A bill to vote 60,000 pounds for the militia was presented to the

Pennsylvania Assembly. At first the Quakers opposed it, but with great

tact Franklin won from them a concession that even though they bore no

arms themselves they would not object if others did so. There was still

more dissension on the subject of taxes. Franklin and many others

believed that the taxes should be raised from all the landholders in the

province. The lawyer for “the proprietors” claimed that the Penn family

should be exempt from such taxes, as they always had been. He was

supported by the conservatives in the Assembly and by Governor Robert

Hunter Morris, who owed his appointment to the Penns.

Eventually the Penns compromised by offering 5,000 pounds toward the

militia as a gift. The question as to whether or not their vast lands

should be taxed remained unsettled, to trouble the future. Thomas Penn,

who was living in London, was duly informed that Benjamin Franklin was a

crafty man who could bend the Assembly to his will.

On November 24, 1755, a Shawnee war party burned down the Moravian

village of Gnadenhuetten, 75 miles from Philadelphia, killing all the

inhabitants except a few who escaped into the forests. The crime was the

more appalling since the Moravians were as opposed to violence as the

Quakers. They were a gentle, devout people who had befriended the

Indians. The next day the Assembly appointed Franklin to head a

committee of seven to manage the funds for the defense. More

responsibilities on his shoulders, more decisions to make, arguments to

settle, hotheads to calm down.

“All the world claims the privilege of troubling my Pappy,” wailed

Deborah to a clerk named Daniel Fisher whom Franklin had just hired.

A few weeks later Franklin set out on horseback with 50 cavalrymen to

recruit volunteers, and check on defenses in outlying districts—a

strenuous assignment for a man nearly fifty and sedentary in his habits.

William served as his aide. Theoretically, James Hamilton, a former

governor, was in charge, but after a few days he quietly yielded the

leadership to Franklin.

Their first stop was Bethlehem, the chief Moravian settlement. Franklin

had expected them to be as opposed to military defense as the Quakers.

On the contrary, they were determined to avoid a tragedy such as that at

Gnadenhuetten, had built a stockade around their principal buildings,

brought in arms from New York, and were even arming their women with

small paving stones to throw out the windows should any marauding

Indians approach.

“General Franklin,” the Moravians insisted on calling the head of the

Philadelphia expedition.

They rode on to Easton next, to find a town in a state of panic and

disorder with no discipline at all. Refugees filled the houses. Food was

almost gone. There was drinking and rioting. Franklin organized a guard,

put sentries on the principal street, set up a patrol, had bushes

outside of town cleared away to avert their use as ambush, and enlisted

some two hundred men into the provincial militia.

They visited other towns, arriving at the ruins of Gnadenhuetten in the

bitter cold of January. After the mournful chore of burying the dead,

the men set to building a stockade—felling pines, placing them firmly in

the ground side by side. Franklin, with his passion for collecting

facts, noted that it took six men six minutes to fell a pine of 14-inch

diameter, and he observed that his men were more cheerful on the days

they worked than when, because of rain or snow, they had to sit idle.

Supplies were running low when provisions arrived from Philadelphia,

including roast beef, veal, and apples from Deborah. To reassure her, he

wrote that he was sleeping on a featherbed under warm blankets. The

truth was that, like his men, he slept on the floor of a hut with only

one thin blanket. The stockade, finished at last, was 450 feet in

circumference, 12 feet high, and had two mounted swivel guns but no

cannon.

They were aware of the danger lurking in the dense forest. On a patrol,

Franklin found the remains of Indian watches. For their fires they dug

holes about three feet deep. The prints in weeds and grass showed they

had lain in a circle around the fire holes, letting their feet hang over

to keep warm. At a short distance, neither flame, sparks, nor smoke

could be seen. But the Indians, not then nor later, risked an attack.

Franklin’s militia did no fighting but they turned defenseless regions

into defensive ones. They had built two more stockades at Fort Norris

and Fort Allen, when Franklin was called back to Philadelphia early in

February for a special Assembly meeting. To have a good bed again seemed

so strange, he hardly slept all night long.

On his return he was appointed a militia colonel. Following his first

review of his regiment, the men accompanied him to his house and saluted

him with several rounds of fire, incidentally breaking some glass tubes

of his electrical apparatus. The following day when he set off for

Virginia on post office business, 20 officers and some 30 grenadiers

escorted him to the ferry, the grenadiers riding with drawn swords in a

ceremony reserved for persons of great distinction. When Thomas Penn in

England learned of this tribute, he was furious. No grenadiers had ever

drawn their swords for him.

As for Governor Morris, he suavely suggested that Franklin and his

command should try to take Fort Duquesne, which Braddock had failed to

take, promising him a general’s commission. Franklin firmly declined. He

had no illusions about his military ability and likely suspected Morris

of wishing to be rid of him. (Fort Duquesne was eventually captured in

1758, in an expedition led by British Brigadier General Forbes; George

Washington hoisted the British flag over the fort’s ruins.)

In August 1756, following a declaration of war on the Delaware, the new

governor, William Denny, offered large bounties for “the scalp of every

male Indian enemy above the age of twelve years,” and smaller bounties

for “female Indian prisoners and youths under eight.” Franklin, like the

majority of the Assembly members, was outraged at this barbarity, and

disgusted with the conduct of the proprietors and their representatives.

Early in 1757, a vote was passed to send Franklin to England, as

official agent of Pennsylvania, there to present to Parliament and the

King a petition of grievances against the Penns.

Debby would not go with him. She was frightened to death of the sea. He

did take William, who was radiant at seeing England. By April they were

in New York, ready to catch their ship. Packets for England were in

charge of Lord Loudon, the new commander-in-chief, an amiable person

with all the time in the world to listen to complaints, indulge in long

conversations, and to write endless notes. Not until he had finished

this mysterious correspondence, would he permit the fleet to depart. For

more than two months, Franklin and his son waited, restless and

impatient and helpless.

There was plenty of time to puzzle about the errors of the British. Why

they should send to the colonies an arrogant man like General Braddock,

a dawdler like Loudon, governors like the dishonest Sir William Keith,

or Morris and Denny, who were far more interested in protecting the rich

proprietors than in the welfare of the colonists. But then the reason

for Franklin’s voyage was to correct such mistakes. He had no doubt that

the King and the mighty Parliament would be glad to listen to him.

7

THE BATTLE WITH THE PENNS

During the voyage to England, Franklin wrote a preface for his 1758

_Almanack_. In the form of a letter from “Poor Richard” to his

“Courteous Reader,” it told of a sermon on frugality and industry, which

Poor Richard had heard in the market place by “a plain clean old man

with white locks” called Father Abraham. He was most flattered to find

that Father Abraham was quoting him, Poor Richard, at every other

breath.

As Poor Richard says: Many words won’t fill a bushel.... God helps

them that help themselves.... The sleeping fox catches no poultry....

Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and

wise.... For want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the

horse was lost; and for want of a horse the rider was lost....

As Poor Richard says: Many a little makes a mickle.... Fools make

feasts, and wise men eat them.... Pride that dines on vanity, sups on

contempt.... ’Tis hard for an empty bag to stand upright.... If you

will not hear reason, she’ll surely rap your knuckles...

All the nuggets of wise counsel which he had dropped in his _Almanack_

in the twenty-five years of its existence, Franklin gathered for Father

Abraham’s speech. Omitted were the racy ballads, verses, broad humor and

jokes which had made the _Almanack_ a potpourri where every man could

find something to his taste. Only at the end was a touch of Franklin’s

sly wit. Following Father Abraham’s sermon, Poor Richard watched

disconsolately as the village folk dispersed to spend their hard-earned

money as foolishly as ever on the marketplace wares. The only one to

take the sermon to heart was Poor Richard himself who had come to buy

material for a new coat but left, “resolved to wear my old one a little

longer.”

Father Abraham’s speech was later published under the title of “The Way

to Wealth.” It was reprinted in many editions and translated in many

languages, and it won the author almost as much fame as his discoveries

in electricity.

Peter Collinson met Franklin and his son in London, where they arrived

on July 26, 1757, taking them to his home. No doubt he and Franklin

discussed electricity until very late, with William only half listening

and more or less bored. The next day, a printer named William Strahan,

with whom Franklin had corresponded some fourteen years but never met,

called on him.

“I never saw a man who was, in every respect, so perfectly agreeable to

me,” Strahan wrote Deborah Franklin of this meeting, adding that William

was “one of the prettiest young gentlemen I ever knew from America.”

Deborah likely scowled. It was just like that artful lad to ingratiate

himself so quickly.

A few days later father and son rented four rooms from a widow, Mrs.

Margaret Stevenson, who lived with her young daughter Polly in a

substantial mansion on 7 Craven Street, Strand. This was to be

Franklin’s English home, which over the years became almost as dear to

him as his Philadelphia one.

He had brought two servants with him. One of them, Peter, served him

faithfully, though the other, a slave, ran away shortly after their

arrival. Franklin’s post as Massachusetts agent required a bit of pomp.

He wore a wig in the latest fashion, silver shoe and knee buckles and

purchased linen for new shirts. Later he rented a coach.

Barely was he settled when he was invited to visit Lord George

Grenville, president of the Privy Council and one of England’s most

important statesmen. This was Franklin’s first test in holding his own

with persons more steeped than he in political intrigue.

Lord Grenville received him with great civility, questioned him at

length about American affairs, and then announced that the colonists had

some erroneous notions he felt duty bound to correct:

“You Americans have wrong ideas of the nature of your constitution; you

contend 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. You must be made to understand that the King’s instruction

are _The Law of the Land_.”

