This was Franklin’s first victory in his battle for ammunition. Although

Governor Bruere, on discovering his loss, promptly sent for British

warships to patrol the island, Bermudian sloops continued to get through

to America, and American ships managed regularly to maneuver around the

patrol. The trade continued for the benefit of both Americans and

Bermudians.

In the midst of this hectic summer, Franklin spent one long and

miserable evening with William, the son whom he had made part of his

life as much as any father ever had. He had hoped his flesh and blood

would share his burning indignation at English oppression. The most

bitter disillusion of his life now faced him. The governor of New Jersey

haughtily denied any sympathy for the “American rabble.” His loyalty was

to the Crown, and that was that.

Franklin continued to write affectionately to Temple, who had gone to

stay with his father, but the breach between him and his first-born son

remained deep.

The Bermuda raid was Franklin’s first step toward a larger plan. The

Secret Committee to further importation of war supplies was set up on

September 18, 1775. Among those serving with him was Robert Morris, the

prosperous merchant who became the financial genius of the American

Revolution. The Committee was granted substantial sums of money and wide

powers. It made contracts with American merchants who, with permits

issued by Congress, took cargoes to the West Indies, Martinique, Santo

Domingo, and even Europe, bringing back arms and ammunition.

Part of the Committee’s work was to get in touch with merchants from

many countries. England was no exception. The friendships Franklin had

formed among English merchants when he was seeking repeal of the Stamp

Act now proved their value. These merchants knew they could trust him

and were not adverse to giving a helping hand to the Americans and

making a profit at the same time.

There was in the West Indies a tiny island no more than seven or eight

miles square called St. Eustatius, a dependency of Holland and an

international free port. Statia, as the Americans called it, had long

been a market for smuggled goods from every corner of the globe. Now it

became an arsenal to which merchants from Holland, France, England, and

other nations brought war materials to be picked up by American vessels.

The British government, through its excellent espionage system, knew

what was happening but could not prevent it.

“Powder cruises,” these ventures were called. They were only one phase

of American sea activity. There was in time a Continental Navy, which

was never very effective. Individual colonies had their own navies.

There were also the romantic privateers, privately owned vessels with

commissions from Congress, which by the first twenty months of the war

had captured over 700 English vessels—and made fortunes for their owners

and crews. The powder cruises alone were planned for the sole purpose of

getting war materials for the fighting forces.

They were a long-range project. It took time to fit and man and load the

ships, more time for them to make their journeys and return. Not for two

years would the Americans have enough ammunition to win a major

engagement. Before this happened, there were hard days ahead.

On October 4, Franklin rode off to visit Washington’s camp at Cambridge,

on a Congressional mission with Thomas Lynch of South Carolina and

Benjamin Harrison of Virginia. If he was a little flabbergasted at the

motley assembly of backwoodsmen, farmers and teenage youths to whom

Washington was trying to teach military discipline, he did not say so.

These were his people. He was proud of them and what they had set out to

do.

On his return, he stopped in Warwick, Rhode Island, where his sister

Jane Mecom, an old woman now, had taken refuge from British-occupied

Boston with their old friends, the Greenes. Besides himself, she was the

only one of Josiah Franklin’s seventeen children who was still living.

Happily, she did not yet know that her Boston home was being looted in

her absence.

“Sorrows roll over me like the waves of the sea,” she had written

Franklin a few years before on the death of her adored daughter Polly.

She was worried now about her son Benjamin, who was unable to hold a job

and whose wife and children were destitute (the same whom Debby had

written her husband that she had had to tea). Only a few months later,

his mind completely gone, Benjamin wandered out in the dark, never to be

seen again.

In spite of the repeated blows of a cruel fate, Jane had remained

warmhearted and thoughtful. Franklin, who had the tenderest affection

for her, brought her back to Philadelphia, where she stayed with him for

the next year. Always he had humored her, given her and her inevitably

needy family material help, written her long and loving letters—and

occasionally fretted at her constant solicitude.

On this same trip he distributed a hundred pounds, sent by English

friends to aid the wounded of Lexington and Concord and the widows and

orphans of those who had been killed. It is possible that one of the

generous donors was Joseph Priestley, to whom Franklin wrote about this

time:

“Britain, at the expense of three millions, has killed one hundred and

fifty Yankees in this campaign, which is twenty thousand pounds a

head.... During the same time sixty thousand children have been born in

America.”

His letter was quoted throughout England, where the hearts of many lay

not with their own corrupt Parliament, but with those who had the

courage to oppose it.

13

THE SPLENDID WORD INDEPENDENCE

As Franklin had foreseen, the King paid no heed to the “olive branch”

petition of the Second Continental Congress. By Royal proclamation all

Americans were declared Rebels. The British had burned Charlestown in

June and Falmouth in October 1775. It was hinted they were buying

mercenaries from German princes. That foreigners should be paid by the

English to kill English subjects seemed the greatest insult of all.

Franklin composed a short letter to William Strahan, his English printer

friend:

Mr. Strahan:

You are a member of Parliament, and one of that majority which has

doomed my country to destruction. You have begun to burn our towns and

murder our people. Look upon your hands! They are stained with the

blood of your relations. You and I were long friends. You are now my

enemy, and I am

Yours,

B. Franklin.

He did not send this cruel note, but instead wrote Strahan a warm and

cordial letter which Strahan answered in kind. Perhaps he had written

the first one to see how it sounded and when he read it over did not

like it. Throughout the conflict he found ways of carrying on a

correspondence with those he cherished in England.

On November 29, 1775, the Congressional Committee of Secret

Correspondence was formed with five members—Benjamin Franklin and John

Dickinson of Pennsylvania, Benjamin Harrison of Virginia, Thomas Johnson

of Maryland, and John Jay of New York. Its assignment was to establish

closer relations with foreign nations, and where possible to make allies

of those nations. With these duties, the Committee of Secret

Correspondence became the predecessor of the United States Department of

State.

As a member of the new committee, Franklin wrote his friend Charles

Dumas, a Swiss journalist with many political connections: “We wish to

know whether, if, as seems likely to happen, we should be obliged to

break off all connection with Britain, and declare ourselves an

independent people, there is any state or power in Europe, who would be

willing to enter into an alliance with us for the benefits of our

commerce.” In a similar vein he sounded out Barbeu Dubourg, his Paris

printer, who had, as he knew, friends high in the French government.

The French were already watching America with interest. The harsh terms

of the 1763 treaty with Great Britain still rankled. They welcomed any

struggle that would involve England’s military forces, particularly if

it could be prolonged to seriously weaken her.

In December 1775, a certain Monsieur Achard de Bonvouloir, allegedly an

Antwerp merchant, arrived in Philadelphia. Through a French bookseller

he arranged to meet Franklin, to whom he admitted that he had

connections at the Court of Versailles. In truth he was a French agent,

sent by Louis XVI’s foreign minister, Count Charles Gravier de

Vergennes, to appraise the American situation.

Franklin arranged for Bonvouloir to meet with the Committee of Secret

Correspondence at a quiet house in the outskirts of Philadelphia. It

turned out to be a very crucial meeting. The French government did not

object to American ships coming into her ports to pick up cargoes,

Bonvouloir said. If the British complained of the presence of these

ships as a breach of neutrality, the government would simply plead

ignorance of what was going on. But in return for this welcome assurance

of free trade, the French wanted to make sure that America intended to

declare its independence from England.

Independence was a word as yet heard rarely. Though Franklin had

mentioned its possibility in his letter to Dumas, he knew that few other

members of Congress, much less the American people, were ready for such

a drastic step. The urgent need for French cooperation made him speak

out boldly.

Certainly the Americans were going to separate from England, he told

Bonvouloir blandly. The country was behind the war to a man. Everything

was going splendidly. General Washington’s army was growing.

There was exaggeration in his statements. Not only was talk of

independence rare, but America was peppered with Loyalists, those who,

like Franklin’s own son, were opposed to action against the British

Crown. While new recruits were joining Washington, many simply walked

off when their time of service was up, and some were deserting outright.

But Franklin’s words were a magnificent prophecy. He was speaking from

his own profound faith in his countrymen, and his confidence was

contagious. Bonvouloir sent back a glowing report to the French minister

Vergennes; France’s secret alliance with America began from that time.

If Americans were not more solidly behind the rebellion, it was that

their emotions had not been deeply aroused. Was not the chief dispute a

matter of taxes? No one likes to pay taxes, but though people were ready

to parade and protest against them, not all were willing to risk their

lives rather than pay them. It took the protégé of Franklin, Thomas

Paine, to point out that the rebellion was for something much more

important than taxes.

Paine had settled in Philadelphia, taken a job with the _Pennsylvania

Magazine_, and had, in the few months he had been in America, written

some fine articles, among them one of the first attacks on slavery to

appear in the American press. Franklin saw him in October and proposed

that he write “a history of the present transactions,” an account of

events that had led to the present crisis. Paine had only looked

mysterious, saying that he was working on something.

Then in January 1776, Franklin received the first copy off the press of

a pamphlet titled “Common Sense.” Though it was published anonymously,

“written by an Englishman,” he guessed easily who had written it.

“Common Sense,” written simply and clearly, was a passioned and reasoned

plea for secession from England. It showed Americans how much they had

to gain from independence and how little there was to lose. It made them

hold up their heads with the pride of being American and convinced them

they were fighting for the most precious thing in the world—their

freedom. There is no estimating the enormous service done by “Common

Sense” in uniting the colonies in a common cause.

In February, Franklin sent in his resignation to the Pennsylvania

Assembly and its Committee of Safety: “Aged as I am, I feel myself

unequal to do so much business....” At the same time he accepted another

arduous assignment from Congress, to head a delegation to Canada to try

and win French Canadians to the side of the colonies.

