Signing Their Rights Away (12 page)

After nine years of serving in France as his nation’s minister, Benjamin Franklin returned to Philadelphia with a golden sedan chair—a carriage designed to be hefted by four strong men. Franklin was pushing eighty years old and suffering from gout, and he had no patience for walking the muddy streets of Philadelphia. Instead, prisoners on loan from the local jail carried him aloft, seated in his sedan, as if he were a god.

And though he was no deity, he was undoubtedly the world’s best-known American. In his eight decades, Franklin had stood in the presence of five kings and summoned thunderbolts from the
heavens. He was a printer, a publisher, a writer, a scientist, a philosopher, an inventor, and a philanthropist, all in a single lifetime. Franklin had none of Thomas Jefferson’s patrician advantages, and yet this self-made man ended his life wealthier, more famous, and more adored than all his contemporaries. Even today, he remains the most famous of the founding fathers.

Franklin began life as a lowborn son of a Boston candlemaker. He ran away from his first job to Philadelphia, where he prospered at the press of a printer. He traveled to England to apprentice and returned to print his own newspaper,
The Pennsylvania Gazette
, and an annual,
Poor Richard’s Almanack
. These publications were chock full of maxims you still hear uttered today, including, “A penny saved is a penny earned” and “Early to Bed, and early to rise, makes a Man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”
Poor Richard’s
soon became the second most popular book in the country (after the Bible). Farmers craved its planting advice, and all colonists wanted its useful calendar. The pamphlet was cheap and written for ordinary people. While many signers condescended to the common man (John Adams called the populace “rabble”), Franklin was sympathetic—even though, by age forty-two, he was rich enough to leave his business in the hands of a partner and devote himself to philanthropic work and the building of a new nation.

He improved life in Philadelphia by creating the first American hospital, library, and volunteer fire department. He worked to create the academy that would later grow into the University of Pennsylvania, and he traveled throughout the colonies seeking to better the colonial mail system. In recognition of his efforts, Parliament appointed him postmaster general. He also cranked out inventions, including such useful items as the Franklin stove, the lightning rod, and bifocals.

Franklin is so closely associated with Philadelphia and early colonial life that it’s somewhat shocking to realize that he spent nearly three decades living in Europe. Following his early visit to
England as a printer’s apprentice, he returned in 1757 for another ten years to serve as an agent of Pennsylvania. He became embroiled in a scandal concerning leaked antirebel letters written by the royal governor of Massachusetts; these letters were stolen for Franklin by another future signer of the Constitution: Hugh Williamson, of North Carolina.

Back in America in 1775, Franklin decided that he supported a total break with the motherland. He helped draft the Declaration of Independence and became the document’s oldest signer, at age seventy.

In the fall of 1776, Franklin left once again for Europe, hopping a ship on a secret mission to beseech France for troops and funds to fight the war. Franklin charmed the pants off France, which kicked in cash and forty-four thousand troops, effectively clinching the war for the Americans. Franklin spent the rest of the Revolution in France (while his finances, unlike those of his fellow signers, tripled) and helped craft the U.S.–Britain peace accord, known as the Treaty of Paris, which he, among others, signed in 1783.

Though Franklin had never been a great speaker and the niceties of law eluded him, the organizers of the 1787 convention knew that his presence would lend the debates an air of respectability. If Washington and Franklin—then serving as Pennsylvania’s governor—took part, it would send a signal that the convention was far more important than whatever Congress was working on in New York, which was then the seat of government.

But old age had done a number on Franklin. He was then eighty-one years old. Everything ached. He often propped up his gout-swollen feet and napped through the deliberations. When too tired to speak, he would pass notes to his friend, legal logician James Wilson, who read them aloud in his distinctive Scottish accent.

It’s not clear that Franklin contributed any great ideas toward the creation of the Constitution. What we do know is that he told humorous stories and parables, which lightened the mood, broke logjams, and often prompted the angry delegates to resume
conversations. On one memorable occasion, he interrupted a heated discussion by signaling a motion to hire a local preacher to lead the delegates in prayer every morning. It was fine idea, but it forced the delegates to confront an embarrassing fact: the U.S. government was so broke, it couldn’t afford the fee! Had wise Franklin made the motion to shame the men into negotiating in earnest? Or was he tossing out random ideas to keep from dozing off?

But his endless storytelling made some delegates nervous. The deliberations were supposed to be kept completely secret—if Americans learned that delegates were constantly bickering, rumors might spread that the union was unraveling. Believing Franklin could keep a secret about as well as a thirteen-year-old blogger, the convention assigned two men to tail him each night and ensure he didn’t blab publicly about the day’s events.

