Part 5

The defeat of Braddock taught the colonists that the British military was not as invincible as they had been led to believe. Many more Indians joined the French, deciding they were most likely to win. In the summer of 1755, Indian raiders were attacking isolated farms less than 100 miles from Philadelphia. It was obvious that once again Pennsylvania must provide its own defense.

A bill to vote 60,000 pounds for the militia was presented to the Pennsylvania Assembly. At first the Quakers opposed it, but with great tact Franklin won from them a concession that even though they bore no arms themselves they would not object if others did so. There was still more dissension on the subject of taxes. Franklin and many others believed that the taxes should be raised from all the landholders in the province. The lawyer for “the proprietors” claimed that the Penn family should be exempt from such taxes, as they always had been. He was supported by the conservatives in the Assembly and by Governor Robert Hunter Morris, who owed his appointment to the Penns.

Eventually the Penns compromised by offering 5,000 pounds toward the militia as a gift. The question as to whether or not their vast lands should be taxed remained unsettled, to trouble the future. Thomas Penn, who was living in London, was duly informed that Benjamin Franklin was a crafty man who could bend the Assembly to his will.

On November 24, 1755, a Shawnee war party burned down the Moravian village of Gnadenhuetten, 75 miles from Philadelphia, killing all the inhabitants except a few who escaped into the forests. The crime was the more appalling since the Moravians were as opposed to violence as the Quakers. They were a gentle, devout people who had befriended the Indians. The next day the Assembly appointed Franklin to head a committee of seven to manage the funds for the defense. More responsibilities on his shoulders, more decisions to make, arguments to settle, hotheads to calm down.

“All the world claims the privilege of troubling my Pappy,” wailed Deborah to a clerk named Daniel Fisher whom Franklin had just hired.

A few weeks later Franklin set out on horseback with 50 cavalrymen to recruit volunteers, and check on defenses in outlying districts—a strenuous assignment for a man nearly fifty and sedentary in his habits. William served as his aide. Theoretically, James Hamilton, a former governor, was in charge, but after a few days he quietly yielded the leadership to Franklin.

Their first stop was Bethlehem, the chief Moravian settlement. Franklin had expected them to be as opposed to military defense as the Quakers. On the contrary, they were determined to avoid a tragedy such as that at Gnadenhuetten, had built a stockade around their principal buildings, brought in arms from New York, and were even arming their women with small paving stones to throw out the windows should any marauding Indians approach.

“General Franklin,” the Moravians insisted on calling the head of the Philadelphia expedition.

They rode on to Easton next, to find a town in a state of panic and disorder with no discipline at all. Refugees filled the houses. Food was almost gone. There was drinking and rioting. Franklin organized a guard, put sentries on the principal street, set up a patrol, had bushes outside of town cleared away to avert their use as ambush, and enlisted some two hundred men into the provincial militia.

They visited other towns, arriving at the ruins of Gnadenhuetten in the bitter cold of January. After the mournful chore of burying the dead, the men set to building a stockade—felling pines, placing them firmly in the ground side by side. Franklin, with his passion for collecting facts, noted that it took six men six minutes to fell a pine of 14-inch diameter, and he observed that his men were more cheerful on the days they worked than when, because of rain or snow, they had to sit idle.

Supplies were running low when provisions arrived from Philadelphia, including roast beef, veal, and apples from Deborah. To reassure her, he wrote that he was sleeping on a featherbed under warm blankets. The truth was that, like his men, he slept on the floor of a hut with only one thin blanket. The stockade, finished at last, was 450 feet in circumference, 12 feet high, and had two mounted swivel guns but no cannon.

They were aware of the danger lurking in the dense forest. On a patrol, Franklin found the remains of Indian watches. For their fires they dug holes about three feet deep. The prints in weeds and grass showed they had lain in a circle around the fire holes, letting their feet hang over to keep warm. At a short distance, neither flame, sparks, nor smoke could be seen. But the Indians, not then nor later, risked an attack.

