Franklin (11 page)

As usual, Franklin saw humor in the situation. One day he cooked up a “model of a letter of recommendation of a person you are unacquainted with.” The letter, which he gave to people going to America, explained that Franklin did not know the person, but he recommended him “to those civilities which every stranger of whom one knows no harm has a right to.”

Franklin worried constantly over American seamen in British jails. Through friends in England, he set up a fund that was to pay them money each week to buy decent food. The man in charge of this fund was Maryland merchant Thomas Digges, whom Arthur Lee had select
e
d. Unfortunately, Digges was a British agent. He took the £400 Franklin sent to England and put it in his pocket.

Franklin condemned Digges in a letter. “He that robs the rich even of a single guinea is a villain; but what is he who can break his sacred trust, by robbing a poor man and a prisoner of 18 pence given in charity for his relief and repeat that crime as often as there are weeks in a winter, and multiply it by robbing as many poor men every week as made up the number of near six hundred? We have no name in our language for such atrocious wickedness. If such a fellow is not damned, it is not worthwhile to keep a devil.”

A British friend wrote to Franklin because he had heard a rumor the secret agents of George III were planning to assassinate him. Franklin wasn't frightened. “I thank you for your kind caution,” he wrote, “but having nearly finished a long life, I set but little value on what remains of it . . . Perhaps the best use such an old fellow can be put to, is to make a martyr of him.” No more was heard of an assassination plot.

At Passy, Franklin became friends with his neighbors. The ladies especially loved him and called him “mon cher Papa.” His favorites were Madame Brillon, a gifted musician of thirty-five, and Madame Helvetius, a widow of over fifty, still beautiful, daughter of an aristocrat. Franklin teased Madame Brillon about being in love with her, but she regarded him as her “spiritual father.” He agreed to adopt her as his daughter and in his letters, he called her that. When she had trouble with her husband, Madame Brillon fled to Franklin for advice.

Franklin's relationship with Madame Helvetius was different; he fell in love with her and proposed. But wishing to remain faithful to the memory of her husband, she declined. Franklin wrote her a story with the hope of changing her mind. He dreamed he had died and gone to heaven, he said, where he met Mr. Helvetius. Helvetius informed Franklin he had taken a new wife in paradise. At that moment, the wife appeared, and Franklin was amazed to discover it was his wife on earth, Deborah. “Come,” he said to Madame Helvetius, “let us revenge ourselves.” But madame still said no.

His friends eased Franklin's pain when he received further news about his son William. The Continental Congress agreed to exchange William for a captured British general. In New York, William became head of the Board of Associated Loyalists, an organization that recruited men to fight for the British and it began launching raids against Americans loyal to Congress, in New Jersey, on Long Island, and in Connecticut. This hurt Franklin deeply. It was bad enough to have his son refuse to fight for independence, but now he was fighting against fellow Americans, killing by ambush, and burning homes and barns. Franklin was devastated; he never again could feel a father's love for William.

Franklin hoped William Temple Franklin would take William's place, but the acrimony between his father and grandfather hurt him. He worked for Franklin part time, but he preferred to be a playboy, wearing the latest fashions and flirting with women in Paris. In America, Arthur Lee needled Franklin through Temple, accusing the young man of being a Loyalist and possibly a spy. “Is it enough that I have lost my son; would they add my grandson?” Franklin cried in a letter to son-in-law Richard Bache. If Congress ordered him to fire Temple as his secretary, Franklin declared, he would quit.

Once Franklin's other grandson, Ben Bache, had learned French, Franklin sent him to school in Geneva, Switzerland. “He is a good, honest lad and will make, I think, a valuable man,” Franklin said. He was right - Ben became a successful newspaper editor.

Franklin wrote Ben many letters while the boy was in Geneva, urging him to study hard. “I think of you every day,” he wrote, “and there is nothing I desire more than to see you furnished with good learning [so that you can become] an honourable man in your own country.”

