49 Roger Hahn, The Anatomy of a Scientific Institution: The Paris Academy of Sciences, 1666–1803 (Berkeley, 1971), 3, 45–47, 58–83, 97–98, 119–120; Gillispie, Science and Polity in France, 78–99, 122; Aldridge, Franklin and His French Contemporaries, 108 (on asparagus).
50 Jacques Barbeu-Dubourg, preface to Oeuvres de M. Franklin . . . , 2 vols (Paris, 1773), PBF, 20:427; Pierre Turini to BF, Sept. 28, 1780, PBF, 33:339.
51 Dumas to BF, Oct. 23, 1778, PBF, 27:613; Jean-Gabriel Monaudoüin de la Touche to BF, Dec. 21, 1776, PBF, 23:61 (“il a fait a philadelphie / un temple a la philosophie, / [et] un Thrône pour la liberté”).
52 Aldridge, Franklin and His French Contemporaries, 16, 124–129.
53 Editorial note, PBF, 25:lxiii; Journal of the Duc de Croÿ, PBF, 26:140 (“son air de patriarche et fondateur de la Nation, jointe à sa célébrité comme inventeur de l’électricité, législateur des treize provinces unies, et sa science”); Stourzh, Franklin and American Foreign Policy, 139–146.
54 Gay, Voltaire’s Politics, 334–340; editorial notes, PBF, 26:697 (on Masonic ceremony); PBF, 35:frontispiece, xxii (on apron); Aldridge, Franklin and His French Contemporaries, 9–12; JA, 4:80–81.
55 Pearson, Voltaire Almighty, 387–390; editorial note, PBF, 28:286–287.
56 See also Bernard Bailyn, To Begin the World Anew: The Genius and Ambiguities of the American Founders (New York, 2003), 84–99.
57 BF to Sarah Bache, June 3, 1779, PBF, 29:613. Franklin was idolized at home, too. New Jersey celebrations on the first anniversary of the Franco-American alliance had featured “the American Philosopher and Ambassador extracting lightening from the clouds”; see New-Jersey Gazette, Mar. 3, 1779.
58 Aldridge, Franklin and His French Contemporaries, 105–106, 116–117.
59 J. L. Heilbron, Elements of Early Modern Physics (Berkeley, 1982), 202; Lebègue de Presle to BF, June 13 [1777], PBF, 24:162–164; Lebègue de Presle to BF, July 16, 1777, PBF, 24:325; editorial note, PBF, 25:5n–6n.
60 BF to [Lèbegue de Presle], Oct. 4, 1777, PBF, 25:26.
61 PBF, 25:5n–6n, 26; Heilbron, Early Modern Physics, 202–203.
62 Adrienne Koch and William Peden, eds., The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson . . . (Indianapolis, Ind., 1944), 178.
63 William C. Stinchcombe, The American Revolution and the French Alliance (Syracuse, N.Y., 1969); Jonathan R. Dull, The French Navy and American Independence: A Study of Arms and Diplomacy, 1774–1787 (Princeton, 1975); Ronald Hoffman and Peter J. Albert, eds., Diplomacy and Revolution: The Franco-American Alliance of 1778 (Charlottesvilla, Va., 1981).
64 Fowler, Rebels under Sail, 78, chaps. 6 and 7; Schaeper, France and America in the Revolutionary Era, 199–200; Conde de Aranda to Marqués de Grimaldi, [Jan. 13, 1777], PBF, 23:178 (quoting Franklin); Jonathan Williams Jr. to BF, Jan. 25, 1777, PBF, 23:232; Williams to the American Commissioners, Aug. 2, 1777, PBF, 24:384–385. See also the American Commissioners to the Committee for Foreign Affairs, May 26, 1777, PBF, 24:79–82.
