Franklin wanted Canada, which, he believed, would add glory to both the continental and the Atlantic dimensions of the empire. During the war, he had written a pamphlet to plan two western colonies that would stretch from the Ohio River to the Great Lakes. (Such schemes were legion during and after the war.) Citing his “Observations on the Increase of Mankind, &c.,” Franklin complained of the expanding colonial population “being confined to the country between the sea and the mountains.” He stressed that the “inland navigation or water-carriage by the lakes and great rivers” gave the region “natural advantages” for its settlers, connecting them back to older settlements, to the sea, and from there to the home country. In 1760, he emphasized to Lord Kames that the conquest of Canada would allow “all the Country from St. Laurence to [the] Missisipi” to fill with British settlers and “the Atlantic Sea” with British ships.36
Once he got wind of British dithering over Canada, Franklin banged out yet another pamphlet, The Interest of Great Britain Considered, with Regard to Her Colonies, and the Acquisitions of Canada and Guadaloupe (1760). In this “Canada Pamphlet,” he stressed that the increase and spread of the colonial population would not make the empire too unwieldy but instead would strengthen it. More settlers meant more British imports and stronger economic and social ties between colonies and metropole. Distance was not a disadvantage, in his opinion. “No body foretels the dissolution of the Russian monarchy from its extent,” Franklin pointed out, “yet I will venture to say, the eastern parts of it are already much more inaccessible from Petersburgh, than the country on the Mississipi is from London.”37
Rather than duck the issue, Franklin confronted the British fear of a growing colonial population. Demographic increase would indeed alter the tie between colonies and capital but in a positive way. “When we first began to colonize in America,” Franklin observed, “it was necessary to send people, and to send seed-corn; but it is not now necessary that we should furnish, [even] for a new colony, either one or the other.” Instead, the colonies imported manufactures, a measure of their societies’ increased complexity as well as their connection back to the home country. If British ministers truly feared these developments, Franklin proposed a Swiftian solution: “Let an act of parliament, [then] be made, enjoining the colony midwives to stifle in the birth every third or fourth child,” a modest proposal that compared British legislators to scriptural tyrants such as Herod.38
Franklin’s political arithmetic—long gestating in his almanac and newspaper—underpinned his first significant critique of the British empire. In case anyone missed the point, he appended his “Observations on the Increase of Mankind” to his “Canada Pamphlet.” If Franklin’s fascination with the Atlantic Ocean reflected an older colonial mind-set, his consideration of continental matters hinted that a later generation of Americans would worry over their “manifest destiny.”
Yet Franklin loyally championed the British empire’s destiny. He was patriotically gleeful over the possibility that Britons might command the New World, thereby stepping into Spanish shoes, richly buckled with American silver. For this reason—and as his comments on colonists’ trade with Britain were indicating—he welcomed any new water route in and around North America, whether the Northwest Passage, the Mississippi River, or the newest problem in hydrography, the Gulf Stream.
The Gulf Stream itself was not new, but public discussion of it was. Indians had probably known parts of the current, and the Norse might have learned about it when they crossed the North Atlantic in the early Middle Ages. And any number of people could have observed the strange debris that the Atlantic scattered, which included pieces of tropical wood that washed ashore in North America and North American native watercraft that drifted over to Ireland. The Spanish gave the first written accounts of transatlantic currents, starting in 1492 with Christopher Columbus. Thereafter, European sailors grew familiar with the currents, though they never put all this knowledge on paper.39
The Gulf Stream’s southern flow, up past Florida, had been essential to the initial Spanish settlement of the Americas. Spanish mariners used the current to shoot eastward across the Atlantic. The very name Gulf Stream reflected political rather than natural realities. Euro-American observers by and large thought that the current issued out of the Gulf of Mexico, then flowed upward past the coast of North America. The current’s name, after its presumed source, acknowledged the old center of power in the Atlantic: Spanish America. Spain’s holdings in South America, its long-standing presence in Mexico and the Caribbean, and its command over the Pacific in places such as the Philippines were continuing reminders of its hemispheric and oceanic dominance. It is little wonder, then, that observers of the Atlantic convinced themselves a mighty current thrust out of the Gulf of Mexico toward the Caribbean, then snaked its way alongside North America—they were visualizing Spanish sea power.40
In the momentous chess game of European colonization of the Americas, the current represented a command over the Atlantic Ocean that was, in the mid-eighteenth century, suddenly available to new players. Britons understood quite well, at the end of the Seven Years’ War, that they needed to understand and exploit the northern part of the Atlantic.
