Franklin (4 page)

The improvements Franklin achieved were widely praised. He reduced the travel time of a Boston-to-Philadelphia letter from six weeks to three. Abolishing the monopoly in which each postmaster sent the newspaper of his choice through the mail free, he opened the service to all papers for a small fee. He insisted postmasters track their revenue and ordered them to print names of people who had letters waiting for them - a practice he had followed in Philadelphia. If customers did not pick up their letter, the post office delivered it the following day and charged an extra penny. Franklin had tried this first in Philadelphia, and it made the post office more popular. Too often, letters were allowed to sit for weeks and were lost or read by others. After three months, unclaimed letters were forwarded to the central post office in Philadelphia, the first dead-letter office.

On the roads, Franklin had milestones erected so post riders could pace themselves. By talking with riders and postmasters, Franklin boosted morale. He consulted post riders and postmasters on new roads, fords, and ferries. In three years, he overhauled the service, improving its speed and reliability. In the fourth year of Franklin's administration, it earned a profit for the first time in history, collecting more revenue in twelve months than it had in the previous thirty-six.

Traveling was a rugged in the 1750s, and only someone with Franklin's rugged makeup could have endured the bad weather, terrible roads, and innumerable rivers a traveler had to cross. Taverns and inns were few and often overcrowded. It was difficult to secure a place by the fire, after hours on the road in the rain or cold.

Once, Franklin stopped at a Rhode Island tavern on a rainy day to find two dozen travelers crowded around the room's only fire.

“Boy,” Franklin said to the tavern keeper's son, “get my horse a quart of oysters.”

“A quart of oysters?” gasped the boy.

“You heard me, a quart of oysters,” Franklin boomed.

The boy obeyed, and everyone stampeded out the door to see the horse who ate oysters. The horse refused the oysters. Baffled, the group returned to the tavern to find Deputy Postmaster General Franklin sitting in the chair closest to the fire.

His job as postmaster allowed Franklin to justify occasional retreats from the pressures of Philadelphia. On one such trip to New England, he met Catherine Ray. Twenty-three years old, she was the first cousin of his brother's wife. She was charming and beautiful. Franklin called her Caty, and the two grew close over a period of weeks in Boston and then at her family farm in Rhode Island. For months after he returned home, Franklin and Caty exchanged letters. While Franklin was away, he entrusted his son to intercept his mistress' letters and forward them on to him, so that his wife did not see them. William also arranged for discreet delivery of Franklin's reply.

But the long-distance love affair grew cold when a letter was lost in transit, and Franklin, preoccupied with politics, failed to respond to three increasingly breathless pleas for attention. Catherine's desperation was unnerving: “Surely I have wrote too much and you are affronted with me or have not received my letters, in which I have said a thousand things that nothing should have tempted me to have said to anybody else, for I knew they would be safe with you. I'll only beg the favor of one line. What is become of my letters? Tell me you are well and forgive me and love me one-thousandth part as well as I do you, and then I will be contented.” Benjamin wrote back with this advice: “Go constantly to meeting or church ‘til you get a good husband, then stay at home and nurse the children and live like a Christian. . . . When I have again the pleasure of seeing you, I may find you like my grape vine, surrounded with clusters, plump, juicy, blushing, pretty little rogues, like their Mama. Adieu.”

While Franklin traveled, his mind was not idle. Moving from colony to colony inspired him to write one of his more important scientific treatises, published under the title,
Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries
. A combination of mathematics and social observation, Franklin noted there were more than a million Englishmen in North America, yet little more than 80,000 had emigrated from England. His research showed a radical difference between the New World and the Old, where the population was relatively stable. America, with its virtually unlimited land and capacity, didn't offer challenges to marriage and the raising of families that the Old World did. For this reason, Franklin predicted the population of America would double every twenty to twenty-five years - a prophecy fulfilled until 1860, when immigration created more growth. For Franklin, this increase meant one significant thing: America will “in another century be more than the people of England, and the greatest number of Englishmen will be on this side of the water.”

Franklin didn't see this as a threat to the mother country; he spoke as an Anglo-American and loyal member of the empire. “What an accession of power to the British Empire by sea as well as land! What increase of trade and navigation! What numbers of ships and seamen!” Underlying this, however, was an American sentiment. In 1750, because British ironmasters had complained that American-made iron competed with their products, Parliament restricted the manufacture of iron in Pennsylvania. This baffled Franklin; the population of the colonies was increasing so fast there was sure to be a market for manufacturers, whether British or American. “A wise and good mother,” Franklin said, placed no distressing restraints on her children. “To distress is to weaken, and weakening the children weakens the whole family.”

