The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin (46 page)

114.   BF to William Franklin: Journal of Negotiations in London, 22 March 1775, in
Papers of Franklin,
21:583.

115.   BF to William Franklin: Journal of Negotiations in London, 22 March 1775, BF, Proposed Memorial to Lord Dartmouth, March 1775, and BF to Galloway, 25 Feb. 1775, in
Papers of Franklin,
21:583, 526, 598, 509; BF to Strahan, 19 Aug. 1784. In May 1774 Franklin published a bitterly satiric account in the London press suggesting that the commander in chief of His Majesty’s forces in America and five battalions march up and down the continent and castrate all American males. The essay was undoubtedly stimulated by the British general’s remark, which he recalled in his 1784 letter to Strahan. Crane,
Letters to the Press,
262-64.

116.   BF to David Hartley, 3 Oct. 1775, in
Papers of Franklin,
22:217.

117.   Lopez and Herbert,
Private Franklin,
196.

118.   Samuel Johnson,
Tyranny No Taxation
(1775), in
Political Writings,
ed. Donald J. Greene, Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, vol. 10 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), 444.

CHAPTER 4: BECOMING A DIPLOMAT

1.   H. W. Brands,
The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin
(New York: Doubleday, 2000), 494.

2.   In 1769 William had considered bringing his illegitimate son Temple to America under the guise of “the Son of a poor Relation, for whom I stood God Father and intended to bring up as my own.” Apparently William’s wife did not know about the existence of Temple until Franklin showed up with him in America in 1775. William Franklin to BF, 2 Jan. 1769, in
Papers of Franklin,
16:5; Sheila L. Skemp,
William Franklin: Son of a Patriot, Servant of a King
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 179.

3.   Claude-Anne Lopez and Eugenia W Herbert,
The Private Franklin: The Man and His Family
(New York: Norton, 1975), 197, 201.

4.   John Adams to Mrs. Mercy Warren, 8 Aug. 1807, Massachusetts Historical Society,
Collections.,
5th ser., 4 (1878): 431.

5.   As Adams recalled in his
Autobiography,
Franklin “often and indeed always appeared to me to have a personal Animosity and very severe Resentment against the King. In all his conversations and in all his Writings, when he could naturally and sometimes when could not, he mentioned the King with great Asperity.” Adams,
Diary and Autobiography,
4:150.

6.   John Adams to Abigail Adams, 23 July 1775, in L. H. Butterfield et al., eds.,
Adams Family Correspondence
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963), 1:253.

7.   Joseph Hewes to Samuel Johnson, 13 Feb. 1776, in Paul H. Smith et al., eds.,
Letters of Delegates to the Congress, iyy^-iySfi
(Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress,
^j
976- ), 3:247. Franklin even stopped wearing a wig when he arrived in America. Despite a scalp irritation, in London he would never have dared to go out in public without a wig; but in America this symbol of hierarchy was not the fashionable necessity it was in England. Charles Coleman Sellers,
Franklin in Portraiture
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962), 97.

8.   Arthur Lee to Samuel Adams, 10 June 1771, in R. H. Lee,
Life of Arthur Lee
(Boston, 1829), 1:216-18.

9.   William Goddard to Isaiah Thomas, 15 Apr. 1811, quoted in Ralph Frasca, “From Apprentice to Journeyman to Partner: Benjamin Franklin’s Workers and the Growth of the Early American Printing Trade,”
PMHB
114 (1990): 245n.

10.   William Bradford to James Madison, 2June 1775, and Madison to Bradford, 19 June 1775, in William T Hutchinson et al., eds.,
The Papers of James Madison

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), 1:149, 151-52. That Franklin was a British spy may seem improbable to us, but at least one modern historian, Cecil B. Currey, in his
Code No. 72: Benjamin Franklin, Patriot or Spy
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ.: Prentice-Hall, 1972), has suggested the possibility of Franklin’s being a British spy while serving as envoy to France.

11.   BF to William Strahan, 3 Oct. 1775, in
Papers of Franklin,
22:219. (I owe this citation to Konstantin Dierks.)

12.   Proposals and Queries to Be Asked the Junto, 1732, in
Franklin: Writings,
209.

13.   BF to Strahan, 5 July 1775, in
Papers of Franklin,
22:85. David Freeman Hawke, in
Franklin
(New York: Harper & Row, 1976), 353-54, says that Franklin’s July 5 letter to Strahan was widely published in America and Europe, but there is no evidence for this. Yet it seems evident to me that Franklin wrote this letter for local effect and showed it to friends and members of Congress in Philadelphia. There was no other reason for his writing such an overwrought and impassioned letter to one of his oldest British friends, especially since his other letters to English friends at this time express none of this exaggerated personal enmity. Moreover, the fact that two days later, on July 7, Franklin wrote a letter to Strahan, now lost, that presumably was as friendly as ever reinforces the idea that Franklin designed the July 5 letter to thwart rumors of his being a spy.

