Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

by Walter Isaacson

  America had pledged to coordinate its diplomacy with France and her allies, rather than negotiate with London separately. But the British wanted direct talks leading to a separate peace with America. Franklin, on the surface, would initially insist on acting in concert with the French. But behind the scenes, he would arrange for private and direct peace negotiations with the British.

  The Rockingham government had two rival ministers, Foreign Secretary Charles Fox and Colonial Secretary Lord Shelburne, each of whom sent their own negotiators to Paris. Franklin would maneuver to ensure that Shelburne’s envoy, whom he liked better and found more malleable, was given a commission to negotiate with the Americans.

  The Negotiations Begin

  “Great affairs sometimes take their rise from small circumstances,” Franklin recorded in the journal he began of the 1782 peace negotiations. In this case, it was a chance meeting between his old flame Madame Brillon and an Englishman named Lord Cholmondeley, who was a friend of Shelburne. Madame Brillon sent Cholmondeley to call on Franklin in Passy, and through him Franklin sent his regards to the new colonial secretary. Franklin had known and liked Shelburne since at least 1766, when he lobbied him about getting a western land grant and made occasional visits to his grand country manor in Wiltshire. Madame Helvétius also played a small role; Shelburne had just sent her some gooseberry bushes, and Franklin wrote politely that they had arrived “in excellent order.”25

  Shelburne responded by dispatching Richard Oswald, a retired one-eyed London merchant and former slave trader who had once lived in America, to begin negotiating with Franklin. Oswald arrived on April 15 and immediately tried to convince Franklin that America could get a quicker and better deal if it negotiated independently of the French. Franklin was not yet willing. “I let him know,” he wrote, “that America would not treat but in concert with France.” Instead, he took Oswald to Versailles the next day to meet with Vergennes, who proposed to host a general peace conference of all the warring parties in Paris.26

  On the way back from Versailles, Oswald argued again for a separate peace. Once the issue of American independence was settled by negotiations, he said, it should not be held up while matters relating only to France and Spain (including the ownership of Gibraltar) were still being disputed. He added an implicit threat: if France became involved and made too many demands, England would continue the war and finance it by stopping payment on its public debt.

  The issue of independence, Franklin pointedly replied, had already been settled back in 1776. Britain should simply acknowledge it, rather than offer to negotiate it. As for reneging on their debt in order to renew the war, Franklin made no reply. “I did not desire to discourage their stopping payment, which I considered as cutting the throat of their public credit,” he wrote in his journal. “Such menaces were besides an encouragement with me, remembering the old adage that they who threaten are afraid.”

  Instead, Franklin suggested that Britain consider offering reparations to America, especially to “those who had suffered by the scalping and burning parties” that England had enlisted the Indians to wage. “Nothing could have a greater tendency to conciliate,” he said, and that would lead to the renewal of commerce that Britain both needed and desired.

  He even suggested a specific reparations proposal: Britain should offer to cede control of Canada. The money Britain could make from the Canadian fur trade, after all, was tiny compared to what it would save by not having to defend Canada. It was also far less than Britain could make through the renewed commerce with America that would flow from a friendly settlement. In addition, the money that America made from selling open land in Canada could be used to compensate the patriots whose homes had been destroyed by British troops and also the British loyalists whose estates had been confiscated by the Americans.

  Behind France’s back, Franklin was playing a wily balance-of-power game. He knew that France, despite her enmity toward Britain, did not want it to cede control of Canada to America. That would make America’s borders more secure, reduce its tensions with Britain, and lessen its need for a friendship with France. If England continued to hold Canada, Franklin explained to Oswald, it “would necessarily oblige us to cultivate and strengthen our union with France.” In his report to Vergennes about his conversation with Oswald, Franklin did not mention that he had suggested the ceding of Canada. It was the first small indication that Franklin, despite his insistence that he would work hand in glove with the French, would be willing to act unilaterally when warranted.

  As usual, Franklin was speaking from notes he had prepared, and Oswald “begged” to be trusted with them so he could show them to Shelburne. After some hesitation, Franklin agreed. Oswald was charmed by Franklin’s trust, and Franklin found Oswald to be sensible and devoid of guile. “We parted exceeding good friends,” he noted.

  Franklin had one regret about the paper he entrusted to Oswald: its hint that compensation might be due to the British loyalists in America whose property had been confiscated. So he published on his Passy press, and sent to Adams and others, a fake issue of a Boston newspaper that purported to describe, in gruesome detail, the horrors that the British had perpetrated on innocent Americans. His goal was to emphasize that no sympathy was due the British loyalists, and that it was the Americans who deserved compensation. The fake edition was cleverly convincing. It featured a description of a shipment of American scalps purportedly sent by the Seneca Indians to England and a letter that he pretended was from John Paul Jones. To make it more realistic, he even included fake little ads about a new brick house for sale in south Boston and a missing bay mare in Salem.27

  Britain agreed to Vergennes’s proposal for an all-parties peace conference, but that meant sending a new envoy, one who represented the foreign secretary Charles Fox rather than the colonial secretary Shelburne. The new envoy’s name was not auspicious: Thomas Grenville, the son of the despised George Grenville who had imposed the Stamp Act back in 1765. But Fox, who had long been sympathetic to the American side, assured Franklin that the young Grenville, a mere 27, was to be trusted. “I know your liberality of mind too well to be afraid that any prejudices against Mr. Grenville’s name may prevent you from esteeming those excellent qualities of heart and head which belong to him, or from giving the fullest credit to the sincerity of his wishes for peace.”28

  When Grenville arrived in early May, Franklin immediately took him to Versailles, where the young Englishman made the mistake of suggesting to Vergennes that if “England gave America independence,” France should give back some of the Caribbean islands it had conquered and a peace could be quickly settled.