Two expeditions had already been sent to wrest Quebec from the British,

one under General Richard Montgomery, the other under Colonel Benedict

Arnold. Both had failed. Montgomery had been killed. Arnold, severely

wounded, had retreated with his battered army to Montreal.

Franklin, aged seventy, set out on his mission the last week of March

1776. There were stops in New York, Albany, and in Saratoga where the

snow was still six inches deep. From there they rode horseback across to

the Hudson and proceeded up the river in rowboats to Fort Edward. “I

began to apprehend that I have undertaken a fatigue that at my time of

life may prove too much for me,” Franklin wrote Josiah Quincy.

They sailed along the coast of Lake George in open flatboats, fighting

their way through ice. When the cold grew too bitter, they stopped to

make fires, thaw out, and brew tea. By April 25 they had reached Lake

Champlain, and in clumsy wagons drove over bad roads to the St.

Lawrence, where they again took to boats. Their hard journey ended at

Montreal on the 29th. Benedict Arnold, now a general, came to meet them,

and there was a cannon salute to the “Committee of the Honourable

Continental Congress,” and to the “celebrated Dr. Franklin.”

The conferences the next day proved what Franklin had doubtless

suspected. The Canadians for the most part found British rule preferable

to French rule and were not dissatisfied. The majority were Catholic and

as such hostile to the colonies because of unpleasant things that had

been said about their faith.

General Arnold and his men were penniless. Franklin loaned them about

350 pounds of his own money in gold. On May 6, word came that the

British were sending reinforcements from England. Franklin guessed that

the Americans would be driven from Canada; it happened just a month

later. He stayed on until May 11, then, realizing nothing more could be

done, set out for home.

He was in New York by the 27th, as worn out and ill as though the vain

mission had drained the last bit of his strength. His health returned

slowly. From Philadelphia, on June 21, he wrote Washington that gout had

kept him from “Congress and company”—that he knew little of what had

passed except that “a declaration of independence was in the making.”

To this development, the magic of “Common Sense” deserved credit. On

April 12, North Carolina had instructed its delegates to Congress to

vote for independence. Other colonies followed suit. On June 7, Richard

Henry Lee introduced a resolution that “these colonies are, and of a

right ought to be, free and independent states.” Three days later

Congress appointed Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Robert Livingston of

New York, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, and Benjamin Franklin, as a

committee to prepare the declaration.

Jefferson produced the first draft. John Adams and Franklin made only a

few alterations before it was submitted to Congress on June 18.

Congress nearly drove the Committee out of its mind with demands for

extensive changes. One clause which attacked slavery was deleted

altogether. When nerves grew tense, Franklin told a story.

There was a hatter he had once known who built a handsome signboard

reading, “John Thompson, hatter, makes and sells hats for some ready

money,” adorned with a picture of a hat. He submitted it to his friends

for approval. One thought the word “hatter” unnecessary. Another that

“makes” was not needed. A third thought “for ready money” useless, since

no one then sold for credit. His next friend insisted “sells hats” be

omitted; no one expected him to give them away. All that was left, when

his friends were through with him, was his name “John Thompson” and the

drawing of the hat.

The moral lesson implied may have speeded up the Congressional process.

At length, the Declaration met with approval. John Hancock, in big black

writing, affixed his signature first. According to legend, Hancock said,

“We must be unanimous; there must be no pulling different ways; we must

all hang together.” To which Franklin allegedly replied, “We must indeed

all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

The ideas in the Declaration were not new. Many of them had been said by

others, specifically by Thomas Paine, in phraseology not too different

from Jefferson’s. The document, adopted by Congress on July 4, 1776,

remained the greatest charter of freedom of all time.

In the midst of the wonder of independence, the New Jersey Assembly

ordered the arrest of its governor, William Franklin, as a Loyalist,

another sad blow for his father. He was first held under guard at his

home, then taken to Connecticut, where he was kept for two years in the

Litchfield jail or on parole. Temple came to live with his grandfather,

attending the Pennsylvania Academy which Franklin had started so many

years before.

The Declaration of Independence, splendid as it was, still was only

words on paper. The reality was far in the future and the present looked

very dark.

On and around Long Island was gathered the greatest British

expeditionary force in history. Some 32,000 men (including German

mercenaries whom the Americans called Hessians) and 500 vessels were

there in command of General Sir William Howe who, after leaving Boston,

had gone to Halifax for reinforcements. And in the harbor, a mighty

fleet under his brother Admiral Lord Richard Howe. And in Manhattan,

General George Washington with less than half as many men, ill-clad and

hungry and a good portion too sick to fight.

To get a foothold on Long Island, Washington took half his army to

Brooklyn Heights. The results were disastrous—a surprise attack by the

British on August 27, brought American casualties, killed and wounded,

to nearly two thousand. It was to the credit of Washington, and John

Glover’s Marbleheaders and former Salem sailors, that boats were found

to carry the survivors back to Manhattan under the cloak of night.

Why did not the Howe brothers pursue them then and there? They needed

only to send a force up the Hudson or Long Island Sound to trap the

Rebels and cut to pieces America’s principal army. Yet they dawdled a

while. Why?

The truth was that Admiral Lord Howe, whom Franklin had first met at the

home of his sister, had come in a dual role of warrior and peace

ambassador. He was empowered to offer full pardon to all Rebels (with

the secret exception of John Adams) and on his arrival had sent Franklin

a flattering and friendly letter making a proposal for

reconciliation—which Franklin, with the sanction of Congress, had turned

down in an equally cordial missive.

Soon after the Battle of Long Island, Lord Howe sent another request to

Philadelphia, by a paroled prisoner, General John Sullivan, for

delegates to come and discuss a settlement of hostilities. Franklin,

John Adams, and Edward Rutledge of South Carolina were chosen. They met

Lord Howe and his staff on September 11, at a neglected house on Staten

Island, in a room hung with moss and branches. Americans and British

dined on cold ham, tongue, mutton, bread, and claret, all the while

making polite conversation. Then they got to business. Lord Howe did

most of the talking.

He felt for America as for a brother, he said, and should lament, as a

brother, should America fall.

“My Lord, we will use our utmost endeavors to save your lordship that

mortification,” Franklin said with a guileless smile.

“The King’s most earnest desire” was to make his American subjects

happy, Howe continued. They would redress any real grievances. It was

not money they wanted. America’s solid advantage to Great Britain was

“her commerce, her strength, her men.”

“Aye, my Lord,” Franklin said, chuckling, “we have a pretty considerable

manufactory of men.” He was referring not, as Howe’s secretary presumed,

to the growing army, but to America’s rapidly increasing population.

Howe continued to plead for a resumption of the old relationship with

England. Franklin told him firmly that was impossible. Had not their

defenseless towns been burned in the midst of winter, Indians encouraged

to massacre their farmers, and slaves to murder their masters—and now

foreign mercenaries brought to deluge their settlements with blood? Ah

no, after these atrocious injuries, there could be no return to their

previous status.

The conference ended on this impasse.

Following this meeting, the British drove Washington north to Harlem

Heights and on to White Plains. During the evacuation, New York caught

fire and a third of it burned. No one ever knew who was responsible. The

situation looked hopeless—unless substantial aid could be had from

outside. And where could they go for such aid if not to France?

Congress chose three commissioners to represent America at the French

court—Jefferson, Franklin, and Silas Deane of Connecticut, who was

already in Paris. When Jefferson declined because of his wife’s health,

Arthur Lee, cousin of “Light-Horse Harry” Lee of Virginia, was chosen in

his place.

Before he left, Franklin appointed Richard Bache as deputy postmaster

and turned over to Congress all the money he could raise as a

loan—around 4,000 pounds. To his friend Joseph Galloway, he entrusted

his trunk, containing his correspondence from the years he had spent in

England, as well as the only existing manuscript of his _Autobiography_.

He took with him two grandsons, eighteen-year-old Temple Franklin, and

Benjamin Franklin Bache, age seven. They left on the sloop _Reprisal_,

October 27, 1776.

Did the two youths know what a perilous journey they were making, with

the English Navy prowling the seas in search of just such prizes as the

_Reprisal_? Temple at least must have realized that if they were

captured, his gray-haired grandfather would be considered a prize more

valuable than any ship, and would certainly be hanged as a traitor. Not

only was the crossing made safely but within two days of landing, the

passengers had the thrill of witnessing their captain take two British

“prizes,” which the _Reprisal_ on December 3 brought to Auray on the

coast of Brittany.

14

FRANCE FALLS IN LOVE WITH AN AMERICAN

“The carriage was a miserable one,” Franklin wrote of the trip from

Auray to the French town of Nantes, where the _Reprisal_ would have

brought them had it not been for the two prizes. “With tired horses, the

evening dark, scarce a traveler but ourselves on the road; and, to make

it more comfortable, the driver stopped near a wood we were to pass

through, to tell us that a gang of eighteen robbers infested that wood

who but two weeks ago had murdered some travelers on that very spot.”

The Nantes townspeople were expecting the celebrated American and were

waiting to greet him as he descended from his carriage.

Instead of a curled and powdered wig, he wore a fur cap over his thin

gray straight hair, which he had adopted on shipboard for reasons of

comfort. His costume was of brown homespun worsted, with white stockings

and buckled shoes. He wore spectacles, because at seventy vanity was

less important to him than seeing clearly. He carried a plain crabtree

cane, such as any man could have cut for himself.

“A _primitive_!” people exclaimed. His simple attire delighted them all.

