The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (117 page)

Lee’s libels were an extreme version of a sentiment widely shared: that Franklin was unduly partial to France. John Adams thought so. As an early anti-British radical, Adams was hardly an apologist for Britain. “They hate us, universally from the Throne to the footstool,” he said, “and would annihilate us, if in their power.” Yet Adams was equally skeptical of the French. In Adams’s worldview, nations had no friends, only interests. French interests had motivated the alliance with America; French interests—rather than any attachment to republican values, for instance—would continue to motivate French policy after the war. And
American
interests dictated creating a certain distance from France now that the war was nearly over. Adams’s skepticism was no secret. “He tells me himself,” Franklin reported to Congress, “that America has been too free in expressions of gratitude to France; that she is more obliged to us than we to her; and that we should shew spirit in our applications.”

John Jay felt similarly. He believed that Vergennes was deliberately delaying the negotiations, from a desire to extend American dependence on France. “It was evident the Count did not wish to see our independence acknowledged by Britain until they had made all their uses of us,”
Jay told Robert Livingston, the American foreign secretary, after an interview with Vergennes. Jay saw no reason to share his insight with the French. “We ought not to let France know that we have such ideas; while they think us free from suspicion they will be more open, and we should make no other use of this discovery than to put us on our guard.”

Franklin had long since stopped answering criticism directed at his person, and he probably would have let the allegations of Francophilia pass had they not threatened what he considered to be essential American interests. “Your enemies industriously publish that your age and indolence have unabled you for your station,” Robert Morris wrote; “that a sense of obligation to France seals your lips when you should ask their aid; and that (whatever your friends may say to the contrary) both your connections and influence at Court are extremely feeble.” Morris said he related this information as a friend, but he added that many in Congress believed the allegations. Moreover, those who censured Franklin were the ones most vocal in their censure of France.

Franklin responded that he was “extremely sorry” to hear the railing against France, as it tended to hurt “the good understanding” that had existed between the governments of France and the United States. “There seems to be a party with you that wish to destroy it. If they could succeed, they would do us irreparable injury.” The help of France had been crucial to America’s success at arms, and it remained crucial to America’s success at diplomacy. “It is our firm connection with France that gives us weight with England, and respect throughout Europe. If we were to break our faith with this nation, on whatever pretence, England would again trample on us, and every other nation despise us.” Franklin acknowledged the prudence of allowing the British to hope for a reconciliation with their former colonies, but America’s polestar must be Paris. “The true political interest of America consists in observing and fulfilling, with the greatest exactitude, the engagements of our alliance with France.”

The negotiations
began in earnest with the arrival of Richard Oswald in France in April 1782. Oswald was the representative of the new ministry in London, which was headed by Lord Rockingham and included Charles James Fox as foreign minister and Lord Shelburne as secretary of state for home and colonial affairs. Oswald impressed all who knew him with his honesty and fair-mindedness. Henry Laurens—
writing from his London cell—called him “a gentleman of the strictest candour and integrity.” Vergennes asserted, “He is a wise man who seems not to have even the idea of intrigues. Rich himself, devoid of ambition, he has yielded to his friendship for Lord Shelburne in coming here, and he does not claim other recompense than the glory of rendering a useful service to his homeland and to humanity.”

Franklin was initially more guarded in his judgment. He granted that Oswald
appeared
“wise and honest,” but he questioned the purpose of his mission. The fact that Oswald proposed to talk to him alone—apart from Vergennes—indicated a desire to separate America from France. Such a separation Franklin refused to allow. “I let him know that America would not treat but in concert with France,” Franklin recorded in his journal of the negotiations.

Oswald did not dispute this. But he would never have received his present appointment had he been so easily dissuaded. “I told the Doctor I made no doubt that was the case,” Oswald wrote. “Yet I could not see but it was in the power of the commissioners of the colonies, by meeting and consulting together, to smooth the way to an equitable settlement of general negotiation, by framing some particular points separately regarding Great Britain.” This would be no more than an efficient use of time.

There
was
more, however. Oswald suggested that once the issue of American independence was settled, reconciliation between the two branches of the English-speaking people could take place quickly; it ought not be delayed by issues concerning only the French. Britain had its pride, and if the French confused British weariness for war in America with unwillingness to defend British interests against French encroachment, they would rue their error—and so would the Americans, if they tied themselves to France. “In case France should make demands too humiliating for England to submit to, the spirit of the nation would be roused, unanimity would prevail, and resources would not be wanting.”

Franklin begged to differ. The issue of independence was
already
settled, he said. It had never been in question in American minds since 1776; and if Britain was slow to acknowledge the obvious, that was the problem of the king and Parliament. Britain said it desired
reconciliation.
“It is a sweet word.” But it meant more than mere peace and required more than a termination of hostilities. For six years Britain had waged a cruel and unjust war upon America; not surprisingly, Americans harbored a great deal of resentment against Britain. Would his countrymen demand reparation for property destroyed by British troops? For homes and villages burned by Britain’s Indian allies? Franklin did not presume to
say. “But would it not be better for England to offer it? Nothing would have a greater tendency to conciliate, and much of the future commerce and returning intercourse between the two countries may depend on the reconciliation. Would not the advantage of reconciliation by such means be greater than the expence?”

