The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (32 page)

(that is, around Africa) and the Spanish capitalizing on their conquests in the Americas, encountered accidentally while searching for trade routes to the East via the West. The English and French were slower to exploit the opportunities of expansion overseas, but after sorting out the squabbles surrounding the Reformation of the sixteenth century—a sorting that left France in the Catholic camp but put England among the Protestants—these northerners launched their own imperial ventures. The English defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 signaled the start of the eclipse of the Iberians; it was followed by the planting of English and French colonies in North America.

The English got the better of the planting, sowing the seeds of settlement in the relatively fertile soil and equable climates of the Atlantic seaboard between the middle thirties and low forties of northern latitude. The French put down roots, or tried to, in the rocky glacial leftovers of the St. Lawrence Valley. The French also tried to force their way into the Mississippi and Ohio valleys; this effort, superimposed upon the larger struggle between the English and French dynasties on the eastern shore of the Atlantic, was what led to the series of colonial wars in which Franklin eventually became involved.

The first of the series, named by the Americans for English King William, lasted eight years and entailed numerous atrocities, including one massacre in New Hampshire perpetrated by a raiding party that was, in Cotton Mather’s characterization, “half Indianized French, and half Frenchified Indians.” King William’s War ended a decade before Franklin was born, and terminated in a treaty that restored the status quo, to the relief of the monarchs and ministers responsible but the disgust of most of those who did the actual fighting.

The second war was under way at the time of Franklin’s birth and was christened for Queen Anne. (No one thought of naming wars after the French monarch, since for longer than most people lived in those days, specifically from 1643 to 1715, all the wars would have been named for the same person, Louis XIV). Queen Anne’s War featured the seizure by Britain—as it was now properly called, following the recent unification of England and Scotland—of Gibraltar from France’s ally Spain, and it ended during the seventh year of Franklin’s life. The settlement confirmed the Gibraltar seizure, to the everlasting humiliation of the Spanish; awarded Acadia and Newfoundland to Britain, to the lasting, if not quite everlasting, vexation of the French; and made Britain’s enterprising slave traders the exclusive (legal) suppliers of captured Africans for the Spanish American market (not to mention the British American market).

Had Louis XIV not finally died shortly after the conclusion of Queen Anne’s War, the third round of fighting probably would have started sooner than it did. But the regents who ruled in the name of Louis’s minor heir lacked the Sun King’s sense of entitlement to primacy among nations, a sense that almost certainly would have provoked His Solarity to repudiate the Treaty of Utrecht. Meanwhile the Mississippi Valley absorbed more of France’s expansionist energies than anyone had imagined, mitigating the hurt of the loss of territory in the northeast. As a consequence, an entire generation—Franklin’s generation—grew up with the odd notion that peace was the rule among the imperial powers, and war the exception.

The error of this notion became apparent during Franklin’s fourth decade. A British smuggler named Robert Jenkins was caught in the act by Spanish authorities, who chastised him by slicing off his ear. He retrieved the alienated part and for seven years carried it across the seven seas in a handkerchief in his pocket. Eventually he found his way to Westminster, arriving—not coincidentally—at a moment when English Protestant passions were again rising against the Spanish papists. He produced his leathery relic, to the professed shock of all the honorable members (who in fact saw far worse examples of human cruelty on the streets of London every day). It would be a few years yet before Samuel Johnson defined patriotism as the last refuge of scoundrels; perhaps the pioneer lexicographer was inspired by Jenkins, who declared that at the moment the Spanish sword was flashing down, “I commended my soul to God, and my cause to my country!”

Parliament and country rose in anger—however belated—and war ensued. The War of Jenkins’s Ear was noteworthy for the massively stupid loss of British and American lives before the walls of Cartegena, Spain’s Caribbean stronghold in New Granada. The American survivors began to form an opinion once commonplace but since forgotten: that they were pawns in Britain’s imperial wars. And now it was evident that they were incompetently played pawns at that. (Whether from stubborn loyalty or as a reminder of what he had been through, an American captain named Lawrence Washington limped back to Virginia and called his hilltop plantation above the Potomac after the British admiral at Cartagena, Edward Vernon.)

The War of Jenkins’s Ear segued seamlessly into King George’s War when France joined the fight on the side of the Spanish. This conflict was the one Franklin referred to in his letter to Josiah and Abiah. The high point of the war, certainly from an American perspective, was the
siege of Louisbourg, the French fortress on Cape Breton Island that commanded the entrance to the St. Lawrence River and harassed American fishing vessels on the Grand Banks. As far east as it was, Louisbourg received news of the formal declaration of war before that news reached New England; privateers out of Louisbourg exploited their informational advantage and swooped down upon American vessels, ultimately ranging as far south as the estuary of the Delaware River, where they seized ships almost within hailing distance of the docks of Philadelphia. The French military governor of Louisbourg meanwhile launched a surprise attack on an English fishing village on the Nova Scotian shore. The commander of the attack followed up his easy victory there with a fatal blunder: instead of transporting the prisoners straight to Boston as promised in the surrender terms, he stopped at Louisbourg on the way. This allowed the prisoners to observe that the fortress was poorly maintained and even less well manned. When they reached Boston they shared this intelligence with Governor William Shirley, who determined to put it to use. He advocated an offensive against Louisbourg to end forever the depredations of the French and their savage Indian allies upon the peace-loving and God-fearing people of New England. If the expedition made a hero of its sponsor, all the better.

