Franklin & Washington

by Edward J. Larson

  With armed conflict already imminent when it convened, the Second Continental Congress quickly turned to Washington for military advice by tapping him to lead virtually every committee that had anything to do with defense. This contrasted sharply with his experience as a delegate to the First Continental Congress only six months earlier. Then, with Congress still hoping to secure concessions peacefully through trade boycotts, Washington served on no committees and virtually disappeared from the historical record except for the odd comment of one fellow delegate that he “speaks very Modestly” and displays an “easy, Soldierlike air.”5 Now, with the colonies moving to a war footing following the battles of Lexington and Concord, it was Washington’s soldierlike bearing that mattered most.

  On May 15, in one of its first acts, with Boston harbor closed and many fearing that New York’s was next, the Second Continental Congress named Washington to chair a committee charged with recommending ways to defend New York. Viewing it as a pivotal central colony, delegates saw the defense of New York as critical to the security of the whole. Entrusting the task to Washington signaled the delegates’ faith in him.

  Anticipating any invasion to come by sea, Washington’s committee urged the colony to take up defensive posts around New York harbor. Drawing on memories of the French and Indian War, New Englanders also feared a land invasion from Canada through northern New York, and dispatched their own forces to guard against it. On May 18, Congress learned that, without much of a fight, militia forces from western New England had captured the lightly manned but heavily armed British forts at Ticonderoga and Crown Point, which had been built during the 1750s in northern New York to deter invasions from French Canada. They would now serve that same purpose against invaders from British-ruled Canada.

  In addition to chairing its committee on the defense of New York, until naming him to command patriot forces in mid-June, Congress tapped Washington to lead three more committees on military preparedness. The first addressed ways to supply colonies with gunpowder, the second projected the cost of a yearlong military campaign, and a third drafted rules and regulations governing a new “American continental army.”6 No member was in greater demand for committee service than Washington. No one’s opinion mattered more on war-related matters. Everyone already looked to him as the military commander should the need arise.

  With moderates still hoping for reconciliation with Britain, Congress initially balanced its war preparations with calls for peace. For this, delegates turned to Benjamin Franklin, their most seasoned diplomat. On June 3, Congress named him to a committee charged with drafting a petition asking the king to redress colonial grievances. At the time, many colonists blamed Parliament for their woes and envisioned some sort of settlement in which America could have its own representative government under the king. Franklin had spent the prior winter in London discussing terms for just such an arrangement, only to see them rejected by Parliament when offered by no less a figure than Lord Chatham. Now the resulting plea, called the Olive Branch Petition and largely drafted by John Dickinson, tried to resurrect Franklin’s idea. When asked by delegates about the likely response from London, based on his own bitter experiences there, Franklin warned them “to be prepared for the worst,” by which he meant war.7

  The delegates did just that, with Franklin and Washington pressed into further service. On June 10, Congress asked Franklin, its sole scientist, to serve on a committee to devise ways to manufacture saltpeter for gunpowder. He also chaired a committee to reestablish postal services among the colonies, which led to his appointment as postmaster general. Then, on June 14, Congress ordered that ten companies of riflemen from the middle colonies join the fifteen thousand New England militiamen besieging Boston, with the combined force designated as “the Army of the United Colonies.”8

  A day later, the Congress unanimously elected George Washington as the army’s commander in chief. As such, he would lead a Continental Army composed of soldiers typically recruited or conscripted by the states but paid by Congress and any local or state militia assigned to work with it.

  To fund the war effort, Congress authorized the first of many issuances of paper money, with Franklin named to the committee charged with designing and printing the bills. His design featured his sketch of a chain with thirteen links circling the motto “We are one.”9 Congress also placed Franklin, its best-known author and editor, on a key committee assigned to draft a declaration, for publication by Washington when he took charge of the army, setting forth the causes for taking up arms.