This was simply not true. The King’s instructions were laws in the

colonies only if they received the approval of the local Assembly. In

the same way, laws passed by a colonial Assembly had to be submitted to

the King before they became final. That was why Franklin was in England,

to get the King’s approval of the Assembly decision on the Penns.

Sure as he was of his facts, he voiced his opinion in the manner he had

learned from Socrates: “It is my understanding that ...”

“You are totally mistaken,” Lord Grenville stated patronizingly, when he

had finished.

It was Franklin’s first experience with the contemptuous attitude which

certain of the British took in regard to the colonists. He would later

observe that “every man in England seems to jostle himself into the

throne with the King, and talks of _our subjects_ in the colonies.”

Around the middle of August he called on the Penn family, at their

stately mansion in Spring Garden. It had seemed courteous to meet with

them personally before approaching higher authority. William Penn’s son

Thomas was there and probably Richard Penn and his son, John. They

received him with glacial politeness, listened haughtily as he told them

the Assembly’s grievances, and just as haughtily denied that the

grievances were in any way justified.

Franklin pointed out that the Assembly was asking no more than what

William Penn had promised citizens under his 1701 Charter of Privileges.

“My father granted privileges he had no right to grant, according to the

Royal Charter,” Thomas Penn announced.

“Then all those who came to settle in the province, expecting to enjoy

the privileges contained in the grant were deceived, cheated and

betrayed?” With the greatest difficulty, Franklin kept his voice calm.

Thomas Penn laughed insolently. “If the people were cheated, it was

their own fault. They should have gone to the trouble of reading the

Royal Charter.”

His tone reminded Franklin of a horse trader of low character, jeering

at the purchaser he had victimized. “Poor people are not lawyers,” he

said steadily. “They trusted your father and did not think it necessary

to consult a lawyer.”

Unabashed, Thomas Penn rose to dismiss him. “If you care to put your

complaints in writing, Mr. Franklin, we will then consider them.”

Those arrogant Penns! How it would have grieved their noble father to

see into what selfish hands he had left his beloved Pennsylvania!

Franklin had yet to find out through personal experience that nobility

of character is not always inherited.

Five days later he returned with the Assembly’s grievances in written

form. On the advice of their lawyer, a “proud and angry man,” Ferdinand

John Paris, the Penns sent Franklin’s paper to the Royal lawyers, the

Attorney-General Charles Pratt, and Solicitor-General Charles Yorke.

These gentlemen were out of town. There was nothing to do but wait.

Franklin fell sick with a cold and fever that September and was

bedridden nearly eight weeks. Dr. Fothergill, the man who had written

the preface for his pamphlet on electricity, tended him regularly. Mrs.

Stevenson, his landlady, nursed him like a son. Even William was

unusually obliging, did his errands and helped him to prepare a letter

to the _Citizen_ to counteract slanders about Pennsylvania which

Franklin suspected emanated from the Penns. William was enrolling in law

school in London; he had bought himself elegant clothes that rivaled

those of any young English peer.

As soon as he was well enough, Franklin went on a shopping spree

himself. For Debby, who still liked bright colors, he purchased a

crimson satin cloak and for Sally a black silk one, with a scarlet

feather and muff which William selected. There were other luxuries for

their home not found in America: English china, silver salt ladles, an

apple corer and a gadget “to make little turnips out of great ones,” a

carpet, tablecloths, napkins, silk blankets from France, and a “large

fine jug for beer,” which he had fallen in love with at first sight.

“I thought it looked like a fat jolly dame,” he explained the gift to

Debby, “clean and tidy, with a neat blue and white calico gown on,

good-natured and lovely, and put me in mind of—somebody.”

His most extravagant present followed later—a harpsichord for Sally

which cost the huge sum of forty-two guineas.

If some Englishmen were snobs, there were plenty of others who were just

the opposite. Franklin’s fellow members of the august Royal Society

welcomed him warmly. He made many new scientific friends, among them the

stout and amiable John Pringle, an authority on military medicine and

sanitation, and John Canton, the first Englishman to draw lightning from

the sky. At Cambridge, in May 1758, he performed experiments in

evaporation with John Hadley, professor of chemistry. He made a trip to

Northampton, the ancestral home of the Franklins, and met some distant

relatives. When he found the Franklin graves in the cemetery so moss

covered that their inscriptions were effaced, he had his servant Peter

scour them clean.

The Scottish University of St. Andrews gave him a degree as doctor of

law. Henceforth he had the right to call himself Dr. Franklin. Later he

visited Scotland where he was made an honorary burgess and guildbrother

at Edinburgh; met the economist Adam Smith; and the philosopher David

Hume, who said of him: “America has sent us many good things, gold,

silver, sugar, tobacco, indigo, etc., but you are the first philosopher,

and indeed the first great man of letters, for whom we are beholden to

her.”

He stayed with the congenial Scottish judge Lord Henry Home Kames, to

whom he wrote in his note of thanks that the time spent in Scotland “was

six weeks of the _densest_ happiness I have met with in any part of my

life.”

A bitter fellow American arrived in London, William Smith, provost of

the Pennsylvania Academy, one of those who had opposed him on the Penn

issue. The Pennsylvania Assembly had tried him on the charge of libel

and he had spent three months in jail. Now he was seeking redress from

the Crown, and blaming not only the Quakers for his arrest but Franklin,

who had not even been in Pennsylvania. Smith was saying that Franklin

was not really a scientist, that he had stolen his ideas from others.

Franklin took the slander philosophically: “’Tis convenient to have at

least one enemy, who by his readiness to revile one on all occasions may

make one careful of one’s conduct. I shall keep him an enemy for that

purpose.”

While the proprietors were stalling, Franklin set out to meet such

high-placed persons as might help his cause. He tried to see the Prime

Minister William Pitt, who was said to be sympathetic to the colonies,

but Pitt was too occupied with his enormous war in India to give him a

hearing. Eventually he met the two royal lawyers, Charles Yorke and

Charles Pratt, to whom the Penns had submitted the Assembly’s

grievances. To his surprise he found they had already given their

verdict, a negative one, which the Penns had forwarded directly to the

Assembly, bypassing Franklin. The Penns were claiming he had insulted

them. He had not addressed them as the “True and Absolute Proprietaries

of the Province of Pennsylvania.”

Back in Pennsylvania, the Assembly had finally persuaded Governor Denny

to pass its act taxing the proprietary estate. Franklin brought the

matter before the British Committee for Plantation Affairs in August

1759, when he had been two years in England. The decision was a

compromise: unsurveyed lands of the proprietors should not be taxed but

their surveyed lands must be taxed at a rate no higher than other

similar lands. The Pennsylvania Assembly held Franklin solely

responsible for the victory, and congratulations flowed to him.

He could have gone home now but he stayed on. There was a tremendous

propaganda job to be done and he was the only one capable. He wanted to

set the English straight on the role of the American colonies in the

British Empire. He wrote articles for the press. He expressed his ideas

at the Whig Club, in coffeehouses where philosophers and literary men

congregated, and to guests whom he invited to dine at Craven Street. His

refreshing candor and quiet wit brought him attention everywhere.

At odd moments he tinkered with various inventions. For the Stevensons,

he devised an iron frame with a sliding plate to serve as a draught in

their fireplace, so it would give more heat and take less fuel. He made

a clock with only three wheels and one hand, which showed hours,

minutes, and seconds. Later others improved his model and sold it

commercially.

He spent long hours constructing a musical instrument, based on the

principle of musical glasses. The “armonica” he named it, remarking that

it was “peculiarly adapted to Italian music, especially that of the soft

and plaintive kind.” Subsequently, an English musician, Marianne Davies,

toured the Continent giving armonica recitals; Marie Antoinette took

lessons from her. Mozart and Beethoven composed selections for the

armonica. Its vogue lasted some fifty years, and then, no one knows just

why, it lost its popularity.

In August 1761, he took William on a trip to Belgium and Holland. In

Brussels, the Prince of Lorraine welcomed him and showed him his physics

laboratory. At Leyden, he met Musschenbroek, inventor of the Leyden jar.

They were back in time for the coronation of George III, whom Franklin

judged “a virtuous and generous young man.”

In February 1762, Oxford University gave the honorary degree of doctor

of civil laws to “the illustrious Benjamin Franklin, Esquire, Agent of

the Province of Pennsylvania, Postmaster-General of North America, and

Fellow of the Royal Society.” Less ostentatiously, William was presented

a degree of master of arts.

William had been basking in the sunlight of his father’s reputation, and

Franklin had more than a little reason to worry about him. Unlike his

father, the youth was proud and haughty and disdainful of those of

humble birth.

One day Franklin told him a story. When he was a child of seven,

Franklin said, some friends on a holiday filled his pocket with coppers.

He went directly to a toy shop, and being charmed with the sound of a

whistle in the hands of another boy, he gave all his money for one like

it. He came home and went whistling all over the house, much pleased

with his purchase, until his brothers, sisters, and cousins told him he

had given four times as much as it was worth, laughing at him for his

folly. Put in mind of the good things he might have bought with the rest

of the money, he cried with vexation. “The reflection gave me more

chagrin than the whistle gave me pleasure.”

“As I grew older,” he continued, “I have found a number of men who have

given too much for their whistle—popularity-seekers, misers, and men of

pleasure. Don’t give too much for the whistle, William. Why not become a

joiner or wheelwright, if the estate I leave you is not enough? The man

who lives by his labor is at least free.”

Did little Benjamin really spend all his pennies for a whistle, or was

this a fable which Franklin invented to clothe a moral lesson? There is

no way of knowing for sure and it is not important. It should be

emphasized that the story, or fable, was not intended merely to show the

folly of wasting money. It had a far more subtle meaning.

