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Benjamin Franklin

<h2>12 BEGINNING OF A LONG WAR</h2> He reached Philadelphia on May 5, 1775—an elderly widower, nearly seventy, grave and saddened by the loss of his wife, by the crisis to his country which his many years of negotiations could not forestall. Sally and Richard Bache took him to the house on Market Street which he had designed but never occupied. Two small grandchildren whom he had never seen, Benjamin and William Bache, were waiting to embrace him and to greet their youthful English cousin, Temple. Franklin’s friends of the Junto and political companions were on hand to give him the big news. On April 19, while he was on the high seas, that was when it had happened. General Sir William Howe (another brother of the chess-playing Miss Howe), who was now stationed in Boston, had sent some 800 British soldiers to Concord, where the Massachusetts Committee of Safety had a store of arms and ammunition. The Massachusetts Minutemen, forewarned by Paul Revere, had tried to stop them at Lexington. The Redcoats, who claimed that the colonials fired first, had killed eight and left ten wounded, then pushed onwards. It was at Concord where for the first time in America the King’s subjects shot at the King’s troops. The return of the Redcoats was a rout, with farmers and tradesmen firing behind every barn and haystack. General Howe announced 73 of his men slain and 174 wounded. A rebellion was under way and there was no turning back. On his second day home, Franklin was chosen as a Pennsylvania delegate to the Second Continental Congress. It opened on May 10 in the Philadelphia State House; delegates from all the colonies attended. In both years and experience, Franklin was the senior member. Colonel George Washington, a big quiet man of forty-three, wore his colonial uniform, as if guessing the heavy responsibility ahead of him as Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Armies. On the day he left for Cambridge to assume his post, word came of the valiant fight at Breed Hill (which history would call the Battle of Bunker Hill). Another tall Virginian joined the Congress, red-haired Thomas Jefferson, thirty-two years old, lawyer and college graduate and of a wealthy and cultured family. In spite of differences in age and background, Franklin found him a kindred spirit. Jefferson, like himself, was a scientist, inventor, man of letters. In July, Congress voted to send another petition to their “gracious sovereign,” asking for a redress of grievances. Franklin knew in advance that this “olive branch” petition was a waste of paper, but he did not voice his objections. Let these impulsive young men of Congress find out for themselves that the weak and stubborn George III was not on their side. They would likely not have taken his word anyway. In sessions of Congress he spoke less than any man present. In his school days he had learned a jingle: “A man of words and not of deeds / Is like a garden full of weeds.” Better to show one’s patriotism in action than talk. Congress did its work largely by committees. Franklin served on a committee for the making of paper money, on committees to protect colony trade, to investigate lead ore deposits, and to study the cheapest and easiest way to procure salt. He was on another committee which considered, and turned down, a reconciliation plan submitted by Lord North. He was one of three commissioners appointed to handle Indian affairs in Pennsylvania and Virginia. On July 25, the Congress voted him postmaster-general of the colonies. The postal system which he set up with his son-in-law Richard Bache was so efficient and comprehensive that it served as a model to modern times, giving Franklin right to the title, “Father of the American Post Office.” For local defense, the Pennsylvania Assembly set up a Committee of Safety, appointing Franklin as president. Among his duties were the reorganizing of the Philadelphia militia, selecting officers for armed boats, obtaining medicines for the soldiers. He designed a special pike—a long wooden pole with pointed metal head—to be used in hand-to-hand fighting as a substitute for bayonets, which the colonists did not have. Half-seriously, he proposed use of bows and arrows, in lieu of more powerful weapons. To keep British warships from coming within firing range of Philadelphia, he had built huge contraptions of logs and iron, called Chevaux de Frise, to be sunk in the Delaware River. On his papers and plans he worked late night after night. He met with the Committee of Safety at six each morning. From nine to four he sat in Congress. It was small wonder that delegate John Adams would catch him napping during the hot and often wearisome sessions. No one knows how he found time for his postmaster duties. Could anything more be expected of old Ben Franklin who twenty-eight years before had decided to retire, since he had enough money to live on, and no man needed more than enough? In all those years he had continued to work for his city, his province, the thirteen colonies. His greatest services still lay ahead. He was sure America would win—eventually. He had no illusions about the hardships involved. England was the most powerful country in the world, swollen with the glory of its victories over France and Spain. Its superb navy was rivaled by none. Its army