For his few days in Nantes he stayed with a commercial agent, Monsieur

Gruet. A string of visitors appeared afternoon and evenings to pay their

respects. He spoke little, knowing his French was imperfect, and his

silence made him seem all the wiser. Everyone was filled with

admiration. The women of the town paid him their greatest tribute in a

_Coiffure à la Franklin_, dressing their hair in a high curly mass to

resemble his fur cap.

His welcome at Nantes was only a preview of what attended him in Paris.

His printer, Barbeu Dubourg, had prepared the populace by distributing

circulars about his visit. For two days before his arrival, he was the

sole subject of conversation in Paris cafés. Wherever he went, admiring

citizens surrounded him, remarking on the simplicity of his costume and

his unaffected manners. Silas Deane, who had received no such attention

on his arrival, was amazed. But then, Deane had little love for the

French people, had made no effort to learn their language, and was

obviously unhappy in this foreign environment.

From Deane, Franklin learned of a plan already under way to help

America. A dummy exporting house had been set up under the name of

Hortalez and Company, to which the French and Spanish governments had

each contributed a million livres. (The livre is replaced by the franc

in modern French currency.) When Deane had reached Paris a few months

before, authorized to buy supplies, Foreign Minister Vergennes had

promptly sent him to the head of Hortalez, a dashing adventurer named

Caron de Beaumarchais (who would later become known for his librettos of

_The Marriage of Figaro_ and _The Barber of Séville_). The company was

now arranging to send arms and ammunition, uniforms, everything the

colonies needed.

Since this was Deane’s project, Franklin did not interfere. Later, when

Americans found they were receiving inferior goods from Hortalez, when

Congress was billed for what they were told was a gift, when

Beaumarchais unaccountably became wealthy, and even Deane was accused of

dishonesty, he may have wished that he had kept a closer check. For the

moment, he had plenty of other work to do.

Silas Deane as well as Arthur Lee, the third commissioner, both gave him

advice on how to conduct himself. Deane, a blunt and tactless man, was

all for forcing the issue with France. Arthur Lee, who had an intriguing

nature, advocated a devious approach. Franklin listened attentively to

both of them and went his own way.

On December 28, he and Deane were received at Versailles by Vergennes,

of whom Franklin had already heard so much. As usual, he wore his brown

worsted suit and his head was bare, with no wig to hide his gray locks.

Though he did little more than transmit expressions of good will and

gratitude from his country, the suave and polished French diplomat

summed him up as a great and good man. Henceforth, whenever possible,

Vergennes avoided dealing with any American other than Benjamin

Franklin.

The next night he attended a soiree held by Madame la Marquise du

Deffand. Her guests were the most important personages in Europe. The

Marquise was known to be strongly pro-British. Everyone expected that

Monsieur Franklin from Philadelphia would be put in his place. How could

he compete in this brilliant company? He was much too clever to try. All

evening he sat quietly smiling, waiting for others to do the talking,

listening with interest to everything that was said, even by the ladies.

The company was enchanted. They had believed all Americans to be bold

and rude-mannered and self-assertive. This Monsieur Franklin, who

dressed like a Quaker, was a sage, a patriarch! They had never known

anyone like him. From then on, the aristocracy gave him their adoration,

as did the scientific world and the common people.

A few days later there was a gift of two million livres, not connected

with the funds at Hortalez, presented for the American cause in the name

of the French King. Franklin had, without resort to bullying or

conniving, scored his first victory in French diplomacy.

For fear of British retaliation, Vergennes dared not openly sponsor him.

Privately he was doing all in his power to convince Louis XVI that the

American rebellion, even though against another king, should be

supported to the hilt. This was not easy, for the French ruler was not

yet ready to show more than a token interest in the Americans. Franklin

understood Vergennes’ position and did not press him for what he had

really come to get, an open alliance. His most important task, from

Vergennes’ viewpoint, was to win French public opinion to his side. This

he did without half trying.

His popularity mounted daily. For the French he was a man of reason,

like their Voltaire, and an advocate of the equality of man and the

virtues of rustic living, like their philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau.

They saw him as the man who had singlehandedly fomented the American

Revolution, a rumor carefully nourished by the British Ambassador in

Paris, Lord Stormont.

He was given credit for the Declaration of Independence and the

Pennsylvania Constitution. Not knowing yet of Thomas Paine, people took

it for granted that he was the author of that marvelous pamphlet “Common

Sense,” which was reprinted in French with the omission of its attacks

on royalty. They admired him alike for his scientific achievements and

for “The Way of Wealth,” the proverbs of Poor Richard as cited by Father

Abraham, which they praised to the skies as “sublime morality.”

It became the fashion of every home to have an engraving of him above

the mantel. Medallions with his image in enamel adorned the lids of

snuffboxes, and tiny ones were even set in rings, selling in incredible

numbers. In time his portrait was reproduced on watches, clocks, vases,

dishes, handkerchiefs, pocket knives. There were paintings of him

without end, and busts in marble, bronze and plaster. “These,” Franklin

wrote to his daughter Sally, “with the pictures, busts, and prints (of

which copies upon copies are spread everywhere), have made your father’s

face as well known as that of the moon.”

The first of March he moved from the Paris hotel where he and his

grandsons had been staying to Passy, a beautiful spot half a mile from

Paris, less a village than a group of villas set amidst forests and

vineyards. Their house was on the great estate of Le Ray de Chaumont, an

ardent partisan of the United States, who refused to accept rent from

his distinguished guest.

The grounds of the Chaumont estate were laid out in formal gardens

around an octagonal pond, with alleys of linden trees. Often Franklin

and his grandsons ate at the lavish Chaumont table, or had their meals

sent from the Chaumont kitchen for a minimum charge. When he gave a

large dinner party in his own quarters, everything would be sent over by

the Chaumont staff. He had his own servants, including a coachman, and

kept a carriage and a pair of horses. Benjamin Bache went to boarding

school in the village, coming home for Sunday. Temple acted as his

secretary.

The British, who had spies everywhere, were well aware of the reason for

his presence in France. Vainly did British Ambassador Lord Stormont try

to belittle him or his country. He could not match Franklin’s wit. Once

Franklin learned that Stormont was spreading a rumor that 4,000

Americans had been lost in a battle and their general killed. “Truth is

one thing. Stormont is another,” he commented dryly. In Parisian slang,

the verb “to Stormont” became a synonym for “to lie.”

In truth, with the exception of Washington’s victory over the Hessians

at Trenton, the Christmas of 1776, news from America was discouraging.

Franklin refused to show any sign of worry. “_Ça ira_,”—“it will go

on”—he would say to anyone who asked how the American Revolution was

faring. In the years of France’s own revolution, Franklin’s famous _Ça

ira_ became the catchword of a popular war song.

Some time that summer, or so it is said, Franklin passed a night at the

same inn as Edward Gibbon, author of _Rise and Fall of the Roman

Empire_. Franklin sent up a note requesting the pleasure of his company.

Gibbon answered that though he admired Franklin as a philosopher he

could not, as a loyal English subject, converse with a Rebel. Franklin

promptly sent him a second note. He had the greatest respect for the

historian, he wrote, and when Gibbon decided to write the _Rise and Fall

of the British Empire_, he would be happy to supply all the needed data.

The revolt in America had enormous glamour for innumerable European

officers who were eager to offer their services, for money, for the

thrill of adventure, and perhaps less often because they believed in the

American cause. Franklin was besieged with their requests for him to

recommend them to the American army. “My perpetual torment,” he called

them:

People will believe, notwithstanding my continually repeated

declaration to the contrary, that I am sent hither to engage officers.

You have no conception how I am harassed.... Great officers of all

ranks, in all departments; ladies, great and small, besides professed

solicitors, worry me from morning to night.... I am afraid to accept

an invitation to dine abroad, being almost sure of meeting some

officer or some officer’s friend who, as soon as I am put in good

humour with a glass of champagne, begins his attack upon me.

Only partly in jest, he composed a form letter:

The bearer of this, who is going to America, presses me to give him a

letter of recommendation, though I know nothing of him, not even his

name. This may seem extraordinary, but I assure you is not uncommon

here. Sometimes, indeed, one unknown person brings another, equally

unknown, to recommend him; and sometimes they recommend one another.

As to this gentleman, I must refer you to himself for his character

and merits, with which he is certainly better acquainted than I can

possibly be. I recommend him, however, to those civilities which every

stranger of whom one knows no harm has a right to; and I request you

will do him all the good offices, and show him all the favour, that on

further acquaintance you shall find him to deserve.

Temple later claimed that he actually used this letter on occasion,

though it has never been proved.

There was, however, one officer whom Franklin recommended to George

Washington without ever having met. This was the nineteen-year-old

Marquis de Lafayette, an ardent youth set on revenging a father killed

by the English. “He is exceedingly beloved,” he wrote Washington early

in August after Lafayette had already left France, “and everybody’s good

wishes attend him; we cannot but hope he may meet with such a reception

as will make the country and his expedition agreeable to him.”

Another valuable recruit Franklin sent to America was the former

Prussian officer Baron von Steuben, whose rigid training of American

troops at Valley Forge raised morale at a moment when it had sunk to a

new low.

In England, he still had friends in high places. Lord Rockingham was

praising his courage in crossing the Atlantic, risking capture and being

brought to an “implacable tribunal.” Charles James Fox, a member of Lord

North’s cabinet, was quoting to his fellow cabinet members Franklin’s

remark that England’s war on America would be as costly and useless as

the Crusades. While to George III he had become “that insidious man from

Philadelphia,” Sir John Pringle, now president of the Royal Society,

supported him in one of the few comic episodes of wartime.

During Franklin’s stay in England, he had given advice on installing

lightning rods on St. Paul’s Cathedral and other important buildings.

