In his boyhood he was as eager as most healthy-minded boys are to go off to sea; but his father already had one runagate son, Josiah the younger, at sea, and had no mind to have another. However, living as he did near the water, Benjamin was much in and about it, and learnt early to swim well and to manage boats.
When in a boat or canoe with other boys [he says in the _Autobiography_], I was commonly allowed to govern, especially in any case of difficulty; and upon other occasions I was generally a leader among the boys, and sometimes led them into sc.r.a.pes, of which I will mention one instance, as it shows an early projecting public spirit, tho" not then justly conducted.
He then tells us how, under his direction, a band of his comrades, late in the afternoon, when no one was about, "like so many emmets," abstracted all the stones collected for the foundation of a new building and constructed with them a wharf on a quagmire for the convenience of the marauders when fishing. The authors of the mischief were discovered. "Several of us," says Franklin, "were corrected by our fathers; and, though I pleaded the usefulness of the work, mine convinced me that nothing was useful which was not honest."[14]
Another incident in Franklin"s youth, indicative of the way in which leadership was apt to be conceded in moments of perplexity to his hardihood, is narrated in the journal of his first voyage from England to America, and arose when he and two companions, after wandering about the Isle of Wight until dark, were anxiously endeavoring to make their way back across an intercepting creek to their ship, the _Berkshire_, which was only awaiting the first favoring breeze to be up and away. On this occasion, he stripped to his shirt, and waded through the waters of the creek, and at one time, through mud as well up to his middle, to a boat staked nearly fifty yards offsh.o.r.e; the wind all the while blowing very cold and very hard. When he reached the boat, it was only to find after an hour"s exertions that he could not release it from its fastenings, and that there was nothing for him to do but to return as he came. Then, just as the unlucky trio were thinking of looking up some haystack in which to spend the night, one of them remembered that he had a horseshoe in his pocket.
Again the indomitable Franklin waded back to the boat, and this time, by wrenching out with the shoe the staple by which it was chained to the stake, secured it, and brought it ash.o.r.e to his friends. On its way to the other sh.o.r.e, it grounded in shoal water, and stuck so fast that one of its oars was broken in an effort to get it off. After striving and struggling for half an hour and more, the party gave up and sat down with their hands before them in despair. It looked as if after being exposed all night to wind and weather, which was bad, they would be exposed the next morning to the taunts of the owner of the boat and the amus.e.m.e.nt of the whole town of Yarmouth; which was worse. However, when their plight seemed utterly hopeless, a happy thought occurred to them, and Franklin and one of his companions, having got out into the creek and thus lightened the craft, contrived to draw it into deeper water.
Still another incident brings into clear relief the resolute will of the youthful Franklin. It is told in the _Autobiography_. He was in a boat on the Delaware with his free-thinking and deep-drinking friend, Collins, who had acquired the habit of "sotting with brandy," and some other young men.
Collins was in the state pictured by one or more of the cant phrases descriptive of an inebriate condition which were compiled with such painstaking thoroughness by Franklin in his "Drinker"s Dictionary" for the _Pennsylvania Gazette_. It became Collins" turn to row, but he refused to do it. "I will be row"d home," said Collins. "We will not row you," said Franklin. "You must, or stay all night on the water just as you please,"
said Collins. The others said: "Let us row; what signifies it?" But Franklin"s mind was soured by Collins" past misconduct, and he refused to do so. Thereupon Collins swore that he would make him row or throw him overboard, and advanced towards him and struck at him. As he did so, Franklin clapped his hand under Collins" crotch, and, rising, pitched him headforemost into the river. Knowing that Collins was a good swimmer, he felt little concern about him; so the boat was rowed a short distance from Collins, and with a few timely strokes removed slightly out of his reach whenever he attempted to board it; he being asked each time whether he would consent to row.
He was ready to die with vexation [says Franklin], and obstinately would not promise to row. However, seeing him at last beginning to tire, we lifted him in and brought him home dripping wet in the evening. We hardly exchang"d a civil word afterwards, and a West India captain, who had a commission to procure a tutor for the sons of a gentleman at Barbadoes, happening to meet with him, agreed to carry him thither. He left me then, promising to remit me the first money he should receive in order to discharge the debt; but I never heard of him after.
The debt was for money that Franklin had lent to Collins, when in straits produced by his dissipated habits, out of the vexatious sum collected by Franklin for Mr. Vernon, which cost him so much self-reproach until remitted to that gentleman.
The firmness exhibited by Franklin on this occasion he never failed to exhibit in his later life whenever it was necessary for him to do so. Even John Adams, in 1778, though he had worked himself up to the point of charging Franklin with downright indolence and with the "constant policy never to say "yes" or "no" decidedly but when he could not avoid it,"
admitted in the same breath that Franklin had "as determined a soul as any man." If anyone doubts it, let him read the letters written by Franklin upon the rare occasions when he felt that, as a matter of justice or sober self-respect, he could not escape the duty of holding up the mirror of candid speech to the face of misconduct. On these occasions, his rebuke was like a bitter draught administered in a measuring gla.s.s, not a drop too much, not a drop too little. Witness his letter of March 12, 1780, to Captain Peter Landais in reply to the demand of that captain that he should be again placed in command of the _Alliance_.
The demand, however [Franklin wrote], may perhaps be made chiefly for the sake of obtaining a Refusal, of which you seem the more earnestly desirous as the having it to produce may be of service to you in America. I will not therefore deny it to you, and it shall be as positive and clear as you require it. No one has ever learnt from me the Opinion I formed of you from the Enquiry made into your conduct. I kept it entirely to myself. I have not even hinted it in my Letters to America, because I would not hazard giving to any one a Bias to your Prejudice. By communicating a Part of that Opinion privately to you it can do you no harm for you may burn it. I should not give you the pain of reading it if your Demand did not make it necessary. I think you, then, so imprudent, so litigious and quarrelsome a man, even with your best friends, that Peace and good order and, consequently, the quiet and regular Subordination so necessary to Success, are, where you preside, impossible. These are matters within my observation and comprehension, your military Operations I leave to more capable Judges. If therefore I had 20 Ships of War in my Disposition, I should not give one of them to Captain Landais.