Much as Franklin had come to love England, his heart was heavy with

yearning for his family and his own country after his five year absence.

Since England and France were still at war, he had to wait for a safe

convoy. It was August 1762 when he set sail from Portsmouth. William did

not come with him. The Crown had appointed him to the high post of

governor of New Jersey. He would take a later ship, after his papers

were in order.

“Don’t give too much for the whistle,” Franklin may have warned him once

more before he left.

8

THE WHITE CHRISTIAN SAVAGES

“Benjamin Franklin has lost all his Philadelphia friends.”

That was the rumor which his “enemy,” William Smith, had been spreading.

It had reached Franklin’s ears but he had not worried about it nor did

he have reason to. As his ship sailed into port, in November 1762, the

docks were bright with waving flags and packed with cheering crowds.

Five hundred horsemen escorted him home.

Waiting for him were Debby, his “plain country Joan,” stout, beaming,

and vociferous in her greeting, and his daughter Sally, pretty and

elegant in the London frocks he had sent her. From morning to night in

the next days, his Philadelphia friends, those whom Smith said he did

not have, were filling his house, boisterous and hearty, slapping him on

the back, congratulating him on the job he had done, in every way

possible showing him their warm and lasting affection.

Did he find their manners a bit rough, their horizon of knowledge

limited after his cultured and learned English friends? Nostalgically he

wrote to Polly Stevenson: “Why should that little island (England) enjoy

in almost every neighbourhood more sensible, virtuous, and elegant minds

than we can collect in ranging a hundred leagues of our vast forests?”

Not that America would always remain behind England in the arts:

“Already some of our young geniuses begin to lisp attempts at painting

poetry and music.” And with his letter he proudly included some American

verse he thought might find favor in England.

The supporters of the proprietors were still criticizing him, claiming

now that Benjamin Franklin had lived extravagantly and wasted public

money in England. They were disappointed rather than gratified when he

submitted to the Assembly a bill for his five years’ expenses—for just

714 pounds, ten shillings, seven pence. The Assembly, too embarrassed to

accept such a modest estimate, promptly voted him 3,000 pounds.

In February, William arrived to take up his office as New Jersey’s royal

governor, bringing with him a beautiful and dignified new bride,

Elizabeth, who had been born in the West Indies. Franklin toured New

Jersey with them, along with an escort of cavalry and gentlemen on

sleighs. His heart filled with pride as he saw the respect and affection

with which they were welcomed by rich and poor alike, and his fears

about William were for the moment put aside.

He did some 1,600 miles traveling of his own from the Spring to the fall

of 1763, the first year of his return, taking up where he had left off

in expanding and improving the colonial postal services. Sally went with

him on one trip up to New England, when they stayed with the former

Catherine Ray, now Mrs. William Greene, her husband a future governor of

Rhode Island. When he dislocated his shoulder in a fall from his horse,

it was Catherine who nursed him. The friendships of Benjamin

Franklin—how much could be said of them! He guarded them all, men and

women alike, more preciously than jewels, nourished them with letters

during separations, and with personal warmth during reunions.

In February 1763, the Treaty of Paris brought the French and Indian Wars

to a formal close in England’s favor, but did not solve the tensions

between colonists and Indians which the struggle had fomented.

Though the treaty granted the Indians the lands from the Allegheny

Mountains to the Mississippi, the Indians had learned to be suspicious

of the white man’s treaties and rightly feared that future settlers

would drive them back further and further. Out of desperation, they

attacked English garrisons from Detroit to Fort Pitt.

The English reciprocated ruthlessly. One British general suggested that

blankets inoculated with smallpox be presented to them “to extirpate

this execrable race.” As contagious as any disease was the racial hatred

that spread along the frontiers. In Lancaster County, certain

Scotch-Irish settlers of Paxton and Donegal townships met together and

vowed vengeance on the “redskins.” “The only good Indian is a dead

Indian,” they said. If the warring Indians vanished into the forests

after each assault, why then there were plenty of others—such as those

living under the protection of the good Moravians.

In December, the Paxton Boys, as they called themselves, attacked a tiny

hamlet of peaceful Conestoga Indians. Six were killed outright. Fourteen

others, old people, women and children, who had been out selling

baskets, brooms and bowls to their white neighbors, were taken captive

and lodged at the Lancaster workhouse. Two days after Christmas, the

rioters broke into the workhouse, killing all of them with hatchets.

Streams of other peaceful Indians poured into Philadelphia for

protection.

William Penn’s grandson, John Penn, was now Pennsylvania’s governor. He

ordered the arrest of the murderers but did nothing to enforce his

order. Made bold by this seeming lack of concern, the Paxton Boys, their

ranks swollen by a lawless mob, voted to go to Philadelphia and force

the Assembly to turn over the Indian refugees to their untender mercies.

Franklin’s war activities had shown he condemned atrocities against the

frontiersmen, but he was outraged that Indians who had kept faith with

the white men should have been betrayed. By mid-January he had both

written and printed a pamphlet, “Narrative of the Late Massacres in

Lancaster County.”

The first part retold the story of Indian relations in Pennsylvania. How

members of the Six Nations had first settled in Conestoga, how its

messengers had welcomed the English with presents of venison, corn and

skins, how the tribe had entered into a treaty of friendship with

William Penn, to last “as long as the sun should shine or the waters run

in the rivers.”

It was an “enormous wickedness,” he continued, to assassinate these

Conestoga Indians for the sins of the “rum-debauched, trader-corrupted

vagabonds and thieves on the Susquehanna and Ohio.” It was as illogical

as if the Dutch should seek revenge on the English for injuries done by

the French, merely because both English and French were white.

To what good, he asked, had Old Shehaes, so ancient he had been present

at Penn’s Treaty in 1701, been cut to pieces in his bed? What was to be

gained by shooting or killing with a hatchet little boys and girls—and a

one-year-old baby? “This is done by no civilized nation in Europe. Do we

come to America to learn and practise the manners of barbarians?” The

Conestoga Indians would have been safe among the ancient heathen, the

Turks, the Saracens, the Moors, the Spanish, the Negroes—anywhere in the

world “except in the neighborhood of the Christian white savages.”

Christian white savages! That was a phrase to make people wince. Those

who shared the prejudices of the Paxton Boys were highly indignant. But

the Quakers agreed with him, and the pamphlet convinced a surprising

number of others that it was their duty to defend their city and protect

the Indians who had sought refuge with them.

Panic spread as the Paxton rioters, armed and in an ugly mood,

approached Philadelphia. In the emergency Governor John Penn turned to

Franklin to reorganize his militia. Almost overnight a thousand citizens

rallied to arms, among them Junto members and firemen. On February 8,

word came that the mob was at the city limits. The governor, with his

councilors, rushed to Franklin at midnight, seeking advice. His house

became their temporary headquarters.

The ford over the Schuylkill River was guarded. The Paxton group

bypassed it, turned north, crossed the river at another ford, and came

noisily into Germantown some ten miles from Philadelphia.

“You go talk to them, Franklin,” pleaded the frightened governor.

Benjamin rode off to Germantown with only three of his men, and spoke

with the mob’s leaders so reasonably and sternly they agreed to turn

back. Three days later they had all gone home and quiet was restored to

the city.

“For about 48 hours, I was a very great man,” he wrote Lord Kames. To

Dr. Fothergill in London, he tersely described his activities: “Your old

friend was a common soldier, a councillor, a kind of dictator, an

ambassador to a country mob, and, on his returning home, nobody again.”

The help he had given in a delicate situation did not win him the

governor’s approval. To his Uncle Thomas Penn he wrote on May 5 that

there would never be “any prospect of ease and happiness while that

villain has the liberty of spreading about the poison of that inveterate

malice and ill nature which is deeply implanted in his own black heart.”

Instead of bringing the Paxton criminals to justice, John Penn launched

a bitter attack on the Pennsylvania Assembly, whom he called “arrogant

usurpers.” The Assembly membership promptly voted as president their

most controversial member, Benjamin Franklin.

The annual elections for Assembly seats were held in October 1764. Two

parties sprang up: Old Ticket, which supported Franklin and Joseph

Galloway, another liberal, as candidates; New Ticket, the conservatives,

the supporters of the Penns, and the Indian haters in whose hearts still

rankled Franklin’s phrase, “white Christian savages.” The campaign was

stormy and there was mud slinging on both sides. In Philadelphia, Old

Ticket lost by 25 votes out of 4,000. Galloway was upset. Franklin

merely shrugged and went home to bed.

Only in Philadelphia had the New Ticket won. When the returns came in

from the rest of the province, Old Ticket still had a majority in the

Assembly. They convened on October 26, and voted to send the King a

petition begging him to take back the province from the Penns, making it

a royal province. Franklin prepared the petition and was selected to

take it in person to England. John Penn was blind with fury but

helpless.

Franklin was engaged in having a new house built on Market Street

between Third and Fourth. It was of brick, thirty-four feet square, with

three rooms to each floor, and it had a pleasant garden. The kitchen was

in the cellar with a special arrangement of pipes “to carry off steam

and smell and smoke.” It would naturally be protected by a lightning rod

and would be heated by the now celebrated Franklin stoves.

He did not like to leave his house unfinished and he dreaded another

separation from Debby, who was still terrified at the thought of an

Atlantic crossing. But the long political squabble had bored and wearied

him, and he looked forward to seeing England and his English friends

again.

“I will be gone only a few months,” he assured his wife and his pretty

daughter, when he left them in November 1764. He could not then guess

that the few months would stretch to more than ten years.

9

THE STAMP ACT

His ship, the _King of Prussia_, reached Portsmouth in just thirty days.