65 American Commissioners to Committee of Secret Correspondence, Feb. 6, 1777, PBF, 23:287; [Samuel Wharton] to BF, Jan. 17, 1777, PBF, 23:204–205; BF to Richard Bache, May 22, 1777, PBF, 24:64; American Commissioners to the Committee for Foreign Affairs, May 26, 1777, PBF, 24:79; Jonathan Williams Jr. to the American Commissioners, Apr. 12, 1777, PBF, 23:578 (on Franklin’s prizes); Fowler, Rebels under Sail, 25, 57 (on Franklin).
66 Howard Robinson, Carrying British Mails Overseas (New York, 1964), 52–56; American Commissioners, May 10–11, 1777, PBF, 24:48–50.
67 William Bell Clark, Ben Franklin’s Privateers: A Naval Epic of the American Revolution (Baton Rouge, La., 1956), 164–170; Jonathan R. Dull, “Was the Continental Navy a Mistake?,” American Neptune 44 (1984), 167–170.
68 Jonathan Williams Jr. to BF, Apr. 8, 1777, PBF, 23:572–573 (see also similar statements on pp. 350, 410, 420n, 435); American Commissioners to Committee of Secret Correspondence, Mar. 12[–Apr. 9], 1777, PBF, 23:467; Reculès de Basmarein & Raimbaux to BF, Nov. 18, 1777, PBF, 25:172; Reculès de Basmarein & Raimbaux to American Commissioners, [before May 16, 1778], PBF, 26:472–474; Dull, French Navy, chaps. 3 and 4; Dull, “Continental Navy a Mistake?” 169; Fowler, Rebels under Sail, 93–95; Ellen Cohn, “Benjamin Franklin, Georges-Louis Le Rouge, and the Franklin/Folger Chart of the Gulf Stream,” Imago Mundi 52 (2000), 133–134.
69 Jonathan Williams Jr. to BF, Jan. 25, 1777, PBF, 23:229; William Bingham to American Commissioners, Apr. 6, 1777, PBF, 23:561; Lambert Wickes to American Commissioners, Mar. 5, 1777, PBF, 23:428; Williams to American Commissioners, Mar. 11, 1777, PBF, 23:463; Williams to American Commissioners, Mar. 25, 1777, PBF, 23:520; Harley, Petchenik, and Towner, Mapping the American Revolutionary War, 91–93; Fowler, Rebels under Sail, 132–133.
70 Benjamin Vaughan to BF, Jan. 27, 1777, PBF, 23:242; American Commissioners to Williams, [Feb. 25, 1777], PBF, 23:380.
71 Robert Sayer and John Bennet, The American Military Pocket Atlas . . . (London, 1776); Joseph F. W. Des Barres, The Atlantic Neptune (London, 1774–1781); G. N. D. Evans, “Hydrography: A Note on Eighteenth-Century Methods,” Mariner’s Mirror 52 (1966), 248–249; Harley, Petchenik, and Towner, Mapping the American Revolutionary War, 87–91.
72 Jean-Pierre Bérenger to BF, Mar. 1, 1778, PBF, 26:6; Harley, Petchinik, and Towner, Mapping the American Revolutionary War, 92; Cohn, “Franklin, Le Rouge and Franklin/Folger Chart,” 125; Dull, French Navy, 143–158. The first part of the Pilot amériquain septentrional (Paris, 1778) appropriated the 1775–1776 edition of The North American Pilot; the second part used the 1779 edition, which included James Cook’s surveys.
73 Fowler, Rebels under Sail, 279–286; Vergennes to BF, Aug. 22, 1778, PBF, 27:289–290; Robert Henderson and John Smith to BF, Sept. 5, 1779, PBF, 30:297.
74 Memoir on the State of the Former Colonies, [before Jan. 5, 1777], PBF, 23:119, 120; BF to David Hartley, Mar. 21, 1779, PBF, 29:177.
75 BF to [Ann-Robert-Jacques Turgot, Baron de l’Aulne], Apr. 2, 1777, PBF, 23:551; Johann Rodolphe Valltravers to BF, Jan. 10, 1778, PBF, 25:464–466 (on pistol); BF to [JB?], [after Oct. 2, 1777?], PBF, 25:22. Each volume of the PBF for the period of Franklin’s residence in Paris gives synopses of the bushels of petitions.