All the higher forms of intellectual or moral power suggest the idea of reserve force, and of nothing is this truer than the self-controlled indignation of a really strong man like Franklin or Washington.
What Franklin did for Philadelphia, when peace prevailed, we have already seen; what he did for it, when threatened by war, remains to be told. In 1747, England was involved in a struggle with France and Spain, and the city lay at the mercy of French and Spanish privateers, all the efforts of Governor Thomas to induce the Quaker majority in the a.s.sembly to pa.s.s a militia law and to make other provision for the security of the Province having proved wholly futile. Under these circ.u.mstances, Franklin wrote and published a pamphlet, ent.i.tled _Plain Truth_, for the purpose of arousing the people of the Province to a true sense of their perilous predicament.
The pamphlet [Franklin tells us in the _Autobiography_], had a sudden and surprising effect, and we can readily believe it, for rarely has an alarum been more artfully sounded. In its pages is to be found every artifice of persuasion that could be skillfully used by an adroit pamphleteer for the purpose of playing upon the fears of his readers and inciting them to determined measures of self-defense. It began by pointing out the causes which had brought about an entire change in the former happy situation of the Province, namely its increased wealth, its defenseless condition, the familiarity acquired by its enemies with its Bay and River through prisoners, bearers of flags of truce, spies, and, perhaps, traitors, the ease with which pilots could be employed by these enemies and the known absence of ships of war, during the greatest part of the year, ever since the war began, from both Virginia and New York. That the enemies of the Province might even then have some of their spies in the Province could not be seriously doubted, it declared, for to maintain such spies had been the practice of all nations in all ages, as for example the five men sent by the Children of Dan to spy out the land of the Zidonians, and search it. (Book of Judges, Chap. XVIII, V. 2). These men, while engaged in their enterprise, met with a certain idolatrous priest of their own persuasion (would to G.o.d no such priests were to be found among the Pennsylvanians!) And, when they questioned him as to whether their way would be prosperous, he among other things said unto them, _Go in Peace; before the Lord is your Way wherein you go_.
(It was well known that there were many priests in the Province of the same religion as those who, of late, encouraged the French to invade the mother country).
_And they came_, (Verse 7) _to Laish, and saw the People that were therein, how they dwelt CARELESS, after the Manner of the Zidonians_, QUIET AND SECURE.
They _thought_ themselves secure no doubt; and, as they _never had been_ disturbed, vainly imagined they _never should_. It was not unlikely that some saw the danger they were exposed to by living in that careless manner; but it was not unlikely, too, that if these publicly expressed their apprehensions, the rest reproached them as timorous persons, wanting courage or confidence in their G.o.ds, who (they perhaps said) had hitherto protected them. But the spies (Verse 8) returned, and among other things said to their countrymen (Verse 9), _Arise that we may go up against them; for we have seen the Land and behold it is very good! When ye go, ye shall come unto a People SECURE_ (that is a people that apprehend no danger, and therefore have made no provision against it; great encouragement this), _and to a large Land, and a Place where there is no Want of any Thing_. What could they desire more? Accordingly we find, continued _Plain Truth_, in the succeeding verses that _six hundred Men_ only, _appointed with Weapons of War_, undertook the conquest of this _large Land_; knowing that 600 men, armed and disciplined, would be an overmatch, perhaps, for 60,000 unarmed, undisciplined, and off their guard. And when they went against it, the idolatrous priest (Verse 17) _with his graven Image, and his Ephod, and his Teraphim, and his molten Image_ (plenty of superst.i.tious trinkets) joined with them, and, no doubt, gave them all the intelligence and a.s.sistance in his power; his heart, as the text a.s.sures us, _being glad_, perhaps, for reasons more than one. And now what was the fate of poor Laish?
The 600 men, being arrived, found, as the spies had reported, a people QUIET and SECURE. (Verses 20, 21).
_And they smote them with the Edge of the Sword, and burnt the City with_ FIRE; _and there was no_ DELIVERER,_ because it was far from Zidon_--not so far from _Zidon_, however, as _Pennsylvania_ was from _Britain_; and yet we are, said _Plain Truth_, more careless than the people of _Laish_!
Having awakened in this clever fashion the slumbering strings of sectarian hatred and religious a.s.sociation, the author of _Plain Truth_ brings the same sure and compelling touch to the other points of his theme: the danger that the Iroquois might, from considerations set forth in the pamphlet with telling force, be wholly gained over by the French; which meant deserted plantations, ruin, bloodshed and confusion; the folly and selfishness of the view that Rural Pennsylvania and the City of Philadelphia did not owe each other mutual obligations of a.s.sistance; the ruin in which commerce, trade and industry were certain to be involved by the occlusion of the Delaware; the probability that the enemy, finding that he could come higher and higher up the river, seize vessels, land and plunder plantations and villages, and return with his booty unmolested, might finally be led to believe that all Pennsylvanians were Quakers, against all defence, from a principle of conscience, and thus be induced to strike one bold stroke for the city and for the whole plunder of the river.