By December 11, 1764, he was ensconced once more at 7 Craven Street, in

the tender care of Polly and Mrs. Stevenson, exuberant to have their

kind American friend with them once more. How pleasant to be spoiled by

them, to resume his dinners at the Royal Society, his meetings with his

scientific colleagues, to see again his many English acquaintances!

In respect to his mission, his return was less satisfactory. The Penn

family was as influential as ever. For nearly two years, their scheming

prevented him from getting the Assembly petition so much as a hearing by

the King’s Privy Council. When at last, in November 1766, the hearing

was granted, the answer was short and decisive: the King had no power to

interfere with the rights of the proprietors of a province. The petition

was denied.

Franklin tried in vain to have the decision reversed. The proprietors

officially retained their claims on Pennsylvania for ten years more,

until the events of 1776 changed the whole structure of the American

provinces.

An even more urgent crisis retained him in London. Lord George

Grenville, the same who had so blatantly stated that the King’s word was

law in the colonies, was now chief adviser to George III. His situation

was precarious and he knew that his cabinet was doomed if he failed to

raise some money. And where would one find money if not by taxing the

American colonies? Since the Americans had no representation in

Parliament, no votes would be lost even should the colonists grumble at

being taxed.

So Grenville reasoned, and it was thus that he conceived foisting the

Stamp Act on the colonies. The Act was to tax some fifty-five articles,

including all legal papers, advertisements, and marriage licenses. A

liquor license required a tax of four pounds; a pack of cards, one

shilling; a pair of dice, ten shillings. A newspaper on a half-sheet of

paper must carry a stamp worth one half-penny. A civil appointment worth

more than twenty pounds a year took a four-pound tax. A college degree

cost two pounds in taxes.

Grenville called the colonial agents together and discussed his

brainstorm with them. The money raised, he assured them, would be used

in America—for public works and for the maintenance of British troops to

protect them. If they had any better idea for levying taxes, they should

tell him. The agents, Franklin among them, could only point out that no

taxes would be popular; that if Parliament needed money, the proper

procedure was to ask the Assemblies to raise what they could.

Their objections were ignored. Politically, America was then in

disfavor. The English held that the seven-year struggle with France,

with its huge expenditure in lives and money, had saved the thirteen

colonies from French tyranny. They should be grateful. They should want

to help reduce the national debt. Instead they were always clamoring for

something or other.

In quick succession the Stamp Act passed the House of Lords and the

House of Commons, and was approved by the King on March 22, 1765,

scheduled to go into effect on November 1. Franklin felt that a bad

mistake had been made, but that, since the Stamp Act was now a law, it

should be obeyed until a way was found to get it repealed. To an

American friend he wrote that he opposed it “sincerely and heartily.” He

added philosophically, “Idleness and pride tax with a heavier hand than

kings and parliaments; if we can get rid of the former, we may easily

bear the latter.”

Grenville summoned Franklin to a conference. Was it not a good idea to

appoint Americans as stamp officers to distribute the stamps, so that

the colonists could deal with their own? Did Franklin have anyone to

suggest? Franklin proposed two—John Hughes of Pennsylvania, who needed a

job, and Jared Ingersoll, agent for Connecticut. Somehow it did not

occur to him that he was throwing himself open to criticism at home.

An attack of gout kept him in bed for some time after the passage of the

Act. He amused himself with one of his hoaxes, a letter to the

newspapers mocking certain alleged economists who claimed that the

colonies could never be self-supporting.

In America, he wrote, the “very tails of the American sheep are so laden

with wool, that each has a little car or wagon on four little wheels, to

support and keep it from trailing on the ground.” Wool was so cheap and

plentiful that colonists spread it on the floors of the horses’ stalls

instead of straw.

He next described a mythical “cod and whale fishery” on the Great Lakes.

Did people imagine that cod and whale lived only in salt water? They

should know how cod fled from whales into any safe water, salt or fresh,

and how the whales pursued them: “The grand leap of the whale in the

chase up the falls of Niagara is esteemed, by all who have seen it, as

one of the finest spectacles in nature.”

Soon all London was chuckling about the whale that leaped up the

Niagara.

In the meantime a tempest was erupting in America. The Stamp Act which

Franklin had taken so calmly had evoked a clamor throughout the

colonies, loudest in New England and Virginia. At the House of Burgesses

in lovely Williamsburg, an eloquent young Virginian named Patrick Henry

rose to declare the act “illegal, unconstitutional, and unjust,” and to

spout a set of resolutions, defining the rights of colonists as British

subjects, as had never been done so effectively. The Virginia Resolves

were printed in all the colonial newspapers, setting aflame a smoldering

indignation. A new organization, the Sons of Liberty, held parades and

protest meetings.

Franklin was plainly shocked. “The rashness of the Assembly in Virginia

is amazing,” he wrote John Hughes, his appointee as stamp officer. “A

firm loyalty to the Crown ... will always be the wisest course.” The

stupid Lord Grenville had been succeeded in July by the Marquis of

Rockingham. Franklin was hopeful he could be persuaded of the folly and

injustice of the tax. All that was needed was patience.

But the word patience had no appeal in America. When the names of the

stamp officers were published in August, riots broke out from New

Hampshire to South Carolina. Mobs gathered in front of the house of John

Hughes, burning him in effigy, threatening him with hanging and

drowning, until he was forced to resign. Similar demonstrations forced

resignations from Jared Ingersoll and other stamp officers. By the time

the stamps arrived, there were almost no officers to distribute them. As

a further measure, the colonists began to boycott British goods, to the

sorrow of the British merchants who henceforth became the most ardent

advocates of repeal.

The Penn supporters took advantage of the fray to point out that it was

Lord Grenville who was responsible for the hated act—not the

proprietors. As for Benjamin Franklin, everyone in England knew he was

on excellent terms with Grenville. In the stormy atmosphere,

exaggeration mounted to falsehood. Soon people were saying that Franklin

had framed the act, helped to get it passed, and accepted pay for

recommending the stamp officers.

Debby became marked as the wife of the man who had betrayed his trust,

and old friends slighted her on the street. There were rumblings about

burning their handsome new home. Governor William Franklin worriedly

came to try to persuade her and Sally to take refuge with him in New

Jersey. She let Sally go but refused to budge herself.

Cool-headedly and courageously, she collected guns and ammunition and

enough provisions to see her through a siege. Her brother came to stay

with her as did one of Franklin’s nephews. The house was turned into an

arsenal. But no attacks were made. In her heart Debby was sure there

would be none. Why should anyone want to hurt her or Pappy?

The object of this fury was in that very period working tirelessly to

achieve repeal by peaceful means. “I was extremely busy,” he wrote Lord

Kames, “attending members of both Houses, informing, explaining,

consulting, disputing, in a continual hurry from morning to night.”

He conferred with leading statesmen, such as Lord Dartmouth, so much

respected in America that a college was named for him. He dined with the

Minister Lord Rockingham, and found an ally in Rockingham’s private

secretary, a gifted Irishman named Edmund Burke. He sought out the

manufacturers and merchants who were suffering from the American

boycott, and enlisted their support. He wrote letters to newspapers to

convince England’s common people that the Stamp Act was a major obstacle

to Anglo-American friendship.

He used his charm, his wit, his power of persuasion, his writing

talents, his high reputation as a scientist, all as weapons to win

friends for the American cause. The other colonial agents worked with

him, but none could equal his activities. The news from America saddened

him and he knew he had to fight, not only to save his own prestige, but

to preserve what then seemed to him terribly important—the harmony

between the colonists and the Crown.

Finally, in February 1766, there was a breakthrough in the wall of

seeming indifference. The House of Commons summoned him to answer

questions of the probable effects of the Stamp Act in America. He was

dead with fatigue and troubled with gout, but inwardly he was jubilant.

He had coached his friends in Parliament in advance on what to ask, and

guessed without difficulty the line of inquiry of the opposition.

“What is your name and place of abode?” the Speaker asked first.

“Franklin of Philadelphia,” he said, as if there were no need to be more

explicit.

For three hours the questions rained down on him. He answered fully,

drawing from his vast knowledge of American affairs. As he spoke in his

dry quiet voice, peering at the House members over his spectacles, he

gave the impression of a schoolmaster instructing a group of students.

“Do the Americans pay any considerable taxes among themselves?” asked

James Hewitt, Member for Coventry, a town that manufactured the worsteds

and ribbons which the colonists had stopped buying.

They paid many and heavy taxes, Franklin said. He enumerated them

precisely, stressing the debt contracted in the recent war, stressing

too that people of the frontier counties were so impoverished by enemy

raids they could contribute nothing.

“From the thinness of the back settlements, would not the Stamp Act be

extremely inconvenient to the inhabitants?” This was certainly a

question he had formulated himself.

It definitely would, Franklin said. “Many of the inhabitants could not

get stamps when they had occasion for them without taking long journeys

and spending perhaps three or four pounds that the Crown might get

sixpence.”

There were many more questions and then the Stamp Act’s creator, Lord

Grenville, asked sharply, “Do you think it right that America should be

protected by this country and pay no part of the expense?”

“That is not the case,” Franklin told them. “The colonies raised,

clothed, and paid, during the last war, near 25,000 men and spent many

millions.” Though they were supposed to be reimbursed by Parliament, in

actual fact they received only a small part of their expenses.

“Pennsylvania, in particular, disbursed about 500,000 pounds and the

reimbursements in the whole did not exceed 60,000 pounds.”

He had at his fingertips equally factual data on every subject that

arose.

Someone asked, “Do you not think the people of America would submit to

pay the stamp duty if it was moderated?”

“No, never,” Franklin stated, “unless compelled by force of arms.”

Another asked, “What was the temper of America toward Great Britain

before the year 1763?”