One member of the Royal Society, Benjamin Wilson, an artist who had

painted Franklin’s portrait, argued that blunt lightning rods would be

more effective than pointed ones, but he had been over-ruled. The battle

between “the sharps and the flats” raged briefly and then subsided.

It was revived when the war was under way by George III, who felt that

since pointed lightning rods had been invented by a Rebel, they must

certainly be subversive. He ordered that the rods on his palace and

throughout the United Kingdom be replaced by the blunt type and

commanded Sir John Pringle to back him. Sir John boldly retorted that

the laws of nature were not changeable at royal pleasure. He was

thereupon informed that the royal authority did not believe that a man

of his views should occupy the presidency of the Royal Society. Sir

John, loyal to Franklin to the end, promptly resigned.

As for Franklin, he remained an objective observer: “I have never

entered into any controversy in defense of my philosophical opinions,”

he wrote in October 1777. “I leave them to take their chances in the

world. If they are _right_, truth and experience will support them; if

_wrong_, they ought to be refuted and rejected. Disputes are apt to sour

one’s temper, and disturb one’s quiet.”

In November a visitor to Passy informed him that General Howe had taken

Philadelphia. (Congress had fled to York, Pennsylvania, which became

temporarily the capital of the United States.) Calm and smiling,

Franklin countered, “I beg your pardon, sir. Philadelphia has taken

Howe.”

Inwardly, he was gravely concerned. His daughter and her family, his

home, those he loved, and everything he owned was in Philadelphia. But

he could not afford to let his anxiety show.

He considered at this time telling Vergennes that unless America could

count on a French alliance, they would have to make terms with England,

but decided the threat might boomerang and force the French to abandon

them. Best wait until the news was better. It so happened he had not

long to wait.

On December 4, a messenger from Boston arrived at Passy, to announce

that General John Burgoyne, whom the British had sent to Canada to lead

an army to invade the colonies from the north, had been defeated at

Saratoga. Beaumarchais, who was present when this news came, drove off

to Paris so recklessly that his carriage upset and his arm was broken.

Franklin and his two commissioners promptly drew up a dispatch for

Vergennes. Two days later Conrad-Alexandre Gérard of the foreign office

arrived at Passy with Vergennes’ congratulations—and a request that the

Americans renew their proposal for an alliance.

Franklin drafted the proposal on December 7 and Temple delivered it the

next day. On the 12th, the commissioners met secretly with Vergennes.

Franklin hoped the matter could be settled there and then but the French

minister said France could not agree to an alliance without Spain. It

took three weeks for a courier to make the trip and bring back an answer

from Spain. It was negative. Temporarily negotiations were at a

standstill.

In the meantime England had sent an envoy named Paul Wentworth to parley

with the Americans. He passed himself off as a stock speculator though

he was actually chief of the British espionage. Silas Deane saw him

several times. Wentworth told him that the British ministry was ready to

return to the imperial status of before 1763, suggested a general

armistice with all British troops withdrawn except those on the New York

islands, and added, insinuatingly, that any Americans who helped to

bring about an understanding would be rewarded with wealth and titles

and high administrative posts.

Franklin knew about Wentworth but refused to see him until January 6, a

week after the news of Spain’s rejection of the alliance. That day he

conferred two hours with Wentworth, devoting the whole time to a recital

of England’s crimes against America. After that he and Wentworth had

dinner with Silas Deane and his assistant Edward Bancroft (who was also

an English spy).

The results of this dinner were exactly what Franklin anticipated. It

was duly reported to Vergennes, who could only judge that negotiations

for a reconciliation between England and America were under way, which

was the last thing in the world he wanted. The very next day the French

King’s council voted formally on a treaty and an alliance with the

United States of America.

The signing of the treaty took place on Friday, February 7, 1778, at the

office of the ministry for foreign affairs in the Hotel de Lautrec,

Paris. For this all important occasion Franklin donned an old costume,

somewhat old-fashioned and rather too tight for him, of figured

Manchester velvet. Someone asked him why. “To get it a little revenge,”

Franklin said. “I wore this coat on the day Wedderburn abused me.”

The ceremony was simple. Gérard signed first, then Franklin, after which

Arthur Lee and Silas Deane added their names. A magnificent diplomatic

campaign had been won.

On March 20, Louis XVI avowed the treaty by receiving the three

commissioners in his private quarters at Versailles. Franklin wore a

brown velvet suit, white hose, and carried a white hat under his arm. He

had neither wig nor sword, and his spectacles were on his nose. The

courtiers claimed they had never seen anything so striking as this

“republican simplicity.”

To the commissioners, the King said, “Firmly assure Congress of my

friendship. I hope that this will be for the good of the two nations.”

Franklin responded for his fellow envoys. “Your Majesty may count on the

gratitude of Congress and its faithful observance of the pledges it now

takes.”

That evening Vergennes gave a great dinner in their honor at Versailles.

Later they made a call on the royal family. The charming and beautiful

Marie Antoinette, who was at her gambling table, insisted that Franklin

stand by her, and talked to him in between making her bids at

exceedingly high stakes. It was certainly the first time in history that

the son of an American candlemaker kept company with a queen.

15

AMERICA’S FIRST AMBASSADOR

In the spring after the signing of the treaty with France, Silas Deane

was recalled to America. John Adams was sent to take his place. Franklin

invited him and his wife Abigail to stay with him at Passy, and arranged

for their ten-year-old son John Quincy to go to school with Benjamin

Bache.

The comfortable life at Passy made Puritan-minded Adams uncomfortable.

Though Franklin’s taste in dress and food was exceedingly simple

compared to the French aristocrats with whom he had to keep company,

Adams found him extravagant. He felt it a waste of money that Arthur Lee

should have separate quarters in Paris. At the same time he objected

that no rent was paid at Passy and vainly tried to get Chaumont to

accept payment.

He could not help himself. Basically it was simply impossible for him to

approve of someone like Benjamin Franklin: “He loves his ease, hates to

offend, and seldom gives any opinion till obliged to do it.... Although

he has as determined a soul as any man, yet it is his constant policy

never to say yes or no decidedly but when he cannot avoid it.”

John Adams was a man who always said yes or no decidedly, never having,

like Franklin, learned from Socrates that if you wish to convince

people, making them think for themselves is more effective than

bludgeoning them.

But as he was essentially honest, Adams did not deny that Franklin was

beloved by the French as he would never be: “His name was familiar to

government and people,” he wrote later, “to king, courtiers, nobility,

clergy, and philosophers, as well as plebeians, to such a degree that

there was scarcely a peasant or a citizen, a _valet de chambre_,

coachman or footman, a lady’s chambermaid or a scullion in a kitchen who

was not familiar with it and who did not consider him a friend to human

kind.... When they spoke of him they seemed to think he was to restore

the golden age....”

In one of the many elaborate ceremonies organized in Franklin’s honor, a

crown of laurel was placed on his white hair by the most beautiful of

three hundred women admirers. At another, a walking stick with a gold

head wrought in the form of a cap of liberty was presented to him. A

poem, composed for the occasion, was read.

The wood of the cane, it said, had been seized on the plains of Marathon

by the Goddess of Liberty before she abandoned Greece. It had been

transported to Switzerland, where the valiant mountaineers fought

against invading Austrians. More recently it had been seen at Trenton,

where Washington defeated the British. By possession of this symbol of

victory, Benjamin Franklin was assured of a place in the “Temple of

Memory.”

Franklin’s French friends had long been hoping for a meeting between him

and Voltaire, considered the two most enlightened men of the eighteenth

century. In February 1778, after an exile of more than twenty-eight

years, Voltaire returned to spend the last four months of his life in

Paris. With his grandson Temple, Franklin called to pay his respects to

the great philosopher. Voltaire was then eighty-four, lean and

emaciated, but he still had the fiery spirit that had kept all Europe in

an uproar over the major part of his life. He insisted on greeting the

“illustrious and wise Franklin” in English, and held his hand over

Temple’s head in blessing, pronouncing the words “God and Liberty.”

There was a more publicized meeting in April at the Academy of Sciences.

The audience, seeing both present, clamored to have them introduced to

each other. Obligingly, they stepped forward and bowed to each other.

The spectators were not yet satisfied. They wanted them to embrace each

other in the French manner. Only when Franklin and Voltaire put their

arms around each other and kissed each other’s cheeks did the tumult

subside.

That year the French sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon, who had immortalized

Voltaire in marble, did his bust of Franklin, catching his likeness

better than any other had done. And that Baron Turgot, the French

Minister of Finance, made his most famous epigram about Franklin: “He

snatched the lightning from the sky and the sceptre from the tyrants.”

Vainly Franklin protested that other Americans, “able and brave men,”

deserved credit for the Revolution.

On September 14, 1778, Congress revoked the commission of three and

elected Franklin sole plenipotentiary to France—America’s first official

ambassador to a foreign land. With only Temple and a clerk to help him

with detail work, he was in actual fact consul-general, consultant on

American affairs, propagandist for America, and, the part which pleased

Franklin least but which he performed expertly, official beggar to the

Court of Versailles for the ever increasing sums of money which Congress

instructed him to procure for their costly war.

With his other duties, he was director of naval affairs, Judge of the

Admiralty, and in effect if not in name, overseas Secretary of the Navy.

In this capacity in March of 1779 he wrote a “passport” for the Pacific

explorer Captain James Cook, instructing commanders of American ships

that Cook and his crew should be treated as “common friends to mankind”

and allowed to go on their way. The sad news had not reached Europe; a

month before Franklin’s instructions, Cook had been killed by natives on

the Hawaiian Islands.