Then, after dispatching with a few practical observations the fallacy that the expense of a vessel to guard the trade of the Province would be greater than any loss that the enemy could inflict upon the Province at sea, and that it would be cheaper for the Government to open an insurance office and to pay every such loss, the pamphlet presents a harrowing description of the fate that would befall Philadelphia if it pa.s.sed into the hands of the enemy. It is all limned with the minuteness of a Dutch painting; the confusion and disorder; the outcries and lamentations; the stream of outgoing fugitives (including citizens reputed to be rich and fearful of the torture), hurrying away with their effects; the wives and children hanging upon the necks of their husbands and fathers and imploring them to be gone; the helplessness of the few that would remain; the sack; the conflagration. But what, asked _Plain Truth_, would the condition of the Philadelphians be, if suddenly surprised without previous alarm, perhaps in the night? Confined to their houses, they would have nothing to trust to but the enemy"s mercy. Their best fortune would be to fall under the power of commanders of King"s ships, able to control the mariners; and not into the hands of licentious privateers. Who could without the utmost horror conceive the miseries of the latter, when their persons, fortunes, wives and daughters would be subject to the wanton and unbridled rage, rapine and l.u.s.t of negroes, mulattoes and others, the vilest and most abandoned of mankind? And then in a timely marginal note _Plain Truth_ tells how poor Captain Brown, for bravely defending himself and his vessel longer than the ragged crew of a Spanish privateer expected, was barbarously stabbed and murdered, though on his knees begging quarter!
It would not be so bad for the rich, said _Plain Truth_. The means of speedy flight were ready to their hands, and they could lay by money and effects in distant and safe places against the evil day. It was by the middling people, the tradesmen, shopkeepers and farmers of the Province and city that the brunt would have to be borne. They could not all fly with their families, and, if they could, how would they subsist? Upon them too the weight of the contributions exacted by the enemy (as was true of ordinary taxes) would rest. Though numerous, this cla.s.s was quite defenceless as it had neither forts, arms, union nor discipline, and yet on whom could it fix its eyes with the least expectation that they would do anything for its security? Not on that wealthy and powerful body of people, the Quakers, who had ever since the war controlled the elections of the Province and filled almost every seat in the a.s.sembly. Should the Quakers be conjured by all the ties of neighborhood, friendship, justice and humanity to consider the obligations that they owed to a very great part of the people who could have no confidence that G.o.d would protect those that neglected the use of rational means for protecting themselves, and the distraction, misery and confusion, desolation and distress which might possibly be the effect of their unreasonable predominancy and perseverance, yet all would be in vain; for the Quakers had already been by great numbers of the people pet.i.tioned in vain. The late Governor of the Province did for years solicit, request and even threaten them in vain. The council had twice remonstrated with them in vain. Their religious prepossessions were unchangeable, their obstinacy invincible.
The manner in which Franklin makes his strictures on the Quakers in this pamphlet keen enough to shame them into letting the other elements of the population of the Province have the use of enough of the public money to enable them to protect both themselves and the Quakers and yet not keen enough to make the Quakers thoroughly incensed as well as obstinate is one of the notable features of _Plain Truth_.
The prospect of the middling people of the Province, the pamphlet continues, was no better, if they turned their eyes to those great and rich men, merchants and others, who were ever railing at the Quakers, but took no one step themselves for the public safety. With their wealth and influence, they might easily promote military ardor and discipline in the Province and effect everything under G.o.d for its protection. But envy seemed to have taken possession of their hearts, and to have eaten out and destroyed every generous, n.o.ble, public-spirited sentiment, and rage at the disappointment of their little schemes for power gnawed their souls, and filled them with such cordial hatred to their opponents that any proposal, by the execution of which the latter might receive benefit as well as themselves, was rejected with indignation.
However, if the city and Province were brought to destruction, it would not be for want of numerous inhabitants able to bear arms in their defence. It was computed that the Province had at least (exclusive of the Quakers) 60,000 fighting men, acquainted with firearms, many of them hunters and marksmen, hardy and bold. All they lacked was order, discipline and a few cannon. At present they were like the separate filaments of flax before the thread is formed, without strength because without connection; but union would make them strong and even formidable. Many of the inhabitants of the Province were of the British race, and, though the fierce fighting animals of those happy islands were said to abate their natural fire and intrepidity, when removed to a foreign clime, yet, with their people this was not so. Among the inhabitants of the Province likewise were those brave men whose fathers in the last age made so glorious a stand for Protestantism and English liberty, when invaded by a powerful French Army, joined by Irish Catholics, under a bigoted Popish King; and also thousands of that warlike nation whose sons had ever since the time of Caesar maintained the character he gave their fathers of uniting the most obstinate courage to all the other military virtues--the brave and steady Germans.
Poor Richard, of course, had to have his proverb in war as well as peace.
Were the union formed, and the fighting men of the Province once united, thoroughly armed and disciplined, the very fame of strength and readiness, _Plain Truth_ thought, would be a means of discouraging the enemy, "for,"
said Franklin, ""tis a wise and true Saying, that _One Sword often keeps another in the Scabbard_. The Way to secure Peace is to be prepared for War."
After these weighty maxims, this remarkable pamphlet ends with the statement that, if its hints were so happy as to meet with a suitable disposition of mind from the countrymen and fellow citizens of the writer, he would, in a few days, lay before them a form of a.s.sociation for the purposes mentioned in the pamphlet, together with a practical scheme for raising the money necessary for the crisis without laying a burthen on any man.