Franklin was unafraid to speak. Shortly after he finished his essay on population, he suggested a way for Americans to stop another bad British practice. Whenever jails became overcrowded, the British deported criminals to America. Often these men continued in crime in the New World. The best way to solve the problem, Franklin suggested in the
Pennsylvania Gazette,
was to return the compliment: Export America's rattlesnakes to England.

As deputy postmaster general, he was one of the few Americans who thought in terms of the entire continent. Pennsylvania appointed Franklin to be a delegate to the
Albany Congress
, convened in 1754 to negotiate an inter-colonial defense against the French and Indians. He did more than think defensively. He proposed a plan of union that would have created a governor general and a Grand Council consisting of members chosen by the assemblies of each colony. Although delegates to the conference approved the plan, it received little attention from colonial assemblies and from England. The assemblies thought it conceded too much local power to the General Council and especially to the governor general, whom the king would appoint. London thought it came too close to creating a political body strong enough to challenge the power of parliament.

Disappointed, Franklin nevertheless continued to drum up interest. He found an ally in Massachusetts Governor
William Shirley
. The men discussed the idea and exchanged letters on the subject. Shirley's approach was to have the Grand Council work out plans for a common defense and, through an act of parliament, have Americans pay for it. Shirley's Grand Council consisted largely of governors and their councilors, most of whom were the king's appointees.

Franklin warned Shirley that Americans never would tolerate this. “Excluding the people of the colonies from all share in the choice of the Grand Council would probably give extreme dissatisfaction, as well as the taxing them by act of Parliament where they have no representation.” In three letters, Franklin explained why Americans would not pay taxes parliament imposed and why they resented England's interference in their affairs. More than two decades later,
James Madison
, reading these letters, declared Franklin had summarized the argument of the
American Revolution
“within the compass of a nutshell” twenty years before it occurred to anyone else.

Pennsylvania and his family remained as important to Franklin during these years as his job as postmaster and his politicking. When Franklin resigned as Assembly clerk - a position he had held for more than a dozen years - the Assembly appointed his son William as his replacement. It was more evidence of the place William held in Franklin's affections. If a word were chosen to describe Franklin, it would be paternal. He seemed happiest when he was sharing his strength, wisdom, generosity, and humor with others. This brought a special intensity to his relationship with his only son.

Another reason for this was William's lineage, especially with regard to Philadelphia's elite. As Franklin's political power increased, he became more critical of the Penns. This antagonized the ruling party, who held judgeships and other positions of power the Penns could appoint. Since they couldn't attack Franklin, they criticized him through his son. There were persistent whispers about William's illegitimacy. When he fell in love with
Elizabeth Graeme
and asked her to marry him, her parents refused. It saddened Franklin to see his son being treated so poorly.

Franklin also worried about William's relationship with Deborah. A young clerk, Daniel Fisher, lived in Franklin's house for a time. He wrote of seeing young Franklin pass through the house “without the least compliment between Mrs. Franklin and him or any sort of notice taken of each other.” One day, as Deborah was talking to Fisher, and William Franklin passed in silence, Deborah said, “Mr. Fisher, there goes the greatest villain upon earth.” While Fisher stared in surprise, Deborah denounced William “in the foulest terms I ever heard from a gentlewoman.” Fisher eventually quit his job and moved out of the Franklin house because he loathed Deborah's “turbulent temper.”

Deborah and Benjamin had grown apart. She remained the shopkeeper's daughter, almost illiterate, signing letters “Your affecthone wife.” His letters to her began: “My dear child.” More jealous of the time he gave to public affairs, she told Fisher, “All the world claimed a privilege of troubling her Pappy,” her pet name for Franklin.

Franklin gave up trying to reconcile Deborah and William. As soon as William was paid his first salary as clerk of the Assembly, with his father's permission, the young man moved into separate quarters to escape his stepmother.

