resolved not to remain at home till the end of his apprenticeship. When
he was seventeen, he sold some of his books and left home with a few
dollars in his pocket. He went on board a vessel bound to New York.
Three days after leaving home, he landed in that city where he hoped
to find work. New York was then only a small town, and young Franklin
found no demand for his services with “the printer in the place.”
Therefore he went on to Philadelphia, which was then a much larger and
more important place than New York. Part of the way he walked, part he
traveled by boat; one Sunday morning in the autumn of 1723, he reached
Philadelphia.
In his account of his life he gives us a vivid picture of himself, a
friendless, homeless boy, walking hungry up the streets of the strange
city. He met a boy with some bread and asked where he could buy food.
Being directed to the baker’s, he asked for “three pennyworth” of bread
and received “three great puffy rolls.” Then he says, he “having no
room in my pockets, walked off with a roll under each arm and eating
the other.” Thus he passed the home of a Mr. Read, and at the door
stood his daughter Deborah, who laughed at the “awkward, ridiculous
appearance” of the strange lad. This Deborah Reed a few years later
became Franklin’s wife. Being satisfied with one roll, the youth gave
the other two to a woman and child who had come on the boat with him.
He soon got work with a printer in the town, but gave it up because
the governor offered to set him up in business for himself. He went
to London, to buy the outfit needed for his trade. On arriving there,
he found that the governor had failed to send the promised letters of
credit,--had, indeed, no credit himself--and the youth, penniless, in
a foreign land, was thrown on his own resources. He sought and secured
work as a printer, and remained in London about a year. He then
returned to Philadelphia, where he worked awhile as salesman in a shop
and afterwards at his trade. Soon after his return, he married Deborah
Read, who made him a good and helpful wife, managing his home and
aiding him in the shop.
Franklin had the “prospering virtues” of economy, industry, and
temperance, and he increased in worldly goods and in the esteem of his
townspeople. Despite some serious personal failings, he was a good
citizen and in public questions people came more and more to respect
his judgment.
In the American colonies in the eighteenth century, there were few
newspapers and those had a small circulation. Nearly every printer,
however, published an almanac which contained weather forecasts,
advice, jokes, and miscellaneous information. These almanacs had a
large sale and in many homes the only books to be found were an almanac
and a Bible. In 1733 Franklin published an almanac which he announced
was prepared by one Richard Saunders, called for short “Poor Richard,”
a character which Franklin created and represented as overflowing with
quaint humor and wise and witty sayings. “Poor Richard’s Almanac”
became the most popular of all publications of the kind. Franklin kept
up the yearly issue till 1758, when he turned it over to his partner.
Franklin was a man who was never so busy about many things that he did
not have time for another. You have been told how he acquired a good
English style; to this was added the charm that he always had something
to say that was worth hearing. He was fond of different branches of
science and was gifted with inventive talent. He studied the laws
which govern the movement of hot air, and invented what is called an
“open fireplace stove;” under the name of “the Franklin stove” or
“Pennsylvania fireplace,” a modified form of it is still in use.
When he was about forty years old, Franklin became interested in
the subject of electricity and became convinced that lightning is a
manifestation of electricity. He proved this by a famous experiment,
drawing the current down the string of a kite in a storm. He invented
the lightning rod--for he was always trying to apply the principles of
science so as to make them useful. Among his other inventions, was a
musical instrument called the “Armonica,” a kind of musical glasses.
Franklin was a progressive and public-spirited citizen. He organized
an orderly night-watch for Philadelphia, established the first
volunteer fire company, the first hospital, and the first subscription
and circulating library, in America. He interested people in the
subject of education and established an academy which became the
College of Philadelphia, and was the real origin of the University of
Pennsylvania. He originated also the American Philosophical Society “to
propagate useful knowledge.”
For years he served as postmaster, first of Philadelphia, and
afterwards as deputy postmaster-general of the colonies; he introduced
many reforms in the postal service and improved the methods of carrying
mail to and from the seventy post offices then in the country.
