Benjamin Franklin: American Founder, Atlantic Citizen

Home , Benjamin Franklin Bache, Fart Proudly, Francis Folger Franklin, Franklin stove, Josiah Franklin, William Temple Franklin

B ENJAMIN FRANKLIN

Known for his influential role in the debates that established the founding documents of the United States, Benjamin Franklin brought to the new nation the insights of a political career that spanned half a century, from the French and Indian War to the drafting of the Bill of Rights. In many ways, Franklin’s commitment to the American cause was informed by his experiences as an Atlantic citizen who spent the decade before the Declaration of Independence in England, and the following seven years in France. The career and life of this iconic American founder provide an ideal opportunity for students to take a closer look at eighteenth-century colonial society and the contested formation of the early American nation.

In this carefully contextualized account, Nathan R. Kozuskanich considers the many facets of Franklin’s private and public lives, and shows how Frank- lin grappled with issues that still concern us today: the right to bear arms, the legacy of slavery, and the nature of American democracy. In a concise narrative bolstered by supporting primary documents, Benjamin Franklin: American Founder, Atlantic Citizen introduces students to the world of the burgeoning United States and enables them to understand the journey from imperial colonies to an independent nation dedicated to the premise that all men are created equal.

Nathan R. Kozuskanich is Associate Professor of History at Nipissing University in North Bay, Ontario. R OUTLEDGE HISTORICAL AMERICANS

S ERIES EDITOR: PAUL FINKELMAN

Routledge Historical Americans is a series of short, vibrant biographies that illuminate the lives of Americans who have had an impact on the world. Each book includes a short overview of the person’s life and puts that person into historical context through essential primary documents, written both by the subjects and about them. A series website supports the books, containing extra images and documents, links to further research, and where possible, multi-media sources on the subjects. Perfect for including in any course on American History, the books in the Routledge Historical Ameri- cans series show the impact everyday people can have on the course of history.

Woody Guthrie: Writing America’s Songs Ronald D. Cohen Frederick Douglass: Reformer and Statesman L. Diane Barnes Th urgood Marshall: Race, Rights, and the Struggle for a More Perfect Union Charles L. Zelden Harry S. Truman: Th e Coming of the Cold War Nicole L. Anslover John Winthrop: Founding the City upon a Hill Michael Parker John F. Kennedy: Th e Spirit of Cold War Liberalism Jason K. Duncan Bill Clinton: Building a Bridge to the New Millennium David H. Bennett Ronald Reagan: Champion of Conservative America James H. Broussard Laura Ingalls Wilder: American Writer on the Prairie Sallie Ketcham Benjamin Franklin: American Founder, Atlantic Citizen Nathan R. Kozuskanich Brigham Young: Sovereign in America David Vaughn Mason B ENJAMIN FRANKLIN A MERICAN FOUNDER, ATLANTIC CITIZEN

NATHAN R. KOZUSKANICH www.routledge.com/cw/HistoricalAmericans

First published 2015 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

And by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

The right of Nathan R. Kozuskanich to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kozuskanich, Nathan, 1975– Benjamin Franklin : American founder, Atlantic citizen / Nathan R. Kozuskanich. pages cm. — (Routledge historical Americans) 1. Franklin, Benjamin, 1706–1790. 2. Statesmen—United States—Biography. 3. Scientists—United States—Biography. 4. Inventors—United States—Biography. 5. Printers—United States—Biography. I. Title. E302.6.F8K87 2014 973.3092—dc23 2014016776 ISBN: 978-0-415-53196-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-415-53200-6 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-08153-2 (ebk)

Typeset in Minion and Scala Sans by Apex CoVantage, LLC C ONTENTS

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction Benjamin Franklin, Biography, and the Writing of History 1

PART I Benjamin Franklin 9

Chapter 1 Inconspicuous Beginnings, 1706–1730 11

Chapter 2 From Tradesman to Gentleman, 1730–1750 33

Chapter 3 War, Electricity, and the Making of a Politician, 1747–1763 54

Chapter 4 Th e Imperial Crisis, 1763–1775 79

Chapter 5 Th e Imperialist and the Revolution, 1775–1778 102

Chapter 6 Th e Long Journey Home, 1778–1790 125

PART II Documents 153 Index 175 This page intentionally left blank ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wrote this book with students in mind. If they do not appreciate its content, then I hope they will at least celebrate its brevity. Many thanks to my own students, Nolan Brennan and Rachel Loewen, for providing feedback on early versions of the opening chapters. Thank you as well to my graduate student, Peter Brath, who assured me that the manuscript was “fine” even though his intensive MA reading list meant that he had no time to read it himself. I am especially grateful to Lacy Bateman whose notes helped me better shape the narrative of Franklin’s life. Thanks to my mother, Janice Kozuskanich, for bringing her years of experience proofreading the local newspaper to this project. When everyone else is too busy with their own stuff, you can always rely on your mom to help out. I cannot thank my friend, Dr. Susan Dawson, enough for helping me get this manuscript ready for publication. She truly is a syntactic ninja. I was able to complete this project on time because of the support of the Nipissing University Faculty Association and Nipissing University. Their recognition of the importance of research at small universities meant that I was able to take a 12 month sabbatical to finish writing. Many thanks to Paul Finkelman for inviting me to submit a proposal to the Historical Americans series. I am grateful for the opportunity, and for the experience of writing a biography. His notes on the manuscript may have been hard to read, but they were invaluable. Thank you to Genevieve Aoki at Routledge for promptly responding to the hundreds of emails I sent about this project over the past few years. Thank you as well to Wilkins Poe at the Packard Humanities Institute for helping me navigate the online version of The Papers of Benjamin Franklin. viii • Acknowledgments

I am indebted to Sheila Skemp for sharing her knowledge of Franklin with me, and for providing feedback on the manuscript. I am also grateful to David Waldstreicher for his input on Franklin and slavery. John Brooke has always been a great support to me, and I thank him for his assistance with this project. Thanks to my colleague, Kirsten Greer, who helped me keep my eye on broader Atlantic themes and connections. Finally, I would like to thank the late Bill Pencak for all of his input on this book. Bill was a tireless supporter of my work on Pennsylvania and I owe him a debt I can never repay. He read and commented on chapters of this manuscript one month before his untimely death, and was already hatching a plan for a Franklin panel at the annual meeting of the Pennsyl- vania Historical Association. I, like so many others, will miss him. introduction Benjamin Franklin, Biography, and the Writing of History

Who was Benjamin Franklin? This question has challenged every biographer who has attempted to understand the man looking back at us from the $100 bill. Take a stroll through Philadelphia in the summer and every impersonator you see comports to the same version of Franklin: balding and old with a prominent belly, distinguished, accomplished, bespectacled, and well- dressed. If you can’t afford the airfare to the City of Brotherly Love, enter “Benjamin Franklin impersonator” into a Google Images search for a similar result. As with most (perhaps all) of the Founding Fathers, it is often difficult to unfreeze Franklin from the moment in time in which he was wealthy and accomplished enough to sit for a portrait in France with Joseph-Siffred Dup- lessis, who had also painted King Louis XVI. It can be hard to imagine Frank- lin as a poor boy in Boston, or as an unkempt and scrappy teenager coming off the boat in Philadelphia harbor, or as an up-and-coming printer cranking out hundreds of copies of the Pennsylvania Gazette in the heat of the Phila- delphia summer. Perhaps the U.S. Treasury is partly to blame. Since 1996, it has used Duplessis’ 1785 portrait of an almost eighty-year-old Franklin on the $100 bill, a change from the 1778 portrait it had used since 1929. Frank- lin sat for his first portrait in 1748, the year that he retired from being a printer and became a gentleman. If you are used to the rounder and older Franklin, then he is practically unrecognizable in this portrait with his thin- ner and younger face framed by a curly wig. But whether we recognize him or not, this portrait is still Franklin as much as are the later ones. It therefore behooves the biographer to understand Franklin in his entirety. 2 • Introduction

Figure 0.1 1748 Portrait by Robert Feke. Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Harvard Univer- sity Portrait Collection, Bequest of Dr. John Collins Warren, 1856, H47. Photo: Imaging Department © President and Fellows of Harvard College.

In many ways, we feel like we should know Franklin, or even that we already do know him. As Gordon Wood argues, Franklin “seems the most accessible, the most democratic, and the most folksy of the Founders.” 1 After all, didn’t Franklin admonish us all to fart proudly? The latest serious cinematic representation of Franklin—HBO’s 2008 John Adams miniseries—certainly Introduction • 3 comports to Wood’s characterization. “I am an extreme moderate, Mr. Rut- ledge,” he quips shortly after he first comes on screen, “I believe anybody not in favor of moderation and compromise ought to be castrated.” 2 He then segues into a vulgar joke in front of the stuffy planters of South Carolina about the British Parliament lacking the “stones” necessary to deal with the discontented colonies. Herein lies another problem with trying to assess Franklin: dealing with a mythical and counter-historical Franklin that says words the historical Franklin never did. It is perplexing that writer Kirk Ellis fabricated some of the first words that Franklin speaks in the HBO miniseries because one of the reasons Franklin confounds biographers is the sheer number of words he left behind. Yale University began collecting, editing, and publishing Franklin’s papers back in 1954. As of 2014, thirty-seven volumes have been published and another nine volumes of material remain. Entire religions have been founded on far less text. Franklin’s prolific writing combined with his varied interests means that most people can find some piece of Franklin to claim as their own. You don’t even have to be an American to claim a piece of Franklin—on June 10, 2013, Canada Post issued a Benjamin Franklin stamp to commemorate the man who established the first “Canadian” post office in Halifax in 1753. Google “Benjamin Franklin quotations” and you will get hundreds of thousands of hits. On any given day, Franklin quotations pop up in hundreds of Twitter feeds. Some are actual quotations, and some are not. “A penny saved is a penny earned,” is a modern variation on Franklin’s original, “A Penny sav’d is Twopence clear, a Pin a day is a Groat a Year. Every little makes a mickle.”3 “Groat” (an English coin equal to fourpence) and “mickle” (a great amount) have fallen out of usage, but the basic premise of what Franklin was saying remains more or less the same (although it really should be, “a penny saved is two pennies earned”). Neither did Franklin say, “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.” Rather, in a letter discussing how Jesus’ miracle of turning water into wine was performed on a daily basis in the French countryside, he wrote, “Behold the water that falls from heaven upon our vineyards. There, it enters the roots of the vines to be changed into wine; constant proof that God loves us and loves to see us happy.” 4 Replacing wine with beer is evidence of the modern desire to see Franklin as “one of the guys,” but the meaning of the original and the altered modern quotation are more or less similar. Still, if you purchased one of the many T-shirts for sale with the erroneous Franklin quotation on it, you might want to ask for a refund. 5 Likewise, if you purchased a “Fart for freedom, fart for liberty— and fart proudly” T-Shirt for Franklin’s 300th birthday in 2006, you will be disappointed to know he did not write those words either. 6 Other quotations attributed to Franklin have no basis in the historical record. He has become such a ubiquitous authority on so many issues that 4 • Introduction words sometimes are put in his mouth because it seems like he could have said them. The ability to post and repost words on the various platforms on the internet without ever verifying the source has only exacerbated this problem. I once received an email from a colleague with this in the signature line: “ ‘An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.’ —Benjamin Franklin.” It certainly sounds like something Franklin could have said. A pithy and wise bon mot from the pages of Poor Richard’s Almanac , I assumed. After all, the quotation appears today in hundreds (perhaps thousands) of education, eco- nomics, and self-help books. Enter the quotation into Google Books and you will get thousands of hits. But you will also notice that none of these books has a footnote to the original source because it does not exist. The internet has helped keep Franklin’s words alive long after his death. The letters he wrote by hand, or carefully organized on his composing sticks and pressed into paper, have now been converted to the 1s and 0s of com- puter code. For historians, this has been a positive development. Almost all of the primary source research for this book was completed online in various high-quality digital archives. Yale University has digitized all of Frank- lin’s papers. Readex has assembled an impressively extensive archive of pamphlets and newspapers. Accessible Archives has digitized the Pennsyl- vania Gazette in its entirety. We also have access to comprehensive collections of some of the people who knew and interacted with Franklin. The Massachusetts Historical Society has a digital John Adams collection. The Library of Congress hosts the papers of George Washington, Thomas Jeffer- son, and James Madison on its American Memory website.7 Complement- ing key archives like these are such tools as Google Books and Google News that can help round out explorations into the past. How do we know that Franklin never said that “an investment in knowledge pays the best interest”? First, simple keyword searching reveals that the phrase appears nowhere, in whole or in part, in Yale’s Franklin Papers. It does not appear in any pamphlet or newspaper published before 1818, including Franklin’s own Pennsylvania Gazette. This evidence alone (or lack thereof) is enough to put the authenticity of the quotation in serious doubt. So, who did say it? And when? This is a more difficult question to answer. Google Books, while not a completely accessible archive (you cannot view or preview all books), can help. Sorting searches of “investment in knowledge” and “pays the best interest” separately by date indicates that the quotation appeared as early as 1841 in a publication called The Christian Family Almanac , but there is no preview in Google to confirm. By the mid-1800s, the quotation had been fleshed out: “If a man empties his purse into his head, no one can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.” This fuller quotation appeared as early as 1849 in a publication called The Evangelical Repository, and variations of it were used in school reports and other educational publications throughout the late 1800s.8 In Introduction • 5

1852, it morphed once again in the antislavery newspaper The National Era : “A man can find nowhere so good on Savings Bank as by emptying his purse into his head. Knowledge is the best capital he can possess; it is at his command every moment, and always above par.”9 Erroneous quotations, then, are not a problem peculiar to the digital age or to the internet itself. Suffice it to say, studying Franklin comes with a certain amount of bag- gage. As Park Honan argues, “myths cling to significant personalities, and . . . the biographer’s first duty is to peel them away.”10 The various recy- cled misquotations indicate a certain modern familiarity with Franklin that is often not based in any kind of serious historical inquiry. A quotation from Franklin, even a fake one, adds some weight to your Twitter feed in a way that a few lines from William Dawes or even Samuel Otis will not. After all, who can argue with the wit and wisdom of a Founding Father? But even the phrase “Founding Father” is largely a twentieth-century invention. Readex’s imprint and newspaper archive from the 1700s to the 1900s returns its first hit of the phrase in 1916: Senator Warren Harding’s plea to a divided Republican National Convention in Chicago that “we ought to be as genuinely American today as when the founding fathers flung their immortal defiance in the face of old-world oppressions and dedicated a new republic to liberty and justice.” 11 Google’s Ngram Viewer shows scattered usage in early to mid-1800s, but use of the phrase increased dramatically from the 1930s through to the 2000s.12 While traditional biography has largely fallen out of favor with profes- sional historians, discarded by some as “the shallow end of history,” the genre enjoyed a resurgence in popularity at the turn of the twenty-first century with offerings about the founding era from David McCullough, Joseph Ellis, Jon Meacham, H. W. Brands, and Walter Isaacson topping best-seller lists and winning prizes all the way up to the coveted Pulitzer. 13 Two biographies of Franklin have won the Pulitzer: William Cabell Bruce’s Benjamin Frank- lin, Self Revealed in 1918, and Carl Van Doren’s Benjamin Franklin in 1939. More recently, H. W. Brands’ The First American: The Life and Times of Ben- jamin Franklin was a finalist in the 2001 Pulitzer competition. The biographies of Franklin written since 2000 all have something in common: the use of the word “American” in the title. Consider H. W. Brands’ aforementioned work from 2000, Walter Isaacson’s Benjamin Franklin: An American Life from 2003, and Gordon Wood’s The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin from 2004. This is no coincidence. Employing the word “American” taps into the resurgence of founding era chic and the celebration of the Founding Fathers as “a tonic for contemporary disillusionment with politics.”14 But as Joyce Chaplin warns, it is not “very helpful to think of Franklin as firmly planted in America, let alone quintessentially American.”15 To do so presents an entirely too parochial version of the well-travelled Franklin, who spent the first seventy years of his life as a British subject in an Atlantic empire. 6 • Introduction

What is biography? By definition, it is the study or writing of a life. But is biography history? Robert I. Rotberg argues unequivocally that “biography is history, depends on history, and strengthens and enriches history.” 16 If we take a very broad definition of history as an accurate representation of the past, then biography fits fairly comfortably within that definition. Thus, if we were to write an accurate account of the events of someone’s life, we would be doing a kind of history, albeit a very narrow history. But who and what should be included in the histories we write? When we say we are writing accurate representations of the past, we are really only writing about select experiences in the past because a completely comprehensive narrative is impossible and probably not even desirable. Biography can have a tendency to thwart interpretation of change over time by focusing myopi- cally on the life of one person. But not necessarily. One of my favorite his- toric sites in Philadelphia is Franklin’s privy pit because of the reminder it provides to root him in the everyday realities of life—to consider not only who filled it up but also who emptied it out. To concentrate solely on Frank- lin’s political world, or his scientific achievements, would be to present an incomplete picture of the man and the world in which he lived. Franklin did not live in a vacuum, and so to tell his story is to account for the events that he shaped, as well as the events that shaped him. To do so widens the cast of characters of this biography quite significantly. This biography is not an exhaustive account of Franklin’s life. Rather, it is more of a compendium that tries as hard to make sense of the times and places Franklin lived in as it does of the man himself. There is no doubt that Franklin was an exceptional person, achieving more in his lifetime than almost anyone of his generation. Nonetheless, as much as Franklin exerted his influence upon his time and tried to change it, he was in turn a product of his times. And so in some ways he was exceptional, and in others he was just like everyone else. To admit this does not diminish the contributions Franklin made to history. In some ways, it makes him even more exceptional because it thwarts any arguments about inevitability. For example, to explain how Franklin ended up supporting a revolution against Britain by helping write the Declaration of Independence, we need not look for some genetic predisposition to rebellion by drawing a link between his Puritan ancestry and his response to the imperial crisis. Rather, we need to understand how a committed Briton and imperialist lost faith in the British empire and the things he held dear for most of his life. To do so forces us to make sense of the context in which Franklin operated rather than relying on the force of inevitability to explain his actions. This biography makes no pretentions about uncovering the “real” Frank- lin. While historians might not fully know their subjects in any psychological sense, they can understand the peoples of the past by paying careful attention Introduction • 7 to context. Context helps to decipher historical actors’ words and make sense of their actions. The fact that Franklin’s original “a penny saved is two pence clear” had been modified to “a penny saved is a penny earned,” and that the whole “groat” and “mickle” business has been forgotten, is a reminder that we need to reconstruct the world in which that original phrase and those words made sense. If understanding our historical subjects is our primary goal, we are less likely to make excuses for their actions or to wholly condemn them for not living up to our modern standards. Dealing with the Founding Fathers is especially fraught with political considerations. As Peter France and William St. Clair argue, traditional biography’s “aim was to celebrate exemplary existences and offer them as models for imitation.”17 But with four of the five presidents of the founding generation being slaveholders, holding them up as role models is rather complicated. As the title of Henry Wiencek’s biography of George Washington, An Imperfect God , suggests, we are now largely willing to recognize the founders’ flaws, but we still want to see them as gods. 18 We do not need to like or hate Benjamin Franklin. Plenty of people did so both during and after his lifetime. We do need to understand him. All of these considerations can help us answer the question that opened this introduction: who was Franklin? They can help us think through the mountains of primary source material that he left behind, both the words he wrote and the words that were written about him. This biography starts with the words Franklin wrote about himself. Like any primary source, these words have to be analyzed and contextualized by considering who wrote them, why they were written, and when they were written. Franklin con- sciously crafted his own narrative as the story of a young man who came from nothing and rose to great prominence through hard work. His friend, Benjamin Vaughan, recognized this plot line when he reviewed a draft of Franklin’s autobiography in 1783. “All that has happened to you,” he wrote to Franklin, “is also connected with the detail of the manners and situation of a rising people.”19 While Franklin admitted to many of his personal failings, his autobiography is hardly a candid examination of his own life. Nor is it, on some levels, an authoritative account of his life. When Franklin sat down to pen the second part of his autobiography in France in 1784, he recognized that the narrative would be far more accurate “if I were at home among my Papers, which would aid my memory, and help to ascertain dates.” 20 He could not remember exactly where he had left off in the first part of the autobiography he wrote thirteen years earlier in Britain. As William Shurr reminds us, “there exists no version of the Autobiography approved by Franklin himself” because “no version of the Autobiography anything like what we now read was published until the 1840s—fifty years after Franklin’s death.”21 The Autobiography can only be the starting point to exploring Franklin’s life. The letters Franklin wrote and those written to him become the next step, 8 • Introduction followed by the newspapers and pamphlets of the era for broader context. All of these sources can help us answer who Franklin was by explaining how he maneuvered through the world in which he lived. This is history.

N OTES 1 Gordon Wood, The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin (New York: The Penguin Press, 2004), 1. 2 www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WGjwNnq0Ic 3 Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard, 1737 (Philadelphia: Benjamin Franklin, 1736) [electronic edition]. Papers of Benjamin Franklin . The Packard Humanities Institute. http://franklin papers.org . All citations to electronic editions are from the Yale papers, unless otherwise indicated. 4 Benjamin Franklin to Abbé Morellet, 1779 [electronic edition]. Translation by author. 5 See http://www.amazon.com/Proof-Loves-Wants-Happy-T-shirt/dp/B005PHQ80Y ; or http:// www.amazon.com/BEER-PROOF-THAT-GOD-LOVES/dp/B00A723HDS/ref=pd_sbs_a_3 6 http://www.zazzle.com/ben_franklin_fart_proudly_t_shirt-235100271640924220. For what Franklin did write, see To the Royal Academy of Brussels, May 19, 1780 [electronic edition]. 7 http://franklinpapers.org ; http:// www.readex.com/content/americas-historical-imprints ; http:// www.readex.com/content/americas-historical-newspapers ; http://www.accessible.com ; http://www. masshist.org/adams/; http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/browse/ListSome.php?category=Presidents 8 Joseph T. Cooper, ed., The Evangelical Repository vol. 8 (Philadelphia: William S. Young, 1849), 524. 9 The National Era , September 23, 1852. 10 Park Honan, “Some Problems in Biography,” Victorian Studies 16 (Jun., 1973): 454. 11 “Harding Makes a Pleas for a United Party,” Philadelphia Inquirer , June 8, 1916. 12 http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=founding+fathers&year_start=1700& year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share= 13 Michael Holroyd, Works on Paper: The Craft of Biography and Autobiography (Washington, D.C.: Counter Point, 2002), 6. 14 Jeffery Pasley et al., eds.,Beyond the Founders: New Approaches to the Political History of the Early American Republic (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 1. 15 Joyce Chaplin, The First Scientific American: Benjamin Franklin and the Pursuit of Genius (New York: Basic Books, 2006), 4. 16 Robert I. Rotberg, “Biography and Historiography: Mutual Evidentiary and Interdisciplinary Considerations,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 40 (Winter, 2010): 305. 17 Peter France and William St. Clair, eds., Mapping Lives: The Uses of Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 1. 18 Henry Wiencek, An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2004). 19 Benjamin Vaughan to Benjamin Franklin, January 31, 1783 [electronic edition]. 20 Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography, part 8 [electronic edition]. 21 William H. Shurr, “ ‘Now, Gods, Stand Up for Bastards’: Reinterpreting Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography,” American Literature 64 (Sep., 1992): 435. See also Betty Kushen, “Three Earliest Published Lives of Benjamin Franklin, 1790–93: The ‘Autobiography’ and Its Continuations,” Early American Literature 9 (Spring, 1974): 39–52. P A R T I B ENJAMIN FRANKLIN This page intentionally left blank CHAPTER 1 I NCONSPICUOUS BEGINNINGS, 1706–1730

Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston on January 17, 1706, to immigrant parents from southern England. 1 Like tens of thousands before them, the Franklin family’s presence in the Province of Massachusetts Bay was the result of the push and pull factors that had linked Britain and North Amer- ica since the early 1600s. When economic opportunity dried up in England, Benjamin’s father, Josiah Franklin, had travelled across the Atlantic ocean in 1683 to start anew. Boston seemed the perfect place to do so. At approximately 7,000 residents in 1689, it was more than twice as populous as Phil- adelphia or New York. In fact, no other settlement in all of the British colonies had more than 3000 people. 2 Franklin was born not just in a city or a colony, but in an expanding Atlantic empire. The English were not, of course, the only European power with a presence in North America. New France sat to the north along the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes, and Spain to the south in Florida and what is now the American southwest. At the time of Franklin’s birth, Britain was embroiled in a war with both Spain and France that spilled over into North America in a series of con- flicts known as Queen Anne’s War. The war ended in 1713 with the Treaty of Utrecht, which saw Britain’s territory expand into Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, as well as Rupert’s Land ringing the southern shores of Hud- son Bay. No one could have predicted in 1706 that Franklin would spend much of his life trying to protect and strengthen that British empire. Benjamin’s mother, Abiah Folger, was his father’s second wife. Josiah’s first wife, Anne, died in 1689 after giving birth to a son who followed her to the grave only a week later. While Benjamin was the fifteenth child Josiah fathered, only ten of his brothers and sisters were still alive when Benjamin was born. The Franklin family’s experiences of life and death at the turn of the century were not uncommon. Consider one of Franklin’s fellow 12 • Benjamin Franklin revolutionaries, Paul Revere. Born in 1734, five of his eleven siblings did not survive infancy. Two of his sisters, Deborah and Frances, died giving birth to their own children at thirty-one and twenty-seven years of age respec- tively. Revere had sixteen children of his own from 1758 to 1787, but five did not live to see adulthood. Both Franklin and Revere were born in a time of increasing infant mortality in New England. In the 1600s, 85 percent of New England children, on average, survived to the age of twenty-one. During the 1700s, that number dropped to around 70 percent as a number of smallpox and yellow fever epidemics over the decades struck the population. 3 Benja- min’s brother, James, made a splashy debut in 1721 with his new newspaper The New England Courant by attacking Cotton Mather over his support for the then-radical practice of inoculation. As one anti-inoculation essayist argued, “inoculation is doing a violence unto the Law of Nature, and the pat- tern which God has set us . . . [t]herefore inoculation is unholy.” 4 Although the northern colonies had once enjoyed a lower mortality rate than England, as the population became more dense in the 1700s, birth and death rates came more in line with the mother country. We can only speculate about the exact details of Franklin’s early life, but it seems safe to say that he and his family experienced life patterns similar to those around them. His day-to-day life would have been shaped primarily by the fact that he was part of a large family. The family was the most basic and important unit of colonial society, and almost everyone married and tried to have children. Only 3 percent of the colonial population was single. Effective contraception did not exist in the 1700s and so women who were not already pregnant usually conceived within three months of getting married, and would continue to have a child every two to three years thereafter.5 Sheep gut condoms were available in London beginning in the 1690s, but few colonials could afford such a uxury,l and certainly not someone like Josiah Franklin. Couples were also unlikely to abstain from sex, leaving withdrawal as the only safe method to try to prevent pregnancy. The problem was that the Bible seemed to condemn men who ejaculated for reasons other than procreation. Genesis chapter 38 tells the story of Onan who “spilled . . . [his seed] on the ground,” an action that “displeased the Lord” so much that he struck Onan dead. Masturbation, then, was forbidden by the church, but such a prohibition was by no means followed. By 1724, over fifteen thousand copies of a pamphlet decrying “Onania, or the heinous sin of self-pollution” and its “frightful consequences” had been sold. The passions of young men were not the only things that had to be curbed. Sex in the marriage bed also needed regulation since “excesses and indecencies” like anal sex could defile a marriage “almost equally with adultery itself.” The issue was not so much the spilling of the seed, per se, but the intent behind that spilling. Masturbation was not technically murder (“if it were, Inconspicuous Beginnings, 1706–1730 • 13 all nocturnal pollution, which no body can prevent, would be so many murders”), but it was “a heinous sin to GOD” to frustrate “what he has appointed for the multiplication of our species.” 6 Bostonians were exhorted to “remember Onan’s sin and untimely death” and “moderate . . . [their] appetites and passions by the rules of God’s word.”7 It was tough advice to follow for some. As one of Franklin’s contemporaries, Joseph Moody, fretted in his diary at age 22, “This morning I got up pretty late. I defiled myself, though wide awake. Where will my unbridled lust lead me?” 8 As a young man, Franklin also struggled with religious and moral admonitions to tame his appetites and passions, a fight he would ultimately lose. Franklin would likely have spent just about every hour of every day surrounded by family, crammed into a small two-room house on Milk Street. He would have first slept in the same bed as his parents, and then shared a bed with one or more of his siblings until he left home. Preoccupied with straight- ness and making sure their children did not exhibit animal behavior, parents wrapped their babies tightly in swaddling clothes so they could not assume the fetal position. They also discouraged crawling and tried to get their children to walk as soon as possible. Most parents were busy with the family business or farm and therefore relied on older brothers and sisters to look after younger ones. Tragically, before Franklin was born, his sibling, Ebenezer, drowned in one of the tubs of water from his father’s soap and candle business at sixteen months of age. For those who survived their early years, infancy lasted until a child turned six years old, at which time boys received breeches and discarded the long shirts that were passed down from older siblings of either sex. In the Protestant Anglo-American worldview, children were not innocent but were products of original sin who had to be brought up to obey God and their parents. Schooling, church, and physical punishment would all serve to accomplish these ends. As one father counseled his daughter, it was parents’ responsibility to bring up their children in the “right way of life.” While mothers and fathers had natural affection for their young, it was common for “people to pervert this lovely principle to the utter ruin of their children.” Indeed, the “excessive fondness” of a mother could undo the “good conduct of the wisest father.”9 Franklin’s life spanned a significant change in how husbands and wives, and parents and children, related to one another. By 1760, marriages based on love and physical attraction were becoming more the norm than marriages of economic prudence and necessity. Colonials considered orgasm to be essential for the health of both men and women, and necessary to a successful conception. Parents were becoming more indulgent (something the author mentioned above was reacting to), and were more inclined to see their children as innocents who needed forgiveness and loving correction. To be sure, the way Franklin raised his own children was different from the way he was raised. 14 • Benjamin Franklin

This is not to say that parents before 1760 did not feel affection toward their children, or vice versa. And yet, the belief that children were inher- ently sinful necessarily shaped familial relationships. When Benjamin Franklin remembered his parents later in life, love did not enter the equa- tion. He remarked first on their good health: his father “had an excellent constitution of body” and his mother “likewise had an excellent constitution.” Josiah was “pious and prudent,” Abiah was “discreet and virtuous,” and the gravestone Benjamin raised in their memory testified to his “filial regard” for his parents. He perhaps had a more affectionate relationship with his uncle Benjamin, who lived in his nephew’s house from 1715 to 1719 after immigrating from England. His uncle encouraged Benjamin’s early interest in poetry, while his father discouraged him “by ridiculing [his] Per- formances, and telling [him] Verse-makers were generally Beggars.” 10 Starting at age six, most children in New England received some kind of schooling for a few hours in the morning either in the home or at a formal school. Massachusetts law mandated that every town of at least fifty households “be constantly provided of a School-Master to teach children and youth to read and write.” 11 Those with the money to do so then sent their boys to grammar school, which Josiah did with Benjamin at age eight with the intention that his son would eventually go to Harvard College and then into the ministry. But an education at Harvard was not to be. His father, strapped for money, soon transferred him to a cheaper school, putting college out of the question. A very small proportion of families could afford to send their boys to college, and the median age of these fortunate Harvard freshmen was about fifteen in the early 1700s.12 For the rest of colonial society, growing up meant learning how to manage the family business, or the family farm or plantation, or the family household until they reached full maturity at age twenty-one. Benjamin Franklin’s life, it seemed, was going to follow this common trajectory. At the age of ten, he was brought home from school to help with the family business and spent his days “cutting wick for the candles, filling the dipping mold, and the molds for cast candles, attending the Shop, going of Errands, &c.” He hated the work, and his father knew it. Josiah feared that Benjamin would jump on a ship to escape Boston like his older brother, Josiah Jr., had done. Many New England boys began an apprenticeship at around ten years of age and Benjamin was no exception. When a plan to set Benjamin up with his cousin in the cutler’s trade fell through, Josiah indentured Benjamin to his older brother, James, a printer. Colonial printers did not have the technology to make their own fonts and presses and therefore relied on suppliers in England for their printing materials. In 1718, James had just returned from England with the necessary materials to establish his business, and now had his brother indentured to him for the next nine Inconspicuous Beginnings, 1706–1730 • 15 years to aid in that endeavor. Benjamin loved reading and now had access to more and better books than he ever could have afforded to buy. Seeing his appetite for the written word, one patron of the printing shop, Mr. Mat- thew Adams, invited Benjamin to borrow any book he wanted from his personal library. Working for his brother also gave Benjamin a taste for being a printed author. He took up writing poems about popular news stories, which his brother printed. Franklin later admitted that the poems were “wretched stuff” but “sold wonderfully.”13 As an apprentice, Benjamin was no longer under his father’s direct control. He stopped going to church, preferring to spend his Sundays reading and perfecting his prose. Sometime around 1722 he became a vegetarian after reading a book by the renowned Thomas Tyron. Tryon turned to vegetarianism in 1657, convinced that God had told him to give up all luxuries, and he also dabbled in alchemy, herbal medicine, and natural magic. Frank- lin does not tell us which of Tryon’s twenty-seven books he read, but it is very likely that it was Tyron’s most popular 1683 work, The Way to Health, Long Life and Happiness, that had already been through multiple editions by the 1720s. Franklin began preparing his own food using the recipes Tryon included in The Way to Health, and then asked his brother for half of the money paid for his meals (James did not own his own house, and therefore paid for room and board with another family for himself and his apprentices). The money he did not spend on food went to books, and he soon found that a vegetarian diet gave him the “greater clearness of head and quicker apprehension that usually attend temperance in eating and drinking.” 14 Although these were some of the benefits of vegetarianism, they were not Tryon’s and possibly not Franklin’s main motivation for adopting the diet. Rather, it was about benevolence. As David Waldstreicher argues, “Franklin could hardly have been unaware of Tryon’s bracing critique of slavery.” 15 Tryon had plied his trade as a hatter in Barbados and was appalled at the cruelty with which European masters treated their African slaves. He returned to England in 1669 and began writing to admonish “Mankind against Violence, Oppression, and Cruelty, either to their own Kind, or any inferior Creatures.” 16 Tryon was no abolitionist, but asked masters to treat their slaves in a non-violent, Christian manner. His philosophy was about treating all inferior creatures with respect. Such ideas had great appeal to a young apprentice like Franklin. Franklin’s conversion to vegetarianism was about more than youthful rebellion to the norms of society, or the financial benefit he found in eating no meat. Franklin bought into Tryon’s philosophy of benevolent non-violence. “I consider’d with my Master Tryon,” he wrote, “the taking of every fish as a kind of unprovok’d Murder, since none of them had or ever could do us any Injury that might justify the slaughter.” He stuck with the diet for about a year, and 16 • Benjamin Franklin considered Tryon’s justification for vegetarianism to be “very reasonable.” On a trip from Boston some of his fellow travelers caught and began frying up some cod, and the smell reminded Franklin how much he used to love fish. He “balanc’d some time between principle and inclination,” but when he remembered that the gutted fish had smaller fish in their bellies, he reasoned that it justified eating them. He returned “only now and then occasionally to a vegetable diet,” but knew he had compromised a solid principle to satisfy selfish desire. How convenient it is to be a reasonable“ Creature,” he wrote, “since it enables one to find or make a reason for every thing one has a mind to do.”17 As his brother’s apprentice, Franklin ventured with him into the newspaper business. The New England Courant , the second newspaper in the colonies, was first published on August 7, 1721, and it quickly gained a reputation as a repository for cheeky opinion pieces that undercut the established order. The first issue launched right into the debate over inoculating for smallpox, with most people decrying the practice and the influential Mather family supporting it. Cotton Mather had learned about inoculation from his slave, Onesimus, which could partially account for why most white colonists rejected the practice. In July 1721, several English physicians and surgeons had inoculated three prisoners at Newgate prison “for an experiment,” but the doctors in Boston still largely rejected the practice. 18 Benjamin was intrigued by the public debate newspapers galvanized. Thus began the writing career of Silence Dogood, a middle-aged widow Franklin invented as a pen name because he knew his brother would never publish his younger brother’s (and apprentice, no less) writing. The public response was rather favorable, and so he ended up writing and publishing fourteen installments from April to October 1722. In the June 11 issue of the Courant , the same issue in which appeared Silence Dogood’s sixth installment about pride, James included an item about how the government of Rhode Island had quickly assembled two armed sloops to pursue a pirate ship harassing the area. The Massachusetts government, James sarcastically stated, was also “fitting out a Ship to go after the Pirates,” that would “sail sometime this Month, if Wind and Weather permit.”19 The suggestion that the government was in collusion with pirates landed James in jail without a trial for three weeks, until the assembly recessed in early July. Appearing humbled, he petitioned the assembly from jail on June 15, acknowledging his offense and asking “that he may be allowed the liberty of the yard.”20 James’ time in prison did little to quell his anti-authoritarian streak. Ben- jamin as Silence Dogood took a few shots at Massachusetts’ rulers in his ninth installment on July 23, but moved into safer territory (the plight of widows and drunkenness, for example) in his final five essays. James, on the other hand, printed a piece on January 7, 1723, ridiculing the elite as Inconspicuous Beginnings, 1706–1730 • 17

“religious hypocrites” who “put on the outward form , as a cloak to cover their wicked practices and designs.” 21 Attacking religion was risky because the legislature had passed several laws restricting what could be printed with regards to religion. All “libel[s] or Mock-Sermons[s],” and the “mimicking of preaching or any other part of divine worship” were to be pun- ished by fines or public humiliation by forcing the transgressor to stand in the pillory at least once.22 The legislature moved quickly against James and by January 15 had passed a resolution stating that since “the tendency of the . . . [ Courant] is to mock religion,” and since the paper disturbed “the peace and good order of His Majesty’s subjects,” Franklin was forbidden to print the Courant “except it be first supervised by the secretary of this province.”23 Rather than shut down the newspaper, James turned control of the Cou- rant over to Benjamin, at least on paper and in the public eye. To make the scheme work James had to release his brother from the terms of his apprenticeship. His indenture was returned to him “with a full discharge in the back of it,” to be shown to anyone who inquired about Benjamin’s status.24 But James drew up a new indenture in private, binding Benjamin to service for the remainder of his original term. Benjamin later admitted it was “a very flimsy scheme,” but one that he would unfairly exploit to his advantage. At first, the façade worked. Benjamin’s first issue as editor assured all readers that the “late Publisher of this Paper . . . has intirely dropt the Undertaking.” 25 James soon retook control of the paper (not officially, of course) and firmly reestablished the master-apprentice relationship. According to Benjamin, he and his brother fought regularly, often relying on their father to arbitrate their disputes. He claimed in his autobiography that his brother often beat him, but admitted that “perhaps I was too saucy and provoking.” 26 When “the blows [James’] passion too often urg’d him to bestow upon” Benjamin became too much to bear, he looked for a way to escape. James had made sure that no other printer in the city would hire his apprentice, so the only option was to leave town. Knowing his brother would not reveal the private indenture papers and blow the scheme to keep the Courant afloat, and knowing that his father opposed his desire to break his indenture, he hatched a plan with his friend, John Collins, to escape to New York. Benjamin needed to escape in private, so he and Collins invented a story that Franklin had impregnated a “naughty Girl” and needed to flee the city before her friends compelled him to marry her.27 The whole point of a cover story for sneaking out of town is that it needs to be believable. Prose- cutions for premarital sex had been in decline (but had not ceased) in New England since the turn of the century, but not because unmarried colonists had stopped having sex. In fact, bastardy rates increased up to the Revolution as courts gradually stopped prosecuting the sin of fornication 18 • Benjamin Franklin and turned their attention to ensuring the bastard child’s financial security. 28 As Clare Lyons argues, by the 1760s “sexual relations outside courtship and marriage were a regular part of the sexual terrain.”29 Being an apprentice made Franklin’s story even more plausible. Since apprentices did not own their own labor and therefore could not provide for an illegitimate child, it fell to their masters to provide support. This in turn would mean an extension of the indenture to pay off the additional and unexpected expense. Franklin sold some of his books to pay his way, boarded a ship on Sep- tember 25, 1723, and three days later was in New York City. He offered his services to a local printer, William Bradford, who had no employment for Franklin because he already had an apprentice named John Peter Zenger as well as a number of slaves working for him. Bradford’s son, Andrew, also a printer, potentially had work since his principal workman, a poet and clerk to the legislature named Aquila Rose, had recently died at age twenty-eight. The catch was that Bradford’s son was 100 miles away in Philadelphia. Hav- ing no other good options, Franklin found himself a few days later, bedrag- gled from a rough journey to Philadelphia, standing on the Market Street wharf. He purchased some bread from a baker on Second Street, and then headed back up Market Street for a few blocks. He claims that he passed the house where his future wife, Deborah, lived. She saw him walk by, he recounted, “and thought I made as I certainly did a most awkward and ridiculous appearance.” 30 To Franklin’s disappointment, the plan to find work with Andrew Bradford fell through. Even though Andrew’s father rode down from New York on horseback to introduce Benjamin to his son, Andrew had already hired Rose’s replacement. The only other printer in town was a recent addition to the city, an eccentric and unkempt man named Samuel Keimer. Keimer had entered the city with a bit of a bang, placing an advertisement in Bradford’s American Weekly Mercury freely offering his services to “teach his poor brethren the Negroes to read the Holy Scriptures &c.” 31 Ever the outcast, Keimer later lamented that he was the “Shuttlecock of Fortune . . . toss’d to and fro, . . . the very But[t] for Villany to shoot at, [and] the continued Mark for Slander and her Imps to spit their Venom upon.” In fact, to prove how hard his life had been he intended to publish his autobiography “under the title of the White Negro.”32 Keimer’s operation was hardly impressive: an old printing press and one set of fonts for composing. Printing in the colonial era meant arranging individual metal letters on composing sticks that were then dabbed with ink and pressed into a sheet of paper. This took some skill, since in order for the final product to read correctly, the letters on each composing stick had to be arranged upside down and backwards, and printers had to start composing the end of the line first and work back to the beginning. Proper inking and pressing ensured a consistently clear and Inconspicuous Beginnings, 1706–1730 • 19 readable final product. Keimer, Franklin tells us, “was a mere compositor, knowing nothing of presswork.”33 The individual metal letters of specific font were kept in two cases, the upper case for capital letters and the rest in the lower case. As much as Keimer wanted to hire Franklin right away, he only had one pair of cases and the elegy he was composing to Aquila Rose was going to use up all the letters he owned. When he finished composing the elegy, he hired Franklin to print it, then purchased another pair of cases and set Franklin to work. When he was in Boston, Franklin had created a debating club of sorts with his friend John Collins, but in Philadelphia he took this to a new level with Samuel Keimer. While he mocked Andrew Bradford as “very illiterate,” Keimer was “something of a scholar.” Franklin had once committed to healthy and non-violent eating as a disciple of Tryon, and he was no stranger to religious controversy. His and James’ attacks on religion in The Courant had led some to conclude that Franklin was an “infidel or atheist.” Before coming to Philadelphia, Keimer had been swept up in the arrival of three Camisards, known as the “French Prophets,” in London. A millennial group that preached hellfire and damnation while speaking in tongues and falling into fits, the Camisards pulled Keimer’s sister into their ranks and she became a well-known prophetess. Believing that the return of Christ was near, he poured his time and money into printing their prophecies. Keimer’s enthusiasm for these convultionaires soon waned, particularly after witness- ing the prophetess Dorothy Harling urinate on a group of converts in a bizarre ceremony of spiritual purification. Franklin noted that although Keimer “could act [the] enthusiastic Agitations” of the prophets (i.e., trances, uncontrollable shaking, and facial contortions), in 1724 he “did not profess any particular Religion, but something of all on occasion.” 34 Franklin tells us that Keimer “lov’d argumentation” and so the two of them “had many Disputations.” These debates, and Keimer’s retention of “a great deal of his old Enthusiasms,” came together in Keimer’s proposal that he and Franklin start a new religious sect. In his autobiography, Franklin passes this off as somewhat of a joke. In accordance with Mosaic law, Keimer never trimmed his beard and he kept the seventh day (i.e., Saturday) as the Sabbath, and he insisted that these two tenets be part of the sect’s doctrines. Franklin disliked both ideas and countered that they also must both adhere to a vegetarian diet. “I promis’d my self some Diversion in half-starving him,” Franklin later wrote in his autobiography. But we should not be so hasty to believe the Franklin of the 1770s reflecting back on his life in his late sixties after becoming the world-renowned Dr. Franklin. In 1724, he was eighteen years old and had only recently forsaken the doctrines of Thomas Tryon. Indeed, there is no reason to believe that Franklin entered this sectarian agreement just for a laugh at Keimer’s expense. He did not 20 • Benjamin Franklin hold Keimer in the highest regard after their first meeting (considering him a “mere novice”), and his opinion of him deteriorated over the 1720s. But in 1724, Franklin and Keimer “liv’d on a pretty good familiar Footing and agreed tolerably well.”35 As Franklin writes, “as I afterwards found, [Keimer had] a good deal of the Knave in his Composition.”36 Much of Franklin’s presentation of Keimer could be an after-the-fact justification for the callous way he treated the man who first gave him a job. Whatever affinity Franklin felt for Keimer, and no matter how well they got along, it was not enough to thwart Franklin’s emerging plan to put his boss out of business and make a name for himself in Philadelphia. Through a remarkably lucky combination of happenstance and nepotism, Franklin caught the attention of Philadelphia’s eccentric governor, Sir William Keith. The governor wined and dined Franklin and the two hatched a plan to set up Franklin in a printing business of his very own. Keith’s insistence that Franklin ask his father for financial support meant that he had to head back to Boston a mere seven months after his escape. Armed with a letter from the governor recommending Benjamin to his own father, he arrived in Bos- ton in mid-May 1724. Dressed in a new suit and watch, his “Pockets lin’d with near Five Pounds Sterling in Silver,” Franklin gave drinking money to his brother’s journeymen, and paraded before his father and brother, rubbing his turn of fortune in their faces. 37 It was an arrogant and vindictive display, and his brother swore to never forgive the insult. In the end, and perhaps to no one’s surprise, Franklin’s father did not support his new business venture. Benjamin was too young and setting up the business too expensive, he reasoned. But, he did not force his son to stay in Boston to serve out the remainder of his indenture and so Franklin headed back to Philadelphia. William Keith was undaunted by Josiah Franklin’s lack of faith in his young son’s abilities and proposed sending Benjamin to England to pick his types and make some connections in the printing world. While waiting for the annual ship to make its journey between Philadelphia and London, Franklin began courting his landlady’s daughter, Deborah Read. Any movements toward marriage were thwarted by her mother since Benjamin was soon to embark on a journey to and from England that would take the better part of a year. Plus, as Franklin later mused, “Perhaps too she thought my Expectations not so wellfounded as I imagined them to be.” 38 If she did think that, she was exactly right. After a journey fraught with bad weather, Franklin arrived in London on December 24, 1724. The trip was a complete disaster. Keith had promised letters of introduction and credit to help Franklin make connections and to cover the approximately £100 sterling worth of equipment he needed to buy. As Franklin learned too late, Keith had a bad habit of making promises Inconspicuous Beginnings, 1706–1730 • 21 that he could not keep, and hatching plans that he never intended to carry through. So, Franklin found a place to live along with James Ralph, a friend who had come on the trip with him from Philadelphia. Ralph started the trip claiming that he intended to make business contacts in London, but he now told Franklin that he had abandoned his wife and child and had no intention of ever returning to Pennsylvania. Self-divorce was a method of dissolving marriages that both men and women employed in Pennsylvania. Philadelphia’s American Mercury printed the first self-divorce advertisement in the colonies from Joseph Wood, a carpenter whose wife, Catherine, “obstinately refused to cohabit” with him. 39 Wood was not alone, and from 1726 to 1786, Philadelphia’s newspapers printed 841 self-divorce ads. 40 Wife abandonment turned out to be a consistent theme of this trip to London. At some point Franklin made contact with the wife Keimer had abandoned when he came to Philadelphia, and she and her friends told Franklin many a tale of Keimer’s misdeeds and bad character. Franklin found work at a printing house, making the money that he and Ralph would later spend having a good time in the city. They had such a good time, and he ended up lending Ralph so much money, that after a year Franklin still had not saved up enough to pay for his passage back to Philadelphia. As he remembered in his autobiography, they had spent all of Franklin’s money and “rubb’d on from hand to mouth.” 41 Ralph ended up moving in with a young female hat maker and her child, but since her income was not enough for the three of them, he took a job in the countryside tutoring young boys in reading and writing. He left his mistress in Benjamin’s care, and she eventually lost her business and her friends on account of her scandalous relationship with Ralph. In a combination of presumption, affection, and lust, Franklin tried to have sex with the young woman. When she told Ralph, his friendship with Franklin was over. Benjamin’s return to Philadelphia came via a friendship with a Quaker merchant named Thomas Denham, a man who had failed in business in Bristol but had made his fortune in the colonies. He hired Franklin as his new clerk, and on July 23, 1726, the two sailed for Philadelphia. On the long trip home, Franklin mulled over his life so far. “I have never fixed a regular design in life; by which means it has been a confused variety of different scenes,” he concluded. He then put together a four-part plan of conduct that would shape his future (in theory, at least): he would live frugally until his debts were paid, he would always speak the truth, he would work hard and not get distracted by “any foolish project of growing suddenly rich,” and he would not speak ill of any man. 42 Franklin would need some kind of personal stability because much had changed since his departure from Phila- delphia some twenty months ago. Keith was no longer governor. Deborah Read had married. Keimer “had got a better House, a Shop well supply’d 22 • Benjamin Franklin with Stationary, plenty of new Types, [and] a number of Hands.”43 Franklin worked at Denham’s shop until February 1726, when the two became ill. Denham never recovered. After a long illness, he died in the summer of 1727. 44 He forgave the ten pounds, three pence, and five shillings Franklin still owed him for his passage from London, but had made no provisions in his will for Franklin to inherit or continue the merchant business they had established. And so, Franklin returned to Samuel Keimer’s employment. He later claimed that he was “not fond of having any more to do” with Keimer, having “heard a bad Character of him in London.” 45 But in 1727, after whooping it up in London and trying to sleep with his best friend’s mistress, Franklin was in no position to judge other people’s character. Despite Franklin’s ill-treatment of him in the past, Keimer initially treated Franklin with “great Civility, and apparent Regard.” 46 But, unsur- prisingly, their relationship soon soured and Franklin began plotting an exit strategy. He worked closely with one of Keimer’s servants, Hugh Meredith, whose father agreed to put up 200 pounds sterling to help the men establish their own printing business. When the equipment they ordered from Lon- don arrived in early 1728, Franklin and Meredith left Keimer and opened their own shop on Market Street. This meant that there were now three printers vying for work in Philadelphia. Someone had to go. In the fall of 1727 Franklin had formed a “club for mutual improvement” that its members called the Junto. It was on one hand a philosophical club dedicated to the pursuit of truth, but since its membership was comprised of artisans and tradesmen like Franklin, it was also a venue for the mutual improvement of their businesses. To help defray the cost of renting the print shop, Franklin and Meredith rented out the attached living quarters. Fellow Junto member Thomas Godfrey and his family were the first to pay rent. Another Juntonian, Joseph Brietnall, secured Franklin’s first big printing job in 1728. Samuel Keimer had been slowly working on reprinting the third edition of William Sewell’s The History of the Rise, Increase, and Prog- ress, of the Christian People called Quakers, a large job of over 700 pages. Through Brietnall, the Quakers turned to Franklin to finish the job. Work- ing long hours, he finished the last forty-four and a half folio sheets (178 pages of text) in a few weeks’ time. 47 It was an incredible amount of work for little pay, but Franklin wanted to prove the quality and speed of his work to gain future customers. The real money was in a successful newspaper. Franklin thought that Bradford’s Weekly Mercury was a “paltry thing, wretchedly manag’d, and no way entertaining,” but as the only newspaper in the city it brought Bradford a tidy profit.48 Franklin made the mistake of telling one of Keimer’s former workmen of his plan to start a newspaper, and on October 1, 1728, Keimer published a notice of his intent to start a paper. The Mercury , Keimer wrote, Inconspicuous Beginnings, 1706–1730 • 23 was “not only a Reproach to the Province, but such a Scandal to the very Name of Printing.”49 He and Franklin agreed on one thing, it seemed. His paper, of course, promised to communicate the news along with “many Thousand Rarities,” on a weekly basis. The paper was to be calledThe Uni- versal Instructor in all Arts and Sciences: and Pennsylvania Gazette because Keimer intended to print out one page from Ephraim Chambers’ recently published two-volume Cyclopaedia, or Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sci- ences in each issue. 50 With over 2,000 pages plus addenda in the 1728 edition of the Cyclopedia , Keimer needed at least forty years to complete this endeavor. We will never know if Keimer would have followed through with this plan because Franklin soon took control of the newspaper. Writing under aliases, he used Bradford’s Mercury to criticize and undermine Keimer’s Gazette . The first foray came on January 28, 1729, after Keimer’s January 21 issue included a reprint of Chambers’ entry on abortion. “Popularly call’d Miscarriage,” Chambers explained, “. . . We have instances of Abortions by way of the Mouth, the Anus , the Navel, &c.”51 Franklin responded on the front page of Bradford’s paper under the pen names Martha Careful and Caelia Shortface. Martha cautioned Keimer not “to Expose the Secrets of our Sex,” and Caelia advised that “if Thou hath nothing else to put in Thy Gazette, lay it down.” 52 Getting Keimer to lay down the Gazette was precisely the plan. From early February to late March, Franklin, writing as Busy-Body, needled Keimer and his Gazette. The first installment assured women that they would be treated with the “utmost Decency and Respect,” and that the Busy-Body essays would lead to the “Embellishment of their Minds, and Brightning of their Understandings, without offending their Modesty .”53 The exact impact of Franklin’s essays is hard to gauge. He noted in his autobiography that Keimer printed the Gazette for “three Quarters of a Year [December 24, 1728, to September, 1729], with at most only 90 Subscrib- ers” before he sold it to Franklin “for a trifle.”54 Keimer claimed that he had 250 subscribers, but it seems likely that both he and Franklin exaggerated their numbers for dramatic effect. Keimer did not need Franklin’s help getting into trouble, damaging his reputation, or losing his business. In April of 1728, he had been called before the Pennsylvania assembly to answer for printing a pamphlet that the members of the legislature deemed “destructive to the liberties and privileges of the people of this province.”55 By mid- July of 1729 Keimer was sinking further into debt despite his attempts to supplement his printing business by selling rugs, blankets, linen, stockings, cotton caps, hand saws, axes, augers, gimlets, molasses, sugar, rum, rice, and pewter. By mid-September, he had turned his business over to his apprentice, David Harry, and was trying to settle his debts so he could leave 24 • Benjamin Franklin

