The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin Page 27

  Not only did Congress ignore his grandson, but it also said that it could not settle his accounts until it received more information from France. As Franklin in 1788 complained with barely suppressed anger in a letter meant for Cyrus Griffin, the president of the Congress, the Congress had had his accounts for the past three years and had done nothing with them. But this had not stopped members of Congress from spreading rumors about him. Indeed, “reports have for some time past been circulated here, and propagated in the News-Papers, that I am greatly indebted to the United States for large Sums that had been put into my Hands, and that I avoid a Settlement.” This, said Franklin, made “it necessary for me to request earnestly” that Congress examine the accounts “without farther Delay” and let him know if something was not right so that he could explain the matter and bring these accounts to a close.52

  He asked his friend Charles Thomson to present this letter to Griffin, “as you must be better acquainted with Persons and Circumstances than I am.”53 Such a request itself suggests Franklin’s problematic standing in the United States in 1788. Would Washington, who was Franklin’s only rival for international renown in the 1780s, or would any of the Revolutionary leaders, for that matter, ever have had to ask someone else to approach the president of Congress on their behalf? Because of the way Congress had treated his request to appoint his grandson to a diplomatic post, Franklin was now well aware of where he stood with that body. He had, he said, “flatter’d myself vainly that the Congress would be pleas’d with the Opportunity I gave them of showing that Mark of their Approbation of my Services. But,” he added pathetically, “I suppose that present Members hardly know me or that I have perform’d any.”54

  In the letter that he finally wrote to Thomson, Franklin released all of the anger he had suppressed in his letter to President Griffin. Indeed, although he assured Thomson that he would not have lessened his “Zeal for the Cause” even if he had foreseen “such unkind Treatment from Congress, as their refusing me their Thanks,” he must have come close to wondering whether he had chosen the right side in 1776.

  He knew that republics were notoriously ungrateful, but he had not expected the United States to treat him so meanly. It was “customary in Europe,” he told Thomson, “to make some liberal Provision for Ministers when they return home from foreign Service, during which their Absence is necessarily injurious to their private Affairs.” He had hoped that the members of Congress might have done something for him. “At least” they might “have been kind enough to have shewn their Approbation of my Conduct by a Grant of some Tract of Land in their Western Country, which might have been of some Use and some Honour to my Posterity.”

  In case Congress had forgotten, he included with his letter a “Sketch of the Services of B. Franklin to the United States.” In this sketch he described in the third person all he had done for the country—from his opposition to the Stamp Act to his encouragement of the Revolution and his missions abroad. He emphasized how many offices along with their salaries he had lost in service to the country and how much he had contributed to the cause out of his own pocket. He also stressed how difficult his service had been. When he was sent to Canada in 1776 he was “upwards of 70 Years of Age.” It was winter and the weather was cold; he passed the Lakes “while they were yet not free from Ice,” and “He suffer’d in his Health by the Hardships of this Journey, lodging in the

  Woods, &c, in so inclement a Season.” When Congress sent him to France, it gave him no advance on his expenses in the way the colony of Pennsylvania had done earlier. He “was badly accommodated in a miserable Vessel, improper for those northern Seas which was nearly founder’d in going and actually founder’d in her Return. In this Voyage he was so badly fed, that on his Arrival he had scarce Strength to stand.” During his mission to France he took on “extra Services” that Congress may not have been aware of, and he listed them—consul, judge of admiralty, merchant, and treasurer for the United States abroad. All this time “Mr. F. could make no Journey for Exercise and Health as had been annually his Custom, and the Confinement brought on a Malady that is likely to afflict him while he lives.” In short, he said, he never worked so hard in his life as he did during those eight years in France. And now he was at an age when “a Man has some Right to expect Repose.”55

  It was humiliating—that he should have been reduced to listing his services to the country in this self-pitying way. Once his services were known he could not believe that Congress would not do something for him. After all, it had paid Arthur Lee and John Jay for their service abroad. But then again, he reflected, as his anger began to mount, the rewards given to the American ministers were “trifling” compared with the compensation that Louis XVI had granted to France’s minister in America upon his return from abroad.

  “How different is what has happened to me!” he exclaimed, his anger palpable. When he returned from England in 1775 he had been given the office of postmaster general—understandably, for he had “some kind of Right” to the office, having transformed the colonial post office into a revenue-producing business. When he was sent to France in 1776 he had left the office in the hands of his son-in-law, Richard Bache, who was to act as his deputy. “But soon after my Departure it was taken from me and given to Mr. Hazard.”

