The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (120 page)

As if this all were not shocking enough, the Seneca chief urged the governor to forward the tribute to London. “We wish you to send these scalps over the water to the great king, that he may regard them and be refreshed; and that he may see our faithfulness in destroying his enemies
and be convinced that his presents have not been made to ungrateful people.”

The whole business was absolutely appalling—and utterly false. There was no such shipment, and no such message for King George.

Yet Franklin, the author of the hoax, defended it as grounded in the reality of the warfare the Indians waged at Britain’s behest. “The
form
may perhaps not be genuine,” he admitted to a French friend, to whom he sent copies for distribution. “But the
substance
is truth; the number of people of all kinds and ages murdered by them being known to exceed that of the invoice. Make any use of them you may think proper to shame your Anglomanes, but do not let it be known through what hands they come.”

Franklin’s
propaganda may have changed a few minds but, coming this late in a long war, probably not many. It certainly did not change the positions of his counterparts in the peace negotiations.

Such a change required a substantive shift in the balance of military power—which, as matters transpired, took place in the spring of 1782. Following the allied victory at Yorktown, one who made it possible, the formerly cautious but now overconfident Grasse, sailed south to the West Indies, where he suffered a devastating defeat. In the Battle of the Saintes the admiral himself was captured, and the British gained what Charles Fox called, without excessive braggadocio, “the most important and decisive victory that has happened during the war.”

Meanwhile, the Spanish effort to recapture Gibraltar stalled. Spain had entered the war hoping to win various prizes from the British, but the one that obsessed the Spanish was the monolith that guarded the passage from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. Though ownership of the great rock had strategic implications, to Spain it was mostly a matter of pride. Unfortunately, Spanish pride had availed little so far against British cannons and the tunnels that shielded them.

In the summer of 1782 the Spanish mounted what promised to be their final offensive—however it turned out. Novel floating batteries were built to carry Spanish guns to sea; Spanish ships were massed in support. John Adams wrote from Holland that the Spanish ambassador there “trembled for the news we should have from Gibraltar.” Well he might have, Adams thought, saying he himself had “no expectation at all” of a Spanish victory. “The earnest zeal of Spain to obtain that impenetrable
Rock, what has it not cost the House of Bourbon this war? And what is the importance of it? A mere point of honour! A trophy of insolence to England and of humiliation to Spain!”

Adams’s apprehensions proved out; the attack failed. This left France in an awkward position. Louis had promised to fight on Spain’s side till the British were evicted from Gibraltar, yet on current trends that might take years—or generations. How long must France wait for this quixotic quest to succeed?

Vergennes had to consider something else. The Americans were tied to France directly, by the Franco-American treaty, but they were tied to Spain indirectly, by the Franco-Spanish treaty. There was no love lost between Spain and America, and if Vergennes clung to Spain too closely too long, the Americans might cut themselves loose of France—Franklin’s protestations of friendship to the contrary notwithstanding.

A final factor complicated things further. Russia had sat out the war, more or less, behind the protection of its “league of armed neutrality.” While Britain and France fought each other, Catherine the Great prepared to gobble up the Crimea. Vergennes, knowing the czarina’s appetite, earnestly desired to keep her from this next meal. But doing so required the cooperation of the British. Needless to say, as long as Britain and France were fighting in the Atlantic, cooperation in the Black Sea would be problematic.

In short, by the autumn of 1782 Vergennes had concluded that time was no longer on France’s side. Within limits, the sooner the present war drew to an end, the better.

As the shape of these events came into view, Vergennes shifted his position on the idea of separate negotiations. With feigned magnanimity he told Franklin the French court was resisting British efforts to deal with the Americans through France. “They want to treat with us for you, but this the king will not agree to. He thinks it not consistent with the dignity of your state. You will treat for yourselves; and every one of the powers at war with England will make its own treaty. All that is necessary for our common security is that the treaties go hand in hand, and are signed on the same day.”

The British, perhaps alerted by Bancroft, responded at once to the new state of affairs. Richard Oswald, with what seemed to Franklin “an air of great simplicity and honesty,” explained the dire financial straits into which Britain had fallen during the present war. “Our enemies may now do what they please with us,” he confided. “They have the ball at their foot.” Only Franklin, as representative of America, could extricate
England from its predicament. Indeed, Oswald said, it was perhaps the case that no single man ever possessed the power to do so much good as Franklin possessed at this moment.

Oswald assured Franklin that Shelburne shared this view, and showed him a letter from Shelburne saying as much. Oswald went on to say that he—Oswald—had told the ministers in London that however much they might seek Dr. Franklin’s assistance, they must not ask him to do anything unsuitable to his character or inconsistent with his duty to his country. “I did not ask him the particular occasion of his saying this,” Franklin recorded, “but thought it looked a little as if something inconsistent with my duty had been talked of or proposed.”

That something Franklin inferred from a memorandum Oswald showed him, written by Shelburne and mentioning “a final settlement of things between Great Britain and America, which Dr. Franklin very properly says requires to be treated in a very different manner from the peace between Great Britain and France, who have always been at enmity with each other.” In other words, a separate peace with the Americans was at the top of London’s list.