Pennsylvania. He did not blame Franklin specifically for his troubles, but rather lamented that throughout his whole life he had been treated poorly. According to Keimer, he had been ruined as a printer three times and to prison nine times, even though he had done nothing wrong save for the “little Mistakes or Peccadilloes of human Nature.”56 Keimer headed to Bar- bados, where he founded The Barbados Gazette in 1731, which folded just before his death in 1738. Franklin and Meredith published their first issue of thePennsylvania Gazette on October 2, 1729. The Gazette was now being “carry’d on by other hands,” they informed their readers. There were now two printers in Phila- delphia: Franklin and Bradford (David Harry quickly ran into debt, lost his business, and joined Keimer in Barbados). As Franklin had learned with the Busy-Body essays, a taste of controversy and scandal could sell papers. So, while his quality workmanship was noted by several prominent people in the city, his willingness to engage controversy brought even more readers. Indeed, some “spirited remarks” Franklin printed about a feud between Massachusetts governor William Burnet and the Massachusetts assembly caused the “Paper and the Manager of it to be much talk’d of, and in a few Weeks brought them all to be our Subscribers. Their Example was follow’d by many, and our Number went on growing continually.” 57 Franklin’s foray into the dispute between the Massachusetts governor and assembly, and Philadelphians’ interest in that dispute, highlights how keenly aware the British subjects in the American colonies were of their unique situation. Ever since Edwyn Sandys instituted a series of reforms in Virginia that established, among other things, land tenancy for servants and a representative legislative assembly in 1619, the American colonies had necessarily diverged from the social and economic patterns that defined England. Accustomed to passing local taxes and laws, the colonists enjoyed a level of local autonomy that Parliament considered to be a privilege and colonists considered to be an essential right. William Burnet had been the governor of New York since 1720, and in 1728 was appointed as governor of Massa- chusetts. The relationship between his predecessor, Samuel Shute, and the assembly had been fraught with disagreements, not the least of which was Shute’s refusal to accept the assembly’s nomination of Elisha Cooke, Jr., one of his most outspoken critics, as its speaker. Since the assembly maintained the right to initiate taxation, and thus controlled the governor’s salary, it first reduced Shute’s stipend and then refused to pay him in 1720. Shute left for England in 1723 to seek a resolution, never to return to Massachu- setts. Burnet’s speech to the assembly on July 24, 1728, reminded the members that the king was “head of the legislature here,” and that his job as governor was to obey “his royal master’s commands.” 58 Burnet had come to the province with royal instructions to demand “a fixed and honorable Inconspicuous Beginnings, 1706–1730 • 25 salary,” which the assembly promptly refused. 59 He moved the assembly to Salem and declined its subsequent offer of an increased (but not fixed) salary, so the issue was still not resolved by the time of his sudden death on September 7, 1729. For British officials in London, the lack of a fixed salary meant the potential for blackmail and for undue concessions to provincial demands, as governors relied on the assembly for annual renewal of their salaries. For the colonists, any attempt to usurp local authority was an infringement on charter privileges and British liberty. To acquiesce to the demand for a fixed salary, the assembly maintained, would “destroy a very valuable privilege belonging to the House of Representatives, and every free-born subject of His Majesty.”60 And, as Franklin explained to his readers, “to make any Gov- ernour independent of his People, would be dangerous, and destructive of their Liberties, and the ready Way to establish Tyranny.” 61 The assembly’s resistance stemmed not from thoughts of treason, but of patriotism. The “Mother Country will perhaps observe with Pleasure,” Franklin wrote with no small amount of cheekiness, that “her Sons in the remotest Part of the Earth, . . . still retain that ardent Spirit of Liberty, and that undaunted Cour- age in the Defence of it, which has in every Age so gloriously distinguished Britons and Englishmen from all the Rest of Mankind.” Although the Gazette was starting to do well, there were signs that the partnership with Hugh Meredith was headed for disaster. This line from Franklin’s autobiography sums it up: “Meredith was no Compositor, a poor Pressman, and seldom sober.” 62 But Meredith was a friend and a Junto member, and, most importantly, his father had promised the capital to get their printing business started. But when Hugh’s father failed to come up with the second £100 needed to pay off his son and Franklin’s creditors, Meredith was suddenly less valuable. Two of Franklin’s friends, William Coleman and Robert Grace, offered to pay the debt on the condition that he dissolve his partnership with Meredith. Having already lost several friends over the past few years, Franklin was hesitant to broach the subject. But when he did, Franklin claimed that Meredith was only too happy to leave printing. And so Franklin assumed all the debts for the printing business, paid off Meredith’s accounts, purchased him a new saddle, and sent him on his way to North Carolina where other Welsh farmers had migrated for cheap land. On July 14, 1730, Meredith signed a statement that the partnership had been dissolved, and Franklin took sole control of the printing business. In the midst of the crisis with Meredith and his father, Franklin attempted to remedy his financial troubles through marriage. Thomas Godfrey’s wife played matchmaker by setting Benjamin up with a relative’s daughter, and he carried the courtship as far as he could before it became necessary to 26 • Benjamin Franklin either propose marriage or end the relationship. At twenty-four years old, Franklin was of typical marrying age. Men in Pennsylvania married at age twenty-six, on average, and women at age twenty-two, throughout the eighteenth century.63 Franklin’s next move highlights how marriage was still a transaction of sorts, though not exclusively so. Mindful of his debts (about £100), Franklin angled for a dowry. Since Godfrey’s wife agreed to manage Franklin’s “little treaty,” he let her know that he “expected as much Money with their Daughter as would pay off [his] Remaining Debt for the Print- inghouse.”64 There was no formal dowry system established in the Ameri- can colonies, and Pennsylvania law made no mention of dowries. Instead, Pennsylvania lawmakers were more concerned with preventing “clandestine, loose and unseemly proceedings in marriage.” 65 Basically, any marriage that did not contravene the laws of God was encouraged, provided that the parents (or masters of servants) were consulted, if the intention to marry was posted on the courthouse door a month before the ceremony, if the couple was married before at least twelve witnesses, and if the marriage was registered with the county. Franklin never had to worry about following these legal requirement because the courtship quickly ended. The dowry price was too high, and when Franklin suggested the parents mortgage their house to raise the sum, the marriage negotiations fell apart. Franklin suspected that the parents’ refusal to pay the dowry was a ploy to marry their daughter off cheaply. They wrongly assumed that Franklin and their daughter were so much in love that they would elope if the marriage negotiations fell apart. The fact of the matter was the Pennsylvania’s marriage laws were easy to skirt, and thus elopement and other kinds of unsanctioned marriages were common. In 1730, the legislature amended the 1701 marriage law after realizing that it had been “very much eluded,” largely because there were no penalties for those who transgressed it.66 Even though Mrs. Godfrey tried to bring the couple back together again, Benjamin refused to have anything to do with the family. The whole affair ruined his friendship with the Godfreys and they moved out of Franklin’s house. And so Franklin remained a bachelor, and in this he was not completely alone. Pennsylvania had a much higher percentage of unmarried people than anywhere else in the colonies, ranging between 12% and 15% of the population. 67 As he soon confirmed, the printer’s profession was not respected enough for him to expect a dowry, making it hard to find a suitable wife or a wife with suitable terms. Franklin was no doubt familiar with St. Paul’s admonition to the church in Corinth that it was better for single people “to marry than to burn.”68 Franklin had not married yet, but he certainly did burn with “that hard-to-be-govern’d Passion of Youth.” He had sex with many prostitutes, even though such liaisons came with “some Inconspicuous Beginnings, 1706–1730 • 27 expence and great inconvenience” and the very real danger of contracting venereal disease. 69 Prostitution was a key part of Philadelphia’s fairly per- missive sexual culture, and would continue to be so throughout Franklin’s lifetime. As one German immigrant to Pennsylvania lamented in a 1725 letter to his family back home, “one hears with horror what luxury prevails in Philadelphia, and it only lacks licensing the houses of prostitution for things to have reached the limit.” 70 By 1790, Philadelphia had bawdyhouses in all parts of the city and prostitutes openly walked the streets soliciting men. Franklin was lucky enough not to contract a venereal disease, or to have to find one of the cures for such diseases that were sold around the city. The trade in such medicines was largely clandestine in the early eighteenth century but was slowly becoming more public. In 1737, Franklin’s Gazette carried an advertisement from a chemist named Evan Jones who advised

All Persons who are so unhappy to have been under the care of those unskillful in the Venereal Disease, or other Chronick Distemper, may, applying to the said JONES, obtain speedy relief, from a Specifick Medicine of his own preparing, which may be used with safety without Danger of Colds or other harm, as other Medicines without great Caution are subject to; but the same may be safely taken without loss of time, or hindrance of Business either by Sea or Land. 71

By the 1760s, some doctors in Philadelphia began to specialize in the treatment of venereal disease and had enough customers to keep themselves in business. But Franklin did not escape one of the other realities of unpro- tected sex: children. In an ironic twist in which his fictional life now mim- icked his real life, Franklin had impregnated a “naughty girl.” We do not know if the mother or her friends pressured Franklin to marry, along the lines of Franklin’s escape story of seven years earlier. In fact, we know nothing of what transpired between the two parents-to-be other than the fact that Franklin did not flee the city and took sole custody of the child he named William. Dealing with unwanted pregnancy (remember that Frank- lin said that sleeping with prostitutes came with “great inconvenience”) was nothing new in the colonies. One avenue available to couples in a desperate situation was aborting the fetus. Scholarship suggests that the specific knowledge to terminate pregnancy was widespread among eighteenth-century women, whether they chose to act on that knowledge or not. 72 The most common method was to take a herbal abortifacient like pennyroyal or savin. Neither England nor its American colonies had statute law on abortion, and the courts did not consider abortion before quickening (i.e. when the mother first felt the fetus move) as a criminal act. Other methods were physical, such as strenuous exercise, horseback riding, and blows to the abdomen to induce 28 • Benjamin Franklin miscarriage. Only those in the most desperate of circumstances resorted to dangerous and often fatal surgical abortion. Infanticide (and then claiming a stillbirth) was also an option once the child was born, but this was unques- tionably murder. As the American Weekly Mercury reported in 1722, two women, Eleanor Moore and Elizabeth Garretson, “received the sentence of death upon their being convicted of the murder of a bastard child born of the body of the said Eleanor Moore.”73 Franklin’s Gazette ran a story from Lan- caster county in 1732 reporting that “A Man and his Wife’s Sister were try’d for the Murder of her Bastard Child, and both condemn’d to die.” 74 Both stories suggest that dealing with unwanted pregnancies involved a network of family and friends, both male and female, that worked to circumvent the law and social strictures. It is impossible to say how many women terminated unwanted pregnancies since such activities were done (or at least attempted) in secret. It is also impossible to say exactly what options William’s mother considered, but it is likely that various methods of abortion would have been known and available to her in a city like Philadelphia. Being the father and sole provider for a bastard child ended any remaining hope Franklin might have had of marrying a woman with a dowry. He would have to find someone as unlucky in love as he had been. That person, thanks to Franklin himself, turned out to be Deborah Read. Her mother had advised the two to wait to get married until Franklin returned from his trip to England (her father had died in 1724), but he had written to Debo- rah whilst in London telling her he was unlikely to ever return. So, she married John Rogers, a potter who already had a wife in England. Accord- ing to Franklin, when Deborah learned of this she refused to live with Rog- ers or take his last name. After getting himself deeply in debt, Rogers stole a slave and fled to the West Indies where, rumor had it, he had died in a brawl. We do not know if Deborah ever gave Franklin the slap in the face he so richly deserved when he came knocking at her door, but soon they began talking about marriage. Since Deborah was still married to Rogers, she could not officially marry Benjamin without becoming a bigamist like her presumably late husband. Those convicted of bigamy, male or female, were to be whipped thirty-nine times on the bare back and sentenced to a life of hard labor. Unable to obtain the required bill of divorce from the governor, Benjamin and Deborah declared themselves to be husband and wife in a private ceremony before friends and family on September 1, 1730, entering into the very kind of clandestine common-law marriage that Pennsylvania legislators were trying to prevent. Benjamin and Deborah took full advantage of the wider trend in the American colonies during the eighteenth century of legislators stepping back from trying to control marriage through numerous laws and subsequent revisions to those laws. Pennsylvania’s reworking of the 1701 marriage Inconspicuous Beginnings, 1706–1730 • 29 law in 1730 aimed to punish officials (justices of the peace, clergymen, etc.) who approved illegitimate marriages, not the couples themselves. Consider- ing the Franklins’ marriage, it really was not much of a solution at all. Throughout British America the often complicated procedures designed to legitimate marriage were giving way to simpler personal declarations of marriage like Benjamin and Deborah performed. On one level this meant the increasing privatization of marriage, but it also meant that the courts played an increasing role in regulating marriages. The reliance on the common law (as opposed to specific colonial statutes) shifted the power to regulate from legislators to judges who had to recognize common-law marriages or end up dissolving the unions of a good percentage of the population. Of course, neither the legislature nor the court’s power was absolute, as the notices of self-divorce in the Pennsylvania papers indicate. For Benjamin and Deborah, transgressing a marriage law with no teeth seemed like a much better idea than openly flouting the bigamy statute by getting married in front of a government official. Of course, they could always claim that Deb- orah’s first marriage was invalid because of Rogers’ alleged bigamy but, as Franklin noted, “this could not be easily prov’d, because of the distance &c.” 75 Certainly the government did have some power to enforce its own laws. In fact, on July 16, Franklin had printed a news item stating that “Richard Evans received 39 lashes at the publick Whipping post, having been convicted of Bigamy. He is also to be imprisoned during Life, and kept to hard Labour.” 76 Not getting legitimately married also decreased the potential that the creditors of Deborah’s legal husband would come looking for payment from Franklin. For Deborah, marrying Benjamin was a gamble. He had a bad track record of relationships with women so far, as she knew first hand. He now had a bastard son that she would be expected to mother. She could be accused of committing adultery because she was not divorced and her husband’s death had never been confirmed. This could mean scrutiny from her peers as well as legal action. The first offense meant twenty-one lashes and a year of hard labor. A second offense meant twenty-one lashes and seven years hard labor or a £100 fine. Subsequent offenses meant the same punishment plus being branded on the forehead with the letter A. Of course, it was unlikely that Deborah would ever face such charges or punishments unless Rogers returned and took her to court. Financially speaking, the Reads had more going for them in 1730 than Franklin did. He was in debt and there was no guarantee that his printing shop would not fold like Keimer’s before him. In 1729, Deborah’s mother, Sarah, had paid £365 to repurchase the family lots her late husband had mortgaged. 77 These lots became central to the development of the Franklins’ home and business— what we now call Franklin Court. Benjamin had yet to succeed in business, 30 • Benjamin Franklin but Sarah Read had supported her family, in part, by selling a variety of salves and ointments aiming to cure everything from burns to head lice. 78 With Meredith out of the picture, Franklin was in need of a printing partner, a job that fell to Deborah. As Jennifer Reed Fry argues, “in marrying Deborah, Benjamin gained much need labor and support for his fledgling enterprise and access to valuable real estate.”79 A lot of things could have gone wrong with Deborah and Benjamin declaring themselves married. But, “none of the inconveniences happened that we had apprehended,” Franklin noted.80 And so he entered his twenty- fifth year as a husband, a father, and the owner of a printing business that had yet to prove its value. As a young son from a large family, an indentured apprentice, an author, a runaway, an idealist, an Atlantic traveler, a workman, a schemer, a business owner, a debtor, a pleasure-seeker, a fornicator, the father of a bastard, and a common-law husband, Franklin’s life had taken some interesting turns. He, like so many of his contemporaries, had lived for himself. He had shunned family and lost friends in the pursuit of his own desires. This interesting but perhaps inauspicious beginning is what makes the next chapters of Franklin’s life so astounding.

N OTES 1 Benjamin Franklin was born on both January 6, 1705 and January 17, 1706. How is this possible? The answer lies in the fact that when Franklin was born, the British world operated under a different calendar than the one we use today. In the early 1700s, the Julian calendar organized peoples’ lives, but its failure to accurately mimic the solar year, combined with its use since the time of Julius Caesar, meant that by the 1750s the calendar was off by eleven days. Although the Gregorian calendar fixed this problem in 1582 by altering the number of leap years, the British world did not adopt the new calendar until 1752. When it did, Parlia- ment also officially changed the start of the new civil year (as opposed to the new calendar year) from the traditional March 25 to the now-familiar January 1. Before then, it was not uncommon to write both years from January to March. For example, when Franklin wrote to William Strahan on January 1, he dated his letter “1746, 7” and wished Strahan “many happy New years.” To catch Britons up with the rest of world using the Gregorian calendar, Parlia- ment removed eleven days from 1752—September 4–14, to be exact. Benjamin Franklin’s original birthday of January 6, 1705, 6 was actually January 17, 1706 by the “new stile.” 2 Richard Middleton, Colonial America: A History, 1565–1776, 3rd Edition (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2002), 381. 3 Ibid., 226. For the birth and death dates of the Revere family, see David Hackett Fischer, Paul Revere’s Ride (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), Appendix A, 297. 4 John Williams, Several arguments proving, that inoculating the small pox is not contained in the law of physick, either natural or divine, and therefore unlawful (Boston: J. Franklin, 1721), 2. 5 Middleton, 228, 345. 6 Onania; Or the Heinous Sin of Self-Pollution (Boston, 1724), 59, 62, 64. 7 Joseph Sewall, When the Godly Cease, and Faithful Fail; We Must Seek to God for Help (Bos- ton, 1737), 22. 8 As quoted in Brian D. Carroll, “ ‘I indulged my desire too freely’: Sexuality, Spirituality, and the Sin of Self-Pollution in the Diary of Joseph Moody, 1720–1724,” The William and Mary Quarterly 60 (Jan., 2003): 155. Inconspicuous Beginnings, 1706–1730 • 31

9 John Taylor, The Value of a Child (Philadelphia, 1753), 5–7. 10 Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography , parts 1 and 2 [electronic edition]. Papers of Benjamin Franklin . The Packard Humanities Institute. http://franklinpapers.org . Unless otherwise noted, all electronic edition citations are to the online version of Yale’s Papers of Benjamin Franklin. 11 “An Act in addition to an Act for the Settlement and Support of Schools and School-Masters,” in Acts and Laws, passed by the Great and General Court or Assembly , (Boston, 1702), 218. 12 Samuel Eliot Morrison, Three Centuries of Harvard , thirteenth printing (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2001 [1936]), 102. 13 Franklin, Autobiography , parts 1 and 2 [electronic edition]. 14 Ibid., part 2. 15 David Waldstreicher, Runaway America: Benjamin Franklin, Slavery, and the American Revo- lution (New York: Hill and Wang, 2004), 67. 16 Thomas Tryon, Some Memoirs (1705), as quoted in Tristram Stuart, The Bloodless Revolution: A Cultural History of Vegetarianism from 1600 to Modern Times (New York: Norton, 2006), 62. 17 Franklin, Autobiography , part 4 [electronic edition]. 1 8 Boston Gazette , October 23, 1721. 1 9 The New England Courant , June 11, 1722. 2 0 A Journal of the House of Representatives (Boston: Bartholomew Green, 1722), 28. 2 1 The New England Courant , January 7, 1723. 2 2 Acts and Laws, passed by the Great and General Court of Assembly of Her Majesties province of the Massachusetts Bay in New England (Boston: Bartholomew Green, 1712), 371. 2 3 A Journal of the House of Representatives (Boston: Bartholomew Green, 1722), 82. 24 Franklin, Autobiography , part 2 [electronic edition]. 2 5 The New England Courant , February 11, 1723. 26 Franklin, Autobiography, part 2 [electronic edition]. 27 Ibid., part 3. 28 Robert V. Wells, “Illegitimacy and Bridal Pregnancy in Colonial America,” in Peter Lastlett et al., eds., Bastardy and Its Comparative History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980), 352, 355. 29 Clare Lyons, Sex Among the Rabble: An Intimate History of Gender and Power in the Age of Revolution, Philadelphia, 1730–1830 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 60–61. 30 Franklin, Autobiography , part 3 [electronic edition]. 3 1 American Weekly Mercury , February 19, 1723. 3 2 Pennsylvania Gazette , July 3, 1729. 33 Franklin, Autobiography , part 3 [electronic edition]. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid., part 4. 36 Ibid., part 3. Emphasis added. 37 Ibid. 38 Ibid., part 4. 3 9 American Weekly Mercury , November 3, 1726. 40 Lyons, Sex Among the Rabble , 15. 41 Franklin, Autobiography , part 4 [electronic edition] 42 Plan of Conduct, 1726 [electronic edition]. 43 Franklin, Autobiography , part 4 [electronic edition]. 44 Notes and Queries, The Pennsylvania Magazineof History and Biography 43 (1919): 276. 45 Franklin, Autobiography , part 4 [electronic edition]. 46 Ibid., part 6 [electronic edition]. 47 http://www.librarycompany.org/bfwriter/entre.htm. Franklin says “40 sheets” in his autobiography, but the Library Company has determined it to be 44.5 sheets. The final product is William Sewel, The history of the rise, increase, and progress, of the Christian people called Quakers , 3rd Edition, corrected (Philadelphia: Samuel Keimer), 1728. 32 • Benjamin Franklin

48 Franklin, Autobiography , part 6 [electronic edition]. 4 9 October 1. 1728. Advertisement (Philadelphia: Samuel Keimer, 1728). 50 A digital copy of the 1728 edition can be found at http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/ HistSciTech/HistSciTech-idx?id=HistSciTech.Cyclopaedia01 51 Ephraim Chambers, Cyclopaedia, or Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences , 2 vols. (Lon- don, 1728), 1:7. 5 2 American Weekly Mercury , January 28, 1729. 53 The Busy-Body, No. 1, American Weekly Mercury , February 4, 1729. 54 Franklin, Autobiography , part 6 [electronic edition]. 55 Gertrude MacKinney, ed., Pennsylvania Archives (Philadelphia, 1931) Eighth series, 3: 1889. 5 6 Pennsylvania Gazette , July 3, 1729. 57 Franklin, Autobiography , part 6 [electronic edition]. 5 8 The Weekly News-Letter , July 25, 1728. 5 9 New England Weekly Journal , August 5, 1728. 6 0 The Weekly News-Letter , September 4, 1729. 6 1 Pennsylvania Gazette , October 9, 1729. 62 Franklin, Autobiography , part 6 [electronic edition]. 63 Middleton, Colonial America , 226. 64 Franklin, Autobiography , part 7 [electronic edition]. 65 Act of October 28, 1701 (2 St.L.161, Ch. 109). 66 Act of February 14, 1730 (4 St.L.154, Ch. 311). 67 Middleton, Colonial America , 228. 68 1 Corinthians, Chapter 7, verse 9, King James Version. 69 Franklin, Autobiography , part 7 [electronic edition]. 70 Letter from Christopher Sauer, August 1, 1725, reprinted in The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 84 (April, 1960): 230. 7 1 Pennsylvania Gazette , May 26, 1737. 72 Lyons, Sex Among the Rabble , 98, n46. 7 3 American Weekly Mercury , April 26, 1722. 7 4 Pennsylvania Gazette , May 18, 1732. 75 Franklin, Autobiography , part 7 [electronic edition]. 7 6 Pennsylvania Gazette , July 23, 1730. 77 Jennifer Reed Fry, “ ‘Extraordinary Freedom and Great Humility’: A Reinterpretation of Deb- orah Franklin,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 127 (Apr., 2003): 175. 7 8 Pennsylvania Gazette , August 26, 1731. 79 Fry, “ ‘Extraordinary Freedom and Great Humility,’ ” 175. 80 Franklin, Autobiography , part 7 [electronic edition]. CHAPTER 2 F ROM TRADESMAN TO GENTLEMAN, 1730–1750

The printing profession was not a particularly glamorous one. Composing was precise and tedious, and pressing the final product was very physical work. ThePennsylvania Gazette alone was four pages long with subscriptions reaching more than 1,500 in the 1740s. 1 That meant pressing 6,000 pages on a weekly basis to produce just the newspaper, to say nothing of Franklin’s other printing ventures. Printers were respected for their craft, like other skilled artisans, but printing was by no means a guaranteed way to influence and wealth. The failed printers who came before Franklin attested to that. And yet, influence and wealth is precisely what Benjamin Franklin achieved. He realized that printing differed from other skilled crafts in that it had “chiefly to do with Men’s Opinions.” This meant that “whereas the Smith, the Shoemaker, the Carpenter, or the Man of any other Trade, may work indifferently for People of all Persuasions, without offending any of them,” printers often faced criticism for printing opinions with which other people disagreed.2 And yet, this was the genius of the printing business. Find a controversy engaging to enough people and your readership increased. Inoffensive and entertaining material also had the same effect because of its broad appeal. Printers who partnered with the people whose opinions mattered also saw their business increase. Franklin was able to do all of these things to turn his printing shop into an incredibly profitable venture—so profitable, in fact, that he retired into the ranks of the genteel in 1748 at the age of forty-two, eighteen years after dissolving his partnership with James Meredith and striking out on his own. Some scholars estimate that his income, twice that of Pennsylvania’s governor, reached almost £2,000 a year through various partnerships and deals that brought in money long after he stopped working the press with his own hands.3 34 • Benjamin Franklin

The story of Franklin’s incredible success, especially as he told it in his autobiography, has often been touted as the quintessential American story. Rags to riches. Rugged individualism. The self-made man. There is good reason why this story resonates—Franklin designed it that way when he sat down to write his life story in 1771. As William Pencak argues, “it is impossible to know if much of the Autobiography is fact or fiction. Franklin delib- erately clouded his activities with ambiguity through an all too-deceptive sense of humor and theatricality.” 4 While Franklin did indeed obtain riches, the “self-made” part of the story is more complicated than any cliché can account for. Franklin’s success in the 1730s and 1740s can be attributed to a combination of personal business acumen and larger cultural and social shifts in the colonies that saw an ever-increasing importance placed on the printed word. That Franklin recognized and exploited these changes to his advantage is a testament to his sharp mind and business sense, but he did not do it alone. As we delve into Franklin’s daily life as it played out within these larger changes we see a man supported outside the home by a network of patrons, friends, colleagues, and acquaintances, and inside the home by his wife, his mother-in-law, his son, his nephew, his journeymen and apprentices, and his slaves. His story is intimately bound to their stories. The 1730s saw Franklin establish himself as a respectable citizen of Phil- adelphia. The first important element of this reputation was his family. He never tried to hide the fact that William was a bastard, and children born out of wedlock were certainly common enough for Franklin’s youthful indiscretions not to taint his future status. He also benefited from the sexual double standards of the day that largely excused male sexual transgressions while punishing those of females. But where society was able to forgive, Deborah was not. As Sheila Skemp argues, William’s stepmother “barely tol- erated his presence.” 5 In 1732, Benjamin and Deborah had a son of their own, Francis Folger Franklin. William and Franky (as his parents affection- ately called him) enjoyed a more comfortable childhood than Benjamin ever did. Denied complete schooling as a child, Franklin placed an advertisement for tutors for his sons when Franky was just two years old. His family grew once again in 1734 when he took in his nephew after reconcil- ing with James, the brother he had escaped from a decade earlier. “Our former Differences were forgotten, and our Meeting was very cordial and affectionate,” Franklin remembered.6 James was quite ill and wanted Benjamin to take in James Jr. (Jemmy) and train him as a printer. Benjamin agreed and James died soon after in February of 1735. Tragedy struck again in 1736 when Franky, already suffering from dysentery, contracted smallpox and died. Benjamin and Deborah were devastated. Deborah would keep the post- humous portrait Benjamin had commissioned of Franky prominently dis- played in the house. Benjamin never got over the death of his second From Tradesman to Gentleman, 1730–1750 • 35 son. In 1770, he wrote to his sister that thirty-six years later he still could not think of Franky “without a Sigh.” 7 Franklin had become an advocate for inoculating against smallpox. As he described it, inoculating involved making a cut on the arm and then applying “a dry Scab or two” from a person with smallpox, or “fresh Matter taken from a Pustule and kept warm till apply’d to the Incision.” 8 Naturally, a rumor spread that Franky had died from this procedure that had yet to gain wide acceptance. “I do hereby sincerely declare, that he was not inoculated,” Franklin told the public in his Gazette, adding that he still thought “that Inoculation was a safe and bene- ficial Practice.”9 He and Deborah would not have another child until their daughter, Sally, was born on September 11, 1743. She was inoculated at ten o’clock in the morning on April 18, 1746. The second element of Franklin’s establishment as a respectable citizen was his growing attention to the common good. “I began now to turn my Thoughts a little to public Affairs, beginning however with small Matters,” he wrote.10 He drafted new regulations for the night watch (and included a proportional tax system that taxed the rich at a higher rate to support it), and organized the Union Fire Company to better protect the largely wooden Philadelphia from fire. But perhaps his most enduring legacy from this time was the formation of the first subscription library in the colonies in 1731, the Library Company. Although the Library Company exists today with its original holdings intact, in the first few decades of its existence it actually served very few people. With very little domestic production, books had to be imported from England and therefore were not cheap. As Franklin remembered, “So few were the Readers at that time in Philadelphia, and the Majority of us so poor, that I was not able with great Industry to find more than Fifty Persons, mostly young Tradesmen, willing to pay . . . Forty shillings each, and Ten Shillings per Annum” to belong to the Library Com- pany. 11 A decade later the membership had increased to only seventy, but the library’s holdings (valued at £500) had grown enough to be moved from the librarian’s house (Franklin’s journeyman, Louis Timothée; then Frank- lin himself; then William Parsons) to the west wing of the State House. By that time proprietor Thomas Penn had donated some land on which to build a library. Franklin also turned his perpetual scientific curiosity to projects of public interest. In 1742 he invented an iron fireplace insert (what we now call the Franklin Stove) meant to decrease smoke inside the house, better heat rooms, and increase fuel efficiency. “The Use of these Fireplaces in very many Houses both of this and the neighbouring Colonies, has been and is a great Saving of Wood to the Inhabitants,” he wrote in his autobiography.12 Franklin refused the governor’s offer to grant an exclusive patent on his design, telling him that since he benefited from the inventions of others, he 36 • Benjamin Franklin should make his own invention available to others. He promoted the new design in a detailed 1744 pamphlet explaining how his stove made use of the principle that “Air is rarified by Heat, and condens’d by Cold” to improve the circulation of heat and discharge of smoke. 13 Convection was just starting to be understood (Franklin did not use the term in his pamphlet), and so the stove never did operate the way Franklin suggested it would on paper. It would take the experiments of Sir Benjamin Thompson (aka loyalist commander Count von Rumford) in the 1790s to greatly improve fireplace design. 14 When Thomas Jefferson drew up plans to remodel Monticello, he noted that he wanted “Count Rumford’s fire places in the square rooms.”15 The third element of Franklin’s establishment as a respectable citizen was his success as a printer. Franklin started building his business by mimicking and then undermining his competitor, Andrew Bradford. He secured two key positions in 1737 that once belonged to Bradford and that helped him grow his business: official printer of the province of Pennsylvania, and deputy postmaster in Philadelphia. The first meant steady, lucrative work, printing the votes and proceedings of the assembly for the year, the gover- nor’s speeches, or any other communication that came from the government. The second paid poorly but gave Franklin access to networks of information and distribution that benefited his newspaper business. And, it almost certainly gave him a sense of smug satisfaction to take the reins of a station once occupied by his rival. After all, Bradford had lost the job because of “Negligence in rendering, and Inexactitude of his Accounts.” Franklin used the story in his autobiography to teach all young men the lesson “that they should always render Accounts and make Remittances with Great Clearness and Punctuality.” 16 It was advice he himself had a hard time following, observing that “Order . . . with regard to Places for Things, Papers, &c. I found extreamly difficult to acquire.”17 The post office was a bit of a sore spot for Franklin. When he first started the Gazette , Bradford ran the post office. “It was imagined he had better Opportunities of obtaining News, his Paper was thought a better Distributer of Advertisements than mine,” Franklin lamented, “and therefore had many more, which was a profitable thing to him and a Disadvantage to me.”18 If public opinion that Franklin was running a second-rate paper was not bad enough, Bradford also forbade Franklin from distributing the Gazette via the post. He therefore had to bribe the post riders to carry his paper behind Bradford’s back. Franklin’s success as a printer was also due to Poor Richard’s Almanack , first published in 1732. Again, an almanac-style publication was nothing new for printers; Franklin’s joined no fewer than five other almanacs already being regularly published in Philadelphia alone. The question was how to stand out in a saturated market. First, Franklin was one of the best printers in Philadelphia, and he consistently turned out high-quality From Tradesman to Gentleman, 1730–1750 • 37 material. As much as he disliked being an apprentice, James had taught him well. Second, as Franklin wrote, “I endeavour’d to make it both entertaining and useful, and it accordingly came to be in such Demand that I reap’d considerable Profit from it, vending annually near ten Thousand.”19 The almanac was purely popular reading meant to serve everyone from Newfoundland to South Carolina, as the title page stated. As Franklin admitted in his first edition, almanacs were about making money. They were popular in part because they played into the prevailing superstitions and religious beliefs that shaped peoples’ lives, giving some hope for surety in an unsure world. What constellations would govern the various parts of your body in 1733? Franklin had a detailed chart that would tell you. Each month got its own page that spelled out the number of days in that month, the church observances, the weather forecast, and the times the sun and the moon rose and set. Almanacs also provided encyclopedic information. How many pearches in a furlong? Forty. Who ruled England in 857? Ethel- bald. How many years since Oliver Cromwell had died? Seventy-five (in 1733). When would the Pennsylvania Supreme Court convene? April 10 and September 24. Sprinkled throughout were plenty of Franklin’s witty words of wisdom. A good number of these were about sex, marriage, and the seemingly eternal battle of the sexes. In fact, stories of the fictitious Richard and his nagging wife, Bridget, ran throughout the twenty-five years Franklin published the almanac. In the second installment in 1734, Rich- ard thanked his readers whose patronage enabled his wife “to get a pot of her own,” no longer “oblig’d to borrow one from a Neighbour.” The issue was packed full of sayings about women, both good (“And therefore all you Men that have good Wives, Respect their Virtues equal with your lives”) and bad (“I know not which lives more unnatural lives, Obeying Husbands, or commanding wives”).20 As Richard Godbeer argues, Franklin’s almanac contained “material that was both lewd and frankly hostile toward women.”21 That it sold so well tells us that society was not much different. The 1730s saw the beginning of change for printers and the concept of freedom of the press. These changes stimulated a significant increase in the amount of material colonial printers were turning out by 1740. As in other colonies, printers in Pennsylvania were often at the mercy of government officials who took offense to any critiques of their job performance. Andrew Bradford had taken some heat from the Pennsylvania assembly for printing the second-to-last installment of the Busy-Body essay series that Franklin had started in February of 1729. The essay critiqued those leaders who had “for the sake of great posts, pensions, and pompous titles . . . abandoned their good old principles of liberty.” 22 These were fighting words in the Pennsylvania of 1729, where the political sphere was rife with division and vitriol and an election was just around the corner. The factions that had 38 • Benjamin Franklin developed under Governor Sir William Keith (the one who had promised to set Franklin up in his own printing shop) were still playing out under his replacement, Patrick Gordon. The contours of Pennsylvania politics, with a few variations, changed very little from the late 1600s to the beginning of the American Revolution. Although the people supporting each faction changed over time, the most basic division was between the proprietary interest (i.e., the Penn family and their allies) and the assembly (generally those who resented proprietary control). William Keith had become governor in 1717 on proprietary supporter James Logan’s recommendation, but he soon came to resent the influence Logan had on provincial affairs through his seat on the gover- nor’s council. The proprietors removed Keith as governor in 1726, but instead of leaving the colony, he ran for a seat in the assembly, believing that he could pull together a broad coalition of voters. He had, after all, founded two political clubs for his supporters: the Tiff Club (or Leather Aprons) for the workingmen, and the Gentlemen’s Club for elite Keithians. On the day the assembly met to elect its speaker, Keith rode into the city on horseback while ships in the harbor fired their guns. Behind him were eighty mounted members of the Gentleman’s Club, and behind them a parade of artisans, journeymen, and apprentices. The ploy failed, and after he lost again in the 1727 election, Keith headed back to England.23 Even with Keith out of the picture, Philadelphia city and county elected a slate of Keithians to the assembly who refused to take their seats in support of the former governor.24 What would the election of 1729 bring? The infighting of Keithian politics could only harm the people and their liberty, some thought. As the Busy-Body essay concluded, “Let us exert ourselves for liberty, and don’t tamely sit by and allow any part of it to be wrested from us by any man, or combination of men whatsoever.”25 Governor Patrick Gordon and his council considered the piece to be “wicked and seditious libel” that promoted confusion “under the Notion of Liberty.”26 The council ordered Bradford to be taken into custody and questioned, and his home and print shop searched for an original copy of the essay so that its author could be prosecuted as well. Despite this harassment, Busy-Body was back in the next issue for a final installment. Given the time-consuming nature of colonial printing, Bradford already had the front page composed and ready for the press before his arrest, but added a small introduction as soon as he got out of prison: “I have not enlarged, lessened, or altered [the essay], for what has happened upon publishing the other. These are my own sentiments,” Bradford assured his readers.27 The final Busy-Body essay pulled no punches. A provincial election was to be held in a few days and “men of capacity, virtue, and stability [were] not very plenty.” But the schisms of the 1720s were coming to an end. In his fourth installment of the Busy-Body, Franklin had From Tradesman to Gentleman, 1730–1750 • 39 promised to write a history of the Tiff Club, but now, he joked, the project had been abandoned because the club had been “dissolved by the present fashionable Liquor.” 28 Only five Keithians were elected to the legislature in October 1729, and the province settled down for a period of relative stability under a new speaker, lawyer Andrew Hamilton. Andrew Hamilton became a central figure in another crucial development for the press in the early eighteenth century: the trial of John Peter Zenger. It was a trial that would interest Americans for the rest of the 1700s, with the small pamphlet Zenger had written about it in 1736 being reprinted until at least 1799. If Franklin remembered Zenger as the apprentice whose employment prevented him from getting a job with William Bradford when he fled to New York from Boston, he did not say. Lawyer James Alexander hired Zenger to publish a newspaper that would serve as a venue for Alexander’s anonymous tirades against notorious New York governor, William Cosby. Not surprisingly, Cosby was having none of it. He convened a committee to collect evidence of sedition on the New-York Weekly Journal’s pages, and ordered the offending issues to be burned. Zenger was then arrested for libel and tried before the New York Supreme Court in 1735. On first gloss, Zenger’s predicament seems similar to what had happened to Bradford and even James Franklin before him. Under English law, the truth or falsity of statements made against government officials was irrele- vant, because all that mattered was whether or not the statements turned the people against the government. In the colonies, such accusations were usually accompanied with a certain amount of pageantry: the offending printer was thrown in jail where he would offer the expected supplications and apologies, thus restoring the balance between the rulers and the ruled. But there are a few things that made the Zenger case different. First, while colonial assemblies exercising broad judicial powers regularly called printers before them to answer for various perceived affronts, there had been only a handful of actual trials for seditious libel before 1735.29 Second, essays like those Zenger printed ridiculing the governor were usually the stuff of anonymous pamphleteers. Indeed, of all the colonial trials for seditious libel, only Zenger’s addressed comments published in a newspaper. Third, Andrew Hamilton did not deny the charges against his client. Instead, he argued that if the prosecution could prove what Zenger printed about the governor was false, then he would agree that the essays were libel. The judge would not allow such a defense, but the damage had been done. In his closing statement, Hamilton exploited Cosby’s unpopularity and asked the men of the jury to make such a decision that “every Man who prefers Free- dom to a Life of Slavery will bless and honour you, as Men who have baffled the Attempt of Tyranny.”30 Zenger was acquitted. 40 • Benjamin Franklin

It is easy to see how generations of historians have latched on to the Zenger case as a precursor to the First Amendment and a taste of the revolutionary rhetoric that would force a split from the Crown and establish the United States under a new constitution and bill of rights. Those looking for legal precedent have been less enthusiastic since no laws were changed in the wake of the trial in England or the colonies regarding the press or freedom of speech. Nevertheless, as Paul Finkelman argues, the Zenger trial “permanently alter[ed] the politics of press freedom in the American colonies,” making it “the most significant political trial of the prerevolutionary period—perhaps of the entire colonial era.” 31 For the trajectory of Franklin’s life and career, the Zenger case’s significance lies not in the law, but in the growth of a genre of writing Franklin employed and that was employed against him: satire. It was a growth made possible by the changing relationship between the press and those in power. After Zenger, colonial governors were less likely to prosecute printers for seditious libel. It was actually Sir William Keith who launched Pennsylvania satire in 1726 by attacking James Logan and his other enemies in The Observator’s Trip to America. Logan hit back in a variety of pamphlets, the most sophis- ticated being A More Just Vindication of the Honourable Sir William Keith . In true satiric form he inverted Keith’s previously published vindication of himself by calling it “a Scandalous Libel” that heaped “unparalleled abuses” on the governor. 32 Franklin was no stranger to satire or to libel. As an apprentice under his brother he had developed a reputation “as a young Genius that had a Turn for Libelling and Satyr.”33 As Keith and Logan traded barbs, Franklin was busy trying to undermine Keimer and his printing business. As Busy-Body he poked fun at Keimer, and chided a reader who tried to assert that Franklin’s essays were actually attacks on the government. “A certain Gentleman has taken a great Deal of Pains to write a Key to the Letter in my No. 4.,” Franklin informed his readers, “wherein he has ingeniously converted a gentle Satyr upon tedious and impertinent Visi- tants into a Libel on some in the Government.” 34 Andrew Bradford printed all of the pamphlets in the Keith-Logan fight, suggesting that there was a viable market for satire. Indeed, the print market in general began to expand in Pennsylvania in the 1730s and 1740s. As Quaker politicians shifted from their elite persona of the 1720s (in opposition to Keith’s populism) to a more popular one set against proprietary privilege, growing ethnic populations in the west swelled along with the number of disenfranchised Philadelphians. 35 Approximately 80 percent of men in Philadelphia were literate, and male literacy rates varied between 60 and 75 percent in the counties outside of the city.36 Taverns, which increased from 14 in 1726 to 120 by 1765, were one key venue through which printed news flowed in the city.37 Coffee houses also supported and encouraged a From Tradesman to Gentleman, 1730–1750 • 41 growing print culture. As places to read or hear the news they became increasingly popular (and numerous) locations for Philadelphians to exchange information and debate the issues of the day. When Franklin (writing as Martha Careful) chided Keimer for printing information about abortion, part of the scandal was that the paper would “be read in all Tav- erns and Coffee-Houses, and by the Vulgar.”38 Likewise, when evangelical preacher George Whitefield visited Philadelphia in 1740, he complained about the people who “mutter in Coffee Houses, give a Curse, drink a Bowl of Punch, and then cry out against me, for not preaching up more Morality.” 39 To those in rural communities, itinerant preachers, merchants, and post- riders carried the printed word westward. The issue of defense and militias in a pacifist colony (discussed in more detail in chapter 3), and the increasing number of literate but non-English inhabitants to the west of the city, set the stage for the biting and scurrilous satires of the 1760s. At the end of the 1730s, another social phenomenon spread through Pennsylvania and the other colonies that benefited Franklin greatly: the evangelical fervor of what we now call the First Great Awakening. Ministers throughout the northern colonies sought to revive their congregations from the spiritual malaise into which they had fallen, most famously Jona- than Edwards in Northampton, Massachusetts. In his popular pamphlet, A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God, Edwards detailed the saving of 500 souls with his revival message emphasizing an individual religious experience of faith over relying on established doctrine. Indeed, believers could have a personal religious experience because God’s “divine and supernatural light” could be “immediately imparted to the soul by the spirit of God.”40 It was a message that appealed first to Calvinist congregations that were perpetually perplexed by the doctrine of predestination. One could never be sure that one was truly saved and predestined by God to go to heaven (one could only exhibit the moral life and actions of a “vis- ible saint”), so a personal religious experience was very appealing because it was something real to latch on to. Edwards’ most famous sermon, “Sin- ners in the Hands of an Angry God,” shows evangelical religion struggling to reconcile predestination with personal salvation. Although God was “hastily gathering in his Elect in all Parts of the Land,” Edwards implored “everyone that is out of Christ” to “awake and fly from the Wrath to come.”41 It was more than just talk. Edwards’ own uncle, Joseph Hawley, despaired over the future of his soul so much that he slit his own throat in June of 1735. Hawley’s suicide considerably dampened the revival spirit in Northampton, but the Great Awakening was larger than one man. The responsibility for the spread of this message of personal salvation lay largely on the shoulders of two men: George Whitefield and Benjamin Franklin. 42 • Benjamin Franklin

Whitefield preached from Georgia to New England, spawning imitators in his wake who delivered sermons in fields and common spaces instead of from the pulpits of established churches. Whitefield drew Franklin into the revival fires of the Great Awakening and Franklin then helped them spread via the printed word. Benjamin Franklin had been hostile toward established religion in his early years, but since adulthood had adopted a less aggressive stance toward what others believed. He rejected the teaching of his pious Puritan childhood and stopped going to church as soon as he was out from under his father’s control, describing himself as “a thorough Deist.”42 Deism was an Enlightenment philosophy that emphasized divine truth through reason and an understanding of nature, not through revelation or established doctrine. While in London, Franklin spelled out his beliefs in a pamphlet titled A Dis- sertation of Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain (1735). By liberty Frank- lin meant the concept of free will. If free will did not exist, then the concept of a predestined elect favored by God was false, he reasoned. In other words, if people could only do what God had ordained or predestined them to do, then “every Creature must be equally esteem’d by the Creator.” Having rather glibly dismissed two great theological debates in a matter of sentences, Franklin declared that pleasure and pain were inseparable parts of a life under the control of an all-knowing and powerful God who only allowed his will to be done on earth. In fact, evil did not really exist because “whatever an infinitely good God hath wise Ends in suffering to be, must be good, is thereby made good, and cannot be otherwise.”43 His own life experience quickly taught him otherwise. People could treat him poorly (even evilly), and he could do (and had done) the same to others. “I began to suspect,” he wrote, “that this Doctrine tho’ it might be true, was not very useful.”44 Franklin avoided church services, though he did contribute money to the Anglican church that Deborah attended. He had no use for established theology and thought church unnecessary. God surely was real, “one Supreme most perfect Being,” but since humans were nowhere near the pin- nacle of creation within the vast universe Franklin imagined to exist, it was illogical to think that such a God demanded human worship. Franklin did not believe in Jesus as the savior of humankind, or that Jesus was God incarnate and the only way to get into heaven. In a personal statement of religious beliefs he wrote in 1728, there is no mention of Jesus. 45 His friend Ezra Stiles would later lament in the last year of Franklin’s life, “As much as I know of Dr. Franklin, I have not an Idea of his religious Sentiments. I wish to know the Opinion of my venerable Friend concerning JESUS of Nazereth [sic].” 46 Franklin did admire Jesus as a role model. Be humble, “imitate Jesus and Socrates,” he told himself.47 But admiration did not equal worship, and in this Franklin differed from many of his contemporaries. From Tradesman to Gentleman, 1730–1750 • 43

