The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (104 page)

The outbreak of the American war presented an opportunity and a problem. The opportunity was the obvious one: to capitalize on Britain’s current discomfiture and distraction. The problem was less obvious (to those unaware of the foreign minister’s timetable) but no less real: whether to accelerate war plans in order to exploit England’s troubles, or to stick with the plan. How
much
help would the Americans be in a war? How
real
was the prospect of their reconciliation with Britain, or their defeat? Vergennes needed to know.

He did not get much out of Franklin—but then neither did Franklin get much out of him. Upon Franklin’s arrival in Paris, where he was joined by Deane and Lee, the three applied for an interview with Vergennes. The foreign minister declined a formal meeting at Versailles in favor of a secret session in Paris, intended to take the measure of the Americans, Franklin especially, rather than to determine policy. “Intelligent, but very circumspect,” was how the foreign minister characterized Franklin, adding, “This did not surprise me.”

Franklin spoke for the group, and for the American Congress. He indicated his country’s interest in a treaty with France (and, for good measure, with Spain). When Vergennes nodded noncommittally, Franklin promised a memorandum on the current state of American affairs. The foreign minister indicated he would read such a memorandum with great interest.

Franklin spent the last days of 1776 drafting the memo, which he delivered to Vergennes at Versailles early in January. Franklin’s message mixed promises with threats.

As other princes of Europe are lending or hiring their troops to Britain against America, it is apprehended that France may, if she thinks fit, afford our Independent States the same kind of aid, without giving England just cause of complaint. But if England should on that account declare war, we conceive that by the united force of France, Spain and America, she will lose all her possessions in the West Indies, much the greatest part of that commerce that has rendered her so opulent, and be reduced to that state of weakness and humiliation she has by her perfidy, her insolence, and her cruelty both in the East and West so justly merited.

On the other hand, without French assistance, especially at sea, America might be forced to terminate the war.

While the English are masters of the American seas and can, without fear of interruption, transport with such ease their army from one part of our extensive coast to another, and we can only meet them by land marches, we may possibly, unless some powerful aid is given us, or some strong diversion made in our favour, be so harassed and put to such immense expense as that finally our people will find themselves reduced to the necessity of ending the war by an accommodation.

France and Spain must seize the moment to link arms with America. Franklin summarized and concluded:

North America now offers to France and Spain her amity and commerce. She is also ready to guarantee in the firmest manner to those nations all their present possessions in the West Indies, as well as those they shall acquire from the enemy in a war that may be consequential of such assistance as she requests. The interest of the three nations is the same. The opportunity of cementing them, and of securing all the advantages of that commerce, which in time will be immense, now presents itself. If neglected, it may never again return. We cannot help suggesting that a considerable delay may be attended with fatal consequences.

Vergennes was not to be moved by mere rhetoric. During the next few months he kept Franklin and the other Americans at arm’s length. Their requests for interviews were diverted to his assistants, their very
existence hardly acknowledged by the French court. Their request for a treaty was rebuffed, as was their application for such formal and undeniable assistance as a loan of ships of the French line. Clearly the government was not ready to embrace the American cause openly—for fear “of giving umbrage to England,” Franklin explained to the Committee of Secret Correspondence.

Yet privately Vergennes facilitated the American war effort. The ports of France were opened to American vessels for the selling of American goods and the buying of French. Arrangements were made for the purchase of five thousand hogsheads of American tobacco by the Farmers General, a consortium of bankers and merchants closely connected to the government, which besides collecting taxes for the king ran the state’s tobacco monopoly. The Farmers General would advance 1 million livres in payment; further sums would follow commencement of delivery of the tobacco. The government itself provided a grant of 2 million livres, to be paid in four quarterly installments.

On the whole Franklin found cause for optimism, as he usually did. The delay in winning an alliance with France simply meant France would be stronger when the alliance did come, as Franklin was certain it ultimately would—by either a positive act on France’s part or a British declaration of war against France for assisting the Americans. And the French would bring Spain—“with which they mean to act in perfect unanimity,” Franklin remarked. “Their fleet is nearly ready,” he said of the French, “and will be much superior to the English, when joined with that of Spain, which is preparing with all diligence. The tone of the Court accordingly rises; and it is said that a few days since, when the British ambassador intimated to the minister, that if the Americans were permitted to continue drawing supplies of arms &c. from this kingdom, the peace could not last much longer, he was firmly answered, Nous ne desirons pas la guerre, et nous ne le craignons pas. We neither desire war, nor fear it.” Franklin was not willing to predict a date for the onset of hostilities; this might be a matter of chance. But it could not be far off. “When all are ready for it, a small matter may suddenly bring it on; and it is the universal opinion that the peace cannot continue another year. Every nation in Europe wishes to see Britain humbled, having all in their turns been offended by her insolence.”