14.   Bradford to Madison, 18 July 1775, in Hutchinson,
Papers of Madison,
1:158.

15.   BF to Strahan, 3 Oct. 1775, and BF to Jan Ingenhouse, 12 Feb.-6 Mar. 1777, in
Papers of Franklin,
22:219; 23:310.

16.   BF to Strahan, 3 Oct. 1775, and BF to John Sargent, 27 June 1775, in
Papers of Franklin,
22:218, 72.

17.   BF to Sargent, 27 June 1775, BF to David Hartley, 12 Sept. 1775, BF to Jonathan Shipley, 13 Sept. 1775, and BF to Strahan, 3 Oct. 1775, all in
Papers of Franklin,
22:72, 196, 199-201, 218.

18.   BF to Hartley, 3 Oct. 1775, and BF to Lord Kames, 3 Jan. 1760, in
Papers of Franklin,
22:217; 9:7.

19.   BF to Shipley, 7 July 1775, in
Papers of Franklin,
22:94.

20.   BF to Shipley, 7 July 1775, in
Papers of Franklin,
22:95-98.

21.   BF to Charles Dumas, 2 May 1782.

22.   BF to William Franklin, 2 Feb., 7 May 1774, in
Papers of Franklin,
21:75, 211-12; Skemp,
William Franklin,
181.

23.   Strahan to BF, 14 July 1778, in
Papers of Franklin,
27:97.

24.   BF to William Franklin, 16 Aug. 1784.

25.   BF, Will Codicil, 23 June 1789; Lopez and Herbert,
Private Franklin,
278-79, 305.

26.   Adams,
Diary and Autobiography,
3:77; Lopez and Herbert,
Private Franklin,
247.

27.   Pennsylvania State Constitution (1776), Section 36, in Jack P. Greene, ed.,
Colonies to Nation,   A Documentary History of the American Revolution
(New York: Norton, 1967), 343.

28.   Gordon S. Wood,
The Creation of the American Republic, 1776—1787
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969), 233.

29.   Adams, Notes for an Oration at Braintree, 1772, in Adams,
Diary and Autobiography,
2:57—60.

30.   Wood,
Creation of the American Republic,
236, 568—87.

31.   BF to Lord Howe, 20 July 1775, in
Papers of Franklin,
22:519-21.

32.   Adams,
Autobiography and Diary,
3:418—19.

33.   Lord Howe’s Conference with the Committee of Congress, 11 Sept. 1776, in
Papers of Franklin,
22:601—5.

34.   BF, Sketch of Propositions for a Peace [after 26 Sept. and before 25 Oct. 1776], in
Papers ofFranklin,
22:630—32.

35.   Currey,
Code No. 72,
77—78; Walter Isaacson,
Benjamin Franklin: An American Life
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003), 321—22.

36.   Rockingham, quoted in Carl Van Doren,
Benjamin Franklin
(New York: Viking,
^j
93
⁸⁾
573.

37.   Thomas Penn to Richard Peters, 14 May 1757, in
Papers of Franklin,
7:111.

38.   BF to William Franklin, 19—22 Aug. 1772, in
Papers of Franklin,
19:259.

39.   Rockingham, quoted in Van Doren,
Franklin,
573.

40.   Alfred Owen Aldridge,
Franklin and His French Contemporaries
(New York: New York University Press, 1957), 26. Aldridge’s book is the best work on the French adoration of Franklin, and my account is much indebted to it.

41.   BF to Mary Stevenson, 14 Sept. 1767, in
Papers of Franklin,
14:254—55.

42.   Aldridge,
Franklin and His French Contemporaries,
29.

43.   Durand Echeverria,
Mirage in the West: A History of the French Image of American Society to 181J
(Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, 1957), 27n.

44.   Echeverria,
Mirage in the West,
18.

45.   For a full discussion of this debate over the New World as a human habitat, see Antonello Gerbi,
The Dispute of the New World: A History of a Polemic, 1730—1900,
trans. Jeremy Moyle (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1973).

46.   Simon Schama,
Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution
(New York: Knopf,

1989), 172; Paul Robinson,
Opera and Ideas: From Mozart to Strauss
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985), 8—57.