Like
"The drum, That makes the warrior"s stomach come,"
was _Plain Truth_ with its sudden and surprising effect. Agreeably with the popular response to it, Franklin drafted articles of a.s.sociation, after consulting with others, and issued a call for a citizen"s rally in the Whitefield meeting-house. When the citizens a.s.sembled, printed copies of the articles had already been struck off, and pens and ink had been distributed throughout the hall. Franklin then harangued the gathering a little, read and explained the articles, and handed around the printed copies. They were so eagerly signed that, when the meeting broke up, there were more than twelve hundred signatures, and this number, when the country people were subsequently given an opportunity to sign, swelled to more than ten thousand. All the signers furnished themselves as soon as they could with arms, organized into companies and regiments, chose their own officers, and met every week for military training. The contagion spread even to the women, and, with money raised by their own subscriptions, they procured silk colors for the companies, set off with devices and mottoes furnished by Franklin himself, who had a peculiar turn for designing things of that sort. The next step was for the officers of the companies, const.i.tuting the Philadelphia regiment, to meet and choose a colonel. They did so, and selected the only man, or almost the only man, so far as we know, who has ever, in the history of the American Militia, conceived himself to be unfit for the office of colonel, and that is Benjamin Franklin. "Conceiving myself unfit," says Franklin in the _Autobiography_, "I declin"d that station, and recommended Mr. Lawrence, a fine person, and man of influence, who was accordingly appointed." But between building and equipping a battery on the river below Philadelphia, and manipulating Quaker scruples, Franklin had his hands quite as full as were those of Colonel Lawrence. At that time, whether the souls of men were to be saved by the erection of a church or their bodies to be destroyed by the erection of a battery, resort was had to a lottery. Franklin himself, for instance, was twice appointed by the vestry of Christ Church the manager of a lottery for the purpose of building a steeple and buying a chime of bells for that church. A lottery, therefore, was proposed by him to defray the expense of building and equipping the battery. The suggestion was eagerly acted upon, and, with the current of popular enthusiasm running so swiftly, the lottery soon filled, and a battery with merlons framed of logs and packed with earth was rapidly erected. The problem was how to get the necessary ordnance. Some old cannon were bought in Boston, a not over-sanguine request for some was made of the stingy Proprietaries, Richard and Thomas Penn, an order was given to other persons in England to purchase in case the request was not honored, and Colonel Lawrence, William Allen, Abram Taylor and Franklin were dispatched to New York by the a.s.sociation to borrow what cannon they could from Governor George Clinton. Fortunately for Pennsylvania, the c.o.c.kles of that Governor"s heart were of the kind that glow and expand with generous benevolence when warmed by the bottle. At first, he refused peremptorily to let the emba.s.sy have any cannon, but, later on when he sat at meat, or rather drink, with the members of his council, there was, we are told by Franklin in the _Autobiography_, great drinking of Madeira wine, as the custom of New York then was. With the progress of the dinner, he softened by degrees, and said that he would lend six. After a few more b.u.mpers, he advanced to ten, and, at length, he very good-naturedly conceded eighteen. They were fine cannon, eighteen-pounders, with their carriages, and were soon transported and mounted on the battery in Pennsylvania, where the a.s.sociators kept a nightly guard while the war lasted; and where, among the rest, Franklin regularly took his turn of duty as a common soldier.
The activity of Franklin at this conjuncture not only won him a high degree of popularity with his fellow-citizens but also the good will of the Governor of Pennsylvania and his Council, who took him into their confidence, and consulted with him whenever it was felt that their concurrence was needed by the a.s.sociation. When they approved his suggestion that a fast should be proclaimed for the purpose of invoking the blessing of Heaven upon the a.s.sociation, and it was found that no such thing had ever been thought of in Pennsylvania before, he even fell back upon his New England training, and drew up a proclamation for the purpose in the usual form which was translated into German, printed in both English and German, and circulated throughout the Province. The fast day fixed by the paper gave the clergy of the different sects in Pennsylvania a favorable opportunity for urging the members of their flocks to enroll themselves as members of the a.s.sociation, and it was the belief of Franklin that, if peace had not soon been declared, all the religious congregations in the Province except those of the Quakers would have been enlisted in the movement for the defence of the Province.
The most interesting thing, however, connected with this whole episode was the conduct of the Quakers. James Logan, true to his former principles, wrote a cogent address to his Fellow-Friends justifying defensive war, and placed sixty pounds in Franklin"s hands with instructions to him to apply all the lottery prizes that they might win to the cost of the battery.
Other Friends also, perhaps most of the younger ones, were in favor of defence, but many Friends preferred to keep up silently the semblance of conformity with their dogma about war, though ready enough to have it refined away by Franklin"s astuteness, which had a gift for working around obstacles when it could not climb over or break through them. That the Quakers, as a body, even if they did not relish his new-born intimacy with the executive councillors, with whom they had had a feud of long standing, were not losing much of their placidity over the proposition to protect their throats and chattels against their will, an ambitious young gentleman, who wished to displace Franklin, as the Clerk of the Quaker a.s.sembly, soon learnt. Like the generous Maori of New Zealand, who refrained from descending upon their English invaders until they had duly communicated to them the hour of their proposed onset, he advised Franklin (from good will he said) to resign as more consistent with his honor than being turned out. He little realized apparently that he was attempting to intimidate one of the grimmest antagonists that ever entertained the robuster American ideas about public office, the manner in which it is to be sought, and the prehensile tenacity, with which it is to be clung to, when secured. But for the fact that Franklin was always a highly faithful and efficient officeholder, and the further fact that he gave his entire salary, as President of Pennsylvania, to public objects, he would not fall far short of being a typical American officeholder of the better cla.s.s, as that cla.s.s was before the era of civil-service reform. On a later occasion, when his resignation as Deputy Postmaster-General for America was desired, he humorously observed in a letter to his sister, Jane, that he was deficient in the Christian virtue of resignation. "If they would have my Office," he said, "they must take it." And, on another later occasion, he strongly advised his son not to resign his office, as Governor of New Jersey, because, while much might be made of a removal, nothing could be made of a resignation. As long as there was a son, or a grandson of his own, with no fear of the inclination of political compet.i.tors to pry into skeleton closets, or a relative of any sort to enjoy the sweets of public office, Franklin appears to have acted consistently upon the principle that the persons whose qualifications we know best, through the accident of family intimacy, are the persons that are likely to confer the highest degree of credit upon us when we appoint them to public positions.
