Chapter 6

[Footnote 25: A letter now printed in Volume VI of the "Works of Franklin," edited by John Bigelow.]

I was asked whether I wished to see any persons in particular; to which I replied that I wished to see the philosophers. "There are two who live here at hand in this garden; they are good neighbors and very friendly toward one another." "Who are they?" "Socrates and Helvetius." "I esteem them both highly; but let me see Helvetius first, because I understand a little French but not a word of Greek." I was conducted to him; he received me with much courtesy, having known me, he said, by character some time past. He asked me a thousand questions relative to the war, the present state of religion, of liberty, of the government in France. "You do not inquire, then," said I, "after your dear friend, Madame Helvetius; yet she loves you exceedingly. I was in her company not more than an hour ago." "Ah," said he, "you make me recur to my past happiness, which ought to be forgotten in order to be happy here. For many years I could think of nothing but her, tho at length I am consoled. I have taken another wife, the most like her that I could find; she is not, indeed, altogether so handsome, but she has a great fund of wit and good sense, and her whole study is to please me. She is at this moment gone to fetch the nectar and ambrosia to regale me; stay here awhile and you will see her." "I perceive," said I, "that your former friend is more faithful to you than you are to her; she has had several good offers, but has refused them all. I will confess to you that I love her extremely, but she was cruel to me and rejected me peremptorily for your sake." "I pity you sincerely," said he, "for she is an excellent woman, handsome and amiable. But do not the Abbe de la R---- and the Abbe M---- visit her?" "Certainly they do; not one of your friends has dropt her acquaintance." "If you had gained the Abbe M---- with a bribe of good coffee and cream perhaps you would have succeeded; for he is as deep a reasoner as Dun Scotus or St. Thomas; he arranges and methodizes his arguments in such a manner that they are almost irresistible. Or if by a fine edition of some old classic you had gained the Abbe de la R---- to speak against you, that would have been still better, as I always observed that when he recommended anything to her, she had a great inclination to do exactly the contrary."

As he finished these words the new Madame Helvetius entered with the nectar and I recognized her immediately as my former American friend, Mrs. Franklin! I reclaimed her, but she answered me coldly, "I was a good wife to you for forty-nine years and four months, nearly half a century; let that content you. I have formed a new condition here, which will last to eternity."

Indignant at this refusal of my Eurydice, I immediately resolved to quit those ungraceful shades and return to this good world again, to behold the sun and you. Here am I; let us _avenge ourselves_.

GEORGE WASHINGTON

Born in 1732, died in 1799; adjutant of Virginia troops in 1751; sent on a mission to the French beyond the Alleghany River in 1753; defended Fort Necessity in 1754; with Braddock at his defeat in 1755; led the advance guard to Fort Duquesne in 1758; Member of the Continental Congress in 1774-75; made Commander-in-chief of the Continental Army in 1775; resigned his commission in 1783; President of the Constitutional Convention in 1787; elected President of the United States in 1789; reelected President in 1793; Commander-in-chief of the Army in 1798.

I

TO HIS WIFE ON TAKING COMMAND OF THE ARMY[26]

My Dearest: I am now set down to write to you on a subject which fills me with inexpressible concern, and this concern is greatly aggravated and increased when I reflect upon the uneasiness I know it will give you. It has been determined in Congress that the whole army raised for the defense of the American cause shall be put under my care, and that it is necessary for me to proceed immediately to Boston to take upon me the command of it.

[Footnote 26: A letter written in Philadelphia on June 18, 1775, three days after his appointment.]

You may believe me, my dear Patsy, when I assure you, in the most solemn manner, that, so far from seeking this appointment, I have used every endeavor in my power to avoid it, not only from my unwillingness to part with you and the family, but from a consciousness of its being a trust too great for my capacity, and that I should enjoy more real happiness in one month with you at home than I have the most distant prospect of finding abroad, if my stay were to be seven times seven years. But as it has been a kind of destiny that has thrown me upon this service, I shall hope that my undertaking it is designed to answer some good purpose.

You might, and I suppose did perceive, from the tenor of my letters, that I was apprehensive I could not avoid this appointment, as I did not pretend to intimate when I should return. That was the case. It was utterly out of my power to refuse this appointment without exposing my character to such censures as would have reflected dishonor upon myself, and given pain to my friends. This, I am sure, could not, and ought not, to be pleasing to you, and must have lessened me considerably in my own esteem. I shall rely, therefore, confidently on that Providence which has heretofore preserved and been bountiful to me, not doubting but that I shall return safe to you in the fall. I shall feel no pain from the toil or the danger of the campaign; my unhappiness will flow from the uneasiness I know you will feel from being left alone. I therefore beg that you will summon your whole fortitude, and pass your time as agreeably as possible. Nothing will give me so much sincere satisfaction as to hear this, and to hear it from your own pen. My earnest and ardent desire is that you would pursue any plan that is most likely to produce content, and a tolerable degree of tranquillity; as it must add greatly to my uneasy feelings to hear that you are dissatisfied or complaining at what I really could not avoid.