The colonists of the early to mid-eighteenth century were a mixed bag when it came to religion. To only say that they were Christians would do a great disservice to the complexity of the religious landscape, and to the theological divisions the peoples of the past saw as so very important. Penn- sylvania alone was home to Quakers, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Moravians, Mennonites, and Dunkers, to name a few, some of whom would face their own internal divisions because of the Great Awakening. Religion was an important way people ordered their lives and understood the world in which they lived—perhaps the most important way. This is not to say that everyone was pious or devout, and religious leaders had struggled against sin and irreligion pretty much from the moment the colonies were founded. However, the existence of God was a given, and his existence explained how the world itself existed. Even Franklin, a confirmed “freethinker,” could not imagine the non-existence of God. What was changing, though, was how humans perceived their relationship to God. The Great Awakening softened the hard line of Calvinism that divided humans into the elect minority and the damned majority. By 1740, most colonial churches offered communion to all morally upright members of the congregation, not just those who could provide evidence of a true conversion experience. Free will was starting to overtake predestination along with the belief that God was benign and had endowed humans with reason to make choices and understand the world around them. The rationality of the European Enlightenment and the development of the scientific method by those such as Isaac Newton pulled people away from strictly theological understandings of the world, but not necessarily from a belief in God. “Philosophy [i.e., science] is no enemy,” wrote Cotton Mather in 1721, “but a very great incentive to religion.”48 What all of this meant by the mid-1700s was an increased emphasis on the individual—the individual who could understand the natural world, think a little more freely, choose a little more openly, and perhaps (if Edwards was right) take some element of control over his or her own salvation. Edwards himself would eventually back away from simple conversion to once again espouse the Calvinist ideal of a predestined elect, but it cost him his job in 1750. Franklin’s Pennsylvania was different from most other colonies in that it did not have an established church and its government was relatively toler- ant of the various strains of Protestantism that had emerged out of the Ref- ormation. The first clause of the first section of the 1701 Charter of Privileges asserted that “no People can be truly happy, though under the greatest Enjoyment of Civil Liberties, if abridged of the Freedom of their Con- sciences, as to their Religious Profession and Worship.” Therefore, no person “who shall confess and acknowledge One almighty God, the Creator, Upholder and Ruler of the World” would be bothered.49 They would not 44 • Benjamin Franklin have to pay tithes to support a local minister, or be forced to go to any particular church, or to do anything that violated their beliefs. Those who believed in Jesus Christ as the savior of the world could serve in the government, though it seems this particular standard was not enforced with any vigor because Franklin would eventually serve in the legislature. The Quak- ers’ comparatively liberal rule and protection of liberty of conscience made Pennsylvania a popular place for European and Native American migrants displaced by war and religious conflict. George Whitefield came to preach to Philadelphia’s heterogeneous population in early November 1739. His fame definitely preceded him. Phila- delphians had read about the dynamic preacher in Franklin’s Gazette as early as 1737. Since May of 1739 they had learned of Whitefield’s growing reputation in England, speaking to as many as 20,000 people at one time. Once in the city he began preaching at Deborah’s place of worship, Christ Church, but soon moved his pulpit to the balcony of the courthouse on Second and Market Streets to accommodate the thousands who came to hear him. Unlike Franklin, Whitefield fully embraced and promoted the soul-saving power of Jesus Christ. One of the sermons he preached in Phil- adelphia, “What Think Ye of Christ,” asserted that Jesus was more than “A Good Man,” he was “the eternal Son of God.” Much like Edwards’ earlier sermons, he pleaded with his listeners to take action and “flee, flee, for your lives . . . for otherwise you will be eternally destroyed.” 50 On this point Franklin and Whitefield would never agree, despite a lifetime of friendship and letter-writing (and, for Whitefield, praying for Franklin’s soul) that began in 1739. Franklin explicitly rejected the specific tenets that defined the various religious groups populating Pennsylvania, preferring the moral and religious code that he had created. He fashioned a list of thirteen virtues to live by: temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity, and humility. It was a code “not wholly without Religion,” as Franklin wrote, but a code free of the various theological debates that divided Christianity so as to be “serviceable to People in all Religions.” 51 If religion was about doing good to others, then surely religion was a useful way for people to order their lives. To this end he financially supported the one and only Presbyterian minister in Philadel- phia, Jebediah Andrews, because Franklin “had still an Opinion of its [religion’s] Propriety, and of its Utility when rightly conducted.”52 He did this even though he thought Andrews was a terrible preacher. The real problem was to define the way to “rightly conduct” a church. In the religious parlance of the day, Franklin’s religious code (though not particularly concerned with salvation and the afterlife) was purely a doctrine of works. Those, like Edwards and Whitefield, who were backing away from predestination and From Tradesman to Gentleman, 1730–1750 • 45 the elect faced a similar criticism. Surely there was no one action that could curry God’s favor, their critics argued. Surely humankind’s salvation rested solely on the grace of God who could easily and justifiably damn sinning humans to hell. As St. Paul had written in Romans 3:28, “therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.” But then, did not James 2:24 say that “by works a man is justified, and not by faith only?” And so the debate continued. Franklin got caught up in the doctrine of faith versus works controversy a few years before Whitefield stepped foot in Philadelphia. In late 1734, a Presbyterian preacher from Ireland named Samuel Hemphill came to Philadelphia to assist Andrews. Hemphill was so good that he brought Franklin back to church. Not only did he preach “with a good voice,” but Franklin also enjoyed the content of his sermons because “they had little of the dogmatical kind, but inculcated strongly the Practice of Virtue, or what in the religious Stile are called Good Works.” 53 But there were some, those who would get dubbed the Old Lights during the Great Awakening, who did not like this new message and so they brought Hemphill up on charges of heterodoxy in front of the Presbyterian synod. Franklin sprang to his defense, penning and printing four pamphlets as well as a piece in the Gazette . Franklin could quote scripture with the best of them. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is Liberty,” he pulled from 2 Corinthians 3:17. That liberty meant that salvation was a personal matter. “One Man’s Salvation does not interfere with the Salvation of another Man,” he wrote, “and therefore every Man is to be left at Liberty to work it out by what Method he thinks best.” 54 In the end, Hemphill left Pennsylvania after it was discovered that he plagiarized his sermons from other preachers’ works, but the controversy had produced two popular Franklin pamphlets. A Defense of the Rev. Mr. Hemphill’s Observations sold well, and Some Observations on the Pro- ceedings Against the Rev. Mr. Hemphill was a best-seller that went into a second edition. Indeed, Franklin could not ignore the relationship between the Great Awakening and the printing business. Simply put, religion sold. Religious works made up 40 percent of colonial printers’ output in 1738, and that number jumped to 60 percent only two years later. With colonists consuming the many words written for and about the revivals, the number of colonial imprints doubled during the 1740s. Franklin had always provided his readers with a popular mix of news, and to accommodate shifting tastes in the 1730s he expanded his coverage of religion by 14.1 percent between 1735 and 1740. 55 Religion broadly, and Whitefield in particular, were good for business. Franklin therefore met with the preacher and the two established what Peter Charles Hoffer calls a partnership of mutual convenience.56 Whitefield wanted 46 • Benjamin Franklin to spread his message far and wide and Franklin wanted to make money. And make money he did. Franklin had already been hedging his bets before Whitefield’s arrival, running stories of the uproar he was causing in England. Combined with the local stories upon Whitefield’s arrival of the “near 6000 people . . . who stood in an awful silence to hear him,” it is no surprise that Franklin’s November 15, 1739, proposal to print Whitefield’s sermons and journals resulted in a subscription list that far exceeded the number of books he was able to print. 57 In an arrangement that would last until Whitefield’s death in 1770, the preacher would supply edited copy and Franklin would print it exclusively. Thousands of people purchased Whitefield’s works from Franklin at two shillings apiece (about $18 in 2014 money), making evangelical religion one of the best things to happen to his business. 58 Although he remained aloof of the central message of the Great Awaken- ing, Franklin was, like so many other people, drawn in by the spectacle that was Whitefield. His powerful voice and message drew in people of all religious persuasions and it seemed to Franklin “as if all the World were growing Religious.” 59 And if this new religious tone created a better society, then that was a good thing. Religion, it seemed, was bringing out the best in the New Lights. The Old Lights quickly banned Whitefield from their lpits,pu so in 1740 his followers from various denominations set themselves to building a meeting hall measuring 100 feet by 70 feet on Fourth and Arch Streets that could accommodate the many people who came to hear him speak. The hall was placed under the care of a board of trustees, all from different denominations so that no one could claim exclusive use of the facility. The building would fall into disuse after Whitefield left Philadel- phia, and Franklin would help acquire it in 1750 to begin establishing the College of Philadelphia. Both Franklin and Whitefield were interested in improvement, both personal and societal. Franklin had done little for anyone but himself in the first twenty-five years of his life, but as a businessman and citizen of Phila- delphia he tried to correct the various errata (as he called them) of his earlier years and do something for the common good. He had a fairly dim view of those in power who were supposed to look out for the people below them. “Few in Public Affairs act from a meer [sic] View of the Good of their Country, whatever they may pretend,” he concluded in 1731. Rather, politicians considered “their own and their Country’s Interest [to be] united.”60 While some leaders might actually do some good, they primarily acted under the notion that what was good for them was also good for the country. In many ways, Franklin’s critique could have applied to himself (though he was not yet “in Public Affairs”). For example, in 1731 he formed a business partnership with a former employee, Thomas Whitmarsh, to open a printing shop in Charleston, South Carolina. On one hand, the print shop would fill a very real public need. The South Carolina legislature had an From Tradesman to Gentleman, 1730–1750 • 47 open offer of a £1,000 loan to any printer who would set up shop in Charles- ton, to be paid off by acting as the government’s official printer. On the other hand, Franklin would benefit financially by getting one-third of the profits for the six years of the partnership agreement. Two other printers took up the legislature’s offer and petitioned to become the colony’s official printer. Whitmarsh lost out, and only became the government printer when his competitor died in July of 1732. Whitmarsh then died in 1733, almost exactly two years after signing the partnership with Franklin. Louis Timo- thée (or Lewis Timothy as he became known) took his place, leaving Frank- lin’s Philadelphia print shop and his post as librarian of the Library Company. Franklin’s partnership with Whitmarsh and then Timothée meant that he profited even more from the slave and servant labor systems that shaped, to varying degrees, all of the colonies’ economies. Every issue of his Gazette carried advertisements for runaway servants and slaves, comprising up to one quarter of the total advertisements placed in the paper.61 “A likely young Negro Woman, fit for all kinds of Household Business, to be dispos’d of. Enquire of Mary Flower, in Water street, near the Crooked Billet,” read one ad in 1730. 62 “Run away last night from Major Butterfield of this City, a Negroe Fellow named Tony, of a middle stature, well-set, 25 Years of Age, has lost one of his little Toes,” read another ad in the next issue.63 At five shillings apiece, these two ads alone cost as much as a yearly subscription to the paper in which they were printed. 64 To supplement the family income, Deborah and her mother (who moved in with the Franklins in 1731) maintained a small store in the Franklin’s house. Deborah’s mother was intimately familiar with slavery, having placed this ad in the Gazette a few months before her daughter married: “A Likely [i.e., capable] Negroe Woman to be Sold. Enquire at the Widow Read’s in Market Street.” 65 Some- times the Franklins dealt in human beings. The print shop acted as a holding cell for slaves and servants brought in by bounty hunters looking for the reward money masters usually offered. Franklin also played the middleman between buyers and sellers. As a 1732 ad read, “A likely New Negro Boy to be disposed of; He is about eighteen Years of Age. Enquire of the Printer hereof.” 66 Whitefield also interacted with the slave economy, and not just because his open-air sermons attracted both slave and free alike. From Philadelphia he worked his way down the eastern seaboard to Georgia, the last American colony to be chartered before the American Revolution as a refuge for England’s poor. Franklin had a rather low opinion of the colony:

instead of being made with hardy industrious Husbandmen accustomed to Labour, the only People fit for such an Enterprise, it was [settled] with Families of broken Shopkeepers and other insolvent Debtors, many of indolent and idle 48 • Benjamin Franklin

habits, taken out of the [Gaols], who being set down in the Woods, unqualified for clearing Land, and unable to endure the Hardships of a new Settlement, perished in Numbers, leaving many helpless Children unprovided for. 67

To solve this very real public problem, Whitefield began raising funds for an orphanage in Georgia. As he headed back north towards Philadelphia, he pleaded with those who came to hear him to donate money to the cause. The trip south had troubled Whitefield. “I think God has a Quarrel with you for your Abuse of and Cruelty to the poor Negroes,” he wrote in an open letter to the slaveholders of Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas. He avoided the question of whether or not Christians should own slaves, arguing instead “it is sinful . . . to use them as bad, nay worse, than as though they were Brutes.”68 If Whitefield had been reading Franklin’s Gazette he could have prepared himself for the shock that was the southern slave system. Right underneath the announcement that Whitefield had arrived in Philadelphia from London was the first news of the Stono Rebellion in South Carolina:

We hear from Charlestown in South Carolina, that a Body of Angola Negroes rose upon the Country lately, plunder’d a Store at Stono of a Quantity of Arms and Ammunition, and murder’d 21 white People, Men, Women and Children before they were suppress’d: That 47 of the Rebels were executed, some gibbeted and the Heads of others fix’d on Poles in different Parts, for a Terror to the rest.69

But like Georgia itself, Whitefield’s orphanage had a hard time staying sol- vent. The ultimate solution was to advocate for the improvement of white society on the backs of black slave labor. The original trustees of Georgia had forbidden slavery, a decision increasingly resented as over the 1730s and 1740s the colony’s population became comprised less poor people from England and more migrants from neighboring South Carolina. By 1747, Whitefield advocated instituting slavery to reverse the colony’s fortunes. “It is impossible for the inhabitants to subsist without the use of slaves,” he wrote. He then began supporting the orphanage with the profits from a slave plantation purchased for him by his wealthy supporters in South Car- olina. “Blessed be God!” he excitedly wrote about the gift, adding that “one negro has been given me. Some more I purpose to purchase this week.”70 The trustees gave in and allowed slavery in Georgia in 1750. Slavery was also allowed in Pennsylvania, and would be until its final abolition in 1847. Although indentured servants were more the norm in the western counties, about half of Philadelphia’s wealthy inhabitants owned slaves and about one in every twelve Philadelphians was enslaved.71 Franklin bought his first slave, a young boy, as late as 1735. It is possible that Franklin From Tradesman to Gentleman, 1730–1750 • 49 purchased another slave by 1745. The reason we do not know for sure is that Franklin, like many other northerners, did not keep careful records of his slaveholding. Evidence of his first slave purchase survives in a receipt for a pair of shoes for his “negro boy” from December of 1735. It is possible that Franklin purchased a second male slave by 1745, since a bill for a beaver hat for “your man Joseph” from 1742, and another for a raccoon hat “for your Negro” in 1745, both survive in Franklin’s papers. 72 It is possible that these are the same person, or two different slaves, or a servant and a slave. Franklin would end up owning at least seven slaves throughout his life. 73 Franklin’s attitudes toward race and slavery were mainstream, which is to say that he had no compunction about owning other human beings. After all, purchasing a slave prompted no comment in his personal papers. While those such as Whitefield called for a more humane slavery, very few called for slavery’s abolition. Even fewer called for black equality. While Franklin did print Benjamin Lay’s 276-page scathing attack on Quaker slaveholders as apostates, he did not include his own name on the title page, preferring the more generic “printed for the author.” 74 He was not above using race to stir up emotion and sway people to his side. For example, in 1731 he drafted a petition to the Pennsylvania Assembly decrying the fairs held in the city twice a year. Such fairs, he wrote, “tend to corrupt the Mor- als, and destroy the Innocence of our Youth; who are at such Times induc’d to Drinking and Gaming, in mix’d Companies of vicious Servants and Negroes.”75 His 1747 plan to form a volunteer militia (discussed in detail in the next chapter) included a warning of the “wanton and unbridled rage, rapine and lust of Negroes, Molattoes, and others.”76 The possibility of such a threat would seem quite plausible to those who read Franklin’s Gazette in the 1730s and 1740s, when it regularly carried stories about lustful black men attacking white women. “Monday last a Negro Man was executed at Gloucester in the Jerseys, for assaulting a White Girl with Intent to ravish her; and afterwards endeavouring to kill her by cutting her Throat,” the Gazette reported in June 1730.77 In 1744, Franklin reported “we hear, that a Negro Man about 19 Years of Age, was apprehended and committed to Prison for ravishing a white Child, aged about 9. ’Tis said he will be burnt alive.”78 Such stories and use of racial rhetoric came from a place of white privilege. The 1730s and 1740s had been good to Franklin in part because he profited from the misery of those with darker skin than his. He had printing partnerships in the slave colonies of South Carolina and Antigua, as well as in the northern seaport most actively engaged in the African slave trade: Newport, Rhode Island. These partnerships brought in revenue not only through printing but also through the flow of goods produced by slave labor. Whitmarsh in South Carolina often sent Franklin rice and Caribbean sugar, 50 • Benjamin Franklin which sold easily in his Philadelphia shop. In this Franklin was not particularly unique. The northern colonies exported some £200,000 a year worth of goods to the West Indies, and Franklin regularly ran advertisements for the sale of the merchandise, human or otherwise, brought back. 79 “To be sold in Lots or singly,” read a 1734 ad in the Gazette , “a choice parcel of Negroes lately imported, consisting chiefly of young Men and Girls, bred to Plantation Business; also Jamaica Rum, Sugar of sundry Sorts, Molasses, Cotton, and Pimento.” 80 Indeed, Franklin was very much part of a world shaped by racialized thinking. He even conceived of the transition from tradesman to gentleman in racial terms. Just like “Molattoes, that . . . are seldom well belov’d either by the Whites or the Blacks,” people who “by their Industry or good Fortune” were able to become genteel were “new Gentleman, or rather half Gentleman, or Mungrel” who could never imitate the “natural and easy Manner of those who have been genteely educated.” 81 But if anyone could mimic the elite it was the well-read and connected Franklin, who in 1748, after turning over the day-to-day operations of the printing business to his foreman, David Hall, retired to be, as he wrote to a friend, “Master of my own Time.”82 To get away from the bustle of it all he moved with his family and his slaves to “a more quiet part of town” on the corner of Sassafras and Second streets. During the 1730s and 1740s Franklin had gained wealth and reputation, establishing himself as a citizen of some significance through his civic endeavors, and his business and political connections. He would soon translate that reputation into a stormy political career that tried to navigate the choppy waters of Pennsylvania’s political scene. As he entered the political arena, he identified himself with the white tradesmen he left behind, claiming that he would protect their interests from those above (who only looked after themselves) and those below, whose wanton and unbridled rage endangered everyone. It was a persona built from his experiences in the 1730s and 1740s and one that would ultimately fail him in the 1760s.

N OTES 1 For circulation estimates, see J. A. Leo Lemay, The Life of Benjamin Franklin , 3 vols. (Philadel- phia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 1:454. 2 Pennsylvania Gazette , June 17, 1731. 3 Gordon Wood, The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin (New York: The Penguin Press, 2004), 54. 4 William Pencak, “Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography , Cotton Mather, and a Puritan God,” Pennsylvania History 53 (Jan. 1986): 22. 5 Sheila Skemp, Benjamin and William Franklin: Father and Son, Patriot and Loyalist (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1994), 7. 6 Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography, part 11 [electronic edition]. Papers of Benjamin Franklin. The Packard Humanities Institute. http://franklinpapers.org . Unless otherwise noted, all electronic edition citations are to the online version of Yale’s Papers of Benjamin Franklin. 7 Benjamin Franklin to Jane Mecom, January 13, 1772 [electronic edition]. From Tradesman to Gentleman, 1730–1750 • 51

8 Benjamin Franklin to William Vassall, May 29, 1746 [electronic edition]. 9 Pennsylvania Gazette , January 15, 1736. 10 Franklin, Autobiography, part 11 [electronic edition]. 11 Ibid., part 8. 12 Ibid., part 12. 13 Benjamin Franklin, An Account of the New Invented Pennsylvanian Fire-Places (Philadelphia: Benjamin Franklin), 1744 [electronic edition]. 14 For a brief account of Rumford and convection, see Sanborn C. Brown, “Count Rumford Discovers Thermal Convection,” Daedalus 86 (Oct., 1957): 340–43. 15 Monticello: remodeling notes, page 16 of 16, [begun 1796], by Thomas Jefferson. N147b; K149b [electronic edition]. Thomas Jefferson Papers: An Electronic Archive. Boston: Massa- chusetts Historical Society, 2003. www.thomasjeffersonpapers.org/ 16 Franklin, Autobiography, part 11 [electronic edition]. 17 Ibid., part 10. 18 Ibid., part 7. 19 Ibid., part 10. 20 Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard, 1734 (Philadelphia: Benjamin Franklin, 1733). 21 Richard Godbeer, Sexual Revolution in Early America (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2002), 272. 2 2 American Weekly Mercury , September 18, 1729. 23 For a more detailed look at the political exploits of Keith, Lloyd, and Logan, see Thomas Wendel, “The Keith-Lloyd Alliance: Factional and Coalition Politics in Colonial Pennsylva- nia.” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 92 (July 1968): 289–305. 24 Norman S. Cohen, “The Philadelphia Election Riots of 1742,”Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 92 (July 1968): 306 n2. 2 5 American Weekly Mercury , September 18, 1729. 26 Samuel Hazard, ed., Pennsylvania Colonial Records (Philadelphia, 1851), 3: 369. Hereafter cited as Colonial Records . 2 7 American Weekly Mercury , September 25, 1729. 28 Ibid., February 25, 1729; August 7, 1729. 29 See the introduction to Paul Finkelman, ed., A Brief Narrative of the Case and Tryal of John Peter Zenger: With Related Documents (New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2010). 30 As quoted in Jill Lepore, New York Burning : Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan (New York: Vintage Books, 2006), 118. 31 Paul Finkleman. “Politics, the Press, and the Law: The Trial of John Peter Zenger,” inAmerican Political Trials , Revised, Expanded Edition, ed. Michal R. Belknap (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994), 26. 32 James Logan, A More Just Vindication of the Honourable Sir William Keith (Philadelphia: Andrew Bradford, 1726), 1. 33 Franklin, Autobiography, part 2 [electronic edition]. 3 4 American Weekly Mercury , March 27, 1729. 35 Only 13 to 15 percent of Philadelphians had the requisite £50 to vote. See Alison Gilbert Olson, “Pennsylvania Satire Before the Stamp Act,” Pennsylvania History 68 (Autumn 2001): 519. 36 F. W. Grub, “Growth of Literacy in Colonial America: Longitudinal Patterns, Economic Models, and the Direction of Future Research,” Social Science History 14 (Winter 1990): 454–55. 37 Olson, “Pennsylvania Satire Before the Stamp Act,” 520. 3 8 The American Weekly Mercury , January 28, 1729. 39 George Whitefield, A Continuation of the Reverend Mr. Whitefield’s Journal (Philadelphia: Benjamin Franklin, 1740), 35. 4 0 New England Weekly Journal , June 2, 1735. For all of Edwards’ works, see the Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University, http://edwards.yale.edu . 41 Jonathan Edwards, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (Boston: S. Kneeland and T. Green, 1741), 25. 52 • Benjamin Franklin

42 Franklin, Autobiography, part 6 [electronic edition]. 43 Benjamin Franklin, A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain (London, 1735) [electronic edition]. 44 Franklin, Autobiography, part 6 [electronic edition]. 45 Benjamin Franklin, “Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion” (1728) [electronic edition]. 46 Ezra Stiles to Benjamin Franklin, January 28, 1790 [electronic edition]. 47 Franklin, Autobiography, part 9 [electronic edition]. 48 Cotton Mather, The Christian Philosopher (Charlestown, MA: J. M’Kown, 1815), 5. 49 Charter of Rights and Privileges, 1701, http://www.constitution.org/bcp/penncharpriv.htm . 50 George Whitefield, What Think Ye of Christ? (Philadelphia: Andrew and William Bradford, 1739), 3, 28. 51 Franklin, Autobiography, part 10 [electronic edition]. 52 Ibid., part 8. 53 Ibid., part 11. 54 Benjamin Franklin, A Letter to a Friend in the Country (Philadelphia: Benjamin Franklin), 14. 55 All statistics in this paragraph are from Lisa Smith, The First Great Awakening in Colonial American Newspapers: A Shifting Story (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2012), 2, 4–5. 56 Peter Charles Hoffer, When Benjamin Franklin Met the Reverend Whitefield (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011), 9. 57 For the 1739 subscription proposal and the story of the 6,000 revivalists, see Pennsylvania Gazette, November 15, 1739; for the subsequent announcement see Pennsylvania Gazette , May 22, 1740. 58 Currency conversion http://futureboy.us/fsp/dollar.fsp?quantity=2¤cy=shillings&from Year=1739 59 Franklin, Autobiography, part 11 [electronic edition]. 60 Observations on Reading History, May 9, 1731 [electronic edition]. 61 David Waldstreicher, Runaway America: Benjamin Franklin, Slavery, and the American Revolution (New York: Hill and Wang, 2004), 24. 6 2 Pennsylvania Gazette , September 10, 1730. 6 3 Pennsylvania Gazette , September 17, 1730. 64 Longer ads cost seven shillings. See Waldstreicher, Runaway America , 24. 6 5 Pennsylvania Gazette , April 16, 1730. 6 6 Pennsylvania Gazette , August 7, 1732. 67 Franklin, Autobiography, part 11 [electronic edition]. 68 George Whitefield, Three Letters from the Reverend Mr. G. Whitefield (Philadelphia: Benjamin Franklin, 1740), 13. 6 9 Pennsylvania Gazette , November 8, 1739. 70 As quoted in Stephen J. Stein, “George Whitefield on Slavery: Some New Evidence,”Church History 42 (Jun., 1973): 245. 71 Approximately 1,400 of Philadelphia’s 18,000 residents in 1760 were enslaved. Hoffer, When Benjamin Franklin Met the Reverend Whitefield, 29–30. See also Gary B. Nash, “Franklin and Slavery,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 150 (Dec., 2006): 618. 72 See Waldstreicher, Runaway America , 26. 73 The “Negro boy” (Joseph?) in 1735; possibly a second slave in 1745; Jemima and Peter in 1750; “a Negro Child” in 1756; King in 1756; Othello in 1757; George in 1763. 74 Benjamin Lay, All slave-keepers that keep the innocent in bondage (Philadelphia: Benjamin Franklin, 1738). 75 Petition to the Pennsylvania Assembly regarding Fairs, 1731 [electronic edition]. 76 Benjamin Franklin, Plain Truth: or, Serious Considerations On the Present State of the City of Philadelphia, and Province of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: Benjamin Franklin, 1747) [electronic edition]. 7 7 Pennsylvania Gazette, June 4, 1730. From Tradesman to Gentleman, 1730–1750 • 53

7 8 Pennsylvania Gazette , December 14, 1744. 79 Richard Middleton, Colonial America: A History, 1565–1776, 3rd Edition (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2002), 207. 8 0 Pennsylvania Gazette , June 27, 1734. 8 1 Pennsylvania Gazette , September 7, 1733. 82 Benjamin Franklin to Cadwallader Colden, September 29, 1748 [electronic edition]. CHAPTER 3 W AR, ELECTRICITY, AND THE MAKING OF A POLITICIAN, 1747–1763

Pennsylvania in the mid-1700s was an important center for science and technology, perhaps the most important in all of the British colonies. Franklin had helped secure that reputation in part with his beloved Junto and its transformation into the American Philosophical Society in 1743. There was much for Franklin to love about the Quaker city. Philadelphia in the 1740s was well on its way to achieving its status as the wealthiest and most populous city in all of the British colonies by the time of the Revolu- tion, largely because of the export of flour and wood products to Europe and the slave-based sugar colonies in the West Indies. The 2,076 houses in the city in 1749 more than doubled to 4,474 by 1769. 1 True, with this rapid expansion did come an increasing disparity of wealth in Philadelphia’s out- skirts, but Franklin always lived in the wealthier core of the city. Although death rates rose and fell dramatically over the 1740s and 1750s due to various epidemics and an influx of sickly immigrants, the average death rate was in decline from the 1760s through the 1770s. 2 Franklin’s growing wealth was no protection against these diseases, of course, as he tragically found out with the death of his own son. “I had on the whole abundant Reason to be satisfied with my being established in Pennsylvania,” Franklin wrote in his autobiography. And yet, he continued, there were “two things that I regretted: There being no Provision for Defence, nor for a compleat Education of Youth; No Militia nor any College.” 3 He would try to solve both deficiencies by applying his success as a private businessman to his increasingly public life. But whereas the Library Company and the Junto had limited appeal or immediate influence, the militia was a popular subject that put Franklin’s name on the lips of thousands of Pennsylvanians. War, Electricity, Politician, 1747–1763 • 55

Combined with his scientific pursuits and reputation as a printer, Frank- lin’s ability to galvanize the public (either for or against him) during the military and imperial crises of the mid-eighteenth century allowed him to spread his political influence on a local, then colonial, and then international stage. In taking on the militia issue, Franklin waded into some tricky waters. Pennsylvania was the only mainland British colony without a militia law mandating that men help provide for the common defense. This was because the 1701 constitution stipulated that no man could be compelled to do anything that violated his conscience, and bearing arms certainly violated Quaker and other pacifist consciences throughout the province. The Quaker position was that militias were unnecessary because security would come through negotiation and by not acting aggressively in the first place. This pacifist approach increasingly came under fire in the 1750s as violence in the western counties undermined Quaker rule and galvanized an oppo- sitional ideology that emphasized the duty of all to the common defense through military service. As discussed in chapter 5, this ideology eventually fueled an internal revolution against the Quakers that unseated them from power as the colonies declared themselves independent of British rule. Although the number of Quakers in the Pennsylvania assembly declined during the first three decades of the eighteenth century, they were able to build an effective popular coalition with non-Quakers who either shared their pacifism, prized liberty of conscience, or saw no immediate danger that necessitated forced militia service. The relative peace the colonies enjoyed with the conclusion of Queen Anne’s War in 1714 only served to strengthen this alliance. The commencement of the War of Jenkins’ Ear with Spain in 1739 proved how strong the Quaker alliance had become, as it was able to keep a militia law at bay despite the influx of non-pacifist Presbyterians and Anglicans. Pennsylvania governor George Thomas, formerly a planter in Antigua, tried to bypass the assembly and raise a militia of his own in 1740 for deployment to the Caribbean. More than 700 men volunteered, but the scheme came to an abrupt halt when it was discovered that some enlistees were indentured servants who had illegally been promised their freedom by the governor’s recruiters. In the ensuing crisis, a blustering Thomas wrote to London asking that all Quakers be removed from office so that the province could put itself in a posture of defense. Some Quakers saw that compromise on defense issues was now necessary. James Logan, a Scotch-Irish Quaker, suggested that “all such who for conscience-sake cannot join in any law for self-defense, should not only decline standing candidates at the ensuing election for representatives themselves, but also advise all others who are equally scrupulous to do the same.”4 The main concern was collective self- defense: Protestants defending themselves against Catholics, and the British 56 • Benjamin Franklin arming themselves against the French. When the French joined the war in 1744, the threat of attack and the need to prepare some kind of defense system was suddenly more pressing. Governor Thomas once again tried to raise a militia by preparing a list of qualified men in each county to whom he could offer commissions. He also asked the assembly for arms, ammunition, and a militia law. Although the assembly did not grant any of these requests, it did agree to provide money for the king’s use (he could spend it on whatever he wanted), a tactic that served to deflect some criticism from London. This prolonged and largely unresolved debate prompted Franklin to step in with a remedy for the defense problem: organized but non-mandatory military service. The “long-continued Endeavours of our Governor Thomas to prevail with our Quaker assembly to pass a Militia Law, and make other Provisions for the Security of the Province having proved abortive,” Frank- lin wrote, “I determined to try what might be done by a voluntary Associa- tion of the People.” 5 The proposal increased Franklin’s popularity, marking his emergence into the political sphere, and his transition from private businessman to public servant. Not that there ever was a clean break between the two, of course, since he remained a businessman and his political persona was shaped by his years as a printer. In 1747, he published Plain Truth: Or, Serious Considerations on the Present State of the City of Pennsyl- vania and Province of Pennsylvania under the pseudonym, A Tradesman of Philadelphia. “There is no British colony excepting this,” he argued, “but has made some kind of provision for its defense” so that when attacked they “have generally defended themselves with success.” The consequences for this lack of defense, as Franklin saw them, were pretty dire. The French were already using every means necessary to sway the powerful Iroquois confederacy over to their side. When Native peoples in Pennsylvania saw “the French, and their Indians, boldly, and with Impunity, ravage the Frontiers of New York, and scalp the Inhabitants,” then “Bloodshed and Confusion” would not be far off in the Quaker province. Once everyone else caught wind that Pennsylvanians actually were defenseless, “licentious privateers” would sail up the Delaware River and wreak havoc. If the prospect of blood- thirsty savages and pirates were not enough to sway his readers, Franklin also warned that, “your Persons, Fortunes, Wives and Daughters, shall be subject to the wanton and unbridled Rage, Rapine and Lust, of Negroes, Molattoes, and others, the vilest and most abandoned of Mankind.” Like James Logan, Franklin condemned the assemblymen who put their religion before their duty as representatives of the people, and suggested that they relinquish their power during wartime. He argued that “ protection is as truly due from the government to the people, as obedience from the people to the government.” 6 War, Electricity, Politician, 1747–1763 • 57

Franklin pitched his message to his fellow middling sorts. After all, rich people could easily use their money to get out of Pennsylvania and escape the “dreadful scene[s]” that were sure to come. As he wrote,

But most unhappily circumstanced indeed are we, the middling People, the Tradesmen, Shopkeepers, and Farmers of this Province and City! We cannot all fly with our Families; and if we could, how shall we subsist? No; we and they, and what little we have gained by hard Labour and Industry, must bear the Brunt: The Weight of Contributions, extorted by the Enemy (as it is of Taxes among ourselves) must be surely borne by us.7

The whole thing was propaganda at its best. It played on racial and class fears while simultaneously drumming up feelings of duty to country and community. It condemned religion as divisive, but ended with a prayer to “ the God of Wisdom, Strength and Power , the Lord of the Armies of Israel.” Although Franklin appealed to the middling people, his pamphlet caught the eye of governor (as he most certainly knew it would). The influential and wealthy men of the governor’s council quickly took Franklin into their confidence, consulting him “in every Measure wherein their Concur- rence was thought useful to the Association.” 8 He ended up playing all sides to perfection, not even losing his position as clerk to the Quaker-controlled legislature. Franklin suspected that this was because “the Defence of the Country was not disagreeable to any of them, provided they were not requir’d to assist in it.”9 As promised in the closing paragraphs of Plain Truth , Franklin quickly set himself to the task of actually creating and mobilizing a volunteer military association. It was by far his most ambitious and far-reaching public project to date, and it resulted not only in organized militia units but also in a battery being built on Atwood’s Wharf below Front Street. After wining and dining with Governor George Clinton of New York and his council, Franklin was able to secure eighteen cannons from a rather drunk Clinton to arm the battery. Seeking to “animate all the middling persons to undertake their own defense,” Franklin read his proposal to 150 tradesmen and mechanics in Philadelphia on November 21, 1747.10 Every man present offered to sign, but Franklin cautioned them to wait until some gentlemen of the city signed as well to ensure the association’s financial viability. Within a few days, Franklin had built a broad coalition and obtained over 500 signatures from men of a variety of backgrounds and economic statuses. By the end of November, more than 1,000 men had signed on to the association. 11 When 600 of these associators marched to the Philadelphia courthouse in early December, the governor told the men that he would commission all elected officers, thus giving legitimacy to this extra-legal organization. In the short 58 • Benjamin Franklin term, Franklin’s associator movement was a success, at least on paper. By 1749, thirty-three companies had been raised in Lancaster County, twenty-six in Chester, nineteen in Bucks, twelve in Philadelphia City, and eight in Philadelphia County.12 By this time, however, the war was over and whether or not volunteer militias could be an effective fighting force remained untested. As with most controversies, the debate over the militia was good for business. As Franklin wrote, “Many Pamphlets pro and con . were publish’d on the Subject, and some by good Quakers in favour of Defence, which I believe convinc’d most of their younger People.”13 For the Quakers’ critics, imperial war opened up not only the possibility of physical harm and property loss, but also for the destruction of Protestantism at the hands of Catholic France. Refusing to raise men into militia units not only compromised provincial safety, it undermined Christian doctrine. In a 1747 sermon dedicated “to all that have joined in the late association for defense,” New Light minister Gilbert Tennent asserted that a defensive war was lawful and “approved by God.” 14 A member of the congregation who heard Tennent’s sermon penned an anonymous essay and sent it to Benjamin Franklin to be published in his Gazette . “A total prohibition or discouragement of bearing arms” could not be found in the New Testament, he argued.15 Equating self-defense with defensive war, the author asserted that “Christians bearing arms” served a necessary role in the “defense of our country, and the protection of the helpless and innocent.”16 When Quaker John Smith published a retort explaining that war and the New Testament gospel were incompatible, Tennent stood firm and penned two additional pamphlets defending Franklin’s defense association and the idea that God was a Man of War, unchanged from the days when he sent the Israelites into battle. “Therefore, go on, my dear brethren, in the name of the God of armies,” he admonished the associators, “I rejoice to hear of the increase of your number, and to see so much love and unity among you, notwithstanding of your different denominations!” 17 Franklin had no use for the religious dimension of war, preferring instead to rely on preparation instead of prayer: “Indeed, in attacking strong towns I should have more dependence on works , than on faith .”18 Franklin’s militia association movement gave him a boost of popularity with the public, and they called upon him to serve their many needs. “The Publick now considering me as a Man of Leisure,” he wrote,

laid hold of me for their Purposes; every Part of our Civil Government, and almost at the same time, imposing some Duty upon me. The Governor put me into the Commission of the Peace; the Corporation of the City chose me of the Common Council, and soon after an Alderman; and the Citizens at large chose me a Burgess to represent them in assembly.19 War, Electricity, Politician, 1747–1763 • 59

Franklin took his seat in the assembly in 1751, and his son, William, replaced him as clerk. He had warned about the dangers of violent Natives for dramatic effect in Plain Truth, but being a member of the legislature opened up the complexities of Native diplomacy to him. Pennsylvania enjoyed more peaceful (though by no means conflict-free) relations with Native Americans because it had no militia to deploy against them. In seeking to not offend in the first place, Quaker legislators had acquiesced to the forms of Native diplomacy more willingly than their neighbors. This meant employing full-time interpreters and cultural brokers like George Croghan and Conrad Weiser to ensure that relations were going smoothly. It also meant a steady stream of gifts to the tribes west of Philadelphia. By the 1750s, however, the Penns had grown tired of footing the bill for these negotiations. The first thing Franklin did as a newly elected assemblyman was to hand-deliver a message from his fellow legislators to the governor reminding the proprietors to “cheerfully contribute towards the heavy charges which are annually brought against the Province, on account of Indian Affairs.” 20 These were peacetime negotiations meant to maintain friendly relations, and thus were removed from most of the urgency and the kind of heightened racial rhetoric that Franklin had employed during the war. With no war, and thus no associators to coordinate, Franklin turned his attention to Pennsylvania’s other flaw: the lack of a college. He approached this task the way he had approached most of his other public projects: by gathering interested friends, printing a pamphlet for the larger public, and collecting subscription fees to fund the project. Franklin stayed in the background at this stage, presenting the project “not as an Act of mine, but of some publick-spirited Gentlemen .” 21 He still was very much in control and was elected, by no coincidence, as the president of the board of trustees. After Franklin secured use of the meeting hall originally built to house George Whitefield and his followers, the College of Philadelphia opened in January 1751 as the first nondenomina- tional institution of higher learning in the British colonies. He parlayed this success into a similar scheme for opening a hospital in 1756 on Fifth and Mar- ket Streets in the west end of the city. The difference was that this time Frank- lin convinced the government to match the privately raised funds, thus doubling the amount of money raised. If the associator movement had shown him that the middling sorts sometimes needed help from the elite, the hospital project showed him that private enterprises sometimes needed government help. Such was also the case with creating a viable militia. Although Franklin had taken a significant step toward providing a system of defense, his associator movement did not solve the fundamental problem: that no one in Penn- sylvania was obligated to join a militia company, nor was the government 60 • Benjamin Franklin required to supply funds or arms to the associators. Pennsylvania had escaped attack during the War of Jenkins’ Ear, but the outlook for the 1750s was not so bright. As tensions escalated with France, many looked to the government to coordinate the defense of the province. On July 15, 1754, seventy-five inhabitants of Cumberland county sent a petition to Governor James Hamilton claiming that they were “now in the imminent danger by a powerful army of cruel, merciless, and inhuman enemies, by whom our lives, liberties, estates, and all that tends to promote our welfare, are in the utmost danger of dreadful destruction.” 22 Similar petitions from Lancaster county followed, stressing claims that the French had been using the Susquehanna River to transport ammunition, artillery, and supplies. The question of defense dominated public debate by September of 1754 and put Franklin in a tricky position. He opposed proprietary power, as did the Quakers in the assembly, but he disagreed with Quaker resistance to a militia law. This division over defense was further complicated by religious factions. A pragmatic alliance had now formed between Anglicans and Presbyterians, two groups that had opposed one another across the Atlan- tic. Anglicans were a minority in Pennsylvania, headed up in the political arena by Reverend William Smith, provost of the College of Philadelphia, and Reverend Richard Peters, head of the governor’s council. Franklin resented the Anglican influence men like Smith tried to impose on his non- denominational college, and Smith in turn tried to have Franklin kicked off the board of trustees. Franklin ended up hating and opposing Smith even though he was fighting for the very thing Franklin wanted: a mandatory militia. The Penns had now converted to Anglicanism and used personal friendships and patronage to wed various pro-Proprietary factions together. The most significant of these factions was that of the Scotch-Irish Presbyte- rians under the leadership of William Allen, a merchant and provincial attorney-general, and frontier leaders like militia officer and proprietary land agent John Armstrong of Carlisle. The Quakers were still allied with pietistic German immigrants who shared their pacifist convictions. The government’s inability to raise a militia was also a concern for the Native tribes allied with the British. If the British could not guarantee protection from French attacks, then there really was no point in being allies. Also, the proprietor’s resentment at having to give gifts to keep lines of communication open was matched by Delaware resentment of the fraudulent 1737 Walking Purchase, for which Thomas Penn hired three runners to sprint (not walk as the treaty stipulated) for a day and a half to define the boundaries of a gift of land to the proprietors. Thus, in October of 1753, Franklin joined a delegation of three commissioners and met with more than 100 Delaware, Twightwee, Shawnee, Wyandot, and Iroquois delegates in Carlisle. If Franklin had met and talked with any Native Americans War, Electricity, Politician, 1747–1763 • 61 before 1753, he does not mention it in his surviving papers. Certainly he had never met with so many at one time. It is clear from how Franklin remembered the conference in his autobiography that he had little respect for or understanding of Natives and their culture, or of how westward expansion and war had impacted their lives. To him they were “savages” who could not control themselves. As he wrote, “those People are extreamly apt to get drunk, and when so are very quarrelsome and disorderly.” Frank- lin and his fellow commissioners declined the request for rum and made the delegates in attendance promise to remain sober during the negotiations. The Natives kept their promise, but Franklin thought this was “only because they could get no Liquor.” His opinion was confirmed in his own mind when he handed over the promised rum at the end of the conference. Frank- lin watched in confusion: “Their dark-colour’d Bodies, half naked, seen only by the gloomy Light of the Bonfire, running after and beating one another with Firebrands, accompanied by their horrid Yellings, form’d a Scene the most resembling our Ideas of Hell that could well be imagin’d.”23 Still, the Natives were essential allies and Franklin worried that the unregulated sale of alcohol to them would ultimately turn Native tribes against the English. Both imperial and colonial officials knew that coordinated and coherent relations with the Iroquois were essential. The New York assembly was convinced that “securing the Five Indian Nations and those in alliance with them in the British interest [was] of the utmost consequence to all his Maj- esty’s colonies on the continent.” 24 Accordingly, when the Board of Trade in London proposed a colonial conference in Albany, New York, the Pennsyl- vania assembly agreed to undergo the expense of sending commissioners, led by Franklin, to sign a treaty with the Iroquois. The assembly also voted to send £500 to be given to the Six Nations at Albany as a gift from Pennsyl- vania, as well as £10,000 to be given for the king’s use. The conference was an attempt to coordinate Native diplomacy since some people (particularly land speculators) in the various colonies pursued policies that benefited themselves but harmed everyone else. As Pennsylvania agent Conrad Weiser reported, “the Indians on Sasquehannah and about Shamokin . . . saw [New England men] making of draughts of the land and rivers, and are very much offended about it.”25 In mid-April, Virginia Governor Robert Dinwiddie began to plan an expedition to the Ohio River under the leadership of Captain William Trent and Major George Washington. The plan was to sway the Natives to the English side by building a fort at the confluence of the Allegheny, Ohio, and Monongahela rivers. The problem was, as Dinwiddie well knew, Virginians’ appetite for land meant the colony had a bad track record of Native diplomacy. As Dinwiddie fretted to Pennsylvania’s governor, “our forces to be sure will be much inferior to the French unless the other colonies are more 62 • Benjamin Franklin liberal and sanguine than ours has been.” 26 Washington’s expedition quickly turned into a disaster, for no sooner had the men begun to build a fortification than they were met by a large French force. The Virginians were easily routed and the French finished what the English had begun, calling the completed structure Fort Duquesne. News of Washington’s defeat prompted Franklin to create the first of what we consider to be an editorial cartoon printed in the colonies. Pub- lished in the Gazette on May 9, 1754, Franklin depicted a snake severed into eight parts, each piece labeled with the names of the colonies (Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire were lumped together as New England) and the ominous message: “Join, Or Die.”27 In the accompanying essay Franklin laid the blame for Washington’s defeat on the dis- union of the colonies. He began working on a scheme of colonial unity and on the way to New York he finalized his “Plan for the Union of all the Col- onies, under one Government so far as might be necessary for Defence, and other important general Purposes.” Upon his arrival he found that some of the commissioners from the six other participating colonies had also drafted up their own plans. Franklin’s Albany Plan of Union, which proposed a grand council made up of representatives from the colonies headed up by a president general, prevailed among the delegates, who recommended it to their respective legislatures. It was here that the plan died. “The Assemblies did not adopt it as they all thought there was too much Prerogative in it,” Franklin later lamented, “and in England it was judg’d to have too much of the Democratic .” 28 The plan’s defeat in Pennsylvania was particularly bitter. The governor approved of it, so of course the assembly could not, discussing and dismissing it when Franklin was absent in order to ensure its defeat. Although Franklin’s plan for union was a failure, he and the other Penn- sylvania delegates were able to secure a land purchase from the Iroquois in an effort to ease Native-white tensions. Little did they know that as they negotiated, George Washington was getting routed by the French at Fort Necessity, setting the stage for the global conflict that was the Seven Years’ War. On July 5, 1754, the Iroquois delivered the following message to the commissioners:

We have several times desired the Governor of Pennsylvania to remove his people from our lands, and we understand that he has done his utmost endeavours for that purpose except using force, which we do not desire he should. We are now, therefore, willing to part with them, and expect to be paid for them. 29

The following day, they signed a deed giving the proprietors the lands sup- posedly belonging to the Iroquois for a sum of £400. The commissioners War, Electricity, Politician, 1747–1763 • 63 congratulated themselves for making a stride forward in Native relations, unaware, or perhaps unconcerned, that the Iroquois had just sold them a large portion of land that did not belong to them. The land actually belonged to the Delaware who, as tributaries to the Iroquois, had not been consulted about the purchase. Pennsylvania’s problems were actually far from over. In early December 1754, newly appointed Pennsylvania Governor Rob- ert Hunter Morris sent a message and wampum belts to the Delaware of the Ohio and Susquehanna rivers, stating that “we are one flesh and blood with you” and asking for their support against the French.30 On December 19, Morris met Delaware leaders in Philadelphia, where they related a history of death wrought by the French and told the council that they would “take into consideration the deaths of [our] forefathers killed by the enemy, and conclude to join . . . in assisting our Brethren.”31 But the council also revealed that many Delaware were not content with Britain’s relative inac- tivity against the French, and that some had taken refuge at Fort Duquesne. With a political stalemate blocking the passage of effective military legislation throughout most of 1754, Pennsylvanians had to believe the government’s assurances that it had secured Delaware loyalty due to the “justice, humanity, and tenderness” with which the province had treated its indigenous inhabitants. 32 Franklin laid the blame for the stalemate solely at the feet of the proprietors, “who when any Expence was to be incurr’d for the Defence of their Province, with incredible Meanness instructed their Dep- uties to pass no Act for levying the necessary Taxes, unless their vast Estates were in the same Act expresly excused.”33 Proprietary supporters saw it the other way around and argued that the Quaker party had “no mind to give a single shilling to the King’s use, unless they . . . [could] thereby increase their own power.”34 As far as those in Britain were concerned, the reality was that the British needed to check France’s military presence, and so 1755 opened with a renewed effort to take Fort Duquesne. England sent General Edward Brad- dock to get the job done, and when the colonists failed to come up with the necessary supplies for the expedition, Franklin personally coordinated an equipment drive to collect private property for the common defense. Penn- sylvanians could either voluntarily give up their horses and wagons and get paid for their troubles, or face the possibility of having their property taken by force so that the “many brave Troops, come so far for your Defence” did not “stand idle.”35 While Franklin’s efforts to supply Braddock were a complete success, the expedition itself was a total failure. Not heeding Franklin’s and George Washington’s advice about the nature of warfare in the colonies, Braddock marched confidently westward only to be ambushed and killed along with two-thirds of his men. He had refused to modify his Euro- pean strategies, or to believe that he could ever be defeated by “savages.” He 64 • Benjamin Franklin was a brave man, Franklin thought, who might “have made a Figure as a good Officer in some European War,” but who was wholly unsuited to North America. 36 Braddock’s complete defeat in July of 1755 shifted the theater of war from Pennsylvania to New York, which meant removing British troops from the province. “The removal of the army from the frontiers will leave the back settlements entirely exposed to the incursions of the French and Indians,” Governor Morris warned the assembly. “I lay these matters before you, that you may, as soon as possible, fall upon measures for the protec- tions of the western frontiers.” 37 Meanwhile, western Pennsylvanians revived Franklin’s idea of voluntary community self-defense. For example, nine citizens of Carlisle entered into an association on July 12, 1755, for their “mutual defense,” promising to keep a night watch “so long as it seemeth necessary to the majority of us.” 38 By November of 1755, raids in the western counties had begun in force and it became apparent that the assembly’s focus on negotiation had failed. “It seems clear,” Governor Morris told the members of the assembly, “that the French have gained to their interest the Delaware and Shawanese Indi- ans, under the ensnaring pretence of restoring them to their country.” 39 French and Native forces, estimated at about 1,500, began to attack settlements along the Susquehanna River, forcing a migration from the west to safer regions to the east. Morris again called on the assembly to pass a militia bill and raise supplies and money for the war effort. But rather than pass such a bill, the assembly felt it was more important to actively engage in diplomacy to undermine France’s human resource pool. “In our opinion,” the assembly told Morris, “it requires great care and judgment conducting our Indian affairs at this critical juncture.”40 That afternoon, word came that “the settlements at a place called the Great Cove, in the county of Cumber- land, are destroyed, the houses burnt, and such of the inhabitants as could not make their escape, either slaughtered or made prisoners.” 41 Negotiation was being put to the ultimate test. The assembly’s reluctance to pass a militia bill in favor of resuming diplomacy enraged the governor. “You have been sitting six days,” he thundered, “and instead of strengthening my hands, and providing for the safety and defense of the people of the people and province . . . you have sent me a message wherein you talk of regaining the affections of the Indians now employed in laying waste to the country, and butchering the inhabitants.”42 The assembly responded by drafting a bill to raise money for the king’s service, but was quick to remind Morris that Pennsylvania had been founded on the maxims of peace and had always, since the province’s establishment, maintained an uninterrupted friendship with the Natives. The members of the assembly maintained that they had “the most sensible concern” for the War, Electricity, Politician, 1747–1763 • 65 frontier inhabitants, and claimed that they “had reason to believe that in the midst of their distresses, they themselves do not wish us to go further. Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”43 It was a sentiment Franklin would repeat in February of 1775.44 Franklin saw through the passage of a voluntary militia bill in 1755, paid for by money from both the assembly and the proprietors. He sought public support by publishing an article in the Gazette that likened the Quakers to rats, but still asked everyone “on this Occasion [to] cast from us all these little Party Views, and consider ourselves as Englishmen and Pennsylva- nians.” 45 Quakers ultimately agreed to the bill because it did not mandate service, and the governor agreed to it as well because it did not tax the proprietary estate. He gave Franklin a colonel’s commission and convinced him to “take Charge of our Northwestern Frontier, which was infested by the Enemy, and provide for the Defence of the Inhabitants by raising Troops, and building a Line of Forts.” Franklin headed north in early January of 1756 to the Moravian settlement of Bethlehem, with William at his side as his aide-de-camp. “I was surprized to find it in so good a Posture of Defence,” he wrote, especially because the Moravians were pacifists. Franklin never had much respect for religious pacifism anyway: “Common Sense aided by present Danger, will sometimes be too strong for whimsicall Opinions.” In his seven weeks on the frontier, Franklin handed out guns, scouted the countryside, buried the dead, and established a rather meager fort at the recently attacked and burned village of Gnadenhutten. He had some 560 men under his command, but they were not particularly well armed, well trained, or well disciplined. “Our Arms were of the most ordinary sort and our Men could not keep their Gunlocks dry,” he wrote, also noting that the men bickered and grumbled mutinously when they were idle.46 After seven weeks, he returned to Philadelphia to find many non-Quakers assembled into companies under the command of elected officers. But the whole thing came screeching to a halt when Franklin’s militia law was declared unconstitutional in England and voided. Thusended Franklin’s military career at the age of fifty. Without a militia law of any kind, some turned to controversial measures to put guns in the hands of men who could fight. With the steady withdrawal of British troops in early 1756 to aid operations in New York, Pennsylvania recruiting officers began to force indentured servants into service in the British army. Such action prompted a protest from the servants’ masters, who complained to Governor Morris that, “as this province has but few slaves, we are now obliged to depend principally upon our servants to assist us in tilling our lands.”47 If this labor force were taken away, it stood to reason that Pennsylvania would be hard pressed to keep supplying 66 • Benjamin Franklin the king with much-needed supplies for the war. By the end of April, locals estimated that at least 300 Pennsylvanians had been taken into captivity, and an untold number had been killed. As Governor Morris wrote to Wil- liam Johnson,

you cannot conceive what havoc has been made by the enemy in this defenseless province, nor what numbers of murders they have committed; what a vast tract of territory they have laid waste, and what a multitude of inhabitants, of all ages and both sexes, they have carried into captivity; by information of several of the prisoners, who have made their escape from them, I can assure you that there are not less than three hundred of our people in servitude to them and the French.48

