DIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA IBRARY
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AMERICAN STATESMEN
EDITED BY
JOHN T. MORSE, JR.
IN THIRTY-TWO VOLUMES
VOL. I.
THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
American Statesmen
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
BY
JOHN T. MORSE, JR.
. </o
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
Cbe fiitoersitir press,
rt: AD! !0 RGBS*
Copyright, 1889 and 1898.
BY JOHN T. MORSE, JR.
Copyright, 1898,
BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.
All rights reserved.
EDITOR S INTRODUCTION
THE editor has often been asked : " Upon what
principle have you constructed this series of lives
of American statesmen ? " The query has always
been civil in form, while in substance it has often
implied that the " principle," as to which inquiry
is made, has been uiidiscoverable by the interro
gator. Other queries, like pendants, have also
come: Why have you not included A, or B, or
C ? The inference from these is that the querist
conceives A, or B, or C to be statesmen certainly
not less eminent than E, or F, or G, whose names
he sees upon the list. Now there really has been
a principle of selection ; but it has not been a
mathematical principle, whereby the several states
men of the country have been brought to the
measuring-pole, like horses, and those of a certain
height have been accepted, and those not seeming
to reach that height have been rejected. The
principle has been to make such a list of men in
public life that the aggregation of all their biogra
phies would give, in this personal shape, the history
and the picture of the growth and development
of the United States from the beginning of that
vi EDITOR S INTRODUCTION
agitation which led to the Revolution until the
completion of that solidarity which we believe has
resulted from the civil war and the subsequent
reconstruction. /
In illustration, let me speak of a few volumes.
Patrick Henry was hardly a great statesman ; but,
apart from the prestige and romance which his
eloquence has thrown about his memory, he fur
nished the best opportunity for drawing a picture
of the South in the period preceding the Revolu
tion, and for showing why and how the southern
colonies, among whom Virginia was easily the
leader, became sharers in the strife.
Benton might possibly have been included upon
his own merits. But if there were any doubt
upon this point, or if including him would seem to
have rendered it proper to include others equally
eminent and yet omitted, the reply is that Benton
serves the important purpose of giving the best
available opportunity to sketch the character of the
Southwest, and the political feeling and develop
ment in that section of the country.
In like manner, Cass was hardly a great states
man, although very active and prominent for a
long period. But the Northwest or what used
to be the Northwest not so very long ago comes
out of the wilderness and into the domain of civ
ilization in the life of Cass.
EDITOR S INTRODUCTION vii
John Randolph, erratic and bizarre, was not
justly entitled to rank among great statesmen.
But the characteristics of Congress, as a body, can
be brought into better relief in the narrative of his
life than in that of any other person of his day.
These characteristics were so striking, so essential
to an understanding of the history of those times,
and so utterly different from the habits and ways
of our own era, that an opportunity to present
them must have been forced if Randolph had not
fortunately offered it.
These four volumes are mentioned by way of
illustration of the plan of the series in some of
its less obvious purposes. By the light of the
suggestions thus afforded, readers will probably see
for themselves the motives which have led to the
presence of other volumes. But one further state
ment should be made. It has been the editor s
intention to deal with the advancement of the
country. When the people have moved steadily
along any road, the men who have led them on
that road have been selected as subjects. When
the people have refused to enter upon a road, or,
having entered, have soon turned back from it, the
leaders upon such inchoate or abandoned excur
sions have for the most part been rejected. Those
who have been exponents of ideas and principles
which have entered into the progress and have
viii EDITOR S INTRODUCTION
developed in a positive way the history of the
nation have been chosen ; those who have unfortu
nately linked themselves with rejected ideas and
principles have themselves also been rejected. Cal-
houn has been made an exception to this rule, for
reasons so obvious that they need not be rehearsed.