In his teens, William considered leaving Philadelphia and Deborah for good. He had tried to run away as a sailor. Franklin searched the harbor and found him before the ship on which he had stowed – crewed by privateers out to raid French and Spanish merchant ships – could embark. “My only son left my house unknown to us all and got on board a privateer, from whence I fetched him,” Franklin wrote. “No one imagined it was hard usage at home that made him do this. Every one that knows me thinks I am too indulgent a parent as well as master. When boys see prizes brought in and quantities of money shared among the men and their gay living, it fills their heads with notions that distract them and put them quite out of conceit with trades and the dull ways of getting money by working.”

Returning home through Franklin's intervention, he badgered his father into getting him an army commission and marched off to fight the French in Canada. Franklin expected the bitter
war
and harsh northern winter would send William scurrying home with a new appreciation for his life in Philadelphia. Instead, William thrived. His Pennsylvania regiment was decimated – sixteen soldiers were killed in one ambush; others succumbed to injuries or deserted. William wrote to his father, who included scant reports in the
Gazette
. Franklin's newspaper made no mention of William's promotion to captain. William returned home with military experience and self-confidence, but when Franklin refused to help him buy a commission in the British military, William relinquished his red uniform and gilt epaulet. His active duty amounted to 515 days.

Almost immediately, William began another adventure. With fur trader
George Croghan
, he rode west to an Indian conference on the Ohio River. Like other Americans of his generation, young Franklin was overwhelmed by the richness of the land beyond the Alleghenies. He loved to share his story about “the country back of us” with his father, who was so impressed he sent copies of William's journal to friends in England. In it, William wrote of the frontier's majestic mountain ranges, grazing buffalo, black bears, and its great promise. He had feasted with his Indian hosts on fresh corn and venison and paddled canoes down the lush Ohio River.

William was convinced that a fortune was waiting for the men who would possess these lands, then owned by small tribes of Native Americans who regarded them as hunting preserves. When William returned home, he talked of organizing trading companies and colonizing expeditions to establish England's hold on the territory. For a while, the Ohio valley seemed to be all that interested him.

Finally, Franklin pulled William aside and said the territory, as fascinating and important as it might become, was as substantial as a castle in the clouds. Franklin feared William was investing time in these fantasies because he was in line for a substantial inheritance. Franklin told his son he planned to spend the modest estate he had accumulated on himself and that William should think about a profession. “Will is now nineteen years of age, a tall proper youth, and much of a beau,” Franklin wrote in a letter to his mother. “He . . . begins of late to apply himself to business, and I hope will become an industrious man. He imagined his father had got enough for him, but I have assured him that I indent to spend what little I have, myself, if it please God that I live long enough, and as he by no means wants sense, he can see by my going on that I am like to be as good as my word.”

Franklin would not allow his son to idle long after his frontier excursion. William's wild stories made him popular at social gatherings, and he seemed content to bounce from one to another. Franklin introduced his son to
Freemasonry
, wherein William came into contact with Philadelphia's most prominent thinkers in architecture, astrology, and mathematics. William began to understand his father's place in this society, as a highly respected scientist. None revered Benjamin Franklin as much as young William. When Franklin lacked confidence even in himself, his son made up for the deficit. William pressed his father's ideas sometimes long after Franklin had abandoned them. When Franklin's Junto disbanded, William formed a new one with his friends to continue the discussion of scientific advancements.

When the time came for William to take over his father's responsibilities as Assembly clerk, he did so with honor and excellence. He also eventually assumed the role of postmaster general, vacated by Franklin. He continued to help in his father's bookstore and printshop. While Franklin made enemies in his political pursuits, William defended him from his rivals, writing in the
Gazette
under the pseudonym Humphrey Scourge – a tactic of which his father approved. As Scourge, he published a salacious pamphlet called
Tit for Tat.

But politics also sometimes strained the relationship between William and Franklin. Though dedicated to his father, William was well-liked in all factions of Philadelphia society, and he started to make friends of the people Franklin opposed. A fellow Mason, James Hamilton was one such friend. He was a prominent Philadelphian and a close friend of the Penns, who commissioned Hamilton lieutenant-governor in 1754. William was a regular guest in Hamilton's home; they played cards, attended parties together, and danced with Penn wives and daughters. Hamilton was also an active member of the Anglican faith. Although Franklin considered himself Presbyterian, he shunned church membership, and his son joined the Anglican Church. William organized fundraisers to build
Christ Church
, a new Anglican citadel; its spire, once complete, was the highest in colonial America. He was beginning to assert his independence from his father.