Franklin’s militia did no fighting but they turned defenseless regions into defensive ones. They had built two more stockades at Fort Norris and Fort Allen, when Franklin was called back to Philadelphia early in February for a special Assembly meeting. To have a good bed again seemed so strange, he hardly slept all night long.

On his return he was appointed a militia colonel. Following his first review of his regiment, the men accompanied him to his house and saluted him with several rounds of fire, incidentally breaking some glass tubes of his electrical apparatus. The following day when he set off for Virginia on post office business, 20 officers and some 30 grenadiers escorted him to the ferry, the grenadiers riding with drawn swords in a ceremony reserved for persons of great distinction. When Thomas Penn in England learned of this tribute, he was furious. No grenadiers had ever drawn their swords for him.

As for Governor Morris, he suavely suggested that Franklin and his command should try to take Fort Duquesne, which Braddock had failed to take, promising him a general’s commission. Franklin firmly declined. He had no illusions about his military ability and likely suspected Morris of wishing to be rid of him. (Fort Duquesne was eventually captured in 1758, in an expedition led by British Brigadier General Forbes; George Washington hoisted the British flag over the fort’s ruins.)

In August 1756, following a declaration of war on the Delaware, the new governor, William Denny, offered large bounties for “the scalp of every male Indian enemy above the age of twelve years,” and smaller bounties for “female Indian prisoners and youths under eight.” Franklin, like the majority of the Assembly members, was outraged at this barbarity, and disgusted with the conduct of the proprietors and their representatives. Early in 1757, a vote was passed to send Franklin to England, as official agent of Pennsylvania, there to present to Parliament and the King a petition of grievances against the Penns.

Debby would not go with him. She was frightened to death of the sea. He did take William, who was radiant at seeing England. By April they were in New York, ready to catch their ship. Packets for England were in charge of Lord Loudon, the new commander-in-chief, an amiable person with all the time in the world to listen to complaints, indulge in long conversations, and to write endless notes. Not until he had finished this mysterious correspondence, would he permit the fleet to depart. For more than two months, Franklin and his son waited, restless and impatient and helpless.

There was plenty of time to puzzle about the errors of the British. Why they should send to the colonies an arrogant man like General Braddock, a dawdler like Loudon, governors like the dishonest Sir William Keith, or Morris and Denny, who were far more interested in protecting the rich proprietors than in the welfare of the colonists. But then the reason for Franklin’s voyage was to correct such mistakes. He had no doubt that the King and the mighty Parliament would be glad to listen to him.

7 THE BATTLE WITH THE PENNS

During the voyage to England, Franklin wrote a preface for his 1758 _Almanack_. In the form of a letter from “Poor Richard” to his “Courteous Reader,” it told of a sermon on frugality and industry, which Poor Richard had heard in the market place by “a plain clean old man with white locks” called Father Abraham. He was most flattered to find that Father Abraham was quoting him, Poor Richard, at every other breath.

As Poor Richard says: Many words won’t fill a bushel.... God helps them that help themselves.... The sleeping fox catches no poultry.... Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.... For want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; and for want of a horse the rider was lost....

As Poor Richard says: Many a little makes a mickle.... Fools make feasts, and wise men eat them.... Pride that dines on vanity, sups on contempt.... ’Tis hard for an empty bag to stand upright.... If you will not hear reason, she’ll surely rap your knuckles...

All the nuggets of wise counsel which he had dropped in his _Almanack_ in the twenty-five years of its existence, Franklin gathered for Father Abraham’s speech. Omitted were the racy ballads, verses, broad humor and jokes which had made the _Almanack_ a potpourri where every man could find something to his taste. Only at the end was a touch of Franklin’s sly wit. Following Father Abraham’s sermon, Poor Richard watched disconsolately as the village folk dispersed to spend their hard-earned money as foolishly as ever on the marketplace wares. The only one to take the sermon to heart was Poor Richard himself who had come to buy material for a new coat but left, “resolved to wear my old one a little longer.”

