The great difficulty, however, was to obtain cannon for the armament of the battery. The associates succeeded at length in finding a few pieces of old ordnance in Boston which they could buy. These they procured and mounted in their places on the battery. They then sent to England to obtain more; and in the mean time Franklin was dispatched as a commissioner to New York, to attempt to borrow some cannon there, to be used until those which they expected to receive from England should arrive. His application was in the end successful, though the consent of Governor Clinton, to whom the application was made, was gained in a somewhat singular way. “At first,” says Franklin, “he refused us peremptorily; but at dinner with his council, where there was great drinking of Madeira wine, as the custom of the place then was, he softened by degrees, and said he would lend us six. After a few more bumpers he advanced to ten; and at length he very good-naturedly conceded eighteen.”
The pieces thus borrowed were eighteen pounders, all in excellent order and well mounted on suitable carriages. They were soon transported to Philadelphia and set up in their places on the battery, where they remained while the war lasted. A company was organized to mount guard there by day and night. Franklin himself was one of this guard, and he regularly performed his duty as a common soldier, in rotation with the rest. In fact, one secret of the great ascendency which he acquired at this time over all those who were in any way connected with him, was the unassuming and unpretending spirit which he manifested. He never sought to appropriate to himself the credit of what he did, but always voluntarily assumed his full share of all labors and sacrifices that were required.
The members of the society of Friends were very numerous in Philadelphia at this time, and they held a controlling influence in the legislature. And inasmuch as the tenets of their society expressly forbade them to engage in war or war-like operations of any kind, no vote could be obtained in the legislature to provide for any military preparations. The Friends, however, were not disposed to insist so tenaciously upon their views as to be unwilling that others should act as they saw fit. It was even thought that many of them were willing to encourage and promote the measures which Franklin was pursuing for the defense of the province, so far as they could do so without directly violating their professed principles by acting personally in furtherance of them.
Various instances occurred of this tacit acquiescence on the part of the Friends in the defensive preparations which were going forward. It was proposed for example that the fire-company which has already been alluded to, should invest their surplus funds in lottery tickets, for the battery. The Friends would not vote for this measure, but a sufficient number of them absented themselves from the meeting to allow the others to carry it. In the legislature moreover, they would sometimes grant money “for the king's use” the tacit understanding being that the funds were to be employed for military purposes. At one time, before the question of appropriating the surplus funds of the fire company was disposed of, Franklin had an idea—which he proposed to one of his friends—of introducing a resolution at a meeting of the company, for purchasing a fire-engine with the money. “And then,” said he, “we will buy a cannon with it, for no one can deny that that is a fire-engine.”
Soon after this Franklin went as a commissioner from the government, to make a treaty with a tribe of Indians at Carlisle, in the interior of Pennsylvania. On the night after the treaty was concluded, a great uproar was heard in the Indian camp, just without the town. The commissioners went to see what was the matter. They found that the Indians had made a great bonfire in the middle of the square around which their tents were pitched, and that all the company, men and women, were around it, shouting, quarreling and fighting. The spectacle of their dark colored bodies, half naked, and seen only by the gloomy light of the fire, running after and beating one another with firebrands, accompanied by the most unearthly yellings, presented a dreadful scene. The frenzy of the people was so great that there was no possibility of restraining it, and the commissioners were obliged to retire and leave the savages to themselves.
After this Franklin returned to Philadelphia and devoted his attention to a variety of plans for the improvement of the city, in all of which his characteristic ingenuity in devising means for the accomplishment of his plans, and his calm and quiet, but efficient energy in carrying them into effect, were as conspicuous as ever. One of the first enterprises in which he engaged was the founding of a hospital for the reception and cure of sick persons. The institution which he was the means of establishing has since become one of the most prominent and useful institutions of the country. He caused a petition to be prepared and presented to the Assembly, asking for a grant from the public funds in aid of this undertaking. The country members were at first opposed to the plan, thinking that it would mainly benefit the city. In order to diminish [pg 292] this opposition, Franklin framed the petition so as not to ask for a direct and absolute grant of the money that was required, but caused a resolve to be drawn up granting the sum of two thousand pounds from the public treasury on condition that the same sum should previously be raised by private subscription. Many of the members were willing to vote for this, who would not have voted for an unconditional donation; and so the vote was passed without much opposition.
After this the private subscriptions went on very prosperously; for each person who was applied to considered the conditional promise of the Assembly as an additional motive to give, since every man's donation would be doubled by the public grant, if the required amount was made up. This consideration had so powerful an influence that the subscriptions soon exceeded the requisite sum. Thus the hospital was founded.