As life is always uncertain, and common prudence dictates to every man the necessity of settling his temporal concerns, while it is in his power, and while the mind is calm and undisturbed, I have, since I came to this place (for I had not time to do it before I left home) got Colonel Pendleton to draft a will for me, by the directions I gave him, which will I now enclose. The provision made for you in case of my death will, I hope, be agreeable.

I shall add nothing more, as I have several letters to write, but to desire that you will remember me to your friends, and to assure you that I am with the most unfeigned regard, my dear Patsy, your affectionate, etc.

II

OF HIS ARMY IN CAMBRIDGE[27]

Nothing would give me more real satisfaction than to know the sentiments which are entertained of me by the public, whether they be favorable or otherwise; and I urged as a reason that the man who wished to steer clear of shelves and rocks must know where they lie. I know the integrity of my own heart, but to declare it, unless to a friend, may be an argument of vanity; I know the unhappy predicament I stand in: I know that much is expected of me; I know that without men, without arms, without ammunition, without anything fit for the accommodation of a soldier, little is to be done; and, what is mortifying, I know that I can not stand justified to the world without exposing my own weakness, and injuring the cause by declaring my wants, which I am determined not to do, further than unavoidable necessity brings every man acquainted with them.

[Footnote 27: From the letter addrest to Joseph Reed, and dated February 10, 1776. Washington had assumed command in Cambridge on July 3d of the previous year. Joseph Reed was President of the Pennsylvania Provincial Congress in 1775, and afterward became Washington's secretary and aide-de-camp. This letter was in reply to two letters from Reed containing "early and regular communication of what is passing in your quarter."]

If, under these disadvantages, I am able to keep above water, in the esteem of mankind, I shall feel myself happy; but if, from the unknown peculiarity of my circumstances, I suffer in the opinion of the world, I shall not think you take the freedom of a friend, if you conceal the reflections that may be cast upon my conduct. My own situation is so irksome to me at times that, if I did not consult the public good more than my own tranquillity, I should long ere this have put everything on the cast of a die. So far from my having an army of twenty thousand men well armed, I have been here with less than one-half of that number, including sick, furloughed, and on command, and those neither armed nor clothed, as they should be. In short, my situation has been such, that I have been obliged to use art to conceal it from my own officers.

The party sent to Bunker Hill had some good and some bad men engaged in it. One or two courts have been held on the conduct of part of them. To be plain, these people are not to be depended upon if exposed; and any man will fight well if he thinks himself in no danger. I do not apply this only to these people. I suppose it to be the case with all raw and undisciplined troops. Yon may rely upon it that transports left Boston six weeks ago with troops; where they are gone, unless driven to the West Indies, I know not. You may also rely upon General Clinton's sailing from Boston about three weeks ago, with about four or five hundred men; his destination I am also a stranger to. I am sorry to hear of the failures you speak of from France. But why will not Congress forward part of the powder made in your province? They seem to look upon this as the season for action, but will not furnish the means. I will not blame them. I dare say the demands upon them are greater than they can supply. The cause must be starved till our resources are greater, or more certain within ourselves.

With respect to myself, I have never entertained an idea of an accommodation since I heard of the measures which were adopted in consequence of the Bunker Hill fight. The King's speech has confirmed the sentiments I entertained upon the news of that affair; and, if every man was of my mind, the ministers of Great Britain should know, in a few words, upon what issue the cause should be put. I would not be deceived by artful declarations, nor specious pretenses; nor would I be amused by unmeaning propositions; but in open, undisguised, and manly terms proclaim our wrongs, and our resolution to be redressed. I would tell them, that we had borne much, that we had long and ardently sought for reconciliation upon honorable terms, that it had been denied us, that all our attempts after peace had proved abortive, and had been grossly misrepresented, that we had done everything which could be expected from the best of subjects, that the spirit of freedom rises too high in us to submit to slavery, and that, if nothing else would satisfy a tyrant and his diabolical ministry, we are determined to shake off all connections with a state so unjust and unnatural. This I would tell them, not under covert, but in words as clear as the sun in its meridian brightness.

III

TO THE MARQUIS DE CHASTELLUX ON HIS MARRIAGE[28]

My Dear Marquis: In reading your very friendly and acceptable letter, which came to hand by the last mail, I was, as you may well suppose, not less delighted than surprized to meet the plain American words, "my wife." A wife! Well, my dear Marquis, I can hardly refrain from smiling to find you are caught at last. I saw by the eulogium you often made on the happiness of domestic life in America, that you had swallowed the bait, and that you would as surely be taken, one day or another, as that you were a philosopher and a soldier.