The war dragged on. Then, in the fall of 1781, Franklin got an unexpected letter from Count Vergennes. He thought it might be a complaint, because the Americans were trying to borrow more money. Instead the letter contained the news Americans had trapped another British army at Yorktown, Virginia, and the best British general in America,
Charles Cornwallis
, had surrendered to Washington. Franklin told Vergennes that King Louis XVI
was le plus grand faiseur d'heureux
(the greatest creator of happiness) in the world.

In the spring of 1782, the upheaval in parliament that Franklin had been hoping for so many years finally occurred. The opposition voted Lord North and his ministers out of power. The new foreign minister was
William Petty
, Lord Shelburne, Franklin's friend. He immediately sent a representative to Franklin, telling him England wanted peace. Franklin urged Shelburne to do more than negotiate a treaty. “Reconcile England and America,” he advised him. How? Along with granting the thirteen colonies independence, Franklin said, Shelburne ought to give them Canada and Nova Scotia. This land could be used to pay for the millions of dollars of damage England's armies and fleets had done to America's towns and cities. Shelburne's representative at the peace conference,
Richard Oswald
, agreed. If Franklin had been able to push negotiations through, alone, America might have won complete control of North America.

But Franklin was not the only peace negotiator on the American side. Two others –
John Jay
and John Adams, both lawyers - tended to see everything in legal terms. Jay refused to negotiate with the British until they formally recognized America's independence. Adams sided with Jay, so Franklin was overruled. As Americans wrangled with the British for more than two months, the British won two battles. The British fleet fought in the West Indies with the French fleet and beat them badly. Spain, which had entered the war on France's side, tried to capture Gibraltar. But the Spanish army was beaten off, and a British fleet broke through with supplies, giving them a stronger position at the peace table.

In the end, the Americans settled for all territory between the seacoast and the Mississippi River, with boundaries on the north and south about where they are today. Even then, the British wouldn't sign the treaty until Americans agreed to pay the Loyalists for the farms, estates and houses they were forced to abandon.

Franklin rose to play a trump card. He read a list of cities and towns the British had burned or looted. He noted the thousands of men, women and children slaughtered on the frontier by British-led Indian raids. Before the British talked about compensating Loyalists, let them pay this bill. British negotiators conferred and agreed to sign the treaty as it stood.

The British, it seemed, had betrayed the Loyalists by failing to insist the treaty include provisions to protect their rights. With American about to seek vengeance on them, more than 100,000 – 5 percent of the American population - fled America, going to Nova Scotia, the Caribbean, and England. On April 26, 1783, more than 7,000 Loyalist boarded ships out of New York. Within five years, many had received compensation from the British government for their treatment.

William, meanwhile, corresponded with his cousins and nephews. In 1784, he wrote to Benjamin, asking to resume their relationship. He explained that he had written sooner because of his father's assignment. He didn't apologize for his actions, pointing out “the cruel sufferings, scandalous neglects, and ill treatment which we poor unfortunate Loyalists have in general experienced.” He called his “duty to my king and regard to my country required. If I have been mistaken, I cannot help it. It is an error of judgment that the maturest reflection I am capable of cannot rectify, and I verily believe, were the same circumstances to occur again tomorrow, my conduct would be exactly similar to what it was.”

Benjamin replied, lamenting the deterioration of their relationship. “Indeed, nothing has ever hurt me so much and affected me with such keen sensibilities as to find myself deserted in my old age by my only son; and not only deserted, but to find him taking up arms against me in a cause wherein my good fame, fortune and life were all at stake,” Benjamin wrote. “We are men, all subject to errors. Our opinions are not in our power. They are formed and governed much by circumstances that are often as inexplicable as they are irresistible.” Benjamin rebuffed William's request to come to visit.

Franklin, meanwhile, was elated with this victory. Thirteen colonies had won their independence against Great Britain, the strongest nation on the globe.

Less than a month later, the British and French signed a treaty. The war was over. That night, arriving at the home of a French friend, Franklin exclaimed, “Could I have hoped, at my age, to enjoy such a happiness?”