76 Fowler, Rebels under Sail, 286–289; Nicholas Rogers, “Liberty Road: Opposition to Impressment in Britain During the American War of Independence,” in Jack Tar in History: Essays in the History of Maritime Life and Labour, ed. Colin Howell and Richard J. Twomey (Fredricton, New Brunswick, Canada, 1991), 72–75; Catherine M. Prelinger, “Benjamin Franklin and the American Prisoners of War in England during the American Revolution,” WMQ 32 (1975), 261–264; Linda Colley, Captives : Britain, Empire, and the World, 1600–1850 (London, 2002), 208–227.
77 Colley, Captives, 208–227.
78 Franklin and Lafayette’s List of Prints to Illustrate British Cruelties, [c. May 1779], PBF, 29:590–593.
79 BF to David Hartley, Oct. 20, 1778, PBF, 27:575; American Commissioners to Sartine, Nov. 5, 1778, PBF, 18:35; BF to David Hartley, Oct. 14[–Dec. 11], 1777, PBF, 25:67; American Commissioners to Lord North, Dec. 12, 1777, PBF, 25:275; BF to Sartine, May 8, 1779, PBF, 29:448.
80 Prelinger, “Franklin and Prisoners of War,” 271–277; BF to John Paul Jones, June 10, 1778, PBF, 26:607; American Commissioners to David Hartley, June 16, 1778, PBF, 26:626; BF to Lafayette, Mar. 22, 1779, PBF, 29:186; BF to Jones, [Apr. 28, 1779], PBF, 29:387; BF to Committee for Foreign Affairs, May 26, 1779, PBF, 29:549.
81 Prelinger, “Franklin and Prisoners of War,” 277–280; Fowler, Rebels under Sail, 154–169; Robert Gardiner, ed., Navies and the American Revolution, 1775–1783 (London, 1996), 152–153.
82 Prelinger, “Franklin and Prisoners of War,” 277–280; Colley, Captives, 210–211.
83 Prelinger, “Franklin and Prisoners of War,” 282–289; BF to William Hodgson, Apr. 1, 1781, PBF, 34:507.
84 BF to Jones, June 10, 1778, PBF, 26:606–6
07; BF to John Adams, Apr. 8, 1779, PBF, 29:279.
85 Prelinger, “Franklin and Prisoners of War,” 261, 269; example from Aug. 22, 1777 (money for sailors), Benjamin Franklin Waste Book, 1776–1779, Franklin Papers, APS; John Atwood, Jacob Vere, and Nathan Chadwick to BF, Aug. 7, 1778, PBF, 27:233.
86 Edward Byers, The Nation of Nantucket: Society and Politics in an Early American Commercial Center, 1660–1820 (Boston, 1987), chap. 10; BF relatives, editorial notes, PBF, 26:38n, 259n–260n. On Franklin’s awareness of the problem of nepotism, see Richard Bache to BF, Oct. 22, 1778, PBF, 27:602; BF to Jonathan Williams, Jr., Mar. 23, 1782, PBF, 37:41.
87 Testimony in a Prize Case, [Oct. 14, 1776], PBF, 22:657–658; Seth Paddack to BF, Aug. 2, 1777, PBF, 24:389.
88 Jonathan Williams Jr. to BF, Mar. 11, 1777, PBF, 23:465 (Paddack); [Silas Deane] to John Folger, Oct. 7, 1777, PBF, 25:48–50; Committee for Foreign Affairs to the American Commissioners, Jan. 12, 1778, PBF, 25:467–468; Thomas Paine to BF, Mar. 4, 1779, PBF, 29:44.