Ever since his arrival in France, he had been concerned with the plight

of captured American seamen, whom the English kept in foul prisons and

treated not as prisoners-of-war but as traitors, charged with high

treason and subject to execution. To Lord Stormont, the British

ambassador, he had sent a formal plea requesting the exchange of

American prisoners for English ones, man for man. It was ignored. A

second came back unopened with a note: “The King’s Ambassador receives

no Letters from Rebels but when they come to implore his Majesty’s

Mercy.”

Through an English friend, David Hartley, Franklin sent money for the

relief of the American prisoners, and generous Englishmen added to the

fund. That was all that could be done until some nine months after the

signing of the treaty with France, when he received reluctant consent

from the London ministry for prisoner exchange.

There was still the problem of getting sufficient English prisoners for

the exchange. Before the treaty, British seamen on the “prizes” which

American ships brought into French ports had to be set free by maritime

law. With France now officially at war with England, the ban no longer

applied, but there were still far fewer English prisoners in France than

American ones in England.

In May 1779, as Minister of the United States at the Court of France,

Franklin signed a commission for Captain Stephen Marchant of Boston, on

the privateer, the _Black Prince_, to operate off the north coast of

France. The _Black Prince_ was so named for her sleek lines, her black

sides, and her reputation as one of the swiftest vessels ever to run a

cargo.

Franklin’s instructions to the captain were brief and explicit. He was

to bring in all the prisoners possible “to relieve so many of our

countrymen from their captivity in England.” He only found out later

that Captain Marchant was a figurehead. The real commander of the _Black

Prince_ was a twenty-five-year-old Irishman named Luke Ryan, with a

dazzling record as a smuggler—an honorable profession in an Ireland

reduced to starvation by repressive English trade regulations.

The success of the _Black Prince_ was phenomenal—twenty-nine prizes,

including a recapture, in the space of two months and eleven days.

Franklin gave commissions to two sister privateers, the _Black Princess_

and the _Fearnot_. Their combined efforts produced a total of 114

British vessels of all descriptions, brought into free ports, burned,

scuttled or ransomed. They created havoc with coastal trade in the

English, Irish and Scotch seas, embarrassed the British Admiralty,

caused marine insurance rates to soar.

Franklin was proud of his three privateers and must have had a vicarious

thrill in their exploits. His own role in the affair became increasingly

worrisome. Each prize was judged in the local marine court of the port

where it was brought. Sometimes there were delays, resulting in the loss

of perishable cargo and voluble cries of protest from the crews who saw

their prize money diminishing daily. In due time Franklin, as Judge of

the Admiralty, received the bulky and voluminous report, handwritten and

of course in French. It was up to him and Temple to appraise the

contents if the venture was to be kept going.

Unfortunately, much as the privateers disrupted English shipping, the

number of prisoners was far fewer than Franklin had hoped. Sometimes

there was no room for prisoners on shipboard, or, when there were

captive ships to man, not enough men to guard prisoners. Franklin

proposed that the privateer captains get sea paroles from those they set

free, but the British stubbornly refused to honor the paroles in

prisoner exchange. There were also numerous British seamen who gladly

joined the privateer crews, finding their free life far preferable to

the cruel discipline of the British Navy.

Aside from his privateers, Franklin pinned his hope on a Scottish-born

American seaman with a colorful past, named John Paul Jones. In 1778,

Jones had captured the _Drake_, the first British warship to surrender

to a Continental vessel. He had come to Brest from America in the

_Ranger_, which had raided English and Scottish coasts, taking seven

prizes. Red tape kept Jones idle for some months after that but at

length he was given an aged and decrepit French forty-gun ship, which he

renamed the _Bonhomme Richard_—the French translation of “Poor Richard.”

In September 1779, the _Bonhomme Richard_ closed in on the superior

British frigate, the _Serapis_, in a battle which lasted three and a

half hours. When the hull of the _Bonhomme Richard_ was pierced, her

decks ripped, her hold filling with water, and fires destroying her, the

British captain asked if they were ready to surrender.

“Sir, I have not yet begun to fight,” Jones reportedly replied.

While his ship was sinking, he and his men boarded the _Serapis_ and

took her captive.

Exultantly, Franklin prepared his dispatch to Congress, announcing “one

of the most obstinate and bloody conflicts that has happened in this

war.” With even greater pleasure he reported three weeks later that John

Paul Jones was safe in Texel, North Holland, with some 500 British

prisoners! In Paris soon afterward the welcome given the hero of the

_Bonhomme Richard_ rivaled only Franklin’s reception there.

At home the war was going drearily. Combined American forces failed to

win Savannah from the British. A British expedition took Charleston. The

British General Cornwallis, marching inland, routed General Horatio

Gates. England, now at war with Holland, captured tiny St. Eustatius,

thus cutting off America’s chief West Indian source of supplies.

Benedict Arnold had turned traitor, and the British had moved their army

from Philadelphia to New York.

The Bache family, who had been living in the country, returned to find

that the officers who had occupied their house had carried off some of

Franklin’s musical instruments, Temple’s school books, and some

electrical apparatus. The portrait of Franklin done by Benjamin Wilson

had also vanished. It turned out that it had been taken by the English

spy Major John André. (It reached England but was later restored to the

White House in Washington in 1906.)

In the spring of 1781, Franklin received two American visitors at Passy,

young Colonel John Laurens, son of the former Congress president Henry

Laurens, and Thomas Paine. There was another financial crisis in

Congress and they had come to request a loan of a million pounds

sterling each year for the duration. Franklin had foreseen the need and

could tell them he already had a promise of an outright gift of 6

million livres. Since July 1780, General Rochambeau and 6,000 fully

equipped French regulars were in America, waiting for the auspicious

time to join the conflict. France had its own to protect now.

The tide turned that year. The valiant General Nathanael Greene (nephew

by marriage of Franklin’s friend, Catherine Ray Greene) together with

Daniel Morgan, “Light-Horse Harry” Lee, and Francis Marion (known as

“The Swamp Fox”) harassed Cornwallis into Virginia, where General

Lafayette, in charge of his first command, forced him onto the peninsula

of Yorktown. To Lafayette’s aid came two armies, the American one led by

Washington, and the French one led by Rochambeau. The siege lasted just

nine days. Cornwallis surrendered on October 18, 1781. The news reached

Franklin at eleven o’clock on the night of November 19, just one month

later.

The defeat of Cornwallis at Yorktown marked the unofficial end of the

war, though George III refused to believe it. In his disordered mental

state, he could not face the reality of the enormous budget asked from

an empty treasury. Nearly everyone else knew that the former American

colonies were lost to the British Empire forever.

Franklin wrote Congress offering his resignation, planning that if it

were accepted he would take his grandsons on a tour in Italy and

Germany. Congress had other plans for him. Along with John Adams and

John Jay of New York, he was chosen a commissioner to negotiate the

formal peace with Great Britain.

“I have never known a peace made, even the most advantageous,” Franklin

wrote John Adams, “that was not censured as inadequate.... I esteem it,

however, an honour.”

John Jay and his family came to stay at Passy, as the Adams family had

done. Maria Jay, age one and a half years, formed a “singular

attachment” to the ancient philosopher, which he claimed he would never

forget.

The peace negotiations dragged on month after month, seemingly

interminable. In April 1782, in the midst of them, Franklin was stricken

with a kidney stone, which disabled him the rest of his life. From then

on even the jolting of his carriage over the cobblestone streets was

unbearably painful. He refused either to have an operation or take

drugs. “You may judge that my disease is not very grievous,” he wrote

John Jay, “since I am more afraid of the medicine than the malady.”

The preliminary Anglo-American peace terms were finally signed on

November 30, 1782, and on September 3, 1783, came the signing of the

Treaty of Paris, in which Great Britain at last acknowledged the

independence of the United States. The achievement of this treaty, by

Franklin with John Adams and John Jay, would be labeled “the greatest

triumph in the history of American diplomacy.”

“May we never see another war!” wrote Franklin to Josiah Quincy. “For in

my opinion there never was a good war or a bad peace.”

“The times that tried men’s souls are over,” wrote Thomas Paine in

America.

Franklin was seventy-seven, sick with gout, dropsy, and half a dozen

minor ailments besides his dreadful stone, but his mind was as keen and

his soul as full of fun as a youth of twenty. No one ever had a more

glorious old age than he was having.

16

A GLORIOUS OLD AGE

On August 27, 1783, just a few days before the signing of the peace

treaty with England, a balloon ascension was held at the Champ-de-Mars.

It was the first in Paris; the first in history had taken place near

Lyons in the previous June. For four days preceding the event, the great

balloon of varnished silk had been filling up with hydrogen gas under

the direction of the physicist Jacques-Alexandre-César Charles. Paris

was agog with excitement. Some 50,000 gathered to watch.

Franklin, who was present, reported that the balloon rose rapidly “till

it entered the clouds, when it seemed to me scarce bigger than an orange

and soon after became invisible.”

“What good is it?” a skeptic asked.

“What good is a newborn baby?” Franklin retorted, a remark that went

around the world.

He saw the first free balloon ascend with human passengers on November

20, at the Château de la Muette in Passy. The passengers, scientist

Pilâtre de Rozier and the Marquis d’Arland, were lifted some 500 feet,

floated over the Seine, and landed in Paris. A few weeks later he

witnessed a balloon soar upwards from the Paris Tuileries, taking its

human cargo to the incredible height of 2,000 feet.

He could not resist speculating as to what man’s triumph over space

might mean to the future. Would the balloon perhaps become a common

means of transportation? How delightful that would be for one like

himself for whom riding in a carriage had become such agony. But he

could hardly hope for such comfort in his lifetime.