French estimates placed the total number of people killed by April at around 700 for all of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Carolina.49 Franklin’s services were called on once again at a November conference with the Delaware at Easton in Northampton County. The goal was to pla- cate a charismatic leader named Teedyuscung, who had been protesting Iroquois authority over the Delaware, Pennsylvania’s questionable past land dealings, and the province’s treatment of Natives since conflict had broken out with the French. It was a formidable task made even more daunting when, in September, Colonel John Armstrong attacked and leveled the western Delaware village of Kittanning, and for which the assembly would pay over £270 for “sundry prisoners and scalps.”50 When the eastern Dela- ware learned of the attack, they refused to come to the conference until Pennsylvania Governor William Denny (elected in 1756) extended them a formal invitation and offered them gifts totaling £175 (plus an additional £225 in gifts from the Quakers).51 Things turned bitter when Denny’s advi- sors convinced him that the Quakers had only contributed gifts for the treaty to befriend the Delaware and “persuade them to denounce the existing land distribution—especially that attributable to the notorious Walking Purchase of 1737.”52 In the end, Teedyscung refused to make a land settlement because Pennsylvania had stolen lands “by fraud.”53 Franklin attended the conference as one of the four commissioners appointed by the assembly, and he aided the governor by writing many of the words that Denny spoke to the Delaware. He also played a role in bringing some of the words Teedyuscung spoke at the conference to a larger audience by editing and printing the official minutes of the meeting. Such pamphlets were of interest to people in the colonies and in England, and Franklin printed the minutes of thirteen different conferences between 1736 and 1762. These were official minutes as far as the government was concerned, but they were not verbatim transcriptions. In his editing, Franklin War, Electricity, Politician, 1747–1763 • 67 finessed some of what Teedyuscung said at the conference.54 This was on top of changes that Richard Peters, proprietary secretary at the conference, had made in producing the government’s official version of what happened at Easton. Franklin’s versions of the speeches are most often quoted by historians, but they do not match exactly with the notes that Quaker and Moravian attendees took of the conference. At the very least, Franklin and Peters tidied up Teedyuscung’s grammar and syntax. James Merrell argues that as presented by Franklin and Peters, Teedyuscung was “more abject and apologetic than other scribes made him out to be,” and they recrafted his words to “defuse [his] anger and put him in a submissive pose.”55 Peters debated keeping in Teedyuscung’s claim that the proprietors were “greedy to purchase Lands” (initially changing it to “many among you Greedy to purchase lands”), but he ultimately kept the condemnation of the Penns. 56 Teedyuscung’s critique of the proprietors played right into the assembly’s agenda. When Peters presented a copy of the official minutes of the conference to the assembly in January 1757, Franklin and his fellow commissioners critiqued its inaccuracies. “We conceive the Warmth and Earnestness with which they [the Natives] insisted on the Wrongs that had been done them in the Purchases of Land,” they reported to the assembly, “are much too faintly expressed in this Account of the Conference.” 57 The fault for not being able to reach a land settlement with Teedyuscung lay with the proprietors, who alone had the power to make land purchases but who were across the ocean and had not given their representatives in Pennsylvania the power to negotiate effectively on their behalf. Governor Denny remained more optimistic about the conference, perhaps relieved that the Quakers were now focusing their ire on the proprietors and not himself. As the Pennsylvania Gazette reported, “it is hoped our northern frontier will now have some rest from the incursions of the savages, and the province better enabled to defend the western parts.” 58 Franklin was cautiously optimistic since several Quakers had resigned their seats after the October election rather than have a hand in passing military measures. “We shall soon see if Matters will be better managed by a Majority of different religious Persua- sions,” he wrote to Peter Collinson in London.59 Franklin did not get to see the next legislative session through to com- pletion. In January of 1757, the members of the assembly voted to send him to London to advocate for their interests before the proprietors and, if that failed, before Parliament. Before he left the city, he appointed printer Wil- liam Dunlap, who had married into his wife’s family, as postmaster of Phil- adelphia. “As Mrs. Franklin has had a great deal of Experience in the Management of the Post Office,” he counseled Dunlap, “I depend on your paying considerable Attention to her Advice in that Matter.”60 Deborah was to be kept on as an employee and paid every Monday for her work. He also 68 • Benjamin Franklin gave power of attorney to “my trusty and loving Friend and Wife Deborah Franklin ,” knowing he could rely on her “Prudence in the Management of my Affairs.”61 He expected to be away for at least a year, but would end up spending close to six years away from his family. Deborah had never written as much as Benjamin had during his frequent trips to congresses, coun- cils, and conferences in 1755 and 1756. He had sent her at least thirteen letters and she had replied only a handful of times. She had not written at all during the Easton conference with Teedyuscung, and he jokingly chided her for this in a letter by noting in the postscript that “I have scratched out the loving words, being writ in haste by mistake, when I forgot I was angry .” 62 Affection could be expressed in other ways, and while Benjamin was in England Deborah would send such things as apples, dried venison, bacon, and smoked beef to her husband to remind him of home. Franklin left Pennsylvania as one of its best-known and most powerful citizens, the person to whom the governor turned to get things done. This did not come without cost, of course. “I leave some Enemies in Pensilva- nia, who will take every Opportunity of injuring me in my Absence,” he wrote to Joseph Galloway, asking his friend to “watch ’em and guard my Reputation and Interest as much as may be from the Effects of their Malev- olence.”63 He was headed to England, where his fame was just beginning to spread but where a much more complex power structure of landed privilege and social class was at play. “Mr. Franklin’s popularity is nothing here,” snorted Thomas Penn in London, “and . . . he will be looked upon coldly by great people, [since] there are very few of any consequence that have heard of his Electrical Experiments.” 64 Certainly no one would have remembered Franklin from his first trip in 1724, but his electricity experiments were starting to gain some attention. As Israel Pemberton wrote to Dr. John Fothergill, an English physician who had written a preface to Franklin’s published papers on electricity, “As I am sensible thou art well acquainted with Benja. Franklin’s Character a recommendation of him seems unnecessary.” 65 Franklin’s interest in electricity began back in 1743. On a trip to Boston, he met Dr. Archibald Spencer, who showed him some “electric experiments.”66 These “experiments,” such as they were, largely involved creating static electricity by rubbing a long glass tube and then drawing sparks from it. In 1747, Peter Collinson of the Royal Society in London donated one such glass tube to the Library Company and Franklin spent hours entertaining guests by rubbing it with a piece of leather to create a charge, and then performing a variety of experiments and parlor tricks. “Friends and Acquain- tance who, from the novelty of the thing, come continually in crouds to see them,” he wrote to Collinson, “I have, during some months past, had little leisure for any thing else.”67 James Logan excitedly wrote to Franklin, asking War, Electricity, Politician, 1747–1763 • 69 if he could visit and bring the glass tube with him. “Yesterday was the first time that I ever heard one syllable of thy Electrical Experiments,” he wrote, perhaps feeling a little left out.68 Franklin commissioned a glass blower to make more tubes so that some of his friends could entertain crowds at their homes and take some of the pressure off him. He kept in regular correspondence with Collinson, informing him of his experiments with “electrical fire” and apologizing if Collinson had observed the same phenomena before on account of there being “so many Hands [that] are daily employed in Elec- trical Experiments on your Side the Water.” Collinson was intrigued by Franklin’s various findings and had his early letters read to the Royal Society. No one else was impressed and the letters were refused into the minutes of the meeting. What no one realized, including Franklin himself, was that he was creating in 1747 much of the terminology we use today to explain how electricity works. In his effort to explain clearly to Collinson the concepts he had discovered, Franklin developed a useful language that others quickly adopted. He discussed positive and negative charges on May 25; plus and minus on July 28; and electric batteries, conductors, and armature in April 1749. “These Terms we may use till your Philosophers give us better,” he wrote to Collinson. 69 In 1749, Franklin began to wonder about the similarities between lightning and electricity. Both exhibited many similar characteristics—they gave off light, were conducted by metals, and gave off a sulphurous smell, for example. Both were also known to kill animals. As his Gazette reported in 1753 about a bad storm, “The Lightning ran along the Ground from the Root of the Tree to the Barn, and entered under the Sill, killed a Cow at one End of the Barn, and a Horse at the other.” 70 He had shocked himself sense- less a few times before, so he knew the power of electric charges stored in glass jars. He even tried his own hand at killing animals with electricity. “We found two large thin glass Jars, gilt (holding each about 6 Gallons, and taking 2000 Turns of a Globe of 9 Inches Diameter to charge them full . . . ) were sufficient to kill common Hens outright,” he reported to Collinson.71 Turkeys were more of a problem. The same electric shock threw them into “violent Convulsions,” but after lying as though dead for a time they would recover. Further experimentation revealed that five charged jars could kill a ten-pound turkey, though Franklin supposed they could have killed an even bigger bird. Franklin’s basic theory about lightning was that the water vapor in the clouds was electrically charged. When these “electrified Clouds pass over a Country, high Hills and high Trees, lofty Towers, Spires, Masts of ships, Chimneys &c. as so many Prominences and Points, draw the Electrical Fire, and the whole Cloud discharges there.” 72 In theory, then, one could place a pointed metal rod on a high tower and draw an electrical charge to it. Such 70 • Benjamin Franklin an explanation was astoundingly different from the accepted knowledge that lighting was of divine origin. In 1740 Franklin had printed a sermon that warned of “flashes of lighting shot from the Heavens ready to scorch” sinners.73 Franklin outlined his theory and proposed an experiment to test it in two letters to Peter Collinson that were soon printed as a pamphlet and subsequently translated into French. When Franklin’s proposed experiment was successfully performed at the behest of King Louis XV on May 10, 1752, outside of Paris, Franklin’s fame began to spread. Not knowing any of this, Franklin hatched a new plan to test his hypothesis. The tallest structure in Philadelphia would soon be the steeple of Christ Church, surpassing the vertical reach of the State House by sixty-two feet. The church had been selling subscriptions to build the steeple since March of 1751, but when that did not bring in enough money, the church’s leadership enlisted Franklin in late 1752 to help run a lottery to raise the remaining funds.74 It still was not enough, so in June of 1752 the steeple remained unfinished and no one could say when it would be completed. Franklin’s new plan, which he executed with William’s help, was to achieve the necessary height by flying a silk kite in a storm with a wire attached to its top and a key attached to the end of the string with a silk ribbon. If the string was wet and the silk dry, then the electrical fire could travel down it to the key from which one could draw a spark. “And when the Rain has wet the Kite and Twine, so that it can conduct the Electric Fire freely,” Franklin later wrote in the October 19, 1752 edition of the Gazette , “you will find it stream out plentifully from the Key on the Approach of your Knuckle.”75 The experiment had been made and proven. As lightning rods began to be erected in Philadelphia, including on Franklin’s own house, the accolades began pouring in. Harvard University awarded him a Master of Arts degree on July 25, 1753, and Yale followed suit on September 12. In November, the Royal Society in London that had snubbed him in 1747 awarded him the prestigious Copley medal. “This Method, which he had pointed out,” the Earl of Macclesfield said in his speech awarding the medal, “was so much approved, and has been so successfully put in execution in many different places, that it remains no longer a matter of suspicion and doubt; but is clear and plain to a demonstration, that Electricity alone is the cause of . . . [lightning], whose effects prove frequently so fatal in many parts of this Terraqueous Globe.” 76 Three years later he would be unanimously voted in as a member of the Royal Society. So, Franklin was not the nobody Thomas Penn would have liked to believe, but earning the respect and admiration of the scientific community did not equal guaranteed success in the political arena. Franklin knew he had a tough road ahead of him. There was little reason to expect that his appeals to the proprietors would actually yield any results. “I have not the War, Electricity, Politician, 1747–1763 • 71 least Inclination to be in their good Graces,” he wrote of the Penns in late 1756, adding that “I despise their Meanness, (as it appears to me) . . . and am thankful that I never had any Connection with them, or Occasion to ask or receive a Favour at their hands.”77 After spending three months in New York, Franklin set sail and arrived in London on July 26, 1757. He was not completely without his family or the comforts of home. He had brought along his son, William, now twenty-six, and two slaves. The first was Benjamin’s personal slave, a man named Peter whom he had purchased, along with his wife, Jemima, in 1750. The other was William’s slave named King. To compensate for the decreased slave presence at home, Deborah purchased a young boy named Othello in June of 1757. Deborah wrote to Benjamin in 1759 that she “went to hear the Negro Children catechised at Church. . . . It gave me a great deal of Plea- sure, and I shall send Othello to the School.” 78 The school she was talking about had been opened a year earlier by the Dr. Bray Associates, a society in London committed to establishing so-called Negro schools throughout the colonies. When its members learned of Deborah’s favorable opinion of the Philadelphia school, they ushered Benjamin into membership in the society and elected him as chairman for 1760.79 In that year, Othello fell ill and died, despite Deborah’s best efforts to nurse him back to health. “I am sorry for the Death of your black Boy, as you seem to have had a regard for him,” Franklin consolingly wrote to his wife.80 Benjamin got on “pretty comfortably” with Peter but did not have the same affection for him that Deborah had for Othello. He was, at the end of the day, a black slave. “Peter continues with me,” he wrote, “and behaves as well as I can expect, in a Country where there are many Occasions of spoiling Servants, if they are ever so good.” 81 Before departing for England, Franklin had written out his last will and testament in which he stipulated “that my Negro Man Peter, and his Wife Jemima, be free after my Decease.”82 King did not wait around for William to propose a similar deal; he ran away in 1758 while William and his father were on a trip with Peter in the English country side. The Franklins got word that he was in Suffolk, where “he had been taken in the Service of a Lady that was very fond of the Merit of making him a Christian, and con- tributing to his Education and Improvement.”83 The word was that King was learning to read and write, and to play the French horn and violin. Neither Benjamin nor William made the journey northeast from London to reclaim him. “Whether she will finally be willing to part with him, or persuade Billy to sell him to her, I know not,” Benjamin wrote to Deborah. “In the mean- time he is no Expence to us.”84 Once in England, the two Franklins took up residence at 36 Craven Street, the home of a widow named Margaret Stevenson and her daughter, Mary, whom everyone called Polly. The home, located near the Thames 72 • Benjamin Franklin

River and Whitehall, had enough room for Benjamin’s continued electricity experiments. His friend, Dr. John Fothergill, advised him not to immediately start complaining to the proprietors, but rather let the intervention of friends soothe what was bound to be a tense situation. Franklin had good reason to listen to this advice because a meeting with the president of the Privy Council, Lord Granville, revealed that he was indeed being looked upon coldly by great people, as Thomas Penn had predicted. Franklin was introduced to Granville through the influential Quaker merchant John Hanbury, one of the original supporters of the Ohio Company that was aggressively seeking land in disputed French territory around the Ohio River. The rumor was that Hanbury was the one behind Braddock’s ill-fated expedition to Fort Duquesne, which Franklin had supplied. Three years earlier, Hanbury had welcomed a young Quaker named John Dickinson, who had come to London to study law at London’s Middle Temple where William now studied. Dickinson left London before Franklin arrived, but their paths would cross upon Franklin’s return to Pennsylvania. Hanbury had helped broker a compromise with Lord Granville in 1756 that allowed Quakers in Pennsylvania to temporarily remove themselves from the assembly during the war.85 Perhaps rankled by the trouble Pennsylvania had already been causing him, Granville quickly went on the offensive with Franklin. “You Americans have wrong Ideas of the Nature of your Constitution;” he asserted, “you con- tend that the King’s Instructions to his Governors are not Laws, and think yourselves at Liberty to regard or disregard them at your own Discretion.” 86 Such instructions were in fact the “law of the land,” he continued, because the king alone was the legislator for the colonies. Franklin countered that the charters the various colonies operated under gave their respective assemblies the power to make laws that could not be repealed once they received royal assent. So, while the colonists could not make laws without the king’s assent, neither could he make laws without their assent. The exchange troubled Franklin and so he wrote down everything he could remember from the exchange when he got back to Craven Street. The question over who could legislate for the colonies would divide those like Franklin and those like Granville even further in the 1760s and lead to war in the 1770s. Franklin was also at odds with the proprietors, brothers Richard and Thomas Penn. After Fothergill brokered a meeting, Franklin met with Thomas and both agreed to be reasonable. “I suppose each Party had its own Ideas of what should be meant by reasonable ,” Franklin recalled in his autobiography. 87 Franklin knew it would take time to breach the gap between the assembly and the proprietors, but his first meeting revealed just how impossibly wide that gap was. As William wrote to Betsy Graeme, his fiancé back in Philadelphia, War, Electricity, Politician, 1747–1763 • 73

I see no Prospect of a Termination of the Affairs my Father has undertaken for the Province. The little Knowledge of (or indeed Inclination to know) American Affairs, among most of those concerned in the Administration . . . join’d with the Obstinacy and Wickedness of the Proprietors render his Task very uphill and difficult.88

At Thomas’s request, Benjamin wrote up a list of three grievances on August 20, 1757, and sent them to the proprietors. The grievances focused on how the Penns were harming Pennsylvania’s defense by hamstringing the gover- nor with proprietary instructions and exempting their estate from taxation. William explained Pennsylvania’s conundrum in a letter printed in The Gentleman’s Magazine in September:

By these proprietary instructions the governor is required not to pass any bill for taxing their quit rents, their located unimproved lands, and their purchase money at interest, but the assembly have ever been determined to frame no money bill, in which these quit rents, lands, and money shall be exempted. 89

The Quakers, ridiculed at home and in London, were not to blame, he insisted in a second article in The London Chronicle . Even though they had “Scruples against bearing Arms,” the Quakers had supplied arms and ammunition to those on the frontier who had “frequently defended themselves,” and they had “granted large Sums for the King’s Use (as they expressed it) which have been applied to the Defence of the Province.” 90 The Penns insisted that Franklin discuss the grievances with their lawyer, Ferdi- nando John Paris, who had written all of the proprietor’s messages to the assembly during Franklin’s tenure as a legislator. Franklin refused to confer with this “proud angry man,” whom he did not respect.91 Consequently, his list of grievances would go unanswered for over a year. The new year did not bring any change. “I begin to think I shall hardly be able to return before this time twelve months,” Benjamin wrote to Deb- orah on January 21, 1758.92 Earlier in the month he had met again with Thomas Penn and used the meeting to probe further the issues raised by his conversation with Lord Granville. In an argument over the assembly’s right to appoint its own commissioners to oversee Native affairs, Franklin asserted that the Pennsylvania assembly had powers like those wielded by the House of Commons. Penn, like Granville, disagreed. The assembly was more like a corporation acting under charter, and nowhere did the charter grant Parliament-like powers to the assembly. They were both right, on some level, and that was the whole problem. The 1701 charter gave the assembly the power to “prepare Bills in order to pass into Laws; impeach Criminals, and redress Grievances.”93 That power was 74 • Benjamin Franklin complicated by the existence of a proprietor instead of a royal governor. While royal governors looked after the king’s interests in the various colonies, the proprietors were first mindful of their own interests. Thus, the proprietors could and had checked the assembly’s legislative power before laws reached the king for approval by instructing the governor not to sign bills of which they disapproved. And so, while the charter did grant the legislature “all other Powers and Privileges of an assembly, according to the Rights of the free-born Subjects of England, and as is usual in any of the King’s Plantations in America,” the nature of its power was different from other colonies. 94 It would take until November 27, 1758 for the Penns to finally answer Franklin’s list of grievances, which they did in a message sent directly to the Pennsylvania assembly. Not surprisingly, the proprietors rejected all of Franklin’s arguments and wished that the assembly had given “full Powers, as the Nature of such a Case would admit, to some Person of Candour, to enter into the Detail and full Discussion of those several Matters.”95 The insult stung and Franklin complained of the proprietors’ “mean chicanery” to Isaac Norris back in Philadelphia.96 He refused to meet with the Penns again, telling the men of the assembly to appoint another agent to take his place if that was their plan of action. However, if the assembly was interested in asking the “Crown . . . [to] take the Province into its immediate Care,” then he was more than willing to offer his continued service.97 Thus began Franklin’s ill-fated campaign to wrest control of Pennsylva- nia from the proprietors and turn the province into a royal colony. He would make little headway on this front during his remaining time in England. Despite Franklin’s critiques of the proprietors, the members of the Privy Council did nothing during his time in England to suggest that they supported stripping the Penns of their power. Others could see early on that the royal campaign was doomed. “The Disposition of Publick Money, and a Militia, are Points on which tho’ I intirely agree in my private Opinion with the assembly of Pennsylvania,” Richard Jackson wrote to Franklin in 1758, “yet which I am convinced would be determined against them, both by the Privy Council and the Parliament, were they formally to be brought before either.”98 Even though his advocacy for the Pennsylvania assembly had essentially ended by September 1760, Franklin was in no hurry to leave England. He was travelling and rubbing elbows with Europe’s intellectual elite. The University of St. Andrews in Scotland awarded Franklin an honorary doctorate on February 12, 1759, and Oxford presented him a doctorate of civil law on April 30, 1762. He also attended King George III’s coronation in 1761. William, too, was having the time of his life. Betsy Graeme had broken their engagement in the fall of 1758, and like War, Electricity, Politician, 1747–1763 • 75 his father before him, William then fathered a bastard son with a prostitute. And, like his father before him, he took full custody of the child he called William Temple Franklin. Franklin loved England, but knew he could not stay. He wrote to Deborah of his “Affection to Pensilvania, and long established Friendships and other Connections there.”99 But, as he wrote to a friend as he was leaving England, “I shall probably . . . settle here for ever. Nothing will prevent it, if I can, as I hope I can, prevail with Mrs. F. to accompany me.” 100 Deborah never would accompany her husband across the Atlantic because she had, as Benjamin called it, an “invincible Aversion to crossing the Seas.”101 Benjamin set sail with Peter in late August 1762, leaving his son behind. Despite the embarrassment of a bastard son, whom he secreted away in the English countryside, the prospects for the younger Franklin were looking very good indeed. William had successfully secured the royal governorship of New Jersey and the hand of Elizabeth Downes in marriage, a woman from a London family that had made its fortune in the sugar plantations of Barbados. When Elizabeth’s father died in 1731, he left her two female slaves named Kitty and Temperance, a lump sum of £12,000 (about $2.7 million in 2014 dollars) and an annual allowance of £70. 102 The two married a week after Benjamin left for Philadelphia, perhaps a good indi- cation that his father privately did not completely approve of his new- found power or the marriage. “As to the Promotion and Marriage you mention,” he later wrote to his sister, Jane, “I shall now only say that the Lady is of so amiable a Character, that the latter gives me more Pleasure than the former, tho’ I have no doubt but that he will make as good a Gov- ernor as Husband.” 103 Benjamin had hoped that William would marry Polly Stevenson, his landlady’s daughter, for whom he had great affection. William had now, at least on paper, surpassed his father. He had been to St. James’ palace to receive his royal commission from King George III’s hand before setting sail for the colonies, leaving William Temple behind to be raised in secret. Benjamin had a reunion with his wife and daughter to look forward to, but his trip to Britain had done little to solve the problems he had been sent across the ocean to address. The enemies he had asked Joseph Galloway to keep an eye on were still around, and the Penns were still in power and still in conflict with the assembly, despite having agreed to let the assembly tax their unsettled lands. While William’s star was on the rise, for Benjamin, returning to Pennsylvania was bound to be a denouement. But whatever peace (or possibly monotony) Franklin thought he was coming home to was soon broken by a bloody massacre that shocked Pennsylvania and forced him back into public service. 76 • Benjamin Franklin

N OTES 1 Billy G. Smith, “Death and Life in a Colonial Immigrant City: A Demographic Analysis of Philadelphia,” Journal of Economic History 37 (Dec., 1977): 863–889. 2 Ibid., 877. 3 Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography, part 12 [electronic edition]. Papers of Benjamin Franklin . The Packard Humanities Institute. http://franklinpapers.org . Unless otherwise indicated, all citations to electronic editions are from Yale’s Franklin Papers. 4 James Logan, To Robert Jordan, and Others (Philadelphia, 1741), 4. 5 Franklin, Autobiography , part 12 [electronic edition]. 6 Benjamin Franklin, Plain Truth (Philadelphia, Franklin, 1747) [electronic edition]. 7 Ibid. 8 Franklin, Autobiography , part 12 [electronic edition]. 9 Ibid. 10 Richard Peters to the Proprietaries, November 29, 1747 [electronic edition]. 11 Samuel J. Newland, The Pennsylvania Militia: The Early Years, 1669–1792 (Annville: Common- wealth of Pennsylvania, Dept. of Military and Veterans Affairs, 1997), 40. 12 Ibid., 42. 13 Franklin, Autobiography , part 12 [electronic edition]. 14 Gilbert Tennent, The Late Association for Defense Encouraged (Philadelphia: Bradford, 1748), 7. 1 5 Mr. Franklin, the Absolute and Obvious Necessity of Self-Defense (Philadelphia, 1748), 1. 16 Ibid., 1, 2. 17 John Smith, The Doctrine of Christianity Explained, As held by the People Called Quakers, Vindicated (Philadelphia: Franklin and Hall, 1748); Gilbert Tennent, The Late Association for Defense Farther Encouraged, or The Consistency of Defensive War with True Christianity (Phil- adelphia: Bradford, 1748), 55. 18 Benjamin Franklin to John Franklin, [May?] 1745 [electronic edition]. 19 Franklin, Autobiography , part 12 [electronic edition]. 20 Gertrude MacKinney, ed., Pennsylvania Archives, Eighth Series (Harrisburg, 1931), 4: 3435. Hereafter cited as PA Archives . 21 Franklin, Autobiography , part 13 [electronic edition]. 22 Petition of the Inhabitants of Cumberland County to the Governor, July 15, 1754, Samuel Hazard, ed., Pennsylvania Colonial Records (Philadelphia, 1851), 6: 130. Hereafter cited as Colonial Records . 23 Franklin, Autobiography , part 13 [electronic edition]. 24 Resolution of the Assembly of New York, April 17, 1754, Colonial Records , 6: 34. 25 A Letter to the Governor from Conrad Weiser, Esquire, May 2, 1754, Colonial Records , 6: 35. 26 A Letter from the Governor of Virginia to Governor Hamilton, March 21, 1754, Colonial Records , 6: 7. 2 7 Pennsylvania Gazette , May 9, 1754. 28 Franklin, Autobiography , part 14 [electronic edition]. 29 At a Meeting of Seventy of the Six Nations at Mr. James Stevenson’s, in Albany, July 5, 1754, Colonial Records , 6: 115. 30 To the Delaware Indians living on the River Ohio and the Susquehannah, September 1754, Colonial Records , 6: 187. 31 At a Council held at Philadelphia, December 19, 1754, Colonial Records , 6: 194. 32 Assembly’s Reply to the Governor, December 6, 1754, Colonial Records , 6: 189. 33 Franklin, Autobiography , part 14 [electronic edition]. 34 William Smith, A Brief State of the Province of Pennsylvania (London, 1755), 25. 35 Franklin, Autobiography , part 15 [electronic edition]. 36 Ibid. 3 7 Pennsylvania Gazette , August 14, 1755. War, Electricity, Politician, 1747–1763 • 77

38 For Our Mutual Defense, July 12, 1755, in D. W. Thompson et al., eds.,Two Hundred Years in Cumberland County: A Collection of Documents and Pictures Illustrating Two Centuries of Life in Pennsylvania (Carlisle: Hamilton Library and Historical Association of Cumberland County, 1951), 25. 39 A Message from the Governor to the Assembly (November 3, 1755), Pennsylvania Gazette , November 13, 1755. 40 A Message to the Governor from the Assembly (November 5, 1755), ibid. 41 Ibid. 42 A Message from the Governor to the Assembly (November 8, 1755), ibid. 43 A Message to the Governor from the Assembly (November 11, 1755), ibid. 44 Franklin’s Contributions to the Conference on February 17 [1775] (III) [electronic edition]. 4 5 Pennsylvania Gazette, December 18, 1755. Z says, “For my Part, I am no Coward; but hang me if I’ll fight to save the Quakers.” X replies, “That is to say, you won’t pump Ship, because ’twill save the Rats, as well as yourself.” 46 Franklin, Autobiography , part 16 [electronic edition]. 4 7 Pennsylvania Gazette , February 19, 1756. 48 A Letter from the Governor to Sir William Johnson, April 24, 1756, Colonial Records, 7: 97–98. 49 Abstract of Despatches from Canada, in E. B. O’Callaghan, ed., Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York (Albany, 1858), 10: 423. 5 0 PA Archives , 5: 4370. 51 http://triptych.brynmawr.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/HC_Friendly/id/198/rec/90 (HC11-25007_18) 52 Louis M. Waddell and Bruce D. Bomberger, The French and Indian War in Pennsylvania, 1753–1763: Fortification and Struggle During the War for Empire (Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1996), 27. 5 3 Minutes of the Conferences Held With the Indians at Easton (Philadelphia: Franklin and Hall, 1757), 23. 54 Ibid., For an example of Franklin’s edits, see James H. Merrell, “ ‘I Desire All That I Have Said . . . May Be Taken down Aright’: Revisiting Teedyuscung’s 1756 Treaty Council Speeches,” William and Mary Quarterly 63 (Oct., 2006): 797. 55 Ibid., 804–805. 56 Ibid., 811. 57 Pennsylvania Assembly Committee: Report on the Easton Conference, Votes and Proceedings of the House of Representatives , 1756–1757 (Philadelphia, 1757), 75–76 [electronic edition]. 5 8 Pennsylvania Gazette , November 25, 1756. 59 Benjamin Franklin to Peter Collinson, November 5, 1756 [electronic edition]. 60 Benjamin Franklin to William Dunlap, April 4, 1757 [electronic edition]. 61 Power of Attorney to Deborah Franklin, April 4, 1757 [electronic edition]; Benjamin Franklin to Deborah Franklin, April 5, 1757 [electronic edition]. 62 Benjamin Franklin to Deborah Franklin, November 13, 1756 [electronic edition]. 63 Benjamin Franklin to Joseph Galloway, April 11, 1757 [electronic edition]. 64 Thomas Penn to Richard Peters, May 14, 1757, as quoted in Ormond Seavy, “ ‘The Manners and Situation of a Rising People’: Reading Franklin’s Autobiography ,” in David Waldsteicher, ed., A Companion to Benjamin Franklin (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2011), 256. 65 Israel Pemberton to John Fothergill, April 4, 1757 [electronic edition]. 66 Franklin, Autobiography , part 17 [electronic edition]. 67 Benjamin Franklin to Peter Collinson, March 28, 1747 [electronic edition]. 68 James Logan to Benjamin Franklin, February 23, 1747 [electronic edition]. 69 Benjamin Franklin to Peter Collinson, May 25, 1747 [electronic edition]. 7 0 Pennsylvania Gazette , April 26, 1753. 71 Benjamin Franklin to Peter Collinson, February 4, 1750 [electronic edition]. 72 Benjamin Franklin to John Mitchell, April 29, 1749 [electronic edition]. 78 • Benjamin Franklin

73 Job Noble, An Alarm Sounded (Philadelphia: Benjamin Franklin, 1740), 17. 74 The November 2, 1752, issue of thePennsylvania Gazette reported a “SCHEME Of a LOTTERY for raising One Thousand and Twelve Pounds, Ten Shillings, to be applied to the STEEPLE to CHRIST CHURCH, in Philadelphia, and the residue towards purchasing a Ring of Bells.” 7 5 Pennsylvania Gazette , October 19, 1752. 76 Earl of Macclesfield: Speech Awarding the Copley Medal, November 30, 1753 [electronic edition]. 77 Ibid. 78 Deborah Franklin to Benjamin Franklin, August 9, 1759 [electronic edition]. 79 See Richard I. Shelling, “Benjamin Franklin and the Dr. Bray Associates,” Pennsylvania Mag- azine of History and Biography 63 (Jul., 1939): 282–93. 80 Benjamin Franklin to Deborah Franklin, March 28, 1760 [electronic edition]. 81 Benjamin Franklin to Deborah Franklin, June 27, 1760 [electronic edition]. 82 Last Will and Testament, April 28, 1757 [electronic edition]. 83 Benjamin Franklin to Deborah Franklin, June 27, 1760 [electronic edition]. 84 Ibid. 85 For a chronology of events, see Francis Jennings, Empire of Fortune: Crowns, Colonies, and Tribes in the Seven Years’ War in America (New York: Norton, 1988): 223–24. 86 Franklin, Autobiography , part 18 [electronic edition]. 87 Ibid. 88 William Franklin to Elizabeth Graeme, December 9, 1757 [electronic edition]. 89 William Franklin, “To the Printer of the Citizen I,” The Gentleman’s Magazine 27 (September 1757), 417 [electronic edition]. 90 William Franklin, “To the Printer of the Citizen II,” The London Chronicle: or, Universal Eve- ning Post , September 20, 1757 [electronic edition]. 91 Franklin, Autobiography , part 18 [electronic edition]. 92 Benjamin Franklin to Deborah Franklin, January 21, 1758 [electronic edition]. 93 Pennsylvania Charter of Privileges, 1701 [electronic edition]. www.constitution.org/bcp/ penncharpriv.htm 94 Ibid. 95 Ferdinand John Paris: Answer to Heads of Complaint; Thomas and Richard Penn: Message to the Assembly, November 27, 1758 [electronic edition]. 96 Benjamin Franklin to Isaac Norris, January 19, 1759 [electronic edition]. 97 Ibid. 98 Richard Jackson to Benjamin Franklin, [April 24, 1758?] [electronic edition]. 99 Benjamin Franklin to Deborah Franklin, March 5, 1760 [electronic edition]. 100 Benjamin Franklin to William Strahan, August 23, 1762 [electronic edition]. 101 Benjamin Franklin to Deborah Franklin, March 5, 1760 [electronic edition]. 102 Vernon O. Stumpf, “Notes and Documents: Who Was Elizabeth Downes Franklin?,” The Penn- sylvania Magazine of History and Biography 94 (Oct., 1970): 533–34. Currency converted using http://www.uwyo.edu/numimage/currency.htm 103 Benjamin Franklin to Jane Mecom, November 25, 1762 [electronic edition]. CHAPTER 4 T HE IMPERIAL CRISIS, 1763–1775

Soon after his return to Philadelphia in early 1763, Franklin became entan- gled in the bitter political divisions being exacerbated by increasing violence in western Pennsylvania. An extended visit from February to November to see William and Elizabeth in New Jersey, and his sister Jane in Boston, took place while a loose confederation of Native tribes began opposing Britain’s assertion of authority over their lands in the wake of France’s decisive defeat in the French and Indian War. Pennsylvania had enjoyed relative peace from 1758 until the fall of Forts Venango, Le Boeuf, and Presque Isle in the west of the province by June of 1763. The attacks were planned and prosecuted by members of the Seneca, Ottawa, Wyandot, Ojibwe, and Mingo nations. Inspired by Ottawa chief Pontiac’s ongoing siege of Fort Detroit. This military conflict—what historians call Pontiac’s War—would continue until October 1764. Once again, Britain asked her colonies to supply defense money and to raise local militia units. Once again the Pennsylvania assembly and the proprietors were at loggerheads, perhaps even more so since Franklin’s trip to London. It was no secret by now that Franklin despised proprietary power, but as the author of a voluntary militia scheme in the late 1740s, he was also frustrated with the assembly. He privately worried that political tensions in Philadelphia would compromise Pennsylvania’s military effectiveness. “Tho’ strong,” he fretted, “we are in effect weak.”1 The stalemate in the province’s government led to more than Franklin could have imagined. In early February of 1764 several hundred primarily western Scotch-Irish Presbyterian men marched fully armed to Philadelphia to kill the Natives held there under Quaker protection, and also to air their grievances about the lack of defense for the western counties. The threat of bloody insurrection temporarily united the 80 • Benjamin Franklin assembly, the proprietors, and Franklin, when Governor John Penn called upon them to solve the crisis. The march of western men east to Philadelphia in February started with cold-blooded murder two months earlier. On December 14, 1763, fifty-seven men from Paxton Township rode under Matthew Smith to the small village of Conestoga Manor in Lancaster County and murdered and scalped six of the Natives who lived there. These men believed that those living at Conestoga Manor had been in contact with members of Pontiac’s confederacy and were responsible for white deaths in the ongoing war. Some of the indigenous residents of Conestoga Manor were not in town during the massacre, so when they returned, local officials quickly placed them in the Lancaster workhouse for protection. It was not enough. Although a regiment of British soldiers was stationed at the workhouse, about one hundred armed men were able to break in on December 27 and brutally murder the residents within, shooting some point-blank in the head with muskets, chopping off the hands and feet of others, and scalping all of them. The death toll was fourteen men, women, and children. The Paxton Boys (as they would be called by their critics) sparked a surge in Pennsylvania’s pamphlet print culture as various citizens weighed in on the issues at hand. When Franklin was a printer, Philadelphia had always lagged behind Boston by about half in the number of imprints issued each year. This was largely because in 1760, Boston had four newspapers and five additional printers, while Pennsylvania had two newspapers and three additional printers. From 1750 to 1760, while Boston printers issued an average of 91 imprints a year, Philadelphia printers issued an average of 46 pamphlets a year. The year 1764, though, saw the publication of at least 153 pamphlets in Philadelphia, followed by at least 96 in 1765.2 This number is even more significant when one realizes that Pennsylvania alone published 43 percent of the imprints issued in all the colonies for 1764 (Boston published 23 percent, and New York 8 percent). This was a considerable increase from 1740–1760, when Philadelphia issued about 23 percent of the total imprints in the colonies.3 Even the Townshend Acts, which galvanized John Dickinson’s incredibly popular and influential Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania in 1768, did not generate half the number of pamphlets as the Paxton Boys did. Not until 1774 would publications again reach 1764 levels with 175, followed by 199 in 1775 and 229 in 1776. In terms of pamphlet culture, then, the Paxton Riots and the ensuing Quaker pursuit of a royal government for the province were significant if not revolutionary moments in which Pennsylvanians articulated differing visions of government’s responsibility to the people and the people’s responsibility to government. Franklin was right there in the thick of it. The Imperial Crisis, 1763–1775 • 81

Franklin was the first to weigh in on the Paxton Boys, appealing to law, race, and masculinity in his anonymous A Narrative of the Late Massacres in Lancaster County. He reminded his readers of the first treaty William Penn signed with the Delaware, which guaranteed that their friendship would last “as long as the Sun would Shine, or the Waters run in the Rivers.” The men who committed these brazen and murderous acts, Franklin argued, did so “in defiance of government, of all laws human and divine, and to the eternal disgrace of their country and colour.” If the Natives at Conestoga were guilty of the murder of whites on the frontier, which he doubted very much that they were, retribution should have been sought through legal channels. “Cowards can handle arms,” Franklin concluded, “but it belongs to brave men to spare, and to protect.”4 Franklin’s condemnation of the white Paxtonians, and claims of equality under the law for indigenous subjects, should not be read as some kind of modern racial thinking. Franklin, like many of his contemporaries, was an Anglophile who had little respect for Native culture. “If it be the Design of Providence to extirpate these Savages in order to make room for Cultivators of the Earth, it seems not improbable that Rum may be the appointed Means,” he wrote in his autobiography.5 The Paxton Massacre of late 1763 soon turned into the Paxton Riots of early 1764 with rumors that up to 1,500 men from Paxton and Donegal townships in Lancaster County were on the march east toward Philadel- phia. The government had offered protection for Natives who sought refuge in the city barracks, and the Paxton Boys aimed to kill them. Carpenters quickly got to work building defensive fortifications in the center of the parade ground at the barracks, and four cannon were taken from the state house along with all available artillery stores to fortify the position. Scouts were sent up the various roads that led into Philadelphia to find out the rioters’ position and report on their movements. Realizing that a scout had not been assigned to watch the ferry on the Schuylkill River, men quickly rushed off, only to return and report that the Paxton Boys had crossed the river and were heading toward Germantown to the north of the city. Since the rioters were still a fair distance away, Franklin and his fellow Philadel- phians settled down for an uneasy night. The ringing of alarm bells and the banging of drums shattered the peace of the early morning of February 6. The streets quickly began to fill with people, and guns were given out to those who were willing to bear them. As one Philadelphian would later recollect, “drums, colors, rusty halberds and bayonets, were brought forth from their lurking places; and as every good citizen who had a sword had it girded to his thigh, so everyone who had a gun had it placed on his shoulder.” 6 Contradictory rumors flew wildly about that the “rebels had divided into three groups and were going to attack the 82 • Benjamin Franklin open city in three places simultaneously; then they were near; then they were still far away; now they were coming from the east, then from the west, and so on.” 7 The alarm bells and drums continued sounding until daybreak revealed that the rioters were in fact not immediately at hand. Amid the tension and confusion, a Moravian at the barracks noted, “Our Indians slept quite peacefully and took little notice of the uproar.” 8 What made the situation particularly disorienting for some was the fact that a number of Quakers took up arms and organized themselves into militia companies. The sight of an armed Quaker did not go unnoticed by even the smallest Philadelphians: a group of small boys followed a prominent Quaker down the street shouting, “Look, look! A Quaker carrying a musket on his shoulder!” 9 Older citizens as well were baffled at the sight of Quakers bearing flintlock muskets and daggers. As Sally Potts marveled to her sister, the Quakers “seem’d as ready as any to take up arms in such a cause to defend the laws and libertys of their country against a parcel of rebels.”10 While a haphazard militia organized outside the state house, the gover- nor and his council met at Franklin’s house to discuss a resolution to the crisis. Penn and others had little faith in the hastily assembled militia companies and so they resolved to negotiate a peaceful settlement with the rioters. At 5:00 a.m. on February 7, Franklin headed up a delegation to Germantown to meet the Paxton Boys. The Philadelphia men were received and ushered to an upstairs room in Coleman’s tavern, where they met with frontier spokesmen Matthew Smith and James Gibson. Franklin helped Smith and Gibson write down their grievances and convinced them to head back home. Franklin found the whole ordeal exhausting and disorienting. As he recalled in a letter on February 11, “I was up two Nights running, all Night, with our Governor; and my Rest so broken by Alarms on the other Nights, that the whole Week seems one confus’d Space of Time, without any such Distinction of Days, as that I can readily and certainly say, on such a Day such a thing happened.”11 Although neither the assembly nor the governor ever seriously addressed their specific grievances (an assembly report Franklin helped to author asserted that they were “founded on false or mistaken Facts”), the Paxton Boys forced a reassessment of Pennsylvania’s government and its ability to ensure security.12 Quaker pacifism and negotiation was under scrutiny, to be sure, but so were the reaches of proprietary power. The assembly and the governor became quickly embroiled in a heated debate over a pending militia bill, and over how money should be raised for the king’s service. Amidst this imbroglio, petitions from the west continued to come asking for relief from the ongoing war. When the governor rejected the assembly’s militia and money-raising bills on the grounds that they infringed on proprietary power, the assembly struck back hard with a series of resolutions that The Imperial Crisis, 1763–1775 • 83

Franklin and a committee of seven other assemblymen wrote. “It is the opinion of this House,” they resolved, “that the proprietors of this province . . . can justly or legally be considered in no other light than as private owners of property, without the least share or constitutional power of legislation whatever.” 13 Perhaps the most damning accusation was that the troubles of the frontier were the fault of the proprietors. As the assembly claimed, the proprietors took “advantage of the times of calamity to extort privileges from the people, or enforce claims against them, with the knife of the savages at their throat.” 14 The Paxton Boys’ march to Philadelphia in February meant that western discontent was no longer mere words and names on a petition—it was armed men at the gates of the city, capable of insurrection and violence. “The most violent parties, and cruel animosities have hence arisen, that I have ever seen in any country,” Benjamin Franklin lamented in the summer of 1764, “so that I doubt the year will scarce pass over without some civil bloodshed.” 15 The civil war he feared was the election of 1764, a referendum on Quaker rule that forced a discussion about how best to defend the province, and which allowed Franklin to push forward with his plan of turning Pennsylvania into a royal colony. As one Philadelphian observed, the election was “the warmest that ever was held in this province.”16 While an emerging “New Ticket” Presbyterian faction sought to oust pacifists from government, “Old Ticket” Quakers, who had long been in conflict with the proprietor, moved to make Pennsylvania a royal colony and oust the Penns. This maneuver made the Presbyterians and the Proprietary Party natural allies through their common goal to uproot Quaker power in the assembly. Benjamin Franklin sided with the Old Ticket, believing that the way to solve the province’s defense problems was to remove the proprietors and replace them with a royal governor. On March 24, the legislature passed twenty-six resolves against the proprietary government and then adjourned for seven weeks to “consult their constituents.” 17 This consultation was in fact a seven-week campaign to sell Franklin’s case to the public. On March 29, he issued “Explanatory Remarks on the Assembly’s Resolves” in the Pennsylvania Gazette, opening up a con- certed propaganda campaign for the Quaker Party. Franklin knew which buttons to push to try and sway the western counties to his cause, having helped the Paxton Boys draft their grievances only a month earlier. He argued that it was the proprietors’ instructions not to tax their own land that had stymied an effective militia and left the west “bleeding in every quarter” with “unhappy inhabitants reduced to every kind of misery and distress.” 18 Franklin then drafted a “Petition of the Pennsylvania Freehold- ers and Inhabitants to the King,” asking for a royal government, printing 100 copies on March 31 and another 200 copies on April 18. Franklin also 84 • Benjamin Franklin arranged for a German translation to be printed and distributed. Franklin framed his argument in the language of safety, reminding the King that proprietary stubbornness had led to “mischiefs . . . during the two last wars,” and asserted that Pennsylvanians wanted to “partake in that happiness and security which they see all those colonies around them enjoy.”19 Unfortunately for Franklin, he was a poor judge of public sentiment and his royal campaign cost him both his recently re-won seat in the assembly and the allegiance of the Germans, whose votes had helped keep the Quaker party in power since the 1750s. Of course, local politics was truly baffling most of the time as the winds of conflict blew hot and cold. Perhaps cheered by the assembly’s reaction to his campaign for royal government (“never was there greater unanimity in any assembly,” he crowed), Franklin pushed forward only to become the focus of many a vituperative and vindictive tirade in the press. “We are now in the utmost confusion,” he wrote on March 31 to Richard Jackson, Pennsylvania’s agent in London, with “animosities between the Presbyterians and Quakers, and nothing in which we seem generally to agree but the wish for a King’s government.”20 This was an overstatement, and Franklin was far too optimistic about his petition’s success in the western counties. In fact, Presbyterian church leaders had sent out a letter to western churches instructing the congregations not to sign any Quaker petition. The plan for royal government, they argued, was “an artful scheme . . . to divert the attention of the injur’d frontier inhabitants.”21 Sympathy for the Paxton Boys, and distaste for the Quaker Party’s attempts to shift all the blame for the west’s problems on to the proprietors, convinced many to not sign the petition. Opponents blasted Presbyterian ministers for turning their pulpits into political platforms. “I have known one [minister] in this neighborhood,” wrote a Chester pamphleteer, “to procure leading men in his congregation, to read political papers and sign petitions. . . . I have known another . . . to charge the people ‘as they valued their salvation, (even if their houses were on fire) to attend and sign a petition against a change of government.’ ”22 The first response to the assembly’s resolves and Franklin’s “Explanatory Remarks” came in early April from Hugh Williamson, a Presbyterian and professor of mathematics at the college. “For my part,” Williamson wrote, “I am clearly persuaded that Quaker politics, and a Quaker faction, have involved this province into almost all the contentions, and all the miseries under which we have so long struggled.” 23 Franklin’s friend and political ally, Joseph Galloway, quickly reminded Pennsylvanians that the assembly had granted the Crown over £500,000 for their “protection and defense,” and argued that the western counties were poorly protected only because proprietary commissioners misappropriated the money and ineffectively coordinated royal troops.24 The Imperial Crisis, 1763–1775 • 85