He replied, “The best in the world. They submitted willingly to the

government of the Crown, and paid, in all their courts, obedience to the

acts of Parliament.... They had not only a respect but an affection for

Great Britain.”

“And what is their temper now?” he was asked.

“Oh, very much altered,” he assured them.

“What used to be the pride of the Americans?”

“To indulge in the fashions and manufactures of Great Britain.”

“What is now their pride?”

“To wear their old clothes over again till they can make new ones,” he

said calmly.

The session ended with this verbal blow leaving them gasping.

He had never considered himself a public speaker, and never before or

after spoken so long before such a large audience, but he had won his

point. In less than a month, on March 8, the Stamp Act repeal had passed

both houses of Parliament and received the reluctant assent of the King.

Franklin’s “Examination” was published in London, and later that year in

Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Williamsburg, and elsewhere in the

colonies. It was translated into French and German.

It was a wonderful victory. There was rejoicing throughout America.

Philadelphia coffeehouses made gifts to the crew of the ship that

brought the news. Taverns served punch and beer on the house. Benjamin

Franklin was once more a hero. Even the Penn supporters had to admit he

had done a fine job. At the Philadelphia State House, 300 guests of the

governor and the mayor drank a toast to him.

Franklin’s own celebration was to go shopping. With Mrs. Stevenson to

guide him, he bought more presents for his wife and Sally—fourteen yards

of Pompadour satin for a new gown, a silk negligee, a petticoat of

“brocaded lutestring,” a Turkish carpet, crimson mohair for curtains,

three damask tablecloths, and a box of “three fine cheeses.”

“Perhaps a bit of them may be left when I come home,” he wrote hopefully

to Debby.

He had asked the Pennsylvania Assembly to let him come home but instead

they appointed him agent for another year.

10

FRIENDSHIPS IN ENGLAND

Some time early in 1766, a young man named Joseph Priestley, a

dissenting minister and a teacher of classical languages in Warrington,

Lancashire, came to see Franklin to ask his help for a history of

electricity he was writing. Franklin gladly gave him assistance and told

him of his kite experiment in more detail than he had done to anyone

before.

Impressed with Priestley’s scientific talents, he recommended him to

membership in the Royal Society. Priestley more than fulfilled his

expectations. A few years later he would discover oxygen—calling it by

the cumbersome name of “dephlogistated air.” He also became a lifelong

friend of the American colonies.

Inevitably, the most brilliant scientists in England and the continent

sought Franklin out and, except for a few jealous ones, were added to

the circle of his friendships. Among the most intimate of these was John

Pringle, whom he had met on his last English trip and who was now Sir

John, personal Physician to England’s Queen. Samuel Johnson’s

biographer, Boswell, once called on Pringle and found him and Franklin

playing chess.

Boswell wrote: “Sir John, though a most worthy man, has a peculiar sour

manner. Franklin again is all jollity and pleasantry. I said to myself:

Here is a prime contrast: acid and alkali.”

With Pringle, Franklin took a trip to the continent in June 1766. They

stayed first in Pyrmont, in what is now West Germany, a fashionable

mineral springs resort. From there they visited Göttingen, where the

Royal Society of Sciences elected both to membership. They met Rudolf

Erich Raspe, narrator of the famous tall tales of the adventures of

Baron Münchausen. In their turn, Pringle and Franklin entertained their

new friends with stories about the giant Patagonians of South America,

which neither of them had of course ever seen. When Franklin later read

the newspaper accounts of their voyage, he noted with amusement that the

Patagonians had grown even taller in the hands of the press.

A letter was waiting for him in London from Debby, saying that Sally

wanted his consent to marry a young man named Richard Bache. Franklin

was too far away to judge the merits of her suitor: “I can only say that

if he proves a good husband to her, and a good son to me, he shall find

me as good a father as I can be,” he wrote. The marriage took place in

October 1767. The ships in the harbor in Philadelphia ran up their flags

to celebrate the wedding of the daughter of their most famous citizen.

The ministry of Lord Rockingham, in which Franklin had such confidence,

toppled while he was in Germany. The King and William Pitt, now Lord

Chatham, set up a coalition cabinet. Pitt, still a good friend of the

American colonies, soon fell violently ill, during which time the reins

of the government were seized by Charles Townshend, chancellor of the

exchequer.

Townshend considered the whole colonial uproar over taxes “perfect

nonsense.” Since the Americans had balked at the _internal_ Stamp Tax,

he resolved to let them pay _external_ taxes, in the form of import

duties on glass, lead, paper, paints—and tea.

By the Townshend Acts, duties were to be collected by English revenue

officers. The acts violated the time-honored right of trial by jury;

those accused of ignoring the revenue laws were to be tried in the

admiralty courts without a jury. As an added insult, the revenue

collected was to be used for the salaries of royal governors and judges

who previously had been paid by the Assemblies and thus subject to some

colonial control.

Franklin foresaw grave danger ahead. The Americans would not accept

these harsh measures. “Every act of oppression will sour their tempers,”

he wrote Lord Kames, “lessen greatly—if not annihilate ... the profits

of your commerce with them, and hasten their final revolt; for the seeds

of liberty are universally found there, and nothing can eradicate them.”

He felt that the colonists’ affection for Britain was such that “if

cultivated prudently” they might be easily governed “without force or

any considerable expense.” But he did not see “a sufficient quantity of

the wisdom that is necessary to produce such a conduct.”

The lack of “a sufficient quantity of the wisdom” on the part of

Parliament and the ministry was almost daily becoming more obvious to

him. Still he continued his course of education and propaganda and

persuasion, and of meeting with men in the government whom he hoped to

influence. Many listened to him. The young and wealthy Earl of

Shelburne, Secretary of State for the Colonies, became his close friend.

In recognition of his usefulness to his country, in 1768 he was chosen

agent for Georgia; in 1769, for New Jersey; and in 1770, for

Massachusetts.

Nearly every year he took a trip from London for his health and to

refresh his mind. In the fall of 1767, he made his first visit to

France, again in the company of his “steady, good friend,” Sir John

Pringle. As a loyal subject of an England frequently at war with France,

he was prejudiced in advance against “that intriguing nation,” as he

called it. Even this first short visit led him to reverse his opinion.

“It seems to be a point settled here universally that strangers are to

be treated with respect,” he wrote Polly Stevenson. “Why don’t we

practise this urbanity to Frenchmen? Why should they be allowed to outdo

us in anything?” Already he was adopting French fashions. “I had not

been here six days before my tailor and peruquier [wig maker] had

transformed me into a Frenchman. Only think what a figure I make in a

little bag-wig and naked ears! They told me I was become twenty years

younger, and looked very _galant_.”

In French scientific circles, his name was legendary. Scientists bragged

that they were _Franklinistes_, a word they had coined. Thomas

d’Alibard, the first to draw electricity from the skies, entertained him

royally. At Versailles, he and Sir John were presented to Louis XV,

whose praise of his electrical experiments Franklin could hardly have

forgotten, and whom he found “a handsome man, has a very lively look,

and appears younger than he is.”

The King “talked a good deal to Sir John,” he wrote Polly, “asking many

questions about our royal family; and did me too the honour of taking

some notice of me. That’s saying enough, for I would not have you think

me so much pleased with this king and queen as to have a whit less

regard than I used to have for ours.” “Our king” to him was still George

III.

He thought Versailles badly kept up in spite of its splendor but was

impressed with the way drinking water was kept pure by filtering it

through cisterns filled with sand.

It seemed as though every time he turned his back to London there were

changes in the ministry. Townshend, who had done more than any man

before him to turn the Americans into revolutionists, died in September

1767. He was succeeded by the Tory, Lord North, a pompous thick-lipped

personage, who had neither the will nor the desire to improve colonial

relations. William Pitt’s health was still poor. He collapsed in 1768 in

the House of Lords, in the midst of a fiery attack on his government’s

American policies. In the same year, the pleasant Lord Shelburne was

succeeded by the Earl of Hillsborough, a master of hypocrisy in

Franklin’s estimation, as Secretary of State for the Colonies.

In America, the Massachusetts Assembly sent a letter to other colony

assemblies, proposing united opposition to the Townshend Acts.

Hillsborough demanded that they rescind their action or dissolve. The

Assembly refused, and was backed by the other colonies. In October 1768,

the British sent eight ships of war to try to compel Boston to pay the

import taxes. Other ships followed. By one estimate the extra military

expenses that year were five thousand times the amount which the

Townshend Acts produced in revenue. Franklin had judged their stupidity

rightly.

In the midst of the American protests against these acts, he was

entertained by the Lord Chancellor Lord Bathurst and Lady Bathurst. He

brought them a gift of American nuts and apples. With an irony that his

lordship could not have missed, he prayed them to accept his present “as

a tribute from the country, small indeed but voluntary.” The nuts and

apples had come from Debby, who also sent him such American products as

corn meal, buckwheat flour, cranberries and dried peaches.

That year young Christian VII of Denmark visited England, and insisted

that Franklin dine with him at St. James. He would not have been human

had he not recalled the proverb of Solomon which his father had so

frequently quoted in his childhood. Now he had not only stood before one

king, Louis XV, he had sat down with a second. There would be others.

The English tried for two more years to make the colonists pay duties

they did not want to pay. At last, on March 5, 1770, Parliament voted

unanimously to repeal all of them but the tax on tea. Franklin commented

dryly that repealing only part of the duties was as bad surgery as to

leave splinters in a wound “which must prevent its healing.” In Boston

on that same day a squad of British soldiers fired into a crowd which

had been pelting them with snowballs—killing five and wounding six. The

“Boston Massacre” became a _cause célèbre_. Bloodshed had been added to

the other colony grievances.