With peace secured, Franklin's spirits soared. He forgave everyone who had hurt him. When John Jay wrote to tell him he had many enemies in England, Franklin replied, “They are my enemies as an
American.”
He added he had two or three enemies in America, but he was able to thank God “there are not in the whole world any who are my enemies as a man; for by His grace, thro' a long life, I have been enabled so to conduct myself, that there does not exist a human being who can justly say ‘Ben. Franklin has wrong'd me.'”

When William Strahan wrote to Franklin, lamenting the confused state of English politics, Franklin told him not to despair. “We have some remains of affection for you, and shall always be ready to receive and take care of you in case of distress. So if you have not sense and virtue enough to govern yourselves . . . dissolve your present old crazy constitution, and send members to Congress.”

Soon after, Franklin had an opportunity to repay a debt of gratitude. In his years at the Court of Versailles, he had become friends with the Papal Legate, the priest who represented the Pope in France. The Papal diplomat informed the ambassador that America's independence had convinced the Pope the Catholic Church in America was ready to take a step toward maturity. It was time to appoint an American bishop. Did he have any suggestions? Franklin had one - his friend, Father John Carroll, who had saved his life on the trip down the lakes from Canada in 1776. The Papal Legate passed on Franklin's recommendation to Rome, and soon a very surprised Father Carroll was America's first bishop.

Meanwhile, Franklin was enjoying a new scientific interest - balloons. The French had begun filling balloons, first with heated air, then with hydrogen, which Franklin called “inflammable air.” Franklin sent reports on these first balloon flights to scientists in England and America. Pessimists bemoaned the expense and time – to fill a balloon took two days and nights - and they demanded to know what good ballooning would do. Franklin, foreseeing the day when people would be able to fly everywhere, replied: “What good is a newborn baby?”

Though Franklin's French friends urged him to spend the rest of his life in their country, he decided to return home. “I want to die in my own country,” he said. He had developed a stone in his bladder, which made riding in a carriage painful, so the king sent him a litter, drawn by his royal mules, to carry him to the coast. Ben Bache, who accompanied him, noted in his diary that the people of Passy crowded around the litter to say goodbye. “A mournful silence reigned . . . only interrupted by a few sobs.”

In August 1785, Franklin stopped for a few days at Southampton to say goodbye to English friends. There, accompanied by Temple and Ben Bache, he saw William for the last time. The meeting was cool. Franklin bought from William the farm he still owned in New Jersey for one third of its value and gave it to Temple. He then presented William with a bill for £1,500 - money William owed for Temple's education in England and loans Franklin had made to the governor when they were trying to create the Ohio colony. William knew if he had joined the Americans in the war, Franklin would have forgiven these bills. Now, he had to give his father the last land he owned in America - several thousand acres in upper New York state. Franklin also gave this land to Temple. William resented that his father forced him to surrender his land in America at the price he had paid for it fifteen years before.

There was another reason Franklin could not forgive William. He was wanted for the murder of a fellow American. Guerrilla raiders under his command had hanged a captured American captain,
Joshua Huddy
. Americans wanted to hang William in return, but he had jumped aboard a ship and gotten safely to England.

Benjamin spent several days in England with friends, apart from William. He sailed back to America without saying goodbye to his son. The British government paid William a pension £750 a year for the rest of his life.

To an English friend who had worked to reconcile the two countries, Franklin was more affectionate in his farewell. “We were long fellow laborers in the best of all works, the work of peace,” he wrote. “I leave you still in the field, but having finished my day's work, I am going home to go to bed! Wish me a good night's rest, as I do you a pleasant evening. Adieu!”

On the trip home, Franklin wrote his delayed report on the Gulf Stream. He told how ships could shorten their passage from America to England by as much as two weeks by using the three-mile-an-hour current. By avoiding it sailing from Europe to America, they could save as much as sixty or seventy miles a day. Modern scientists have not forgotten Franklin's discovery - the submarine that began exploring the Gulf Stream from top to bottom in 1969 is named the Benjamin Franklin.