Franklin did not reject the British overture, but neither did he accept it at face value. Nor did he conceal it from Vergennes. The two diplomats discussed Britain’s efforts to drive them apart, and agreed on the prudence of their keeping together. Franklin—either from an honest suspicion of Britain’s bona fides or from a desire to assure Vergennes of
America’s
good faith—suggested that the British strategy of peacemaking might conceal a desire to conclude treaties with all parties, the better to isolate one to make war on after the treaties were signed. Egregiously exceeding his instructions, Franklin recommended that the four countries at war with Britain ought to enter into a new treaty, pledging all to the defense of each in the event of just such an English subterfuge. Vergennes concurred, noncommittally.

Following this nod to allied solidarity, Franklin pressed toward a settlement with Britain. He took pains to ensure that the British government acknowledge the independence of the United States
prior
to the commencement of formal negotiations, lest London try to count this as a concession compelling something of similar weight from the Americans. On this point Franklin demonstrated an ability to split hairs with the sharpest bargainers.

In early July he got down to particulars. He supplied Oswald with two lists. The first comprised matters he described as “necessary” to a
peace treaty; the second, elements “advisable.” Heading the necessary list was independence—“full and complete in every sense.” An immediate corollary of independence was the evacuation of all British troops from American soil. Next was a definitive determination of the boundaries of the American states and of the British colonies of Canada. Related to this was the retreat of the boundaries of Canada to what they had been before the Quebec Act of 1774. Finally, Britain must recognize the rights of Americans to fish on the banks off Newfoundland, as they had for centuries. Franklin explained that these items were nonnegotiable, and he spent little time discussing them.

The advisable list—“such as he would as a friend recommend to be offered by England,” was how Oswald paraphrased Franklin to Shelburne—required greater explanation. It started with a reparation payment to Americans ruined by the burning of towns and the destruction of farms. Franklin suggested £500,000 or £600,000 as a reasonable figure. “I was struck at this,” Oswald recorded, and he indicated as much to Franklin. Franklin answered that it sounded like a large sum but in fact would be money well spent. “It would conciliate the resentment of a multitude of poor sufferers who could have no other remedy, and who without some relief would keep up a spirit of secret revenge and animosity for a long time to come against Great Britain.”

Second of the advisables was a public acknowledgment by Britain of its error in distressing America so. “A few words of that kind would do more good than people could imagine,” Franklin said.

Third was a free-trade compact between Britain and America. American ships should have the same privileges in British ports as British ships; British ships should trade in American ports as equals with American ships.

Fourth and finally, Britain should cede Canada to the United States. In British hands Canada would become the bone of contention in Anglo-American relations it had long been in Anglo-French relations. Better to bar such quarrels by transferring Canada to the United States at once.

It was not lost on Oswald that Franklin’s position here was firmer than it had been in April. At that time Franklin had been vague on the boundaries of Canada and suggested using proceeds from the sale of Canadian land to compensate the Loyalists. Now he was adamant that Canada did not stretch south of the Great Lakes—which meant, in effect, that the western boundary of the United States must be the
Mississippi River. And he offered nothing to the Loyalists beyond a vague statement that the commissioners might recommend recompense to the separate states.

Oswald delivered Franklin’s terms to Shelburne, who, following the unexpected death by influenza of Rockingham, was suddenly prime minister. (The same influenza gripped John Jay, recently arrived in Paris from Spain but now incapacitated by illness.) Shelburne therefore spoke with enhanced authority when he indicated general acceptance of Franklin’s necessary terms. If the Americans could be persuaded to drop Franklin’s advisable articles, Shelburne said, the treaty might be “speedily concluded.”

In fact it was concluded, for the most part on Franklin’s necessary terms, but not as speedily as Shelburne or Franklin hoped. John Jay recovered sufficiently to register suspicion that things were moving
too
quickly (why were the British suddenly so accommodating?). Jay insisted on stronger guarantees of American independence in the language of Oswald’s commission. Without informing Franklin he sent an envoy to London to insist on a new commission, which Shelburne, still eager to move the talks along, granted.

Jay was no more trusting of the French. “This Court chooses to postpone an acknowledgment of our independence by Britain, to the conclusion of a general peace,” he wrote Congress president Robert Livingston, “in order to keep us under their direction until not only their and our objects are attained, but also until Spain shall be gratified in her demands.” Candor compelled him to a further comment: “I ought to add that Doctor Franklin does not see the conduct of this Court in the light I do, and that he believes they mean nothing in their proceedings but what is friendly, fair and honourable.”

Franklin was disinclined to argue the matter. The same lifestyle that had given him gout now inflicted a kidney stone that bloodied his urine and made travel, even from Passy to Versailles, most painful. For several weeks Jay took the lead in the negotiations; Franklin, persuaded that nothing important was at stake in Jay’s bustling about, gave the younger man his head.

The arrival of John Adams from Holland at the end of October complicated matters further. Whether Adams was more distrustful of France or of Franklin was hard to say; to him they seemed the same. By contrast, Jay seemed to Adams to be exhibiting a salutary “firmness and independence” toward France. “Between two as subtle spirits as any in this world, the one malicious [Franklin], the other I think honest [Jay], I
shall have a delicate, a nice, a critical part to act,” Adams told his diary. “Franklin’s cunning will be to divide us. To this end he will provoke, he will insinuate, he will intrigue, he will maneuvre.” Adams did not hide his preference for Jay over Franklin. After a conversation with Franklin, he recorded, “I told him without reserve my opinion of the policy of this Court, and of the principles, wisdom and firmness with which Mr. Jay had conducted the negotiation in his [Franklin’s] sickness and my absence, and that I was determined to support Mr. Jay to the utmost of my power in the pursuit of the same system.”