The next summer Franklin visited Ireland. In Dublin, he attended two

sessions of the Irish Parliament. The Speaker introduced him as “an

American gentleman of distinguished character and merit,” and he was

given a place of honor. He noted that the Irish Parliamentarians were

more cordial than their English counterparts, but was too astute not to

realize they did not really represent their own people. Ireland, like

America, had suffered under British oppressive measures, but more

intensely and longer. The appalling misery of the Irish people was a

moral lesson to him. He foresaw that if the colonists did not continue

to insist on their rights, they would suffer the same wretched fate.

Sally’s husband, Richard Bache, came to England that fall to meet his

famous father-in-law. Bache had set his heart on getting a political

appointment and had brought a thousand pounds in case he would have to

pay for it. Even members of the House of Commons bought their posts, a

practice which was responsible for much of the corruption and

inefficiency of the government. Franklin advised his son-in-law to stay

clear of politics.

“Invest your money in merchandise. Start a store in Philadelphia. You

will be independent and less subject to the caprices of superiors.”

Bache followed this advice and within a few years was one of

Pennsylvania’s most respected merchants.

That year Lord Hillsborough, with whom Franklin’s relations had been

only outwardly civil, was succeeded by Lord Dartmouth, whom he liked.

Again his hopes were raised for a cessation of hostilities. In truth,

the ministry and Parliament had never treated him more cordially.

“As to my situation here,” he wrote his son on August 19, 1772, “nothing

can be more agreeable ... a general respect paid me by the learned, a

number of friends and acquaintances among them with whom I have a

pleasing intercourse ... my company so much desired that I seldom dine

at home in winter and could spend the whole summer in the country houses

of inviting friends if I chose it.... The king too has lately been heard

to speak of me with great regard.” In a postscript he mentioned that the

French Royal Academy had chosen him a foreign member, of which there

were only eight.

His Craven Street family was now enlarged to include his grandson

William Temple Franklin, and a distant English cousin named Sally

Franklin who was, like his daughter, an eager young girl “nimble-footed

and willing to run errands and wait upon me.” Mrs. Stevenson continued

to pamper him and nurse him during his spells of gout. Polly, for whom

he always had great affection, was married to a young doctor, William

Hewson. The young couple had been living with their mother since 1770.

There were several weeks when Mrs. Stevenson was away, leaving Polly in

charge. To amuse them, Franklin composed a newspaper, the _Craven Street

Gazette_, reporting the daily household happenings as though they were

world events. In this sheet, Mrs. Stevenson was “Queen Margaret,” Sally

was “first maid of honor,” Polly and her husband were “Lord and Lady

Hewson,” while he referred to himself as the “Great Person”—“so called

from his enormous size.”

When Debby wrote him of the cleverness of his grandson Benjamin Franklin

Bache, born in August 1769, Franklin responded with anecdotes about

Polly’s first boy, whose godfather he was.

Wherever he was, a rich family life was as essential to his happiness as

food. Among his close friends was Jonathan Shipley, bishop of St. Asaph,

at Twyford. “I now breathe with reluctance the smoke of London, when I

think of the sweet air of Twyford,” he wrote after a visit there in June

1771.

The bishop had five daughters and a son, and Franklin more or less

adopted them all. To the Shipley girls he presented a gray squirrel

which Debby had sent. They were thrilled with Skugg, as they named him.

One day the squirrel escaped from his cage and was killed by a dog. The

children buried him in their garden and Franklin composed his epitaph:

Here Skugg

Lies snug

As a bug

In a rug.

At the Shipleys he wrote the first part of his famous _Autobiography_ in

the form of a letter to William.

Another of his intimates was Lord Le Despencer, former chancellor of the

exchequer, who in his youth was reputedly the “wickedest man in

England.” Franklin found him a delightful companion and often stayed at

his country place at Wycombe. “I am in this house,” he wrote William,

“as much at my ease as if it was my own; and the gardens are a paradise.

But a pleasanter thing is the kind countenance, the facetious and very

intelligent conversation of mine host.” With Lord Le Despencer, the

alleged “rake,” he wrote an _Abridgement of the Book of Common Prayer_,

published in 1773.

He was a frequent guest of Lord Shelburne, whose vast wooded estate was

also at Wycombe. One windy day he gravely told the other visitors that

he could quiet the waves on a small stream on the grounds. Ignoring

their skeptical looks, he walked upstream, made some mysterious passes

over the water, and waved his cane three times in the air. As he had

prophesied, the waves quieted down and the stream became smooth as a

mirror. His companions could not conceal their astonishment.

Later he satisfied their curiosity. There was oil in the hollow joint of

his cane. A few drops of it spread in a thin film over the water and

caused the seeming miracle.

Back of this trick was a great deal of serious study on the effects of

pouring oil on troubled waters. In his youth he had read in Pliny how

sailors of ancient Greece had smoothed a choppy sea in this manner. On

one of his ocean crossings an old sea captain told him that Bermuda

fishermen poured oil on rough waters so they could see the fish strike.

Subsequently, he had made his own experiments, finding that one teaspoon

of oil would calm a pond several yards across.

If such a minute bit of oil would still a pond, would not several

barrels of oil level out the surf, making it possible for boats to land

with less danger? He tried out this theory the next year at Portsmouth,

England. With a local sea captain he took off on a barge one windy day,

sprinkling oil on the waves from a large stone bottle. The experiment

was only partially successful. Oil did not diminish the height or force

of the surf on the shore, but he had the satisfaction of seeing that

where the oil had spread, the surface of the water was not wrinkled by

smaller waves or whitecaps.

His scientific and cultural interests were as varied as life itself. He

was in turn occupied with the nature of mastodon tusks and teeth which a

friend sent to London, with the transit of Venus, the causes of lead

poisoning, population increase, geology, salt mines, Scottish tunes,

whirlwinds and water-spouts, and the science of phonetics—the need of

reforms to reduce the “disorderly confusion in English spelling”—and the

curious fact that flies apparently drowned in a bottle of Madeira wine

might sometimes be brought back to life.

His observations on all these matters were published in _Letters on

Philosophical Subjects_, and added to the fourth edition of “Experiments

and Observations on Electricity.” Barbeu Dubourg, a Parisian printer,

issued a French translation in two handsome volumes, which included “The

Way to Wealth,” under the French title, “_Le Moyen de s’Enricher_.”

Philadelphia, wrote Dubourg in his preface, was founded in the midst of

the savages of America by William Penn, a man wiser than the Spartan

hero Lycurgus. In less than a century the city had gone far beyond the

ancient world in the practice of the purest virtues and the most useful

arts. Benjamin Franklin, scientist, statesman, and sage, had now brought

this heroic age to troubled Europe.

The legend of Benjamin Franklin, which would mount to greater heights in

France than anywhere else in the world, was already in the making.

11

THE TERRIBLE HUTCHINSON LETTERS

At sixty-seven, Franklin had an expression at once benign, kindly, and

humorous. His years in England had subtly altered his appearance and his

manner. He dressed with elegance in a smooth wig and fashionable

ruffles, and he was equally at ease with eleven-year-old Kitty Shipley

or the King’s ministers. During the London season, he set out each

afternoon in his coach, often with Temple, his lively grandson, to leave

his card or pay calls on members of Parliament or other influential

persons whom he wished to win over to the American cause.

In the year 1773, he was most concerned with the threat of the British

troops still stationed in Boston three years after the “Boston

Massacre.” Wherever he thought it might help, he argued the folly of

treating Bostonians like troublesome children. “I am in perpetual

anxiety lest the mad measure of mixing soldiers among a people whose

minds are in such a state of irritation, may be attended with some

sudden mischief,” he wrote his Boston correspondent, Thomas Cushing.

One day, during a conversation on this subject, a British “gentleman of

character and distinction” told him that he was wrong to blame the

English for the troops in Boston. They had been requested by some of his

most respectable fellow countrymen.

Franklin was incredulous. The gentleman then turned over to him some

letters written between 1767 and 1769 by two Massachusetts Crown

officers, both native Americans, Thomas Hutchinson and Andrew Oliver. In

effect, it was as Franklin had been told. Hutchinson, and Oliver too,

pleaded of England “a firm hand,” even armed forces, to keep order. They

demanded for Massachusetts “an abridgment of what are called English

liberties.”

By the time Franklin read these letters, Oliver was lieutenant governor

of Massachusetts and Thomas Hutchinson was governor. Hutchinson had as

an excuse that his house had been ransacked during the Stamp Act furor.

This did not alter that he had been undermining the work of colonial

agents and betraying the very people he had been chosen to govern.

In his position as agent for Massachusetts, Franklin knew he must warn

their Assembly. After some reflection, he sent the letters to Thomas

Cushing, asking that they be returned to him after Cushing and members

of the Assembly Committee of Correspondence, a small and trusted group,

had studied them. He further explained that he could not reveal the

source of the letters and that he was not at liberty to make them

public. He had no scruples about showing the letters since they were

political, not personal, but he had to protect the “gentleman of

distinction” who had entrusted them with him.

In due time the letters reached Cushing, who followed Franklin’s

instructions. Neither Cushing nor anyone else who saw the letters could

prevent their being talked about. In June 1773, Samuel Adams, one of the

most ardent of Boston patriots, read them to a secret session of the

Massachusetts Assembly. Someone took the responsibility of having them

copied and printed. In the public uproar that ensued, the Assembly

prepared a petition to the King to remove both Hutchinson and Oliver

from office.

Perhaps it was for the best, Franklin decided when the news reached him.

Without reproaches, he wrote Cushing that he was grateful his own name

had not been mentioned, “though I hardly expect it.” He only hoped that

the letters’ publication would not “occasion some riot of mischievous

consequence.”