Sensitive to western concerns, and looking to defend the Quakers Party’s push for royal government, Franklin issued Cool Thoughts on the Present Situation of Our Public Affairs . Making a small concession to the Paxton pamphleteers, he agreed that old disputes between assembly and proprietor had been “obstructing the public defense.” The problem lay not in Quaker pacifism, as the Paxtonians asserted, but in the nature of a proprietary government. According to Franklin, the answer was not to substitute Presbyte- rians for Quakers. Since the blame for poor defense lay with the proprietors and the constitutions developed under their rule, the same obstacles to a militia law would still exist. Nor was it a problem with religion. As Franklin observed, “religion has happily nothing to do with our present differences, tho’ great pains [are] taken to lug it into the squabble.” He looked to his son’s colony of New Jersey as an example, arguing that as soon as it became a royal colony it received “arms, ammunition, cannon, and military stores of all kinds”; things yet to be given to any proprietary colony.25 The tensions of the Paxton Riots very much colored the debate over a change in government. The governor still demanded “a sufficient force to guard the frontiers,” and petitioners asked for redress “of certain grievances set forth in . . . the Remonstrance of Matthew Smith and James Gibson .”26 No one had been brought to justice for either the massacres in Lancaster or the march on Philadelphia, and for the assembly, the governor’s inability to enforce the rule of law was further proof of the ineffectiveness of proprietary government. In the end, Franklin’s petition campaign was only mod- erately successful in the western counties. Undaunted, the assembly quickly appointed a committee of eight men, with Franklin at the helm, to draft a formal petition to the king. The committee finished the petition by three o’clock that afternoon, largely because Franklin had already prepared a draft petition in advance to speed along the process.27 Franklin’s biggest opponent in the assembly was John Dickinson. Although Dickinson admitted to some of the problems that came from a proprietary government, he advised caution for the sake of liberty above all. “If the change of government now meditated, can take place, with all our privileges preserved; let it instantly take place,” he told his fellow representatives, “but if they must be consumed in the blaze of royal authority, we shall pay too great a price for our approach to the throne.” 28 Dickinson’s words of caution struck a chord, and Franklin added a clause to his petition asking for protection of “those civil and religious privileges” that had prompted the Quakers to engage in “the cultivation of this then wilderness” in the late 1680s.29 This is not to say that Franklin was personally persuaded by Dickinson’s speech, but rather that he saw the propriety in allaying any fears over loss of liberty to ensure his royal campaign’s success. Franklin clearly still felt that the majority of the province was behind the change in 86 • Benjamin Franklin government. The assembly had received only one petition against the change, but since it was “from a remote part of the country, and . . . [from] persons unknown,” Franklin was quick to dismiss it. 30 He was also certain that Dickinson truly did not oppose a royal government. Those who voted against the petition were “arguing not against the expediency of the change,” he wrote to Richard Jackson on June 13, “but the propriety of the time for making the application.” 31 Presbyterian printer, William Bradford (Andrew’s nephew), entered the fray by issuing a pamphlet of Dickinson’s critiques of the royal campaign. The second edition appeared on June 29 and contained a preface by Provost William Smith (whom Franklin considered “a ready Scribbler . . . employ’d in all the dirty work of abusing and libelling the Assembly”), outlining the missteps of Quaker rule since the French and Indian War. 32 In the blistering heat of July, Smith coordinated a campaign to counter the assembly’s own petition for royal government. “The Proprietary Party are endeavoring to stir up the Presbyterians to join a petition against a change of government,” Franklin lamented; “what the endeavor will produce I cannot say.”33 By Sep- tember, the endeavor produced approximately 15,000 signatures, dwarfing Franklin’s paltry 3,200. At the end of July, Franklin and his supporters issued Joseph Galloway’s response to Dickinson in a pamphlet. Franklin provided a lengthy preface to lay out a “true state of facts” and to correct the misrepresentations in Dickinson’s pamphlet. Seeking to sway the western counties to his side, Franklin spoke directly to the issue of defense and how the state had shirked its obligation to provide security. “Your present proprietors,” he argued, “have never been more unreasonable hitherto, than barely to insist on your fighting in defense of their property, and paying the expense yourselves.” Franklin was bitterly partisan, condemning the Proprietary Party for treating Pennsylvania’s “distinguishing privileges as so many illegalities and absurdities.” He disparaged Proprietary Party supporters as “demons,” and sarcastically deemed its western supporters to be “the wiser part of the province,” blown to and fro on the winds of change and caught up in the passion of the Paxtonian moment. Franklin also took issue with Smith’s claim that except for “Indian ravages,” Pennsylvania enjoyed “the most perfect internal tranquility.” “What!” blasted Franklin in reply,

are there not pamphlets continually written, and daily sold in our streets, to justify and encourage [a spirit of riot and violence]? Are not the mad armed mob in those writings instigated to imbrue their hands in the blood of their fellow citizens, and then representing the Assembly and their Friends as worse than Indians, as having privately stirr’d up the Indians to murder the white people, and arm’d and rewarded them for that purpose? LIES, Gentlemen, The Imperial Crisis, 1763–1775 • 87

villainous as ever the malice of hell invented; and which to do you justice, not one of you believes, tho’ you would have the mob believe them. 34

For all his partisan anger, Franklin was not far off in his assessment of the fragility of the proprietary alliance. The Paxton Riots and Pontiac’s War had drawn together groups that formerly opposed one another. Old and New Light Presbyterians tried to find common ground and establish committees of correspondence in the western counties while working with Provost Smith (an Anglican) to gain the German vote. Through William Smith, the Proprietary Party had great success in swaying German voters away from Franklin and the Quaker Party. Perhaps its most effective tactic was uncovering one of Franklin’s earlier writings from 1751, published in London, in which he had asked “why should the Palatine Boors be suffered to swarm into our settlements, and, by herding together, establish their language and manners, to the exclusion of ours?” 35 Members of the proprietary faction circulated Franklin’s xenophobic slur as widely as they could by visiting the German coffee house in Philadelphia every night in the days before the election. Franklin’s enemies claimed that “boor” was translated as “hog,” while his supporters reassured Germans that “peasant” was a more accurate translation. William Smith had written equally offensive statements about the Germans in the 1750s, a fact the members of the Franklin’s supporters tried to bring to light. The Quaker Party also tried to show that Presbyterians were equally disdainful of their German neighbors by publishing the satirical proceedings of a Presbyterian council in Lancaster in which the attending ministers celebrated their success in spreading lies and turning the Germans against Franklin. “If it holds them ‘till the 1st of October,” they cheered, “we don’t care how soon they are undeceived afterwards.”36 Nevertheless, many German voters, unsettled by the Paxton Riots and wary of the royal government, latched onto Franklin’s remarks to justify their shifting political loyalties. In the midst of all the fighting, painter and engraver James Claypoole issued a cartoon depicting Quakers marching with guns out of their meet- inghouse to challenge the Paxton Boys. “When dangers threaten ’tis mere nonsense,” he scoffed in the accompanying verses, “to talk of such thing as conscience / To arms to arms with one accord / The Sword of Quakers and the Lord.” The cartoon also showed Franklin as a scheming politician watch- ing from behind a curtain saying, “Fight Dog! Fight Bear! You’re all my friends / By you I shall attain my ends / For I can never be content / ’Till I have got the government.” Claypoole then issued “The Quakers and Frank- lin,” which showed a group of Quakers sitting around a table grumbling that “the Paxton spirit grows stronger and stronger,” and “could we but get them to sign the petition we’d then have them ith’ noose.” Joseph Fox, an 88 • Benjamin Franklin assemblyman and Quaker who had been read out of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting in 1756 for violating the Quaker testimony against war, peers over their shoulders, whispering to himself that if the plan fails he must turn “Presbyterian again.” Meanwhile, Quaker merchant Abel James hands out tomahawks to a group of Natives with the promise, “exercise those on the Scotch Irish and Dutch and I’ll support you while I am Abel.” Franklin surveys the scene saying to himself, “I am content if I but get the government.”37 After eight long months of debate, Pennsylvanians finally cast their votes on October 1 and 2. Men crowded the steps of the state house for the opening of the polls at nine o’clock in the morning, and the polls remained busy until midnight. One Philadelphian observed “that at no time a person could get up in less than a quarter of an hour from his entrance at the bot- tom.” 38 Lutheran voters first met in a Philadelphia schoolhouse at one o’clock to discuss the election, and then made their way “in an orderly group to the court house to vote.” 39 When they arrived, the state house was so packed with people that they had to wait in line for three hours. At three o’clock in the morning on October 2, New Ticket organizers called for the polls to close, but the Old Ticket men insisted they stay open so the old and lame could vote, having been kept at bay all day by the large crowd. These men were carried up the steps in chairs and litters to vote until six o’clock in the morning, throwing their support largely behind the Old Ticket. New Ticket supporters then dispatched horsemen to Germantown and other areas of support to rally voters to the polls. By nine o’clock, New Ticket voters began to flood the polls, which finally closed at three o’clock in the afternoon. It took until the afternoon of the next day to count the almost 31,000 votes cast. The biggest upset and perhaps most symbolic victory for the Proprietary Party was in Philadelphia City, where Franklin and Galloway both lost their seats. Franklin rightly attributed his defeat to losing the German vote. The Proprietary Party “carried (would you think it!) above 1000 Dutch from me,” he lamented to Richard Jackson, “by printing part of my paper . . . where I speak of the Palatine Boors herding together.” 40 Although Franklin dismissed it all as “quite a laughing matter,” it surely was humiliating to see his name second to last on the election results list. Vituperative Quaker critic David James Dove did not miss the opportunity to take a jab at Franklin’s loss in a cartoon, showing him front and center saying to two other men, “See how the Palatine Boors herd together.” The devil leans over his shoulder reassuring him, “Thee shall be agent Ben for all my realms.” In the background are Germans crowd courthouse steps, saying, “who dares defame the German name,” and, “none call us boors but sons of whores.” A mounted Proprietary supporter declares, “March on, brave Germantonians” while above an angel trumpets, “The Germans are The Imperial Crisis, 1763–1775 • 89 victorious,” rubbing the election loss in Franklin’s face. The verses below condemn the Quakers as lying and depraved men and celebrate the Ger- mans’ hand in the election victory: “Drink a health to the Boors / Who turn’d BEN out of doors / And like heroes erected their banners / For he said they were swine / Who did Herd and combine / To spread both their language and manners.” 41 Post-election celebration and vituperation gave way to the reality that the proprietary faction was in no position to stop the Quakers and their supporters in the assembly. Not that it did not try. When the issue of royal government came to the fore on October 20, considerable debate ensued. Although Franklin and Galloway were not present during this and future debates, they were heavily involved from the outside. As Benjamin Chew wrote, “Franklin and Galloway and others tho excluded have had the entire direction of matters within doors. The measure and plan of each days proceedings being settled by them every evening at private meetings and cabals held with their Friends in the house.”42 The assembly voted to instruct agent Jackson to proceed with the royal petition with caution to ensure that none of the privileges Pennsylvanians currently enjoyed would be lost. As his enemies feared would happen, the assembly quickly moved to appoint a second agent to aid Jackson in London, a job everyone knew was created just for Franklin. To protest the appointment, some residents of Philadelphia sent a remonstrance to the assembly laying out the reasons why Franklin should not get the job. Franklin was a crass opportunist who had ignored “the sentiments of more than three-fourths of the province” during the campaign for royal government, something he would likely do again since both he and his son held “offices of considerable profit and honor under the Crown.” 43 Franklin had entered public service as a middling tradesman, but would soon leave the province branded as an entitled and self-serving elitist. John Dickinson also submitted a protest to the Pennsylvania Journal , asking the assembly to appoint another “gentleman of integrity, abilities, and knowledge” to help “avert the mischiefs apprehended from the intended appointment.”44 Franklin was quick to respond, taking the unusual step of using the first person singular and signing his name to the pamphlet before boarding a ship to England on November 7. Franklin scolded his opponents for playing his election defeat as a mandate from the people, arguing that “among near four thousand voters” none of his opponents “had scarcely a score more” votes than he had. “It seems then,” he chided, “that your elections were very near being rejections.” In his final address to the people of Pennsylvania, Franklin closed with these words: “I wish every kind of pros- perity to my friends, and I forgive my enemies.” 45 He would return ten and a half years later to a revolution. 90 • Benjamin Franklin

As he set up his old residence at 36 Craven Street, Benjamin hoped that this trip would only take a few months. He took his grandson, now four years old, into the house but did not tell anyone who he was, referring to him only as William Temple. In spite of Franklin’s hopes, it would not be a short trip because on March 22, Parliament passed the Stamp Act. On the back of the Paxton Riots, the Stamp Act put the Quakers, and Franklin as their agent, in a peculiar conundrum. If the plan for royal government was to succeed, they needed to prove to the Crown that they could effectively replace the Penns. Thus, obeying ministerial policies and enforcing all laws was paramount in currying royal favor. Joseph Galloway insisted that those who opposed the Stamp Act had “already forfeited all favor that might be expected from a new government.”46 The problem was that most Quaker leaders despised the act as an infringement upon colonial liberties. “The Stamp Act,” Franklin had lamented to David Hall in mid-February, “notwithstanding all the opposition that could be given it by the American interest, will pass.”47 Caught between popular opinion and their own royal petition, the Quakers were immobilized. Whatever opinions he had about the Stamp Act, Franklin used the new legislation to further insert himself into the patronage system by recommending his friend, John Hughes, to be Stamp Master for Pennsylvania. This was par for the course for Franklin. Since becoming postmaster general in 1753, he had given his brother, his brother’s stepson, his nephew, the son of a friend, a friend, his own son, and the husband of his wife’s niece jobs in the postal service. Removed from the growing anger against the Stamp Act in the colonies, Franklin’s tacit support of the legislation served to further tarnish his reputation back home. As John Dickinson’s star began to rise as the defender of colonial liberties, critics painted Franklin as a myopic royalist who would do anything to become Pennsylvania’s first royal governor. “The Spirit of the People is so violent against every One, they think has the least concern with the Stamp Law,” David Hall wrote to Frank- lin in September, “and they have imbibed the Notion, that you had a Hand, in the framing of it, which has occassioned you many Enemies.” 48 The criticism was unfair. Although Franklin wrote to Hughes in August 1765 advising him that, “Loyalty to the Crown and faithful Adherence to the Government of this Nation . . . will always be the wisest Course for you and I to take,” he also assured Hughes that he was working hard to get the act repealed. 49 Franklin was appalled by what he considered to be the rash- ness of the Virginia legislature in passing four resolves against the Stamp Act at Patrick Henry’s urging. He agreed with Virginia’s assertion of the “inestimable right” of the colonies to legislate their own taxes, but believed that “Prudence and Moderation” were the best course of action. 50 This did not mean sitting back and doing nothing, and Franklin was in regular The Imperial Crisis, 1763–1775 • 91 contact with Philadelphia’s most active opponent of the new legislation: Charles Thomson. Thomson sent Franklin a letter decrying the Stamp Act that he had printed in the August 17 edition of The London Chronicle to reveal to London readers the colonial attitude about the tax. Thomson reassured Franklin that “it is not the bearing a part in the general defense that gives the alarm,” but rather the deprivation of “being governed by laws of [the colonists’] own making.” 51 The Stamp Act created a constitutional crisis and was an essential precursor to the Revolution along the Atlantic coast. In Pennsylvania, Thom- son argued that the western counties were too unstable for the Stamp Act to be enacted. “Our frontiers are still in confusion,” he wrote, and the people living there are “determined to admit no intercourse with the Indians.” Vio- lence was rampant as disgruntled whites began attacking supply trains from the east carrying trade goods for western tribes. Thomson concluded that “those who before would have heartily joined to have composed the confu- sions on the frontier now dissatisfied with the measures pursued in Great Britain, look on them with less concern.”52 In other words, Pennsylvanians who might once have tried to calm (i.e., compose) western rioters were now too concerned with imperial policy and their own maltreatment by the Crown. The only result could be chaos. Franklin used Thomson’s fears to promote his plan for a royal government. “The outrages continually committed by those misguided people,” he wrote of western Pennsylvanians, “will doubtless tend to convince all the considerate on your side of the water of the weakness of our present government and the necessity of a change.” 53 He assured Thomson that he had taken “every step in [his] power to prevent the passing of the Stamp Act,” but that in the end he “might as well have hinder’d the sun’s setting.” 54 Franklin urged caution and moderation when opposing the Stamp Act, but Thomson saw the situation as much more dire. “The Sun of Liberty is indeed fast setting, if not down already, in the American colonies,” he told Franklin. For Thomson, the “frontier” experience entitled Americans to be treated with respect. Should the colonists, after they “encountered the hor- rors of a desert, borne the attacks of barbarous savages, and, at the expense of their blood and treasure, settled this country” now “quietly submit to be deprived of everything an Englishman has been taught to hold dear?”55 John Dickinson argued a similar line in his appeal against the Stamp Act. The colonists, he wrote, “are so closely employed in subduing a wild country for their subsistence, . . . that they have not the time nor any temptation to apply themselves to manufactures.” 56 Since Britain relied so heavily on the resources of the colonies for its own manufactures, he reasoned, it would be folly to upset the economic relations already in place with an unconstitutional tax. 92 • Benjamin Franklin

The Proprietary Party did not miss the chance to undermine the Quaker Party by trying to substantiate a rumor that Franklin had done little to oppose the Stamp Act. Franklin knew he was damned no matter what he did. “It is my opinion,” he concluded, “that if I had actually prevented the Stamp Act, . . . neither the malice of the interested abettors of Indian murder, nor the malice of the interested abettors of Proprietary injustice would have in the least abated towards me.”57 When reports reached Philadelphia in August of riots and protests in the other colonies, more men rallied to the Proprietary Party’s banner to oppose the Stamp Act and demand that John Hughes resign. “If John Hughes, don’t the Stamp refuse,” a local poet threatened, “I wish he may be thus abused. / Grant heaven that he may never go without, / The rheumatism, the pox or gout.”58 As John Hughes rightly predicted, he was not able to “escape the storm of Presbyterian rage.”59 Men gathered at Bradford’s London Coffee House where they hatched plans to pull down Franklin’s, Hughes’s, and Galloway’s homes. Josiah Davenport, the son of Benjamin’s sister, Sarah, came to Deborah’s aid. Once she assessed the situation she told him that “he should fetch a gun or two as [she] had none.” She then called for her brother, asking him to “bring his gun.” As she recounted the episode later in a letter to Benjamin, she “made one room [of the house] into a magazine,” prepared to “show a proper resentment” to anyone who dared threaten her. 60 As Edward Burd reported, “the mob made a bon-fire and burnt an effigy for our stamper, and surrounded his house, whooping and halooing, which caused him to load his arms.”61 Hughes spent the evening with his guns, taking what little respite there was from the threat of the mob to write a few lines to Franklin. “I for my part am well- arm’d with fire arms and am determin’d to stand a siege,” he wrote at around eight o’clock in the evening, adding, “If I live till tomorrow morning I shall give you a further account.”62 Hughes did live to see another day, and to see the Stamp Act go into effect on November 1. In Philadelphia, the occasion was marked by the ringing of muffled bells and other peaceful demonstra- tions, but no violence. “The dreadful first of November is over,” Deborah wrote, “and not so much disorder as was dreaded.” 63 Franklin would get the chance to repair his reputation with a showdown in Parliament on February 13, 1766. George Grenville’s ministry, which had proposed the Stamp Act, had fallen in the summer of 1765—the news of which had helped fuel such daring opposition to the Stamp Act in Philadel- phia. Charles Watson-Wentworth, the Second Marquess of Rockingham, replaced Grenville as Prime Minster and was generally more friendly to the colonies than his predecessor. There was much damage to undo. William Bradford had published some of Franklin and John Hughes’s correspondence about the Stamp Act—a boon for Franklin’s enemies in Pennsylvania. Hughes sued Bradford over the letters’ publication, and by early 1766 word The Imperial Crisis, 1763–1775 • 93 had started to reach the colonies that Franklin had been working hard for the Stamp Act’s repeal. Real redemption came when printed transcripts of Franklin’s interrogation before Parliament about the Stamp Act began circulating in early October. Did not Parliament have the power to make laws for the colonies, the members asked? “The authority of parliament was allowed to be valid in all laws, except such as should lay internal taxes,” Franklin replied. 64 Respect for Parliament was “greatly lessened,” he told them, assuring them that the colonists would “never submit” to the tax. The colonists had known since May about the Stamp Act’s repeal on March 18, and here was proof that Franklin had come out on the right side of the issue, if not influenced the outcome. Franklin soon faced a second challenge when Stamp Act tensions revived once again with the Townshend Revenue Acts of 1767. Back home in Pennsylvania, Quaker Party leaders still believed that they could persuade the Crown to establish a royal government. Galloway took the position that the duties would be of no consequence. “I don’t well see,” he wrote to Franklin on October 9, 1767, “how the public weal of the Province can be affected by it.”65 In his view, Pennsylvania only stood to benefit from the revenues generated by the duties since the King would use the money to appoint and pay officials in the province. Sensible that few Pennsylvanians would see his point of view, he instructed Franklin to protest the acts but only if the agents from the other colonies first took the initiative. The Quaker Party’s opposition stopped there, and it once again tried to prevent public displays of protest and discouraged merchants from signing a non-importation act. Some Quaker Party supporters were sure that the Townshend Duties would not create as much furor in Philadelphia as the Stamp Act did. “We seem at present very quiet here,” Thomas Wharton wrote to Franklin in November 1767, “and I am satisfied that the watch- word among the Presbyterians is moderation .” 66 The Proprietary Party was no less conservative, preferring to send petitions to the Crown rather than to organize overt opposition in the streets. Resistance then fell to the Pres- byterian Party and John Dickinson. Opposition to the Townshend Duties solidified John Dickinson’s status as the foremost defender of colonial liberty. Dickinson’s incredibly popular Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania , published in almost every paper in the colonies, were rooted in local concerns while speaking to a larger Atlan- tic audience. Their remarkable popularity made him the de facto spokes- man for the American colonists. Since the twelve letters were published anonymously from December 1767 to February 1768 (and reprinted until late April), at first no one knew who it was they were celebrating. Some suspected it was Franklin. In reality, Franklin was far more cautious than Dickinson and behind the curve in his constitutional thinking. During the 94 • Benjamin Franklin

Stamp Act crisis, Franklin had recognized Parliament’s right to lay everything but internal taxes. Dickinson now argued that any duty not expressly used to regulate trade was a tax, and all taxation by Parliament was unconstitutional. Indeed, the Stamp Act and the new Townshend Duties were as “universally detested . . . as slavery itself” because they were passed without the colonies’ consent.67 Franklin was unconvinced. Either “Parliament has a power to make all laws for us,” he wrote to his son, or “it has a power to make no laws for us.”68 Dickinson also warned of the usurpation of rights, which “acquire strength by continuance and thus become irresistible.” 69 History had proven that excises and standing armies went hand in hand, to the detriment of the people’s liberty. “A standing army and excise have not yet happened ,” Dickinson warned, “but it does not follow from this that they will not happen .”70 As with his opposition to the plan for royal government, Dickinson expressed fear of what might happen to colonial liberties should the Townshend Acts go unopposed. “Let us take care of our rights ,” Dickin- son urged his readers in his final installment, for “SLAVERY IS EVER PRE- CEDED BY SLEEP.” 71 Franklin’s thinking started to catch up to Dickinson’s in April when the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Lord Hillsborough, issued a letter ordering colonial governors to keep the legislatures in line or face the dissolution of their governments. Back in Philadelphia, the Presbyterian Party began to organize a public protest while Galloway and the Quakers sat stupefied by such harsh words from London. A nervous John Penn observed that “those persons who were the most moderate are now set in a flame and have joined the general cry of liberty.” 72 Presbyterians publicly condemned the letter while Quakers watched hopes of a royal government slip through their fin- gers. Still, the assembly, although affronted by Hillsborough’s words, refused to join Massachusetts’ call for inter-colonial cooperation. With Galloway at the helm and still holding on to a shred of hope that the plan for royal government would succeed, the assembly sent a petition to the king asking for his “paternal care and regard” in protecting British liberties in the colonies.73 Franklin, too, was unwilling to discard his call for moderation because he hoped that he would be appointed Hillsborough’s undersecre- tary. That, combined with the chance that Pennsylvania might become a royal colony, meant Franklin had reason to keep playing it safe. Privately, Franklin admitted to William in January that it was unlikely he would get the appointment since, “it is a settled point here that I am too much of an American.”74 Being an American in 1768 did not mean splitting from Brit- ain, but it did increasingly meant an acceptance of Dickinson’s constitutional ideology that rejected Parliamentary taxes on the colonies. By late 1768, Franklin was tired and wanted the dispute to be over. After all, what had all of this fighting accomplished? “I do not find that I have gained any The Imperial Crisis, 1763–1775 • 95 point in either country,” he concluded, “except that of rendering myself suspected by my impartiality; in England of being too much an American, and in America of being too much an Englishman.” 75 Franklin soon concluded that the royal petition was now dead. Joseph Galloway was crushed when a letter from Franklin arrived in Philadelphia in late October saying that he would no longer press for a royal government “during the administration of a minister that appears to have a stronger partiality for Mr. Penn than any of his predecessors.” 76 With nothing left to lose, Franklin went on the attack against Hillsborough and the Townshend Duties. Under the obvious pen name “Francis Lynn,” he made it clear that all he and the colonists wanted was for Britain to “leave us the Enjoyment of our native and dear-bought Privileges, and not attempt to alter or inno- vate our Constitutions.”77 William wrote to him praising the essay: “The Piece sign’d Francis Lynn . . . is much admir’d, and has been reprinted, I believe, in all the Papers on the Continent.”78 While Franklin may have lagged behind Dickinson in his thinking about the Stamp Act and the Townshend Acts (at least at first), his prediction for the future should tensions remain unresolved were spot on. On March 18, 1770, he wrote to Charles Thompson that there were some men on the Privy Council who were just waiting “for a colourable Pretence and Occasion of ordering the Souldiers to make a Massacre among us.” 79 What Franklin did not know when he wrote the letter was that on March 5, British soldiers had fired into a crowd in Boston, killing five colonists in what was quickly called a massacre. In a letter printed in The London Chronicle in November, Franklin repeated his earlier sentiment that the plan all along was to provoke the colonists into “some rash action that might justify making a massacre among them.”80 His words struck all the right chords in the colonies and by 1771 Franklin was the agent for Georgia and Massachusetts on top of his duties for Pennsylvania. On December 2, 1772, Franklin made the fateful decision to send a pack- age of letters to Thomas Cushing, the speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives. Six of the letters were authored by Massachusetts’ governor, Thomas Hutchinson, written in the late 1760s and containing advice on how England could bring an end to the fits of discontent that had wracked the colonies since the Stamp Act. The letters “shall not be printed, nor any Cop- ies taken of the whole or any part of it,” Franklin clearly instructed, “but I am allow’d and desired to let it be seen by some Men of Worth in the Province for their Satisfaction only.”81 Despite Franklin’s wishes, the letters were simply too explosive not to be used by those opposed to Hutchinson’s government. Samuel Adams read them aloud to the members of the Massachusetts legislature, which subsequently struck a committee to petition the king to remove Hutchinson from office. The letters were then made public in a 96 • Benjamin Franklin pamphlet produced by Boston Gazette printers Benjamin Edes and John Gill. “Since the Letters themselves are now copied and printed, contrary the Promise I made,” Franklin wrote to Cushing on July 25, 1773, “I am glad my Name has not been heard on the Occasion.”82 His anonymity in the affair was short-lived. In September, Franklin penned two satires, “Rules by Which a Great Empire May be Reduced to a Small One,” and “An Edict of the King of Prussia,” lampooning Parliament’s colonial policies. Although only a few friends knew that Franklin had written these satires, he was already getting a reputation as an advocate for colonial independence. Gov- ernor Hutchinson suspected that Franklin had leaked his personal letters, William informed his father, adding that the governor was spreading the idea that Franklin had been encouraging the colonists “in insisting on their Independency.” 83 The accusation was false, but Franklin had now fully embraced Dickinson’s ideology while his son had not. “I am indeed of opinion, that the parliament has no right to make any law whatever, binding on the colonies,” he wrote to William, adding, “I know your sentiments differ from mine on these subjects.”84 In late December, after learning that two men had dueled over their alleged involvement in the Hutchinson affair, Franklin came forward as the one who sent the letters to Cushing. “I alone am the person who obtained and transmitted to Boston the letters in question,” he admitted in The London Chronicle. 85 The admission set the stage for his appearance on January 11, 1774, before the Privy Council that was considering the petition from Massachusetts to remove Hutchinson from office. The meeting was very brief. The Council was more interested in how Hutchin- son’s letters were obtained in the first place and Franklin quickly sensed that the tables were turning against him. “I thought that this had been a matter of politics and not of law,” he told the assembled men, “and have not brought any Council.”86 The members recessed until January 29 to allow Franklin to get a lawyer and prepare his case. By the time the Council reconvened, news of the Boston Tea Party had reached London. Specta- tors packed the room, including Lord Hillsborough, who had lost his position as secretary in 1772 while trying to prevent Franklin from getting approval from the Council for a land grant in the Ohio country (and whom, rather ironically, Franklin thought had intercepted his private mail when in power). Over the course of an hour, Hutchinson’s lawyer, Alexander Wedderburn, dismantled the defense of his actions that Frank- lin previously offered in his earlier public confession in theChronicle . He also made an accusation that Franklin was familiar with: that he was trying to oust the governor so that he could take his place. Franklin remained silent the entire time, and when Wedderburn called him forward to be examined as a witness, he declined. The Imperial Crisis, 1763–1775 • 97

In the end, Franklin was let go without any charges laid against him, and the Massachusetts petition was dismissed. But that did not mean there were no repercussions. Hutchinson lost his governorship to General Gage, and Franklin lost his position as postmaster. There had been talk before the hearing of seizing Franklin and his papers and locking him up in Newgate prison, so he lay low for the rest of the year apart from writing some biting satires. And yet, he did not go home to Philadelphia even though William assured him that he could “depend, when you return here, on being received with every Mark of Regard and Affection.”87 His daughter, Sally, had married Richard Bache in 1767. In 1769, they had a son and named him Benja- min Franklin in honor of his grandfather. Richard had visited Franklin in London in 1771, but the only contact Sally had with her father was a few letters. Franklin wrote to Deborah in February 1774, telling her he hoped to be home in May of 1775. But with little business to conduct, he seems to have considered speeding up that time line. In April 1774, he wrote to Deb- orah: “I hoped to have been on the Sea in my Return by this time, but find I must stay a few Weeks longer, perhaps for the Summer Ships.”88 But he did not leave that summer either. Franklin’s relationship with William was straining because his wanted his son to give up his governorship. “I think Independance more honourable than any Service,” he wrote to William in May, “and that in the State of American Affairs, which from the present arbitrary measures is likely soon to take place, you will find yourself in no comfortable Situation, and perhaps wish you had soon disengaged yourself.”89 While William began to correspond secretly with Lord Dartmouth, Hillsborough’s replacement, Benjamin was pushing for a meeting of all the colonies to determine a course of action in the aftermath of the Coercive Acts passed to punish the colonies for the Boston Tea Party. Even Deborah’s failing health did not draw Benjamin home. She suffered a stroke in the winter of 1769 and deteriorated from there. “It is now nine long Months since I received a Line from my dear Debby,” he wrote in Sep- tember 1774. It was no surprise that she had not written. “It is so dificall to writ,” she told him in a rather incoherent October 1773 letter, reiterating again at the end of the letter, “I Cante write aney mor I am your afeckshone wife.” 90 Benjamin’s September letter would be the last he wrote to his wife. On December 14, she suffered another stroke and died on December 19. William set out in a snowstorm from New Jersey for the funeral and then fired off a bitter letter to his father. He had visited Deborah before her stroke and she told him then that she would not live to see the summer of 1775.91 If Benjamin did not come home by then she would never see him again. “I heartily wish you had happened to have come over in the Fall,” William wrote to his father, “as I think her Disappointment in that respect preyed a good deal on her Spirits.” It was as close as he would come to blaming his 98 • Benjamin Franklin father for his stepmother’s death. William was baffled that Franklin still showed no sign of coming home. “You postpone your Return to your Fam- ily,” he wrote, even though, “you are look’d upon with an evil Eye in that Country, and are in no small Danger of being brought into Trouble for your political Conduct.” 92 But Franklin stayed. Perhaps the only explanation of why Franklin did not rush home was because he engaging in secret meetings of his own. Franklin had been talking with former Prime Minister William Pitt (i.e., Lord Chatham) since August about how to smooth things over with the colonies. Pitt intended to bring a list of proposals before the House of Lords to solve the ongoing imperial crisis. Franklin was there when Pitt explained his ideas to his peers on Febru- ary 1, 1775. As he recounted the story to William, once Pitt was done,

Lord Sandwich rose, and in a petulant vehement Speech oppos’d its being receiv’d at all, and gave his Opinion that it ought to be immediately rejected with the Contempt it deserv’d. That he could never believe it the Production of any British Peer. That it appear’d to him rather the Work of some American; and turning his Face towards me, who was leaning on the Bar, said, he fancied he had in his Eye the Person who drew it up, one of the bitterest and most mischie- vous Enemies this Country had ever known. This drew the Eyes of many Lords upon me: but as I had no Inducement to take it to myself, I kept my Counte- nance as immoveable as if my Features had been made of Wood.93

Chatham’s bill was rejected outright. In a circular letter to the speakers of the colonial assemblies, Franklin and the two other agents for Massachu- setts warned that

the Ministry have declared in both Houses the Determination to inforce Obe- dience to all the late Laws. For this Purpose we understand that three Regi- ments of Foot, one of Dragoons, seven hundred Marines, six Sloops of War, and two Frigates, are now under Orders for America.94

Still, Franklin hoped for a solution. “I would try any thing, and bear any thing that can be borne with Safety to our just Liberties rather than engage in a War with such near Relations,” he wrote to Joseph Galloway in late February, “unless compelled to it by dire Necessity in our own Defence.” 95 He finally left England on March 19, 1775, telling his fellow agent from Massachusetts, Arthur Lee, that, “I may possibly return again in Autumn.”96 He landed in Philadelphia on May 5, 1776, with his grandson, William Temple, at his side. But there would be no rest for Franklin—the next day he was selected as a member of the second Continental Congress. At 70 years of age, Franklin showed no signs of slowing down and he now had a front-row seat to the revolution he was trying so hard to prevent. The Imperial Crisis, 1763–1775 • 99

N OTES 1 Benjamin Franklin to Richard Jackson, December 19, 1763 [electronic edition]. Papers of Benjamin Franklin. The Packard Humanities Institute. http://franklinpapers.org . Unless otherwise noted, all citations to electronic editions are from Yale’s Franklin Papers. 2 The numbers were determined by searching “Pennsylvania” as the place of publication in the Evans Digital Edition database. www.readex.com/content/early-american-imprints-series-i- evans-1639–1800 3 On average per year, Philadelphia issued 43 of 173 imprints from 1740 to 1750, and 46 of 215 from 1750 to 1760. On average per year, Boston issued 91 from 1740 to 1750, and 87 from 1750 to 1760. 4 Benjamin Franklin, A Narrative of the Late Massacres, in Lancaster County, of a Number of Indi- ans, Friends of This Province, by Persons Unknown (Philadelphia, 1764) [electronic edition]. 5 Franklin, Autobiography , part 12 [electronic edition]. 6 Alexander Graydon, Memoirs of His Own Time (Philadelphia: Lindsay and Blakiston, 1846), 47–48. 7 The Journals of Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, trans. Theodore G. Tappert and John W. Dober- stein (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1942), 2: 19. 8 Extract of “Diary of the Indian Congregation in the Barracks of Philadelphia,” in Memoirs of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1826), 13: 353. 9 Muhlenberg, Journals , 2: 20. 10 Quoted in John R. Dunbar, ed., The Paxton Papers (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1957), 40, n2. 11 Benjamin Franklin to Richard Jackson, February 11, 1764 [electronic edition]. 12 Pennsylvania Assembly Committee: Report, February 21, 1764 [electronic edition]. 13 Assembly to the Governor, March 24, 1764, Charles F. Hoban, ed., Pennsylvania Archives (Philadelphia, 1935) Eighth series, 7: 5591. Hereafter cited asPA Archives. 14 Resolves of the Assembly, March 24, 1764, ibid., 7: 5593. 15 Benjamin Franklin to Richard Jackson, June 25, 1764 [electronic edition]. 16 Anonymous Letter from Philadelphia, October 18, 1764, North Carolina Magazine . . . for 1764 (New Bern, 1764), 198, as quoted in J. Phillip Gleason, “A Scurrilous Colonial Election and Franklin’s Reputation,” William and Mary Quarterly 18 (1961), 70. 17 Resolves of the Assembly, March 24, 1764, PA Archives , 7: 5595. 18 Explanatory Remarks on the Assembly’s Resolves, March 29, 1764 [electronic edition]. 19 Petition of the Pennsylvania Freeholders and Inhabitants to the King, 29 March 1764 [electronic edition]. 20 Benjamin Franklin to Richard Jackson, March 31, 1764 [electronic edition]. 21 Copy of a Circular Letter, March 30, 1764, in A Looking Glass, &c., Number II (Philadelphia, 1764), reprinted in Dunbar., ed., The Paxton Papers , 311–12. 2 2 Observations on a Late Epitaph (Philadelphia, 1764), 4. 23 Hugh Williamson, The Plain Dealer, Number I (Philadelphia, 1764), 3–4. 24 Joseph Galloway, An Address to the Freeholders and Inhabitants of the Province of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1764), 4. 25 Benjamin Franklin, Cool Thoughts on the Present Situation of our Public Affairs (Philadelphia, 1764) [electronic edition]. 26 Governor Penn to the Assembly, May 17, 1764, PA Archives, 7: 5603; Minutes of the Assembly, May 24, 1764, PA , 7: 5608. 27 For Franklin’s initial draft and the final petition sent to the King, see Pennsylvania Assembly: Petition to the King (I), May 23, 1764 [electronic edition], and Pennsylvania Assembly: Peti- tion to the King (II), May 26, 1764 [electronic edition]. 28 John Dickinson, A Speech . . . By John Dickinson , 2nd Edition (Philadelphia, 1764), 3. 29 A Petition of the Representatives of the Freemen of the Province of Pennsylvania, May 26, 1764 [electronic edition]. 30 Benjamin Franklin to Richard Jackson, June 1, 1764 [electronic edition]. 31 Ibid. 100 • Benjamin Franklin

32 Documents on the Hearing of William Smith’s Petition, April 27, 1758 [electronic edition]. 33 Benjamin Franklin to Richard Jackson, July 12, 1764 [electronic edition]. 34 Joseph Galloway and Benjamin Franklin, The Speech of Joseph Galloway (Philadelphia: W. Dunlap, 1764) [electronic edition]. 35 Benjamin Franklin, Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind , 1755 [electronic edition]. 3 6 The Substance of Council Held at Lancaster (Philadelphia, 1764), 6. 37 All cartoons reprinted in E. P. Richardson, “The Birth of Political Caricature,” in Robert F. Looney, ed., Philadelphia Printmaking: American Prints Before 1860 (West Chester, 1974), 79. 38 Charles Petit to Joseph Reed, November 3, 1764, Leonard W. Labaree, ed., The Papers of Benjamin Franklin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), 11: 391. Hereafter cited as PBF. 39 Entry for October 1, 1764, Journals of Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, 2: 122. Muhlenberg does not indicate how he voted, but if he was like his fellow Germans, he would have voted for the Proprietary ticket. 40 Franklin to Richard Jackson, October 11, 1764 [electronic edition]. 41 David James Dove, The Counter-Medly (Philadelphia: Anthony Armbruster, 1765). 42 Benjamin Chew to Thomas Penn, November 5, 1764, as quoted in PBF, 11: 402, n6. 4 3 PA Archives , 7: 5688. 44 John Dickinson and Others: Protest Against the Appointment of Benjamin Franklin as Agent, October 26, 1764 [electronic edition]. 45 Benjamin Franklin, Remarks on a Late Protest (Philadelphia, 1764), 3, 7. 46 Benjamin Franklin to Joseph Galloway, June 13, 1767 [electronic edition]. 47 Benjamin Franklin to David Hall, February 14, 1765 [electronic edition]. 48 David Hall to Benjamin Franklin, September 6, 1765 [electronic edition]. 49 Benjamin Franklin to John Hughes, August 9, 1765 [electronic edition]. 50 For Virginia’s Stamp Act Resolutions, see www.history.org/History/teaching/tchcrvar.cfm . For the “prudence and moderation” comment, see Benjamin Franklin to John Hughes, August 9, 1765 [electronic edition]. 51 Charles Thomson, A Merchant in Philadelphia, August 17–20, 1765, The London Chronicle [electronic edition]. 52 Ibid. 53 Benjamin Franklin to Charles Thomson, July 11, 1765 [electronic edition]. 54 Ibid. 55 Charles Thomson to Benjamin Franklin, September 24, 1765 [electronic edition]. 56 John Dickinson, The Late Regulations Respecting the British Colonies (Philadelphia, 1765), 3. 57 Benjamin Franklin to David Hall, September 14, 1765 [electronic edition]. 5 8 The Lamentation, of Pennsylvania, on Account of the Stamp Act (Philadelphia, 1765). 59 John Hughes to Franklin, September 8, 1765 [electronic edition]. 60 Deborah Franklin to Benjamin Franklin, September 22, 1765. 61 Edward Burd to James Burd, September 18, 1765, in Lewis Burd Walker, ed., The Burd Papers (Pottsville, 1899), 3: 8. Edward Burd was the son of Colonel James Burd and nephew of Chief Justice Edward Shippen, under whom he studied law and whose daughter, Elizabeth, he married in 1778 at the age of twenty-six. Burd was only fourteen years old when the Paxton Boys marched on the city, and fifteen when the election of 1764 shook the province’s political structure; but his letters to his father show remarkable insight into the major currents shaping Pennsylvania in the 1760s and into the Revolution. 62 John Hughes to Benjamin Franklin, September 16, 1765 [electronic edition]. 63 Deborah Franklin to Benjamin Franklin, November 3, 1765 [electronic edition]. 6 4 The Examination of Doctor Benjamin Franklin, before an August Assembly, relating to the Repeal of the Stamp Act, &c . (Philadelphia: Hall and Sellers, 1766) [electronic edition]. 65 Joseph Galloway to Benjamin Franklin, October 9, 1767 [electronic edition]. 66 Thomas Wharton to Benjamin Franklin, November 17, 1767 [electronic edition]. 67 John Dickinson, “Letter II,” reprinted in Forrest McDonald, ed., Empire and Liberty (Engle- wood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1962), 12. The Imperial Crisis, 1763–1775 • 101

68 Benjamin Franklin to William Franklin, March 13, 1768 [electronic edition]. 69 Dickinson, “Letter III,” Empire and Liberty , 16. 70 Dickinson, “Letter XI,” Empire and Liberty , 73. 71 Dickinson, “Letter XII,” Empire and Liberty , 81. 72 John Penn to Thomas Penn, as quoted in James H. Hutson, Pennsylvania Politics, 1746–1770: The Movement for Royal Government and its Consequences (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), 225. 73 The Petition of the Representatives of the Freemen of the Province of Pennsylvania, Septem- ber 22, 1768, PA Archives, 7: 6273, 6277. 74 Benjamin Franklin to William Franklin, January 9, 1768 [electronic edition]. 75 Benjamin Franklin to unknown, November 28, 1768 [electronic edition]. 76 Benjamin Franklin to Joseph Galloway, August 20, 1768 [electronic edition]. 77 “Reply to Thomas Crowley,”The Public Advertiser , October 24, 1768 [electronic edition]. 78 William Franklin to Benjamin Franklin, March 2, 1769 [electronic edition]. 79 William Franklin to Charles Thompson, March 18, 1770 [electronic edition]. 80 To the Printer of the London Chronicle, The London Chronicle , November 6–8, 1770 [electronic edition]. 81 Benjamin Franklin to Thomas Cushing, December 2, 1772 [electronic edition]. 82 Benjamin Franklin to Thomas Cushing, July 25, 1773 [electronic edition]. 83 William Franklin to Benjamin Franklin, July 29, 1773 [electronic edition]. 84 Benjamin Franklin to William Franklin, October 6, 1773 [electronic edition]. 8 5 The London Chronicle , December 23–25, 1773. 86 “The Preliminary Hearing before the Privy Council Committee for Plantation Affairs on the Petition from the Massachusetts House of Representatives for the Removal of Hutchinson and Oliver (I)” 1773 [electronic edition]. 87 William Franklin to Benjamin Franklin, May 3, 1774 [electronic edition]. 88 Benjamin Franklin to Deborah Franklin, April 28, 1774 [electronic edition]. 89 Benjamin Franklin to William Franklin, May 7, 1774 [electronic edition]. 90 Deborah Franklin to Benjamin Franklin, October 29, 1773 [electronic edition]. 91 Sheila Skemp, Benjamin Franklin and William Franklin: Father and Son, Patriot and Loyalist (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1994), 119. 92 William Franklin to Benjamin Franklin, December 24, 1774 [electronic edition]. 93 Benjamin Franklin to William Franklin, March 22, 1775 [electronic edition]. 94 “To the Speakers of the Colonial Assemblies: a Circular Letter from Franklin, William Bollan, and Arthur Lee,” February 5, 1775 [electronic edition]. 95 Benjamin Franklin to Joseph Galloway, February 25, 1775 [electronic edition]. 96 Benjamin Franklin to Arthur Lee, March 19, 1775 [electronic edition]. CHAPTER 5 T HE IMPERIALIST AND THE REVOLUTION, 1775–1778

While Franklin was out somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean in April of 1775 taking regular water temperature readings and ruminating on the Gulf Stream, British regular soldiers and local militia units in Massa- chusetts were shooting at one another along the road connecting Lexington and Concord to Boston. Not realizing that Franklin was on his way home to Philadelphia, members of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress under Dr. Joseph Warren (the man who had coordinated Paul Revere’s and Wil- liam Dawes’ rides west) sent their version of the battles that they wished to be “immediately printed and dispersed thro’ every Town in England.” 1 Upon leaving England, Franklin knew that things would never be the same again and he lamented that he would not live long enough to see a return to normalcy. What made the American Revolution so heartbreaking for Frank- lin was his deep affection for and loyalty to England and its empire. Indeed, he had dedicated much of his public life to preserving that empire and it interests. “I now think it not likely I shall ever again see England,” he wrote soon after returning the Pennsylvania, “hostilities being commenced by General Gage against America, and a Civil War begun, which I have no Chance of living to see the End of, being 70 Years of Age.” 2 But he was not ready to die just yet. “I am, Thanks to God, very hearty and well,” he wrote to his sister.3 In many ways, his public work had just begun. To say that Frank- lin had become an American by 1775 can only be true if we adopt Franklin’s rather expansive view of what “America” was. One clue is found in the ten- tative terms for peace with Britain that Franklin had privately sketched out at the beginning of the Revolution. Britain would give up any claim to rule in North America and would cede the “Colonies of Quebec, St. John’s, Imperialist and Revolution, 1775–1778 • 103

Nova Scotia, Bermuda, East and West Florida, and the Bahama islands, with all their adjoining and intermediate territories” to the United States in exchange for money.4 This proposal reveals Franklin’s continental percep- tion of what America was, and what America could be. It would take a revolution to sort it all out. Much had changed in Pennsylvania since Franklin’s departure a decade before in 1765. First, John Dickinson had replaced Franklin as Philadel- phia’s foremost citizen because of his continued opposition to royal policy in the wake of the Boston Tea Party. When Paul Revere had ridden into Philadelphia in the late spring of 1774, bearing a public letter from Boston explaining the city’s hardships under the Coercive Acts, it provided a perfect opportunity for the anti-Quaker factions to undermine the assembly and sway Pennsylvanians away from the Quaker Party. The Boston letter was read that day in William Bradford’s London Coffee House on Front and Market Streets, with an announcement that it would be read again the following evening a few blocks away at City Tavern on Second Street. Frank- lin’s radical friend, Charles Thomson, knew that Dickinson’s attendance was paramount if the public was to be swayed and promised not to come to the tavern without Dickinson in tow. The idea was that Thomson would present a radical plan of action and then leave it to Dickinson to “moderate that fire by proposing measures of a more gentle nature.” 5 Everything worked according to plan. After some opening speeches urging immediate and decisive action (one delivered by Thomson who, with the heat of the room and his own excitement, fainted and had to be carried out), Dickinson arose and suggested establishing a committee of correspondence that could write to Boston explaining that “firmness, prudence, and moderation” were in order.6 As per Dickinson’s suggestion, Pennsylvania then joined the other colonies in establishing a committee of correspondence, which met in Phil- adelphia on May 21, 1774, under his leadership. Second, some of Franklin’s old allies and the assembly itself were beginning to lose political influence. Dickinson did not trust the Quaker assembly with Franklin’s friend, Joseph Galloway, at its head. He therefore asked the committee of correspondence to issue a call for an independent provincial conference. This was an important first step in undermining Quaker rule by creating a parallel representative body that would do what the Quakers would and could not. Delegates to the conference denied that they were seeking “unconstitutional independence,” but were sure to assert that Parliament’s attempt to “bind the people of these colonies ‘by statutes in all cases whatsoever’ ” was unconstitutional. 7 Sensible to the growing public support for the provincial conference and extra-legal bodies like it, the assembly ultimately rejected Parliament’s offer of reconciliation in the wake of the skirmishes at Lexington and Concord in April 1775. When the 104 • Benjamin Franklin assembly selected members for the second Continental Congress, Joseph Galloway petulantly refused his appointment, effectively ending his political career. “I am concern’d at your Resolution of quitting public Life at a time when your Abilities are so much wanted,” Franklin wrote to his friend three days after he returned to Philadelphia, “I hope you will change that Resolution.”8 Thirdly, the imperial crisis was destroying friendships like the one between Franklin and Galloway. While Franklin was away, Galloway had accepted a seat in the first Continental Congress in 1774, where he proposed a plan “to accommodate the difference between the two countries, and to establish their union on more firm and constitutional principles.”9 The plan was rejected a month later. Galloway’s proposal looked much like Franklin’s Albany Plan of 1754, with an elected grand council, under a president general, that would “ hold and exercise all the like Rights Liberties and privileges as are held and exercised by and in the House of Commons of Great Britain.”10 Galloway did not consult Franklin about the plan, preferring instead to correspond with Franklin’s son, William. Franklin noticed the absence of letters. “It is long since I have heard from you, tho’ I have written several Letters to you,” he wrote to Galloway from London on September 7, 1774.11 The last letter of substance Galloway had sent Franklin was in October 1772, in which he lamented that although “the old Friends of good Order and Government . . . express much Uneasiness and Alarm at the wicked and base Conduct of these mad People . . . yet they do not lift a finger to prevent it.”12 Galloway would eventually leave Philadel- phia in 1777 after the British invaded but then abandoned the city. He left behind his wife, Grace Growden Galloway, hoping that if he, a much-hated figure, was gone then the new patriot government would not confiscate his estate. He was very much mistaken. Even though Grace was the daughter of one of Philadelphia’s most powerful and wealthy men, the radicals took everything, even the dowry she begged to keep. She was forced from the city in 1778 and spent the next four years living in rented rooms until her death in 1782. Joseph would follow her to the grave in 1802 from exile in England. Fourthly, the volunteer militia (known as the associators) that Franklin had started in the 1740s was becoming a major player in the destruction of Quaker power. While the majority of the members of the assembly could not bring themselves to support a militia in 1775, Pennsylvanians had little compunction about mustering themselves without state sanction. Philadel- phia, protected from most of the violence of the French and Indian War, had no regular military associations and some residents were learning to use firearms for the first time. The posturing and parading of some members of the upper class came as an amusement to other Philadelphians, who Imperialist and Revolution, 1775–1778 • 105 mockingly dubbed one company of young gentlemen the “Silk Stocking Company” and the “Lady’s Light Infantry.”13 The city’s associators met in late April of 1775, agreeing to raise at least two companies for each ward of the city to supplement the two rifle and two artillery companies already being formed. “It is not doubted,” the associators were pleased to report, “but we shall have in a few weeks from this date, 4000 men, well equipped, for our own defense.”14 Opponents were quickly targeted, and some men joined a company or ceased their opposition to militia formation after “being formally introduced to a tar barrel.”15 Even Isaac Hunt, who had penned some of the most vicious anti-Paxton pamphlets and had consistently opposed the Presbyterian Party, “asked pardon of the public” for his Tory sentiments when thirty associators showed up on his doorstep.16 They placed him on a cart and forced him to admit to his wrongdoing. When he did so, the associators wheeled him through the main streets of Philadel- phia, beating drums, and stopping at various places for Hunt to make his declaration once again. John Adams, back in the city to attend the second Continental Congress, was overjoyed at the “martial spirit throughout this province,” which he claimed was so pervasive that “Quakers and all are carried away with it.”17 On June 10, upon seeing 2,000 uniformed battalion men, light infantry, grenadiers, riflemen, light horse, and artillery men performing drills, Adams boasted that “so sudden a formation of an army never took place any where.”18 Of course, not everyone was carried away. Franklin assured Nathanael Seidel, a nervous Moravian reverend and pacifist, that he was “persuaded that the Congress will give no Encouragement to any to molest your People on Account of their Religious Principles; and tho’ much is not in my Power, I shall on every Occasion exert my self to discountenance and prevent such infamous Practices.” He also offered Seidel some advice. He remembered being surprised at how prepared for defense the Moravian town of Bethlehem was when he visited it in 1756. If the Moravians would not restrain non-pacifists from taking up arms, it would “operate in the Minds of People very greatly in your Favour.”19 On May 11, 1775, the second day of business for the Second Continental Congress, the members read Franklin’s circular letter from February 1775 to the colonial legislatures that told of “a great majority” of the House of Com- mons rejecting his request to defend the petition the first Congress had sent in October of 1774 asking for the repeal of the Coercive Acts. The main issue before Congress was the deteriorating situation in Massachusetts. “We are now reduced to the sad alternative of defending ourselves by arms,” the Massachusetts legislature told Congress, “or submitting to be slaughtered.” 20 As Massachusetts’ former agent in London, Franklin was well-positioned to speak to the men assembled. “We rejoice greatly on the Arival of Doctor 106 • Benjamin Franklin

