The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin (32 page)

But, angry as he was, Franklin was no fool. He knew that this meeting between himself and a British agent would arouse Vergennes to act. Ver-gennes and his king, the young Louis XVI, finally decided that they had better pin down the Americans in an alliance before they reached terms with the English. In February 1778 France signed two treaties with the United States—one a commercial agreement, the other a military alliance pledged to American independence.

Franklin had not originally wanted a formal alliance with any foreign state, but he now willingly participated in the greatest diplomatic triumph in American history. During the ceremonial signing of the treaties Franklin wore an old blue velvet coat. When Deane asked why he was wearing that particular coat, Franklin replied, “To give it a little revenge. I wore this Coat on the day Widderburn abused me at Whitehall.”
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THE MISCHIEVOUS MADMAN, JOHN ADAMS

John Adams of Massachusetts, Deane’s replacement, arrived that April, too late to participate in making the treaties with France. Compared with Franklin, Adams was a babe in the woods. Where Franklin was reserved and impenetrable, Adams was impulsive and open. He was awkward and anything but diplomatic. He knew nothing of European politics, he had never laid eyes on a king or queen or the foreign minister of a great power, and he had never been in a city larger than Philadelphia. Still, he had been one of the firmest advocates for American independence, and he had a strong sense of his own worth, which most called vanity.

He soon became irritated that Franklin, “the old Conjurer,” was getting all the credit when he was doing all the work. In a 1779 letter to the chief justice of Pennsylvania, Thomas McKean, Adams conceded that Franklin was “a Wit and Humourist.... He may be a Philosopher, for what I know, but he is not a sufficient Statesman, he knows too little of American affairs or the Politicks of Europe, and takes too little Pains to inform himself of Either. He is too old, too infirm, too indolent and dissipated, to be sufficient for the Discharge of all the important Duties” he had to fulfill.
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Franklin, Adams complained, seemed to spend all his time with women and never deigned to meet with him.

Adams was shocked at the way Franklin flirted with women, especially with his wealthy and beautiful neighbor, Anne-Louise de Harancourt Brillon de Jouy, who openly showed her affection for Franklin even in the presence of her elderly husband. Madame Brillon used to call Franklin “Cher Papa” while sitting on his lap. Adams was surprised to learn that a “very plain and clumzy” woman who was often present in the company was not the friend of Madame Brillon as he had assumed, but was actually the mistress of Monsieur Brillon. “I was astonished,” recalled Adams, “that these People could live together in such apparent Friendship and indeed without cutting each others throats. But I did not know the World.”

When Adams did get to know the French world that Franklin moved in, he did not at all like it. He particularly resented all the attention Franklin received from the French. Every day, as soon as Franklin finished his breakfast, Adams recounted sarcastically, he was surrounded by his many admirers who came “to have the honour to see the great Franklin, and to have the pleasure of telling Stories about his Simplicity, his bald head and scattering strait hairs, among their Acquaintances.” Adams never appreciated Franklin’s contribution to the American cause. Adams advised his cousin Samuel Adams that the mission ought to be in the hands of a single minister, namely himself.
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Franklin himself suggested to the Continental Congress that France had more ambassadors than it needed. Three were already too many, he told James Lovell, a member of its foreign affairs committee. Izard regarded himself as a fourth, said Franklin, “and is very angry that he was not consulted in making the Treaty which he could have mended in several Particulars.” William Lee, who was returning from a trip, would soon make a fifth.
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In September 1778 Congress finally recalled all the other commissioners and made Franklin sole minister plenipotentiary, largely because France insisted upon it. Adams was mortified and returned to America to participate in the writing of the Massachusetts Constitution; but Izard and the Lees stayed on for another year, making more trouble for Franklin.