A Series of Great Failures presents fine oppor
tunities, which will some day attract some enter
prising editor; but that is not the undertaking
here in hand. If the men who guided and the men
who failed to guide the movement and progress of
the country were to stand side by side in this series
its size would be increased by at least one third,
but probably not so its value. Yet the failures
have held out some temptations which it has been
difficult to resist. For example, there was Gov
ernor Hutchinson, whose life has since been written
by the same gentleman who in this series has
admirably presented his great antagonist, Samuel
Adams. There was much to be said in favor of
setting the two portraits, done by the same hand,
side by side. It must be remembered that the
cause for the disaffected colonists is argued by the
writers in this series in the old-fashioned way, -
that is to say, upon the fundamental theory that-
Great Britain was foully wrong and her cis- Atlantic
subjects nobly right. A life of Hutchinson would
have furnished an opportunity for showing that, as
EDITOR S INTRODUCTION ix
an unmodified proposition, this is very far from
being correct. The time has come when efforts to
state the quarrel fairly for both parties are not
altogether refused a hearing in the United States.
Nevertheless the admission of Hutchinson for this
purpose would have entailed too many conse
quences. The colonists did secede and did estab
lish independence ; their action and their success
constitute the history of the country ; and the
leaders of their movement are the persons whose
portraits are properly hung in this gallery. The
obstructionists, leaders of the defeated party, who
failed to control our national destiny, must find
room elsewhere. In the same way, Stephen A.
Douglas has been left outside the door. Able,
distinguished, influential, it was yet his misfortune
to represent ideas and policies which the people
decisively condemned. Sufficient knowledge of
these ideas and policies is obtained from the lives
of those .who opposed and triumphed over them.
The history of non-success needs not the elaborate
presentation of a biography of the defeated leader
in a series of statesmen. The work of Douglas was
discredited ; it does not remain as an active sur
viving influence, or as an integral part amid our
modern conditions. Andrew Johnson, also, fur
nished such an admirable opportunity for the dis
cussion of the subject of reconstruction that some
x EDITOR S INTRODUCTION
persons have thought that he should have found
a place. But this was impossible unless he were
absolutely necessary for this especial purpose ; and
fortunately he was not so, since the work could be
done in the lives of Seward and Stevens and Sum-
ner. Then, if one were willing to contribute to the
immortality of a scoundrel, there was Aaron Burr ;
but large as was the part which he played for a
while in American politics, and near as it came to
being very much larger, the presence of his name
would have been a degradation of the series.
Moreover his career was strictly selfish and per
sonal; he led no party, represented no idea, and
left no permanent trace. There was also William
H. Crawford, who narrowly missed being Presi
dent, and who was a greater man than many of
the Presidents ; but he did miss, and he died, and
there was an end of him. There was Buchanan
also ; intellectually he had the making of a states
man ; but his wrong-headed blundering is suffi
ciently depicted for the purposes of this series by
the lives of those who foiled him.
These names, again, are mentioned only as indi
cations of the scheme, as explaining some exclu
sions. There are other exclusions, which have
been made, not because the individuals were not
men of note, but because it seemed that the story
of their lives would fill no hiatus among the vol
umes of the completed series.
EDITOR S INTRODUCTION xi
The editor cannot expect every one to agree with
him in the selection which he has made. We all
have our favorites in past history as well as in
modern politics, and few lists would precisely dupli
cate each other. So the only thing which would
seriously afflict the editor with a sense of having
made a bad blunder would be, if some one should
detect a really gaping chasm, a neglect to treat
somewhere among the lives some important item
of our national history falling within the period
which the series is designed to cover.
The whole series naturally shapes itself, in a
somewhat crude and rough way to be sure, yet by
virtue of substantial lines of division, into a few
sub-series or groups. The first of these belongs to
the Revolutionary period, what may be called the
destructive period, since it witnessed the destruc
tion of the long-established political conditions.
In this group we find the leaders of the disaffection
and revolt : Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Adams,
Patrick Henry, and George Washington. Wash
ington, of course, might properly find a place also
in the second group ; but for the purposes of sepa
ration he is by preference placed in the first one,
because the Revolution was to so great an extent
his own personal achievement, his transcendent and
crowning glory.
The second group, constituting the constructive
xii EDITOR S INTRODUCTION
period, comprises the men who were foremost in
framing the Constitution, and in organizing and
giving coherence and life to the new government
and to the nationality thereby created. This is
introduced by John Adams. He, like Washington,
might properly find a place in both the first and
the second groups, but the distinction of the presi
dential office brings him with sufficient propriety
into the second. The others in this group are
Alexander Hamilton, Gouverneur Morris, John
Jay, and John Marshall.