Franklin was now nearly fifty years of age and he was just to begin
the career which made him honored and renowned. This was his work as a
patriot at home and abroad.
When the French and Indian War broke out, he was commissioned to
procure wagons for Braddock’s army. In two weeks by the exercise of
private means and wonderful energy, he procured one hundred and fifty
wagons and two hundred and fifty pack-horses. After Braddock’s defeat,
Franklin, with a band of men whom he had persuaded to enlist, went to
protect the settlers on the frontier against the Indians.
It was not as a soldier, however, that he was to serve his country
best. Oppressive and burdensome laws were passed for the government
of the colonies, and it was resolved to send someone to England to
protest against them. Benjamin Franklin was sent to represent first
Pennsylvania, later Georgia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. He spent
several years in England and succeeded in getting repealed the laws
to which the colonies objected. Then he returned home. But soon the
English government passed laws more oppressive than ever. One of these
was the Stamp Act. Franklin ably and eloquently presented the cause
of the colonists, stating that they were willing to bear their fair
share of expenses, but that on principle they were opposed to taxation
without representation. The king and his ministers were not disposed to
grant the reasonable demands of the colonists. Franklin was insulted
and abused. In 1775 he returned to a home made desolate during his
absence by the death of his wife.
The battle of Lexington had already been fought, and the greatest and
wisest of the Americans realized that there was nothing left but to
fight for the rights they had failed to gain by respectful petition.
In 1776 there met at Philadelphia the second Continental Congress,
composed of delegates from the colonies. It was resolved to form a
colonial government and Benjamin Franklin was one of a committee
appointed to draw up a declaration of independence. This declaration
was drafted by Thomas Jefferson and was adopted so nearly in his words
that he is regarded as its author. On the fourth of July, 1776, this
declaration was adopted by Congress, and henceforth the colonies were
fighting not only for redress of wrongs but for freedom.
The next year Dr. Franklin, then over seventy years of age, was sent to
France as one of the commissioners from the United States. It was very
important for the struggling colony to gain aid and recognition from
France. No more popular or more influential ambassador could have been
selected than Franklin; he gained terms more favorable than any other
American could have secured.
The three American commissioners did not always agree. Franklin was
accused of mismanagement of affairs, or at least of failing to exercise
proper oversight. He talked little in his own defence. “A spot of dirt
thrown upon my character I suffered while fresh to remain;” he once
said shrewdly. “I did not choose to spread by endeavoring to remove
them, but relied on the vulgar adage that they would all rub off when
dry.”
At first the French were not willing openly to help the rebelling
English colonies, but they gave secret aid. The patriots, however,
seemed to be losing instead of gaining ground, and the outlook was
gloomy at home and abroad. The commissioners in France were distressed
by a report that the English general Howe had taken Philadelphia.
“Well, doctor,” said an Englishman to Franklin, “Howe has taken
Philadelphia.”
“I beg your pardon, sir,” said Franklin, “Philadelphia has taken Howe.”
But though he endeavored to put a brave face on the matter, his heart
was full of apprehension. A messenger came from the colonies and the
commissioners rushed out to meet him, asking if Philadelphia were
really taken.
“Yes,” answered the messenger.
Franklin clasped his hands and turned to stumble back into the house.
“But, sir, I have greater news than that,” continued the messenger.
“General Burgoyne and his whole army are prisoners of war.”
The French government hesitated no longer; in a few weeks it openly
recognized the United States, and made a treaty with them.
In 1785 Franklin returned home. He was now nearly eighty, but his
public life was not at an end. He was elected President of Pennsylvania
and the next year he was sent as a delegate to the Convention which met
to form a Constitution for the United States. In April, 1790, he died
and was buried in his adopted home in Philadelphia. He had years before
written an epitaph for himself.
“The Body
of
Benjamin Franklin, Printer,
(Like the cover of an old book,
Its contents torn out,
And stripped of its lettering and gilding,)
Lies here food for worms.