Franklin,” Abigail Adams wrote to John, “as he must certainly be able to inform you very perticuliarly of the situation of affairs in England.”21 But Franklin said very little. “You scarcely make mention of Dr. Franklin,” Abi- gail later wrote to her husband. “Surely he must be a valuable member.”22 When John finally obliged his wife with news of Franklin, his assessment was tepid: “He has had but little [to] share farther than to co operate and assist. He is however a great and good Man.” On the question of independence, Adams thought that Franklin had not yet made up his mind. Adams was certain that the colonies could maintain their independence, if they were driven to that “disagreeable necessity,” but for now the colonies were “neither in Peace nor War, neither dependent nor independent.”23 The state of limbo between dependence and independence did not mean inaction, especially among Pennsylvania’s volunteer militia. On June 30, 1775, the Pennsylvania assembly officially approved “the Association entered into by the good people of the province for the defense of their lives, liberty, and property,” and recommended that “firelocks, with bayonets fit- ted to them, cartridge boxes . . . and knapsacks” be sent to city and county volunteer militias. The assembly also recommended, as Franklin had suggested to Seidel, that all those opposed to bearing arms “cheerfully assist in proportion to their abilities.” 24 Those who supported the formation of an official Pennsylvania militia soon had the backing of Congress. On July 6, the Congress issued a declaration, largely the work of Thomas Jefferson and John Dickinson, stating the necessity of taking up arms. “We shall lay them down when hostilities shall cease on the part of the aggressors, and all danger of their being renewed shall be removed, and not before,” the Congress declared. 25 Congress would “give Britain one more chance, one opportunity more of recovering the friendship of the colonies,” Franklin wrote the next day, “which however I think she has not sense enough to embrace, and so I conclude she has lost them for ever.”26 That last chance was the so-called Olive Branch petition, again the work of Dickinson and Jefferson, submitted to the king on July 8. It asked that the King remedy the tax and trade disputes between Britain and her American colonies so that he and his heirs could enjoy a “long and prosperous reign” over the empire.27 Franklin thought the attempt to reconcile was futile, but he still signed the petition along with John Adams and the Massachusetts delegates (who shared Franklin’s pessimism). The reality was that armed conflict was already well under way, making reconciliation less and less likely. The battle of Bun- ker Hill and the burning of Charlestown had followed the skirmishes at Lex- ington and Concord; Fort Ticonderoga had fallen to the Americans; George Washington had been appointed the commander of a continental army; and Congress was seeking to arm and train anyone who would volunteer for military service so that it could prosecute an invasion into Canada to capture Imperialist and Revolution, 1775–1778 • 107

Montréal and Québec city. “All Trade and Business, Building, Improving, &c. . . . [is] at a Stand here,” Franklin wrote on July 17, “and nothing thought of but Arms.”28 On July 18, the Congress recommended that “all able bodied men [blacks included], between sixteen and sixty years of age in each colony, immediately form themselves into regular companies of militia.” 29 As the president of Pennsylvania’s Committee of Safety, Franklin started tallying Pennsylvania’s potential fighting force and asked that county-level committees provide the number of the associators and non-associators within their respective districts. While John Dickinson was hoping that the display of colonial military strength would force reconciliation with Britain, Franklin was working on a new frame of government for what he called “The United Colonies of North America.” Franklin presented the plan before Congress on July 21, 1775, proposing that the colonies enter into a “firm league of friendship” and coordinate their common interests through an annually elected Gen- eral Congress. If all of the grievances outlined in the Olive Branch petition were remedied, then the colonies would “return to their former Connection and Friendship with Britain.” If not, then “this Confederation is to be perpetual.” 30 It was not independence, but it was close. The continued failure to find a resolution to the imperial crisis started to come at an increasing personal cost for Franklin. “You are a Member of Parliament, and one of that Majority which has doomed my Country to Destruction,” he wrote to his old friend, William Strahan, on July 5, 1775, the day that the Continental Congress approved the Olive Branch petition. “You have begun to burn our Towns, and murder our People. Look upon your Hands! They are stained with the Blood of your Relations! You and I were long Friends: You are now my Enemy, and I am, Yours,” he finished the curt letter to the man who had once proposed that Sally Franklin marry his son. 31 Franklin never did send the letter, perhaps finding the penning of those angry words to be catharsis enough. That same day across the ocean, Strahan wrote a letter to Franklin. “I am somewhat afraid the Voice of Mod- eration will not now be listened to,” he wrote, “and that the Violence of some Men whose Views may not be truly so patriotic as they appear to be, will inflame the Quarrel beyond a Possibility of Accomodation.”32 Despite the strain the Revolution placed on their friendship, the two would continue to correspond until Strahan’s death in 1785. More serious was Franklin’s faltering relationship with his son, William. When Benjamin first returned to Philadelphia in early May of 1775, his relationship with William was more or less intact despite Deborah’s recent death and William’s angry letter of late 1774. The two met mid-month at Joseph Galloway’s manor in Bucks County, where fifteen-year old William Temple was reunited with the father he barely knew. William disagreed with 108 • Benjamin Franklin his father about how to resolve the imperial crisis, with Benjamin making his views quite clear by reading aloud a lengthy letter he had penned to William whilst sailing to Philadelphia. Still, in mid-August William wrote to his father to ask “when it will be proper Billy should be there [in Philadel- phia] in order to go to the College?”33 The relationship was civil, but cool. William still addressed Benjamin as “honoured father” in his letters and was torn between the deference he owed his father and the duty he owed his king. Even after Benjamin’s two visits to New Jersey in the summer of 1775 ended with father and son yelling at each other and disturbing the neighbors, Temple returned to Philadelphia with his grandfather in the fall. As Sheila Skemp argues, “the two men maintained some sense of civility at least in part because of their mutual devotion to Temple.”34 In mid to late 1775, William had little reason to understand his father’s side, let alone join it. Just like in Pennsylvania, extra-legal committees were usurping the power of the New Jersey legislature and governor’s council, which William deeply resented. It seemed as though these cheeky upstarts had little to back up their lofty rhetoric. The Continental army was in bad shape, as Benjamin knew firsthand. In October of 1775, he travelled at Con- gress’s behest to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to assess Washington’s army in a weeklong conference with the general. The army was sorely in need of regulation, and so Franklin and Washington hammered out how to feed, clothe, pay, discipline, and arm the soldiers. The army was in danger of collapse, but Franklin lied about it in a letter to his son-in-law, Richard, to keep morale up. “Here is a fine healthy Army, wanting nothing but some Improvement in its Officers,” he wrote.35 He was much more candid with Congress: soldiers were dissatisfied with their pay (Massachusetts men had received better pay during the French and Indian War) therefore few were planning to re-enlist when their terms were done at the end of the year. Franklin also feared that the news that the British had burned Falmouth, Massachusetts, would exacerbate the problem since men would think first of protecting their families and not of joining the army. Even if the colonists wanted independence, in late 1775 it seemed almost impossible that they could actually achieve it. Before heading home, Franklin picked up his sister, Jane, who had fled her house in occupied Boston for Cambridge and then for a friend’s house in Warwick, Rhode Island. The friend was Catherine Greene, whom Frank- lin had met in the 1754 and with whom he had flirted in person and by letters until her marriage to Rhode Island’s governor. “Tell me you are well and forgive me and love me one thousandth Part So well as I do you and then I will be Contented,” she had written to Benjamin in 1755.36 At sixty-three years old, Jane had been a widow for a decade and had already buried eight of her twelve children. 37 She would soon learn of the death of her son, Imperialist and Revolution, 1775–1778 • 109

Josiah, possibly from wounds sustained at the Battle of Bunker Hill. After the battle of Trenton, her mentally ill son, Benjamin, escaped from the house in which his uncle had arranged to have him locked up. She never learned his fate and presumed him to be dead. Her remaining son, Peter, also mentally ill and locked away in a house in the Massachusetts countryside since 1763, died in the summer of 1778. Only her estranged daughter, Jane, would survive to see the new century. In what must have been a rather awkward meeting, Benjamin and Jane (with Catherine’s son, Ray, in tow) called in on William at his mansion before heading back to Pennsylvania. Despite gains made with regards to military preparedness, the Pennsyl- vania assembly still instructed Franklin and the other provincial delegates in Congress to oppose independence. “We strictly enjoin you,” the members wrote, to “dissent from, and utterly reject, any Propositions, should such be made, that may cause, or lead to, a Separation from our Mother Country, or a Change of the Form of this Government.”38 For a brief moment, it seemed as though the luck of the continental army had turned with the fall of Montréal to American forces. “Our Troops, Assisted by near 6000 Canadians, took Possession of that Capital a day or Two After the Middle of November,” Horatio Gates wrote to Franklin on December 5; “. . . thus is the whole Province of Canada most Gloriously Added to the United Colonies.” 39 Gates was far too optimistic in his appraisal of the victory, but was adamant that this was the perfect time to push Congress to declare independence. He knew that Franklin did not need any “of this rea- soning to stimulate [him] to Action,” but “can not you inforce it with better of your Own into The Farmer?” he asked, referring to John Dickinson.40 On December 10, Charles Lee wrote from Massachusetts that “the tide has turn’d. . . . Our Army will be soon compleat. Give us Powder and Boston shall be yours.”41 With his exiled sister living with him, the prospect must have been enticing for Franklin. Gates’ celebration of winning over Canada was extremely premature. The subsequent attack on Québec city was a disaster, with Guy Carleton easily beating Benedict Arnold and Richard Montgomery’s forces. In the end, Montgomery lay dead and Arnold suffered a serious leg wound. He spent a miserable winter in an ineffective siege of the city, recovering, ward- ing off the smallpox epidemic ravaging his men, and trying to secure men and supplies from Congress while Carleton stayed within the walls of the city waiting for spring reinforcements. Instead of money and men, Con- gress sent Franklin to head up a delegation to convince the Canadians that “their Interest and ours are inseparably united.”42 The trip north through New York in April of 1776 was arduous, with heavy snows, frozen lakes, and swollen and fast-running rivers. Franklin’s first report back to John Han- cock contained no good news. Credit was hard to get and hard money even 110 • Benjamin Franklin harder; smallpox was ravaging the undersupplied and underpaid troops; there were no surgeons to tend to the men, and at least 8,000 more soldiers and $20,000 more were needed to effectively take Québec. Talks with Native tribes did not result in any treaties because these tribes were aiming for “perfect neutrality” in the dispute between Britain and her American colonies.43 Plus, with no money, the Americans were in no position to promise anything to anyone. “Till the arrival of money,” Franklin wrote, “it seems improper to propose the federal union of this Province with the others, as the few friends we have here, will scarce venture to exert themselves in promoting it, till they see our credit recoverd, and a sufficient army arrived to secure the possession of the Country.” 44 Congress did not have the needed funds. “I have forwarded to Genl. Schuyler by this Conveyance the Sum of sixteen Hundred and sixty two Pounds one Shilling and three Pence in hard Money, which was all that was in the Treasury,” wrote John Hancock on May 24. 45 Unable to accomplish anything, a depressed Franklin and his fellow commissioners headed home. Franklin returned once again to a divided Philadelphia. Congress’s call in early May for the overthrow of all colonial governments had deepened the existing fissures in Pennsylvania’s political scene, particularly in the wake of a special election on May 1, 1776. Indicative of how powerful the extra-legal committees had become, the assembly agreed to the radicals’ demand for more equal representation (something the Paxton Boys had complained about) by adding seventeen new seats to the legislature, mostly from the western counties. But the election for the new seats had not gone as well as hoped for the radicals, who took only one of the four new seats for Philadelphia. Thomas Paine attributed the losses to the fact that those who supported independence were already on the battlefield. “On our side,” he wrote in the Pennsylvania Journal, “we had to sustain the loss of those good citizens who are now before the walls of Québec, and other parts of the continent; while the Tories, by never stirring out, remain at home to take advantage of the elections.” 46 Congress’s resolution also deepened the existing fissures in Franklin’s family. The New Jersey provincial convention deemed governor William Franklin to be a “virulent enemy to this country, and a person that may prove dangerous,” arrested him, and imprisoned him in Connecticut.47 As Congress began moving toward throwing off British rule, Pennsylva- nia was experiencing its own internal revolution to overthrow Quaker rule. Franklin would play a key role in both events. Pennsylvania radicals had been pushing since March for a second provincial convention, and Congress’s admonition to dissolve all colonial governments provided the perfect opportunity to make it happen. Those opposed to independence knew that a second convention would mean an end to Pennsylvania’s existing government. Imperialist and Revolution, 1775–1778 • 111

“A convention chosen by the people will consist of the most fiery independents,” lamented conservative James Allen; “they will have the whole executive and legislative authority in their hands.”48 Now, radicals had Congress’s blessing to continue their extra-legal committees and push for a new government. On May 20, 1776, several thousand people gathered in the rain to hear Congress’s latest resolution, giving three cheers after it was read. Those assembled agreed that the legislature had not been elected to form a new government, and thus a second provincial conference was needed. A signed protest delivered to the assembly on May 22 declared the legislature’s power to be derived from the king and not from the people, and therefore its members were unfit to govern. As James Allen noted on June 6, “the [radical] tide is too strong.” 49 Indeed, the time of the Quakers was coming to an end and a new order was ready to be ushered in. On June 14, the Pennsylvania assembly once again instructed Franklin to “utterly reject any Propositions . . . that might cause or lead to a Separa- tion from Great-Britain.” 50 This instruction was hard for Franklin to follow because a few days earlier Congress had appointed him to a committee of five men to draft a declaration of independence. It did not matter what the legislature demanded because its authority had been usurped by the second provincial conference, which convened on June 18 and authorized Franklin and the other Pennsylvania delegates to vote for independence. The conference then resolved to call a convention to form a new government based solely on the authority of the people. The next day, the delegates considered a proposal from German associators in the city of Philadelphia asking that they be granted the right to vote by virtue of their military service. On June 20, the conference resolved to afford every associator in the province the right to vote for members of the constitutional convention, provided that they were at least twenty-one years old and paid provincial or county taxes. Even associators in Westmoreland, a new county that had been exempt from taxes since it was severed from Bedford county in 1773, were given the right to vote. Indeed, willingness to defend the community and join an association trumped property qualifications and gave men access to rights previously denied. The informal militia system that Franklin had helped to create had now helped to create a revolution. A bad case of gout kept Franklin out of Congress for the month of June. “I know little of what has pass’d there, except that a Declaration of Indepen- dence is preparing,” he wrote to George Washington on June 21.51 That same day, from a rented apartment a block away from Franklin’s home, Thomas Jefferson sent a draft of the declaration to Franklin with a brief note asking “will Doctr. Franklyn be so good as to peruse it and suggest such alterations as his more enlarged view of the subject will dictate?” 52 The larger committee of John Adams, Robert Livingston, and Roger Sherman 112 • Benjamin Franklin had already approved some changes, but Jefferson wanted Franklin’s input before bringing it back to them. Franklin made several relatively small changes, adding a few words here, changing some phrases there. It is possible that Franklin had a hand in the most well-known change of all. “We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable,” Jefferson had written, “that all men are created equal and independent, that from that equal creation derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness.” Either Franklin or Jefferson crossed out “sacred and undeniable” and wrote in the now famous words “self-evident.” 53 The change put the draft declaration more in line with the other major statement of American independence to come out of Philadelphia: Thomas Paine’s Common Sense . Paine had sent Franklin the very first copy of his remarkably popular pamphlet when it came off the press on January 10, 1776. “I offer nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense,” Paine wrote. Self-evident truth, in other words. For an island to govern a continent was absurd because it “reverses the common order of nature, it is evident they belong to different systems: England to Europe, America to itself.” Britons supported the monarchy out of tradition and national pride, not out of reason. That the Crown only derived its power by handing out lands and titles was “self-evident.” Kings and queens would rule more despotically if they could, if not for the people who jealously guarded their liberties. The only solution for Americans was to completely jettison anything that smacked of monarchy in choosing a new form of government. “As a man who is attached to a prostitute is unfitted to choose or judge of a wife,” Paine wrote, “so any prepossession in favour of a rotten constitution of government will disable us from discerning a good one.”54 In the wake of the passage of the Declaration of Independence, both the members of Congress and of Pennsylvania’s constitutional convention were trying to discern good forms of new government in rooms across the hall from one another in the Philadelphia statehouse. Elections for the constitutional convention were held on July 8, 1776, the same day the Declaration of Independence was read at the statehouse. Many had high hopes for Philadel- phia’s representatives, arguing that these men should have “great learning, knowledge in our history, law, mathematics, &c., and a perfect acquaintance with the laws, manners, trade, constitution and polity of all nations, men of independent fortunes, steady in their integrity, zeal and uprightness to the determination and result of Congress in their opposition to the tyranny of Great Britain.”55 They certainly got their wish in the election of Benjamin Franklin, who was subsequently voted president of the convention, but other counties were not as happy with their representatives. The provincial conference imposed loyalty oaths that excluded many conservatives from voting for delegates, and others protested the convention’s illegality by refusing to Imperialist and Revolution, 1775–1778 • 113 vote, leaving radicals to dominate the polls. It seemed that James Allen’s fears had come to pass, and a “convention chosen by the people” consisting of “the most fiery independents” was going to draft a new frame of government for the province. 56 Who were these men who traveled to Philadelphia in the summer of 1776 to undertake the formidable task of drafting a new government for Pennsylvania with Franklin? In many ways they are hard to categorize since they were not all young Presbyterian radicals, nor were they all poor western farmers and eastern mechanics (as critics of the convention alleged). 57 Franklin was the oldest at seventy years of age, and John Weitzall of Northumberland the youngest at twenty-four years old. Approximately three quarters of the men were born in Pennsylvania or in other American colonies, while most of the rest had immigrated from England, Wales, Ire- land, Scotland, France, and Germany. The men ranged in wealth and status, with large landholders and speculators sitting in the convention alongside small farmers, millers, and mechanics. Judges, lawyers, magis- trates, surveyors, sheriffs, and justices of the peace debated and deliberated with ministers, Indian traders, gunsmiths, and ironworkers. Anglicans, Baptists, Lutherans, Moravians, Presbyterians, and Quakers all partici- pated in Pennsylvania’s first experiment in popular constitution making. The constitutional convention was a body as diverse as the province it was meant to represent. The convention first met at the statehouse in Philadelphia on July 16, 1776. The members appointed Colonel Miles as commander-in-chief of Pennsylvania’s forces, and then entertained a motion to take the guns of all non-associators and Tories and give them to those willing to bear them. The convention quickly established a committee to write a Declaration of Rights made up of one man from each county save Westmoreland, whose representatives had yet to complete the long journey to Philadelphia. After much debate, the committee settled on a list of sixteen principles and had ninety- six copies of the draft declaration of rights printed up for the other members of the convention to peruse. Franklin took his quill to his own copy, crossing out words and sentences he did not like and adding in those he felt were necessary. The first clause took its cue from the Declaration of Independence but added in some Pennsylvania flavor by stating that “all men are born equally free and independant,” and enjoyed the unalienable rights of “defending life and liberty, possessing and protecting Property, and pursuing and obtaining Happiness and Safety.” For a province so recently run by pacifists, safety and the common defense were key to the nascent constitutional movement. To that end, Franklin tin- kered with the eighth clause of the declaration, and the members of the convention expanded its language even more when they approved the final draft on August 16. 114 • Benjamin Franklin

Table 5.1 Declaration of Rights, 8th Clause: Franklin Edits and Final Draft

Draft (with Franklin edits) Final Draft

8. That all private Property, 8. That every member of society hath a right to be being protected by the State, protected in the enjoyment of life, liberty and ought to pay its just Proportion property, and therefore is bound to contribute his towards the Expence of that proportion towards the expence of that protection, Protection; but that no Man’s and yield his personal service when necessary, or Property can be ^ justly taken an equivalent thereto: But no part of a man’s from him, or applied to property can be justly taken from him, or applied Public Uses, without his own to public uses, without his own consent, or that of Consent, or that of his legal his legal representatives: Nor can any man who is Representatives: Nor are the conscientiously scrupulous of bearing arms, be People bound by any Laws but justly compelled thereto, if he will pay such such as they have, in like equivalent, nor are the people bound by any laws, Manner, assented to, for their but such as they have in like manner assented to, common Good. for their common good.

The successive clauses reaffirmed the substance of the first clause (with the convention largely adopting Franklin’s wording): a man’s liberty could not be taken without a speedy trial by a jury of his peers, his property and papers could not be seized without warrant, and the right to a jury trial in any dispute over property was to be “held sacred.” 58 The convention also agreed that “the people have a right to free speech, and . . . therefore the Freedom of the Press ought not to be restrained.”59 Pennsylvania was the only state in the Revolutionary era to recognize the people’s right to free speech outside of the legislature. It was also the first state to secure the right to bear arms into a constitution: “That the People have a Right to bear Arms for the Defense of themselves, and the State.”60 With men obligated to contribute to the common defense, and with the right to bear arms secure for those who could bear them in good conscience, Franklin and his fellow delegates had decisively uprooted Pennsylvania’s pacifist foundations. While Franklin was overseeing Pennsylvania’s constitutional convention in the summer of 1776, he was simultaneously fighting against John Dick- inson’s re-draft of the Articles of Confederation in Congress. Franklin’s 1775 draft had proposed a proportional legislature and a strong central government. Dickinson’s draft, while keeping the power of the federal government, stated that “each Colony shall have one Vote.” 61 Franklin vehemently opposed equal representation, but not out of any elitist predilections. In fact, the only section of the Pennsylvania declaration of rights not to survive the convention’s debates was Franklin’s proposal that the state regulate property ownership so that an “enormous Proportion of Property” was not “vested in a few Individuals.” 62 Yes, the Continental Congress had operated Imperialist and Revolution, 1775–1778 • 115 with equal representation, Franklin conceded in a draft protest that he wrote but never actually submitted to his fellow delegates, but no state ever agreed “to fix that Inequality upon them forever.”63 It was a battle Franklin would ultimately lose in November of 1777 when Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union with its guarantee that “in determining questions in the United States in Congress assembled, each State shall have one vote.” 64 Franklin had an uphill battle to fight with Pennsylvania’s constitution as well. The declaration of rights had been finished and approved, but there was still a new frame of government to write. Franklin’s friend, Francis Ali- son, noted that the declaration was “in the main pretty well,” but expressed concern that the convention was “hardly equal to the task to form a new plan of government” since it was largely filled with “honest well meaning Country men” who were “entirely unacquainted with such high matters.”65 The job of writing the first draft fell to the declaration of rights committee. Most of the delegates and the public favored continuing the old charter with the one major exception of vesting the authority to rule in the people instead of the proprietor. Critics asserted that the convention was dragging its heels in drafting and presenting a new constitution to the people. Part of the reason for the delay was that Franklin and the members of the constitutional convention had assumed the powers of the assembly and had spent their time raising militias, freeing prisoners, and carrying out the wishes of the Continental Congress. As conservative opponents noted, the radicals in the convention were “unwilling to part with their power” and wanted to be sure they could win the elections proposed under a new constitution. 66 With the associators called away to battle, victory was uncertain and so the convention delayed fulfilling its original purpose. This stalling did not go unnoticed, and rumor ran rampant about the kind of government being proposed. One Philadelphian remarked in mid-August that the convention had made little progress, “having only formed a Bill of Rights,” and fretted about news that “they are to have but one branch to legislate.” 67 By September 5, the committee had finished a draft of the state’s new frame of government, and on September 10, had 400 copies printed to distribute to the public. The public had little time to consider the new constitution, published in the Pennsylvania Evening Post on September 10 and in the Pennsylvania Gazette on September 18, two days after the convention resumed discussion on the matter. Nevertheless, public and private comments affected the final version of the constitution, which retained only fifteen of the originally proposed forty-nine sections. Debate over the draft of the constitution continued until September 28, 1776, when a majority in the convention approved the new constitution (a little over two months after the convention had first convened) without submitting it to a popular vote. 116 • Benjamin Franklin

The convention selected November 19 as election day, and passed a resolution that every elector had to swear fidelity to the Commonwealth of Penn- sylvania and to the new constitution. As James Allen noted, the required oath “split the Whigs to pieces, the majority disliking the frame and therefore not voting for the new Assembly.”68 Of the ninety-five members of the convention present to sign the new constitution, twenty-three, in protest, refused to attach their the members refuse to sign the constitution because of the oath. They don’t refuse to sign the oath. The new constitution was the American Revolution’s most radical experiment in democracy, the product of Pennsylvania’s struggles of the 1750s and 1760s. The constitution institutionalized the militia system that Frank- lin had started: the new frame of government demanded that all “the freemen of this commonwealth and their sons shall be trained and armed for its defense.” 69 The constitution eliminated property restrictions for voting, enfranchising all taxpaying freemen, black and white, and their adult sons. It also mandated that members of the legislature be chosen annually, and that no man serve more than four years in seven or hold any other office, except in the militia. To ensure accountability, the doors of the legislature had to remain open to “all persons who behave decently, except only when the welfare of this state may require the doors to be shut.” 70 While the new frame of government vested executive power in a president and council (analogous to a governor and a governor’s council), it did not grant the executive the power to generate or reject legislation. It was this unicameral freedom that provoked the harshest criticism. Opponents to the new constitution held futile protest elections in the eastern counties of Bucks and Chester on October 1—the old election day. “The Assembly is therefore dead,” wrote John Adams from Philadelphia a few days later.71 Organized opposition to the new constitution took the form of a town meeting on October 21 at the state house. About 1,500 men gathered to hear John Dickinson (dubbed the “compromising farmer” by some of his former friends) and Thomas McKean speak against the frame of government. Radicals James Cannon, Timothy Matlack, and James Smith then spoke for it until darkness forced them to adjourn. Reconvening the next day, the majority of the crowd agreed to a set of resolutions denouncing the convention and the constitution. The thrust of the opposition to the new frame of government was against the unicameral legislature and required oath of affirmation for all members. Over the next week, anti-constitutionalists in Philadelphia launched a three-pronged attack against the impending elections: voting for anti-constitutionalist candidates; refusing to take the elector oath; and casting no ballots for the Supreme Executive Council. If these things could be successfully executed, the radicals would have a minority in the assembly, and would be unable put the new constitution into effect, and a new convention could be called. But, all of these plans failed. Imperialist and Revolution, 1775–1778 • 117

Franklin seems to have removed himself from the partisan maneuver- ing in Pennsylvania, making no comment about the constitution and its implementation in his surviving papers. First, he was too busy to get too deeply tangled in the local politics that might hamper his performance in the multiple congressional and state committees of which he was a member. He also spent the later summer and early fall of 1776 embroiled in his own family drama. First, tragedy struck in mid-August with the death of his eight-month-old granddaughter, Sarah Bache. “This Family has been in great Grief, from the Loss of our dear little Girl,” he wrote to William Temple, “She suffer’d much: but is now at Rest.”72 Then, his relationship began to sour with William Temple, who wanted to visit his father incarcerated in Connecticut. “I . . . cannot approve of your taking such a Journey at this time, especially alone, for many reasons which I have not time to write,” Franklin curtly responded to his fourteen-year- old grandson’s letter asking for permission to travel. 73 He suggested that William’s stepmother, who was anxious to communicate with her imprisoned husband, write a sealed letter to the Connecticut governor and ask that it be delivered untouched by the censors. Besides, Franklin concluded, it was time for William Temple to get back to his studies. His grandson replied bitterly: “You might perhaps imagine, I should give such intelligence to my Father, as would not be thought proper for him to know, but I can assure you sir, that I am entirely ignorant of every thing relating to Publick Affairs, except the petty News, which is talk’d of by every body, and is in all the Publick Prints.”74 Franklin assured his grandson that he did not think he was a spy, and that his father could not act on any “dangerous intelligence” even if he received some. 75 As it turned out, Franklin was quite wrong and William had in fact been working covertly for the British, making use of the relative freedom granted by his American captors to ride through the countryside and issue pardons to the farmers he met. In May 1777, after being found out, he was moved to solitary confinement in Litchfield and denied almost all forms of outside contact. Franklin worried that his grandson was adopting loyalist sympathies while living with his stepmother in Perth Amboy. Thus, when Congress appointed him in late September as one of three commissioners to France to negotiate a treaty of commerce and friendship, he decided to take Wil- liam Temple with him as his personal secretary. He wrote him a very quick note: “I hope you will return hither immediately, and that your [step] Mother will make no Objection to it, something offering here that will be much to your Advantage if you are not out of the Way. I am so hurried that I can only add Ever your affectionate Grandfather.”76 Since the trip to France was to be kept completely secret (an American envoy to France would not fare well in British waters), William Temple did not know what he was in 118 • Benjamin Franklin for as he headed back to Philadelphia. Neither did his stepmother, who would die the following year after fleeing New Jersey for the British strong- hold of New York. For an increasingly bitter and angry William, who already blamed his father for his own stepmother’s death, Benjamin was also responsible for the “broken heart” that killed his wife. 77 Benjamin also brought his seven-year-old grandson, Benjamin Franklin Bache (called Benny), on the trip and the three set sail aboard the Reprisal on October 27, 1776. Franklin’s fame certainly preceded him. Soon after sailing into the Bay of Biscay and then landing on the west coast of France, Franklin wrote from Nantes to his fellow commissioner, Silas Deane, that he was “continuing incog[nito] as to my publick Character,” because he was not “sufficiently acquainted with the Disposition and present Circumstances of this Court.” 78 But remaining unnoticed was quite out of the question, as Franklin well knew. By the time he wrote to Deane he had already been warmly welcomed by several of the prominent citizens in Nantes. “You can have no Conception of the Respect with which I am receiv’d and treated here by the first People,” he wrote to his sister, Jane.79 Even though he did not immediately announce his official role as an American ambassador, everyone knew that he had not come to Paris for a vacation as he had done in 1767. The rumor circulating was that Franklin was there to negotiate with the French, an idea that Franklin claimed “appears to give great pleasure.” 80 By the time Franklin reached Paris on December 21, people lined the streets to welcome him to the city. Franklin enjoyed the attention his celebrity brought him, and French society was delighted to host the American scientist. Merchant Jacques-Donatien Leray de Chaumont offered him space at his estate in Passy, a wealthy town about a half hour’s carriage ride outside of Paris. “I walk a little every Day in the Garden, have a good Appetite and sleep well,” Franklin wrote to his sister, and “upon the whole I live as comfortably as a Man can well do so far from his Home and his Family.” 81 The “fine fur cap” that Franklin wore almost everywhere pushed far down his forehead quickly became the inspiration for a new style of wig for French ladies. 82 Within a few years of his arrival the French were selling pictures, busts, and prints of Franklin, and his likeness adorned many a snuff box lid, locket, and ring. “It is said by learned etymol- ogists that the name Doll , for the images children play with, is derived from the word IDOL;” Franklin wrote to his daughter—“from the number of dolls now made of [me], [I] may be truly said, in that sense, to be i-doll-ized in this country.”83 As much as Franklin enjoyed his celebrity, there was some very serious work to be done, as the Committee of Secret Correspondence reminded the commissioners on December 21, 1776. The campaign in New York had not Imperialist and Revolution, 1775–1778 • 119 gone well for the Americans, who had been retreating northward since the Battle of Brooklyn Heights in late August. The British pressed forward, the committee lamented, “through the Jerseys, whilst our feeble Army was obliged to retreat from Post to Post, until it crossed the Delaware at Tren- ton.” Written just days before Washington’s now famous re-crossing of the Delaware and victories at Trenton and Princeton, the letter painted a bleak picture. Although “various Maneuvres and Stratagems have been practised to effect a Passage over the River, . . . they have hitherto failed.” If things did not turn around quickly, Philadelphia, the seat of Congress, was bound to fall to the British very soon. Congress had authorized the raising of an army and a navy, but until the requisite funds and men could be collected, only the militia stood between the Americans seeking independence and the strength of the British army. Foreign aid and recognition was essential. “If France desires to preclude the Possibility of North America’s being ever reunited with Great Britain,” the committee told Franklin, “now is the favourable Moment for establishing the Glory, Strength, and Commercial Greatness of the former Kingdom by the Ruin of her ancient Rival.”84 But would ancient rivalries overcome the very real financial problems facing France? And would King Louis XVI support a cause that showed almost no signs of success by the end of 1776? After Washington’s victory at Trenton, the Committee of Secret Correspondence quickly sent off another letter to Franklin, hoping that some evidence of American military success would sway the French to their side. If not, then the commissioners were to suggest that the British might very well make “conquest of the French Posses- sions in the West Indies; which would be a sad Contrast to that security and commercial benefit, that would result to France from the Independence of N. America.”85 For a year, Franklin and his fellow commissioners, Silas Deane and Arthur Lee, made little progress, despite reporting in early 1777 that “the Hearts of the French are universally for us, and the Cry is strong for immediate War with Britain.” Much of the delay was geopolitical—France wanted to act in concert with its ally, Spain, and wanted assurances that going to war with Britain would reap benefits on the continent and in the Caribbean. “Indeed every thing tends that way [i.e. to war],” Franklin wrote, “but the Court has its reasons for postponing it a little Longer.”86 The other part of the problem was the internal discord among the commissioners themselves. Silas Deane, who had arrived in France before Franklin and had initially been successful in securing secret financial aid, was at best a sloppy book- keeper and at worst an embezzler. He would be recalled from France in late 1777 to answer to Congress, and would then be replaced by John Adams in 1778. The person most responsible for calling Deane to account was his fellow commissioner, Arthur Lee, who also questioned the depth of Franklin’s 120 • Benjamin Franklin loyalty to the American cause. Even though Lee had defended Franklin in the London newspapers in 1774, he now suspected him to be as corrupt as Deane. A tense situation was made even worse when William Lee (Arthur’s brother) and Ralph Izard invited themselves to join the American delegation, having been rejected as commissioners to other European nations refusing to recognize American independence. The Lees were deeply sus- picious of Edward Bancroft, Franklin and Deane’s friend and secretary to the American commissioners. Deane had tutored Bancroft as a young man, and Arthur Lee was convinced that the apple had not fallen far from the tree. “You know also that he is the creature and Agent of that Mr. Deane,” he warned Franklin in a 1779 letter opposing Bancroft’s appointment as an agent to spy on the British.87 Although Lee claimed to have incriminating evidence against Bancroft, he was never able to convince the right people of his suspicions. What Franklin never realized was that Lee was right about Bancroft, who spent his entire time at Passy, and the rest of the Rev- olution, spying for the British. “I went to Paris, and during the first year, resided in the same house with Dr. Franklin, Mr. Deane etc.,” Bancroft admitted after the war, “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.” 88 When Franklin finally secured a treaty with France in February of 1778, it came as no surprise to the British. Since early January of 1777, Franklin had been asking the French for ships, muskets, artillery, and ammunition to supplement the secret loans he and Deane had already secured. After the invasion and occupation of Philadelphia in September 1777, during which Franklin’s house was taken over by a British captain and much of his personal property stolen, the success in France was very welcome news. Although Burgoyne’s advance down the Hudson river had been halted, his surrender at Saratoga had not weakened the British anywhere near enough to end the war. It had, however, put the British in a talking mood, and so they sent Paul Wentworth, Bancroft’s handler, to discuss a treaty with Deane and Franklin. Franklin met with Wentworth for two hours in early January 1778. Franklin informed him that nothing short of full independence would be acceptable, because “the people of America had formed Constitutions in the midst of a Cruel war, they were dear Bought and could not be parted with at any rate.” 89 Franklin put Wentworth on the defensive by repeatedly referring to British barbarity. Indeed, with his own family having fled Phil- adelphia for safety out west, Franklin was in no mood to talk reconciliation. If England was truly ready to accept an American delegation in London to talk peace, he was ready to make the journey. “I said nothing, but that I would if I could trouble him with a short Visit to day,” Wentworth Imperialist and Revolution, 1775–1778 • 121 reported back to his superior, William Eden. “On reflection, I do not see any good End it can answer, and therefore I shall not go.” 90 As Wentworth well knew from Bancroft, things had started to fall into place for the American delegation by the end of 1777. “Our affairs, so far as they are connected with this country, are every day more promising,” Frank- lin wrote to Thomas Paine on October 7, 1777.91 News of the victory at Sara- toga had “occasion’d as much general Joy in France, as if it had been a Victory of their own Troops over their own Enemies;” Franklin reported, “such is the universal warm and sincere Goodwill and Attachment to us and our Cause in this Nation.”92 Franklin used the opportunity to push once more for a com- pletion of the proposed treaty, letting the French know that Britain would now be more likely to talk. Right after Franklin’s meeting with Wentworth, the French asked: “What is necessary to be done to give such Satisfaction to the American Commissioners, as to engage them not to listen to any Propo- sitions from England for a new Connection with that Country?” 93 Conclude the treaty, Franklin replied, provide money and credit the American cause, and send eight ships to protect the American coast and commerce. Over the next month the commissioners and their French counterparts hammered out the language of treaties of alliance, and of amity and commerce (with Bancroft leaking the details to the British as they were finalized), which they signed in Paris on February 6, 1778. King Louis XVI invited the commissioners, Izard and William Lee included, to Versailles on March 20, where he received them, as he did most males, in his bedcham- ber just after rising at noon. The meeting was brief. According to Arthur Lee, the king said, “I shall be glad if the Congress is assured of my friendship,” and then left the room.94 Another bystander recalled that the king also added, “I hope this will be for the good of both nations.” That bystander was the Duke of Croy, who had seen Franklin earlier surrounded by ador- ing admirers and described him as picturesque, even beautiful, “with his spectacles and bald head, his air of a patriarch and founder of the Nation, combined with his fame as the inventor of electricity.” 95 The treaties were a triumph for Franklin. Franklin’s mission to France was fueled by his “love for his compatriots and his rage at the government of Britain, which had shunned his counsels, murdered his fellow-citizens, and alienated from him his beloved son William, whose loyalism the father never forgave. Beneath Franklin’s cosmopolitanism and charm lay the heart of a zealous patriot as uncompromising as Samuel Adams.”96 The fact that Franklin wore the same coat he had worn in 1774 when Widderburn abused him at Whitehall indicates that he harbored resentment toward Britain and its treatment of the American colonies. According to Benjamin Rush, when Deane asked Franklin why he was wearing his old suit to sign the treaty Franklin replied, “to give it a little revenge.” 97 Wentworth was flummoxed 122 • Benjamin Franklin when Franklin had “talked of English men to be Barbarous!,” but Franklin surely meant it. 98 As Michael Zuckerman argues, Franklin had a “banked rage that made him a rebel.” 99 The angry words he penned inRules by Which a Great Empire May Be Reduced to a Small One in 1773 were more than just hyperbole. He had believed in the British empire and it had failed him. As he told William, the Revolution had put his “good Fame, Fortune and Life . . . all at Stake,” and the treaty with France was a major step toward securing these things once again. But the Revolution was far from over, as was his stay in France.

N OTES 1 From the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, April 26, 1775 [electronic edition]. Papers of Benjamin Franklin. The Packard Humanities Institute. http://franklinpapers.org . Unless otherwise noted, all references to electronic editions are from Yale’s Franklin Papers. 2 Benjamin Franklin to Thomas Life, June 5, 1775 [electronic edition]. 3 Benjamin Franklin to Jane Mecom, June 17, 1775 [electronic edition]. 4 Sketch of Propositions for a Peace, 1776 [electronic edition]. 5 Joseph Reed, “Narrative,” in New York Historical Society Collections (1878), 271, as quoted in John Paul Selsam, The Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776: A Study in Revolutionary Democ- racy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1936), 50–51. 6 Pennsylvania Gazette , June 8, 1774. 7 Resolves of the Committee for the Province, July 15, 1774, in John B. Linn and William H. Egle, eds., Pennsylvania Archives , Second Series (Harrisburgh, 1874), 3: 474–76. Hereafter cited as PA Archives . 8 Benjamin Franklin to Joseph Galloway, May 8, 1775 [electronic edition]. 9 Worthington C. Ford et al., eds., Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789 , 34 volumes (Washington, D.C., 1904–37), 1:45. 10 Smith, Paul H., et al., eds. Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774–1789 , 25 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1976–2000), 1:119. 11 Benjamin Franklin to Joseph Galloway, September 7, 1774 [electronic edition]. 12 Joseph Galloway to Benjamin Franklin, October 12, 1772 [electronic edition]. 13 Steven Rosswurm, Arms, County, and Class: The Philadelphia Militia and “Lower Sort” During the American Revolution, 1775–1783 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1987), 50. 1 4 Pennsylvania Evening Post , May 2, 1775. 1 5 Pennsylvania Gazette , May 10, 1775. 16 Christopher Marshall, September 6, 1775, Extracts from the Diary of Christoper Marshall, 1774–1781 , William Duane, ed. (Albany, 1877), 41. 17 John Adams to James Warren, in “Warren-Adams Letters,” Massachuse tts Historical Society Collections (Boston, 1917), vol. 72, as quoted in Selsam, The Pennsylvania Constitution , 78. 18 John Adams to Abigail Adams, June 10, 1775 [electronic edition]. Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive . Massachusetts Historical Society. http://www.masshist.org/digitaladams/ 19 Benjamin Franklin to Nathanael Seidel, June 2, 1775 [electronic edition]. 20 To the Speakers of the Colonial Assemblies: a Circular Letter from Franklin, William Bollan, and Arthur Lee, February 5, 1775 Ford et al., eds, Journals of the Continental Congress, 2: 22–23, 25. 21 Abigail Adams to John Adams, May 24, 1775 [electronic edition]. Adams Family Papers. 22 Abigail Adams to John Adams, July 5, 1775 [electronic edition]. Adams Family Papers. 23 John Adams to Abigail Adams, July 23, 1775 [electronic edition]. Adams Family Papers. 24 Resolves of the Assembly, June 30, 1775, PA Archives , Eighth Series, 8: 7246. Imperialist and Revolution, 1775–1778 • 123

2 5 Pennsylvania Evening Post , July 11, 1775. 26 Benjamin Franklin to Joseph Priestly, July 7, 1775 [electronic edition]. 2 7 Journals of the Continental Congress , 2:161. 28 Benjamin Franklin to Margaret Stevenson, July 17, 1775 [electronic edition]. 2 9 Pennsylvania Evening Post , July 25, 1775. 30 Proposed Articles of Confederation, July 21, 1775 [electronic edition]. 31 Benjamin Franklin to William Strahan, July 5, 1775 [electronic edition]. 32 William Strahan to Benjamin Franklin, July 5, 1775 [electronic edition]. 33 William Franklin to Benjamin Franklin, August 14, 1775 [electronic edition]. 34 Sheila Skemp, Benjamin and William Franklin: Father and Son, Patriot and Loyalist (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1994), 131. 35 Benjamin Franklin to Richard Bache, October 19, 1775 [electronic edition]. 36 Catherine Greene to Benjamin Franklin, June 28, 1755 [electronic version]. 37 See Jill Lepore, Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin (New York: Knopf, 2013), 280–282. 38 The Pennsylvania Assembly: Instructions to Its Delegates in Congress, November 9, 1775 [electronic edition]. 39 Horatio Gates to Benjamin Franklin, December 5, 1775 [electronic edition]. 40 Horatio Gates to Benjamin Franklin, December 7, 1775 [electronic edition]. 41 Charles Lee to Benjamin Franklin, December 10, 1775 [electronic edition]. 42 Instructions and Commission from Congress to Franklin, Charles Carroll, and Samuel Chase for the Canadian Mission, March 20, 1776 [electronic edition]. 43 The Commissioners to Canada to [John Hancock], May 6, 1776 [electronic edition]. 44 The Commissioners to Canada to John Hancock, May 1, 1776 [electronic edition]. 45 John Hancock to the Commissioners to Canada, May 24, 1776 [electronic edition]. 4 6 Pennsylvania Journal , May 8, 1776. 4 7 Journals of the Continental Congress , 5: 473. 48 Diary of James Allen, May 15, 1776, reprinted in Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biog- raphy 9 (Jul. 1885): 187. 49 Ibid., June 16, 1776. 50 The Pennsylvania Assembly: Instructions to Its Delegates in Congress, June 14, 1776 [electronic edition]. 51 Benjamin Franklin to George Washington, June 21, 1776 [electronic edition]. 52 Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Franklin, June 21, 1776 [electronic edition]. 53 The Library of Congress website has scans of the draft: www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/ images/decp1.jpg. The most recent biography of Franklin, Walter Issacson’s Benjamin Frank- lin: An American Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003) attributes the change wholly to Franklin (see p. 312). The editors atThe Papers of Thomas Jefferson tell us that “the opinion rests on no conclusive evidence, and there seems to be even stronger evidence that the change was made by TJ or at least that it is in his handwriting.” See http://jeffersonpapers.princeton. edu/selected-documents/jefferson’s-“original-rough-draught”-declaration-independence-0 54 Thomas Paine, Common Sense (Philadelphia: R. Bell, 1776), 17, 25, 6, 7. 55 Marshall, July 3, 1776, Diary , 81. 56 Diary of James Allen , May 15, 1776. 57 The most comprehensive accounts of these men appear in William H. Egle, “The Constitu- tional Convention of 1776: Biographical Sketches of Its Members,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography (PMHB) 3 (1879), 96–101, 194–201, 319–330, 438–446; PMHB 4 (1880), 89–98, 225–233, 361–372, 483–484. 58 1776 Pennsylvania Constitution, clause 11, available at http://ow.ly/sllVQ 59 Ibid., clause 12. 60 Ibid., clause 13. 61 Dickinson draft, Articles of Confederation, article 17, available at http://avalon.law.yale. edu/18th_century/contcong_07–12–76.asp 124 • Benjamin Franklin

62 Revisions of the Pennsylvania Declaration of Rights, 1776 [electronic edition]. 63 Protest against the First Draft of the Articles of Confederation, 1776 [electronic edition]. 64 Articles of Confederation, Article 5, section 4, in Richard Peters, ed., The Public Statutes at Large of the United States of America (Boston, 1845), 1: 5. 65 Francis Alison to his Cousin, Robert, August 20, 1776, reprinted in PMHB , 28 (1904): 379. 66 Diary of James Allen, January 25, 1777 . 67 John Morton to Anthony Wayne, August 16, 1776, reprinted in PMHB , 39 (1915): 373. 68 Diary of James Allen, January 25, 1777 . 69 Section 5, Plan or Frame of Government for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, in The Proceedings Relative to Calling the Conventions of 1776 and 1790 , (Harrisburg, 1825), 57. 70 Section 13, ibid. 71 John Adams to Abigail Adams, October 4, 1776 [electronic edition]. Adams Family Papers. 72 Benjamin Franklin to William Temple Franklin, August 27, 1776 [electronic edition]. 73 Benjamin Franklin to William Temple Franklin, September 19, 1776 [electronic edition]. 74 William Temple Franklin to Benjamin Franklin, September 21, 1776 [electronic edition]. 75 Benjamin Franklin to William Temple Franklin, September 22, 1776 [electronic edition]. 76 Benjamin Franklin to William Temple Franklin, September 28, 1776. 77 William Franklin to Lord Germain, November 10, 1778, as quoted in Sheila Skemp, Benjamin Franklin and William Franklin: Father and Son, Patriot and Loyalist (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1994), 149. 78 Benjamin Franklin to Silas Deane, December 7, 1776 [electronic edition]. 79 Benjamin Franklin to Jane Mecom, December 8, 1776 [ electronic edition]. 80 Benjamin Franklin to John Hancock, December 8, 1776 [electronic edition]. 81 Benjamin Franklin to Jane Mecom, October 5, 1777 [electronic edition]. 82 Benjamin Franklin to Emma Thompson, February 8, 1777 [ electronic edition]. 83 Benjamin Franklin to Sarah Bache, June 3, 1779 [electronic edition]. 84 The Committee of Secret Correspondence to the American Commissioners, December 21, 1776 [electronic edition]. 85 The Committee of Secret Correspondence to the American Commissioners, December 30, 1776 [electronic edition]. 86 The American Commissioners to theCommittee of Secret Correspondence, January 17, 1777 [electronic edition]. 87 Arthur Lee to Franklin and John Adams, February 7, 1779 [electronic edition]. 88 As quoted in H. W. Brands, The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (New York: Anchor Books, 2000), 609. 89 Paul Wentworth to [William Eden]: Extract, January 7, 1778 [electronic edition]. 90 Ibid. 91 Benjamin Franklin to Thomas Paine, October 7, 1777 [electronic edition]. 92 The American Commissioners to the Committee for Foreign Affairs, December 18, 1777 [electronic edition]. 93 The American Commissioners’ Interview on January 8 with Gérard, January 8, 1778 [electronic edition]. 94 Lee’s sentence is a choppy one: “Je serai bien aide [aise] que le congrès soit assuré de mon amitié.” The Presentation of the American Commissioners at Versailles: Account (I), March 20, 1778 [electronic edition]. 95 The Presentation of the American Commissioners at Versailles: Account (II), March 20, 1778 [electronic edition]. Translation by author. 96 Jonathan R. Dull, “Benjamin Franklin and the Nature of American Diplomacy,” International History Review , 5 (Aug., 1983): 349. 97 “Excerpts from the Papers of Dr. Benjamin Rush,” PMHB , 29 (1905): 28. 98 Paul Wentworth to [William Eden]: Extract, January 7, 1778 [electronic edition]. 99 Michael Zuckerman, “Review Essay,” PMHB , 131 (Apr., 2007): 192. CHAPTER 6 T HE LONG JOURNEY HOME, 1778–1790

Two months after the United States and France signed treaties of friendship and of amity and commerce, Franklin wrote a note to his enemy, Arthur Lee. “I hate Disputes. I am old, cannot have long to live, have much to do and no time for Altercation,” penned the seventy-two-year-old.1 He had complained about his advanced age for at least the past decade. “I am myself grown so old as to feel much less than formerly the spur of ambition,” he had written to his son in 1768. His other complaint was his failing health. “I am old and heavy, and grow a little indolent,” he told a friend. 2 His corpu- lence and lack of exercise exacerbated the painful gout and kidney stones that plagued him continually for the last twenty years of his life. “I din’d and drank rather too freely,” he admitted while nursing a painfully swollen right foot, noting as well that “my having us’d no Exercise lately may be the Cause.”3 While he was in London in 1770, Deborah wrote that she wished she was “near aneuef to rube it [his gout] with a lite hand.”4 But despite his prediction in 1778, Franklin had quite a bit longer to live and much more conflict to deal with before he could rest. On April 1, 1778, John Adams and his eleven-year-old son, John Quincy, arrived in Passy. Early reports back home were positive. He and Franklin lived together in the same house as “one family,” Franklin was “in fine Health and great Reputation,” and had set up John Quincy in the same school his grandson attended. 5 Nevertheless, it did not take long for things to sour. A week after his first letter home Adams was already pining for the simplicity of home. He also regarded Franklin with a bit of prudish jealousy. “My venerable Colleague enjoys a Priviledge here, that is much to be envyd,” Adams informed his wife. “Being seventy Years of Age, the Ladies not only allow him to kiss them as often as he p embrace them as often as he pleases, but they are 126 • Benjamin Franklin perpetually embracing him.” 6 What began as a bit of a joke about Franklin’s penchant for the ladies soon turned into disgust. “The Life of Dr. Franklin was a Scene of continual dis[s]ipation,” he complained, grumpily adding that, “the Business of our Commission would never be done, unless I did it.”7 Combined with his dislike of French customs and manners, Adams did not remedy the tensions that had plagued the Franklin-Deane-Lee diplomatic team. “Luxury, dissipation, and Effeminacy, are pretty nearly at the same degree of Excess here,” he told Abigail, and if he had the power he would “forever banish and exclude from America, all Gold, silver, precious stones, Alabaster, Marble, Silk, Velvet and Lace.”8 While Franklin was enjoying himself in the salons and at dinner parties, Adams spent his time with his nose in a French grammar book. “This is a delicious Country,” he told Abigail, “Every Thing that can sooth, charm and bewitch is here. But these are no Enchant- ments for me.” 9 Fortunately, his stay did not last long. The Americans needed one voice in France to coordinate diplomacy, and the obvious choice for the job was Franklin. “It appears that Dr. Franklin is sole Plenipotentiary, and of Consequence that I am displaced,” Adams noted in his diary. 10 By the summer of 1779, Adams was on his way back home to Massachusetts. The one thing Adams did appreciate about France was its women. “To tell you the Truth, I admire the Ladies here,” he told his wife. “Dont be jealous. They are handsome, and very well educated. Their Accomplishments are exceedingly brilliant. And their Knowledge of Letters and Arts, exceeds that of the English Ladies much, I believe.” 11 This was one thing he and Franklin had in common. When Adams arrived, Franklin was involved with one of his neighbors, musician and composer Madame Brillon de Jouy, who had written a song about the American victory at Saratoga called Marche des Insurgents. The fact that she was married made the whole thing all the more titillating for French gossipers and all the more disgusting to Adams. He described Madame Brillon as “one of the most beautiful Women in France” and noted that Franklin “spent much of his Time” with the family. 12 Franklin regularly attended Brillon’s salon, and the two wrote over one hundred and sixty letters to one other from 1777 to 1789. Despite the often risqué correspondence and copious amounts of time spent together, Frank- lin “never play’d at any Thing but Chess or Checquers,” as Adams put it.13 Franklin lamented that the relationship was not sexual. Brillon soon became jealous of Franklin’s affections, especially after she discovered that her husband was having an affair. When she tried to stop Franklin from seeing other women, he protested by comparing his neglected penis to a cherub:

My poor little Boy, whom you ought methinks to have cherish’d, instead of being fat and Jolly . . . is meagre and starv’d almost to death for want of the Sub- stantial Nourishment which you his Mother inhumanly deny him, and yet would now clip his little Wings to prevent his seeking it elsewhere! 14 The Long Journey Home, 1778–1790 • 127

Brillon proposed that Franklin become her adopted father (Franklin was more than forty years her senior) and he agreed. He had, after all, “lost the gentle company” of his own daughter in coming to France.15 Franklin’s affections turned next to Anne-Catherine de Ligniville d’Au- tricourt, the wealthy fifty-six-year-old widow of philosopher Claude- Adrien Helvétius. Franklin was not the only man attracted to her. “I see that statesmen, philosophers, historians, poets, and men of learning of all sorts, are drawn around you,” he wrote, “and seem as willing to attach themselves to you as straws about a fine piece of amber.”16 Franklin was smitten and indirectly proposed sex and marriage several times. For example, if Madame Helvétius “likes to spend her days with him, he would like to spend his nights with her,” he wrote in September of 1779. The most forceful of these proposals came in the publication of “The Elysian Fields” in January 1780 on the press he operated from his home in Passy. The story, or bagatelle as he called it, revolved around Franklin dying and going to the Elysian Fields—the resting place of Greek myth for virtuous souls. There he meets Claude-Andrien Helvétius, who tells him that while he once pined for his wife, he has now remarried. “I perceive,” Franklin replies, “that your old friend is more faithful than you: for several good offers have been made to her which she has all refused.” Helvétius’ new wife then appears, none other than Deborah Franklin, his “old American friend.” She treats him coldly, telling him to be happy that she has been his wife for almost fifty years but has now “formed a new connection . . . which will last for eternity.”17 Frank- lin then returns to earth to ask Madame Helvétius to avenge themselves by marrying one other. Despite this overture, or perhaps because of it, she rebuffed him. Franklin’s attempts to form a new family in France, as he had done during his time in London, took place amid faltering relationships with his biological family. Indeed, his rather abrupt and secretive departure from Philadel- phia with two of his grandsons in tow had damaged his relationship with his children. As discussed in the previous chapter, the death of his wife and theft of his son made William’s bitter resentment burn all the more brightly against his father. Sally, too, grieved the separation from her son. Soon after her father departed for France she had fled to the Pennsylvania countryside in anticipation of the British attack on Philadelphia. From there she anxiously waited for news of her family’s arrival in France. That her boy was on a trea- sonous mission could not have been far from her mind. “It was seventeen weeks Yesterday since you left us, a day I never shall forget,” she wrote on February 23, 1777; “how happy shall we be to hear you are all safe arrived and well.”18 Franklin had cause to worry as well; reports of “Burnings and Devas- tations made by the Enemy” filtered their way over to him in France. “I hope soon to hear from you,” he wrote, assuring his daughter that, “Benny continues well, and minds his Learning.”19 When Sally returned to Philadelphia in 128 • Benjamin Franklin

October of 1778 (“the House and Furniture in much better order than we could expect”), she complained to her father about the inflated prices but was happy hear that her “dear little Ben . . . behaves so well.” 20 Letters took a long time to cross the Atlantic, with some of them lost or stolen along the way. It was emotionally taxing for Sally to go months without any word from her son or her father. After a long letter to her father never made it into his hands, she lamented that “it is taken as I believe many of yours are, I am unwilling to think you neglect us.” 21 Franklin’s reply was harsh, having only received two letters from her in the past year and a half. “If you knew how happy your letters make me, and considered how many miscarry, I think you would write oftener,” he scolded her. But he was just getting warmed up:

I was charmed with the account you give me of your industry, the table-cloths of your own spinning, &c. but the latter part of the paragraph, that you had sent for linen from France because weaving and flax were grown dear; alas, that dissolved the charm; and your sending for long black pins, and lace, and feathers! disgusted me as much as if you had put salt into my strawberries. . . . [Y]ou seem not to know, my dear daughter, that of all the dear things in this world, idleness is the dearest, except mischief.