  But his anger over losing the patronage of the post office reminded him of other irritations with the Congress concerning postal matters. Even the much hated British had not treated him as shabbily as the Congress had. When the British had taken away his position as deputy postmaster of North America in 1774, they had at least left him the privilege of not having to pay postage for his letters. That was the custom when a postmaster was displaced for any reason except malfeasance in office. By contrast, what did Congress do? “In America I have ever since had the Postage demanded of me, which since my Return from France has amounted to above £50 much of it occasion’d by having acted as Minister there.”56 Franklin made these complaints privately to Thomson as a friend. Although he wanted Thomson to present his letter to the president of the Congress, along with some sense of Franklin’s services to the United States, he declared he would never complain publicly about Congress’s behavior.57 For he knew “something of the Nature of such changeable Assemblies.” With the constant turnover of membership, these assemblies could never keep track of the services provided by their agents abroad; not only did they never feel obliged for these services, they even forgot that their agents had rendered them. He knew too from bitter experience the effect “artful and reiterated malevolent Insinuations of one or two envious and malicious Persons may have on the Mind of Members, even of the most equitable, candid, and honourable dispositions.” He was deeply hurt and angry. He realized his “Reproach thrown at Republicks, that they are apt to be ungrateful,” may have gone too far. If so, then he “would pass these reflections into oblivion.”58

  In the end the American republic showed no gratitude whatsoever. All of Franklin’s appeals to Congress to help his grandson or to straighten out his accounts came to nothing. Congress did not bother to acknowledge any of his requests or even to read his description of his services.59

  In this mood in 1788 he resumed the writing of his Autobiography. He began this third part with a statement that he would have to rely largely on his memory, since many of his papers had been lost in the war. But he did have one document, “accidentally preserved,” that he claimed he had written in 1731. This document stressed the inevitability of parties and the prevalence of self-interest in public affairs. He had thought his “united Party for Virtue” might be the best answer to the confusion and selfishness of the world. This party for virtue ought to have some sort of creed containing the essentials of all religions. These essentials included the belief that there was “one God” who “governs the World by his Providence”; that the way to serve God was to do good to man; that “the Soul is immortal”; and “that God would certainly reward Virtue and punish Vice either here or hereafter.”60

&nb
sp; In the rest of the Autobiography Franklin continued with a recital of his accomplishments in philanthropic and public affairs. The third section carried the narrative of his life up to his arrival in England in July 1757. The brief fourth section, which stops in 1758, was probably written in the winter of 1789-1790 and described only his negotiations with the proprietors as the agent of the Pennsylvania Assembly. These final two sections deal largely with the external events of Franklin’s life; he revealed little of his inner life—his anger and his disappointments. At the end he was determined to show his readers only the extent of his good work on behalf of America and the number of his civic accomplishments. If Congress did not appreciate them, then maybe posterity would.

  FRANKLIN AND SLAVERY

  Although his body was failing, his mind and his curiosity and his benevolence were as active as ever. He thought about various reforms, including insuring farmers against natural disasters, lessening the brutality of criminal punishments, and the possibilities of eliminating privateering in wartime. But the humanitarian issue that preoccupied him most was slavery.

  While we today can scarcely conceive of one person holding another in bondage, most early-eighteenth-century white Americans, living in a hierarchical society composed of ranks of dependency and unfreedom, accepted black slavery as a matter of course. Franklin was no exception. He had run advertisements for slaves in his newspaper, and he himself owned slaves for more than thirty years. His early questioning of slavery in 1751 was based solely on its effects on white society: with slaves “the white Children become proud, disgusted with Labour, and being educated in Idleness, are rendered unfit to get a living by Industry.”61 During his post office tours in the 1760s he saw a number of schools for blacks and developed “a higher Opinion of the natural Capacities of the black Race, than I had ever before entertained. Their Apprehension seems as quick, their Memory as strong, and their Docility in every Respect equal to that of White Children.”62

  But, like many other Americans, he did not begin seriously to question the existence of slavery until the early 1770s. Through the influence of his Quaker friend Alexander Benezet and the writings of British abolitionists, he began to hope that “the Friends to Liberty and Humanity will get the better of a Practice that has so long disgrac’d our Nation and Religion.”63 In France these early antislavery views were further stimulated by enlightened philosophes, especially the Marquis de Condorcet.64 By the 1780s he was willing to lend his name to the abolitionist movement in Pennsylvania. In 1775 the Philadelphia Quakers had founded the first abolitionist group in North America, which came to be called the Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage. Under the influence of this society, Pennsylvania became the first state to pass legislation providing for the gradual elimination of slavery. But more had to be done, as Franklin realized when he became the society’s president in 1787.

  In a statement in November 1789 signed by Franklin, the society declared that slavery was “such an atrocious debasement of human nature, that its very extirpation, if not performed with solicitous care, may sometimes open a source of serious evils.” It was foolish, the statement said, to expect the freed slave, “who has long been treated as a brute animal,” to behave as an ordinary citizen. Emancipated black people needed help in assimilating into free society. Therefore, it was the responsibility of the abolitionist organization not merely to work for the eradication of slavery but also “to instruct, to advise, to qualify those, who have been restored to freedom, for the exercise and enjoyment of civil liberty, to promote in them habits of industry, to furnish them with employments suited to their age, sex, talents, and other circumstances, and to procure their children an education calculated for their future situation in life.”65 Though tired and in considerable pain from his kidney or bladder stones, the eighty-four-year-old Franklin had lost none of his zest for improving the lives of his fellow Pennsylvanians.