Perhaps influenced by his friend, William decided to break out on his own and pursue a career as a lawyer. William began to study law with Franklin's friend and political lieutenant,
Joseph Galloway
. Franklin, who held lawyers in contempt, was not particularly pleased with this choice, but supported it. He asked friends in England to register William in the Inns of Court, where the elite of the British legal profession studied law. He hoped to make the trip to England with William.

Before they sailed for England, Franklin and his son shared an adventure on the Pennsylvania frontier. The French had built a fort on the site of the present-day city of Pittsburgh. To drive them out, the British sent Major General
Edward Braddock
and an army of 2,500 Redcoats. Pennsylvania and the other colonies were to contribute money to purchase supplies for this army, but as expected, the Pennsylvanians clashed with the governor about taxing the Penns' estates. This angered Braddock, and the Assembly sent Benjamin and William to Frederick, Maryland, where Braddock was organizing troops and gathering supplies, to explain.

The Franklins discovered a furious General Braddock. The supplies American contractors sold to the army were rotten, and only twenty-five wagons were available to transport tents and supplies for 2,250 men. Braddock was cursing everyone involved, from ministers in England who initiated the expedition to farmers who would not risk a wagon to serve their country. The Franklins watched while young
George Washington
of Virginia, Braddock's aide, argued in vain with the general, trying to defend America's reputation.

Hoping to calm the general, Franklin assured him wagons were available in Pennsylvania. The general seized him by the arm. “Then you, sir, who are a man of interest there can probably procure them for us, and I beg you will undertake it.” The general took £100 in hard cash from his money box and told Franklin to get to work.

The Franklins conferred with Sir John Sinclair, Braddock's quartermaster general. He just had returned from Pennsylvania and was critical of the colony. Franklin noticed Sinclair was wearing a uniform resembling a
Hussar
, the fearsome light cavalry of the Austrian and German armies, famous for their love of plunder.

Franklin had several thousand copies of an announcement printed for distribution throughout Lancaster, York, and Cumberland counties. He offered fifteen shillings a day - a good price for a wagon, four horses, and a driver. But the heart of Franklin's message was his warning that if farmers of Pennsylvania did not accept “such good pay and reasonable terms,” their loyalty would be “strongly suspected.” This would put the king's “brave troops” in a foul mood and their march through the counties would be “attended with many and great inconveniences.”

If General Braddock did not get the necessary number of wagons in fourteen days, Franklin wrote, “I suppose Sir John Sinclair, the Hussar, with a body of soldiers, will immediately enter the province . . . which I shall be sorry to hear, because I am very sincerely and truthfully your friend and well-wisher.”

Since most farmers there were German immigrants, the word Hussar had an almost magical effect. More than 150 four-horsed wagons, plus 259 pack horses, streamed into Braddock's camp.

The Franklins became General Braddock's favorite dinner guests. He discussed his battle strategy, and Benjamin warned Braddock that his army, struggling through the thick forests and swift streams of western Pennsylvania, would be easy to ambush. General Braddock laughed: “The savages may indeed be a formidable enemy to your raw American militia, but upon the king's regular and disciplin'd troops, sir; it is impossible that they should make any impression.”

Benjamin and William Franklin returned to Philadelphia, troubled by doubts. A few days later, two doctors, friends of Franklin, asked him to donate to buy several hundred pounds of fireworks to celebrate the capture of
Fort Duquesne
, Braddock's objective in western Pennsylvania. Franklin let his glasses slip down on his nose: “I think it will be time enough to prepare the rejoicing when we know we have a reason to rejoice.”

The doctors looked amazed. Like Braddock, they assumed British regulars were invincible. “Why the devil,” said one, “you surely don't suppose that the fort will not be taken.”

“I don't know that it will not be taken,” Franklin said, “but I know that war is a very uncertain business.”

The doctors stopped fundraising. A few days later, a messenger rushed into Philadelphia carrying the news that Braddock had been
ambushed
a few miles from Fort Duquesne, and two-thirds of his army were killed or wounded. The survivors, under Colonel Thomas Dunbar, were in retreat.

The British did not stop until they reached Trenton, New Jersey, on the eastern side of the Delaware. It was up to Pennsylvania to defend its frontiers. Braddock's only accomplishment was to build a road that the French and their Native-American allies could use.