The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (99 page)

Franklin appreciated that all this was considerably more than many of the delegates to the Continental Congress were willing to accept. To allay their fears he appended a clause contemplating the dissolution of the confederation upon Britain’s restoration of the rights and privileges of the American colonies, the withdrawal of all British troops from America, and the receipt of compensation for damages to Boston’s commerce and Charlestown’s structures and for the expense to the colonies of “this unjust war.” How much this actually allayed the fears of the timid must be doubted; by all proclamation and policy Britain evinced that it would never accept such conditions. Failing acceptance, “this Confederation is to be perpetual.”

Even with the escape clause Franklin’s confederation was too forward, as he certainly realized. He contented himself with reading his articles to a committee of the whole Congress. He made no motion that required a vote or even a formal record of his proposal; his purpose was to set the delegates thinking about the kind of union that would be necessary to fight and win a war and to carry America into the peace beyond. In this he certainly succeeded, and when the time proved riper, his proposal became the starting point for the Articles of Confederation the Congress and the states finally adopted.

Other actions by Franklin bore fruit immediately. It was lost on none of the delegates, on none of the committees of correspondence of the several colonies, or for that matter on the British government, that the resistance to British usurpation could not have congealed as it had without an efficient postal service. Needless to say, British postal officials would be loath to deliver letters for practicing rebels; already the mails were being regularly opened. And already the colonial governments were making separate provisions for delivery. As one, the delegates to the Congress concluded that the obvious person to organize this alternative service was the man who had made the system run so well under the British. On July 26 the Congress unanimously elected Franklin postmaster general for the American colonies.

Even as he engaged the subordinates necessary to make the American
post office a reality (true to nepotic form, he appointed Richard Bache his secretary and comptroller), Franklin received another appointment freighted with no less importance, albeit considerably less publicity. In September he was named to the “secret committee” of the Congress; this group bore primary responsibility for obtaining the weapons necessary to wage the war. Franklin’s experience provisioning General Braddock’s army at the outset of the French and Indian War stood him well in this endeavor, as did his repeated raising of militia to defend Philadelphia, and his construction of forts on the Pennsylvania frontier. But the job was immense, being hardly less than creating an army from scratch—or, what was worse, from a motley collection of militias jealous of their rights and confirmed in their ignorance.

Franklin
felt the immensity of the task on a visit to General Washington’s headquarters. Following his appointment to the command of what was optimistically styled the “Continental Army,” Washington traveled to Boston to take charge of the mostly Massachusetts force besieging the British there. He required a few weeks to assess his soldiers and reconnoiter the position; molding the militia into a real army took considerably longer. This necessitated the creation of an officer corps that knew its business and could teach the troops. But the troops did not want to learn, considering themselves above discipline and, in many cases, intending to leave the ranks when their brief terms of enlistment expired. To make bad worse, winter was fast descending on an army ill equipped even for a New England autumn. Washington appealed to the Congress for help; without it, he warned, the army would disintegrate.

The Congress did what congresses do: it appointed a committee to investigate. Franklin headed the committee; joining him were Thomas Lynch of South Carolina and Benjamin Harrison of Virginia. In October the three traveled to Washington’s headquarters at Cambridge. For seven days they met with Washington and his staff in an effort to forge a policy that would meet the needs of the military moment without abridging the political liberties for which the war was being fought. Discipline was a central issue. The group authorized the death penalty for mutiny and incitement thereto. Drunken officers should be drummed out of the army with infamy. Sentries caught asleep should receive not less than twenty lashes nor more than thirty-nine. An officer absent without leave should be fined one month’s pay for the first offense and cashiered for the
second; an enlisted man should be confined and placed on bread and water for seven days for the first such offense and suffer similar confinement, with loss of a week’s pay, for the second.

The group considered rations—to wit, what the Congress could afford and the men tolerate. They decided on a pound of beef or salt fish or three-quarters of a pound of pork per man per day; a pound of bread or flour; a pint of milk; a quart of spruce beer or cider (or 9 gallons of molasses per company—of somewhat fewer than a hundred men—per week, for making rum); a half-pint of rice or one pint of cornmeal per man per week; 24 pounds of soft soap or 8 pounds of hard soap per company per week; and 3 pounds of candles per company per week. Additional provisions—vegetables, beans and peas, extra milk—might be purchased by the troops at regulated prices.

Standards were established for the men’s arms. The several colonies should set their gunsmiths to work fabricating firelocks with barrels three-quarters of an inch in bore and 44 inches in length, with bayonets 18 inches in the blade. For additional arms the colonies should “import all that can be procured.”

The size of the army should be increased to 20,000 (the overly precise figure was 20,372). It should consist of regiments of 728 men (including officers), with each regiment divided into eight companies consisting of one captain, two lieutenants, one ensign, four sergeants, four corporals, two drums or fifes, and 76 privates. Some in the Congress, complaining of cost, advocated reducing the pay of the troops. Washington and his staff, and Franklin and his committee, agreed unanimously that lowering pay “would be attended with dangerous consequences.” It should remain at 40 shillings per month.

Provisions for privateers were made, along with procedures for disposing of their prizes. General Washington should arrange for the sale of vessels and cargoes captured by warships outfitted at the expense of the Congress; the proceeds would support the war effort.