  A few months later, in February 1790, Franklin signed a memorial to the new federal Congress requesting the abolition of slavery in the United States. This was a very different Franklin from the earlier pragmatic Franklin. No longer was he the tactful conciliator looking for the practical compromise between very diverse opinions. With his antislavery petition he was eager to provoke. Surely knowing what Congress’s response would be, he must have enjoyed sticking the issue to the heir of a body that had so long ignored and humiliated him, especially since Senators Richard Henry Lee and Ralph Izard, who had been his special tormentors, were Southern slaveholders. Since the new Congress had been created to secure “the blessings of Liberty to the People of the United States,” these blessings, the petition read, ought to be administered “without distinction of colour to all descriptions of people.” After all, said the petition, “Mankind are all formed by the same Almighty Being, alike the objects of his care, and equally designed for the enjoyment of happiness.”66

  As much as these views seem commonsensical to us today, they were not so in Franklin’s day. The petition predictably outraged many in the Congress and the country, and Franklin and the Quakers were viciously attacked. Congressman James Jackson of Georgia was especially vociferous in defending slavery in the House of Representatives. The Bible and nature justified slavery, said Jackson. If the slaves were freed, who would tend the fields of the South? Who else could do the work in a hot climate? Who would indemnify the masters? Abolitionists like Franklin, declared Jackson, were threats to the social order and ought to be ignored. The congressional committee to which the petition had been sent reported on March 5 that Congress had no authority to interfere in the internal affairs of the states.67

  Franklin saw his opportunity when he read Jackson’s speech, and he made the most of it with the literary technique he knew best—a hoax. This, his final hoax, appeared in the Federal Gazette on March 25, 1790, under the signature of “Historicus.” It purported to reprint a speech of Sidi Mehemet Ibrahim to the Divan, or council, of Algiers defending the time-honored custom of enslaving white Christians captured by Barbary pirates. Franklin took Jackson’s arguments and placed them in the mouth of this Muslim apologist for enslaving Christians. The Koran justified slavery, the Muslim leader said, and by every calculation it is necessary. “If we cease our Cruises against the Christians, how shall we be furnished with the Commodities their Countries produce, and which are so necessary for us? If we forbear to make Slaves of their People, who in this hot climate are to cultivate our Lands?” Besides, these white infidels were “brought into a Land where the Sun of Islamism gives forth its Light and shines in full Splendor,” and thus these poor benighted slaves had an opportunity of becoming “acquainted with the true Doctrine and thereby saving their immortal Souls.” After many such arguments, the conclusion was the same one that Jackson had made to Franklin’s petition to free the African slaves: “Let us hear no more of this detestable Proposition, the Manumission of Christian Slaves.” Just as Congress had decided, after some huffing and puffing about the injustice of slavery, so too did Franklin have his Muslim Divan behave: “The Divan came to this Resolution,” he wrote, that “ ‘The Doctrine, that Plundering and Enslaving the Christians is unjust, is at best problematical; but that it is the Interest of this State to continue the Practice, is clear; therefore let the Petition be rejected.’ ”68

  FRANKLIN’S DEATH

  During that same month of March 1790, Ezra Stiles, president of Yale, wrote Franklin to ask about his religious views. Franklin said that it was the first time anyone had questioned him about the subject. He did not want to take Stiles’s curiosity amiss, and he tried to answer him as succinctly as possible. He said that he believed “in one God, Creator of the Universe. That He governs it by his Providence. That he ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable Service we can render to him, is doing Good to his other Children. That the Soul of Man is immortal, and will be treated with Justice in another Life respecting its Conduct in this.” Franklin went on to say that
he (like Jefferson) believed Jesus’s “System of Morals and his Religion as he left them to us, the best the World ever saw, or is likely to see.” He also expressed his doubts of Jesus’s divinity, but did not want to argue the matter. Practical to the end, he saw no harm in people’s believing in Christ’s divinity since that belief would likely make his doctrines more respected and observed. Knowing that his own views might not be well received by his countrymen, he asked Stiles to keep them confidential.

  Early in April, Franklin developed a fever and some sort of lung ailment that made breathing difficult. He had been in pain for some time and was taking opium for relief. With him at the end were his daughter, Sally, her husband, and Franklin’s two grandsons, together with Mrs.

  Stevenson’s daughter Polly, who had succumbed to Franklin’s appeals and had immigrated to Philadelphia with her family. At one point Sally told her father that she hoped he would recover and live many more years. He replied, “I hope not.” He died on April 17, 1790. He was eighty-four.

  His will, drawn up in 1788, was odd. Instead of leaving the bulk of his four-thousand-book library to the Library Company, as the directors expected, Franklin left only a single multivolume work. Most of the rest of his books he left to his grandsons and a cousin. To the Philadelphia Hospital he left over £5000 in old debts that he had been unable to collect—a bequest that the hospital’s gentry patrons eventually turned down.69 Perhaps tired of the social snubbing he was getting from some genteel Philadelphians, he became in the end increasingly interested in young artisans. In a lengthy codicil drawn up in 1789 he left £1000 each to the cities of Boston and Philadelphia in hopes of having other young men emulate his life. The cities were to use these funds as the source of loans for young journeyman mechanics setting themselves up in business. (At the present time these funds amount to millions of dollars.) By making these grants Franklin seemed to foresee something of the role he was to play in America following his death.70