With this general outlook upon the part of Franklin in regard to public office, the young man, who wished to be his successor, as clerk, soon found that there was nothing left for him to do except to go off sorrowfully like the young man in the Scriptures.
My answer to him [says Franklin in the _Autobiography_]
was, that I had read or heard of some public man who made it a rule never to ask for an office, and never to refuse one when offer"d to him. "I approve," says I, "of his rule, and will practice it with a small addition; I shall never _ask_, never _refuse_, nor ever _resign_ an office." If they will have my office of clerk to dispose of to another, they shall take it from me. I will not, by giving it up, lose my right of some time or other making reprisals on my adversaries.
Franklin never actually refused an office except when its duties could be discharged only from what was virtually his death-bed, and he never resigned an office, though he was removed from one under circ.u.mstances which furnished a fine ill.u.s.tration, indeed, of how much can be made of a removal. On the other hand, he did not keep his vow of never asking for an office; for melancholy to relate, like a raven eying a sick horse, we find him fore-handed enough, when it was manifest that Mr. Elliot Benger, the Deputy Postmaster-General of America, was about to pay his last debt to nature, to apply for the reversion of his office before the debt was actually paid, and to offer, through Chief Justice Allen of Pennsylvania, the sum of three hundred pounds in perquisites and contingent fees and charges for it. Indeed, Benger, though "tho"t to be near his end" by Franklin, when the latter first set to work to succeed him, did not die until more than two years afterwards.[15] As we shall see hereafter, to Franklin, as an officeholder, was honorably allotted even the state of supreme beat.i.tude under the spoils system of politics which consists in holding more than one public office at one time.
The young aspirant for Franklin"s place had nothing but his generous motives to soothe his disappointment, for at the next election Franklin was unanimously elected clerk as usual. Indeed, Franklin had reason to believe that the measures taken for the protection of Pennsylvania were not disagreeable to any of the Quakers, provided that they were not required to partic.i.p.ate actively in them. The proportion of Quakers sincerely opposed to resistance, he estimated, after having had a chance to look the field over, was as one to twenty-one only.
His long contact with the a.s.sembly, as its clerk, had afforded him excellent opportunities for observing how embarra.s.sed its Quaker majority, which loved political power quite as much as it detested war and Presbyterians, was, whenever applications were made to the a.s.sembly for military grants by order of the Crown, and to what subtle shifts this majority was compelled to resort on such occasions to save its face; ending finally in its voting money simply for the "King"s use," and never inquiring how it was spent. Sometimes the demand was not directly from the Crown, and then the conflict, that is being perpetually renewed between eccentric human opinions and the inexorable order of the universe, became acute, indeed, as, for instance, when this majority was urged by Governor Thomas to appropriate a sum of money with which to buy powder for the military needs of New England. Money to buy powder nakedly the Quakers were not willing to vote, but they appropriated three thousand pounds to be put into the hands of the Governor for the purchase of bread, flour, wheat or other _grain_. Some members of the Governor"s Council, desirous of still further embarra.s.sing the a.s.sembly, advised him not to accept provisions instead of powder, but he replied: "I shall take the money, for I understand very well their meaning; other grain is gunpowder." Gunpowder he accordingly bought, and the Quakers maintained a silence as profound as that which lulled Franklin to sleep in their great meeting-house when he first arrived in Philadelphia. The esoteric meaning of this kind of language was, of course, not likely to be lost upon a man so prompt as Franklin to take a wink for a nod. With his practical turn of mind, he was the last person in the world to boggle over delphic words when they were clear enough for him to see that they gave him all that he wanted. So, when it was doubtful whether the Quakers in the Union Fire Company would vote a fund of sixty pounds for the purchase of tickets in the lottery, remembering the incident, which has just been related, he said to his friend, Syng, one of its members, "If we fail, let us move the purchase of a fire-engine with the money; the Quakers can have no objection to that; and then, if you nominate me and I you as a committee for that purpose, we will buy a great gun, which is certainly a _fire engine_." But there was no real danger of the fund not being voted. The company consisted of thirty members, of whom twenty-two were Quakers. The remaining eight punctually attended the meeting, at which the vote was to be taken. Only one Quaker, Mr. James Morris, appeared to oppose the grant. The proposition, he said, with the confidence that usually marks statements in a democratic community about the preponderance of popular opinion, ought never to have been made, as Friends were all against it, and it would create such discord as might break up the company. At any rate, he thought that, though the hour for business had arrived, a little time should be allowed for the appearance of other members of the company, who, he knew, intended to come for the purpose of voting against the proposition. While this suggestion was being combated, who should appear but a waiter to tell Franklin that two gentlemen below desired to speak with him. These proved to be two of the Quaker members of the company. Eight of them, they said, were a.s.sembled at a tavern just by, who were ready to come and vote for the proposition, if they should be needed, but did not desire to be sent for, if their a.s.sistance could be dispensed with. Franklin then went back to Mr. Morris, and after a little seeming hesitation--for at times he had a way of piecing out the skin of the lion with the tail of the fox--agreed to a delay of another hour. This Mr. Morris admitted was extremely fair. n.o.body else came, and, upon the expiration of the hour, the proposition was carried by a vote of eight to one. Franklin was a thoroughly normal man himself, but his wit, patience and rare capacity for self-transformation usually enabled him to deal successfully with any degree of abnormality in others, however p.r.o.nounced. "Sensible people," he once said to his sister Jane, "will give a bucket or two of water to a dry pump, that they may afterwards get from it all they have occasion for."