Information about the Gulf Stream began to flood British publications. Robert Bishop’s Instructions and Observations Relative to the Navigation of the Windward and Gulph Passages (1761) was a good example. Bishop explained that the windward passage guided mariners from Africa to the Americas; the gulf passage, around the Caribbean, was trickier. He recommended routes that used the “current of the Gulph” to swing west and north but also ones that avoided the current in order to maneuver around Florida. In that way, they could reach the Mississippi River. It was still in Spanish hands but, if transferred to the British, would give westward settlers access to the Atlantic. The Mississippi River, the Gulf Stream, the Northwest Passage—all were coveted routes that added value to territory in North America. The prospect that Britain might command all three was breathtaking.41
Indeed, Franklin wrote the words Gulph Stream for the first time, in 1762, while discussing the Northwest Passage. He told John Pringle (a Scottish friend) of the promising northwest “exploration” of one Bartholomew de Fonte, “now Prince of Chili.” The explorer’s grand-sounding but obscure title should have warned Franklin: the voyage never took place, and there was no such person as the prince of Chili. The hoax was so clever that even Silence Dogood was fooled. Franklin’s credulous discussion of de Fonte made two connected points: the Gulf Stream prophesied Britain’s eventual supremacy in the North Atlantic, and it indicated the larger pattern of circulation in that ocean. Put another way, British empire was a natural fact.42
Franklin dismissed Spanish protests that de Fonte’s voyage was imaginary. The Spaniards, he asserted, were simply “jealous” of “the maritime Power of their Neighbours, and apprehensive for their extensive Settlements on the Coasts of the South Sea” or Pacific. As peace negotiations ground on, Franklin anticipated that an ability to navigate the Gulf Stream, the Mississippi, and a possible Northwest Passage would add value to whatever American territory that Britain might receive and that rapidly increasing Americans might settle.43
Before the Seven Years’ War, Franklin had interpreted the Gulf Stream as a local phenomenon. But now, he viewed it within the context of the greater Atlantic, particularly the ocean’s wind vectors. So powerful were these air currents that they created distinct hemispheric climates; the North American side had much harder winters than the warmer European side. While cooling the western Atlantic, the winds sent its waters clockwise. “The Trade Wind blowing over the Atlantic Ocean constantly from the East, between the Tropics,” Franklin explained, “carries a Current to the American Coast, and raises the Water there above its natural Level.” Once elevated, the water poured through “the Gulf of Mexico, and all along the North American Coast to and beyond the Banks of Newfoundland in a strong Current called by Seamen the Gulph Stream.” From Newfoundland,
the northwesterly winds “mov’d [the currents] away from the North American Coast towards the coasts of Spain and Africa, whence they get again into the Power of the Trade Winds, and continue the Circulation.”44
Using the Gulf Stream, Franklin traced both circulation and equilibrium. By rising and then returning to their natural level, the waters of the North Atlantic traveled in a circle. That circle may have always been there in the middle of the ocean, but it only became a topic of public discussion at the end of the Seven Years’ War, when European nations were redividing the globe’s land and water. Was it a natural fact? The Gulf Stream had to wait for the right political context. For Franklin, wind and waves were both natural forces and vehicles of British empire.
