The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin (47 page)

67.   Commissioners to Committee of Secret Correspondence, 12 Mar-7 Apr. 1777, in
Papers ofFranklin,
23:467.

68.   Commissioners to Committee of Secret Correspondence, 12 Mar-7 Apr. 1777, in
Papers of Franklin,
23:467. On the lack of guidance from Congress, see Jonathan R. Dull, “Franklin the Diplomat: The French Mission,” American Philosophical Society,
Transactions
72 (1982), 68-69.

69.   Van Doren,
Franklin,
650.

70.   BF to Jacques Barbeu-Dubourg?, after 2 Oct. 1777, in
Papers of Franklin,
25:21.

71.   BF to Richard and Sally Bache, 10 May, 1785.

72.   Currey,
Code No. 72.
Elizabeth M. Nuxoll, one of the editors of the Robert Morris Papers, has suggested that the charges of Franklin’s being a British spy come from these murky circumstances in which the commissioners were secretly trying to manipulate the release of information. H-Net/OIEAHC, 7
^A
p
^r
. 1999.

73.   George III, quoted in Van Doren,
Franklin,
573.

74.   Samuel F. Bemis, “British Secret Service and the French-American Alliance,”
American Historical Review
29 (1923-1924): 474-95; David Schoenbrun,
Triumph in Paris: The Exploits of Benjamin Franklin
(New York: Harper & Row, 1976); Dull, “Franklin the Diplomat,” 33-42.

75.   BF to Juliana Ritchie, 19 Jan. 1777, in
Papers of Franklin,
23:211.

76.   It is Franklin’s casual, even sloppy, attitude toward spying and record keeping that convinced Cecil B. Currey that Franklin “—covertly perhaps, tacitly at least, possibly deliberately—cooperated with and protected” a British spy cell operating out of his home in France. Unfortunately, Currey seems to have forgotten what Franklin said about his inability to maintain order in his affairs. Currey,
Code No. 72,
12.

77.   Claude-Anne Lopez,
My Life with Benjamin Franklin
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 61-72.

78.   For a balanced study of Lee, see Louis W. Potts,
Arthur Lee: A Virtuous Revolutionary
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981).

79.   Morgan,
Franklin,
259-60.

80.   Arthur Lee to Committee of Foreign Affairs, 1 June 1778, and Ralph Izard to Henry Laurens, 29 June 1778, in Francis Wharton, ed.,
The Revolutionary Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States
(Washington, D.C., 1889), 2:600-603, 629-31.

81.   Adams,
Diary and Autobiography,
4:87. In addition to telling John Adams that Franklin was more to be mistrusted than Deane, Izard told him that “Dr. Franklin was one of the most unprincipled Men upon Earth: that he was a Man of no Veracity, no honor, no Integrity, as great a Villain as ever breathed.” Ibid.

82.   BF to Laurens, 31 Mar. 1778, in
Papers of Franklin,
26:203-4. See also BF to James Lovell, 21 Dec. 1777, in
Papers of Franklin,
25:329-30.

83.   A. Lee to Richard Henry Lee, 12 Sept. 1778, quoted in Lopez and Herbert,
Private Franklin,
235.

84.   John Adams thought that Deane’s public denunciation of the Congress in December 1778 was “the most astonishing Measure, the most unexpected and unforeseen Event, that has ever happened, from the Year 1761... to this Moment.” It seemed to threaten the existence of the Confederation and French confidence in America. Since Adams continued to believe that Deane epitomized corruption and treachery, anyone who admired Deane had to be contemptible. To Mercy Otis Warren’s accusation in her 1805
History
that “Mr. Adams was not beloved by his Colleague Dr. Franklin,” Adams had a simple retort that he believed to be devastating: “Mr. Deane was beloved by his Colleague Dr. Franklin.” Adams,
Diary and Autobiography,
2:348, 353; 4:118.

85.   “Excerpts from the Papers of Dr. Benjamin Rush,”
PMBH
29 (1905): 27-28.

86.   Arthur Lee, Journal, 25 Oct. 1778, in
Papers of Franklin,
25:100, 102.

87.   Paul Wentworth to William Eden, 7 Jan. 1778, in
Papers of Franklin,
25:436-38.

88.   “Excerpts from the Papers of Rush,” 27-28.

89.   J. Adams to Thomas McKean, 20 Sept. 1779, in
Papers of Adams,
8:162.

90.   Adams,
Diary and Autobiography,
4:47, 118-19, 107-8.

91.   BF to Lovell, 22 July 1778, in
Papers of Franklin,
27:135.

92.   Richard Bache to BF, 22 Oct. 1778, in
Papers of Franklin,
27:599-601.

93.   John Fells Diary, 21 April 1779, in Smith,
Letters of Delegates,
12:362. On the congressional controversy over Franklin and the other commissioners, see

H. James Henderson, “Congressional Factionalism and the Attempt to Recall Benjamin Franklin,”
WMQ27
(1970): 246-67, and his
Party Politics in the Continental Congress
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974), 200-206.