More to the point was the possibility that the actuality of balloon

flight might convince “sovereigns of the folly of wars”:

Five thousand balloons, capable of raising two men each, could not

cost more than five ships of the line; and where is the prince who can

afford so to cover his country with troops for its defense as that ten

thousand men descending from the clouds might not in many places do an

infinite deal of mischief before a force could be brought together to

repel them?

Not even the wealthiest and most powerful ruler could guard his

dominions against such an air raid. The terrible threat would mean an

end to warfare. So Franklin reasoned, happily unable to peer into the

future.

Following the Treaty of Paris, Congress had retained his services as

ambassador to France for two years longer. He served unofficially as

United States ambassador for all of Europe, and new honors rained down

on him. He was elected a member of Madrid’s Royal Academy of History, of

Manchester’s Literary and Philosophical Society, of the Academies of

Sciences and Arts in the French towns of Orléans and Lyons. Through

Admiral Lord Richard Howe, a staunch friend still, the British Admiralty

sent him Captain Cook’s _Voyage to the Pacific Ocean_, a tribute to his

instructions to American cruisers to refrain from interfering with the

explorer and his crew.

His real and solid pleasures came not from such tokens of recognition

but from the circle of good friends he had acquired in his years at

Passy. He was on good terms with the parish priest, the village

tradesmen, and all the children of the town. The Chaumont family, on

whose estate he lived, were deeply devoted to him, including the young

daughter Sophie whom he called “my little wife.”

He established strong bonds of friendship with his neighbor, the lovely

and talented young Madame Brillon, wife of an elderly treasury official.

For several years he called on her nearly every Wednesday and Saturday,

to play chess or to idle on her terrace in the sun. Sometimes he played

for her on his armonica.

Once he spent a summer day with Madame Brillon and some other companions

on Moulin-Joli, an island on the Seine. Over the river hovered a swarm

of tiny May flies, known as _ephemera_ since their life span is but a

few hours. As a souvenir of this holiday, he wrote the “Ephemera,” one

of his most charming fables, a delicate satire about the trivia which

make up the thoughts and actions of many human souls during their own

comparatively brief period on earth.

“Papa,” Madame Brillon called Franklin. After she and her husband left

Passy, she sent him a plaintive note. “How am I going to spend the

Wednesdays and Saturdays?” Might they perhaps be united in paradise? “We

shall live on roast apples only; the music will be made up of Scottish

airs ... everyone will speak the same language; the English will be

neither unjust nor wicked ... ambition, envy, pretensions, jealousy,

prejudices, all these will vanish at the sound of the trumpet.”

Young and old, French women lavished attention on the American

philosopher. In return, he gave them affection both fatherly and

gallant, told them amusing stories, and showed that combination of

respect for their mental capacities and appreciation of their womanly

charms which had won over Catherine Ray Greene so many years before.

Among his many close women friends the most celebrated was the elderly

Madame Helvétius, widow of a wealthy landowner and philosopher, who

lived with her two daughters at Auteuil, a village next to Passy, in the

midst of a little park planted with hortensias and rhododendron, and

over-run with cats, dogs, chickens, canaries, pigeons, and wild birds.

“Our Lady of Auteuil,” Franklin called her, while her daughters were

“_les étoiles_,” the stars.

Her salon was frequented by philosophers, statesmen, poets, scientists,

and mathematicians. Franklin first met her through the French minister

Turgot. When she knew him better she told him she wished she had

welcomed him as she had Voltaire, whom she had greeted at her gate like

a king.

One of the many scholars Franklin met at her salon was a talented young

doctor named Philippe Pinel. Franklin advised him to come to America

where doctors were badly needed. Pinel was tempted but refused—and

became famous for his courage and wisdom in removing chains from the

insane at the Paris hospitals of Bicêtre and Saltpêtrière.

While John Adams and his wife Abigail were at Passy, Franklin invited

Madame Helvétius to dinner. The worthy Abigail was horrified when Madame

Helvétius kissed Franklin’s cheeks and forehead in greeting. Even more

shocking in her eyes, the guest held Franklin’s hand at dinner and now

and then let her arm rest on the back of John Adams’ chair.

“I should have been greatly astonished at this conduct,” Abigail wrote

afterwards, “if the good Doctor had not told me that in this lady I

should see a genuine Frenchwoman, wholly free from affectation or

stiffness of behaviour, and one of the best women in the world. For this

I must take the Doctor’s word; but I should have set her down for a very

bad one.”

Whatever Abigail Adams thought, there is no doubt of Franklin’s

devotion. Sometime—no one knows just when—he proposed marriage to Madame

Helvétius. She refused him. Perhaps she was too accustomed to her own

way of life to want to make a change. Perhaps she felt that his proposal

was only a form of gallantry. Neither the proposal nor her refusal

interfered with their friendship, which lasted as long as he stayed in

France and by correspondence afterward.

Since 1777 he had his own private press at Passy and a foundry to cast

his own type. His excuse was that the press was useful with so many

official forms to be prepared, but it was also true that printing was

still in his blood and always would be.

One of the pamphlets that came off the Passy printing press was

“Information to Those who would Remove to America.” He thought too many

of the wrong people wanted to emigrate to America for the wrong reasons,

and he wanted to correct their misapprehensions. He discouraged artists

and scholars who expected they would receive free transportation, land,

slaves, tools and livestock from a rich but ignorant America. In

America, a man who did not bring his fortune “must work and be

industrious to live.”

The chief resource of America was cheap land, he pointed out. Farm

laborers were needed. Skilled artisans could make a good living and

“provide for children and old age.” But “those Europeans who have these

or greater advantages at home would do well to stay where they are.”

To answer those who besieged him with questions about the Indians, he

wrote “Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America,” perhaps the

first fair appraisal of America’s original inhabitants to be printed:

The Indian men, when young, are hunters and warriors; when old,

counsellors; for all their government is by counsel of the sages;

there is no force, there are no prisons, no officers to compel

obedience or inflict punishment.... The Indian women till the ground,

dress the food, nurse and bring up the children, and preserve and hand

down to posterity the memory of public transactions. These employments

of men and women are accounted natural and honourable. Having few

artificial wants they have abundance of leisure for improvement by

conversation. Our laborious manner of life, compared with theirs, they

esteem slavish and base; and the learning on which we value ourselves

they regard as frivolous and useless....

So he continued, by illustration and by example, to show that while

Indian ways and customs were quite different from those of the white

men, there was much to be said for them, and they were by no means

always inferior. In fact, there was much which men who called themselves

civilized could learn by studying the nature of those called savages.

Some pieces in lighter vein were also run off his press, which Franklin

wrote partly as an exercise in French, partly to entertain himself and

his friends. In one of these bagatelles, as such pieces are known, he

told Parisians of a discovery he had made whereby they could make great

savings in the cost of candles and oil lamps. He had gone to bed one

night, as usual at three or four hours after midnight, and had been

awakened by a sudden noise at six, to find that his room was flooded

with light! His servant had forgotten to close the shutters before he

retired. Looking into his almanac, he learned what few others could

know—that the sun rises early and “_that he gives light as soon as he

rises_.”

Another of his bagatelles was “Dialogue between Franklin and the Gout,”

in which Gout explains his frequent and unwelcome visits as due simply

to Franklin’s indolence; he plays chess too much and exercises too

little. The “Ephemera” was printed as a bagatelle, and so was “The

Whistle,” an expanded version of the little story he had once told his

son William.

His intellectual curiosity had not slackened during his years in France.

War or no war, he continued to observe natural phenomenon, write and

reflect on scientific matters, and keep up with the newest discoveries

and inventions.

He attended meetings of the Royal Society of Medicine, to which he had

been elected in 1777, and of the French Academy of Science. In 1782, he

watched Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier perform an experiment with the gas he

had named oxygen—Joseph Priestley’s “dephlogistated air.” He wrote to

Jan Ingenhousz, a Dutch scientist, about differences between the Leyden

jar and Volta’s new electrophorus, and to Edward Nairne, an English

friend, about the comparative humidity of the air in London,

Philadelphia and Passy.

To a French friend, Count de Gebelin, he discoursed on the

characteristics of the various Indian languages. When de Gebelin

commented that some Indian words sounded Phoenician, Franklin dived into

archaeological speculations:

If any Phoenicians arrived in America, I should rather think it was

not by the accident of a storm but in the course of their long and

adventurous voyages; and that they coasted from Denmark and Norway

over to Greenland, and down southward by Newfoundland, Nova Scotia,

etc., to New England; as the Danes themselves certainly did some ages

before Columbus.

He wrote a paper on the phenomenon of the aurora borealis (the northern

lights) for the French Academy of Science, sent notes to Marie

Antoinette’s physician, Felix Vicq d’Azyr, on the length of time

infection could remain in the body after death, and investigated a story

of some workmen in the Passy quarry who claimed to have found living

toads shut up in solid stone.

In a letter to another friend, the Abbé Soulavie, he pondered on why

there were coal mines under the sea at Whitehaven and oyster shells in

the Derbyshire mountains—indications of great geological changes in the

past. Was it possible that the surface of the earth was a shell “capable

of being broken and disordered by the violent movements of the fluid on

which it rested?” Admittedly, this was only a guess: “I approve much

more your method of philosophizing, which proceeds upon actual

observations....”

He still tinkered with inventions, and for his own comfort devised the

first bifocal glasses, so he could see both near and far without

changing his spectacles.

He was old enough to be serious all the time, but he never could resist

a hoax, even with his scientific friends. To the eminent French

physician Georges Cabanis he confided that in the forests of North

America he had observed a bird which “like the horned screamer or the

horned lapwing, carries two horned tubercles at the joints of the wings.

These two tubercles at the death of the bird become the sprouts of two

vegetable stalks, which grow at first in sucking the juice from its

cadaver and which subsequently attach themselves to the earth in order

to live in the manner of plants and trees.”