He returned to the pins, lace, and feathers again at the end of the letter, and disgust turned to mockery. The requests were pure vanity, so that Sally could “appear, I suppose, in the mode!” Franklin snorted. If she wanted lace, she could wear her cambric ruffles until they became full of holes. “And feathers, my dear girl,” he finished, “may be had in America from every cock’s tail.”22 Sally also learned in that June 1779 letter that her father had sent Benny off to Geneva for schooling, over three hundred miles away. “We are well satisfied with your sending Benjamin to Geneva knowing well that you would do every thing by him for the best,” she told her father, “but I cannot help feeling very sensibly when I consider the distance he is removed from you.”23 In March of 1780 he acknowledged her feelings and mused that he would perhaps bring Benny back to France. In the end, he did not. Since his last letter condemned her vanity, she assured her father that “industry in this house is by no Means lay’d aside.” She was knitting socks for the family from wool her maid had spun, and had decided that, “home will be the place for me this winter” because coats and hats were expensive, and fabric so dear that “I should think it not only a shame but a sin to buy it, if I had Millions.” 24 Franklin rewarded his daughter’s frugality with kind words and gifts. “All the Things you Order will be sent,” he wrote to her, “as you continue to be a good Girl, & spin & knit your Family Stockings.” 25 The Long Journey Home, 1778–1790 • 129

John Adams came back to France in early 1780 after only a few short months at home. Congress had appointed him Minister Plenipotentiary to negotiate a treaty with Britain when the time was right. On November 14, 1779, he headed back across the Atlantic. The trip did not go well. His boat sprang a leak that required all of the passengers and the ship’s crew to man two pumps night and day to keep it from sinking. On December 11, the captain docked in Ferrol on the northwest coast of Spain, where Adams spent a few uncomfortable weeks plagued by fleas and sleepless nights. He made the journey to Paris by land and arrived in the city in mid-February to find that the French wanted to continue to deal only with Franklin. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Charles Gravier, Comte de Vergennes, became convinced that Adams was ignoring his directives from Congress and nego- tiating wholly his own. He sent Franklin copies of his correspondence with Adams and asked that it be brought before Congress. “I shall not fail . . . to lay the whole before them,” Franklin wrote on July 10, 1780, assuring the king that the sentiments of Congress and the American people “differ widely from those that seem to be express’d by M. Adams.” 26 In a letter to Samuel Huntington, president of Congress, he complained that, “Mr Adams has given Offence to the Court here.” The issue was that Adams resented American reliance on France, whereas Franklin felt the French court had to be “treated with Decency & Delicacy.” 27 Once again, Adams left Paris, this time headed for Holland to secure money and recognition of American independence. Although Adams lacked tact, his appraisal of the European situation was spot on: “No Facts are believed, but decisive military Conquests: no Argu- ments are seriously attended to in Europe but Force,” he wrote Franklin from Amsterdam.28 In other words, like the Battle of Saratoga that brought the French into the war, the Americans needed battlefield victories to be taken seriously by potential European allies and to force Britain to negotiate. Back home, Franklin’s enemies were demanding his recall. Since he had left for France, there had been accusations that William Temple could not be trusted as the son of an unrepentant loyalist. “It is enough that I have lost my son, would they add my grandson!” Franklin lamented to Richard Bache in June 1779. After all, had he not “rescued a valuable young man from the danger of being a Tory, and fixed him in honest republican Whig principles?” 29 Although Franklin always stuck up for his grandson, William Temple had done little to prove his worth to the American cause. This is perhaps why he joined forces with the Marquis de Lafayette to plan an ultimately aborted land invasion of Britain that summer. When Franklin secured another loan from the French in 1781, he wrote to Huntington asking that Congress accept his resignation but to “take under their Protection my Grandson Wm. Temple Franklin.” 30 130 • Benjamin Franklin

Retirement was not to be. Congress assigned Franklin to a five-man commission to negotiate peace with Britain, and appointed William Temple as the secretary. As Adams had predicted, it took Charles Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown on October 19, 1781, to finally push Britain to negotiate the treaty Adams had been sent to oversee in 1779. Adams joined Franklin, John Jay, and Henry Laurens in Paris to begin negotiations in April 1782 (Thomas Jefferson, the final commissioner, declined the appointment). Laurens had most recently been imprisoned for fifteen months in the Tower of London after being captured by the British and charged with treason while on his way to negotiate a treaty with the Netherlands. Franklin secured his release on December 31, 1781, in exchange for the Americans releasing Cornwallis. Adams first resented Franklin’s presence, and then hated it after he found out about the letter Franklin had written earlier to Huntington about him. He had every reason to distrust Franklin. “F[rank- lin’]s cunning will be to divide Us,” he wrote in his diary. “To this End he will provoke, he will insinuate, he will intrigue, he will maneuver.” 31 In the end, though, Franklin forsook his dedication to the French and agreed to secretly negotiate with the British, helping dissipate Adams’ anger and mis- trust. “He has accordingly met Us in most of our Conferences and has gone on with Us, in entire Harmony and Unanimity, throughout, and has been able and useful, both by his Sagacity and his Reputation in the whole Nego- tiation,” Adams wrote only one month after denouncing Franklin’s cunning in his diary. 32 A few days later, on September 3, 1783, the American and British commissioners signed the Treaty of Paris that recognized the United States as an independent country. After he smoothed over relations with France, and helped negotiate treaties with other European nations with Adams and Jefferson (who finally accepted an overseas commission and arrived in August 1784), Congress at last accepted Franklin’s resignation. In May of 1785, almost nine years after he had set sail for France, Franklin began to make plans to travel back home to Philadelphia. After weeks of preparations and farewells, Franklin, Wil- liam Temple (now twenty-five), and Benny (now sixteen) made their way north to the port of Le Havre. His exit from France could not have been more different from his entrance, riding in one of Queen Marie Antoinette’s litters to the coast. From LeHavre, the Franklins set sail across the English channel on July 22 with the wind, as Franklin wrote, “full in our teeth.”33 Two days later they landed in Southampton. During the four days they stayed at the Star Inn, Franklin entertained and bid farewell to a few old friends. He also met with his exiled son, William, with whom he had re-established contact the year before. The meeting warranted only one line in his diary: “Met my son, who had arrived from London the evening before.” 34 The entry stands in stark contrast to Franklin’s reunion with Bishop Jonathan Shipley The Long Journey Home, 1778–1790 • 131

(an enthusiastic supporter of the Revolution), which he described as “very affectionate.” But Franklin was not there to reminisce with William; he was there to oversee the signing over of his lands in New Jersey and New York to William Temple. Before William departed for London, Benjamin gave “a power to my son to recover what may be due to me from the British government.”35 The meeting was surely a bitter disappointment for William. He had written a heartfelt letter on July 22, 1784, in which he had asked for a “personal Interview” now that he had “broken the Ice” between him and his estranged father. Even though Benjamin had agreed to “endeavour as you propose mutually to forget what has happened,” the emotional reunion Wil- liam hoped for did not happen, nor would it ever happen. Benjamin set sail for Philadelphia on July 28, 1785, and would neither see nor write to his son again. On September 14, Franklin caught his first “full view of dear Philadel- phia!” from Gloucester Point, New Jersey. After getting cleared by the health officer of having any communicable diseases, Richard Bache ferried the group across the Delaware River to the Market Street wharf. “We were received by a crowd of people with huzzas, and accompanied with acclama- tions quite to my door,” Franklin wrote in his diary.36 He offered up an uncharacteristic thanks to the supernatural for a safe trip home: “God be praised and thanked for all his mercies!” He had offered similar thanks at the end of the Revolution, writing, “At length we are in Peace, God be praised; and long, very long may it continue.” 37 Among the many congratu- lations for his safe return came a letter from George Washington: “No one entertains more respect for your character, so none can salute you with more sincerity, or with greater pleasure than I do on the occasion.”38 After settling in, he soon found his house too small for himself and his daughter’s family, what with “four new little Prattlers, who cling about the Knees of their Grand Papa,” and so he began drafting plans to tear down the three houses he owned on Market street and replace them with two larger new ones.39 It did not take long for Franklin to make his way back into the political sphere. In some ways, nothing had changed. The 1776 state constitution he had helped draft and implement was still the cause of faction nine years later. Under its provisions, the assembly had passed Pennsylvania’s first militia act on March 17, 1777, mandating that every white male person from ages 18 to 53 “capable of bearing arms” serve in the militia and establishing a series of fines for those who shirked their duty or who could not “yield their personal service.”40 Not everyone was happy with the new law. Some complained to Thomas Wharton, then president of the Supreme Executive Council, that Pennsylvania was now worse off than before in terms of defense. “You cannot be ignorant,” these men argued, “. . . that these defects and disorders are, in a great degree, owing to the difference of 132 • Benjamin Franklin sentiment which prevails among the inhabitants on Pennsylvania concerning the Plan of Government formed by the late convention.” 41 Supporters of the constitution warned that an elite faction was seeking to “trample upon those liberties which ye have so dearly purchased,” and reminded everyone that Benjamin Franklin “was considerably engaged in framing” the constitution. 42 Both pro (the Constitutionalists) and anti (the Republicans) constitution parties lobbied for his support in the 1785 election, and so he won the presidency of the Supreme Executive Council in October, replacing John Dickinson. He quickly found out that the militia law was still causing trouble when a petition arrived from men in Chester County complaining how they, as “faithful subjects of this Government,” had “to feel the severity of a Malitia Law rigourously executed on them.” 43 Amid the continuing talk of militias and constitutions came news in late 1786 from Massachusetts of an armed rebellion led by a Revolutionary War veteran named Daniel Shays. As president, Franklin publicly condemned Shays and offered a reward for his capture. There was little else he could do. The problem was that little money existed to back up the “firm league of friendship with each other, for their common defense” agreed to in the Articles of Confederation. 44 In the end, Massachusetts’ governor, unable to rely on the underfunded and underpopulated army or his own state’s militia, raised a private militia to march against Shays and his men. The rebellion shocked the thirteen states and spread the fear that mobs acting in the name of popular sovereignty might try to undermine other state governments. This convinced some that a change to the Articles was needed. In fact, a plan for a convention to amend the confederation had been hatched earlier at the September 1786 at the Annapolis Convention. Virginia took the lead in supporting the Annapolis resolution by electing men to serve at the new convention, slated to meet in Philadelphia in May 1787. On Decem- ber 1, 1786, Governor Edmund Randolph sent Franklin a copy of the law appointing the delegates, and asked for “your Excellency’s co-operation at this trying moment.” 45 Three weeks later, Franklin replied that the Pennsyl- vania legislature had appointed seven commissioners, and wished “all Suc- cess to your Deliberations on this very important Business.” 46 Shays’ Rebellion “frightened [George] Washington out of retirement,” and he allowed his name to stand as a Virginia delegate. 47 On March 28, the Pennsylvania assembly added Franklin to its list of delegates, and the assumption in the press was that the convention would succeed because both men would be there. “An union of the abilities of so distinguished a body of men, among whom will be a FRANKLIN and a WASHINGTON, cannot but produce the most salutary measures,” argued the Massachusetts Centinel . 48 But it was not at all clear at the beginning that the convention could actually accomplish the goal it was mandated to fulfill. May 14 was the appointed day to start deliberations, but only delegates from Virginia The Long Journey Home, 1778–1790 • 133 and Pennsylvania showed up. They met again the next day but could still not reach quorum, and so they adjourned until May 25. “The late bad weather has been the principal cause” of the lack of “punctuality in the out- set,” James Madison assured Thomas Jefferson.49 Those who made it to Phil- adelphia dined at Franklin’s on May 16, where he served them some porter that his friend, London brewer Thomas Jordan, had sent him in February. “When the cask was broached, . . . its contents met with the most cordial reception and universal approbation,” Franklin informed Jordan.50 Ever mindful of his age, he signed the letter “B. Franklin, in his 82d year.” By May 25, nine states had delegates in attendance, but only seven had more than one delegate, and Rhode Island refused to send any delegates at all. Could the twenty-nine men assembled on that rainy Friday morning in May actually suggest amendments to the Articles that would be acceptable to the American people? Could they muster the authority to actually alter the federal system? Twenty-six years Franklin’s junior, Washington was the only other delegate able to match Franklin’s reputation in the public eye. And, as James Madison noted, “Doctor Franklin alone could have been thought of as a competitor” for the presidency of the convention.51 But Franklin was old and he knew it, and thus made no attempt to vie for the seat. “I am grown so old as to have buried most of the friends of my youth,” he wrote a week before the convention first met.52 Illness kept him from attending on May 25, so he had his fellow state delegates put forward Washington’s name to preside over the convention. They also put forward William Temple’s name to be secretary of the convention, but Alexander Hamilton’s choice, Major William Jackson, won the position. When the convention met again on Monday, May 28, Franklin’s health had improved enough for him to attend. He would join his fellow delegates every day thereafter, sitting for hours at a time. He surely was in discomfort because of his kidney stones. “I am grown old and feeble, being in my 82d Year and the Posture of sitting to write, makes the Stone I am afflicted with more painful to me,” he wrote a few months before taking his seat at the convention. 53 He still complained of the pain in November 1787, but found that

Blackberry Jelly taken at Night . . . which I sometimes eat with a Bit of Bread, and sometimes dissolve in a Tumbler of Water and drink it, mixing sometimes two or three Tea Spoonfuls of Brandy, has constantly given me Ease and Free- dom by the Morning, with long Intervals between the Calls [to urinate] during the following Day. 54

It did not take long for the members of the convention to move from amending the Articles to scrapping them altogether and proposing a new frame of government. Virginia led the charge, with Edmund Randolph 134 • Benjamin Franklin arguing on May 30 that the convention needed to pass a resolution stating that “a union of the States merely foederal” would not provide the defense, security, and liberty that the Articles promised. The solution was “a national government . . . consisting of a supreme legislature, judiciary, and executive.”55 “If we have a right to pass this resolution,” argued Massachusetts delegate, Eldbridge Gerry, “we have a right to annihilate the confederation.” 56 And annihilate the confederation they did. Although the press had used Franklin’s name to give the convention credibility, his influence over its decisions was mixed. When the members agreed to a bicameral legislature, they did so over the Pennsylvania delegates’ objection, though James Madison thought they only did so “from complaisance to Docr. Franklin who was understood to be partial to a single House of Legislation.” 57 His motion that the executive receive no com- pensation for his service was politely ignored. “Indeed in all Cases of public Service,” Franklin argued in a speech read by James Wilson because his gout would not allow him to stand for long periods of time, “the less the Profit the greater the Honor.” Franklin knew the motion was doomed, but was “contented with the Satisfaction of having deliver’d my Opinion frankly, and done my Duty.”58 As James Madison noted, the motion “was treated with great respect, but rather for the author of it, than from any apparent conviction of its expediency or practicability.” 59 After the first month of deliberation produced little that the delegates could agree on, Franklin proposed that a chaplain be appointed to offer daily “Prayers, imploring the Assistance of Heaven, and its Blessing on our Deliberations.” 60 The motion died, in part because the convention did not have the money to pay a chaplain, but also because, as Franklin indignantly noted, “ The Convention except three or four Persons, thought Prayers unnecessary!!” 61 He also supported a motion to give the executive the power to suspend legislation, not veto it outright (veto power “would be abused so as to get money for passing bills”), but the motion failed. 62 Finally, his idea for an executive council to advise the president did not gain traction. Franklin was not the only one to lose battles that summer, but he remained a cool head in a hot room sometimes filled with angry men. When the issue of proportional representation threatened to irreparably divide the convention, Franklin (through James Wilson) delivered a speech reminding his fellow delegates that “declarations of a fixed opinion, and of determined resolution, never to change it, neither enlighten nor convince us.” 63 He then threw his weight behind brokering a compromise that saw the convention agree to proportional representation in the lower house and equal representation in the upper. In a convention nervous about the excesses of democracy in the wake of Shays’ rebellion, Franklin was often the voice of the people. “It seems to have been imagined by some that the The Long Journey Home, 1778–1790 • 135 returning to the mass of the people was degrading the magistrate,” Franklin asserted during a debate over the nature of the presidency during which Charles Pinckney of South Carolina suggested that the executive branch be held by men worth at least $100,000. “In free Governments,” he reminded his peers, “the rulers are the servants, and the people their superiors & sov- ereigns.” 64 He was comfortable with extending the vote to the “common people” because to be “denied the right of suffrage . . . would debase their spirit and detatch them from the interest of the country.” 65 As James Madi- son noted, “Doctr Franklin expressed his dislike of every thing that tended to debase the spirit of the common people.”66 Despite the many battles he had lost, at the end of the convention Frank- lin supported what he and his fellow delegates had done. As he told the convention on September 17, 1787, the final day of deliberation:

Thus I consent . . . to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure, that it is not the best. The opinions I have had of its errors, I sac- rifice to the public good—I have never whispered a syllable of them abroad— Within these walls they were born, and here they shall die.67

He did not exactly keep his promise, writing to a friend in France soon after that, “I am of Opinion with you that the two Chambers were not necessary, and I dislik’d some other Articles that are in, and wish’d for some that are not in the propos’d Plan.”68 It was now up to state ratification conventions to decide whether or not “we the people” would abide by the new frame of government. But it would not fall to Franklin to defend the document the grand convention had produced, though many would invoke his name to support ratification. “Let it but appear that . . . a WASHINGTON, and a FRANKLIN approve the new government,” boasted the Massachusetts Cen- tinel, “and who will not embrace it?” 69 Franklin was finally planning to retire, and so the success of the new constitution would be the responsibility of others. “I shall have nothing to do with the Execution of it,” he told a friend, “being determined to quit all public Business with my present Employment. At 83 one certainly has a Right to ambition Repose.”70 He was, however, skeptical that the people would accept the new constitution. “We have, however, done our best,” he told his sister, “and it [the Constitution] must take its Chance.” 71 Debating the federal constitution in Pennsylvania was shaped by two of Franklin’s earlier key contributions: the associator movement and the state constitution. Public debate was boisterous and vituperative as federalists and antifederalists clashed in the state where the constitution Franklin had helped craft in 1776 stood in stark contrast to the federal constitution he had helped craft in 1787. Some saw the change as a good thing, arguing that 136 • Benjamin Franklin it was time to tame democracy. “The year 1776 is celebrated . . . for a revolution in favor of Liberty,” the federalist Pennsylvania Gazette reported as the grand convention was winding down its deliberations, but “the year 1787, it is expected, will be celebrated with equal joy, for a revolution in favor of Government.”72 Others—“most ordinary white men,” as Terry Bou- ton argues—thought that “the government and society had not been democratized enough.”73 These men threatened ratification because they could harness the rhetoric of the Revolution and decry the loss of liberty. “Every state . . . has its SHAYS,” the Pennsylvania Gazette warned, “who, either with their pens—or tongue—or offices—are endeavouring to effect what Shays attempted in vain with his sword.”74 But the threat of the sword was real in Pennsylvania. Three days after the grand convention ended, Franklin wrote to New York’s governor, George Clinton, about a group of squatters amassing along the Pennsylvania-New York border. “Their Num- bers are daily increasing by Vagabonds from all quarters,” he wrote, and “they expect Reinforcements from Shay’s late Partizans, and purpose defending their Proceedings by Force of Arms.” 75 Antifederalists in Pennsylvania asserted that the federalists relied more on “great names, instead of addressing our reason with solid arguments.”76 They accused those who used Franklin’s name to support their cause of being the same men who “despise the present [state] constitution, which was dictated and avowed by that venerable patriot.” 77 Wealthy federalists, they charged, “flatter themselves that they have lulled all distrust and jealousy of their new plan, by gaining the concurrence of the two men in whom America has the highest confidence.” After all, Franklin was old and “the weakness and indecision attendant on old age” had played a role in his support of such an obviously flawed document.78 Federalists fired back in indignation against that charge that Franklin was “an old fool.” Surely the antifederalists would next say that, “Daniel Shays is the best patriot in the United States.” 79 When Franklin’s final speech to the convention hit the newspapers in late December, antifederalists began excerpting the sections in which he expressed concern (i.e., “I do not entirely approve of this constitution”), and not the sections of support (i.e., “thus I consent, Sir, to this constitution”). 80 This played into the story circulating since late November that Franklin had shed “a tear at signing the DEATH-WARRANT of his COUNTRY”S LIBERTIES” when he put his name on the Constitution.81 “Why,” asked the antifederalists, “was the aged Dr. Franklin . . . oppose[d to] almost every article in the system till the last, when he lent his signature in tears?”82 With over a decade of discontent over the 1776 constitution behind them, political enemies in Pennsylvania latched on to the ratification debate with relish. As one observer noted, it was “the only state which suffered The Long Journey Home, 1778–1790 • 137 some jolts by the publication of the new Constitution. The parties which have existed there for such a long time seem to take on a new vigor.”83 As expected, the federalists/Republicans dominated the election to the ratification convention, and they celebrated with a small riot against William Find- ley and some other prominent antifederalists. According to another observer,

when the election was over, honest Findley and other country members who lodged at Boyd’s were insulted at 12 o’clock, the windows broken with large stones, etc. The houses of G. Bryan, Ewing, and Hutchinson were attacked by a violent noise and they abused, their wives frightened, etc. Does not this give us a foretaste of this blessed Constitution? 84

Although Franklin and the Executive Council condemned the rioters and offered a $300 reward for their discovery, none were ever identified or prosecuted. When it was certain that the constitution would be ratified, antifederalists turned their attention to demanding a bill of rights. They argued that “powers given —powers reserved—ought to be all enumerated. Let us add a bill of rights to our other securities.” 85 The complaints against the constitution were many (James Wilson wrote down thirty-five in his notes from the ratification convention). Wilson opposed a bill of rights as “not only unnecessary but improper.” 86 The federalist majority in the convention ultimately rejected the proposed amendments and ratified the Constitution on December 12, 1787. In a widely reprinted pamphlet, The Address and Rea- sons of Dissent of the Minority of the Convention, Pennsylvania antifederalists railed against the Constitution and warned that it “will alter and may annihilate the constitution of Pennsylvania.” 87 In a letter to Benjamin Franklin, John Armstrong worried that the Dissent would “have a wild and pernicious tendency,” while the Independent Gazetteer fretted that “a civil war with all its dreadful train of evils will probably be the consequence of such proceedings.”88 The Carlisle Gazette celebrated the dissenters “while the names of the majority, and their ignorant tools will be spurned and execrated by the succeeding generations as the pillars of slavery, tyranny, and despotism.” 89 By February of 1788, six states had ratified the Constitution and Franklin believed that “there is now a little doubt of its being accepted by a sufficient number to carry it into execution, if not immediately by the whole.” Tired of all the political bickering and speculation about his motives, he dismissed the argument that the government would be granted too much power. “I think,” he wrote to a friend in a change of tone from his speeches during the convention, “we are more in danger from too little obedience in the governed.”90 The 138 • Benjamin Franklin only public piece Franklin wrote about the Constitution was published in the Philadelphia Federal Gazette on April 8, 1788, under the pseudonym “K.” It was a bitter response to the invective of the ratification process that had seen his reputation besmirched. Even God himself could not draft a constitution that Americans would not grumble about, Franklin argued. He turned to the Old Testament and to Moses and Aaron, who had faced all sorts of backbit- ing even though they had freed their people from slavery in Egypt and had been hand-delivered a constitution (i.e., the Ten Commandments) by God. As Franklin wrote,

One would have thought that this Appointment of Men, who had distinguish’d themselves in procuring the Liberty of their Nation, and had hazarded their Lives in openly opposing the Will of a powerful Monarch, who would have retain’d that Nation in Slavery, might have been an Appointment acceptable to a grateful People; and that a Constitution fram’d for them by the Deity himself, might on that Account have been secure of an universal welcome Reception: yet there were, in every one of the thirteen Tribes, some discontented restless Spir- its, who were continually exciting them to reject the propos’d new Government; and this from various Motives. Many still retain’d an Affection for Egypt, the Land of their Nativity; and these whenever they felt any Inconvenience or Hard- ship, tho’ the natural and unavoidable Effect of their Change of Situation, exclaim’d against their Leaders as the Authors of their Trouble, and were not only for returning into Egypt, but for Stoning their Deliverers.91

If this was the experience of God’s chosen deliverers of the Israelites, what chance did Washington and Franklin stand? Franklin had been called both a doddering old man and a conniving and corrupt schemer. In the pages of the Philadelphia Independent Gazetteer, the essayist “Centinel” accused Franklin of using the ex post facto clause of Section 9, article 1 to default on the loans the Continental Congress had given him. Since no laws could be passed ex post facto (i.e., after the fact) to punish crimes committed before the Constitution was ratified, Centinel argued, all debts would be cancelled. “Several” members from the Pennsylvania delegation “have long standing and immense accounts to settle, and MILLIONS perhaps to refund,” he charged. 92 Franklin summed up the argument in a letter he drafted to the editor of the Pennsylvania Gazette that was never printed: “your President the unanimous joint Choice of the Council and Assembly, is ‘an old Rogue,’ who gave his Assent to the Federal Constitution merely to avoid refunding Money he had purloin’d from the United States.” 93 To the list of Franklin’s faults was added abettor of slavery. It was no small charge. Franklin had entered the grand convention as the president of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, and the The Long Journey Home, 1778–1790 • 139

Relief of Free Negroes, Unlawfully Held in Bondage (later shortened to the Pennsylvania Abolition Society)—the organization Anthony Benezet had formed in 1774. And yet, the proposed Constitution, now ratified in Penn- sylvania, allowed for the Atlantic slave trade until at least 1808. This did not go unnoticed by Philadelphia’s abolitionist Quakers. In addition to their worries about the lack of protection for liberty of conscience (“I should have liked the constitution much better if our friends of the Convention had inserted the 2d article of the Bill of Rights prefixed to the Constitution of Pennsylvania,” wrote one Quaker), they were affronted by Franklin’s acquiescence to slavery. 94 “I was sure my friend—[i.e. Franklin],” wrote one Quaker under the pen name Timothy Meanwell in the pages of the Phila- delphia Independent Gazetteer, “whose character I very much respect, would never attempt to encourage or connive at slavery, he who is famed throughout the world as the champeon of liberty.” 95 The federalists fired back that Meanwell was missing the point by focusing on the negative. “Would not every candid reader conclude . . . that in twenty one years such importations may be prohibited [?]”96 This prohibition was the sign of the beginning of an age of “liberality and humanity,” and surely the time when “the supreme power of the United States shall abolish slavery altogether” was not far off.97 Meanwell disagreed, and feared that the new constitution’s stipulation that slave importation “shall not be prohibited ” until 1808 would nullify Pennsylvania’s 1780 law for the gradual emancipation of slaves. 98 Slavery and the slave trade had been a part of Pennsylvania almost since its founding. Pennsylvania’s first slavery law, passed in 1706, aimed to prevent the importation of Native American slaves since the practice gave “the Indians of this province some umbrage for suspicion and dissatisfaction.” 99 Six years later, in the wake of a slave insurrection in New York City that shocked the northern colonies, the Pennsylvania assembly considered a proposal to free the province’s African slaves. Many of the assemblymen owned slaves themselves, which surely played a role in their decision that, “it is neither just nor convenient to set them at Liberty.”100 Instead, the legislature settled on a duty of £20 on imported slaves to regulate the influx of slaves into the province and thereby prevent a repetition of the “plots and insurrections [that] have frequently happened, not only in the islands but on the mainland of America, by negroes.”101 When the legislature dealt with slavery up until the American Revolu- tion, its concern was regulating the slave trade in Pennsylvania through duties, or simply raising money for public coffers. The only exception was in 1726, when the assembly passed a law after observing that “too often . . . negroes commit felonies and other heinous crimes which by the laws of this province are punishable by death.”102 Their concern was not for the slaves themselves, but for the “great hardship” that befell the masters who lost 140 • Benjamin Franklin their valuable property to the executioner. The law restricted who slaves could marry (not white people), what they could drink (not alcohol), where they could go (no farther than ten miles from their masters’ homes without written permission), and what work they could do for pay (again, nothing without permission). Quakers were one of a very few religious denominations in the Atlantic world to grapple with the morality of slavery before the Revolution. Because of the tireless efforts of reformers Anthony Benezet and John Woolman, the Quakers began disciplining members involved in the slave trade in 1755, and in 1758 tried to convince all Friends to give up slaveholding altogether.103 But it was not until 1774 that slaveholding was cause for being excommunicated from a Quaker meeting. Of course, Quakers were not the only people in Philadelphia, and thus slaveholding was not at all uncommon in the city by the 1770s. It was into this evolving context that Franklin began owning other human beings in the 1730s. Franklin makes almost no comments in his surviving papers about the six, or possibly seven, slaves he owned. We can only speculate about what their lives were like. We do not know all their ages, where they were born, or even when all of them died. We must rely on tax records, receipts, and snippets from letters to figure out when Franklin and his family owned slaves. After his return from London in 1775 he gave Bob, whom Deborah had purchased while he was away, to his daughter, Sally. Bob joined George, whom Franklin obtained in 1763 in lieu of a debt payment, and whom he had given to Sally and Richard in 1767, possibly as a wedding present. George died in 1781. Franklin did not bring any slaves with him to France, nor did he purchase any new slaves when he came home to Philadelphia in 1785. Richard still owned Bob in 1789, but appears to have been angry with him and his other slaves. “Your female servants are not to be depended on,” he wrote to his wife, “and you know what Bob is—a disagreeable circumstance has happened since you left home, which evinces that some of them are not trust worthy, who the culprit is I can’t find out, and perhaps never may, but I have my suspicions.” 104 Although Franklin did not personally own any slaves in the final years of his life, they were still around him. Since the Baches lived with Franklin and nursed him until his death, Franklin lived with slaves in his house until the end of his life. He requested in his will that Richard “immediately after my decease manumit and set free his negro man Bob.”105 While it is difficult to piece together the lives of Franklin’s slaves, it is much easier to trace the evolution of Franklin’s opinions about slavery and race over time. As Gary Nash argues, “Franklin’s ambivalence about slavery, like that of many colonists, increased during the years leading up the Amer- ican Revolution.” 106 He appears to have had no compunction about buying, owning, or giving slaves, but he was willing as early as 1757 to free his slaves The Long Journey Home, 1778–1790 • 141 if he died. He was also willing to educate his slaves and did not oppose Deb- orah’s plan in 1759 to send Othello to the Bray Associates school when he was old enough to attend. Franklin’s ideas about race tended towards the environmental and not the biological. In other words, non-whites were inferior not because of genetics, but because of lack of opportunity and education. In 1774, he wrote that although the free black citizens in Phila- delphia were “improvident and poor[,] I think they are not deficient in natural Understanding, but they have not the Advantage of Education.” 107 This is identical to a remark he made about Native Americans in 1753. Yes, they were uncivilized and resisted adopting Anglo American culture, but “they are not deficient in natural understanding.”108 In his 1751 pamphlet, Obser- vations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Franklin argued that “the Labour of Slaves can never be so cheap here as the Labour of working Men is in Britain,” in part because slave owners had to spend so much time making sure their slaves were working and not stealing from their masters.109 “Almost every Slave . . . [is] by Nature a Thief,” Franklin wrote.110 In the fourth edition, published in 1769, Franklin altered the sentence to read, “almost every slave . . . [is] from the nature of slavery a thief.”111 In 1772, while in London, Franklin published an anonymous letter railing against “Pharisaical Britain!” for freeing an American slave living in Britain in the infamous Somerset case, while “so many hundreds of thousands are dragged into a slavery that can scarce be said to end with their lives, since it is entailed on their posterity!” 112 His main target, though, was the brutal slave system in the sugar islands. “Can sweetening our tea, &c. with sugar, be a circumstance of such absolute necessity?” he asked.113 The Revolution put the institution of slavery into sharp relief against the language of liberty the colonists employed to make sense of the imperial crisis. “Slavery is ever preceded by sleep,” John Dickinson had warned in 1768.114 The word “slavery” was used on purpose—Americans knew exactly what slavery was. Dickinson himself owned at least 59 slaves to work his Delaware plantation.115 How white Americans responded to slavery, and how they thought about race, differed greatly. Consider the three men most responsible for writing the Declaration of Independence: Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams. Adams came from rural Massachusetts where slavery had never figured prominently (slaves were about 2% of the population of the entire province), but that did not mean its peoples were untouched by the slave economy. 116 Indeed, newspapers had a symbiotic relationship with the slave economy similar to the one Franklin’s Gazette had enjoyed. Although a cash crop economy (like Virginian tobacco) did not develop, New Englanders were eager to export their surplus to the West Indies to the tune of about £200,000 worth of goods a year.117 Adams opposed slavery, but was not an active 142 • Benjamin Franklin abolitionist. “Although I have never Sought popularity by any animated Speeches or inflammatory publications against the Slavery of the Blacks,” he wrote to two abolitionists in 1801, “my opinion against it has always been known and my practice has been so conformable to my sentiment that I have always employed freemen both as Domisticks and Labourers, and never in my Life did I own a Slave.” His relative inaction can perhaps be explained by his assumption that “the practice of slavery is fast dimin- ishing.”118 After all, Massachusetts had abolished slavery in 1783 after slaves Elizabeth Freeman (or, Mum Betts) and Quock Walker sued for their freedom. Their argument was that slavery was incompatible with the 1780 state constitution Adams himself had penned, which recognized that “All men are born free and equal.” By 1801, other northern states had passed emancipation laws or banned slavery through their constitutions. Franklin, on the other hand, owned slaves but after the Revolution fought publicly to abolish slavery. Jefferson also owned slaves: at least eighty-three in the year that he drafted the Declaration. Unlike Franklin, Jefferson opposed black education and the idea that slaves’ inferiority did not stem from their biology. 119 It was perhaps easier for Franklin than Jefferson to relinquish his slaves because he did not rely on slave labor in the same way as did his Virginian friend. This is not to say that slavery was unimportant in Philadelphia, where one in every twelve persons was a slave and one in every five households had slaves in the early 1770s. 120 Philadelphia housed 10 percent of the province’s population and 40 percent of its slaves.121 And it was not just the elite who owned slaves. By the 1760s, one third of all urban slave masters were tradesmen or artisans who owned 40 percent of the city’s slave population.122 Outside of the city, grain farmers (like Dickinson) had increasingly turned to slavery since the mid-1700s, when the French and Indian War limited the supply of white servants from Europe. In Chester County, for example, the number of slaves doubled to 600 before the Revolution. In 1777, John Dick- inson owned at least thirty-seven people: twelve men, ten women, five boys, and ten girls. In that year he proclaimed that he desired to “to prevent a Continuance of Slavery,” and conditionally freed his slaves. If they would “honestly, diligently, and faithfully serve and obey and work” for Dickinson for the next twenty-one years, they and their children would be free. Since he often hired out his slaves when their work was not required during plant- ing or harvesting season, he applied this conditional freedom to “each and every other Negro belonging to Me, if any there be, whose Name is above omitted.” 123 By the time Dickinson sat in the grand convention in 1787 his convictions had deepened and he had unconditionally set all of his slaves free. And so while Franklin and Dickinson were both abolitionists in 1787, Dickinson had paid a much higher price for his convictions. The Long Journey Home, 1778–1790 • 143

Slavery had forced a series of compromises in Congress not because members were pushing for its abolition, but because it was unclear exactly what role slaves would play in the United States. Were they merely property, or could they be counted as population? Franklin and his fellow delegates to the second Continental Congress had tackled the issue in late July of 1776 while debating how to determine each state’s contribution to the Treasury. Dickinson’s draft of the Articles of Confederation allotted the contribution on population, but southerners argued that since slaves were property they could not count as population, just like northerners could not count their livestock as part of the population. When Benjamin Harrison of Virginia proposed that two slaves could be counted as one freeman, James Wilson of Pennsylvania argued that such a ratio ignored the fact that slavery was both profitable and dangerous. “Slaves increase the profits of a state, which the Southern states mean to take to themselves,” he argued, but slaves also “increase the burthen of defense, which would of course fall so much heavier on the Northern [states].”124 Thomas Lynch of South Carolina then threatened “an end of the confederation” if southerners could not consider their slaves as property, and demanded to know why slaves should be “taxed more than the land, sheep, cattle, [and] horses?” There was a difference between slaves and sheep, Franklin replied, because “sheep will never make any insurrections.” 125 In October 1777, Congress started apportioning taxes on the basis of land value, but in March 1783 agreed to switch back to using population. At that time, James Madison modified Harrison’s 2:1 ratio and successfully proposed that three-fifths of all slaves be counted when determining a state’s population. The grand convention would address the issue once more in 1787. The debate was over representation, not abolition, even though five northern states had already taken steps to end slavery. For example, in 1780, the Penn- sylvania legislature passed a gradual emancipation law stating “that all persons, as well negroes and mulattoes as others who shall be born within this state, from and after the passing of this act, shall not be deemed and considered as servants for life or slaves.”126 But with no instructions from any legislature to end slavery or even the slave trade, the existence of slavery in the new republic was a given. It meant that Franklin’s most significant contribution to the Constitution, helping broker a compromise over representation in Congress, was framed by slavery. As David Waldstreicher writes, “every time a major decision was made about the nature of representation, . . . the slavery question came to the fore again, shifting votes and muddying the waters.”127 Although the words “slave” and “slavery” did not appear in the document the convention produced, the delegates debated slavery by name openly and sometimes angrily. “The idea of property ought not to be the rule of representation,” argued Eldbridge Gerry of Massachusetts. “Blacks are property, 144 • Benjamin Franklin and are used to the southward as horses and cattle to the northward; and why should their representation be increased to the southward on account of the number of slaves, than horses or oxen to the north?”128 Franklin remained silent about slavery during the constitutional convention, even though the Atlantic network of abolitionists he was involved with had hoped otherwise. English abolitionist Granville Sharp was “sincerely grieved” by both the Constitution’s allowance of the slave trade until 1808 and its fugitive slave clause. The provisions were “so clearlynull and void by their iniquity, that it would be even a crime to regard them as law!” he lamented to Franklin. 129 But, as Nicholas Guyatt argues, despite the compromises over slavery at the constitutional convention, “Franklin had enough data to plot the course of antislavery in an upward vector.”130 States emancipating their slaves (even conditionally), attacks on West Indian slavery, and a growing concern for human rights throughout the Atlantic world suggested that minds could still be changed in the United States. From this momentum, Franklin sent an antislavery petition to Con- gress on February 3, 1790, asking that its members “devise means for removing this Inconsistency from the Character of the American People” and “step to the very verge of the Powers vested in you, for discouraging every Species of Traffick in the Persons of our fellow Men.”131 The day before the Speaker of the House read the petition, Pennsylvania representative Thomas Fitzsimmons presented another from the Quakers who asked that Congress abolish the slave trade. A petition from Quakers in New York followed. When it was suggested that the address be referred to a committee, a debate ensued during which James Madison reminded his fellow southern delegates that, “the Constitution secures to the individual States the right of admitting, if they think proper, the importation of slaves into their own territory.” 132 Needless to say, no one was in the mood to compromise when Franklin’s petition was read the next day on February 12. “Do these men expect a general emancipation of slaves by law? This would never be submitted to by the Southern States without a civil war,” predicted Thomas Tudor Tucker of South Carolina.133 On the evening of March 22, 1790, Franklin was at home reading that day’s edition of The Federal Gazette and Philadelphia Evening Post, the city’s new daily newspaper. After glancing over the advertisements that covered page one, he turned to the second page to see the proceedings of the House of Representatives from March 16, when the members received the committee report on the Quaker antislavery petition. Georgia representative James Jackson’s vitriolic speech covered all of page two and spilled over on to page three. In February, Jackson had opposed the Quaker petition in part because “religion is not against” slavery, and now in March he rose to condemn the Quakers as anti-American shirkers “who [come] forward to blow The Long Journey Home, 1778–1790 • 145 the trumpet of sedition, and to destroy that constitution, which they had not in the least contributed by personal service or supply to establish.” Yes, slavery was “an evil habit,” but it was an established and necessary habit. Franklin responded by sending a parody of Jackson’s speech to The Federal Gazette, claiming it was a translation of Algerian divan Sidi Mehemet Ibra- him’s speech rejecting a petition to end the enslavement of Christian Euro- peans in Africa. Who would work the fertile lands of Georgia and South Carolina, Jackson had asked, places so hot it was “impossible . . . for northern constitutions even to exist there?”134 Similarly, the divan asked, “If we forbear to make slaves of their people, who, in this hot climate, are to culti- vate our lands?” After considering (as Jackson had done) how slave owners would have to be compensated if their slaves were freed, proclaiming that slaves were worse off in their home country, and providing assurances that slaves were treated with humanity, the divan rejected the petition. “And since like motives are apt to produce in the minds of men like opinions and resolutions,” Franklin wrote to the editor, “may we not . . . venture to pre- dict, from this account, that the petitions to the parliament of England for abolishing the slave trade, to say nothing of other legislatures, and the debates upon them, will have a similar conclusion.”135 The parody was Franklin’s final contribution to public debate. The pain from his gout and kidney stones was so bad that he had been taking opium to get relief. He had complained of kidney stones since the fall of 1782 when he “daily voided Gravel Stones the Size of small Pease” and doctors advised him to try laudanum (a mixture of opium and alcohol).136 Both problems would plague him until his death. As he wrote in early August of 1788: “This is all I can say about them at present; the Gout and Stone which have afflicted me these 8 Months past, still continuing to harass me; and have so enfeebled the old Machine, that I think it not far from the final Stop of its Motions.” 137 As Richard Bache reported to his wife on July 21, 1789, “Your Father has endured a great deal of pain, he seems easier this Morning, the effect I suppose of the Opium he took last night.”138 In early September, Franklin wrote to a friend in France that “I have a long time been afflicted with almost constant and grievous Pain to combat which I have been obliged to have recourse to Opium.” 139 Narcotic use was not without its side effects (thePennsylvania Packet had run a story in late March 1790 about “the fatal effects of laudanum”).140 Although it gave Franklin “Ease from time to time,” he reported that “it has taken away my Appetite and so impeded my Digestion that I am become totally emaciated and little remains of me but a Skeleton covered with a Skin.”141 He fretted that he would be unable to properly finish his memoirs before he died. Two months later he reported that he had “grown very weak, so that I cannot well sit up to write.” 142 146 • Benjamin Franklin

Franklin’s death at 11:00 p.m. on April 17, 1790, was covered in all the newspapers, perhaps a fitting end for the man who had first made his reputation as a printer. Readers of the Monday, April 19, edition of The Federal Gazette were informed that two days ago “the illustrious Benjamin Frank- lin” had died at eighty-five years of age.143 The day of the funeral, April 21, the Gazette reported that “the ships in the harbor, even those of Great Brit- ain, hung their flags half mast high.”144 ThePennsylvania Mercury reported that no less than twenty thousand people attended the funeral, and their silence “evinced the heartfelt sense, entertained by all classes of citizens, of the unparalleled virtues, talents, and services of the deceased.” 145 The Free- man’s Journal ran a description of Franklin’s last days that his doctor provided. It was not a pretty picture. The pain from his kidney stones had “confined him chiefly to a bed,” and he “was obliged to take large doses of laudanum to mitigate his tortures.” A fever turned into chest pain two weeks before his death, accompanied by a cough and labored breathing. When it looked like he was going to recover, the abscess that had been growing in his lung burst “and discharged a great quantity of matter, which he continued to throw up.” Slow and labored breathing turned into a “calm lethargic state,” and then death.146 TheIndependent Gazetteer ran a version of the epitaph Franklin had written for himself in 1728:

Th e Body of BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, Printer; like an old Book stript of its Lettering and Gilding, lies here, food for worms; Yet the work shall not be lost, but will appear in a new and beautiful edition, revised and corrected by the AUTHOR. 147

The New York papers quickly picked up the news, followed by New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire. By May 5, news of Franklin’s death and funeral had reached as far south as South Carolina. The papers offered poems and eulogiums to Franklin’s memory, anecdotes from and histories of his life, and excerpts from his last will and testament in which he left William only his land grant in Nova Scotia. “The part he acted against me in the late war, which is of public notoriety, will account for my leaving him no more of an estate he endeav- oured to deprive me of,” Franklin explained.148 By the autumn came news from across the Atlantic that the French and British had been paying their respects to Franklin as well. In November, Franklin’s likeness was added to Daniel Bowen’s wax museum in Boston, with tickets to see him selling for twenty-five cents. The Long Journey Home, 1778–1790 • 147

One year after his death people were still invoking the name and memory of Franklin in the newspapers. President George Washington was in Pennsylvania for the fourth of July in 1791, where he toasted “the memory of the American Patriot, Statesman and Philosopher—Benjamin Frank- lin.” 149 The memory of who Franklin was, and what he meant to the fledgling United States, would change over time as many different people in many different contexts offered their histories of the man. As The Federal Gazette stated: “Time alone can unfold to his country and his fellow-men, the numerous treasures of wisdom, which his patriotism and philanthropy have bequeathed them.” 150