What might be fair reparation? Franklin answered his own query: Canada. Britain could hardly get more from Canada in furs and other items of export than it cost her to defend and govern the province. Americans could make far better use of it. Franklin appreciated that Britain might not wish to give up Canada at the insistence of the United States; he acknowledged the role pride played in human affairs. But why not
offer
Canada without being asked, as a token of Britain’s sincerity regarding reconciliation? Such an offer would have “an excellent effect” in America. It would settle the issue of reparations—and at the same time provide, through Canadian land sales, the means by which the Loyalists might be indemnified for loss of their estates.

If Oswald was surprised at the audacity of Franklin’s opening offer, he diplomatically cloaked his feelings. He congratulated Franklin on the forthrightness of his statement, and the two agreed that Oswald ought to relay the message personally to Shelburne in London. Franklin had written out his position in advance; Oswald, explaining that his own paraphrase could not do justice to Franklin’s own wording, asked to take Franklin’s paper with him. He assured the author it would be returned safely. Franklin, though reminding Oswald that the American commission comprised others besides himself, and that these would have to be consulted before any decisions could be made, at length agreed.

Franklin’s initial skepticism of Oswald had vanished. “We parted exceeding good friends,” he recorded. To Shelburne he declared, “I desire no other channel of communication between us than that of Mr. Oswald, which I think your Lordship has chosen with much judgment.” Franklin hoped that the secretary of state, replying through Oswald, would be as frank and serious as he himself had tried to be. “If he is enabled, when he returns hither, to communicate more fully your Lordship’s mind on the principal points to be settled, I think it may contribute much to the blessed work our hearts are engaged in.”

Blessed
the work may have been, but complicated. Oswald returned in the first week of May with the news that Shelburne had read
Franklin’s proposal with real interest. Oswald relayed that Shelburne had evinced surprise that a reparation was even under consideration, and he wondered if the Americans were going to demand it. Franklin, of course, had not said they would; and now Oswald tried to ensure that they would
not.
Speaking confidentially, he said—and subsequently repeated—that he thought the question of Canada would be settled to the Americans’ satisfaction at the end of the negotiations. But if they brought it up at the beginning it might snarl the talks irreparably.

Franklin was not sure what to make of this. Was Oswald speaking for Shelburne or simply for himself? “On the whole,” he wrote in his journal, “I was able to draw so little from Mr. Oswald on the sentiments of Lord Shelburne, who had mentioned him as entrusted with the communication of them, that I could not but wonder at his being sent again to me.”

Franklin’s wonder increased upon the arrival of a second envoy. The new man was young—only twenty-seven—and just recently elected to Parliament. But he was obviously well connected, for he was the son of Franklin’s nemesis, George Grenville. And he was well tutored, in that his instructions from Charles Fox indicated precisely how he was to conduct himself. Thomas Grenville was to determine whether the diplomatic distance between Franklin and Vergennes remained as small as it appeared to Oswald, and to do everything in his power to increase it. In secret instructions to young Grenville, Fox explained:

After having seen Mons. de Vergennes you will go to Dr. Franklin, to whom you will hold the same language as to the former, and as far as his country is concerned there can be no difficulty in shewing him that there is no longer any subject of dispute and that if unhappily this treaty should break off his countrymen will be engaged in a war in which they can have no interest whatever either immediate or remote. It will be very material that, during your stay at Paris, and in the various opportunities you may have of conversing with this gentleman, you should endeavour to discover whether, if the treaty should break off or be found impracticable on account of points in which America has no concern, there may not in that case be a prospect of a separate peace between G. Britain and America, which after such an event must be so evidently for the mutual interests of both countries.

Grenville’s first efforts in this direction failed. Franklin ushered him to a meeting with Vergennes; when Grenville proposed that Britain
formally acknowledge American independence in exchange for a return to the territorial status quo ante bellum, Vergennes smiled. The offer of independence amounted to nothing, he said. “America does not ask it of you. There is Mr. Franklin; he will answer you as to that point.”

Franklin obliged. “We do not consider ourselves as under any necessity of bargaining for a thing that is our own,” he said, “which we have bought at the expense of much blood and treasure, and which we are in the possession of.”

Britain would have to do better, Vergennes continued. And as for a return to the status quo, had Britain been thus contented after the last war? That war had started over minor disputes regarding the Ohio and Nova Scotia; it ended with Britain taking Canada, Louisiana, and Florida, not to mention her gains in the East Indies. A country that gambled on war, Vergennes suggested, must accept its losses.