IN 1762, Franklin sailed back to America, crossing the Atlantic he had just been studying. His official business in London was done. He and the Penns had fought out a compromise that had the one advantage of displeasing everyone equally. Thomas Penn had labeled Franklin a “malicious V[illain].” For his part, Franklin conceived a “more cordial and thorough Contempt for [Penn] than I ever before felt for any Man living.” The Penns snubbed Franklin and ordered him to meet with their lawyer; he and the lawyer quickly learned to detest each other as well.45
But the proprietors had underestimated Franklin. To a correspondent who worried that Fothergill and Collinson would “introduce [Franklin] to the Men of most influence at Court,” Thomas Penn had sneered, “Franklin’s popularity is nothing here . . . there are very few of any consequence that have heard of his Electrical Experiments.” He was wrong. Ultimately, Franklin won the day—in August 1760, the Privy Council ruled mostly in favor of the Pennsylvania Assembly and against the Penns, who had to pay some taxes, if not the amount the assembly wanted. Franklin conceded a truce but itched to get the Penns out of Pennsylvania entirely.46
A return home would allow him to gather more support for his bid to establish his colony as a royal one. It would also remove him from a sticky family situation. William Franklin was poised to marry an heiress, Elizabeth Downes, and to accept a royal commission as governor of New Jersey. Whether Franklin disapproved of the social climbing or merely felt slighted by his son’s increasing independence, we will never know. But he planned to depart before the wedding and the ceremony of royal appointment. This also meant he would travel separately from his son and daughter-in-law. Perhaps this was wise. It allowed Franklin to cool his temper so he could bless the young couple rather than pick a quarrel with them.
Franklin’s departure was a blow to his distinguished British friends and a reminder of the distance between Britain and the colonies. William Strahan wrote that “there is something in his leaving us even more cruel than a Separation by Death; it is like an untimely Death.” (Franklin agreed, writing Lord Kames that his departure from “the old World to the new” made him “feel like those who are leaving this World for the next.”) David Hume, made of sterner stuff, put it best. “America has sent us many good things,” he declared, such as the “Gold, Silver, Sugar, Tobacco, Indigo, &c.,” that had inspired European colonization. “But you,” he assured Franklin, “are the first Philosopher” from America, “the first Great Man of Letters for whom we are beholden to her.” Given that Europeans would “never send back an ounce of” American gold, why should they relinquish American “Wisdom?”47
If he was sad when he left London, Franklin had cheered up by the time he reached Madeira, where the passengers refreshed themselves with the island’s fruit and fabled wine. He described how the ships in his convoy then ran “Southward till we got into the Trade Winds, and then with them Westward till we drew near the Coast of America.” Perhaps because of the warm southern route and the fresh fruit, Franklin arrived home in uncharacteristically good health. It was his first experience with the westward movement of the Atlantic winds on which he had commented. (In 1726, he had traveled back to Philadelphia, much more slowly, through northern waters.) He had defined a circle of air and water that swept clockwise around the North Atlantic—now, he had traversed both halves of the circle.48
Back in Philadelphia, Franklin busied himself with building a house and being reelected to the assembly. Big news then arrived from Paris: peace. In the 1763 Treaty of Paris, Britain indeed swapped Guadeloupe for Canada. The French retained some fishing rights off Newfoundland but otherwise withdrew from the former New France. The British finally had access to the Mississippi and St. Lawrence Rivers, the two big continental conduits. France even ceded greater access to India to Britons. The British—and British Americans—were delirious about their nation’s unsurpassed strength over continents and oceans. Franklin rejoiced that Britons would “retain our Superiourity at Sea” and give the colonists “all the Country” on “this Side [of] the Missisipi.” It was only the start. In future, Franklin told his son, any British military force “might easily be poured down the Missisippi upon the lower country [Louisiana], and into the Bay of Mexico, to be used against Cuba, or Mexico itself.”49
The expansion of British territories in the Caribbean, North America, and South Asia convinced the free inhabitants of the English-speaking world that they belonged to the most powerful empire seen since the Rome of Caesar Augustus—George III was a new Caesar; the age itself was Augustan. It was a dangerous analogy. The Roman empire had declined and then fell. Could Britain do better? Or would maladministration and barbarian invasion doom its empire as well?