Yet the work itself shall not be lost,
For it will, (as he believed) appear once more
In a new
And more beautiful Edition
Corrected and Amended
By
The Author.”
Montcalm and Wolfe
You have heard of the beginnings of the French power in America--how
Cartier and La Salle, Marquette and Champlain, explored the country and
claimed it in the name of their king. They went up and down the St.
Lawrence and the Mississippi, and established along the streams their
trading-posts and military forts.
The English meanwhile, settled along the Atlantic coast and established
farms and villages.
The English patents granted to their colonists the land from the
Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. The French claimed and were occupying
the Mississippi valley. The English pressed westward and crossed the
Alleghany Mountains through gaps made by the rivers which the French
claimed; the French pressed eastward along these same rivers. Contact
and conflict were inevitable. The French foresaw it and made their
preparations accordingly. From the mouth of the St. Lawrence to the
mouth of the Mississippi, they established posts and organized their
forces. French traders, French missionaries, French settlers, upheld
the power of their king. They made friends with the Indians of many
tribes, but from the day that Champlain joined battle against the
Iroquois, the Five Nations were the deadly enemies of the French and
therefore the friends of the English.
The English were, as you may think, most unwilling to give up the
western lands which they claimed. Governor Spottswood of Virginia, who
in 1716 rode westward to the summit of the Blue Ridge at the head of a
company of gentlemen, realized how important it was to hold this fair
region against the French. He urged the English government to establish
a chain of posts from the lakes to the Mississippi in order to keep
back the French. His advice was unheeded. A few years later the French
began to occupy the valley of the Ohio, and it became evident that
there the two nations would clash.
During this time there were growing into manhood two youths who were to
be leaders when the conflict came.
One of these was a Frenchman, Louis Joseph, Marquis de Montcalm. At the
age of fourteen, he entered the army and at the age of eighteen he was
a general. He did valiant service in Italy and in Germany.
Several years younger than Montcalm was the English soldier, James
Wolfe. He also became a soldier at an early age and at sixteen was
serving in the Netherlands, doing a man’s work in the battles which
he described with boyish zest in his loving and dutiful letters to his
mother in England.
About the middle of the eighteenth century, the French determined to
shorten and strengthen their line of defence towards the south. They
established a fort on French Creek and an outpost upon the Alleghany
River. This was land which the English claimed, and George Washington,
then a lad of twenty-one, was sent to the French to demand that they
leave the Ohio. A forced march was made through the pathless winter
woods. The French commander received the messenger courteously, but
informed him that they regarded the land as their own and had no
intention of yielding it to the English. This was in the winter of
1753. The next year Washington was sent in command of a little force
of three hundred and fifty men to uphold the English claim, and was
defeated at Great Meadows by a French force of double the size. The
English began to build a fort at the junction of the Alleghany and
Monongahela Rivers on a site selected by Washington, but the French
drove them away and finished the fort, which they called Fort Du Quesne.
In this emergency the colonies at first did not act together. Troops
were sent from Virginia, South and North Carolina, and Maryland; but
the Quakers of Pennsylvania and the Dutch of New York said that the
English claim to the valley of the Ohio was a matter of no importance,
and did not move. Fortunately, the home government recognized the
necessity of protecting the frontier, and of extending outposts; troops
were sent from England for this purpose. Thus in 1755 began the Seven
Years’ War which involved England and France in Europe; in America this
contest was called the French and Indian War, from the enemies the
English colonists had to encounter.
The English general Braddock led forces to the northwest just as he
would have marched them in a European campaign. He paid with his life
the penalty of his ignorance of Indian warfare, being defeated and
fatally wounded by an Indian attack in the forest. This defeat was the
first of many.
“I dread to hear from America,” said the English statesman, Pitt, as
month after month, year after year, brought tidings of defeat.