The next time that Franklin crosses the stage of war is when General Braddock and his men, in the buskins of high tragedy, are moving to their doom. It had been reported to the General that, not only had the Pennsylvania a.s.sembly refused to vote money for the King"s service, but that the Pennsylvanians themselves had sold provisions to the French, declined to aid in the construction of a road to the West, and withheld wagons and horses sorely needed by the expedition; and the General had just been compelled to settle down for a time in the temper of a chafed bull at Frederick, Maryland, for the want of wagons and horses to transport his army to Fort Duquesne, which he afterwards told Franklin could hardly detain him above three or four days on his triumphant progress to Niagara and Frontenac. Forts, he seemed to think, to recall Franklin"s simile, could be taken as easily as snuff. Under these circ.u.mstances, the Pennsylvania a.s.sembly decided to ask Franklin to visit Braddock"s camp, ostensibly as Deputy Postmaster-General, for the purpose of arranging a plan, by which the General could effectively keep in postal touch with the Colonial Governors, but really for the purpose of removing the prejudices which the General had formed against Pennsylvania. And a pleasant April journey that must have been for the mounted Franklin through Pennsylvania and Delaware, and over "the green-walled hills of Maryland," with his son, and the Governors of New York and Ma.s.sachusetts, also mounted, as his companions. That such a brave company, as it pa.s.sed through the mild vernal air of that delightful season from stage to stage of its itinerary, experienced no dearth of hospitable offices, we may rest a.s.sured. One Maryland gentleman, the "amiable and worthy" Colonel Benjamin Tasker, who entertained Franklin and William Franklin on this journey with great hospitality and kindness at his country place, even pleasantly claimed that a whirlwind, which Franklin made the subject of a most graphic description in a letter to Peter Collinson, had been got up by him on purpose to treat Mr. Franklin.
It was probably the energy and resource of Franklin that were really responsible for Braddock"s defeat, paradoxical as this may sound. When that brave but rash and infatuated general and his officers found that only twenty-five wagons could be obtained in Virginia and Maryland for the expedition, they declared that it was at an end; not less than one hundred and fifty wagons being necessary for the purpose. Their hopes, however, were revived when Franklin remarked that it was a pity that the army had not landed in Pennsylvania, as almost every farmer in that Colony had his wagon. This observation was eagerly pounced upon by Braddock, and Franklin was duly commissioned to procure the needed wagons. With such consummate art did he, in an address published by him at Lancaster, partly by persuasion, and partly by threats, work upon the feelings of the prosperous farmers of York, Lancaster and c.u.mberland Counties that in two weeks the one hundred and fifty wagons, with two hundred and fifty-nine pack-horses, were on their way to Braddock"s camp. Nay more; with the aid of William Franklin, who knew something of camp life and its wants, he drew up a list of provisions for Braddock"s subaltern officers, whose means were too limited to enable them to victual themselves comfortably for the march, and induced the Pennsylvania a.s.sembly to make a present of them to these officers. The twenty parcels, in which the provisions were packed, were each placed upon a horse and presented to a subaltern together with the horse itself. The twenty horses and their packs arrived in camp as soon as the wagons, and were very thankfully received. The kindness of Franklin in procuring them was acknowledged in letters to him from the colonels of the two regiments composing Braddock"s army in the most grateful terms, and Braddock was so delighted with his services in furnishing the wagons and pack-horses that he not only thanked him repeatedly, craved his further a.s.sistance, and repaid him one thousand pounds of a sum amounting to some thirteen hundred pounds which he had advanced, but wrote home a letter in which, after inveighing against the "false dealings of all in this country," with whom he had been concerned, he commended Franklin"s prompt.i.tude and fidelity, and declared that his conduct was almost the only instance of address and fidelity which he had seen in America. The balance of the amount that Franklin advanced he was never able to collect.
It is foreign to the plan of this book to describe the horrors of the sylvan inferno in which the huddled soldiers of Braddock stood about as much chance of successfully retaliating upon their flitting a.s.sailants as if the latter had been invisible spirits. It is enough for our purpose to say that, as soon as the wagoners, whom Franklin had gathered together, saw how things were going, they each took a horse from his wagon, and scampered away as fast as his steed could carry him, leaving too many wagons, provisions, pieces of artillery, stores and scalps behind them to make it worth the while of the victors to pursue them. Franklin states in the _Autobiography_ that, when Braddock, with whom he dined daily at Frederick, spoke of pa.s.sing from Fort Duquesne to Niagara, and from Niagara to Frontenac, as lightly as a traveller might speak of the successive inns at which he was to bait on a peaceful journey, he conceived some doubts and fears as to the event of the campaign. He might well have done so, for he knew, if Braddock did not, what a nimble, painted and befeathered Indian in the crepuscular shades of the primeval American forest was. We also learn from the _Autobiography_ that when the Doctors Bond came to Franklin to ask him to subscribe to fireworks, to be set off upon the fall of Fort Duquesne, he looked grave, and said that it would be time enough to prepare for the rejoicing when they knew that they had occasion to rejoice. All this was natural enough in a man whose temper was cautious, and who had dined daily for some time with Braddock. "The General presum"d too much, and was too secure. This the Event proves, but it was my Opinion from the time I saw him and convers"d with him." These were the words of Franklin in a letter to Peter Collinson shortly after the catastrophe. But, when we remember his written a.s.surance in his Lancaster address to the Pennsylvania farmers that the service, to which their wagons and horses would be put, would be light and easy, and above all the individual promises of indemnity, tantamount to the pledge of his entire fortune, which he gave to these farmers, we cannot help feeling that Franklin"s doubts and fears were not quite so strong as he afterwards honestly believed them to be, and that his second sight in this instance was, perhaps, somewhat like that of the clairvoyant, mentioned in the letter, contributed by his friend, Joseph Breintnal to one of his Busy-Body essays, who was "only able to discern Transactions about the Time, and for the most Part after their happening."