89 Richard Grinnell, memorandum [Oct. 7, 1778], PBF, 27:515; Tristram Barnard to the American Commissioners, [after Oct. 9, 1778], PBF, 27:528; Richard Grinnell to American Commissioners, [after Oct. 23, 1778], PBF, 27:608; American Commissioners to Antoine Raynaud Jean Galbert Gabriel de Sartine, Oct. 30, 1778, PBF, 27:659–660; Griffith Williams to BF, PBF, 27:666–667; Henry Laurens to BF, Oct. 26, 1778, PBF, 27:636; American Commissioners to Sartine, Nov. 17, 1778, PBF, 28:122 (for quotation); Elisha Clark to BF, Dec. 5, 1778, PBF, 28:189; Shubael Gardner to the American Commissioners, Dec. 22, 1778, PBF, 28:260; Edouard A. Stackpole, The Sea-Hunters: The New England Whalemen during Two Centuries, 1635–1835 (Philadelphia and New York, 1953), 66–84.
90 BF to the Duc de Villequier, Oct. 1, 1779, PBF, 30:425; JL to BF, May 26 [1777], PBF, 24:84.
91 JA, 4:118; Stourzh, Franklin and American Foreign Policy, 150–169.
92 Heilbron, Early Modern Physics, 210–213.
93 JI to BF, Nov. 15, 1776, PBF, 23:10–11.
94 Prince de Gallitzin (Dimitri Golitsyn) to BF, Jan. 28, 1777, PBF, 23:250; Georgiana Shipley to BF, Feb. 11, 1777, PBF, 23:305; Johann Rodolphe Valltravers to BF, Sept. 21, 1777, PBF, 24:552; Henri Serre to BF, May, 29, 1778, PBF, 26:541–542.
95 John Ingenhousz, “Electrical Experiments, to Explain How Far the Phenomena of the Electrophorus May Be Accounted for by Dr. Franklin’s Theory of Positive and Negative Electricity,” Philosophical Transactions 48 (London, 1779), 1027–1048, quotation on p. 1027; JI to BF, May 25, 1779, PBF, 29:545.
96 “Sundry Papers Relative to an Accident from Lightning at Purfleet,” Philosophical Transactions 48 (London, 1779), 232–317, quotation on p. 240.
97 Gentleman’s Magazine 49 (1779), 556.
98 Editorial note on “The Morals of Chess,” PBF, 29, 750–753; BF and JL on lightning rods, May 12, 1780, PBF, 32:373–376. On the continuing saga of lightning rods, see BFS, chap. 8; Riskin, Science in the Age of Sensibility, chap. 5.
99 American Commissioners to Vergennes, Jan. 5, 1777, PBF, 23:123; BF, “Comparison of Great Britain and America as to Credit, in 1777,” PBF, 24:508n, 512.
100 Aldridge, Franklin and His French Contemporaries, 40–41, 95–104.
101 BF to Madame Brillon, Mar. 10, 1778, PBF, 26:85; BF to Lafayette, Sept. 1 7, 1782, WBF, 8:595–596.
102 Editorial note, PBF, 28:190–192; PG, Jan. 6, 1737; John Bartram to BF, [Nov. 12, 1757], PBF, 7:271–272; Isaac L. Winn to BF (and BF’s response), Aug. 12, 1772, PBF, 19:236–239;JL to BF, [c. Dec. 1778], PBF, 28:309.
103 Editorial note, PBF, 28:191; editorial note, PBF, 29:323n–324n.
104 BF, “Suppositions and Conjectures on the Aurora Borealis,” [before Dec. 7, 1778], PBF, 28:192–193.
105 Ibid., 193–195.
106 Ibid., 192–200.
107 Mémoires secrets cited in PBF, 29:323n–324n; Abbé François Rozier to BF, Apr. 21, 1779, PBF, 29:353–354; Georgiana Shipley to BF, June 6, 1779, PBF, 29:636; Gillispie, Science and Polity in France, 188 (on Rozier’s Journal de Physique); editorial note, PBF, 30:66n (on London ed.).