In the spring of 1756, Montcalm was sent to Canada to command the
French forces. He began a career of victory by capturing Fort Ontario
at Oswego. The next year he captured Fort William Henry at the head of
Lake George, with its garrison of twenty-five hundred men. In 1758,
with thirty-six hundred men he defended Fort Ticonderoga against an
English force of fifteen thousand. As he had neither men nor supplies
to hold the place, he was compelled to abandon it the next year and
retire to Quebec. Here he was to contend in a death struggle with the
English general Wolfe, who was sent to America in 1758.
The English realized the value of their New World possessions. The
best of their troops were sent over to prosecute the war with vigor.
Montcalm, on the other hand, lacked men, means, ammunition, and
supplies, for which he appealed in vain to the home government. With a
sad heart he foresaw the downfall of French power in America. Resolved
“to find his grave under the ruins of the colony,” he bent all his
energies to the struggle.
One place after another was captured by the English. News of their
victories came now as regularly as tidings of their defeat had come
a few months before. Louisburg, a naval station and fortified town
commanding the mouth of the St. Lawrence, was attacked and taken. The
French were driven from Fort Frontenac at Oswego which guarded the
outlet of the Great Lakes. Fort Du Quesne was taken by Washington, and
Crown Point was captured and strengthened.
In 1759 the rival powers made ready for a final struggle at Quebec, the
stronghold of the French. Montcalm had retired there and collected his
forces--fourteen thousand men. Wolfe, with a smaller army, besieged
the place. Week after week the English endeavored to find a vulnerable
spot; week after week the French held the strongly-fortified city.
At last Wolfe determined to conduct soldiers up a bluff which was so
steep that it was thought to be inaccessible and so was not strongly
guarded.
One September night his boats dropped down the river and landed the
soldiers who marched up the cliff. On the way Wolfe quoted some lines
from Gray’s noble poem, “The Elegy in a Country Churchyard:”
“The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave
Await alike the inevitable hour:--
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.”
“I would rather have written that than to take Quebec,” he said.
By daybreak four thousand, five hundred men were on the heights above
Quebec. Montcalm, with such a force as he could collect, made ready to
attack.
Wolfe gave his last charge to his men: “The officers and men will
remember what their country expects from them, and what a determined
body of soldiers are capable of doing against five weak battalions,
mingled with a disorderly peasantry. The soldiers must be attentive to
their officers, and resolute in the execution of their duty.”
He led his men forward to the plains of Abraham, an open tract about
a mile from Quebec. In the attack Wolfe was wounded. He was informed
that the French were retreating and an eye-witness says that he “raised
himself up on this news and smiled in my face. ‘Now,’ said he, ‘I die
contented,’ and from that instant the smile never left his face till he
died.”
Montcalm, too, was mortally wounded. On being told that death was near
he said, “So much the better; I shall not live to see the surrender of
Quebec.”
The fall of this stronghold was the practical loss of Canada. By the
treaty of peace in 1763, France yielded to England all her northern
possessions in America, and her claim on the eastern valley of the
Mississippi.
Patrick Henry
An Eloquent Orator
Up to the very time that war was begun, Franklin hoped that it might
be averted; even then while he hoped that the colonies would get their
rights, he expected them to remain subject to England. Patrick Henry
was one of the few men who looked with eagle eye into the future and
saw that the American cause--the cause of freedom--must be upheld by
force of arms.
Patrick Henry was born in Virginia, in 1736. He was an awkward and
idle lad who picked up a smattering of an education at an “old field
school,” as the country schools of the time were called. He was fond of
books, but fonder still of his gun and his fishing-rod with which he
spent most of his spare time in the woods.
It was, however, necessary for him to set to work when a boy of
fifteen. He became a clerk in a store and then opened a little shop
of his own--but he did not succeed either as clerk or shopkeeper.
He married in young manhood and in order to support his wife and
children he went to work on a farm; here also he failed. He went back
to shopkeeping--and failed again. By this time people had a poor
opinion of the idle, slovenly young man whose life had been a series of
failures. The truth is, Henry was like a fish out of water; but in the
course of time he was to find his element.