Franklin supported a unicameral, or single-house, legislature, and a weak president, or possibly a council of men to act together as chief executive. He disliked the idea of entrusting a single person with so much power, and he was against paying politicians for their services. Handsome wages would attract only greedy, narrow-minded men who lusted for power and money, he said. In time, such good-for-nothings would raise taxes in a ceaseless bid to milk the government dry.

But when Charles Pinckney, a delegate from South Carolina, suggested that only men with a net worth of at least $100,000 be allowed to serve in government, Franklin protested. He argued that some of the biggest rogues he’d ever met were wealthy men, and he warned that immigrants might stop moving to the United States because it would be perceived not as a land of opportunity, but as a domain of the rich.

On another occasion, when delegates were clashing over how best to represent the states in Congress, Franklin told a story of a woodworker building a table. What happens when the pieces of wood don’t match up perfectly? he asked. The craftsman takes a
little from each piece until they dovetail beautifully; he doesn’t give up until he makes it work. The message was obvious:
Do likewise, gents, or we are doomed
. Shortly after, delegates from Connecticut proposed the Great Compromise.

At the end of the convention, before the document had been signed, Franklin was invited to make the closing remarks. He labored over a beautiful speech, which was read by James Wilson. The speech unwittingly handed delegates the message they would parrot to their constituents back home:
This document may not be perfect, but it’s the best we can do
.

“I cannot help expressing a wish,” added Franklin, “that every member of the Convention who may still have objections to it, would with me, on this occasion, doubt a little of his own infallibility, and to make manifest our unanimity, put his name to this instrument.”

The thirty-nine signed, his words still ringing in their ears.

A final anecdote: Franklin spent much of the convention scrutinizing George Washington’s chair, the back of which was decorated with the motif of a sun, with shafts of light radiating outward. Franklin couldn’t shake the chair from his mind. Did it depict dawn or dusk? He could not decide. On the last day of the convention, after the men had signed the document, he told the delegates of his little dilemma and concluded, “But now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a
rising
and not a setting sun!”

The oldest signer of the U.S. Constitution lived to see the document ratified and his friend Washington elected as the first president of the United States. In 1790, Franklin became the first signer of the Constitution to die. He passed away at age eighty-four and is buried in Philadelphia.

The Signer Who Was Ruined by Drink

BORN
: January 10, 1744

DIED
: January 20, 1800

AGE AT SIGNING
: 43

PROFESSION
: Merchant, soldier, politician

BURIED
: Trinity Lutheran Churchyard, Lancaster, Pennsylvania

In revolutionary times, it was commonly believed that alcohol gave people strength—and our founding fathers needed all the strength they could get. They drank nearly every day—morning, noon, and night. Some historians estimate that the average person living in revolutionary America guzzled six gallons of pure alcohol every year (today that number is probably closer to two).

Stephen Hopkins, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, was famous for imbibing rum in congressional chambers. Luther Martin, a brilliant Baltimore attorney who ultimately did not sign the Constitution, gave one of his most famous, albeit craziest, convention speeches while absolutely tanked. Yet both men ended
life with their reputations relatively intact.

So what happened with Thomas Mifflin? How could this constitutional delegate (and future governor of Pennsylvania) be ruined by alcohol? The answer lies in the mores of the time. For while heavy drinking was acceptable in revolutionary America, flagrant public drunkenness was not. And, alas, Mifflin’s frequent tipsiness made him an easy mark for political enemies.

Born in Philadelphia, Mifflin was the son of wealthy merchant parents. He studied at the future University of Pennsylvania, clerked at a local business, toured England and France, and opened a store in Philadelphia with his brother. He became active in politics while still in his twenties and identified strongly with patriots, who were in the minority in Pennsylvania. Though affluent all his life, he seemed to have the common touch and formed a strong bond with the state’s poorer citizens, farmers and laborers alike. One writer described him as “very popular and handling with a surprising ease the hundred-headed monster known as the people.” But he was also a brooding, temperamental man who longed to contribute to his country’s formation. At the first Continental Congress, a delighted Mifflin was among the group of men who chose Washington to lead the Continental forces. Later, Mifflin himself was picked as the general’s aide-de-camp. As he kissed his beloved wife, Sarah, goodbye and dashed off to war, his Quaker brethren voted to boot him out of the meetinghouse for bearing arms.