Many other matters were decided, but on a critical question of strategy the soldiers and civilians agreed to consult the Congress. Washington and his war council had determined that a frontal attack on the British forces in Boston was impractical before winter; he now requested guidance as to whether an artillery bombardment of British positions and troops in the city was appropriate. He could probably compel a withdrawal, but not without destroying the town. What should he do?

Franklin and the other committee members agreed, as they stated in their report, that this was “a matter of too much consequence to be determined
by them”; therefore they referred it back to the Congress. In sending them off, Washington made another appeal for money: “The General then requested that the Committee would represent to the Congress the necessity of having money constantly and regularly sent.”

Franklin had heard the dire reports from Washington and others of the army’s troubles; having seen the soldiers and spoken to the officers, he thought the reports overblown. “Here is a fine healthy army,” he wrote Richard Bache, “wanting nothing but some improvement in its officers, which is daily making.”

As for the expense of the war, he was similarly optimistic. What was necessary could well be borne.

Though I am for the most prudent parsimony of the public treasury, I am not terrified by the expence of this war, should it continue ever so long. A little more frugality, or a little more industry in individuals will with ease defray it. Suppose it [costs] £100,000 a month, or £1,200,000 a year. If 500,000 families will each spend a shilling a week less, or earn a shilling a week more; or if they will spend 6 pence a week less and earn 6 pence a week more, they may pay the whole sum without otherwise feeling it. Forbearing to drink tea saves three fourths of the money; and 500,000 women doing each threepence worth of spinning or knitting in a week will pay the rest. (How much more then may be done by the superior frugality and industry of the men?)

I wish nevertheless most earnestly for peace, this war being a truly unnatural and mischievous one; but we have nothing to expect from submission but slavery and contempt.

In another letter Franklin examined the cost question from the British side and came to the same conclusion. He and Joseph Priestley had a mutual friend, Richard Price, a man of mathematical (among other) interests; Franklin sent Priestley a message to forward. “Tell our good friend Dr. Price, who sometimes has doubts and despondencies about our firmness, that America is determined and unanimous, a very few tories and placemen excepted, who will probably soon export themselves.” Franklin then suggested a simple calculation. “Britain, at the expence of three millions, has killed 150 Yankees this campaign, which is £20,000 a head; and at Bunker’s Hill she gained a mile of ground, half of which she lost again by our taking post on Ploughed Hill. During the same time 60,000 children have been born in America. From these data his
mathematical head will easily calculate the time and expence necessary to kill us all, and conquer our whole territory.”

While
Washington maintained the siege of Boston (permission to bombard the city was withheld), another American force drove north to Canada. As it had for the French before them, Canada currently enabled the British to conceive a strike at the American interior, raising the possibility that New England might be cut off, via New York and the Hudson River, from the lower colonies. The American invasion of Canada was designed to deny that province to the British; if the Canadians could be persuaded to join the other colonies in opposition to Britain, all the better.

The invasion was a two-pronged affair. Philip Schuyler pushed up from Fort Ticonderoga along Lake Champlain to Fort St. John; after sickness disabled him he turned the command over to Richard Montgomery, who captured Montreal before driving down the St. Lawrence toward Quebec. Meanwhile Benedict Arnold led an appallingly arduous march across Maine, losing nearly half his men to cold, hunger, sickness, exhaustion, and discouragement before meeting up with Montgomery below the walls of Quebec. At dawn on the last day of 1775 the combined American force attempted to repeat Wolfe’s feat of seizing the fortress. The assault was a fiasco, with Montgomery (like Wolfe in this respect at least) dying in the battle. A seriously wounded Arnold watched the American force break itself on the British defenses; in a howling blizzard the Americans—those who avoided death or capture—had all they could do to retreat beyond range of the defenders’ guns. Snug behind their walls, the British let them freeze while both sides awaited the spring thaw, which would certainly bring British reinforcements up the river, and possibly American reinforcements overland.

Naturally the Continental Congress desired to know whether to send such reinforcements, especially in light of the other demands on American resources. In March 1776 the Congress appointed a commission to travel to Canada to investigate. The commissioners were Franklin, Samuel Chase of Maryland, and Charles Carroll, another Marylander, who was not a delegate to the Congress but who had been educated in France and was a prominent Catholic. Carroll was also the cousin of John Carroll, an even more prominent Catholic and a priest, who was persuaded to accompany the commission; the two Carrolls, the Congress
thought, might have some influence with the largely Catholic, formerly French, Canadians.

The British government learned of the mission almost as soon as it began. None other than William Franklin informed Lord Germain, the new secretary for America and the man overseeing the American war, of his father’s movements, company, and purpose. “I have just heard,” the governor wrote on March 28, “that two of the delegates (Dr. Franklin and Mr. Chase) have passed through Woodbridge this morning in their way to Canada, accompanied by a Mr. Carroll, a Roman Catholic gentleman of great estate in Maryland, and a Romish priest or two. It is suggested that their principal business is to prevail on the Canadians to enter into the confederacy with the other colonies and to send delegates to the Continental Congress.” William added a pleasant note: “It is likewise reported that a great number of the continental troops have returned to Albany, not being able to cross the lakes, several soldiers, carriages, etc. having fallen in and some lives lost by the breaking of the ice.”