108 Howard S. Reed, “Jan Ingenhousz, Plant Physiologist, with a History of the Discovery of Photosynthesis,” Chronica Botanica 11 (1949), 295–296, 301–302; Jan Ingenhousz, Experiments upon Vegetables . . . (London, 1779), in Chronica Botanica 11 (1949), 311, 313, 324 (for quotation), 338–340, 379–380.
109 JI to BF, Nov. 18, 1779, PBF, 31:122; BF to Francis Hopkinson, Mar. 16, 1780, PBF, 32:120; JI to BF, Apr. 24, 1782, PBF, 37:212; BF to JI, Oct. 2, 1781[–June 21, 1782], PBF, 35:550.
110 JI to BF, May 3, 1780, PBF, 32:341–346 (quotations on pp. 341, 345).
111 BF to JI [after May 3, 1780], PBF, 32:346–349; JI to BF, Dec. 5, 1780, PBF, 34:121–123; BF to JI, Oct. 2–[June 21], 1782, PBF, 35:545–446; BF to JI [June 21, 1782], PBF, 37:504–512; F&N, 326–334.
112 JI to BF, Apr. 7, 1781, PBF, 34:522; JI to BF, May 23, 1781, PBF, 35:98–99.
113 BF’s passport for JI, [Oct. 17, 1777], PBF, 25:80–81; BF to Baudouin, June 18, 1779, PBF, 29:700. On Moravians, see BF to captains and commanders, June 22, 1778, PBF, 26:667–668; BF to captains and commanders, [Apr. 11, 1779], PBF, 29:308–309.
114 Duc de Croÿ to BF, [Mar. 1, 1779], PBF, 29:5; Duc de Croÿ’s account of a dinner with BF, [Mar. 1, 1779], PBF, 29:8 (“avec son laconisme sublime . . . ‘Cela sera fait!’”); BF to captains and commanders, [Mar. 10, 1779], PBF, 29:86. See also John Gascoigne, Science in the Service of Empire: Joseph Banks, the British State and the Uses of Science in the Age of Revolution (Cambridge, 1998), 158.
115 Dull, French Navy, 149; [Joshua Steele] to BF, Oct. 18, 1778, PBF, 17:568–569, 568n (on RSA); JP to BF, May 8, 1779, PBF, 29:453; BF to JI, May 4[–5], 1779, PBF, 29:428 (for quotation); editorial note on Royal Society, PBF, 29:544n; Jean-Hyacinthe de Magellan to BF, May 13, 1779, PBF, 29:489; Joshua Steele to BF, June 25, 1779, PBF, 29:741; editorial note, PBF, 31:lxii.
116 James Cook, A Voyage towards the South Pole, and Round the World . . . (London, 1777), 1:104–105.
117 Benjamin Vaughan, ed. Political, Miscellaneous, and Philosophical Pieces . . . Written by Benj. Franklin (London, 1779), in PBF, 31:210–218 (quotation on p. 214).
118 BF et al., report to the Académie Royale des Sciences, [Mar. 26, 1779], PBF, 29:209–211 (on gunpowder); Denis I. Duveen and Herbert S. Klickstein, “Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) and Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743–1794),” Annals of Science 11 (1955), 271–278; Claude-Anne Lopez, “Saltpetre, Tin and Gunpowder: Addenda to the Correspondence of Lavoisier and Franklin,” Annals of Science 16 (1960), 83–87.
119 BF to Richard Price, June 13, 1782, WBF, 8:457; Jean-François Fournier to BF, Sept. 4, 1777, PBF, 24:500–501 (on typefaces); invitation to an Independence Day celebration, [before June 24, 1779], PBF, 29:726–727; passport for Thomas Burdy (first passport), 1779, PBF, 30:181–182; Simon-Pierre Fournier le Jeune to BF, Sept. 16, 1779 (on order for type), PBF, 30:346–347; BF to Fizeaux, Grand et Cie., Oct. 29, 1779 (on orders for English equipment), PBF, 30:609–612.
