Revolutionary Summer: The Birth of American Independence by Ellis Joseph J

Author:Ellis, Joseph J. [Ellis, Joseph J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780385349628
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2013-06-04T04:00:00+00:00

IF JEFFERSON WAS disposed to levitate above the political struggles within congress, and if Adams preferred to embed himself in them all at once, Franklin brought his own distinctive mix of floating engagement to the task. In any meeting he was always the most famous man in the room—an internationally acclaimed scientist, a renowned essayist and wit, the senior statesman par excellence. “I am glad to find that notwithstanding your Countrymen have had so many good slices of you those forty years past,” James Bowdoin wrote Franklin with a wink, “there’s enough of you to afford them good Picking Still.… They still expect to feast upon you, and to feast as usual most deliciously.”37

Though he was a latecomer to the cause of independence who had worked tirelessly in London to effect a reconciliation, his conversion was as complete as it was sudden. He was convinced that the decision by George III and the British ministry to, in effect, declare war on the American colonies would go down as the biggest blunder in the history of British statecraft, and he had apprised Richard Howe of that conviction. It was a measure of Franklin’s prestige that Lord Richard, instead of feeling insulted, attempted to sustain the friendship. He hoped that “the dishonour to which you deem me exposed by my military situation in this country has effected no change in your sentiments of personal regard towards me; so shall no difference in political points alter my desire of proving how much I am your sincere and obedient humble servant.” Franklin wrote back to reiterate his view that Howe’s hopes for a reconciliation with America and with him were illusions. But he chose not to send the letter. He conveyed the impression of a prophet who knew which way history was headed. And if you were on the wrong side, as Howe clearly was, no sentimental attachment could bridge the gap between the two political camps.38

Franklin applied the same rigorous standard to his own son, William, an illegitimate child whom he had raised as a full-fledged member of his family. William Franklin had been appointed the royal governor of New Jersey, then sided with Great Britain when the Anglo-American argument widened into a war. He was arrested as a dangerous Tory in the spring of 1776 and was eventually sent to Connecticut for safekeeping. William’s wife, Elizabeth, wrote to Franklin, begging him to intercede and have William paroled to New Jersey so they could be together. “Consider my Dear and Honored Sir,” she wrote, “that I am now pleading the Cause of your Son on the core question of ideCo, and my beloved Husband.” Franklin did not respond. His son had chosen sides and would have to live with the consequences. At this fateful moment, political commitments were thicker than blood.39

On the more controversial issues about the future American government raised by the Dickinson Draft, Franklin was a staunch advocate for proportional representation and therefore a neonationalist who thought that an independent America should become more than a confederation of sovereign states.

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