  With the hint of a smile, Vergennes turned on the novice English diplomat and belittled his offer of independence. “America,” he said, “did not ask it of you. There is Mr. Franklin. He will answer you as to that point.”

  “To be sure,” said Franklin, “we do not consider ourselves as under any necessity of bargaining for such a thing that is our own and which we have bought at the expense of much blood and treasure.”

  Like Oswald, Grenville hoped to be able to convince Franklin to negotiate a separate peace with Britain rather than remain linked to France’s demands as well. To that end, he visited Passy a few days later and warned that France “might insist on” provisions that were not related to the treaty she had made with America. If that happened, America should not feel obligated by that treaty to “continue the war to obtain such points for her.”

  As he had done with Oswald, Franklin refused to make such a concession. “I gave a little more of my sentiments on the general subject of benefits, obligations and gratitude,” Franklin noted. People who wanted to get out of obligations often “became ingenious in finding out reasons and arguments” to do so, but America would not follow that route. Even if a person borrows money from another and then repays it, he still owes gratitude:“He has discharged the money debt, but the obligation remains.”

  This was stretching the idea of gratit
ude rather far, replied Grenville, for France was the party that actually benefited from America’s separation from Britain. Franklin insisted that he felt so strongly about the “generous and noble manner” in which France had supported America that “I could never suffer myself to think of such reasonings for lessening the obligations.”29

  Grenville further annoyed Franklin by trying to hide the fact that his commission gave him the authority to negotiate only with France and not directly with the United States, which Britain did not yet recognize as an independent country. Franklin confronted him on this point at the beginning of June. Why did his commission not explicitly authorize him, Franklin asked, to deal directly with the United States? As Franklin reported to Adams the next day, “He could not explain this to my satisfaction, but said he believed the omission was occasioned by their copying an old commission.” That, of course, did not convince Franklin. He insisted that Grenville get a new commission before any negotiation could begin. This was not merely a nicety of protocol, as Franklin well knew. He was insisting that the British tacitly accept America’s independence as a precondition for talks. “I imagine there is a reluctance in their King to take this first step,” he wrote Adams, “as the giving such a commission would itself be a kind of acknowledgment of our independence.”30

  Franklin was willing to work in concert with France, but he had nointention of allowing Britain to insist that France negotiate on America’s behalf. Vergennes agreed. “They want to treat with us for you. But this the King [of France] will not agree to. He thinks it not consistent with the dignity of your state. You will treat for yourselves.” All that was necessary, Vergennes added, was “that the treaties go hand in hand and are signed the same day.”

  Wittingly or not, Vergennes had given Franklin tacit permission to begin separate discussions with the British. Because the British were very eager to have such talks, and because there were two British negotiators vying to conduct them, Franklin had a lot of leverage. When Grenville returned to Passy at the beginning of June to argue once again for direct talks, this time Franklin decided “to evade the discussion” rather than reject the idea.

  “If Spain and Holland and even if France should insist on unreasonable terms,” Grenville asked, “can it be right that America should be dragged on in a war for their interests only?”

  It was “unnecessary to enter at present into considerations of that kind,” Franklin replied. “If any of the other powers should make extravagant demands,” he continued enticingly, “it would then be time enough to consider what our obligations were.”

  Because Grenville was so eager to get direct talks underway, he was willing to tell Franklin, confidentially, that he was “instructed to acknowledge the independence of America previous to the commencement of the treaty.” Oswald was also eager for direct talks to begin, and he came to Passy two days later to hint that he would be willing to serve as Britain’s negotiator if Franklin preferred. He was coy. He was not trying to supplant Grenville, he insisted, for he was old and had no need for further glory. But it was clear to Franklin that he was now in the happy position of having a choice between two hungry suitors.

  Oswald was more sophisticated than Grenville, and he was able to appear both more eager and more threatening. Peace was “absolutely necessary” for Britain, he confided. “Our enemies may now do what they please with us; they have the ball at their foot.” On the other hand, there were those back in London who were “a little too much elated” by Britain’s recent victory over the French navy in a major battle in the West Indies. If he and Franklin did not act soon, they might prevail in prolonging the war. There had even been serious discussions, Oswald warned, of ways to finance further fighting by canceling debt payment only on bonds of more than £1,000, which would not upset most of the population.

  Franklin noted that he viewed this “as a kind of intimidation.” Yet Oswald was able to soften Franklin through flattery. “He repeatedly mentioned the great esteem the ministers had for me,” Franklin recorded. “They depended on me for the means of extricating the nation from its present desperate situation; that perhaps no single man had ever in his hands an opportunity of doing so much good as I had at present.”

  Oswald further endeared himself to Franklin by seeming to agree with him privately on what should be in a treaty. When Franklin railed against the idea of paying compensation to loyalists whose estates had been confiscated, saying that such a demand would elicit a contrary one from America demanding reparations for all the towns the British had burned, Oswald confidentially said that he personally felt the same. He also said that he agreed with Franklin that Britain should cede Canada to America. It was as if he were competing with young Grenville in an audition for the job of being Britain’s negotiator and trying to win Franklin’s recommendation.

  Indeed, oddly enough, he was. He showed Franklin a memo that Shelburne had written that offered to give Oswald, if Franklin wished it, a commission to be the special negotiator with America. Shelburne wrote that he was willing to give Oswald any authority “which Dr. Franklin and he may judge conducive to a final settlement of things between Great Britain and America.” That way, Shelburne’s memo added, Britain could forge a peace with America “in a very different manner from the peace between Great Britain and France, who have always been at enmity with each other.”

  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 pe
ace.” 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