Not only were the Lees and Ralph Izard sure that Franklin was too lazy, too partial to France, and unable or unwilling to do his job as representative of America, but they were also convinced that Franklin had been Deane’s partner in corruption and was continuing to make money out of his position as minister. They even suggested that Franklin’s loyalties might not really be with America. After all, his grandson, Temple Franklin, worked as his secretary, and wasn’t his grandson the son of the notorious loyalist William Franklin, the former royal governor of New Jersey? In fact, one of Pennsylvania’s congressional delegates charged that from these connections
“much evil might ensue to the United States
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These charges stirred up the Congress and resulted in days of debate in April 1779 over whether or not to recall Franklin, along with the other commissioners. The Congress even spent a day debating Franklin’s character.
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Largely because France insisted on Franklin’s continued presence as minister and lobbied the Congress to that end, Virginia and North Carolina were ultimately the only states to support Franklin’s recall. Nonetheless, many members of Congress continued to question whether the old man was up to being minister. Ralph Izard repeatedly told Congress that “the political salvation of America depends upon the recalling of Dr. Franklin.”
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Much to Franklin’s chagrin, the Congress even sent Henry Laurens’s twenty-six-year-old son, John, to negotiate a new loan from the French. Franklin suppressed his anger at this insult, and in a letter to the president of the Congress in March 1781 he, in effect, asked for a vote of confidence. He suggested that his age had caught up with him, that the press of business was too heavy, and that perhaps the United States would like another person to replace him. He assured the Congress that he had no dissatisfaction with it or any doubts about the success of “the glorious Cause.” But he did warn that, if replaced, he would remain in France at least until the peace and perhaps for the remainder of his life.
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Franklin was pleased when Congress reaffirmed his appointment as minister plenipotentiary—again largely because France had let Congress know in no uncertain terms that it wanted Franklin as minister. But Franklin sensed that Congress was full of doubts about him, and he was not at all happy with its lack of gratitude. Franklin reminded the wealthy merchant Robert Morris, who had just become superintendent of finance, what he might expect from serving the American public. First of all, he told Morris, the public office would take so much time and attention that his private interests would inevitably be injured. But worse: “the Publick is often niggardly even of its Thanks, while you are sure of being censured by malevolent Criticks and Bug Writers, who will abuse you while you are serving them and wound your Character in nameless Pamphlets.” Such critics, he said with uncharacteristic bitterness, resembled “those little dirty stinking Insects, that attack us only in the dark, disturb our Repose, molesting & wounding us while our Sweat & Blood is contributing to their Subsistence.”
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In the meantime John Adams had returned to Paris with the authority to negotiate peace with Britain. But since Britain was not ready to negotiate peace, Adams, “having nothing else here wherewith to employ himself,” as Franklin ruefully told the Congress, had decided to try “supplying what he may suppose my Negociations defective in.” Adams thought that Franklin was entirely wrong in the deferential way he approached the French. “He thinks as he tells me himself,” reported Franklin in August 1780, “that America has been too free in Expressions of Gratitude to France; for that she is more obliged to us than we to her: and that we should shew Spirit in our Applications.”
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Unfortunately, Adams in a series of undiplomatic letters said many of the same things directly to Vergennes, much to Franklin’s embarrassment. Vergennes became so angry with Adams’s bumptious manner that he ceased communicating with him and asked Franklin to send Adams’s letters to Congress in order for it to decide whether Adams ought to be entrusted with any important mission. Ultimately, Congress in June 1781 decided to assign the peace negotiations to a commission composed of Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John Jay, Henry Laurens, and Franklin.
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According to Arthur Lee, it was Franklin whom Congress almost left out. The only reason Franklin was included, said Lee, was “because France wills it.”
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Although Jefferson declined the appointment and Laurens was captured at sea and imprisoned in the Tower of London, the other three commissioners were on hand in Paris by the fall of 1782. Jay and Adams were nearly as suspicious of their colleague’s partiality to France as Arthur Lee had been. They also thought their French ally was not to be trusted. According to Franklin, Adams especially thought that Vergennes was “one of the greatest Enemies” of the United States. For Americans “to think of Gratitude to France,” said Adams, “is the greatest of Follies,” and “to be influenced by it, would ruin us.” Franklin told the American foreign secretary, Robert R. Livingston, that Adams was beguiled by conspiratorial notions. Adams believed that Vergennes and Franklin were “continually plotting against him and employing the News writers of Europe to depreciate his Character, &ca.” And worse: Adams said all this publicly, in “extravagant and violent Language,” even in front of English officials. What could be done with such a man? Perhaps Franklin was too generous in his famous summary of the man from Massachusetts, when he said that Adams “means well for his Country, is always an honest Man, often a Wise One, but sometimes and in some things, absolutely out of his Senses.”
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Franklin hoped that “the ravings of a certain mischievous Madman here against France and its Ministers, which I hear every Day will not be regarded in America.”
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But Adams was not alone in his views; many Americans at home shared Adams’s suspicions that Franklin was too attached to France. Franklin’s “Enemies” in Congress, his friend Robert Morris warned him, were spreading the word “that a sense of Obligation to France seals your Lips when you should ask their Aid.”
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Franklin was sorry to hear such criticism of America’s connection with France. He wanted his critics to know that they were doing America “irreparable harm” by destroying “the good understanding that has hitherto so happily subsisted between this court and ours.” America’s connection with France was what gave the United States weight with England and the respect of Europe. Therefore Franklin believed that “the true political interest of America consists in observing and fulfilling with the greatest exactitude the engagements of our alliance with France.”
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He was grateful to France for its aid in the Revolution, and he thought all of America ought to be too.