94.   Izard to R. H. Lee, 15 Oct. 1780, in Edmund C. Burnett, ed.,
Letters of Members of the Continental Congress
(Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution, 1931), 5:362n.

95.   BF to Samuel Huntington, 12 Mar.-i2 Apr. 1781, in
Papers of Franklin,
34:446.

96.   BF to Robert Morris, 26 July 1781, in
Papers of Franklin,
35:311-12.

97.   BF to Huntington, 9 Aug. 1780, in
Papers of Franklin,
33:162.

98.   Adams’s wife, Abigail, was even more disgusted with Franklin’s behavior. She thought that Franklin and his grandson Temple, the “old Deceiver” and the “young Cockatrice,” were “wicked unprincipled debauched wretches.” Lopez and Herbert,
Private Franklin,
273; Abigail to John Adams, 21 Oct. 1781, in Butterfield,
Adams Family Correspondence,
4:230.

99.   A. Lee to James Warren, 8 Apr. 1782, in Smith,
Letters of Delegates,
18:441. See also Dull, “Franklin the Diplomat,” 47.

100.   BF to R. Livingston, 22July 1783; and BF to Morris, 25 Dec. 1783. See also Lopez,
My Life with Franklin,
176.

101.   BF to Morris, 7 Mar. 1783.

102.   Morris to BF, 28 Sept. 1782.

103.   BF to Samuel Cooper, 26 Dec. 1782.

104.   On Vergennes and his support for the American war, see Orville T Murphy,
Charles Gravier, Comte de Vergennes: French Diplomacy in the Age of Revolution, iyifi-iySy
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1982), 397-98; and Munro Price,
Preserving the Monarchy: The Comte de Vergennes, iyy^—iy^y
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 66, 236, 240. On Franklin’s relationship with Vergennes, see Dull, “Franklin the Diplomat,” 67-68.

105.   BF to Richard and Sarah Bache, 27July 1783.

106.   BF,
Information to Those Who Would Remove to America
(1784), in
Franklin: Writings,

975-83.

107.   R. D. Harris, “French Finances and the American War, 1777-1783,”
Journal of Modern History
48 (1976): 236, 241. Jonathan R. Dull writes that French financial aid added up to some 40 million livres, which he says was equivalent to about $80 million in 1980s purchasing power. Dull, “Franklin the Diplomat,” 11. Dull rightly concludes, “The French support for the Revolution was Franklin’s work.” Ibid., 50.

108.   BF to R. Livingston, 5 Dec. 1782, and BF to Morris, 23 Dec. 1782.

109.   BF to John Jay, 2 Oct. 1780, in
Papers of Franklin,
33:356.

110.   BF to Committee of Foreign Affairs, 26 May 1779, in
Papers of Franklin,
29:555.

111.   BF to Vergennes, 17 Dec. 1782, 25 Jan. 1783.

CHAPTER 5: BECOMING AN AMERICAN

1.   BF,
Autobiography,
163.

2.   BF, “The Morals of Chess” (1779), in
Papers of Franklin,
29:754.

3.   BF,
Autobiography,
163.

4.   BF,
Autobiography,
133—40.

5.   See BF to Lord Kames, 3 May 1760, in
Papers of Franklin,
9:104.

6.   BF,
Autobiography,
148.

7.   Franklin’s Art of Virtue was not at all based on the puritan tradition. Franklin, as Norman Fiering points out, had little or no interest in the inward states of

people, but instead had an essentially behaviorist approach to morality. See Fiering, “Benjamin Franklin and the Way to Virtue,”
American Quarterly
30 (1978): 199-223. On the down-to-earth character of Franklin’s Art of Virtue, see also Ralph Lerner,
Revolutions Revisited: Two Faces of the Politics of the Enlightenment
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 3-18.

8.   BF,
Autobiography,
148-57.

9.   BF,
Autobiography,
155-57; R. Jackson Wilson,
Figures of Speech: American Writers and the Literary Marketplace, from Benjamin Franklin to Emily Dickinson
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 40-41.

10.   BF,
Autobiography,
148-57.

11.   BF,
Autobiography,
159, 44, 160.

12.   BF to Elizabeth Partridge, 11 Oct. 1779, in
Papers of Franklin,
30:514.

13.   Claude-Anne Lopez,
My Life with Benjamin Franklin
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 174.

14.   BF to Anne-Catherine de Ligniville Helvétius, Oct. 1778?, in
Papers of Franklin,
²
7
^:6
7
^0-
71.

15.   Claude-Anne Lopez,
Mon Cher Papa: Franklin and the Ladies of Paris
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), 259; Carl Van Doren,
Benjamin Franklin
(New York: Viking, 1938), 647.