Apart from the evidence afforded by the expedition that, if Braddock had been as able a general as Franklin was a commissary, its result would have been different, its chief interest to the biographer of Franklin consists in the light that it sheds upon the self-satisfied ignorance of American conditions and the complete want of sympathy with the Americans themselves which subsequently aided in rendering the efforts of Franklin to secure a fair hearing in London for his countrymen so difficult. When Franklin ventured to express apprehension that the slender line of Braddock"s army, nearly four miles long, might be ambushed by the Indians, while winding its way through the woods, and be cut like a thread into several pieces, Braddock smiled at his simplicity and replied, "These savages may, indeed, be a formidable enemy to your raw American militia, but upon the King"s regular and disciplin"d troops, sir, it is impossible they should make any impression." He saw enough before he was fatally wounded to realize that the very discipline of his British soldiers was their undoing, when contending with such a mobile and wily foe as the Indian in the forest, and that a few hundred provincials, skulking behind trees, and giving their French and Indian antagonists a taste of their own tactics, were worth many thousands of such regulars even as his brave veterans. That he came to some conclusion of this kind before the close of his life we may infer from what Captain Orme told Franklin and what Franklin tells us in the _Autobiography_.
Captain Orme [says Franklin], who was one of the general"s aids-de-camp, and, being grievously wounded, was brought off with him, and continu"d with him to his death, which happen"d in a few days, told me that he was totally silent all the first day, and at night only said "_Who would have thought it?_" That he was silent again the following day, saying only at last, "_We shall better know how to deal with them another time_"; and dy"d in a few minutes after.
There was not to be another time for this intrepid but reckless soldier, who, true to the broad, red banner of England, died like a bulldog with his iron jaws set to the last, but the first time might have sufficed for his task if he had only taken Franklin"s hint, or freely consulted the advice of George Washington and the other provincial officers who accompanied him, or had not reduced his army merely to the condition of legs without eyes by treating the hundred Indians, invaluable as guides and scouts, whom George Croghan had brought to his aid, with such neglect and slights that they all, by successive defections, gradually dropped away from him.
In the _Autobiography_ Franklin contrasts the conduct of the British on their way from the sea to the unbroken wilderness with the conduct of the French allies when making their way from Rhode Island to Yorktown. The former, he says, from their landing till they got beyond the settlements, plundered and stripped the inhabitants, totally ruining some poor families, besides insulting, abusing and confining such persons as remonstrated. This was enough, he adds, to put the Americans out of conceit of such defenders, if they had really wanted any. The French, on the other hand, though traversing the most inhabited part of America for a distance of nearly seven hundred miles, occasioned not the smallest complaint for the loss of a pig, a chicken, or even an apple. Perhaps this was partly because the people gratefully gave them everything that they wanted before there was any occasion to take it. But it was the pusillanimous misbehavior of Colonel Dunbar, left by Braddock in the rear of his army to bring along the heavier part of his stores, provisions and baggage which converted disaster into disgrace. As soon as the fugitives from the battle reached his camp, the panic that they brought with them was instantly imparted to him and his entire force. Though he had at his command more than a thousand men, he thought of nothing better to do than to turn his draft horses to the purposes of flight, and to give all his stores and ammunition to the flames. When he reached the settlements, he was met with requests from the Governors of Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania that he would station his troops on the frontier of those states so as to protect them from the fury of the savages, but, so far from stopping to protect anybody else, not one jot of speed did he abate until, to use Franklin"s words, "he arriv"d at Philadelphia, where the inhabitants could protect him." "This whole transaction," declares the _Autobiography_, "gave us Americans the first suspicion that our exalted ideas of the prowess of British regulars had not been well founded."
When Dunbar did abandon the shelter which he had found at Philadelphia, it was only to give the people of Pennsylvania a parting whiff of his quality.
He promised Franklin that, if three poor farmers of Lancaster County would meet him at Trenton, where he expected to be in a few days on his march to New York, he would surrender to them certain indentured servants of theirs whom he had enlisted. Although they took him at his word, and met him at Trenton, at considerable sacrifice of time and money, he refused to perform his promise.
The defeat of Braddock and its consequences left the province fully exposed to Indian incursions, and again its ablest and most public-spirited man was compelled to take the lead in providing for its defense. His first act was to draft and push through the a.s.sembly a bill for organizing and disciplining a militia. Each company was to elect a captain, a lieutenant and an ensign, subject to the confirmation of the Governor, and the officers, so elected, of the companies forming each regiment, were to elect a colonel, a lieutenant-colonel and a major for the regiment, subject to the same confirmation. But nothing about the bill is so interesting as the further evidence that it affords of Franklin"s finesse in the management of Quakers. The Articles of a.s.sociation, provided for in the Act, were to be purely voluntary, and nothing in the Act was to be taken as authorizing the Governor or the military officers mentioned in it to prescribe any regulations that would in the least affect such of the inhabitants of the Province as were scrupulous about bearing arms, either in their liberties, persons or estates. There is almost a gleam of the true Franklin humor in the recital in the Act, which, though other parts of the Act safeguarded the Quaker crotchet as to fighting, made the Quaker majority in the a.s.sembly admit that there were some persons in the Province who had been disciplined in the art of war, and even--strange as that might be--conscientiously thought it their duty to fight in defense of their country, their wives, their families and estates. The Militia Act was followed by Franklin"s _Dialogue between X Y and Z_ explaining and defending it. This paper is garnished with apt references to the Bible, and, as a whole, is written with much vivacity and force. Its object was to convince the English, Scotch-Irish and German Pennsylvanians that they should fight to keep their own scalps on their heads even though they could not do this without accomplishing as much for the Quakers. "For my part,"
says Z, "I am no coward, but hang me if I"ll fight to save the _Quakers_."