The inspiration for this weird creation of his imagination was perhaps

the “vegetable animal” he thought he saw on the gulf weed he had fished

out of the Gulf Stream at the age of twenty. His friend Cabanis,

suspecting nothing, dutifully reported it in one of his books, taking

only the precaution to note that “in spite of the great veracity of

Franklin, I cite it with a great deal of reserve.”

What endless marvels the world offered and how much there was to know

about them! One lifetime was not nearly long enough. “The rapid progress

true science now makes occasions my regretting sometimes that I was born

so soon,” he wrote Joseph Priestley after their countries were at peace

once more. “It is impossible to imagine the height to which may be

carried, in a thousand years, the power of man over matter.... O that

moral science were in as fair a way of improvement that men would cease

to be wolves to one another, and that human beings would at length learn

what they now improperly call humanity.” He could not guess that his

fervent cry would still be echoed, in one form or another, more than a

hundred and seventy-five years after his death.

In 1784, the King of France chose him to serve on a commission of five

to investigate the work of Dr. Franz Anton Mesmer, who claimed to effect

cures through “animal magnetism,”—a universal fluid which flowed to his

patients from the healer, or from some object “magnetized” by the

healer, such as a tree. All fashionable Paris was flocking to Mesmer’s

seances; his following was enormous throughout France.

With Franklin on this commission served Joseph-Ignace Guillotin (whose

name would survive in the French Revolution’s chief instrument of

execution) and the scientist Lavoisier (whom the guillotine would claim

as a victim). After many months of study, the commission concluded that

“animal magnetism” did not exist, and that Mesmer’s cures were the

result of “imagination.” The importance of imagination in physical

illness was as yet unrecognized. Privately Franklin commented that

Mesmer’s treatments certainly did some good—at least they kept some from

taking injurious drugs.

On the whole the findings of the commission brought both Mesmer and

mesmerism into disrepute. Indirectly the shadow of its disapproval fell

on a phenomenon first discovered by a Mesmer disciple, the Marquis de

Puysegur—that some persons, in a state of trance and apparently asleep,

are able to obey simple commands. Hypnotism, for many years after de

Puysegur’s observations, was relegated to quacks rather than physicians

and scientists.

In August of 1784 Thomas Jefferson arrived from America to help

negotiate treaties with European and North African powers. Franklin

introduced him to his French scientific friends and found in his company

the same harmony as when they were both members of the Second

Continental Congress. His last winter in France, Polly Hewson and her

children also joined him at Passy. Mrs. Stevenson, Polly’s mother, had

died in England during the war. Franklin welcomed these members of his

“English family” with joy and affection.

He still had his two grandsons with him. There had been some objections

from Congress to his making Temple his secretary, on the grounds that he

was the son of a traitor. Franklin had been highly indignant: “Methinks

it is rather some merit that I have rescued a valuable young man from

the danger of being a Tory, and fixed him in honest republican Whig

principles.”

Yet there was some justification in the fears of Congress. At

twenty-six, Temple was charming, handsome and spoiled. He spent his

evenings at music halls and, wearing red heels, an embroidered coat, and

with an Angora cat on a leash, paraded the boulevards with aristocratic

young friends. Mockingly the Parisians dubbed him “Franklinet.” While

Franklin was trying to kill a clause in the peace treaty conceding

special privileges to Tories, Temple, without his knowledge, wrote to

Lord Shelburne pleading a government post for his Tory father.

Different as could be was Benjamin Bache, now sixteen, a husky wholesome

youngster much like Franklin at his age. He wanted no more than to be a

printer as his grandfather had been. Franklin taught him how to cast

type, and in April 1785 persuaded the best printer in France to make him

an apprentice. The arrangement was of short duration.

In May, Franklin at last received permission from Congress to come home.

Jefferson was appointed ambassador to France in his stead. “I am not

replacing Franklin,” Jefferson said loyally. “No one could do that. I am

only his successor.”

He left Passy on July 12, 1785, traveling to Havre in a royal litter

drawn by mules, which the King had provided for his comfort. His

personal goods—128 boxes in all—went by barge down the Seine. He took

with him Louis XVI’s personal gift—the King’s miniature, set with 408

diamonds. The whole population of Passy watched him leave, silent except

for occasional outbursts of sobs.

“All the days of my life I shall remember that a great man, a sage,

wished to be my friend,” wrote Madame Brillon just before his departure.

A farewell note from Madame Helvétius was waiting for him at Havre: “I

see you in your litter, every step taking you further from us, lost to

me and all my friends who love you so much and to whom you leave such

long regrets.”

He and his grandsons spent four days at Southampton, England. William

Franklin came down from London, where he was now living, to see them,

but the meeting with his father was brief and strained. Then Benjamin

Franklin set off for his eighth crossing of the Atlantic. He knew it

would be his last.

17

THE CLOSING YEARS

Never had America given a returning hero a more resounding welcome.

Booming cannons announced his landing on September 14, 1785, at

Philadelphia’s Market Street wharf. Bells rang throughout the city and

the whole town was out to greet him. Cheering crowds lined the street as

his carriage proceeded to his home at Franklin Court, where Sally and

his grandchildren, eight now in all, were waiting for him. Ceremonies in

his honor continued for weeks.

Old and feeble and almost constantly in pain, he was still not allowed

to relax. On October 11, he was made president of the Supreme Executive

Council of the Pennsylvania Assembly—an Assembly which would never again

have to pay heed to “the proprietors.” On October 29, two weeks later,

he was elected president of Pennsylvania. To avoid the agony of riding

in a carriage, he had a sedan chair built, so he could be carried to

meetings.

His eightieth birthday, January 6, 1786, was celebrated at the Bunch of

Grapes Tavern by Philadelphia’s now numerous printers. They drank their

first toast to their “venerable printer, philosopher, and statesman.” At

least once in this period George Washington came to dinner with him. One

pleasant afternoon and evening he spent with Thomas Paine, now one of

America’s most distinguished citizens; together they worked on inventing

a “smokeless candle.” For a while, Franklin kept in his garden a model

of an iron bridge which Paine had invented and which attracted droves of

curious visitors.

He tried vainly to secure a post for Temple, but Congress was still

doubtful about him. Later he bought the young man a farm at Rancocas,

New Jersey. Temple liked farm life so little he spent most of his time

in Philadelphia. For Benjamin Bache he set up a printing press and type

foundry, which the youth managed contentedly until at the age of thirty

an attack of yellow fever brought his life to a premature end.

In July 1786, an Indian chief of the Wyandots, named Scotosh, came to

Franklin with a message from his people, bringing strings of white

wampum. Franklin received him with the same courtesy due any ambassador.

Following the Indian custom, he waited two days to consider the chief’s

message, then presented more strings of wampum with his reply.

In the Pennsylvania Assembly, that September, he helped revise the penal

code. No longer were men to be hanged for robbery, arson, or

counterfeiting. By the new act only murder and treason warranted capital

punishment. Branding with a hot iron, flogging, the pillory were all

abolished. Such barbarities did not belong in a new nation.

He was pleased with signs of progress and quick recovery from war. “Our

working-people are all employed and get high wages, are well fed and

well clad,” he wrote in November. “Buildings in Philadelphia increase

rapidly, besides small towns rising in every quarter of the country. The

laws govern, justice is well administered, and property is as secure as

in any country in the globe.... In short, all among us may be happy who

have happy dispositions; such being necessary to happiness even in

paradise.”

But all was not yet honey and roses in the new United States, as he soon

discovered. Much trouble had risen because of the lack of power of the

Confederacy.

Under the Articles of the Confederation, Congress might declare war, but

could not enlist a single soldier. Congress could ask the states for

money, but had no authority to raise a dollar by taxation. It could make

treaties but could not force the states to recognize them. It could not

regulate commerce and each state taxed imports as it wished. Not only

the Confederacy, but all the states issued their own money, resulting in

endless confusion.

To create a strong central government, the Constitutional Convention

opened on May 25, 1787, at the Philadelphia State House, in the same

room where the Declaration of Independence had been signed. Franklin,

who was the oldest delegate here, as he had been at the Second

Continental Congress, expressed the hope that good would come from the

Convention: “Indeed if it does not do good it must do harm, as it will

show that we have not wisdom enough among us to govern ourselves.”

There were fifty-five delegates in all, the best minds in America.

George Washington was the natural choice as presiding officer. All that

hot summer they labored on the task of making a workable constitution.

Franklin did not miss a meeting in the four months. As always, he said

little. When he had a speech to make, he wrote it out in advance and let

James Wilson, or some other delegate, read it for him. He could no

longer stand to deliver an address without pain. In the course of the

sessions he advocated three ideas—a single legislature, a plural

executive, the nonpayment of officers. All three were rejected. He

accepted the defeat without rancor.

His main role was as a peacemaker. In case of an impasse, as was

inevitable with so many contrary views and opinions, it was invariably

he who suggested a workable compromise. Once, when feelings were taut to

the point of hostility, he moved that the Convention open its sessions

with prayer:

“I have lived a long time, and the longer I live the more convincing

proofs I see of this truth: that God governs in the affairs of men. And

if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it

probable that an empire can rise without His aid?”

His motion was received with respect but no action was taken on it.

Perhaps he guessed there would be none. Whether he planned it or not,

his proposal had the effect of cooling hot tempers, and work continued

with less dissension.

The final day of the Convention was Monday, September 17. The great

document, which was the fruit of their heavy labor, was read by the

secretary. Then James Wilson gave Franklin’s comments:

I confess that there are several parts of this Constitution which I do

not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them;

for, having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being

obliged by better information or fuller consideration to change my

opinions.... In these sentiments, sir, I agree to this Constitution

with all its faults, if there are such; because I think a general

government necessary for us, and there is no form of government but

what may be a blessing to the people if well administered.... Thus I

consent, sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and

because I am not sure that it is not the best....