[Footnote 28: From a letter, written at Mount Vernon on April 25, 1788, and addrest to the Marquis de Chastellux, author of "Travels in North America," and a major-general in the army of Rochambeau, who served under Washington in the American Revolution.]

So your day has at length come. I am glad of it, with all my heart and soul. It is quite good enough for you. Now you are well served for coming to fight in favor of the American rebels, all the way across the Atlantic Ocean, by catching that terrible contagion, domestic felicity, which, like the smallpox or the plague, a man can have only once in his life, because it commonly lasts him (at least with us in America; I know not how you manage these matters in France), for his whole lifetime. And yet, after all, the worst wish which I can find in my heart to make against Madame de Chastellux and yourself is that you may neither of you ever get the better of this same domestic felicity, during the entire course of your mortal existence.

If so wonderful an event should have occasioned me, my dear Marquis, to write in a strange style, you will understand me as clearly as if I had said, what in plain English is the simple truth, "Do me the justice to believe that I take a heartfelt interest in whatsoever concerns your happiness." And, in this view, I sincerely congratulate you on your auspicious matrimonial connection. I am happy to find that Madame de Chastellux is so intimately connected with the Duchess of Orleans; as I have always understood that this noble lady was an illustrious example of connubial love, as well as an excellent pattern of virtue in general.

While you have been making love under the banner of Hymen, the great personages in the north have been making war under the inspiration, or rather under the infatuation, of Mars. Now, for my part, I humbly conceive that you have acted much the best and wisest part; for certainly it is more consonant to all the principles of reason and religion, natural and revealed, to replenish the earth with inhabitants than to depopulate it by killing those already in existence. Besides, it is time for the age of knight-errantry and mad heroism to be at an end. Your young military men, who want to reap the harvest of laurels, do not care, I suppose, how many seeds of war are sown; but for the sake of humanity it is devoutly to be wished, that the manly employment of agriculture, and the humanizing benefits of commerce, would supersede the waste of war and the rage of conquest; that the swords might be turned into plowshares, the spears into pruning-hooks, and, as the Scriptures express it, the "nations learn war no more."

Now I will give you a little news from this side of the water, and then finish. As for us, we are plodding on in the dull road of peace and politics. We, who live in these ends of the earth, only hear of the rumors of war like the roar of distant thunder. It is to be hoped that our remote local situation will prevent us from being swept into its vortex.

JOHN ADAMS

Born in 1735, died in 1826; second President of the United States; graduated from Harvard in 1755; active in opposing the Stamp Act; elected to the Revolutionary Congress of Massachusetts in 1774; delegate to the first and second Continental Congresses; proposed Washington as commander-in-chief; signed the Declaration of Independence; commissioner to France in 1777; to the Netherlands in 1782, to Great Britain in 1782-83, and to Prussia; minister to England in 1785; vice-president in 1789; elected President in 1796; unsuccessful candidate for President in 1800; his "Life and Works" in ten volumes published in 1850-56.

I

ON HIS NOMINATION OF WASHINGTON TO BE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF[29]

When Congress had assembled, I rose in my place, and in as short a speech as the subject would admit, represented the state of the colonies, the uncertainty in the minds of the people, their great expectation and anxiety, the distresses of the army, the danger of its dissolution, the difficulty of collecting another, and the probability that the British army would take advantage of our delays, march out of Boston, and spread desolation as far as they could go. I concluded with a motion, in form, that Congress would adopt the army at Cambridge, and appoint a general; that tho this was not the proper time to nominate a general, yet, as I had reason to believe, this was a point of the greatest difficulty. I had no hesitation to declare that I had but one gentleman in my mind for that important command, and that was a gentleman from Virginia who was among us and very well known to all of us, a gentleman whose skill and experience as an officer, whose independent fortune, great talents, and excellent universal character, would command the approbation of all America, and unite the cordial exertions of all the colonies better than any other person in the Union. Mr. Washington, who happened to sit near the door, as soon as he heard me allude to him, from his usual modesty, darted into the library-room. Mr. Hancock--who was our President, which gave me an opportunity to observe his countenance while I was speaking on the state of the colonies, the army at Cambridge, and the enemy--heard me with visible pleasure; but when I came to describe Washington for the commander, I never remarked a more sudden and striking change of countenance. Mortification and resentment were exprest as forcibly as his face could exhibit them. Mr. Samuel Adams seconded the motion, and that did not soften the President's physiognomy at all.

[Footnote 29: From the "Diary," printed in the "Works of John Adams," as edited by Charles Francis Adams. In his speech naming Washington, Adams referred to him as "one who could unite the cordial exertions of all the colonies better than any other person." Two days later he wrote to his wife that Congress had chosen "the modest and virtuous, the amiable, generous and brave George Washington, Esq., to be chief of the American army."]