America’s star was on the rise. “All Europe is for us. Our Articles of Confederation, being by our means translated and published here, have given an appearance of consistence and firmness to the American states and Government, that begins to make them considerable. The separate
constitutions of the several states are also translating and publishing here, which afford abundance of speculation to the politicians of Europe.”

On this point Franklin was speaking more of popular opinion than of the views of the courts of the Continent—which on principle looked askance at republicanism. His meaning became clear as he described what victory would yield. “It is a very general opinion that if we succeed in establishing our liberties, we shall as soon as peace is restored receive an immense addition of numbers and wealth from Europe, by the families who will come over to participate our privileges and bring their estates with them.” This made the American cause all the more worthy.

Tyranny is so generally established in the rest of the world that the prospect of an asylum in America for those who love liberty gives general joy, and our cause is esteemed the cause of all mankind. Slaves naturally become base as well as wretched. We are fighting for the dignity and happiness of human nature. Glorious it is for the Americans to be called by Providence to this post of honour. Cursed and detested will everyone be that deserts or betrays it.

The great
goal of Franklin’s French mission was an alliance with Louis’s regime, but achieving that goal required keeping the United States afloat till the Bourbon monarch came round. Money was a constant problem, despite the grants and advances Vergennes arranged. Franklin knew something about financing a war from the last conflict with France, but the war against Britain ate through money faster than he or anyone else in America had imagined. For internal consumption the Congress could levy taxes and print money, both of which it did. Yet neither addressed the need for foreign exchange—the coin of the realms where Americans hoped to buy the muskets, cannons, ships, and other items they could not produce themselves in the quantities they needed. For these they had to pay in promises, which went at a severe discount after disasters like Long Island, or in trade goods the French, Spanish, and other foreigners wanted to buy. The tobacco deal marked a start, but it soon suffered from the same ailment that afflicted the rest of the trade from America: British men-of-war, which stopped up American ports and scoured the shipping lanes to Europe. Vessels got through now and
again, compensating their captains for their audacity, but not frequently enough to keep the new republic in the livres it required.

An alternative was resort to privateers, the licensed pirates on whom the English had relied since the days of Francis Drake. The privateers preyed on the maritime trade of Britain, thereby depriving London of revenues; more positively (from the American perspective), the privateers’ prizes might be sold on the open foreign market for the hard currency America desperately required.

The problem was that the market for prizes was not as open as Franklin and the other Americans wished. France was the obvious place to sell the captured cargoes and vessels, and France was where they were first disposed of. Lambert Wickes, the captain of the
Reprisal,
the bucking brig that brought Franklin over from Philadelphia, sold his two prizes to French purchasers willing to wink at the falsified papers that were to the privateers’ practice what Continental dollars were to the fiscal practice of the American Congress. But the British were not so tolerant. They warned Vergennes that conspiracy in piracy might lead to belligerency. Vergennes initially told Franklin that American privateers in French ports must leave with their prizes at once, but upon being informed that the vessels in question required repairs, and that to turn them out would simply turn them over to the British, the foreign minister relented. They might stay—indeed they
must
stay—pending further notice.

Although Franklin was willing to abide by Vergennes’s cease-and-desist order, the privateers themselves—for whom privateering was often as much a moneymaking venture as an exercise in patriotism—were not. Gustavus Conyngham was released from French custody at Dunkirk on the assurances of the American commissioners that he and his cutter
Revenge
would sail directly to America and engage in no activities hostile to Britain save self-defense. The captain blithely ignored written orders and set about picking off British merchantmen. To make matters worse, he allowed one of his prizes to be recaptured by the British, and the prize crew (the sailors from Conyngham’s ship detailed to sail the captured vessel in place of the now-confined original crew) turned out to be mostly Frenchmen.

The fault was not all Conyngham’s. Evidently the captain had received an oral message from one William Carmichael, a courier from Franklin and the commission, that countermanded his written orders. Carmichael evidently considered Franklin too timid and desired to force the French into the war. Whether or not Conyngham suspected Carmichael of freelancing, the captain was happy to resume his predation.

Vergennes had no interest in
which
Americans were to blame; the fact that French sailors had been captured in what the British interpreted as piracy provoked a diplomatic crisis. A special envoy from King George arrived at Versailles threatening war against France. Vergennes and Louis took the matter most seriously, with the former warning the French ambassador in London that hostilities could begin at any time and the latter holding French ships in port. Louis also ordered American privateers and prizes out of French harbors, repaired or not. Vergennes refused to deal further with Franklin or the other American commissioners.

Franklin
understood that Vergennes’s displeasure was as much for Britain’s benefit as America’s, and he assumed that once the war scare passed, the displeasure would dissipate.

Other problems were less tractable. The American commissioners had charge of purchasing weapons and other war matériel for Washington’s army, and though funding these purchases was a constant challenge, there was no lack of interest on the part of French and other European merchants and manufacturers in America’s business. Yet precisely because of the uncertainty of getting paid, those expressing the interest were often of the enterprising—not to say shady—sort.