The third group follows the overthrow of Feder
alism with its theory of a strongly centralized gov
ernment. This, of course, begins with Thomas
Jefferson, who led and organized the new party of
the democrac} f . He is followed by his political
disciple, James Madison ; by their secretary of the
treasury, Albert Gallatin ; and by James Monroe,
John Quincy Adams, and John Randolph. The
two last named are hardly to be called Jefferso-
nians, but they mark the passage of the nation
from the statesmanship of Jefferson to the widely
different democracy of Jackson.
The fourth group witnesses the absorption of the
nation in questions of domestic policy. The crude
and rough domination of Andrew Jackson opened
a new order of things. Men s minds were busied
with affairs at home, at first more especially with
EDITOR S INTRODUCTION xiii
the tariff, then more and more exclusively with sla
very. This group, besides Jackson, includes Mar
tin Van Buren, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, John
C. Calhoun, Thomas H. Benton, and Lewis Cass.
The fifth and closing group is that of the civil
war. This of course opens with Abraham Lincoln.
The others are William H. Seward, as being a sort
of prime minister throughout the period ; Salmon
P. Chase, in whose life can properly be discussed
the financial policy and the principal legal matters ;
Charles Francis Adams, embodying the important
topic of diplomatic relations ; Charles Sumner,
representing the advanced abolitionist element ;
and Thaddeus Stevens., who appears as a tribune,
perhaps we may say the leader, in the popular
branch of Congress.
Almost inevitably the series begins with Benja
min Franklin, the first great American, the first
man born on this side of the water who was " meant
for the universe." His mere existence was a sort
of omen. It was absurd to suppose that a people
which could produce a man of that scope, in char
acter and intellect, could long remain in a condi
tion of political dependence. It would have been
preposterous to have had Franklin die a colonist,
and go down to posterity, not as an American, but
as a colonial Englishman. He was a microcosm
of the coming nation of the United States ; all
xiv EDITOR S INTRODUCTION
the better moral and intellectual qualities of our
people existed in him, save only the dreamy philo
sophy of the famous New England school of think
ers. It is very interesting to see how slowly and
reluctantly, yet how surely and decisively, he came
to the point of resistance and independence. He
was not like so many, who were unstable and shift
ing. There was no backward step, though there
were many painful and unwilling forward ones in
his progress. One feels almost as if an apology
were needed for writing another life of a man so
be-written. Yet there is some reason for doing
so ; the chapter concerning his services in France
during the Revolution presents the true facts and
the magnitude of his usefulness more carefully
than, so far as I am aware, it has previously been
done.
As a promoter of the Revolution, Samuel Adams
has easily the most conspicuous place. He was an
agitator to the very centre of his marrow. He was
the incarnation of New England ; to know thor
oughly his career is to know the Massachusetts of
that day as an anatomist knows the human frame.
The man of the town meeting did more to kindle
the Revolution than any other one person. Many
stood with him, but his life tells the story and
presents the picture. The like service is done for
Virginia by Patrick Henry ; and the contrast be-
EDITOR S INTRODUCTION xv
tween the two men is most striking and pictur
esque, yet not more so than the difference between
the two sections of the country to which they re
spectively belonged.
If John Adams had died before he was made
President, he also would have been one of this
group. But the lustre of his official position pre
vents our placing him in the earlier constellation.
Yet, though not more prominent than many others,
in fact hardly to be called prominent at all in the
events which led up to the Revolution, he became
a leader in the first Congress, and it is probable
that no one contributed more than he did possi
bly no one contributed so much towards forcing
the adoption of the Declaration of Independence.
Washington, though a member of Congress, was
by no means conspicuous in the agitation which
preceded the actual outbreak of hostilities. His
entry in his uniform among his civilian comrades
was indeed dramatic ; but his important public
career really began with his acceptance of the posi
tion of commander in chief. In this capacity he
achieved the overthrow of the British supremacy,
and brought to a successful close the period of
destruction.