N OTES 1 Benjamin Franklin to Arthur Lee, April 3, 1778 [electronic edition]. Papers of Benjamin Franklin. The Packard Humanities Institute. http://franklinpapers.org . Unless otherwise noted, all references to electronic editions are from Yale’s Franklin Papers. 2 Benjamin Franklin to John Alleyne, August 9, 1768 [electronic edition]. 3 Franklin’s Journal of His Health, October 4, 1778, to January 16, 1780 [electronic edition]. 4 Deborah Franklin to Benjamin Franklin, August 16, 1770 [electronic edition]. 5 Letter from John Adams to Abigail Adams, April 19, 1778 [electronic edition]. Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive. Massachusetts Historical Society. www.masshist.org/digital adams/ 6 Ibid. 7 John Adams autobiography, part 2, “Travels, and Negotiations,” 1777–1778, sheet 26 of 37 [electronic edition]. Adams Family Papers. 8 Letter from John Adams to Abigail Adams, June 3, 1778 [electronic edition]. Adams Family Papers. 9 Letter from John Adams to Abigail Adams, July 26, 1778, letterbook copy [electronic edition]. Adams Family Papers. 10 Entry for February 12, 1779, John Adams diary 47, February 13, 1778—April 26, 1779 [electronic edition]. Adams Family Papers. 11 Letter from John Adams to Abigail Adams, April 25, 1778 [electronic edition]. Adams Family Papers. 12 April 10, 1778, John Adams autobiography, part 2, “Travels, and Negotiations,” 1777–1778, sheet 11 of 37 [electronic edition]. Adams Family Papers. 13 May 27, 1778, John Adams autobiography, part 2, “Travels, and Negotiations,” 1777–1778, sheet 26 of 37 [electronic edition]. 14 Exchanges with Anne-Louise Boivin d’Hardancourt Brillon de Jouy: Six Letters circa July 27, 1778 (VI) [electronic edition]. 15 Benjamin Franklin to Madame Brillon, September 17, 1778 [electronic edition]. 16 Benjamin Franklin to Anne-Catherine de Ligniville Helvétius, October 1778 [electronic edition]. 17 To Anne-Catherine de Ligniville Helvétius: First Edition of “The Elysian Fields,” January 1780 [electronic edition]. 18 Sarah Bache to Benjamin Franklin, February 23, 1777 [electronic edition]. 19 Benjamin Franklin to Richard and Sarah Bache, March 31, 1778 [electronic edition]. 20 Sarah Bache to Benjamin Franklin, October 22, 1778 [electronic edition]. 21 Sarah Bache to Benjamin Franklin, January 17, 1779 [electronic edition]. 22 Benjamin Franklin to Sarah Bache, June 3, 1779 [electronic edition]. 23 Sarah Bache to Benjamin Franklin, September 14, 1779 [electronic edition]. 24 Ibid. 148 • Benjamin Franklin

25 Benjamin Franklin to Sarah Bache, March 16, 1780 [electronic edition]. 26 Benjamin Franklin to the Comte de Vergennes, July 10, 1780 [electronic edition]. 27 Benjamin Franklin to Samuel Huntington, August 9, 1780 [electronic edition]. 28 John Adams to Benjamin Franklin, August 17, 1780 [electronic edition]. 29 Benjamin Franklin to Richard Bache, June 2, 1779 [electronic edition]. 30 Benjamin Franklin to Samuel Huntington, March 12, 1781 [electronic edition]. 31 Entry for October 27, 1782, John Adams diary 35, October 26, 1782—November 17, 1782 [electronic edition]. Adams Family Papers. 32 Entry for November 30, 1782, John Adams diary 37, November 22–30, 1782 [electronic edition]. Adams Family Papers. 33 From Benjamin Franklin: Diary, Saturday, July 23 [electronic edition]. 34 Ibid., Sunday, July 24. 35 Ibid., Wednesday, July 27. 36 Ibid., Wednesday, September 14. 37 Benjamin Franklin to Mary Stevenson Hewson, January 27, 1783 [electronic edition]. See also Benjamin Franklin to Charles Thompson, May 13, 1784. 38 George Washington to Benjamin Franklin, September 25, 1785 [electronic edition]. 39 Benjamin Franklin to John and Sarah Van Brugh Livingston Jay, September 21, 1785 [electronic edition]. 40 An Act to Regulate the Militia of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 1777 (9 St.L.75, Ch.750). 41 Memorial of Several Gentlemen Respecting Calling a Convention, May 6, 1777, Historical Society of Pennsylvania (HSP), Gratz Collection, Pennsylvania Series, Pennsylvania Conven- tion 1775, case 1, box 14. 42 “To the Citizens of Pennsylvania,” September 29, 1784, Freeman’s Journal . 43 From the Inhabitants of Chester County: Petition, 1785 [electronic edition]. 44 Articles of Confederation, Article 3, in Richard Peters, ed., The Public Statutes at Large of the United States of America (Boston, 1845), 1: 4. 45 Edmund Randolph to Benjamin Franklin, December 1, 1786 [electronic edition]. 46 Benjamin Franklin to Edmund Randolph, December 21, 1786 [electronic edition]. 47 Leonard L. Richards, Shays’s Rebellion: The American Revolution’s Final Battle (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 4. 4 8 Massachusetts Centinel , April 14, 1787, as reprinted in Commentaries , 1: 80. 49 James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, May 15, 1787, in Max Farrand, ed.,The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 , 3 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1911), 3:20. 50 Benjamin Franklin to Thomas Jordan, May 18, 1787 [electronic edition]. 51 Farrand, 1: 4. 52 Benjamin Franklin to George Whatley, May 18, 1787 [electronic edition]. 53 Benjamin Franklin to Sir Edward Newenham, May 24, 1787 [electronic edition]. 54 Benjamin Franklin to Walter Dulany, November 29, 1787 [electronic edition]. 55 Farrand, 1: 41. Emphasis added. 56 Ibid.: 43. 57 Ibid.: 48. 58 From Benjamin Franklin: Convention Speech on Salaries, June 2, 1787 [electronic edition]. 59 Farrand, 1: 85. 60 Farrand, 3: 479; From Benjamin Franklin: Convention Speech Proposing Prayers, June 28, 1787 [electronic edition]. 61 Ibid. 62 Farrand, 1: 106. 63 Ibid.: 197. 64 Farrand, 2: 120. 65 Ibid.: 204, 210. The Long Journey Home, 1778–1790 • 149

66 Ibid.: 249. 67 Ibid.: 643. 68 Benjamin Franklin to Louis-Guillaume Le Veillard, April 22, 1788 [electronic edition]. 6 9 Massachusetts Centinel, October 17, 1787, in John P. Kaminski et al., eds., The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1981), 13: 394. Hereafter cited as DHRC. 70 Benjamin Franklin to Louis-Guillaume Le Veillard, April 22, 1788 [electronic edition]. 71 Benjamin Franklin to Jane Mecom, September 20, 1787 [electronic edition]. 7 2 Pennsylvania Gazette , September 5, 1787. 73 Terry Bouton, Taming Democracy: “ The People, ” the Founders, and the Troubled Ending of the American Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 4. 7 4 Pennsylvania Gazette , September 5, 1787. 75 The Pennsylvania Supreme Executive Council to George Clinton and Pennsylvania Delegates in Congress, September 20, 1787 [electronic edition]. 76 William Findley to William Irvine, March 12, 1788, HSP, Irvine-Newbold Family Papers, series 1, box 6. 77 William Findley, An Address from an Officer of the Late Continental Army (Philadelphia, 1787), 7. 78 Centinel I, Philadelphia Independent Gazetteer , October 5, 1788, DHRC, 13: 330. 7 9 Philadelphia Independent Gazetteer , October 13, 1787, DHRC, 13: 379. 80 See The Carlisle Gazette , December 26, 1787. 8 1 Boston American Herald , November 19, 1787, DHRC, 14: 454. 82 Helvidius Priscus II, Boston Independent Chronicle , January 10, 1788, DHRC, 15: 333. 83 Louis-Guillaume to Comte de Montmorin, October 10 1787, DHRC, 14: 125. 84 William Shippen, Jr., to Thomas Lee Shippen, November 7–18, 1787, DHRC, 14: 235. 85 Wilson’s Notes, DHRC, 14: 439. 86 Wayne’s Notes, DHRC, 14: 470. 87 Dissent of the Minority, clause 11, DHRC, 14: 619. 88 John Armstrong, Sr., to Benjamin Franklin, DHRC, 14: 649; Independent Gazetteer , January 25, 1788, in ibid., 14: 657. 89 An Address to the Minority of the Convention, Carlisle Gazette , January 2, 1788, DHRC, 14: 653. 90 Benjamin Franklin to Louis-Guillaume Le Veillard, February 17, 1788 [electronic edition]. 91 Benjamin Franklin to the Editor of the Federal Gazette, April 8, 1788 [electronic edition]. 92 Centinel XVI, February 26, 1788, DHRC, 16: 219. 93 To the Editor of the Pennsylvania Gazette, March 30, 1788 [electronic edition]. 9 4 Independent Gazetteer , October 29, 1787, DHRC, 14: 511. 9 5 Philadelphia Independent Gazetteer , October 29, 1787, DHRC, 14: 512. 9 6 Philadelphia Independent Gazetteer , October 30, 1787, DHRC, 14: 514. 97 Ibid. 9 8 Philadelphia Independent Gazetteer , November 3, 1787, DHRC, 14: 516. 99 Act of January 12, 1706 (2 St.L.236, Ch.144). 100 Gertrude MacKinney, ed., Pennsylvania Archives , 8th Series (Philadelphia, 1931), 2: 1013. See Gary B. Nash and Jean R. Soderlund, Freedom by Degrees: Emancipation in Pennsylvania and Its Aftermath (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 42. 101 Act of June 7, 1712 (2 St.L.433, Ch. 192). 102 Act of March 5, 1726 (4 St. L. Ch. 292). 103 Gary B. Nash, “Franklin and Slavery,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society , 150 (Dec., 2006): 627. 104 Richard Bache to Sarah Bache, July 21, 1789 [electronic edition]. 105 From Benjamin Franklin: Will and Codicil, July 17, 1788 [electronic edition]. 106 Nash, “Franklin and Slavery,” 627. 150 • Benjamin Franklin

107 Benjamin Franklin to the Marquis de Condorcet, March 20, 1774 [electronic edition]. 108 Benjamin Franklin to Peter Collinson, May 9, 1753 [electronic edition]. 109 Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind , 1751 [electronic edition]. 110 Ibid. 111 As quoted in Nash, “Franklin and Slavery,” 629. 112 The Sommersett Case and the Slave Trade, The London Chronicle , June 18–20, 1772 [electronic edition]. 113 Ibid. 114 John Dickinson, “Letter XII,” reprinted in Forrest McDonald, ed., Empire and Liberty (Engle- wood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1962), 81. 115 http://digitalhistory.hsp.org/pafrm/doc/manumission-john-dickinsons-slaves-may-12–1777- march-27–1779 116 Richard Middleton, Colonial America: A History , 1565–1776, 3rd Edition (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2002), 306. 117 Ibid., 207. 118 John Adams to George Churchman and Jacob Lindley, January 24, 1801 [electronic edition]. Available at: www.gilderlehrman.org/sites/default/files/inline-pdfs/T-00921.pdf 119 Paul Finkleman, Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson, 2nd edition (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2001), 192. 120 Nash, “Franklin and Slavery,” 619. 121 Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (Cam- bridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998), 179. 122 Ibid., 180. 123 Manumission of John Dickinson’s Slaves, May 12, 1779, available at http://digitalhistory.hsp. org/pafrm/doc/manumission-john-dickinsons-slaves-may-12–1777-march-27–1779 124 Worthington C. Ford et al., eds., Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789, (Washing- ton, D.C., 1904–37), 6: 1100. 125 Ibid., 1080. 126 Act of March 1, 1780 (10 St.L.67, Ch. 881). 127 David Waldstreicher, Slavery’s Constitution : From Revolution to Ratification (New York: Hill and Wang, 2009), 77. 128 Farrand, Records , 1: 205–206. 129 Granville Sharp to Benjamin Franklin, January 10, 1788 [electronic edition]. 130 Nicholas Guyatt, “The Complexion of My Country: Benjamin Franklin and the Problem of Racial Diversity,” in David Waldstreicher, ed., A Companion to Benjamin Franklin (New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), iBooks edition. 131 The Pennsylvania Abolition Society to the United States Congress, February 3, 1790 [electronic edition]. 132 Annals of Congress , 1st Congress, 2nd Session, 1226. 133 Ibid., 1240. 134 The Federal Gazette , March 22, 1790. 135 Benjamin Franklin to the Federal Gazette, March 23, 1790 [electronic edition]. The parody appeared in the March 25 edition of The Federal Gazette . 136 From Benjamin Franklin: Case History of Stone with Medical Opinions, July 18, 1785 [electronic editon]. 137 Benjamin Franklin to John Anderson, August 8, 1788 [electronic edition]. 138 Richard Bache to Sarah Bache, July 21, 1789 [electronic edition]. 139 Benjamin Franklin to Louis-Guillaume Le Veillard, September 5, 1789 [electronic edition]. 140 The Pennsylvania Packet and Daily Advertiser , March 20, 1790. 141 Benjamin Franklin to Louis-Guillaume Le Veillard, September 5, 1789 [electronic edition]. 142 Benjamin Franklin to Sir Edward Newenham, November 5, 1789 [electronic edition]. 143 The Federal Gazette , April 19, 1790. The Long Journey Home, 1778–1790 • 151

144 Ibid., April 21, 1790. 145 The Pennsylvania Mercury , April 24, 1790. 146 Freeman’s Journal , April 21, 1790. 147 The Independent Gazetteer , April 24, 1790. 148 From Benjamin Franklin: Will and Codicil, July 17, 1788 [electronic edition]. 149 Freeman’s Journal , July 13, 1791. 150 The Federal Gazette , April 21, 1790. This page intentionally left blank P A R T II D OCUMENTS

1 Silence Dogood, No. 1 155 2 From Poor Richard’s Almanac for 1733 157 3 Old Mistresses Apologue, June 25, 1745 159 4 Slave Advertisements from the Gazette 161 5 John Dickinson and Others: Protest against the Appointment of Benjamin Franklin as Agent (excerpt) 163 6 Rules by Which a Great Empire May Be Reduced to a Small One (excerpt) 166 7 The Pennsylvania Abolition Society to the United States Congress 170 8 Benjamin Franklin to Ezra Stiles (excerpt) 172 This page intentionally left blank DOCUMENT 1 SILENCE DOGOOD, NO. 1

Printed in Th e New-England Courant, April 2, 1722.

At the age of sixteen, Benjamin Franklin adopted the pen name Silence Dogood and wrote fourteen essays as a fictional middle-aged widow in The New England Courant from April 2 to October 8, 1722. Franklin was keenly aware of his lowly status as an apprentice, and so he had some fun in this first installment by drawing the reader’s attention to the purported importance of knowing the author, and then laying out a fictitious backstory for Silence drawn largely from his imagination.

S i r , It may not be improper in the fi rst place to inform your Readers, that I intend once a Fortnight to present them, by the Help of this Paper, with a short Epistle, which I presume will add somewhat to their Entertainment. And since it is observed, that the Generality of People, now a days, are unwilling either to commend or dispraise what they read, until they are in some measure informed who or what the Author of it is, whether he be poor or rich, old or young, a Schollar or a Leather Apron Man, &c. and give their Opinion of the Performance, according to the Knowledge which they have of the Author’s Circumstances, it may not be amiss to begin with a short Account of my past Life and present Condition, that the Reader may not be at a Loss to judge whether or no my Lucubrations are worth his reading. At the time of my Birth, my Parents were on Ship-board in their Way from London to N. England. My Entrance into this troublesome World was attended with the Death of my Father, a Misfortune, which tho’ I was not then capable of knowing, I shall never be able to forget; for as he, poor 156 • Documents

Man, stood upon the Deck rejoycing at my Birth, a merciless Wave entred the Ship, and in one Moment carry’d him beyond Reprieve. Th us, was the fi rst Day which I saw, the last that was seen by my Father; and thus was my disconsolate Mother at once made both a Parent and a Widow . When we arrived at Boston (which was not long aft er) I was put to Nurse in a Country Place, at a small Distance from the Town, where I went to School, and past my Infancy and Childhood in Vanity and Idleness, until I was bound out Apprentice, that I might no longer be a Charge to my Indi- gent Mother, who was put to hard Shift s for a Living. My Master was a Country Minister, a pious good-natur’d young Man, and a Batchelor: he labour’d with all his Might to instil vertuous and godly Principles into my tender Soul, well knowing that it was the most suitable Time to make deep and lasting Impressions on the Mind, while it was yet untainted with Vice, free and unbiass’d. He endeavour’d that I might be instructed in all that Knowledge and Learning which is necessary for our Sex, and deny’d me no Accomplishment that could possibly be attained in a Country Place; such as all Sorts of Needle-Work, Writing, Arithmetick, &c. and observing that I took a more than ordinary Delight in reading ingenious Books, he gave me the free Use of his Library, which tho’ it was but small, yet it was well chose, to inform the Understanding rightly, and enable the Mind to frame great and noble Ideas. Before I had liv’d quite two Years with this Reverend Gentleman, my indulgent Mother departed this Life, leaving me as it were by my self, having no Relation on Earth within my Knowledge. I will not abuse your Patience with a tedious Recital of all the frivolous Accidents of my Life, that happened from this Time until I arrived to Years of Discretion, only inform you that I liv’d a chearful Country Life, spending my leisure Time either in some innocent Diversion with the neighbouring Females, or in some shady Retirement, with the best of Company, Books . Th us I past away the Time with a Mixture of Profi t and Pleasure, having no affl iction but what was imaginary, and created in my own Fancy; as nothing is more common with us Women, than to be grieving for nothing, when we have nothing else to grieve for. As I would not engross too much of your Paper at once, I will defer the Remainder of my Story until my next Letter; in the mean time desiring your Readers to exercise their Patience, and bear with my Humours now and then, because I shall trouble them but seldom. I am not insensible of the Impossibility of pleasing all, but I would not willingly displease any; and for those who will take Off ence were none is intended, they are beneath the Notice of Your Humble Servant, Silence Dogood DOCUMENT 2 FROM POOR RICHARD’S ALMANAC FOR 1733

Almanacs were popular and plentiful in the colonial era, but Franklin was able to put together the right combination of humor, information, and quality printing to make Poor Richard’s Almanac stand out from the rest. When he ﬁrst started his almanac, Franklin’s stiffest competition was from Titan Leeds, whose death Franklin predicted in this ﬁrst installment of Poor Rich- ard to draw attention to his new printing venture.

Courteous Reader, I might in this place attempt to gain thy Favour, by declaring that I write Almanacks with no other View than that of the publick Good; but in this I should not be sincere; and Men are now a-days too wise to be deceiv’d by Pretences how specious soever. Th e plain Truth of the Matter is, I am excessive poor, and my Wife, good Woman, is, I tell her, excessive proud; she cannot bear, she says, to sit spinning in her Shift of Tow, while I do nothing but gaze at the Stars; and has threatened more than once to burn all my Books and Rattling-Traps (as she calls my Instruments) if I do not make some profi table Use of them for the good of my Family. Th e Printer has off er’d me some considerable share of the Profi ts, and I have thus begun to comply with my Dame’s desire. Indeed this Motive would have had Force enough to have made me publish an Almanack many Years since, had it not been overpower’d by my Regard for my good Friend and Fellow-Student, Mr. Titan Leeds, whose Interest I was extreamly unwilling to hurt: But this Obstacle (I am far from speaking it with Pleasure) is soon to be removed, since inexorable Death, who was never known to respect Merit, has already prepared the mortal Dart, the fatal Sister has already extended her destroying Shears, and that 158 • Documents ingenious Man must soon be taken from us. He dies, by my Calculation made at his Request, on Oct. 17. 1733. 3 ho. 29 m. P.M. at the very instant of the of and : By his own Calculation he will survive till the 26th of the same Month. Th is small diff erence between us we have disputed whenever we have met these 9 Years past; but at length he is inclinable to agree with my Judgment; Which of us is most exact, a little Time will now determine. As therefore these Provinces may not longer expect to see any of his Perfor- mances aft er this Year, I think my self free to take up the Task, and request a share of the publick Encourgement; which I am the more apt to hope for on this Account, that the Buyer of my Almanack may consider himself, not only as purchasing an useful Utensil, but as performing an Act of Charity, to his poor Friend and Servant. R. Saunders DOCUMENT 3 OLD MISTRESSES APOLOGUE, JUNE 25, 1745

Franklin wrote this essay as a joke meant to be circulated among a small circle of his literary friends. No original printed copy survives, but a few manuscript copies in Franklin’s handwriting do. Once considered too raunchy to be asso- ciated with a Founding Father, the essay did not appear in any collections of his writings until Yale University published it in 1961 in The Papers of Benjamin Franklin. This essay gives us insight into not only an emerging American style of humor, but also the sexual terrain of mid-eighteenth century colonial society.

My dear Friend, I know of no Medicine fi t to diminish the violent natural Inclinations you mention; and if I did, I think I should not communicate it to you. Mar- riage is the proper Remedy. It is the most natural State of Man, and therefore the State in which you are most likely to fi nd solid Happiness. Your Reasons against entring into it at present, appear to me not well-founded. Th e circumstantial Advantages you have in View by postponing it, are not only uncertain, but they are small in comparison with that of the Th ing itself, the being married and settled. It is the Man and Woman united that make the compleat human Being. Separate, she wants his Force of Body and Strength of Reason; he, her Soft ness, Sensibility and acute Discernment. Together they are more likely to succeed in the World. A single Man has not nearly the Value he would have in that State of Union. He is an incomplete Animal. He resembles the odd Half of a Pair of Scissars. If you get a prudent healthy Wife, your Industry in your Profession, with her good Oeconomy, will be a Fortune suffi cient. 160 • Documents

But if you will not take this Counsel, and persist in thinking a Commerce with the Sex inevitable, then I repeat my former Advice, that in all your Amours you should prefer old Women to young ones. You call this a Para- dox, and demand my Reasons. Th ey are these: 1. Because as they have more Knowledge of the World and their Minds are better stor’d with Observations, their Conversation is more improving and more lastingly agreable. 2. Because when Women cease to be handsome, they study to be good. To maintain their Infl uence over Men, they supply the Diminution of Beauty by an Augmentation of Utility. Th ey learn to do a 1000 Services small and great, and are the most tender and useful of all Friends when you are sick. Th us they continue amiable. And hence there is hardly such a thing to be found as an old Woman who is not a good Woman. 3. Because there is no hazard of Children, which irregularly produc’d may be attended with much Inconvenience. 4. Because thro’ more Experience, they are more prudent and discreet in conducting an Intrigue to prevent Suspicion. Th e Commerce with them is therefore safer with regard to your Reputation. And with regard to theirs, if the Aff air should happen to be known, considerate People might be rather inclin’d to excuse an old Woman who would kindly take care of a young Man, form his Manners by her good Counsels, and prevent his ruining his Health and Fortune among mercenary Prostitutes. 5. Because in every Animal that walks upright, the Defi ciency of the Fluids that fi ll the Muscles appears fi rst in the highest Part: Th e Face fi rst grows lank and wrinkled; then the Neck; then the Breast and Arms; the lower Parts continuing to the last as plump as ever: So that covering all above with a Basket, and regarding only what is below the Girdle, it is impossible of two Women to know an old from a young one. And as in the dark all Cats are grey, the Pleasure of corporal Enjoyment with an old Woman is at least equal, and frequently superior, every Knack being by Practice capable of Improvement. 6. Because the Sin is less. Th e debauching a Virgin may be her Ruin, and make her for Life unhappy. 7. Because the Compunction is less. Th e having made a young Girl miserable may give you frequent bitter Refl ections; none of which can attend the making an old Woman happy. 8. [thly and Lastly] Th ey are so grateful!! Th us much for my Paradox. But still I advise you to marry directly; being sincerely Your aff ectionate Friend. DOCUMENT 4 SLAVE ADVERTISEMENTS FROM THE GAZETTE

Slave advertisements were a steady source of revenue for Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette, and are a valuable source for understanding slavery in the north. The following ads can tell us something about both slaves and slave owners.

August 20, 1730 RUN away from William Moore of Moore-hall in Chester County, a likely young Negro Man named Jack, speaks but indiff erent English, and had on when he went away a new ozenburg Shirt, a pair of strip’d home spun Breeches, a strip’d ticking Wastecoat, an old dimity Coat of his Master’s with Buttons of Horse teeth set in Brass, and Cloth Sleeves, a Felt Hat almost new. Whoever secures the said Negro, and will bring him to his Master, or to John Moore, Esq; in Philadelphia, shall receive Twenty Shillings Reward and reasonable Charges. August 10, 1730. William Moore. September 17, 1730 Run away last night from Major Butterfi eld of this City, a Negroe Fellow named Tony, of a middle stature, well-set, 25 Years of Age, has lost one of his little Toes. Is supposed to have taken away a black Horse of 14 Hands High, without any White about him, a fi ne Pacer, shod all round, branded with a W upon his Buttock. Whoever secures the said Negro and Horse, so as the Owner may have them again, shall have Forty Shillings November 27, 1731 To be SOLD, A Likely Negro Wench, about Fift een Years old, has had the Small pox, been in the Country above a Year, and talks English. Enquire of the Printer hereof. 162 • Documents

May 30, 1734 TWO likely young Negroes, one a Lad about 19: Th e other a Girl of 15, to be sold. Inquire of the Printer. August 10, 1738 RUN away on the 1st Inst. from Th omas Lawrence, of this City, a Negro Woman named Hannah, aged about 22 Years, smooth skin’d, likely and very black, of a middle Stature and slender siz’d, speaks good English, had some of her Toes bruised, and has taken a large Bundle of Cloaths with her. Who- ever secures her so that she is had again, shall be rewarded according to the Law of this Province, and all Persons are forewarned not to entertain her. March 24, 1747 To be SOLD, A Prime able young Negro man, fi t for laborious work, in town or country, that has had the small pox: As also a middle aged Negro man, that has likewise had the smallpox. Enquire of the printer hereof. Or otherwise they will be exposed to sale by publick vendue, on Saturday the 11th of April next, at 12 o’clock, at the Indian king, in Market street. DOCUMENT 5 JOHN DICKINSON AND OTHERS: PROTEST AGAINST THE APPOINTMENT OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AS AGENT (EXCERPT)

Printed in Th e Pennsylvania Journal and Weekly Advertiser, November 1, 1764.

The Pennsylvania election of 1764 was one of the most vituperative in the province’s history. Franklin misjudged the support for his plan to institute a royal government in Pennsylvania and found himself ousted from the assembly and on the outs with the public. John Dickinson helped lead the charge against Franklin as a scheming opportunist who did not have the authority to speak for the people of Pennsylvania as their provincial agent in London.

We whose Names are hereunto subscribed, do object and protest against the Appointment of the Person proposed as an Agent of this Province, for the following Reasons. First. Because we believe him to be the Chief Author of the Measures pursued by the late Assembly, which have occasioned such Uneasiness and Distraction among the good People of this Province. Secondly. Because we believe his fi xed enmity to the Proprietors will preclude all Accommodation of our Disputes with them, even on just and reasonable Terms. . . . [B]y such an Appointment, we, and a vast Number of our most worthy Constituents, are deprived of all hopes of ever seeing an End put to the fatal Dissentions of our Country; it being our fi rm 164 • Documents

Opinion, that any further Prosecution of the Measures for a Change of our Government at this Time, will lay the Foundations of unceasing Feuds, and all the Miseries of Confusion, among the People we represent, and their Posterity. . . . Th irdly. Because the Gentleman proposed, as we are informed, is very unfavorably thought of by several of his Majesty’s Ministers; and we are humbly of Opinion, that it will be disrespectful to our most Gracious Sov- ereign, and disadvantageous to ourselves and our constituents, to employ such a person as our Agent. Fourthly. Because the Proposal of the Person mentioned, is so extremely disagreeable to a very great Number of the most serious and reputable Inhabitants of this Province of all Denominations and Societies (one Proof of which is, his having been rejected, both by this City and County at the last Election, though he had represented the former in Assembly for 14 Years) that we are convinced no Measure this House can adopt, will tend so much to infl ame the Resentments and imbitter the Divisions of the good People of this province, as his Appointment to be our Agent—And we cannot but sincerely lament, that the Peace and Happiness of Pennsylvania should be sacrifi ced for the Promotion of a Man, who cannot be advanced but by the Convulsions of his Country. Fift hly. Because the unnecessary haste with which this House has acted in proceeding to this Appointment (without making a small Adjourn- ment, tho’ requested by many Members, to consult our Constituents on the Matters to be decided, and) even before their Speaker has been presented to the King’s Representative, tho’ we are informed that the Gov- ernor will be in Town the Beginning of next Week; may subject us to the Censures and very heavy Displeasure of our most gracious Sovereign and his Ministers. . . . Lastly. We being extremely desirous to avert the Mischiefs apprehended from the intended Appointment, and as much as in us lies to promote Peace and Unanimity among us and our Constituents, do humbly propose to the House, that if they will agree regularly to appoint any Gentleman of Integrity, Abilities, and Knowledge in England, to assist Mr. Jackson as our Agent, under a Restriction not to present the Petitions for a Change of our Government, or any of them, to the King or his Ministers, unless an express Order for that Purpose be hereaft er given by the Assembly of this Province; we will not give it any Opposition: But if such an Appointment should be made, we must insist (as we cannot think it a necessary one) that our Constituents, already labouring under heavy Debts, be not burthened with fresh Impositions on that Account; and therefore, in Condescension to the Members, who think another Agent necessary, we will concur with Protest against Franklin as Agent • 165 them if they approve of this Proposal, in paying such Agent at our own Expence.

John Dickinson, William Allen, David Mccanaughy Th omas Willing, John Montgomery George Bryan, Isaac Sanders Amos Strettell, George Taylor Henry Keppele. DOCUMENT 6 RULES BY WHICH A GREAT EMPIRE MAY BE REDUCED TO A SMALL ONE (EXCERPT)

Printed in Th e Public Advertiser, September 11, 1773

This is one of Franklin’s most bitter and biting satires, written for a London newspaper a few months before Franklin revealed himself to be the one who sent copies of Thomas Hutchinson’s letters to the Massachusetts legislature. This document clearly shows Franklin’s disillusionment with the colonies’ treatment at the hands of the king (whom he compared to the infamous Roman emperor Nero) and Parliament, and it helped solidify the erroneous opinion that Franklin was pushing for independence in the early 1770s.

An ancient Sage valued himself upon this, that tho’ he could not fi ddle, he knew how to make a great City of a little one. Th e Science that I, a modern Simpleton, am about to communicate is the very reverse. I address myself to all Ministers who have the Management of extensive Dominions, which from their very Greatness are become troublesome to govern, because the Multiplicity of their Aff airs leaves no Time for fi ddling. I. In the fi rst Place, Gentlemen, you are to consider, that a great Empire, like a great Cake, is most easily diminished at the Edges. Turn your Attention therefore fi rst to your remotest Provinces; that as you get rid of them, the next may follow in Order. II. Th at the Possibility of this Separation may always exist, take special Care the Provinces are never incorporated with the Mother Country, that they do not enjoy the same common Rights, the same Privileges in Commerce, and that they are governed by severer Laws, all of your Great Empire Reduced to Small • 167

enacting, without allowing them any Share in the Choice of the Legis- lators. By carefully making and preserving such Distinctions, you will (to keep to my Simile of the Cake) act like a wise Gingerbread Baker, who, to facilitate a Division, cuts his Dough half through in those Places, where, when bak’d, he would have it broken to Pieces. . . . IV. However peaceably your Colonies have submitted to your Govern- ment, shewn their Aff ection to your Interest, and patiently borne their Grievances, you are to suppose them always inclined to revolt, and treat them accordingly. Quarter Troops among them, who by their Insolence may provoke the rising of Mobs, and by their Bullets and Bayonets suppress them. By this Means, like the Husband who uses his Wife ill from Suspicion, you may in Time convert your Sus- picions into Realities. V. Remote Provinces must have Governors, and Judges, to represent the Royal Person, and execute every where the delegated Parts of his Offi ce and Authority. . . . You are . . . to be careful who you recommend for those Offi ces. If you can fi nd Prodigals who have ruined their Fortunes, broken Gamesters or Stock-Jobbers, these may do well as Governors; for they will probably be rapacious, and provoke the People by their Extortions. Wrangling Proctors and pettyfogging Lawyers too are not amiss, for they will be for ever disputing and quarrelling with their little Parliaments, if withal they should be ignorant, wrong-headed and insolent, so much the better. . . . VII. When such Governors have crammed their Coff ers, and made themselves so odious to the People that they can no longer remain among them with Safety to their Persons, recall and reward them with Pensions. . . . VIII. Th ey will probably complain to your Parliaments that they are taxed by a Body in which they have no Representative, and that this is contrary to common Right. Th ey will petition for Redress. Let the Parlia- ments fl out their Claims, reject their Petitions, refuse even to suff er the reading of them, and treat the Petitioners with the utmost Con- tempt. Nothing can have a better Eff ect, in producing the Alienation proposed; for though many can forgive Injuries, none ever forgave Contempt. IX. In laying these Taxes, never regard the heavy Burthens those remote People already undergo, in defending their own Frontiers, supporting their own provincial Governments, making new Roads, building Bridges, Churches and other public Edifi ces, which in old Countries have been done to your Hands by your Ancestors, but which occasion constant Calls and Demands on the Purses of a new People. Forget the 168 • Documents

Restraints you lay on their Trade for your own Benefi t, and the Advan- tage a Monopoly of this Trade gives your exacting Merchants. . . . X. Possibly indeed some of them might still comfort themselves, and say, “Th ough we have no Property, we have yet something left that is valuable; we have constitutional Liberty both of Person and of Con- science. . . . Th en let there be a formal Declaration of both Houses, that Opposition to your Edicts is Treason, and that Persons suspected of Treason in the Provinces may, according to some obsolete Law, be seized and sent to the Metropolis of the Empire for Trial; and pass an Act that those there charged with certain other Off ences shall be sent away in Chains from their Friends and Country to be tried in the same Manner for Felony. Th en erect a new Court of Inquisition among them, accompanied by an armed Force, with Instructions to transport all such suspected Persons, to be ruined by the Expence if they bring over Evidences to prove their Innocence, or be found guilty and hanged if they can’t aff ord it. And lest the People should think you cannot possibly go any farther, pass another solemn declaratory Act, that “King, Lords, and Commons had, hath, and of Right ought to have, full Power and Authority to make Statutes of suffi cient Force and Validity to bind the unrepresented Provinces in all cases whatsoever.” Th is will include Spiritual with temporal; and taken together, must operate wonderfully to your Purpose, by convincing them, that they are at present under a Power something like that spoken of in the Scriptures, which can not only kill their Bodies, but damn their Souls to all Eternity, by compelling them, if it pleases, to worship the Devil. . . . XIX. Send Armies into their Country under Pretence of protecting the Inhabitants; but instead of garrisoning the Forts on their Frontiers with those Troops, to prevent Incursions, demolish those Forts, and order the Troops into the Heart of the Country, that the Savages may be encouraged to attack the Frontiers, and that the Troops may be protected by the Inhabitants: Th is will seem to proceed from your Ill will or your Ignorance, and contribute farther to produce and strengthen an Opinion among them, that you are no longer fi t to govern them. XX. Lastly, Invest the General of your Army in the Provinces with great and unconstitutional Powers, and free him from the Controul of even your own Civil Governors. Let him have Troops enow under his Command, with all the Fortresses in his Possession; and who knows but (like some provincial Generals in the Roman Empire, and encouraged by the universal Discontent you have produced) he may Great Empire Reduced to Small • 169

take it into his Head to set up for himself. If he should, and you have carefully practised these few excellent Rules of mine, take my Word for it, all the Provinces will immediately join him, and you will that Day (if you have not done it sooner) get rid of the Trouble of govern- ing them, and all the Plagues attending their Commerce and Con- nection from thenceforth and for ever.

Q.E.D. DOCUMENT 7 THE PENNSYLVANIA ABOLITION SOCIETY TO THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS

February 3, 1790.

Franklin was the president of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society (PAS) when he sat as a delegate in the Constitutional Convention in 1787. The PAS tried to convince Franklin to present an anti-slavery petition to the convention as the members debated how to frame a new government for the United States, but he refused. Once the constitution had been ratiﬁed, Franklin sent this petition to the 1st Congress, employing the familiar rhetoric of natural rights to urge the government to put an end to slavery.

To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States. Th e memorial of the Pennsylvania Society for promoting the Abolition of Slavery, the relief of free Negroes unlawfully held in bondage, and the Improvement of the Conditions of the African Race Respectfully sheweth, Th at from a regard for the happiness of Mankind an association was formed several years since in this State by a number of her Citizens of various religious denominations for promoting the Abo- lition of Slavery and for the relief of those unlawfully held in bondage. A just and accurate Conception of the true Principles of liberty, as it spread through the land, produced accessions to their numbers, many friends to their Cause, and a legislative Co-operation with their views which, by the blessing of Divine Providence, have been successfully directed to the reliev- ing from bondage a large number of their fellow Creatures of the African Race. Th ey have also the Satisfaction to observe, that in Consequence of Pennsylvania Abolition Society • 171 that Spirit of Philanthropy and genuine liberty which is Generally diff using its benefi cial Infl uence, similar Institutions are gradually forming at home and abroad. Th at mankind are all formed by the same Almighty Being, alike objects of his Care, and equally designed for the Enjoyment of Happiness the Christian Religion teaches us to believe, and the Political Creed of America fully coincides with the Position. Your Memorialists particularly engaged in attending to the Distresses arising from Slavery believe it their indispen- sible Duty to present this Subject to your notice. Th ey have observed with great Satisfaction, that many important and salutary Powers are vested in you for “promoting the Welfare and securing the blessings of liberty to the People of the United States”, and as they conceive, that these blessings ought rightfully to be administered, without distinction of Color, to all descrip- tions of People, so they indulge themselves in the pleasing expectation that nothing which can be done for the relief of the unhappy objects of their care will be either omitted or delayed. From a persuasion that equal liberty was originally the Portion, and is still the Birthright of all Men, and infl uenced by the strong ties of Humanity and the Principles of their Institution, your Memorialists conceive themselves bound to use all justifi able endeavors to loosen the bands of Slavery and promote a general Enjoyment of the blessings of Freedom. Under these Impressions they earnestly entreat your serious attention to the subject of Slavery; that you will be pleased to countenance the Restoration of liberty to those unhappy Men, who alone in this land of Freedom are degraded into perpetual Bondage, and who amidst the general Joy of Surrounding Free men are groaning in servile Subjection, that you will devise means for removing this Inconsistency from the Character of the American People, that you will promote Mercy and Justice towards the distressed Race, and that you will step to the very verge of the Powers vested in you, for discouraging every Species of Traffi ck in the Persons of our fellow Men. Benja. Franklin President DOCUMENT 8 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN TO EZRA STILES (EXCERPT)

Philadelphia March 9, 1790

On January 28, 1790, Franklin’s friend, Ezra Stiles, wrote a letter claiming, “As much as I know of Dr. Franklin, I have not an Idea of his religious Sentiments.” Franklin’s reply, written just ﬁve weeks before he died, is one of the last letters he ever wrote. It is also the ﬁnal word on God and religion from a man who knew his immortal soul would soon pass on to the afterlife.

Reverend and Dear Sir, . . . You desire to know something of my Religion. It is the fi rst time I have been questioned upon it: But I do not take your Curiosity amiss, and shall endeavour in a few Words to gratify it. Here is my Creed: I believe in one God, Creator of the Universe. Th at He governs it by his Providence. Th at he ought to be worshipped. Th at the most acceptable Service we can render to him, is doing Good to his other Children. Th at the Soul of Man is immortal, and will be treated with Justice in another Life respecting its Conduct in this. Th ese I take to be the fundamental Principles of all sound Religion, and I regard them as you do, in whatever Sect I meet with them. As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his Religion as he left them to us, the best the World ever saw, or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupting Changes, and I have with most of the present Dissenters in England, some Doubts as to his Divinity: tho’ it is a Question I do not dog- matise upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an Opportunity of knowing the Truth with Benjamin Franklin to Ezra Stiles • 173 less Trouble. I see no harm however in its being believed, if that Belief has the good Consequence as probably it has, of making his Doctrines more respected and better observed, especially as I do not perceive that the Supreme takes it amiss, by distinguishing the Believers, in his Government of the World, with any particular Marks of his Displeasure. I shall only add respecting myself, that having experienced the Goodness of that Being, in conducting me prosperously thro’ a long Life, I have no doubt of its Con- tinuance in the next, tho’ without the smallest Conceit of meriting such Goodness. My Sentiments in this Head you will see in the Copy of an old Letter enclosed, which I wrote in answer to one from a zealous Religionist whom I had relieved in a paralitic Case by Electricity, and who being afraid I should grow proud upon it, sent me his serious, tho’ rather impertinent, Cautions. I send you also the Copy of another Letter, which will shew something of my Disposition relating to Religion. With great and sincere Esteem and Aff ection, I am, Dear Sir, Your obliged old Friend and most obedient humble Servant. B Franklin This page intentionally left blank I NDEX

Note : BF = Benjamin Franklin abortion 23 , 27 – 8 Canada: invasion of 109 ; BF heads delegation Adams, John: and Declaration of to 109 – 10 Independence 111 ; in France 125 – 6 , Canada Post: issues BF stamp 3 129 ; opinion of BF 105 – 6 , 125 – 6 , 130 ; in City Tavern see taverns Philadelphia 105 , 116 ; and slavery 141 – 2 coff ee houses 40 – 1; German coff ee house 87 ; Adams, John Quincy 125 London Coff ee House 41 , 92 , 103 Albany Plan of Union 62 College of Philadelphia 59 associators see militia Common Sense 112 Constitution, U.S: BF’s opinion of 135 , 138 ; Bache, Benjamin (Benny) Franklin 118 , 128 , ratifi cation debate in PA 135 – 7 130 constitutional convention 132 – 5 ; BF appointed bachelorhood 12 , 26 to 132 ; BF’s infl uence in 134 – 5 ; debate Bancroft , Edward 120 over slavery 143 – 4 bastardy 17 – 18 Continental Congress (second) 105 ; BF bearing arms: Quaker opposition to 55 , 73 , appointed to 98 106 ; provision against in PA constitution contraception 12 114 ; provision for in 1777 militia law 131 ; and religion 58 Deane, Silas 119 biography 5 – 7 Declaration of Independence 111 – 12; BF’s role Bill of Rights 137 in 112 Boston massacre 95 Denham, Th omas 21 – 2 Braddock, General Edward 63 – 4 ; BF’s opinion Dickinson, John: and Articles of of 64 ; BF supplying Braddock’s expedition Confederation 114 ; and committee 63 of correspondence 103 ; Letters from Bradford, Andrew 18 , 36 ; BF’s opinion of 19 , a Farmer in Pennsylvania 93 – 4 ; and 22 , 36 ; Busy-Body essays 37 – 8 ; as deputy Olive Branch petition 106 ; opposition postmaster 36 ; Keith-Logan satires 40 ; as to BF’s appointment as agent 89 , 163 – 5 ; provincial printer 36 ; Weekly Mercury 22 opposition to royal campaign 85 – 6 ; Bradford, William 86 ; printer of Franklin- opposition to Stamp Act 91 ; and Hughes correspondence 92 – 3 slavery 142 Busy-Body essays 23 , 40 digital research 4 – 5 176 • Index

diplomacy: with France 118 – 21, 130 ; John Franklin, William: appointed royal governor of Adams’ thoughts on European 129 ; with NJ 75; birth 27 ; engagement and marriage Native Americans 61 , 62 – 3, 64 , 66 74 – 5 ; imprisoned 110 ; placed in solitary Dove, David James 88 – 9 confi nement; 117 ; relationship with BF Dunlap, William 67 98 , 107 – 8 , 118 , 121 ; reunion with BF 130 – 1 Easton conference (1756) 66 – 7 Franklin, William Temple: accompanies BF Edwards, Jonathan 41 to France 117 ; accused of loyalism 129 ; election of 1764 83 , 87 – 9 ; BF loses his seat birth 75; and the Marquis de Lafayette in 89 129 ; relationship with BF 108 , 117 ; taken electricity: BF’s experiments in 68 – 9, 72 ; and in by BF 90 lightning 69 – 70 Franklin Stove 35 – 6 espionage 120 freedom of the press 37 , 39 – 40

fi rearms: BF distributes; confi scation of 113 ; Galloway, Joseph 84 , 88 , 90 , 93 , 94 , 104 and Deborah Franklin 92 ; and the Paxton Great Awakening 41 – 4, 46 Riots 81 – 2 , 87 ; in Philadelphia 104 ; and Grenville, George 92 Stamp Act 92 guns see fi rearms Folger, Abiah 11 Fort Duquesne 62 , 63 Hall, David 50 Fothergill, Dr. John 68 , 72 Hamilton, Andrew 39 France: American delegation in 119 – 20 , 130 ; Hughes, John 90 , 92 BF appointed commissioner to 117 ; BF’s Hutchinson (Th omas) aff air 95 – 6; legal popularity in 118 repercussions for BF 96 – 7 Franklin, Benjamin: Autobiography 7 ; birth of 11 ; courtship of Deborah 20 , 28 ; infanticide 28 courtship of Godfrey relative 25 – 6 ; death infant mortality 12 146 ; defense of Samuel Hemphill 45 ; health issues 111 , 125 , 133 , 145 ; honorary Jackson, Richard 74 , 84 degrees, 70 , 74 ; income 33 ; indenture James, Ralph 21 to his brother 14 – 17; marriage 28 – 30; Jeff erson, Th omas 106 , 130 ; and Declaration of misquotations of 3 – 5; partnership with Independence 111 – 12 ; and slavery 142 Th omas Whitmarsh 46 ; portrayal in John John Adams miniseries 3 Adams miniseries (HBO) 3 ; and printing “Join, or Die” cartoon 62 profession 33 ; and prostitution 26 – 7; Junto 22 , 54 publishes fi rst Pennsylvania Gazette 24 ; and religion 42 – 5 , 172 – 3 ; romantic/ Keimer, Samuel 18 – 24 , 40 ; Th e Barbados sexual aff airs 21 , 27 , 127 ; as a satirist 40 , Gazette 24 ; Universal Instructor . . . and 166 – 9 ; and slavery 47 , 49 – 50 , 71 ; small Pennsylvania Gazette 23 pox inoculation controversy 16 , 35 ; Keith, Governor William: failed partnership vegetarianism of 15 – 16 , 19 with BF 20 – 1 ; and Pennsylvania politics Franklin, Deborah Read 18 ; and business 47 , 38 – 9; and Pennsylvania satire 40 67 – 8 ; courtship with BF 20 – 1 ; failing health and death 97 ; letters to BF 68 ; Laurens, Henry 130 marriage 28 – 30 ; raising William 34 ; and Lee, Arthur 119 – 20 , 125 slavery 49 , 71 ; and the Stamp Act crisis 92 Lee, William 120 Franklin, Francis (Franky) Folger 34 – 5 Library Company 35 Franklin, James Jr. (Jemmy) 34 literacy: in Philadelphia 40 Franklin, James Sr. 16 – 17 , 20 , 34 London Coff ee House see coff ee houses Franklin, Josiah 11 , 20 Franklin, Sally 35 ; correspondence with BF Madison, James 133 , 143 , 144 ; notes on BF in 127 – 8 constitutional convention 134 – 5 Index • 177 marriage laws in Pennsylvania 28 – 9 Presbyterian Party 60 , 83 – 4, 93 – 4, 105 masturbation 12 – 13 printing in the colonies 80 Mecom (née Franklin), Jane 108 – 9 prostitution: in Philadelphia 27 Meredith, Hugh: partnership with BF 22 , 25 militia: BF’s associator movement 55 – 60 ; BF as Ralph, James 21 a militia colonel 65 ; Continental Congress religion: BF’s opinion of 42 – 5 , 172 – 3 ; and 107 ; indentured servants forced into evangelical 41 ; importance of 43 ; James 65 ; mobilization during Paxton Riots 82 ; Franklin’s attacks on 17 ; and science 43 ; and Native diplomacy 60 – 1; Pennsylvania in Pennsylvania 43 – 4 ; and PA politics, Association (1775) 106 ; Pennsylvania 56 – 7 , 85 ; and printing 45 – 6 ; and slavery militia law (1777) 131 – 2 ; political debate 144 , 171 over 60 – 1, 64 – 6, 85 – 7; as a political force Revere, Paul 12 , 103 104 – 5 , 111 ; provision for in Pennsylvania royal campaign, 74 , 83 – 7, 91 ; BF abandons constitution 116 ; voluntary militia bill 95 (1755) 65 self-divorce 21 New England Courant, Th e 16 sex: attitudes about 12 , 34 , 37 , 159 – 60; and contraception 12 ; culture in PA 27 ; in Paine, Th omas 110 , 112 Poor Richard’s Almanack 37 ; premarital Paxton Boys 80 ; BF’s opinion of 81 17 ; and venereal disease 27 Paxton Massacre 81 Shays’ Rebellion 132 Paxton Riots 79 , 81 – 3; BF’s role in ending 81 – 2 Silence Dogood 16 , 155 – 6 Penn family: BF’s opinion of 71 ; BF’s confl ict slavery: and the American Revolution 141 ; with Richard and Th omas 72 – 4 BF’s opinion of 140 – 1, 144 – 5; BF’s slaves Penn, Governor John 80 , 94 71 , 140 ; debate over in Congress 143 ; Penn, Richard 72 debate in Constitutional convention Penn, Th omas 72 – 3 143 – 4 ; in Massachusetts 142 ; in Pennsylvania Abolition Society 170 – 1 ; BF as Pennsylvania 48 , 139 – 40 , 142 , 143 ; and president of 138 – 9 , 144 Quakers 140 , 144 Pennsylvania constitution (1776) 112 – 16; smallpox 12 , 109 – 10, 162 ; debate over BF’s infl uence on Declaration of Rights inoculation 16 , 35 113 – 14 ; infl uence in ratifi cation of U.S. Smith, William 60 , 87 ; BF’s opinion of 86 ; and Constitution 135 – 6 ; opposition to 116 ; election of 1764 87 ; opposition to royal radicalism of 116 campaign 86 Pennsylvania Gazette 24 ; slavery ads in 47 , Stamp Act 90 – 1 ; BF accused of supporting 161 – 2 ; stories of slave violence 48 – 9 ; 90 , 92 ; correspondence with Charles subscription rates 33 Th omson about 91 ; correspondence with Pitt, William 98 John Hughes about 90 , 93 Pontiac’s War 79 standing army 94 Poor Richard’s Almanack 36 – 7 , 157 – 8 population: as the basis for political taverns: City Tavern 103 ; Coleman’s tavern 82 ; representation 143 ; of Boston 11 ; density in Philadelphia 40 – 1 12 ; of New England 12 ; slaves as a Teedyuscung 66 – 7 percentage of Philadelphia’s 142 Th omson, Charles 91 , 103 post offi ce: BF appoints William Dunlap Townshend Revenue Acts 93 postmaster 67 ; BF as deputy postmaster Treaty: of alliance (France) 121 ; of amity and 36 ; BF loses position as postmaster 97 ; commerce (France) 121 ; of Paris 130 BF as postmaster general 90 ; Deborah Tryon, Th omas 15 Franklin’s; experience with 67 ; under Andrew Bradford 36 ; Union Fire Company 35 pregnancy: implications for servants 18 ; University of Pennsylvania, see College of patterns 12 ; preventing 12 , unwanted 27 – 8 Philadelphia 178 • Index

venereal disease: treatment of in Philadelphia Wentworth, Paul 120 – 1 27 Whitefi eld, George: and the Great Awakening 41 ; in Philadelphia 44 , 46 ; partnership Washington, George: defeat at Fort Necessity with BF 42 , 45 – 6 ; and slavery 47 – 8 61 – 2; delegate to constitutional convention Wilson, James 134 , 137 , 143 132 – 3 : and Shays’ Rebellion 132 Watson-Wentworth, Charles 92 Zenger, John Peter 18 , 39