Franklin (12 page)

Authors: Davidson Butler

Tags: #Biography/Historical

BOOK: Franklin

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Franklin said he was going home to bed, but he found more work. Pennsylvania promptly elected him president of the commonwealth â similar to the present-day governorship â and re-elected him three times. It was, he told his sister
Jane Mecom
, an honor he treasured, because it was the tribute of a free people.

The Continental Congress had not taken Franklin's advice when it passed its
Articles of Confederation
. As a central government for the thirteen colonies, Congress had no real power. Each state had one vote, leaving small states and large states bickering, and relations between them deteriorated. They quarreled over boundaries and refused to accept each other's money. For the most part, they ignored Congress and acted as independent countries.

It was obvious America needed a central government with more power to regulate disputes, organize the country, and pay the war debt. Franklin was among many Americans who welcomed the
Constitutional Convention
when it met in Philadelphia in May 1787. “Indeed if it does not do good, it must do harm,” he told his successor in France, Thomas Jefferson, “as it will show that we have not wisdom enough among us to govern ourselves.”

Franklin mustered his strength in a last expression of commitment. At eighty-two, he trudged almost daily for four consecutive months from his house to the Pennsylvania State House and spent hours debating how to reconcile poor states and rich states, large states and small states, slave states and free states.

From the first day, Franklin preached compromise. He could have asked to be the chairman, but he stepped aside and allowed George Washington to be nominated. When the argument grew violent, Franklin warned delegates if they allowed themselves to be “divided by [their] little partial local interests,” they would become “a reproach and a bye-word down to future ages.”

Congress selected a Grand Committee, consisting of one delegate from each state, to resolve arguments between the large states and the small states. Franklin, seizing an idea others had suggested, recommended that one house in Congress have equal representation, and the second house be represented in proportion to population. The committee agreed by a five-to-four margin, with one state (Massachusetts) divided. Thus the Senate and House of Representatives were created, thanks to Franklin's influence. This was a turning point in the Constitutional Convention; once the small states felt their interests were protected, the convention moved forward.

As the convention closed, another danger became apparent to delegates. Many compromises had passed by a close vote, and many of those who lost were disgruntled. If a vote had been taken on a man-by-man basis, it would reveal how many did not like the Constitution as it stood, even though a majority favored it.

Franklin stepped forward to suggest one more compromise. He urged everyone to sign the document as witnesses to the fact all the
states
unanimously approved it. This was true - a majority of each state delegation did approve it. Franklin then urged delegates to support the Constitution in their separate states when it was proposed for ratification. He did not entirely approve the document at present, but in the course of his life, he had changed his opinions on many important subjects; perhaps his disagreements with the Constitution were wrong. He hoped “every member of the convention who may still have objections to it would with me on this occasion doubt a little of his own infallibility, and to make manifest our unanimity, put his name to this instrument.” Franklin's proposal was carried, ten to nothing, and all but two delegates signed the Constitution.

Franklin, watching them walk up to the president's table to sign the historic document, pointed to a sun on the president's chair. “I have,” he said, “often and often in the course of this session . . . looked at that . . . without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting: but now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting sun.”

Franklin lived two more years. His bladder stone grew larger and more painful, but he seldom complained. He took pleasure in watching the successful establishment of the American government. Writing to President George Washington, Franklin congratulated him “on the growing strength of our new government under your administration. For my own personal ease, I should have died two years ago; but tho these years have been spent in excruciating pain, I am pleased that I have lived them, since they have brought me to see our present situation.”

At home, Franklin enjoyed the warm, loving company of his family. Sarah Bache and her seven children lived in the same house. Widowed Polly Stevenson Hewson came to America with her three children to be near the man who was her spiritual father. She visited him constantly, read to him and nursed him affectionately. He treated his daughter, Sally, as he had his wife â she maintained the house and waited on him. Despite criticism that he had enjoyed a lavish life in Paris while Americans were fighting, Franklin built a three-story addition to his house that contained some of his prized books, including a history of American horticulture and a copy of
Don Quixote
, which he had purchased in France.

Only Temple Franklin worried his grandfather. Bored with country life, he neglected the New Jersey farm he had inherited, longing to reunite with his mistress and son in Paris. Franklin tried to secure him an American diplomatic appointment abroad, but Temple's reputation undermined his grandfather's influence, and he could not get the position.

In his last years, Franklin found time for one more cause. Though he still owned slaves, he accepted the presidency of “The Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, and the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage.” In this capacity, he wrote letters to governors of northern states, reproaching them for allowing their seamen, ship captains and merchants to participate in the slave trade. When the first Congress met, the society presented a memorial that Franklin signed, urging an immediate abolition of slavery.
James Jackson
of Georgia attacked the proposal, stating the Bible sanctioned slavery, and Negroes were better off and happier as slaves.

A few days later, an essay appeared in the
Federal Gazette,
Philadelphia's leading newspaper. It was supposed to be a statement by one Sidi Mehemet Ibrahim, a leading member of the Algerian government. Sidi argued against a small group of Algerians who wanted to abolish piracy and their country's practice of enslaving white Christians. Sidi pointed out Christians were better off as slaves: They lived safe lives; they were well-fed, lodged, and clothed. “They are not liable to be impressed for soldiers, and forced to cut one another's Christian throats, as in the wars of their own countries.” The real writer, of course, was Franklin, ridiculing Jackson's speech in Congress. Although many Philadelphians were impressed, and Pennsylvania soon became one of the first northern states to abolish slavery, this institution was too entrenched in the South for Franklin or any other American of his time to defeat it.

A few weeks later, Franklin suffered an attack of pleurisy, the illness that had almost killed him when he twenty-one. This time, his body was too worn to resist. He slipped into a coma, and at 11:00 p.m. on April 17th, 1790, surrounded by his daughter and her family, as well as Temple and Polly, he died. He was eighty-four.

The
Pennsylvania Gazette,
with a black border, announced his death. While bells tolled and 20,000 watched, his coffin was lowered into the grave in Christ Church burying ground, beside his wife, Deborah.

Franklin's will, published in Philadelphia newspapers, left his assets to Temple. He only bequeathed his antiquated claim to Nova Scotia lands to William, and he imposed one final indignity to his son: “The part he acted against me in the late war, which is of public notoriety, will account for my leaving him no more of an estate he endeavored to deprive me of.”

Franklin's heirs sold his estate at an auction not long after his death, selling his harpsichord, press, and coal gates for his Franklin stove. His house was demolished to accommodate a wider street.

NEW WORD CITY