This first group is a small one, for the first Con
gress brought no new men to the front. Indeed,
that body lost its own prestige very soon after inde-
xvi EDITOR S INTRODUCTION
pendence was declared ; thereafter it was no stage
on which new men could win distinction, or men
already famous could add to their store ; indeed,
members were lucky if they escaped without dimi
nution of their reputations, by very reason of being
parts of so nerveless and useless a body. The fact
is, that the civilians, after they had set the ball
going, did little more. They contributed almost
nothing to the Revolution in any practical way
during its actual progress. Perhaps they could
not ; but certainly they did not. Washington and
his officers and soldiers deserve all the credit for
making independence a reality instead of an as
sertion. They were not very strenuously or gener
ously backed by the mass of the people after the
first fervor was over. The truth is that that grand
event was the work of a small body of heroes, who
presented freedom and nationality to the people of
the thirteen colonies. John Adams and Congress
said that the colonists were free, and there left the
matter, functi officio. Washington and the troops
took up the business, and actually made colonists
into freemen. Those upon whom this dignity and
advantage were conferred were, for the most part,
content somewhat supinely to allow the new con
dition to be established for them.
JOHN T. MORSE, JR.
September. 1898.
CONTENTS
PAGUB
I. EARLY YEARS 1
y II. A CITIZEN OF PHILADELPHIA: CONCERNMENT IN
PUBLIC AFFAIRS ...... 17
III. REPRESENTATIVE OF PENNSYLVANIA IN ENGLAND :
RETURN HOME 59
IV. LIFE IN PHILADELPHIA 86
V. SECOND MISSION TO ENGLAND: I. . . .100
VI. SECOND MISSION TO ENGLAND: II. . . . 142
VII. SECOND MISSION TO ENGLAND : III. THE HUTCH-
INSON LETTERS : THE PRIVY COUNCIL SCENE
RETURN HOME 177
VIII. SERVICES IN THE STATES 204
IX. MINISTER TO FRANCE : I. DEANE AND BEAUMAR-
CHAIS : FOREIGN OFFICERS .... 220
X. MINISTER TO FRANCE : II. PRISONERS : TROUBLE
WITH LEE AND OTHERS 248
XL MINISTER TO FRANCE : III. TREATY WITH FRANCE :
MORE QUARRELS 267
XII. FINANCIERING 304
JCIII. HABITS OF LIFE AND OF BUSINESS: AN ADAMS
INCIDENT 337
XIV. PEACE NEGOTIATIONS : LAST YEARS IN FRANCE 357
XV. AT HOME: PRESIDENT OK PENNSYLVANIA: THE
CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION : DEATH . . 403
INDEX . . 429
ILLUSTRATIONS
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN Frontispiece
From the original by Jean Baptiste Greuze, in the
Boston Public Library. It was painted for Benjamin
Franklin as a gift to Richard Oswald, the English com
missioner associated with him in the peace negotiations
of 1782. Gardner Brewer of Boston bought the painting
in 1872 and presented it to the Library.
Autograph from the Declaration of Independence.
The vignette of Independence Hall is after a drawing
in the possession of the American Bank Note Co., Phila
delphia. Page
COUNT VERGENNES facing 84
From the frontispiece to Doniol, " Histoire de la Par
ticipation de la France a 1 Establissement des Etats-
Unis d Ame rique," Paris, 1886, 5 vols., 4to, vol. i. ; an
engraving by Vangelisti, from the original painting by
Antoine Francois Callet.
Autograph from same book.
LORD HILLSBOROUGH (Born Wills Hill ; afterwards Mar
quis of Downshire) .......... facing 164
From a painting by J. Rising, owned by Lord Salisbury.
Autograph from MS. collection in the New York
Public Library, Lenox Building.
PAUL JONES facing 300
From the original portrait by C. W. Peale in Independ
ence Hall.
Autograph from MS. collection in Library of Boston
Athenaeum.
SEA-FIGHT BETWEEN THE SERAPIS AND BON HOMME
RICHARD facing 302
Off Flamborough Head, September 3, 1779. Paul
xx ILLUSTRATIONS
Jones s ship, in compliment to the author of " Poor Rich
ard s Maxims," was named " Bon Homme Richard."
Captain Pearson, who commanded the Serapis, was
knighted for his heroic resistance. Paul Jones, tradition
says, on hearing- of the honor conferred on Pearson,
good-naturedly observed, " If I ever meet him again,
I 11 make a lord of him."
