Benjamin Franklin

by Jr. John T. Morse

With the outbreak of war Franklin's feelings towards England had taken on that extreme bitterness which so often succeeds when love and admiration seem to have been misplaced. "I was fond to a folly," he said, "of our British connections, ... but the extreme cruelty with which we have been treated has now extinguished every thought of returning to it, and separated us forever. You have thereby lost limbs that will never grow again." English barbarities, he declared, "have at length demolished all my moderation." Often and often he reiterated such statements in burning words, which verge more nearly upon vehemence than any other reminiscence which survives to us of the great and calm philosopher.

Yet in the bottom of his heart he felt that the chasm should not be made wider and deeper than was inevitable. In 1780 he told Hartley that Congress would fain have had him "make a school-book" from accounts of "British barbarities," to be illustrated by thirty-five prints by good artists of Paris, "each expressing one or more of the different horrid facts, ... in order to impress the minds of children and posterity with a deep sense of your bloody and insatiable malice and wickedness." He would not do this, yet was sorely provoked toward it. "Every kindness I hear of done by an Englishman to an American prisoner makes me resolve not to proceed in the work, hoping a reconciliation may yet take place. But every fresh instance of your devilism weakens that resolution, and makes me abominate the thought of a reunion with such a people."

In point of fact the idea of an actual reunion seems never from the very outset to have had any real foothold in his mind. In 1779 he said: "We have long since settled all the account in our own minds. We know the worst you can do to us, if you have your wish, is to confiscate our estates and take our lives, to rob and murder us; and this ... we are ready to hazard rather than come again under your detested government."[77] This sentiment steadily gained strength as the struggle advanced. Whenever he talked about terms of peace he took a tone so high as must have seemed altogether ridiculous to English statesmen. Independence, he said, was established; no words need be wasted about that. Then he audaciously suggested that it would be good policy for England "to act nobly and generously; ... to cede all that remains in North America, and thus conciliate and strengthen a young power, which she wishes to have a future and serviceable friend." She would do well to "throw in" Canada, Nova Scotia, and the Floridas, and "call it ... an indemnification for the burning of the towns."

Englishmen constantly warned him of the blunder which the colonies would commit, should they "throw themselves into the arms" of France, and they assured him that the alliance was the one "great stumbling-block in the way of making peace." But he had ever the reply, after the fashion of Scripture: By their fruits ye shall know them. France was as liberal of friendship and good services as England was of tyranny and cruelties. This was enough to satisfy Franklin; he saw no Judas in the constant and generous de Vergennes, and could recognize no inducement to drop the substance France for the shadow England.[78] To his mind it seemed to concern equally the honor and the interest of the States to stand closely and resolutely by their allies, whom to abandon would be "infamy;" and after all, what better bond could there be than a common interest and a common foe? From this view he never wavered to the hour when the definitive treaty of peace was signed.[79]

Such was Franklin's frame of mind when the surrender at Yorktown and the events incident to the reception of the news in England at last brought peace into really serious consideration. The States had already been forward to place themselves in a position for negotiating at the first possible moment. For in 1779 Congress had received from France an intimation that it would be well to have an envoy in Europe empowered to treat; and though it was seizing time very much by the forelock, yet that body was in no mood to dally with so pleasing a hint, and at once nominated John Adams to be plenipotentiary. This, however, by no means, fell in with the schemes of the French ministry, for de Vergennes knew and disliked Mr. Adams's very unmanageable character. Accordingly the French ambassador at Philadelphia was instructed to use his great influence with Congress to effect some amelioration of the distasteful arrangement, and he soon covertly succeeded in inducing Congress to create a commission by appointing Adams, Jay, Franklin, Jefferson, who never went on the mission, and Laurens, who was a prisoner in England and joined his colleagues only after the business had been substantially concluded. Adams promptly came to Paris, created a great turmoil there, as has been in part narrated, and passed on to Holland, where he still remained. Jay, accredited to, but not yet received by, the Spanish court, was at Madrid. Franklin therefore alone was on hand in Paris when the great tidings of the capture of Cornwallis came.

It was on November 25, 1781, that Lord North got this news, taking it "as he would have taken a ball in his breast." He recognized at once that "all was over," yet for a short time longer he retained the management of affairs. But his majority in Parliament was steadily dwindling, and evidently with him also "all was over." In his despair he caught with almost pathetic eagerness at what for a moment seemed a chance to save his ministry by treating with the States secretly and apart from France. He was a man not troubled with convictions, and having been obstinate in conducting a war for which he really cared little, he was equally ready to save his party by putting an end to it with the loss of all that had been at stake. Franklin, however, decisively cut off that hope. America, he assured Hartley, would not forfeit the world's good opinion by "such perfidy;" and in the incredible event of Congress instructing its commissioners to treat upon "such ignominious terms," he himself at least "would certainly refuse to act." So Digges, whom Franklin described as "the greatest villain I ever met with," carried back no comfort from secret, tentative errands to Adams in Holland and to Franklin in France. Simultaneous furtive advances to de Vergennes met with a like rebuff. France and America were not to be separated; Lord North and his colleagues were not to be saved by the bad faith of either of their enemies. On February 22, 1782, an address to the king against continuing the American war was moved by Conway. It was carried by a majority of nineteen. A few days later a second, more pointed, address was carried without a division. The next day leave was granted to bring in a bill enabling the king to make a peace or a truce with the colonies. The game was up; the ministry held no more cards to play; on March 20 Lord North announced that his administration was at an end.