16.   Abigail Adams to Lucy Cranch, 5 Sept. 1784, in Richard Alan Ryerson et al., eds.,
Adams Family Correspondence
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
^I
993
⁾
5
^:
43
^6-
37.

17.   Adams,
Autobiography and Diary,
4:59.

18.   Lopez,
My Life with Franklin,
174; Lopez,
Mon Cher Papa,
264-71.

19.   Richard B. Morris,
The Peacemakers: The Great Powers and American Independence
(New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 192.

20.   BF to William Franklin, 16 Aug. 1784. See also BF to Deborah Franklin, 6 Apr., i Sept. 1773, and BF to Samuel Cooper, 27 Oct. 1779, all in
Papers of Franklin,
20:145, 3
⁸
3; 3
^0:
59
⁸
.

21.   Debate in the Virginia Convention, 17 June 1788, in Max Farrand, ed.,
The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1937), 3:327.

22.   Cooper to BF, 5 May 1783.

23.   BF to Henry Laurens, John Adams, and John Jay, 10 Sept. 1783.

24.   BF to Charles Thomson, 13 May 1784, and BF to Richard Price, 16 Aug. 1784.

25.   BF to Thomson, 13 May 1784.

26.   BF to Jonathan Shipley, 22 Aug. 1784, and Richard Bache to William Temple Franklin, 14 Dec. 1784. See also Lopez,
My Life with Franklin,
179-80.

27.   Elbridge Gerry to Adams, 16 June 1784, in Paul H. Smith et al., eds.,
Letters of Delegates to the Congress, 1774—1789
(Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1976- ), 2I:686.

28.   FH. to William Temple Franklin, i Nov. 1784.

29.   Thomas Jefferson to Ferdinand Grand, 23 Apr. 1790, in Julian P. Boyd et al., eds.,
The Papers of Thomas Jefferson
(Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, 1953), 16:369.

30.   Francois Steinsky to BF, 17June 1789; J. Thiriot to BF, 1 July 1784; Erasmus Darwin to BF, 29 May 1787; Marquis de Condorcet to BF, 20 Aug. 1784; - Thomas to BF, 20 Sept. 1787;-Taillefert to BF, 18 Feb. 1788; Pierre Ox to BF,

6 Sept. 1784; J.-P. Brissot de Warville,
New Travels in the United States of America, iySS,
trans. Mara Soceanu Vamos and Durand Echeverria (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964), 184.

31.   Jefferson to James Monroe, 5 July, 28 Aug. 1785, in Boyd et al., eds.,
Papers of Jefferson,
8:262, 446.

32.   BF to John and Sarah Jay, 21 Sept. 1785.

33.   BF to Thomas Paine, 27 Sept. 1785.

34.   BF to Paine, 27 Sept. 1785.

35.   On the Philadelphia aristocrats’ reaction to Franklin, see Keith Arbour, “Benjamin Franklin as Weird Sister: William Cobbett and Philadelphia’s Fears of Democracy,” in Doren Ben-Atar and Barbara Oberg, eds.,
Federalists Reconsidered
(Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1998), 179-80.

36.   BF to Jane Mecom, 4 Nov. 1787.

37.   BF to Jonathan Williams, 16 Feb. 1786. When he wrote in 1787 to his former colleague John Jay, secretary for foreign affairs in the Confederation, to recommend someone as vice consul in Bordeaux, he first had to wonder whether “my Recommendation might have any weight.” Such was his sense of his position in American politics. BF to Jay, 10 Nov. 1787.

38.   BF to Thomas Jordan, 18 May 1787.

39.   William Parker Cutler and Julia Perkins Cutler,
Life, Journals and Correspondence of Rev. Manasseh Cutler, LLD
(Cincinnati, 1888), 1:267-68; 2:363.

40.   Madison, 25 May 1787, in Farrand,
Records of the Convention,
1:4.

41.   Pierce, in Farrand,
Records of the Convention,
3:91.

42.   BF, Speech in the Convention on the Subject of Salaries, 2 June 1787, in
Franklin: Writings,
1131.

43.   BF to William Strahan, 16 Feb., 19 Aug. 1784. See also BF to Joseph Galloway, 12 Oct. 1774, 25 Feb. 1775, in
Papers of Franklin,
21:333-34, 509; BF to Shipley, 17 Mar. 1783, BF to Laurens, 12 Feb. 1784, BF to George Whately, 23 May 1785, and BF to John Wright, 4 Nov. 1789.

44.   BF, Speech on Salaries, in
Franklin: Writings,
1134; Madison, 2 June 1787, in Farrand,
Records of the Convention,
1:85.

45.   BF, Last Will and Testament, 23 June 1789.

46.   BF to Sarah Bache, 26Jan. 1784. Despite Franklin’s opposition to the Society of the Cincinnati, the State Society of Pennsylvania in July 1789 unanimously elected him to an honorary membership in the organization. We have no record of Franklin’s response to this election. (I owe this information to Ellen