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
CHAPTER I
EAELY YEARS
IT is a lamentable matter for any writer to find
himself compelled to sketch, however briefly, the
early years of Benjamin Franklin. That auto
biography, in which the story of those years is so
inimitably told, by its vividness, its simplicity,
even by its straightforward vanity, and by the
quaint charm of its old-fashioned but well-nigh
faultless style, stands among the few masterpieces
of English prose. It ought to have served for the
perpetual protection of its subject as a copyright
more sacred than any which rests upon mere statu
tory law. Such, however, has not been the case,
and the narrative has been rehearsed over and
over again till the American who is not familiar
with it is indeed a curiosity. Yet no one of the
subsequent narrators has justified his undertaking.
Therefore because the tale has been told so often,
and once has been told so well, and also in order
that the stone which it is my lot to cast upon a
2 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
cairn made up of so many failures may at least be
only a small pebble, I shall get forward as speed
ily as possible to that point in Franklin s career
where his important public services begin, at the
same time commending every reader to turn again
for further refreshment of his knowledge to those
pages which might well have aroused the envy of
Fielding and Defoe.
Franklin came from typical English stock. For
three hundred years, perhaps for many centuries
more, his ancestors lived on a small freehold at
Ecton in Northamptonshire, and so far back as
record or tradition ran the eldest son in each gen
eration had been bred a blacksmith. But after
- the strange British fashion there was intertwined
with this singular fixedness of ideas a stubborn
independence in thinking, courageously exercised
v in times of peril. The Franklins were among the
early Protestants, and held their faith unshaken
by the terrors of the reign of Bloody Mary. By
the end of Charles the Second s time they were
non-conformists and attendants on conventicles;
and about 1682 Josiah Franklin, seeking the
peaceful exercise of his creed, migrated to Boston,
Massachusetts. His first wife bore him seven
children, and died. Not satisfied, he took in sec
ond nuptials Abiah Folger, "daughter of Peter
Folger, one of the first settlers of New England,
of whom honorable mention is made by Cotton
Mather," and justly, since in those dark days he
was an active philanthropist towards the Indians,
EARLY YEARS 3
and an opponent of religious persecution. 1 This
lady outdid her predecessor, contributing no less
than ten children to expand the family circle.
The eighth of this second brood was named Ben
jamin, in memory of his father s favorite brother.
He was born in a house on Milk Street, opposite
the Old South Church, January 6, old style, 17,
new style, 1706. Mr. Par ton says that probably
Benjamin "derived from his mother the fashion of
his body and the cast of his countenance. There
are lineal descendants of Peter Folger who strik
ingly resemble Franklin in these particulars ; one
of whom, a banker of New Orleans, looks like
a portrait of Dr. Franklin stepped out of its
frame." 2 A more important inheritance was that
of the humane and liberal traits of his mother s
father.
In that young, scrambling village in the new
country, where all material, human or otherwise,
was roughly and promptly utilized, the unproduc
tive period of boyhood was cut very short. Frank
lin s father speedily resolved to devote him, "as
the tithe of his sons, to the service of the church,"
and so sent him to the grammar school. A droller
misfit than Franklin in an orthodox New England
pulpit of that era can hardly be imagined; but
since he was only seven years old when his father
endeavored to arrange his life s career, a misap-
preciation of his fitnesses was not surprising. The
boy himself had the natural hankering of children
1 Parton s Life of Franklin, i. 27. 2 Ibid. i. 31.
4 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
bred in a seaboard town for the life of a sailor.
It is amusing to fancy the discussions between this
babe of seven years and his father, concerning his
occupation in life. Certainly the babe had not
altogether the worst of it, for when he was eight
years old his father definitively gave up the notion
of making him a preacher of the Gospel. At the
ripe age of ten he was taken from school, and set
to assist his father in the trade of tallow-chandler
and soap-boiler. But dipping wicks and pouring
grease pleased him hardly better than reconciling
infant damnation and a red-hot hell with the love
liness of Christianity. The lad remained discon
tented. His chief taste seemed to be for reading,
and great were the ingenuity and the self -sacrifice
whereby he secured books and leisure to read them.
The resultant of these several forces was at last
a suggestion from his father that he should take
up, as a sort of quasi -literary occupation, the trade
of a printer. James Franklin, an older brother of
Benjamin, was already of that calling. Benja
min stood out for some time, but at last reluctantly
yielded, and in the maturity of his thirteenth year