In his shrewd, intelligent fashion, Franklin was watching these events, perfectly appreciating the significance of each in turn. On March 22 he seized an opportunity which chance threw in his way for writing to Lord Shelburne a short note, in which he suggested a hope that the "returning good disposition" of England towards America would "tend to produce a general peace." It was a note of a few lines only, seemingly a mere pleasant passage of courtesy to an old friend, but significant and timely, an admirable specimen of the delicate tact with which Franklin could meet and almost create opportunity. A few days later the cabinet of Lord Rockingham was formed, composed of the friends of America. In it Charles Fox was secretary for foreign affairs, and Lord Shelburne had the home department, including the colonies. No sooner were the new ministers fairly instated than Shelburne dispatched Richard Oswald, a retired Scotch merchant, of very estimable character, of good temper, reasonable views, and sufficient ability, to talk matters over with Franklin at Paris. Oswald arrived on April 12, and had satisfactory interviews with Franklin and de Vergennes. The important fact of which he became satisfied by the explicit language of Franklin was, that the hope of inducing the American commissioners to treat secretly and separately from France was utterly groundless.[80] After a few days he went back to London, carrying a letter from Franklin to Shelburne, in which Franklin expressed his gratification at these overtures and his hope that Oswald might continue to represent the English minister. Oswald also carried certain "Notes for Conversation," which Franklin had written out; "some loose thoughts on paper," as he called them, "which I intended to serve as memorandums for my discourse, but without a fixed intention of showing them to him." As matters turned out later, it would have been better if Franklin had not been quite so free with these "memorandums," which contained a suggestion that the English should cede Canada and the Americans should recoup the losses of the royalists. Indeed, no sooner had the paper left his hands than he saw his error, and was "a little ashamed of his weakness." The letter only was shown to the whole cabinet.

On May 5 Oswald was again in Paris, charged to discuss terms with Franklin. But on May 7 there arrived also Thomas Grenville, deputed by Fox to approach de Vergennes with the design not only of treating with France, but also of treating with the States through France. The double mission indicated a division in the English cabinet. Fox and Shelburne were almost as hostile to each other as were both to Lord North; and each was aiming to control the coming negotiations with the States. Which should secure it was a nice question. For English purposes of classification the States, until independence was acknowledged, remained colonies, and so within the charge of Shelburne. Hence came Fox's scheme for reaching them indirectly through France, also his avowed willingness to recognize their independence immediately, for foreign business belonged to him. Shelburne, on the other hand, strenuously resisted this; at worst, as he thought, independence must come through a treaty, and with equivalents. Moreover it seems that he cherished an odd, half-defined notion, apparently altogether peculiar to himself, that he might escape the humiliation of a grant of full independence, and in place thereof might devise some sort of "federal union." Perhaps it was out of this strange fancy that there grew at this time a story that the States were to be reconciled and joined to Great Britain by a gift of the same measure of autonomy enjoyed by Ireland.

When Oswald and Franklin next met, they made at first little progress; each seemed desirous to keep himself closed while the other unfolded. The result was that Franklin wrote, with unusual naïveté: "On the whole I was able to draw so little of the sentiments of Lord Shelburne ... that I could not but wonder at his being again sent to me." At the same time Grenville was offering to de Vergennes to acknowledge the independence of the United States, provided that in other respects the treaty of 1763[81] should be reinstated. That is to say, France was to agree to a complete restoration of the status quo ante bellum in every respect so far as her own interests were concerned, and to accept as the entire recompense for all her expenditures of money and blood a benefit accruing to the American States. This was a humorous assumption of the ingenuousness of her most disinterested protestations. The French minister, we are told, "seemed to smile" at this compliment to the unselfishness of his chivalrous nation,[82] and replied that the American States were making no request to England for independence. As Franklin happily expressed it: "This seems to me a proposition of selling to us a thing that was already our own, and making France pay the price they [the English] are pleased to ask for it." But the design of weaning the States from France, in the treating, was obvious.

Grenville, thus checked, next tried to see what he could do with Franklin in the way of separate negotiation. But he only elicited a statement that the States were under no obligations save those embodied in the treaties of alliance and commerce with France, and a sort of intimation, which might be pregnant of much or of little, that if the purpose of the former were achieved through the recognition of independence, then the commercial treaty alone would remain. This somewhat enigmatical remark doubtless indicated nothing more than that the States would not continue active and aggressive hostilities in order to further purely French designs. Clearly it would depend upon the demands of France whether the States might not find themselves in a somewhat delicate position. Their obligation to make no separate peace with England had been contracted upon the basis that France should ally herself with them to obtain their independence; and the injury expected to result therefrom to England, with the chance of commercial advantages accruing to France, had been regarded as a full consideration. Yet it would seem ungrateful, to say the least, to step out of the fight and leave France in it, and to refuse to back her demands for the recoupment of some of the losses which she had suffered in the previous war. But now the French alliance with Spain threatened grave complications; she had joined France in the war, and the two powers were held closely together by the Bourbon family interests. Spain now had demands of her own in the way of territory on the American continent, where she had made extensive conquests, and even for the cession of Gibraltar. But the States owed little to Spain, vastly less, indeed, than they had tried to owe to her; for their incessant begging had elicited only small sums, and they were more irritated at their failure to obtain much than thankful for the trifles they had extorted. So they now easily and gladly took the position of entire freedom from any obligation, either by treaty or of honor, towards that power. But in the probable event of France standing by Spain, peace might be deferred for the benefit of a country with which the States had no lien, unless the States could treat separately. It was not within the purview of the treaty that they should remain tied to France for such purposes; and to this purport Fox wrote to Grenville. But though it might be tolerably easy to enunciate a theory by which the States could justly control their own affairs, with no regard to France, it was only too probable that the application of that theory to circumstances would be a very nice and perplexing task. It strongly behooved a new country to preserve its good name and its friendships.