He was continuing his own methodical and unrelenting pressure to bring

reason to the English government. In September 1773, an anonymous and

stinging satire appeared in the _Public Advertiser_ under the title

“Rules by Which a Great Empire may be Reduced to a Small One.” Among the

rules cited were:

Forget that their colonies were founded at the expense of the

colonists;

Resent their importance to the Empire;

Suppose them always inclined to revolt, and treat them accordingly;

Choose “inferior, rapacious and pettifogging” men for governors and

judges in the provinces;—and reward these men for having governed

badly.

In all, the “Rules” encompassed every fault and folly of which England

was guilty in its treatment of the American colonies. Ministers and

members of Parliament could not doubt that the piece came from the quill

pen of Benjamin Franklin. It was followed by an even more devastating

attack on British policy: “Edict by the King of Prussia.”

Frederick the Great of Prussia, the “Edict” announced, was now taking up

his claims on the province of Great Britain, which had been settled

originally by German colonists and had never been emancipated. Hence the

Prussian government had the right to exact revenue from its “British

colonies,” to lay duties on all goods they exported or imported, to

forbid all manufacturing in these “colonies.”

From now on, should the British need hats, they must send raw materials

to Prussia, which would manufacture the hats and let the British

purchase them. (This was exactly the manner in which the British were

preventing American manufacture.) Next, Prussia planned to ship to “the

island of Great Britain” all the “thieves, highway and street robbers,

housebreakers, and murderers” whom they “do not think fit here to hang.”

(Here Franklin returned to an old grievance—Britain’s using the colonies

as a dumping ground for convicts. In 1751 he had proposed

tongue-in-cheek to send American rattlesnakes to England in exchange.)

He was visiting Lord Le Despencer when a servant brought to the

breakfast table the newspaper which had printed the “Edict” hoax. A

fellow guest named Paul Whitehead read the first paragraphs and

exploded:

“Here’s the King of Prussia claiming a right to this kingdom.... I dare

say we shall hear by next post that he is upon his march with one

hundred thousand men to back this.”

Franklin kept a straight face. Whitehead read on until, as absurdities

piled up, it dawned on him that he had been taken:

“I’ll be hanged, Franklin, if this is not some of your American jokes

upon us.”

They admitted he had made his point very cleverly and all had a good

laugh.

But neither the “Rules” nor the “Edict” persuaded Parliament and the

ministry to change their ways. Colonial resentment focused on the tax on

tea, which small as it was, remained a “splinter in the unhealed wound.”

In Boston, on December 16, 1773, fifty citizens, dressed as Mohawk

Indians, defiantly dumped 342 chests of British tea into the ocean.

Parliament, when the news reached London, acted swiftly. Until

restitution was made for the tea, the port of Boston was to be closed.

Four more regiments under General Thomas Gage were sent to keep order.

Boston became an occupied city, unable to conduct its commerce and faced

with financial ruin.

Pay for the tea, Franklin urged his Boston colleagues. The Boston Tea

Party was an act of lawlessness which could only harm the cause of the

colonies. Just as the colonists were unaware of the problems that faced

him daily in England, so he was too far away to appreciate the fire of

indignation that was sweeping America.

In the meantime a scandal had erupted in London as a result of the

publication of Governor Hutchinson’s letters. Two gentlemen, William

Whately and John Temple, had each accused the other of making the

letters public. They carried the argument to the newspapers, and then

Temple challenged Whately to a duel. It was fought at Hyde Park on

December 11, with pistols and swords. Whately was wounded. Neither party

was satisfied.

Franklin was out of town when the duel took place. After he heard about

it, he realized what he had to do. On Christmas Day, a letter signed by

him appeared in the _Public Advertiser_, which said that both Whately

and Temple were “ignorant and innocent” of the publication of the

Hutchinson letters, that he was the one who had obtained them and sent

them to Boston. The entire blame was his. He did not give the name of

the man who had turned the letters over to him. This secret he carried

to his grave.

How many high-placed persons in England were waiting to get something on

this imperturbable Philadelphian! How many resented the way, like

Socrates’ gadfly, he forced them to admit what they did not want to

admit, and pestered them eternally with his troublesome colonies. Now

they would have their revenge. Franklin knew his admission would bring

wrath on his head. He had not long to wait.

On January 29, 1774, he was summoned to the Cockpit Tavern, to a meeting

of the King’s Privy Council for Plantation Affairs. The subject given

was the petition of the Massachusetts Assembly for the removal from

office of Andrew Oliver and Governor Hutchinson. Franklin’s friends had

informed him already that the petition was to be denied. There were even

rumors that his papers might be seized and himself thrown in prison. He

was prepared for the worst.

He arrived on time, dressed in a suit of figured Manchester velvet,

wearing an old-fashioned curled wig, and carrying the same cane with

which he had once quieted the ripples on the stream at Lord Shelburne’s

estate.

Thirty-six members of the Privy Council were seated around a large

table. Among them were the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of

London, the Duke of Queensberry, Lord Dartmouth, whom he had found

sympathetic; Lord Hillsborough, who hated and feared him; and the Earl

of Sandwich (from whom the word “sandwich” was derived); the London head

of the post office, a conceited individual who disliked everything that

Franklin stood for. Among them, Franklin could be positive of only one

friend—Lord Le Despencer.

A few spectators had been admitted, including Joseph Priestley, the

scientist, and Edmund Burke, the Irish peer. They stood behind the table

since there were no extra chairs. No one offered Franklin a chair

either. For the entire hearing he stood by the fireplace, facing the

councilors.

It opened with a reading of the Massachusetts petition and of the

Hutchinson and Oliver letters. Franklin’s lawyer, John Dunning, appealed

to the King’s “wisdom and goodness” to favor the petition and remove the

two men from their posts, as a gesture to quiet colonial unrest. Then

Alexander Wedderburn, lawyer for Hutchinson, took over.

His speech, which lasted an hour, was from beginning to end a tirade

against Franklin. Franklin could have got hold of the controversial

letters only by fraudulent or corrupt means, he said. His own letter,

clearing Whately and Temple of blame, was “impossible to read without

horror.” Franklin was “a receiver of goods dishonorably come by.” He had

duped the “innocent, well-meaning farmers” of the Massachusetts

Assembly.

Wedderburn’s accusations grew wilder as he warmed to his subject.

Franklin wanted to become governor himself, he stated categorically.

That was why he had taken on himself “to furnish materials for

dissensions; to set at variance the different branches of the

legislature; and to irritate and incense the minds of the King’s

subjects against the King’s governor.”

While Wedderburn continued to spew forth his poisonous invective,

Franklin stood stoically, his face impassive, seemingly unaware either

of the triumphal smirks of his enemies or the compassionate glances of

his friends. People agreed later that his silence, in face of the

screams of his adversary, showed him the stronger man. When the hearing

was over, he went quietly home alone.

He made no answer to Wedderburn, nor even to those closest to him did he

indicate that the attack rankled. To Thomas Cushing he wrote, “Splashes

of dirt thrown upon my character I suffered while fresh to remain. I did

not choose to spread by endeavouring to remove them, but relied on the

vulgar adage that they would all rub off when they were dry.”

The day after the hearing he was notified of his dismissal as deputy

postmaster-general of the colonies. This was a severe blow, for he had

prided himself on the efficient work he had done in this service. Then,

on February 7, 1774, the King formally rejected the Massachusetts

Assembly petition to remove Hutchinson and Oliver.

Seemingly Franklin’s usefulness as a provincial agent was ended. He

thought of going home but decided against it. Critical days were ahead.

He felt he might still, in spite of his disgrace, find ways of helping

his country.

Except that he had no direct dealings with the ministry or Parliament,

his life went on as before. He discussed scientific matters with Joseph

Priestley, among them the phenomenon of marsh gas. When Polly Hewson’s

husband died, leaving her with three children, he grieved with and for

her. He worried lest William be removed from the governorship of New

Jersey as further punishment to him, but this did not happen.

In September 1774, a dark-haired youngish man, who spoke in the Quaker

manner, paid him a visit. His name was Thomas Paine, he said. He was

fascinated by Franklin’s work in electricity and gave evidence of being

well informed himself on scientific matters. He had also done a bit of

writing, particularly a quite eloquent petition to Parliament on the

plight of the excisemen, a petition that had cost him his own job in the

excise service.

He had a dream of going to America, Paine confided. Would Dr. Franklin

be good enough to give him some advice?

Franklin rarely refused such requests. In this case, he was sufficiently

impressed to write a note of recommendation to his son-in-law Richard

Bache. He could not guess the enormous favor he was doing his homeland

by sending Thomas Paine to America’s shores.

Massachusetts had rejected Franklin’s advice to pay for the Boston Tea

Party. Other colonies were coming to the rescue of beleaguered Boston.

Connecticut sent flocks of sheep. From Virginia came flour. South

Carolina gave rice. Franklin was delighted; at last the colonies were

helping each other, nearly twenty years after he had proposed a union at

the Albany conference.

When the First Continental Congress met in Philadelphia in May 1774, he

was full of praise for “the coolness, temper, and firmness of the

American proceedings,” and he was all in favor of a strong boycott of

British manufacturers. “If America would save for three or four years

the money she spends in fashions and fineries and fopperies of this

country she might buy the whole Parliament, ministers and all.”

At last his beloved colonies were learning the value of concerted and

dignified action, so much more effective, in his thinking, than mob

actions.

As the crisis deepened, one by one important statesmen sought him out

and almost humbly asked his advice as to what they should do. The great

William Pitt summoned him in August. Did he think the colonists would go

as far as to ask for independence? Franklin assured him, truthfully,

that he “never had heard in any conversation, from any person drunk or

sober, the least expression of a wish for a separation or hint that such

a thing would be advantageous to America.”