FRANKLIN’S DIPLOMATIC ACHIEVEMENT

All this American carping about overweening French influence could have eroded the Franco-American alliance. Indeed, without Franklin’s presence it is hard to see how the alliance could have held together as it did, and without the alliance it is hard to see how the Americans could have sustained their revolution. By the early 1780s Vergennes had become virtual first minister of the French government and the chief supporter of aiding the Americans. He retained the confidence of Louis XVI, and Franklin alone among the American commissioners retained Vergennes’s confidence.”
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Probably only Franklin could have persuaded Vergennes to keep on supporting the American cause, and probably only Franklin could have negotiated so many loans from an increasingly impoverished French government. Certainly no one else could have represented America abroad as Franklin did. He was the greatest diplomat America has ever had.

Not only did Franklin hold the Franco-American alliance together, but he also oversaw the initial stages of the successful peace negotiations with Britain. And he did all this with a multitude of demands placed on him. In addition to his duties as minister plenipotentiary, which included dealing with countless persons offering advice, seeking favors, and asking for information, he effectively acted as consul general, director of naval affairs, and judge of admiralty. He handled mercantile matters, commissioned privateers, and served as judge in the condemnation and sale of the prizes captured by the privateersmen; at one point he was even called upon to help plan a prospective French invasion of England.

All the while countless Europeans continually pestered him for letters of recommendation that they hoped would be passports to prosperity in America. Many of these would-be emigrants, said Franklin, had very little money but often had “such romantic Schemes and Expectations as must end in Disappointment and Poverty.” He tried to dissuade all who had no “useful Trade or Art by which they may get a living.” But many were fools and would not listen. They “hope for Offices and Public Employments” and “value themselves and expect to be valued by us for their Birth or Quality, though I tell them those things bear no Price in our Markets.”
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Finally, to keep from having to repeat himself over and over to these prospective settlers, Franklin in February 1784 published a short piece,
Information to Those Who Would Remove to America.

In it he laid out a description of the New World that contributed mightily to the emerging myth of American exceptionalism. America, said Franklin, was “the Land of Labour” where land was cheap and labor was dear and where hard work could lead to a moderate prosperity. Birth counted for nothing in America. There “People do not enquire concerning a Stranger,
What IS he?
but
What can he DO?
” Those who hoped for some lucrative political office in America would be greatly disappointed, for there were few civil offices there and no superfluous ones, as in Europe. Indeed, he said, emphasizing a point of utmost importance to him, some of the states had established a rule “that no Office should be so profitable as to make it desirable.”
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