Then Franklin moved that the Constitution be signed by the delegates as

“done in Convention by the unanimous consent of the states present.”

While the last delegates were affixing their signature, Franklin’s eyes

were on the president’s chair, on the back of which a sunset—or

sunrise—was painted. To those near him he said, “I have often and often

in the course of the session ... looked at that sun behind the president

without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting. But now at

length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a

setting sun.”

In the year of the Convention, the Massachusetts delegate, Elbridge

Gerry, called on Franklin, bringing a friend named Manasseh Cutler.

Later Cutler wrote down his recollections of this first meeting with the

philosopher-statesman.

He was sitting hatless under a mulberry tree in his garden, “a short,

fat, trunched old man in a plain Quaker dress, bald pate, and short

white locks.” Present were several men and women, one of whom was Sarah

Bache. When Cutler was introduced, Franklin rose, took him by the hand,

expressed his joy at seeing him, and begged him to be seated by his

side. He spoke in a low voice and his “countenance was open, frank, and

pleasing.”

Sarah Bache served tea under the tree. She had three of her younger

children with her, who “seemed to be excessively fond of their

grandpapa.” They talked until dark when Franklin took his guests into

his study, “a very large chamber and high-studded.” The walls were lined

with bookshelves and there were more books in four alcoves extending

two-thirds of the length of the room. Cutler guessed rightly that this

was “the largest and by far the best private library in America.”

Their host showed them a sort of artificial arm—a long pole with prongs

at the end that could be opened or shut with a rope, which he had

devised to take down and put up books on the upper shelves. (Previously

he had used a chair which could be unfolded into a ladder, but now he

was not sufficiently agile.) He had other curiosities in the room, such

as a glass machine for “exhibiting the circulation of the blood in the

arteries and veins of the human body” and his rocking armchair, with a

fan placed over it which he could operate by a small motion of his foot.

Because Cutler was a botanist, Franklin showed him a precious folio

containing _Systema Vegetabilium_, by Linnaeus, the founder of

systematic botany. Heavy as the folio was, Franklin insisted on lifting

it himself, and to Cutler he expressed regret that he had not in his

youth given more attention to the science of botany.

They discussed many other matters and Cutler was astonished at

Franklin’s extensive knowledge, “the brightness of his memory, and

clearness and vivacity of all his mental faculties, notwithstanding his

age,” and at the “incessant vein of humour ... which seems as natural

and involuntary as his breathing.”

But his age was catching up with Benjamin Franklin, as no one realized

better than he. In February 1788, he fell on the stone steps that led

into his garden, bruising himself badly and spraining his wrist, so that

temporarily he could not even write to his friends. The accident was

followed by a severe attack of his kidney stone ailment. He was still

confined to bed when Pennsylvania celebrated gloriously its twelfth

Fourth of July. The Pennsylvania Council held meetings at his house

during his illness, and in October, Thomas Mifflin, a veteran of the

Revolutionary War, was elected to succeed him.

To quiet the anxiety of his sister in Boston, Jane Mecom, he wrote,

“There are in life real evils enough, and it is a folly to afflict

ourselves with imaginary ones.... As to the pain I suffer, about which

you make yourself so unhappy, it is, when compared with the long life I

have enjoyed of health and ease, but a trifle.”

He made his will that summer of 1788. In a codicil, he bequeathed to “my

friend, and the friend of mankind, General Washington,” the walking

stick with the gold head in the shape of a cap of liberty, which had

been given him in France as a symbol of victory.

Congress was now allotting many pensions and bonuses to patriots who had

sacrificed their personal interests to serve in the cause of freedom.

Franklin had hoped that his many years of foreign service might be

thought worthy of a grant of a tract of land in the West “which might

have been of some use and some honour to my posterity.” This was never

given him.

Arthur Lee, who had been notably jealous of Franklin and who had written

him vitriolic letters in France accusing him of leaving him out of

things, was a member of the Treasury Board. He had never forgotten or

forgiven Franklin for being the better man. John Adams was finding ears

to listen to his long-standing disapproval of Franklin’s “frivolity.” He

was being criticized for being too fond of France, as he had once been

censored for his attachment to England, and especially for accepting as

a gift the King of France’s miniature. There was also a matter of a

million livres given by France to the dummy importing concern, Hortalez

and Company, which was unaccounted for. Franklin was condemned by

innuendo, though time would clear him completely.

He was sorrowful about this turn of affairs but he blamed nobody. He

knew something of the “nature of such changeable assemblies,” he wrote a

friend, “and how little successors are informed of services that have

been rendered to the corps before their admission.”

Once more he had turned to working on his _Autobiography_, commenced

years before at the Shipley home in England. For six months off and on

he kept at it, even while his kidney stone was causing him such acute

pain he had to resort to opium. He brought his life story up to the time

of his first meetings with the Penn brothers in England. It remained

unfinished.

By the summer of 1789 he was so emaciated that, in his words, “little

remains of me but a skeleton covered with a skin,” and philosophic as

always, commented, “In this world, nothing can be said to be certain

except death and taxes,” tossing off another epigram that would survive.

The long fermenting discontent of the French working classes exploded in

the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789. Franklin seems not to

have realized the extent of the misery in France during his stay there.

Most of his intimate friends had been wealthy, or at least well-to-do.

His own life had been so idyllic he had come to think of his foster

country almost as a utopia. Moreover, he was deeply grateful to the

French King for his generosity to America.

But his belief in the rights of the common man was firm and if the

people of France felt they needed a change, he was with them. When

rumors of their Revolution reached him, he wrote, “Disagreeable

circumstances might attend the convulsions in France ... but if by the

struggle she obtains and secures for her nation its future liberty, and

a good constitution, a few years’ enjoyment of those blessings will

amply repair all the damages their acquisition may have occasioned.”

Since 1787 he had been president of the Pennsylvania Society for

Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, founded by the Quakers, and his

signature was on a memorial which the society sent to Congress on

February 12, 1790, advocating the abolition of slavery. Congress

dismissed the memorial on the grounds that it had no authority to

interfere in the internal affairs of the states. Whereupon Franklin

promptly published an essay, “On the Slave Trade,” in which a mythical

Algerian, Sidi Mehemet Ibrahim, used the same arguments as the Negro

slave owners to defend his right to Christian slaves! The piece showed

the same barbs of wit and satire as his earlier writings. His campaign

against slavery was his last public activity.

His pain now kept him bedridden, but he did some work, using Benjamin

Bache as his secretary, and he found the energy to listen to his

nine-year-old granddaughter Deborah recite lessons from her Webster

spelling book. In March, Thomas Jefferson, on his way to accept his post

as Secretary of State under President George Washington, came to see

him, and on April 8, he wrote Jefferson his last letter, a clear account

of the map which he and the other peace commissioners used in fixing the

boundary between Maine and Nova Scotia.

He was now running a high temperature. Breathing became so difficult

that he nearly suffocated. When, briefly, he felt a little better, he

rose from his bed, begging that it might be made up fresh for him so he

could die in a decent manner.

His daughter Sally told him she hoped he would recover and live many

years longer.

“I hope not,” he said calmly.

They put him back to bed and his physician advised him to change his

position so he could breathe more easily.

“A dying man can do nothing easy,” he commented.

Soon afterwards he fell in a coma. Temple and Benjamin Bache, his

grandsons, were alone with him when, on April 17, 1790, at the age of

eighty-four and three months, the end came.

His death brought an abrupt halt to the petty recriminations that had

saddened his last months. In Philadelphia, the city that had grown up

with him and because of him, muffled bells tolled, and flags on the

ships in the harbor hung at half mast. Some 20,000 attended his funeral,

the greatest number the city had ever seen gathered in one spot. As he

was lowered into his grave in the Christ Church burying ground beside

his wife, a company of militia artillery fired funeral guns in honor of

the man who had organized Pennsylvania’s first militia.

In New York, by a motion passed unanimously, the United States House of

Representatives voted to wear mourning for a month. Neither the Senate

nor the Executive Council followed the example of the House. Ironically,

the man chosen to pronounce his funeral eulogy at the Lutheran German

Church in Philadelphia was William Smith, his ancient enemy. Although

Smith did not do him justice, the crowd before the pulpit sobbed openly.

But it was in France, his adopted country, where the expressions of

grief and loss were most tumultuous. The National Assembly proclaimed a

period of three months of national mourning for the “benefactor and hero

of humanity.” “Antiquity would have raised altars to this mighty

genius,” cried the revolutionary leader Mirabeau.

Splendid orations in his honor were delivered by the Jacobins, the

Friends of the Constitution, the Academy of Science, the Royal Society

of Medicine, the National Guard, the Masonic lodges, the printers of

France, and uncounted other societies. All over the country, women wept

for him. It is said that one enterprising businessman became rich by

selling statuettes of him, made from the stones of the Bastille.

Franklin’s contributions to his country, to science, to better

understanding between nations and peoples were immense. His maxims on

thrift and moral virtues have been extolled to generations of school

children. His wit and wisdom have added to the world’s riches. He was

many men in one—statesman, scientist, inventor, writer, humorist,

philosopher, and a friend of humanity who shared himself with all around

him.

“Who that know and love you can bear the thoughts of surviving you in

this gloomy world?” cried out Jane Mecom, his beloved sister, shortly

before his death.

Posterity would provide her answer. Because Benjamin Franklin lived and

enjoyed life, the world would be a little less gloomy and a little more

pleasant for all who came after him.