Colonial administration was adjusted to meet new demands. Postal service needed reform, which was where Franklin came in. Deliveries to the West Indies and New York had staggered on through the war, though enemy action took out fourteen packets. After a brief respite during the peace negotiations, a permanent British Atlantic postal service began in 1763 and has lasted ever since, through all the wars that have lashed the ocean. This system required not only boats and captains but also colonial postmasters to organize the collection and distribution of the mail and keep track of expenses. Franklin and his counterparts in Virginia (first William Hunter and then John Foxcroft) studied their half of the coastline and decided that they needed to determine new rates, based more precisely on mileage traveled. They published the new rates on a broadside circa 1763. Franklin had discovered one way to conquer distance: make every mile of it pay.50
But the rate-related distances were unclear because they had never been measured, despite the frenzy of mapping that had begun even before the war. Franklin and Foxcroft thus set out to do their own postal surveys. From April through November 1763, Franklin made trips to Virginia, New Jersey, New York, and New England, spending almost six of his twenty-four months in America away from home. He measured some of the distances himself, a grueling task for a man of fifty-seven. While riding in New England, he suffered two bad falls, dislocating a shoulder in the second tumble. Perhaps at this point, a bigger empire seemed less appealing.51
Bigger for whom? It was not enough that the Seven Years’ War had expanded the British empire—it had also raised unprecedented questions about the rights of colonized persons. Britons on either side of the Atlantic discovered a new solicitude for the non-European peoples who lived within the empire, most of whom wished they did not. The French had been able to count on more Indian military support than the British, which highlighted Britain’s comparatively poor diplomatic relations with native peoples. Ottawa leader Pontiac made the point clear when he began an Indian rebellion in 1763, once he and other Indians heard that their lands now belonged to Britain. British ministers took note. In a proclamation of 1763, they drew a line down the western edge of the colonial settlements. This border would separate and, it was hoped, prevent conflict between the settlers and the Indians, who thoroughly distrusted each other and threatened the peace.
Slavery troubled British consciences even more than Indian policy. Criticism of the slave trade gained ground, and for the first time, there was public debate over the possible rights of black (and Indian) people. Might they not be subjects of Great Britain, with at
least some of the obligations and rights that this legal status would entail? Was it just to exploit African Americans in ways unlawful for people of European descent? Or did their inherited physical and mental characteristics reflect a natural inferiority?52
Franklin was beginning to think not. He had been elected to Dr. Bray’s Associates in 1760, while living in London. He agreed to inspect the “Negro School” in Philadelphia on his return. In assenting to this, he had perhaps capitulated to Deborah Franklin. She had expressed concern over slaves before her husband did and, as an Anglican, believed in the Anglican evangelism of the associates. In December 1763, Franklin visited the Philadelphia school, and its pupils astonished him. They gave him “a higher Opinion of the natural Capacities of the black Race, than I had ever before entertained. Their Apprehension seems as quick, their Memory as strong, and their Docility in every Respect equal to that of white Children.” Franklin could no longer account for his earlier “Prejudices,” which had been considerable.53
He made no attack on slavery itself, and he continued to own slaves, but Franklin had come to see that people of African ancestry possessed sufficient intelligence to claim a place in civil society. He had earlier conceded that Germans and Indians differed from British settlers only in custom and language; now, he thought the same of people of African descent. This mattered to Franklin—only by thinking of Africans as people who might acquire knowledge could he consider them equal to free people of European descent. He continued to work with Dr. Bray’s Associates to educate freed blacks. In 1767, he and two other associates would be delegated to invest £1,000 in Philadelphia real estate in order to generate income “for the Support of Negro Schools in America.”54
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