He received an invitation to play chess with the sister of Admiral Lord

Richard Howe. At their second session, Miss Howe pressed him to tell her

what should be done to settle the dispute between Great Britain and the

colonies. “They should kiss and be friends,” he said lightly. Nor would

he be more explicit when she brought Admiral Lord Howe to talk with him.

In his heart he knew it was now too late to repair the many blunders on

the part of Parliament and the King.

On December 18, 1774, he received the Declaration of Rights and

Grievances, a petition from the First Continental Congress to George

III. The King, who was having the first of those attacks which would end

in insanity, ignored it completely. With William Pitt, Admiral Lord

Howe, and other of the more reasonable officials, Franklin spent long

hours trying to work out a compromise that would keep the peace. It was

all in vain.

In the midst of these labors, word reached him that his faithful Debby

had died of a stroke on December 19—the day after the arrival of the

petition.

There would be no more of her warm and loving and atrociously spelled

letters to keep him informed about his relatives: “I donte know wuther

you have bin told that Cosin Benney Mecome and his Lovely wife and five

Dafters is come here to live and work Jurney worke I had them to Dine

and drink tee yisterday....”

Or to lament the lack of news from him: “I have bin verey much distrest

a bout [you] as I did not [get] oney letter nor one word from you nor

did I hear one word from oney bodey that you wrote to so I muste submit

and indever to submit to what I am to bair.”

Letters which she might sign “Your afeckshonet wife,” or when she was

less careful “Your ffeckshonot wife.” He would miss them, but above all

he would miss the assurance that she was there waiting for him, loyal

and cheerful, to greet him whenever he returned from his long voyage.

He stayed on in England only a few months longer. His last day in London

he spent with Joseph Priestley. Together they read papers from America,

and now and then tears ran down Franklin’s cheeks. He was sure America

would win if there were a war, he told Priestley, but it would take at

least ten years.

On March 25, 1775, he and his grandson Temple embarked on the

_Pennsylvania Packet_. The crossing took six weeks and the weather was

pleasant. In the first half of it, he wrote out the complicated story of

his recent dealings with the ministry in his last futile and desperate

efforts to prevent war. The last part of the journey he devoted to

studying the nature of the Gulf Stream, taking its temperature two to

four times a day, and noting that its water had a special color of its

own and “that it does not sparkle in the night.”

Thus he was able to enjoy a brief interlude in the world of nature

between the bitter disputes he left behind and the struggle that lay

ahead.

12

BEGINNING OF A LONG WAR

He reached Philadelphia on May 5, 1775—an elderly widower, nearly

seventy, grave and saddened by the loss of his wife, by the crisis to

his country which his many years of negotiations could not forestall.

Sally and Richard Bache took him to the house on Market Street which he

had designed but never occupied. Two small grandchildren whom he had

never seen, Benjamin and William Bache, were waiting to embrace him and

to greet their youthful English cousin, Temple. Franklin’s friends of

the Junto and political companions were on hand to give him the big

news.

On April 19, while he was on the high seas, that was when it had

happened. General Sir William Howe (another brother of the chess-playing

Miss Howe), who was now stationed in Boston, had sent some 800 British

soldiers to Concord, where the Massachusetts Committee of Safety had a

store of arms and ammunition. The Massachusetts Minutemen, forewarned by

Paul Revere, had tried to stop them at Lexington. The Redcoats, who

claimed that the colonials fired first, had killed eight and left ten

wounded, then pushed onwards. It was at Concord where for the first time

in America the King’s subjects shot at the King’s troops. The return of

the Redcoats was a rout, with farmers and tradesmen firing behind every

barn and haystack. General Howe announced 73 of his men slain and 174

wounded.

A rebellion was under way and there was no turning back.

On his second day home, Franklin was chosen as a Pennsylvania delegate

to the Second Continental Congress. It opened on May 10 in the

Philadelphia State House; delegates from all the colonies attended. In

both years and experience, Franklin was the senior member.

Colonel George Washington, a big quiet man of forty-three, wore his

colonial uniform, as if guessing the heavy responsibility ahead of him

as Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Armies. On the day he left for

Cambridge to assume his post, word came of the valiant fight at Breed

Hill (which history would call the Battle of Bunker Hill). Another tall

Virginian joined the Congress, red-haired Thomas Jefferson, thirty-two

years old, lawyer and college graduate and of a wealthy and cultured

family. In spite of differences in age and background, Franklin found

him a kindred spirit. Jefferson, like himself, was a scientist,

inventor, man of letters.

In July, Congress voted to send another petition to their “gracious

sovereign,” asking for a redress of grievances. Franklin knew in advance

that this “olive branch” petition was a waste of paper, but he did not

voice his objections. Let these impulsive young men of Congress find out

for themselves that the weak and stubborn George III was not on their

side. They would likely not have taken his word anyway.

In sessions of Congress he spoke less than any man present. In his

school days he had learned a jingle: “A man of words and not of deeds /

Is like a garden full of weeds.” Better to show one’s patriotism in

action than talk.

Congress did its work largely by committees. Franklin served on a

committee for the making of paper money, on committees to protect colony

trade, to investigate lead ore deposits, and to study the cheapest and

easiest way to procure salt. He was on another committee which

considered, and turned down, a reconciliation plan submitted by Lord

North. He was one of three commissioners appointed to handle Indian

affairs in Pennsylvania and Virginia.

On July 25, the Congress voted him postmaster-general of the colonies.

The postal system which he set up with his son-in-law Richard Bache was

so efficient and comprehensive that it served as a model to modern

times, giving Franklin right to the title, “Father of the American Post

Office.”

For local defense, the Pennsylvania Assembly set up a Committee of

Safety, appointing Franklin as president. Among his duties were the

reorganizing of the Philadelphia militia, selecting officers for armed

boats, obtaining medicines for the soldiers. He designed a special

pike—a long wooden pole with pointed metal head—to be used in

hand-to-hand fighting as a substitute for bayonets, which the colonists

did not have. Half-seriously, he proposed use of bows and arrows, in

lieu of more powerful weapons. To keep British warships from coming

within firing range of Philadelphia, he had built huge contraptions of

logs and iron, called _Chevaux de Frise_, to be sunk in the Delaware

River.

On his papers and plans he worked late night after night. He met with

the Committee of Safety at six each morning. From nine to four he sat in

Congress. It was small wonder that delegate John Adams would catch him

napping during the hot and often wearisome sessions. No one knows how he

found time for his postmaster duties.

Could anything more be expected of old Ben Franklin who twenty-eight

years before had decided to retire, since he had enough money to live

on, and no man needed more than enough? In all those years he had

continued to work for his city, his province, the thirteen colonies. His

greatest services still lay ahead.

He was sure America would win—eventually. He had no illusions about the

hardships involved. England was the most powerful country in the world,

swollen with the glory of its victories over France and Spain. Its

superb navy was rivaled by none. Its army was well-trained, well-armed,

disciplined, and numerous. The Americans had to start from scratch.

The embargo against English goods had boomeranged sadly. America was

still an agricultural country with little manufacturing of its own.

There were shortages of necessities and of luxuries. That year Abigail

Adams sent a tearful request to her husband, John, to buy her a box of

pins in Philadelphia—even if it cost ten dollars.

The most urgent need was for arms and ammunition. From General

Washington at Cambridge came letter after letter, pleading for them. One

note, confessing that he had no more than half a pound of gunpowder per

soldier, fell into the hands of General Howe—who thought it was a trick.

(It was not until March 1776 that Henry Knox brought down guns captured

at Ticonderoga and Washington could frighten Howe and his troops from

Boston.)

One of Franklin’s many Congressional committees was formed to promote

the manufacture of saltpeter for gunpowder. Progress was slow.

Throughout the war, the colonies produced only about fifty tons of

gunpowder. Obviously home manufacture was not the answer.

In July, Congress had a visitor from Bermuda, Colonel Henry Tucker, who

headed the island’s local militia. Tucker was sympathetic to the

Americans as were many Bermudians. There was for a time talk of Bermuda

being the fourteenth colony to revolt against British domination. It had

previously been dependent on America for foodstuffs, but as it was a

British possession shipments had been stopped. Colonel Tucker had come

to plead that the ban be lifted.

Franklin found occasion to talk with Tucker privately and one thing the

Bermudian told him interested him greatly. At the Royal Arsenal at St.

George, there was a large stock of gunpowder—and no guard.

On Franklin’s recommendation, Congress put through a blanket order to

exchange food for guns with any vessel arriving on the American coast,

an order which evaded the controversial point of trading with an enemy.

Bermuda was promised not only food, but candles, soap and lumber. There

was another deal with Colonel Tucker, about which only those intimately

concerned were informed.

In August, two ships set sail for Bermuda—the _Lady Catherine_ from

Virginia and the _Savannah Pacquet_ from South Carolina. At Mangrove

Bay, their crews disembarked, to be welcomed by friendly Bermudians,

including the son of Colonel Tucker. Bermudians and American seamen

boarded small boats and sailed along the coast to St. George, where, on

the estate of Bermuda’s Governor James Bruere, the Royal Arsenal was

located.

The raiders waited until the governor, his fourteen children, and his

numerous watchdogs were all asleep. They proceeded so stealthily that

not even a dog was wakened. A sailor, lowered into the arsenal through a

vent in the roof, unlocked the doors from inside. Barrels of powder were

rolled to the waiting boats. Then the party took off.

Twelve days later the _Lady Catherine_ arrived at Philadelphia with

1,800 pounds of gunpowder, while the _Savannah Pacquet_ delivered its

cargo at Charleston.