The subject came under debate, and several gentlemen declared themselves against the appointment of Mr. Washington, not on account of any personal objection against him, but because the army were all from New England, had a general of their own, appeared to be satisfied with him, and had proved themselves able to imprison the British army in Boston, which was all they expected or desired at that time. Mr. Pendleton, of Virginia, Mr. Sherman, of Connecticut, were very explicit in declaring this opinion; Mr. Cushing and several others more faintly exprest their opposition, and their fears of discontents in the army and in New England. Mr. Paine exprest a great opinion of General Ward and a strong friendship for him, having been his classmate at college, or at least his contemporary; but gave no opinion upon the question. The subject was postponed to a future day. In the mean time, pains were taken out-of-doors to obtain a unanimity, and the voices were generally so clearly in favor of Washington, that the dissentient members were persuaded to withdraw their opposition, and Mr. Washington was nominated, I believe by Mr. Thomas Johnson of Maryland, unanimously elected, and the army adopted.

II

AN ESTIMATE OF FRANKLIN[30]

His reputation was more universal than that of Leibnitz or Newton, Frederick or Voltaire, and his character more beloved and esteemed than any or all of them. Newton had astonished perhaps forty or fifty men in Europe, for not more than that number probably at any one time had read him and understood him, by his discoveries and demonstrations. And these being held in admiration in their respective countries, as at the head of the philosophers, had spread among scientific people a mysterious wonder at the genius of this, perhaps, the greatest man that ever lived. But this fame was confined to men of letters. The common people knew little and cared nothing about such a recluse philosopher. Leibnitz's name was more confined still. Frederick was hated by more than half of Europe as much as Louis XIV was and Napoleon is. Voltaire, whose name was more universal than any of these before mentioned, was considered as a vain, profligate wit, and not much esteemed or beloved by anybody, tho admired by all who knew his works. But Franklin's fame was universal. His name was familiar to governments and people, to kings, courtiers, nobility, clergy and philosophers, as well as plebeians, to such a degree that there was scarcely a peasant or citizen, a valet de chambre, coachman, or footman, a lady's maid, or a scullion in a kitchen, who was not familiar with it, and who did not consider him a friend to human kind. When they spoke of him they seemed to think he was to restore the Golden Age....

[Footnote 30: From a letter to the Boston _Patriot_ of May 15, 1811, now given as an appendix to the "Works of John Adams." The differences of Adams and Franklin form a striking incident in the biographies of the two men. Colaborers as they were in a common cause, they had constant disagreements as to methods while serving their country in Europe. That they never openly quarreled Adams's biographer, John T. Morse, attributes to "their sense of propriety and dignity, and to the age and position of Dr. Franklin." The radical cause lay in the fact that "they were utterly incompatible, both mentally and morally."]

Nothing perhaps that ever occurred upon this earth was so well calculated to give any man an extensive and universal celebrity as the discovery of the efficacy of iron points and the invention of lightning-rods. The idea was one of the most sublime that ever entered a human imagination that a mortal should disarm the clouds of heaven and almost "snatch from his hand the scepter and the rod." The ancients would have enrolled him with Bacchus and Ceres, Hercules and Minerva....

Franklin had a great genius, original, sagacious, and inventive, capable of discoveries in science no less than of improvements in the fine arts and the mechanic arts. He had a vast imagination, equal to the comprehension of the greatest objects, and capable of a steady and cool comprehension of them. He had wit at will. He had humor that, when he pleased, was delicate and delightful. He had a satire that was good-natured or caustic, Horace or Juvenal, Swift or Rabelais, at his pleasure. He had talents for irony, allegory, and fable, that he could adapt with great skill to the promotion of moral and political truth. He was master of that infantine simplicity which the French call _naïveté_, which never fails to charm, in Phædrus and La Fontaine, from the cradle to the grave.

Had he been blest with the same advantages of scholastic education in his early youth, and pursued a course of studies as unembarrassed with occupations of public and private life, as Sir Isaac Newton, he might have emulated the first philosopher. Altho I am not ignorant that most of his positions and hypotheses have been controverted, I can not but think he has added much to the mass of natural knowledge, and contributed largely to the progress of the human mind, both by his own writings and by the controversies and experiments he has excited in all parts of Europe. He had abilities for investigating statistical questions, and in some parts of his life has written pamphlets and essays upon public topics with great ingenuity and success; but after my acquaintance with him, which commenced in Congress in 1775, his excellence as a legislator, a politician, or a negotiator most certainly never appeared. No sentiments more weak and superficial were ever avowed by the most absurd philosopher than some of his, particularly one that he procured to be inserted in the first constitution of Pennsylvania, and for which he had such a fondness as to insert it in his will. I call it weak, for so it must have been, or hypocritical; unless he meant by one satiric touch to ridicule his own republic, or throw it into everlasting contempt.