"That is to say," says X, "you won"t pump ship because "twill save the rats, as well as yourself." And to Z"s suggestion that, if the Act was carried into execution, and proved a good one, they might have nothing to say against the Quakers at the next election, X, no unknown quant.i.ty, but Franklin himself, replies with this burst of eloquent exhortation which makes us half doubt Franklin when he says that he was not an orator:
O my friends, let us on this occasion cast from us all these little party views, and consider ourselves as _Englishmen_ and _Pennsylvanians_. Let us think only of the service of our king, the honour and safety of our country, and vengeance on its murdering enemies. If good be done, what imports it by whom "tis done? The glory of serving and saving others is superior to the advantage of being served or secured. Let us resolutely and generously unite in our country"s cause, (in which to die is the sweetest of all deaths) and may the G.o.d of Armies bless our honest endeavours.
When the defeat of Braddock first became known to Governor Morris, he hastened to consult with Franklin about the proper measures for preventing the desertion of the back counties of Pennsylvania, and he even went so far as to offer to make him a general, if he would undertake to conduct a force of provincials against Fort Duquesne. Franklin had, or with his wise modesty affected to have, a suspicion that the offer was inspired not so much by the Governor"s confidence in his military abilities as by the Governor"s desire to utilize his great personal influence for the purpose of enlisting soldiers and securing money to pay them with; and that, perhaps, without the taxation of the Proprietary estates. The suspicion we should say was groundless. In the land of the blind the one-eyed mole is king, and the probability is that the Governor was actuated by nothing more than the belief that in a province, where there were no seasoned generals, a man with Franklin"s talents, energy and resource would be likely to prove the best impromptu commander that he could find. If so, his calculations came to nothing, for Franklin, who always saw things as they were, could discern no reason why he should be unfit to be a colonel and yet fit to be a general. When, however, the Militia Act had been pa.s.sed, and Z had been silenced by X, and military companies were springing up as rapidly as mushrooms in a Pennsylvania meadow, he did permit himself to be prevailed upon by the Governor to take charge of the northwestern frontier of the Province, and to bend his energies to the task of enlisting soldiers and erecting forts for its protection. He did not think himself qualified for even this quasi-military post, but posterity has taken the liberty of differing from him in this regard. Having speedily rallied five hundred and sixty men to his standard, and called his son, who had had some military training, to his side, as his aide-de-camp, he a.s.sembled his little army at Bethlehem, the chief seat of the Moravians, and divided it into three detachments. One he sent off towards the Minisink to build a fort in the upper part of the exposed territory, another he sent off to build a fort in the lower part of the same territory, and the third he conducted himself to Gnadenhutten, a Moravian village, recently reduced to blood and ashes by the Indians, for the purpose of erecting a third fort there.
When he reached Bethlehem, he found that not only had the Moravian brethren, who, he had had reason to believe, were conscientiously averse to war, erected a stockade around the princ.i.p.al buildings of the town, and purchased a supply of arms and ammunition for themselves in New York, but that they had even placed a quant.i.ty of stones between the windows of their high houses, to be thrown down by their women upon the heads of any Indians by whom these buildings might be invested. "Common sense, aided by present danger, will sometimes be too strong for whimsical opinions," dryly comments Franklin in the _Autobiography_.
How death kept his court in that tortured land may be inferred from an incident recorded by Franklin in the _Autobiography_. Just before he left Bethlehem for Gnadenhutten, eleven farmers who had been driven from their plantations by the Indians obtained from him each a gun with a suitable supply of ammunition, and returned to their homes to fetch away their cattle. Ten of the eleven were killed by the Indians. The one who escaped reported that they could not discharge their guns because the priming had become wet with rain--a mishap which the Indians were too dexterous to allow to befall their pieces. The same rain descended upon Franklin and his men on their march from Bethlehem to Gnadenhutten, and disabled their guns too, but fortunately, though at one point they had to pa.s.s through a gap in the mountains which their foes might well have turned to deadly account, they were not attacked on the march. Once arrived at Gnadenhutten, as soon as the detachment had sheltered itself under rude huts, and interred with more decent completeness the ma.s.sacred victims, who had been only half buried by their demoralized neighbors, it proceeded to fell trees and to erect a fort, or rather stockade, with a circ.u.mference of four hundred and fifty-five feet. "How bow"d the woods beneath their st.u.r.dy stroke," was not more aptly written of the peasants whom Gray"s _Elegy_ has immortalized, than it might have been of the seventy brawny axemen in Franklin"s camp, two of whom could by Franklin"s watch in six minutes cut down a pine fourteen inches in diameter. In a week, in spite of drenching rains, a stockade had been constructed of sufficient strength, flimsy as it was, to fend off cannonless Indians. It consisted of palisades eighteen feet long, planted in a trench three feet deep, loopholes, and a gallery, at an elevation of six feet around its interior, for its defenders to stand on and take aim through the loopholes. When it had been finished, a swivel gun was mounted at one of its angles and discharged to let the Indians know that the garrison was supplied with such pieces. They were not far off; for when Franklin began, after he had furnished himself with a place of refuge, in case of retreat, to throw out scouting parties over the adjacent country, he found that they had been watching his movements from the hills with their feet dangling in holes, in which, for warmth, fires, made of charcoal, had been kindled. With their fires going in this way, there was neither light, flame, sparks, nor even smoke, to betray their presence; but it would seem that they were too few in numbers to feel that they could hazard an attack upon the stockade-builders.