Father Abraham’s speech was later published under the title of “The Way to Wealth.” It was reprinted in many editions and translated in many languages, and it won the author almost as much fame as his discoveries in electricity.

Peter Collinson met Franklin and his son in London, where they arrived on July 26, 1757, taking them to his home. No doubt he and Franklin discussed electricity until very late, with William only half listening and more or less bored. The next day, a printer named William Strahan, with whom Franklin had corresponded some fourteen years but never met, called on him.

“I never saw a man who was, in every respect, so perfectly agreeable to me,” Strahan wrote Deborah Franklin of this meeting, adding that William was “one of the prettiest young gentlemen I ever knew from America.”

Deborah likely scowled. It was just like that artful lad to ingratiate himself so quickly.

A few days later father and son rented four rooms from a widow, Mrs. Margaret Stevenson, who lived with her young daughter Polly in a substantial mansion on 7 Craven Street, Strand. This was to be Franklin’s English home, which over the years became almost as dear to him as his Philadelphia one.

He had brought two servants with him. One of them, Peter, served him faithfully, though the other, a slave, ran away shortly after their arrival. Franklin’s post as Massachusetts agent required a bit of pomp. He wore a wig in the latest fashion, silver shoe and knee buckles and purchased linen for new shirts. Later he rented a coach.

Barely was he settled when he was invited to visit Lord George Grenville, president of the Privy Council and one of England’s most important statesmen. This was Franklin’s first test in holding his own with persons more steeped than he in political intrigue.

Lord Grenville received him with great civility, questioned him at length about American affairs, and then announced that the colonists had some erroneous notions he felt duty bound to correct:

“You Americans have wrong ideas of the nature of your constitution; you contend that the King’s instructions to his governors are not laws, and think yourselves at liberty to regard or disregard them at your own discretion. You must be made to understand that the King’s instruction are _The Law of the Land_.”

This was simply not true. The King’s instructions were laws in the colonies only if they received the approval of the local Assembly. In the same way, laws passed by a colonial Assembly had to be submitted to the King before they became final. That was why Franklin was in England, to get the King’s approval of the Assembly decision on the Penns.

Sure as he was of his facts, he voiced his opinion in the manner he had learned from Socrates: “It is my understanding that ...”

“You are totally mistaken,” Lord Grenville stated patronizingly, when he had finished.

It was Franklin’s first experience with the contemptuous attitude which certain of the British took in regard to the colonists. He would later observe that “every man in England seems to jostle himself into the throne with the King, and talks of _our subjects_ in the colonies.”

Around the middle of August he called on the Penn family, at their stately mansion in Spring Garden. It had seemed courteous to meet with them personally before approaching higher authority. William Penn’s son Thomas was there and probably Richard Penn and his son, John. They received him with glacial politeness, listened haughtily as he told them the Assembly’s grievances, and just as haughtily denied that the grievances were in any way justified.

Franklin pointed out that the Assembly was asking no more than what William Penn had promised citizens under his 1701 Charter of Privileges.

“My father granted privileges he had no right to grant, according to the Royal Charter,” Thomas Penn announced.

“Then all those who came to settle in the province, expecting to enjoy the privileges contained in the grant were deceived, cheated and betrayed?” With the greatest difficulty, Franklin kept his voice calm.

Thomas Penn laughed insolently. “If the people were cheated, it was their own fault. They should have gone to the trouble of reading the Royal Charter.”

His tone reminded Franklin of a horse trader of low character, jeering at the purchaser he had victimized. “Poor people are not lawyers,” he said steadily. “They trusted your father and did not think it necessary to consult a lawyer.”

Unabashed, Thomas Penn rose to dismiss him. “If you care to put your complaints in writing, Mr. Franklin, we will then consider them.”

Those arrogant Penns! How it would have grieved their noble father to see into what selfish hands he had left his beloved Pennsylvania! Franklin had yet to find out through personal experience that nobility of character is not always inherited.

