a black circle all around to denote their being killed in the night….

  No. 2. Containing 98 of farmers killed in their houses … great white circle and sun to show they were surprised in the daytime, a little red foot to show they stood upon their defence and died fighting for their lives and families.

  No. 3. Containing 97 of farmers … killed in their fields….

  No. 4. Containing 102 of farmers … 18 marked with a little yellow flame to denote their being of prisoners burnt alive, after being scalped, their nails pulled out by the roots, and other torments….

  No. 5. Containing 88 scalps of women, hair long … 17 others very grey … knocked down dead or had their brains beat out.

  No. 6. Containing 193 boys’ scalps, of various ages … bullet-marks, knife, hatchet or club, as their deaths happened.

  No. 7. 211 girls’ scalps, big and little….

  No. 8. This package is a mixture of all the varieties above-mentioned, to the number of 122…. 29 little infants’ scalps of various sizes … ripped out of their mothers’ bellies.

  As if this all were not shocking enough, the Seneca chief urged the governor to forward the tribute to London. “We wish you to send these scalps over the water to the great king, that he may regard them and be refreshed; and that he may see our faithfulness in destroying his enemies and be convinced that his presents have not been made to ungrateful people.”

  The whole business was absolutely appalling—and utterly false. There was no such shipment, and no such message for King George.

  Yet Franklin, the author of the hoax, defended it as grounded in the reality of the warfare the Indians waged at Britain’s behest. “The form may perhaps not be genuine,” he admitted to a French friend, to whom he sent copies for distribution. “But the substance is truth; the number of people of all kinds and ages murdered by them being known to exceed that of the invoice. Make any use of them you may think proper to shame your Anglomanes, but do not let it be known through what hands they come.”

  Franklin’s propaganda may have changed a few minds but, coming this late in a long war, probably not many. It certainly did not change the positions of his counterparts in the peace negotiations.

  Such a change required a substantive shift in the balance of military power—which, as matters transpired, took place in the spring of 1782. Following the allied victory at Yorktown, one who made it possible, the formerly cautious but now overconfident Grasse, sailed south to the West Indies, where he suffered a devastating defeat. In the Battle of the Saintes the admiral himself was captured, and the British gained what Charles Fox called, without excessive braggadocio, “the most important and decisive victory that has happened during the war.”

  Meanwhile, the Spanish effort to recapture Gibraltar stalled. Spain had entered the war hoping to win various prizes from the British, but the one that obsessed the Spanish was the monolith that guarded the passage from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. Though ownership of the great rock had strategic implications, to Spain it was mostly a matter of pride. Unfortunately, Spanish pride had availed little so far against British cannons and the tunnels that shielded them.

  In the summer of 1782 the Spanish mounted what promised to be their final offensive—however it turned out. Novel floating batteries were built to carry Spanish guns to sea; Spanish ships were massed in support. John Adams wrote from Holland that the Spanish ambassador there “trembled for the news we should have from Gibraltar.” Well he might have, Adams thought, saying he himself had “no expectation at all” of a Spanish victory. “The earnest zeal of Spain to obtain that impenetrable Rock, what has it not cost the House of Bourbon this war? And what is the importance of it? A mere point of honour! A trophy of insolence to England and of humiliation to Spain!”

  Adams’s apprehensions proved out; the attack failed. This left France in an awkward position. Louis had promised to fight on Spain’s side till the British were evicted from Gibraltar, yet on current trends that might take years—or generations. How long must France wait for this quixotic quest to succeed?

  Vergennes had to consider something else. The Americans were tied to France directly, by the Franco-American treaty, but they were tied to Spain indirectly, by the Franco-Spanish treaty. There was no love lost between Spain and America, and if Vergennes clung to Spain too closely too long, the Americans might cut themselves loose of France—Franklin’s protestations of friendship to the contrary notwithstanding.

  A final factor complicated things further. Russia had sat out the war, more or less, behind the protection of its “league of armed neutrality.” While Britain and France fought each other, Catherine the Great prepared to gobble up the Crimea. Vergennes, knowing the czarina’s appetite, earnestly desired to keep her from this next meal. But doing so required the cooperation of the British. Needless to say, as long as Britain and France were fighting in the Atlantic, cooperation in the Black Sea would be problematic.

  In short, by the autumn of 1782 Vergennes had concluded that time was no longer on France’s side. Within limits, the sooner the present war drew to an end, the better.

  As the shape of these events came into view, Vergennes shifted his position on the idea of separate negotiations. With feign
ed magnanimity he told Franklin the French court was resisting British efforts to deal with the Americans through France. “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 for our common security is that the treaties go hand in hand, and are signed on the same day.”

  The British, perhaps alerted by Bancroft, responded at once to the new state of affairs. Richard Oswald, with what seemed to Franklin “an air of great simplicity and honesty,” explained the dire financial straits into which Britain had fallen during the present war. “Our enemies may now do what they please with us,” he confided. “They have the ball at their foot.” Only Franklin, as representative of America, could extricate England from its predicament. Indeed, Oswald said, it was perhaps the case that no single man ever possessed the power to do so much good as Franklin possessed at this moment.

  Oswald assured Franklin that Shelburne shared this view, and showed him a letter from Shelburne saying as much. Oswald went on to say that he—Oswald—had told the ministers in London that however much they might seek Dr. Franklin’s assistance, they must not ask him to do anything unsuitable to his character or inconsistent with his duty to his country. “I did not ask him the particular occasion of his saying this,” Franklin recorded, “but thought it looked a little as if something inconsistent with my duty had been talked of or proposed.”

  That something Franklin inferred from a memorandum Oswald showed him, written by Shelburne and mentioning “a final settlement of things between Great Britain and America, which Dr. Franklin very properly says requires to be treated in a very different manner from the peace between Great Britain and France, who have always been at enmity with each other.” In other words, a separate peace with the Americans was at the top of London’s list.