120 BF to JP, Jan. 27, 1777, PBF, 23:238; BF to JP, June 7, 1782, FW, 8:451, 452.
121 BF to Joseph Banks, Sept. 9, 1782, WBF, 8:593.
122 Colley, Captives, 219; Stourzh, Franklin and American Foreign Policy, 186–192; BF to David Hartley, Apr. 5, 1782, WBF, 8:414; BF to Lord Shelburne, Apr. 18, 1782, WBF, 8:467–468; Hartley to BF, May 3, 1782, WBF, 8:499.
123 Stourzh, Franklin and American Foreign Policy, 167–169; Richard B. Morris, The Peacemakers: The Great Powers and American Independence (New York, 1965), chaps. 1 and 9–12.
124 Earl of Shelburne to BF, Apr. 6, 1782, PBF, 37:103–104, 104n; Morris, Peacemakers, chap. 14.
125 Stourzh, Franklin and American Foreign Policy, 169–179; Morris, Peacemakers, chap. 15; Dull, French Navy, 312–314; Orville T. Murphy, “The Comte de Vergennes, the Newfoundland Fishers, and the Peace Negotiations of 1783: A Reconsideration,” Canadian Historical Review 46 (1965), 32–46; Stackpole, Sea-Hunters, chaps
. 7 and 8.
126 BF and John Adams to the President of Congress, July 23, 1778, PBF, 27:146; BF to David Hartley, Oct. 26, 1778, PBF, 27:629; BF to Hartley, May 4, 1779, PBF, 29:427.
127 Cohn, “Franklin, Le Rouge, and the Franklin/Folger Chart,” 125–128.
128 Ibid., 135–136.
129 Ibid., 135; Folger to BF, July 3 [1781], PBF, 35:217, 217n.
130 Jonathan Williams Jr. to BF, Nov. 10, 1781, PBF, 36:41.
131 BF to Williams, Nov. 19, 1781, PBF, 37:67; Williams to BF, Feb. 24, 1782, PBF, 37:611.
Chapter 9
1 BFS, chap. 1 2; Richard P. Hallion, Taking Flight: Inventing the Aerial Age from Antiquity through the First World War (New York, 2003), 51; Thomas J. Schaeper, France and America in the Revolutionary Era: The Life of Jacques-Donatien Leray de Chaumont, 1725–1803 (Providence, R.I., 1995), 136–137.
2 BF to JI, Apr. 29, 1785, WBF, 9:318.
3 Henry Guerlac, Lavoisier, the Crucial Year: The Background and Origin of His First Experiments on Combustion in 1772 (Ithaca, 1961); Charles Coulston Gillispie, Science and Polity in France at the End of the Old Regime (Princeton, 1980), 61–64.
4 Douglas McKie and Niels H. de V. Heathcote, The Discovery of Specific and Latent Heats (London, 1935); F&N, 334–340; William Alexander to BF, Sept. 26, 1778, PBF, 27:464; “Books Lent,” Nov. 1778, PBF, 28:178; Benjamin Vaughan to BF, Sept. 20, 1779, PBF, 30:381–382.
5 J. L. Heilbron, Elements of Early Modern Physics (Berkeley, 1982), 213–240; James Delbourgo, A Most Amazing Scene of Wonders: Electricity and Enlightenment in Early America (Cambridge, Mass., 2006).
6 Patricia Fara, “Marginalized Practices,” CHS, 485–507.
7 Gillispie, Science and Polity in France, 290–330; [Jean-Paul Marat] to BF, [before Mar. 13, 1779], PBF, 29:105–107; [Marat] to BF, Apr. 12, 1779, PBF, 29:311–312; François Sage, Analyse chimique et concordance des trois règnes (Paris, 1786), 1:118.
8 Robert Darnton, Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France (Cambridge, Mass., 1968), 10, 62–64; Gillispie, Science and Polity in France, 261–265; editorial note, PBF, 10:123 (on armonica).
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