Five days later he returned with the Assembly’s grievances in written form. On the advice of their lawyer, a “proud and angry man,” Ferdinand John Paris, the Penns sent Franklin’s paper to the Royal lawyers, the Attorney-General Charles Pratt, and Solicitor-General Charles Yorke. These gentlemen were out of town. There was nothing to do but wait.

Franklin fell sick with a cold and fever that September and was bedridden nearly eight weeks. Dr. Fothergill, the man who had written the preface for his pamphlet on electricity, tended him regularly. Mrs. Stevenson, his landlady, nursed him like a son. Even William was unusually obliging, did his errands and helped him to prepare a letter to the _Citizen_ to counteract slanders about Pennsylvania which Franklin suspected emanated from the Penns. William was enrolling in law school in London; he had bought himself elegant clothes that rivaled those of any young English peer.

As soon as he was well enough, Franklin went on a shopping spree himself. For Debby, who still liked bright colors, he purchased a crimson satin cloak and for Sally a black silk one, with a scarlet feather and muff which William selected. There were other luxuries for their home not found in America: English china, silver salt ladles, an apple corer and a gadget “to make little turnips out of great ones,” a carpet, tablecloths, napkins, silk blankets from France, and a “large fine jug for beer,” which he had fallen in love with at first sight.

“I thought it looked like a fat jolly dame,” he explained the gift to Debby, “clean and tidy, with a neat blue and white calico gown on, good-natured and lovely, and put me in mind of—somebody.”

His most extravagant present followed later—a harpsichord for Sally which cost the huge sum of forty-two guineas.

If some Englishmen were snobs, there were plenty of others who were just the opposite. Franklin’s fellow members of the august Royal Society welcomed him warmly. He made many new scientific friends, among them the stout and amiable John Pringle, an authority on military medicine and sanitation, and John Canton, the first Englishman to draw lightning from the sky. At Cambridge, in May 1758, he performed experiments in evaporation with John Hadley, professor of chemistry. He made a trip to Northampton, the ancestral home of the Franklins, and met some distant relatives. When he found the Franklin graves in the cemetery so moss covered that their inscriptions were effaced, he had his servant Peter scour them clean.

The Scottish University of St. Andrews gave him a degree as doctor of law. Henceforth he had the right to call himself Dr. Franklin. Later he visited Scotland where he was made an honorary burgess and guildbrother at Edinburgh; met the economist Adam Smith; and the philosopher David Hume, who said of him: “America has sent us many good things, gold, silver, sugar, tobacco, indigo, etc., but you are the first philosopher, and indeed the first great man of letters, for whom we are beholden to her.”

He stayed with the congenial Scottish judge Lord Henry Home Kames, to whom he wrote in his note of thanks that the time spent in Scotland “was six weeks of the _densest_ happiness I have met with in any part of my life.”

A bitter fellow American arrived in London, William Smith, provost of the Pennsylvania Academy, one of those who had opposed him on the Penn issue. The Pennsylvania Assembly had tried him on the charge of libel and he had spent three months in jail. Now he was seeking redress from the Crown, and blaming not only the Quakers for his arrest but Franklin, who had not even been in Pennsylvania. Smith was saying that Franklin was not really a scientist, that he had stolen his ideas from others.

Franklin took the slander philosophically: “’Tis convenient to have at least one enemy, who by his readiness to revile one on all occasions may make one careful of one’s conduct. I shall keep him an enemy for that purpose.”

While the proprietors were stalling, Franklin set out to meet such high-placed persons as might help his cause. He tried to see the Prime Minister William Pitt, who was said to be sympathetic to the colonies, but Pitt was too occupied with his enormous war in India to give him a hearing. Eventually he met the two royal lawyers, Charles Yorke and Charles Pratt, to whom the Penns had submitted the Assembly’s grievances. To his surprise he found they had already given their verdict, a negative one, which the Penns had forwarded directly to the Assembly, bypassing Franklin. The Penns were claiming he had insulted them. He had not addressed them as the “True and Absolute Proprietaries of the Province of Pennsylvania.”