  “THO’ I AM TRULY SENSITIVE of the high Honour done me,” Washington told Congress in accepting his commission, “yet I feel great distress, for a consciousness that my abilities and military experience may not be equal to the extensive and important Trust.”10 An honest appraisal of his qualifications, he expressed similar concerns in letters to his wife, brother, brother-in-law, and stepson. Washington’s experience leading colonial militias and temporary regiments could not prepare him for commanding a large but still forming volunteer force wholly lacking in training and supplies against the world’s preeminent professional army, which was augmented by Hessian mercenaries and a navy with complete command of the seas. A virtuous cause and popular support only counted for so much. But who else was there? After all he had said and done, Washington felt honor bound to accept Congress’s call despite his reservations.

  “It was utterly out of my power to refuse this appointment without exposing my Character to such censures as would have reflected dishonour on myself,” Washington explained in a poignant letter to his wife. After urging armed resistance to British tyranny, he could not refuse to lead it when asked. “It has been a kind of destiny that has thrown me upon this Service,” he wrote, and if Washington did not believe much else in the way of religion, he did believe in personal destiny and a disembodied providence. “I shall rely therefore, confidently, on that Providence which has heretofore preservd, & been bountiful to me,” he assured her.11

  Washington elaborated on his sense of duty in a long letter written a day later to his brother John. “The partiality of the Congress,” he wrote, “joind to a political motive, really left me without a Choice.”12 The political motive clearly involved the desire of delegates to give a continental character to the resistance by choosing a native southerner—or at least someone not from the northeast—to lead an army composed mostly of New Englanders. For this role, the Virginian had no equal.

  Precisely what Washington meant by Congress’s partiality is less immediately clear. Certainly many delegates thought that he looked the part. Thomas Jefferson, who joined Congress in June, wrote privately that Washington’s appearance “was fine, his stature exactly what one would wish, his deportment easy, erect, and noble.”13 John Adams’s wife, Abigail, commented to her husband in July upon meeting the newly commissioned general, “You had prepaired me to entertain a favorable opinion of him, but I thought the one half was not told me. Dignity with ease, and complacency, the Gentleman and Soldier look agreably blended in him.”14 The Philadelphia physician Benjamin Rush, who joined Congress in 1776, wrote to a friend about Washington, “You would distinguish him to be a general and a soldier from among ten thousand people. There is not a king in Europe who would not look like a valet de chambre by his side.”15

  In their letters, these correspondents stressed a further attribute that surely added to Congress’s partiality toward Washington: his republican virtue. Jefferson, for example, noted, “His integrity was most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known, no motives of interest or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, being able to bias his decision.”16 Abigail Adams wrote, “Modesty marks every line and feture of his face.”17 Rush added, “His disinterestedness, his activity, his politeness . . . have captivated the hearts of the public.”18 These and other patriot leaders held to the Whig Party view that an all-consuming craving for power within the Tory Party in London posed an ongoing threat to individual liberty and property
throughout the Empire. Written constitutions, bills of rights, and the separation of power among branches of government help to check the human proclivity toward self-interested power-seeking, Whig ideology maintained, but only the republican virtue of disinterested leaders could prevent tyranny. As every delegate knew, a covetous general like Oliver Cromwell could pose as grave a threat to liberty as a despotic king. For its general, Congress looked to someone who did not seek power and seemed eager to set it aside at war’s end. Washington personified the citizen-soldier: an American Cato or Cincinnatus.

  Since the First Continental Congress, fellow delegates had observed Washington’s apparent modesty. “Eloquence in public Assemblies is not the surest road, to Fame and Preferment,” John Adams wrote. “The Examples of Washington, Franklin and Jefferson are enough to shew that Silence and reserve in public are more Efficacious than Argumentation or Oratory.”19 In particular, Adams praised Washington for leaving the room during debate over his nomination as commander in chief, moments after Adams formally nominated the Virginian for the post with Franklin’s full support on June 15. A student of political theater, Franklin likely smiled at the scene of the large-framed, fully uniformed colonel slipping out of the chamber by a rear door. Franklin knew the vote would go well. Washington accepted the post a day later, with delegates hailing his humility. “I am called by the unanimous voice of the Colonies to the command of the Continental army,” Washington wrote in a widely distributed public letter, “an honor I did not aspire to—an honor I was solicitous to avoid upon full conviction of my inadequacy to the importance of the service.”20 Connecticut delegate Silas Deane captured the general mood when he noted that Washington “Unites the bravery of the Solider, with the most consummate Modesty & Virtue.”21