47.   Aldridge,
Franklin and His French Contemporaries,
61, 66.

48.   Van Doren,
Franklin,
576; Brands,
First American,
528.

49.   BF to Sarah Franklin Bache, 3 June 1779, in
Papers of Franklin,
29:613.

50.   Sellers,
Franklin in Portraiture,
96—139; Ellen G. Miles, “The French Portraits of Benjamin Franklin,” in J. A. Leo Lemay, ed.,
Reappraising Benjamin Franklin: A Bicentennial Perspective
(Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1993), 272—89.

51.   BF to Thomas Diggs, 25 June 1780, in
Papers of Franklin,
32:590.

52.   Van Doren,
Franklin,
632. On the many images of Franklin in France, see Bernard Bailyn’s illustrated essay, “Realism and Idealism in American

Diplomacy: Franklin in Paris,
Couronne par la Liberte”
in Bailyn,
To Begin the World Anew: The Genius and Ambiguities of the American Founders
(New York: Knopf, 2003), 60-99.

53.   According to Darcy R. Fryer, one of the editors of the
Papers of Franklin,
the story of the chamber pot adorned with Franklin’s face on the bottom probably originated with Madame Campan,
Memoirs of the Private Life of Marie Antoinette
(London, 1823), 1:230-31. Campan wrote that Louis XVI “had a vase de nuit made at Sevres manufactory at the bottom of which, was the medallion [of Franklin] with its fashionable legend, and he sent the utensil to the countess Diana as a new year’s gift.” H-Net/OIEAHC, 11 Dec. 2001.

54.   Adams,
Diary and Autobiography,
4:81.

55.   Aldridge,
Franklin and His French Contemporaries,
61.

56.   BF to Emma Thompson, 8 Feb. 1777, in
Papers of Franklin,
23:298. Franklin had long thought about the political implications of dress. “Simplicity is the homespun Dress of Honesty, and Chicanery and Craft are the Tinsel Habits and the false Elegance which are worn to cover the Deformity of Vice and Knavery,” he had written in 1732. BF, On Simplicity, 1732, in
Writings of Franklin,
181-84. On the political significance of clothing and dress, see Michael Zakim, “Sartorial Ideologies: From Home-Spun to Ready-Made,”
American Historical Review
106 (2001): 1553-86.

57.   BF to William Carmichael, 29 July 1778, in
Papers of Franklin,
27:176.

58.   Ronald C. Clark,
Benjamin Franklin: A Biography
(New York: Random House,
^j
9
⁸
3X 34
^l

59.   BF, “The Speech of Miss Polly Baker” (1747), in
Papers of Franklin,
3:120-25; Van Doren,
Franklin,
721-22; Max Hall,
Benjamin Franklin and Polly Baker: The History of a Literary Deception
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, i960).

60.   The famous preface to
Poor Richard’s Almanack
for 1758, known in different versions as “Father Abraham’s Speech” and
The Way to Wealth,
was reprinted at least i45 times in seven different languages before the end of the eighteenth century and many times since. BF,
Autobiography,
i64n.

61.   BF, Poor Richard Improved, 1758,
Papers of Franklin,
7:342. Most of the Poor Richard sayings, as Franklin’s persona admitted, were not of his own making. They were gleaned from a variety of sources, ranging from the works of George Herbert and James Howell to the writings of Thomas Fuller, Lord Halifax, and Samuel Richardson. He even borrowed some from Montaigne. He usually modified the borrowed sayings by making them more simple, more concrete, more euphonious, and often more bawdy. See Bruce Ingham Granger,
Benjamin Franklin: An American Man of Letters
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, i964), 65-75.

62.   Aldridge,
Franklin and His French Contemporaries,
50.

63.   BF to Robert Livingston, 4 Mar. 1782 in
Papers of Franklin,
36:646.

64.   Comte de Vergennes to Marquis de Lafayette, 7 Aug. 1780, in StanleyJ. Idzerda et al., eds.,
Lafayette in the Age of the American Revolution: Selected Letters and Papers, 1776—1790
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1977), 3:130. Actually French views have not much changed. In 2001 the wife of French president Jacques Chirac told her fellow citizens what made her husband a perfect public official. “He is not a money man,” she said. “Money has never been any kind of motivation for him. Never.”
International Herald Tribune,
11 Apr. 2002.

65.   BF, Positions to Be Examined, 4 Apr. 1769, BF to Jane Mecom, 30 Dec. 1770, BF, Last Will and Testament, 22 June 1750, and BF to Dumas, 6 Aug. 1781, all in
Papers of Franklin,
16:109; 17:315; 3:481; 35:341.

66.   See J. A. Leo Lemay,
The Canon of Benjamin Franklin: New Attributions and Reconsiderations
(Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1986), 53, for Franklin’s harsh views on commercial dealings.