At the age of twenty-four, he read law for six weeks, was examined by
judges, and was given a license to practice the profession. The judges
granted his license with much hesitation. Henry was ignorant of the
law,--had indeed read only the Virginia Statutes and one other law
book. But he showed remarkable powers of thought and reasoning, natural
not acquired qualifications, and the license was granted on condition
that he would continue to study. One of the judges said, “Mr. Henry, if
your industry be only half equal to your genius, I augur that you will
do well, and become an ornament and an honor to your profession.”
It is not strange, however, that the small amount of law business
which was in his community did not come Henry’s way. People naturally
preferred to put their business in the hands of those whom they
considered better qualified. He eked out a support for his family by
aiding his father-in-law to manage a tavern.
In 1763 he had what seems to have been his first really important
case,--one which was turned over to him because no one else cared
to undertake it. This was the famous “Parsons’ Case.” In order to
understand it, you must remember that the colony of Virginia was
then a part of England and that the church of England, like its
civil government, was established by law. The salaries of clergymen
were raised by a regular tax on all the people. As money was scarce
in the colonies, this tax was paid in tobacco which was the regular
currency of Virginia. By law sixteen thousand pounds of tobacco was a
clergyman’s yearly salary.
The people do not seem to have objected to paying these salaries, and
usually they found no fault with the amount of them. Twice, however,
after bad crop years, the House of Burgesses passed laws allowing the
payment of money instead of tobacco at a rate lower than the price
of tobacco in these years of scarcity. Naturally, the clergymen did
not like this, and they finally appealed to the king of England who
decided that the salaries must be paid in tobacco every year. So the
clergymen of Hanover county where Henry lived brought suit for the loss
sustained by the payment of money instead of tobacco. As the king,
who was the supreme authority, had decided the matter in favor of the
clergymen, it seemed that there was nothing for the Virginia courts
to do but to agree on the amount of damages due and pay them. Henry,
however, offered to plead the case against the parsons and plead it he
did with unexpected power. He told the people fearlessly that this was
a matter for them to decide. They were to be governed by their House
of Burgesses. It had made this law, and the king of England had no
right to gainsay it. Henry spoke so eloquently that he won the sympathy
of all. The jury could not put aside the king’s decree but it gave a
nominal adherence to that and a real one to Henry’s argument; for it
stated the clergymen’s damages as one penny each, about two cents.
From that time Henry was “the man of the people;” a little ahead of the
conservative element, but always in sympathy with the people and always
upon the side of the cause which in the end proved right. After his
success in “the Parsons’ Case,” he did not lack law business. He was
sent in the spring of 1765 to the House of Burgesses at Williamsburg.
This was then the site of the Virginia government; having been selected
after Jamestown was burned in the Great Rebellion.
The people of the colonies--even the loyal Virginians--were beginning
to be dissatisfied with the treatment of the mother-country. The Seven
Years’ War between England and France had come to an end two years
before. It had, of course, cost a great deal of money; in particular,
the sending of troops and supplies against the French in America had
been very expensive. The English government said that the colonies
ought to bear a large share of the war debt; the contest had begun on
the American frontier and the English victory had extended colonial
territory and trade. On the whole, this was not unfair. Probably the
colonies would have agreed to it, if they had been allowed to send
representatives to parliament--the English legislative body which has
the power of taxation. But the English were not willing to grant that
right. Then, said the Americans, “We must not be taxed. ‘Taxation
without representation is tyranny.’”
England paid little attention to the protests from America. A Stamp Act
was passed,--that is, a law requiring a stamp to be put on all papers
to make them legal. The money for these stamps was to be a source of
revenue to help pay the war debt. When the matter was being discussed,
Virginia protested against this Stamp Act. Nevertheless, in May, 1765,
a copy of the act was sent to the Virginia legislature, with the
information that it had become a law and must be enforced at a certain
time.