  Nothing marked the ascension of Washington more than his offer to serve without pay. “As no pecuniary consideration could have tempted me to have accepted this arduous employment,” he told Congress, “I do not wish to make any proffit from it.”22 Never mind that he possibly received more for expenses than he would have in pay. “There is something charming to me in the conduct of Washington,” Adams wrote at the time, “that he would lay before us an exact account of his expenses, and not accept a shilling for pay.”23 Many others made similar comments about Washington’s refusal of pay, with one widely republished article calling it “A most noble example.”24 Of course, Washington’s wealth made it possible, and the same was true for Franklin, who donated his pay as postmaster general to disabled veterans. The two positioned themselves as models of republican virtue, standing above temptation.

  Upon reaching New York in late June on his way to the front near Boston, Washington made another key republican affirmation, this time on behalf of himself and his officers. “When we assumed the Soldier, we did not lay aside the Citizen,” he told the New York Provincial Congress, “& we shall sincerely rejoice with you in that happy Hour, when the Establishment of American Liberty on the most firm, & solid Foundations, shall enable us to return to our private Stations.”25 This was precisely the assurance that New York’s revolutionary lawmakers asked him for in advance. His vow to retire at war’s end was hailed across America. When he later fulfilled this commitment, Jefferson wrote, “The moderation & virtue of a single character has probably prevented this revolution from being closed as most others have been by a subversion of that liberty it was intended to establish.”26 His republican integrity intact, Washington was unsullied by power and became a model for emulation.27

  Although the secret nature of the proceedings makes it difficult to reconstruct their interactions during the six weeks that Washington and Franklin served together in Congress (before the Virginian took command of the army), available evidence confirms that they attended all or most sessions, served on committees with overlapping jurisdiction, and shared a common political outlook. Committed to fight for colonial rights without being as white-hot for independence as some, they worked with all sides in Congress and continued to correspond with loyalists outside Congress. Although it was mainly the product of an odd-couple collaboration of the radical Jefferson and the conservative Dickinson, both Franklin and Washington could readily subscribe to the “Declaration Setting Forth the Causes and Necessity of Their Taking Up Arms,” which Franklin’s committee produced and Washington published following his arrival in Boston. “Our cause is just. Our union is perfect,” the Declaration stated after relating those causes. “In defence of the freedom that is our birth-right . . . for the protection of our property . . . we have taken up arms. We shall lay them down when hostilities shall cease on the part of the aggressors, and . . . not before.”28 Independence was not yet at issue, though surely on everyone’s mind.

  WHILE STILL IN NEW YORK, Washington received news of a battle for Bunker Hill that was destined to shape the war in New England. Since the clash at Concord three months earlier, a jury-rigged patriot army now numbering around sixteen thousand had tightened its grip on a British force less than half its size bottled up in Boston, which stood isolated at the end of a long peninsula. Having received reinforcements for losses suffered in the retreat from Concord, including the arrival of Generals William Howe, Henry Clinton, and John Burgoyne, British commander Thomas Gage decided to counter the envelopment by seizing the strategic highlands across the water to the north and south of Boston.

  Learning of Gage’s plans, the patriots moved on the night of June 16 to occupy two hills on the Charlestown peninsula north of Boston. Responding the next day with a frontal attack on patriot positions, British forces were twice repulsed before taking the hills after defenders ran out of ammunition. The British had won, but at great cost—suffering more than a thousand casualties (including a hundred commissioned officers) to less than five hundred by the patriots—and never regained the offensive in New England, leaving Dorchester Heights across the water south of Boston unoccupied.