Back in Pennsylvania, the Assembly had finally persuaded Governor Denny to pass its act taxing the proprietary estate. Franklin brought the matter before the British Committee for Plantation Affairs in August 1759, when he had been two years in England. The decision was a compromise: unsurveyed lands of the proprietors should not be taxed but their surveyed lands must be taxed at a rate no higher than other similar lands. The Pennsylvania Assembly held Franklin solely responsible for the victory, and congratulations flowed to him.

He could have gone home now but he stayed on. There was a tremendous propaganda job to be done and he was the only one capable. He wanted to set the English straight on the role of the American colonies in the British Empire. He wrote articles for the press. He expressed his ideas at the Whig Club, in coffeehouses where philosophers and literary men congregated, and to guests whom he invited to dine at Craven Street. His refreshing candor and quiet wit brought him attention everywhere.

At odd moments he tinkered with various inventions. For the Stevensons, he devised an iron frame with a sliding plate to serve as a draught in their fireplace, so it would give more heat and take less fuel. He made a clock with only three wheels and one hand, which showed hours, minutes, and seconds. Later others improved his model and sold it commercially.

He spent long hours constructing a musical instrument, based on the principle of musical glasses. The “armonica” he named it, remarking that it was “peculiarly adapted to Italian music, especially that of the soft and plaintive kind.” Subsequently, an English musician, Marianne Davies, toured the Continent giving armonica recitals; Marie Antoinette took lessons from her. Mozart and Beethoven composed selections for the armonica. Its vogue lasted some fifty years, and then, no one knows just why, it lost its popularity.

In August 1761, he took William on a trip to Belgium and Holland. In Brussels, the Prince of Lorraine welcomed him and showed him his physics laboratory. At Leyden, he met Musschenbroek, inventor of the Leyden jar. They were back in time for the coronation of George III, whom Franklin judged “a virtuous and generous young man.”

In February 1762, Oxford University gave the honorary degree of doctor of civil laws to “the illustrious Benjamin Franklin, Esquire, Agent of the Province of Pennsylvania, Postmaster-General of North America, and Fellow of the Royal Society.” Less ostentatiously, William was presented a degree of master of arts.

William had been basking in the sunlight of his father’s reputation, and Franklin had more than a little reason to worry about him. Unlike his father, the youth was proud and haughty and disdainful of those of humble birth.

One day Franklin told him a story. When he was a child of seven, Franklin said, some friends on a holiday filled his pocket with coppers. He went directly to a toy shop, and being charmed with the sound of a whistle in the hands of another boy, he gave all his money for one like it. He came home and went whistling all over the house, much pleased with his purchase, until his brothers, sisters, and cousins told him he had given four times as much as it was worth, laughing at him for his folly. Put in mind of the good things he might have bought with the rest of the money, he cried with vexation. “The reflection gave me more chagrin than the whistle gave me pleasure.”

“As I grew older,” he continued, “I have found a number of men who have given too much for their whistle—popularity-seekers, misers, and men of pleasure. Don’t give too much for the whistle, William. Why not become a joiner or wheelwright, if the estate I leave you is not enough? The man who lives by his labor is at least free.”

Did little Benjamin really spend all his pennies for a whistle, or was this a fable which Franklin invented to clothe a moral lesson? There is no way of knowing for sure and it is not important. It should be emphasized that the story, or fable, was not intended merely to show the folly of wasting money. It had a far more subtle meaning.

Much as Franklin had come to love England, his heart was heavy with yearning for his family and his own country after his five year absence. Since England and France were still at war, he had to wait for a safe convoy. It was August 1762 when he set sail from Portsmouth. William did not come with him. The Crown had appointed him to the high post of governor of New Jersey. He would take a later ship, after his papers were in order.

“Don’t give too much for the whistle,” Franklin may have warned him once more before he left.

8 THE WHITE CHRISTIAN SAVAGES

“Benjamin Franklin has lost all his Philadelphia friends.”