Shirley struck a sympathetic nerve with his call for ships and troops and money. The maritime interests of Franklin’s birthplace itched to be rid of the Gallic menace. Every New England family recalled horror stories of women and children being slaughtered by fiendish red men, provoked and provisioned by the French. The infamous massacre at Deerfield, Massachusetts, was forty years old but more horrible for the telling and retelling. Everyone knew that the Indian raids would never cease until the French were thrust out of Canada. The Massachusetts General Court—the same body that had chastised James Franklin for sedition—instructed Shirley to raise an army of 3,000 volunteers. He persuaded the popular and civic-minded merchant William Pepperell to lead the force and promised easy plunder to all who participated in storming the fortress and reducing the town it guarded. Shirley figuratively brought aboard local preachers, who literally brought aboard their lay brothers. George Whitefield provided a motto for what quickly assumed the trappings of a Protestant crusade:
“Nil desperandum Christo duce.”
(“None despairing where Christ leads.” Apparently the great revivalist was not bothered by the fact that Latin was the language of the papists.) Shirley invited the other colonies to join the crusade. Rhode Island promised a ship, sailors, and soldiers. Connecticut voted to dispatch
a force of 500 men. New York sent cannon, vital for use against the walls of the French fort.

The response from Pennsylvania was less enthusiastic. Governor George Thomas spoke openly for the plan, commending the New Englanders’ initiative to the Assembly. “The enterprise shows a fine public spirit in that people!” he declared. “And, if it succeeds, it will be greatly for the honour of His Majesty and the interest of all his colonies in North America.” In private, however, he expressed reservations, which strengthened the skeptics in the Assembly. The theology of the Quakers had attenuated over time; pacifism was not as central to the self-conception of the third generation of Friends in America as it had been to William Penn’s contemporaries. Yet there remained an uneasiness with war and war preparations, especially when they entailed expense and risk, as these did. Non-Quakers in the Assembly joined the party of the founders in objecting to the cost and hazard and in complaining that they had not been consulted by the New Englanders in advance of the decision to sail against Cape Breton. “We should not think it prudent,” the Assembly concluded, “to unite in an enterprise where the expense must be great, perhaps much blood shed, and the event very uncertain.”

Franklin
observed the Louisbourg debate as clerk of the Assembly. This extremely part-time job, which he had commenced in 1736, was hardly in demand, paying little in cash and less in honor. Its chief recommendation to Franklin was that it facilitated his work as printer of the Assembly’s proceedings, which
did
make him some money. It also afforded a firsthand view of Pennsylvania politics.

What he witnessed in the debate over the Louisbourg expedition did not impress him. “When I compare the Governor’s message to the House with his private conversation,” Franklin noted to himself, “I cannot but admire at his insincerity, to commend the undertaking publicly, that he might gain the applause of the Governor and people of New England, and the Ministry at home [that is, in England], at the same time that he privately does all in his power to disappoint it.” The Assembly was no more ingenuous. Remarking the enthusiasm of several members for New England’s success, even while they precluded a role for Pennsylvania, Franklin asserted, “If it be against their consciences, they ought not by any means to encourage military proceedings in others more than themselves.” To the faces of these same members he spoke more tartly.
“I told them those people [the New Englanders] were as much obliged to them for their good wishes as the poor in the Scripture to those that say, Be ye warmed and ye filled.” Again speaking to himself, Franklin added, “I think they ought to be open and honest and give the true reason, and not trifle in the manner they do, by pretending, among other things, that they are offended in not being consulted in such an affair.” Neither side had done itself credit. “The Governor and Assembly have been only acting a farce and playing tricks to amuse the world.”

The Louisbourg offensive went forward without Pennsylvania’s help—but not without Pennsylvania’s attention. “Our people are extremely impatient to hear of your success at Cape Breton,” Franklin wrote his Boston brother John a month after the expedition set sail. “My shop is filled with thirty inquiries at the coming of every post.” Most of those who crowded into the Market Street shop were military innocents—this being Quaker country—and they wondered that the fortress had not already fallen. Franklin was scarcely surprised. “I tell them I shall be glad to hear that news three months hence,” he reported to John. “Fortified towns are hard nuts to crack; and your teeth have not been accustomed to it. Taking strong places is a particular trade, which you have taken up without serving an apprenticeship to it. Armies and veterans need skilful engineers to direct them in their attack. Have you any?” Yet these objections hardly registered with many who watched the proceeding from afar. “Some seem to think forts are as easy taken as snuff.”

Franklin could not resist a laugh at those who treated the expedition as a crusade and called upon God to guarantee its success. “You have a fast and prayer day for that purpose,” he wrote John, “in which I compute five hundred thousand petitions were offered up to the same effect in New England, which added to the petitions of every family morning and evening, multiplied by the number of days since January 25th, make forty-five millions of prayers; which, set against the prayers of a few priests in the garrison, to the Virgin Mary, give a vast balance in your favor.” There was serious theology at issue here, Franklin teased. “If you do not succeed, I fear I shall have but an indifferent opinion of Presbyterian prayers in such cases, as long as I live. Indeed, in attacking strong towns I should have more dependence on
works
than on
faith,
for, like the kingdom of heaven, they are to be taken by force and violence; and in a French garrison I suppose there are devils of that kind, that they are not to be cast out by prayers and fasting, unless it be by their own fasting for want of provisions.”