  Reactions came swiftly, with Americans claiming a moral victory and London all but conceding a tactical defeat. “Britain, at the expense of three millions, has killed 150 Yankies this campaign, which is £20,000 a head; and at Bunker’s Hill she gained a mile of ground,” Franklin commented in letters designed for publication in Britain. “From these data,” he asked readers to “calculate the time and expense necessary to kill us all, and conquer our whole territory.”29

  After reviewing Gage’s report of the battle, the British high command replaced him with Howe, and the king issued a proclamation declaring elements of the colonies in open and avowed rebellion. Undermining moderates at the Continental Congress and in the colonies, this proclamation, issued on August 23, 1775, extended the rebels’ rage against illegitimate parliamentary rule to also include arbitrary royal decrees. Delegates opposing revolution, such as Philadelphia lawyer John Dickinson, could no longer effectively argue that King George would bridge the gap between Parliament and his colonies. He was now the problem, just as George Mason had argued all along. Franklin had realized this while still in London; Mason had drawn Washington into this line of thinking before the Continental Congress began. Bringing the public on board was a necessary step toward revolution.

  The carnage at and around Bunker Hill, particularly as it was portrayed by patriot propagandists, helped steel resistance to British rule. Hearing of the battle’s outcome while on his way toward Boston, Washington gained faith that the troops he would command could defeat the British. “A few more such Victories would put an end to their army and the present contest,” Washington boasted after reaching his command post at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in July.30 Of more worry to Washington was word, coming from his cousin at Mount Vernon, that Virginia’s royal governor had responded to the rebellion by offering freedom for slaves who left their masters to fight for the crown. “There is not a man of them, but woud leave us, if they believe’d they coud make there Escape,” Washington was told about his own slaves. “Liberty is sweet.”

  After Bunker Hill, Washington yearned for bold strokes that cou
ld sweep the British from the field but would not have the means to engineer them until Franklin secured French support. The siege of Boston never provided one. Outnumbered two to one, the British stayed behind their defensive perimeter protected by water on three sides and the Royal Navy in Boston harbor. “The place indeed is naturally so defensible,” Franklin wrote about his hometown and the British troops there, “that I think them in no danger.”31 Washington’s generals vetoed plans to storm the city, including one calling for troops to rush the heavily fortified neck of land connecting it to the mainland and another with troops skating over the frozen Charles River during winter.

  Instead, Washington waited ten months until his chief artillery officer, Henry Knox, managed to have men under his command haul heavy cannons seized at Fort Ticonderoga over frozen mountain roads in the dead of winter and place them on the heights south of Boston. From there, these guns could destroy the city and any army in it. Without a fight, Howe evacuated his troops from Boston by ship on March 17, 1776. Rather than retreat to England, however, Howe’s army reassembled in Halifax with reinforcements drawn from across the Empire and some eighteen thousand Hessian mercenaries for a massive assault on New York that tested Washington to his limits and drew Franklin to the front.

  Franklin’s role in the war effort had increased even before the siege of Boston ended. He turned seventy during this period and doubted whether he would survive the war, yet he took on a staggering number of tasks for Congress and his colony.32 Beginning in July, he presided over Pennsylvania’s Committee of Safety, a demanding job that involved organizing and managing the colony’s defense. Between this committee’s broad mandate and the virtual removal of the colony’s appointed governor, Franklin effectively acted as Pennsylvania’s chief executive. Regaining his seat in the colonial assembly, he also served on committees to enforce the boycott with Britain even as he championed efforts to allow exports in exchange for arms or ammunition and to open foreign markets for American goods. In August, he brokered a deal with merchants from Bermuda to trade stolen British gunpowder for Pennsylvania produce. Congress soon elected him to two powerful new secret standing committees: one to secure war matériel from abroad and one dealing with foreign affairs. It also named him as an Indian commissioner and to chair or serve on more than a half dozen ad hoc committees.