was well-trained, well-armed, disciplined, and numerous. The Americans had to start from scratch. The embargo against English goods had boomeranged sadly. America was still an agricultural country with little manufacturing of its own. There were shortages of necessities and of luxuries. That year Abigail Adams sent a tearful request to her husband, John, to buy her a box of pins in Philadelphia—even if it cost ten dollars. The most urgent need was for arms and ammunition. From General Washington at Cambridge came letter after letter, pleading for them. One note, confessing that he had no more than half a pound of gunpowder per soldier, fell into the hands of General Howe—who thought it was a trick. (It was not until March 1776 that Henry Knox brought down guns captured at Ticonderoga and Washington could frighten Howe and his troops from Boston.) One of Franklin’s many Congressional committees was formed to promote the manufacture of saltpeter for gunpowder. Progress was slow. Throughout the war, the colonies produced only about fifty tons of gunpowder. Obviously home manufacture was not the answer. In July, Congress had a visitor from Bermuda, Colonel Henry Tucker, who headed the island’s local militia. Tucker was sympathetic to the Americans as were many Bermudians. There was for a time talk of Bermuda being the fourteenth colony to revolt against British domination. It had previously been dependent on America for foodstuffs, but as it was a British possession shipments had been stopped. Colonel Tucker had come to plead that the ban be lifted. Franklin found occasion to talk with Tucker privately and one thing the Bermudian told him interested him greatly. At the Royal Arsenal at St. George, there was a large stock of gunpowder—and no guard. On Franklin’s recommendation, Congress put through a blanket order to exchange food for guns with any vessel arriving on the American coast, an order which evaded the controversial point of trading with an enemy. Bermuda was promised not only food, but candles, soap and lumber. There was another deal with Colonel Tucker, about which only those intimately concerned were informed. In August, two ships set sail for Bermuda—the Lady Catherine from Virginia and the Savannah Pacquet from South Carolina. At Mangrove Bay, their crews disembarked, to be welcomed by friendly Bermudians, including the son of Colonel Tucker. Bermudians and American seamen boarded small boats and sailed along the coast to St. George, where, on the estate of Bermuda’s Governor James Bruere, the Royal Arsenal was located. The raiders waited until the governor, his fourteen children, and his numerous watchdogs were all asleep. They proceeded so stealthily that not even a dog was wakened. A sailor, lowered into the arsenal through a vent in the roof, unlocked the doors from inside. Barrels of powder were rolled to the waiting boats. Then the party took off. Twelve days later the Lady Catherine arrived at Philadelphia with 1,800 pounds of gunpowder, while the Savannah Pacquet delivered its cargo at Charleston. This was Franklin’s first victory in his battle for ammunition. Although Governor Bruere, on discovering his loss, promptly sent for British warships to patrol the island, Bermudian sloops continued to get through to America, and American ships managed regularly to maneuver around the patrol. The trade continued for the benefit of both Americans and Bermudians. In the midst of this hectic summer, Franklin spent one long and miserable evening with William, the son whom he had made part of his life as much as any father ever had. He had hoped his flesh and blood would share his burning indignation at English oppression. The most bitter disillusion of his life now faced him. The governor of New Jersey haughtily denied any sympathy for the “American rabble.” His loyalty was to the Crown, and that was that. Franklin continued to write affectionately to Temple, who had gone to stay with his father, but the breach between him and his first-born son remained deep. The Bermuda raid was Franklin’s first step toward a larger plan. The Secret Committee to further importation of war supplies was set up on September 18, 1775. Among those serving with him was Robert Morris, the prosperous merchant who became the financial genius of the American Revolution. The Committee was granted substantial sums of money and wide powers. It made contracts with American merchants who, with permits issued by Congress, took cargoes to the West Indies, Martinique, Santo Domingo, and even Europe, bringing back arms and ammunition. Part of the Committee’s work was to get in touch with merchants from many countries. England was no exception. The friendships Franklin had formed among English merchants when he was seeking repeal of the Stamp Act now proved their value. These merchants knew they could trust him and were not adverse to giving a helping hand to the Americans and making a profit at the same time. There was in the West Indies a tiny island no more than seven or eight miles square called St. Eustatius, a dependency of Holland and an international free port. Statia, as the Americans called it, had long been a market for smuggled goods from every corner of the globe. Now it became an arsenal to which merchants from Holland, France, England, and other nations brought war materials to be picked up by American vessels. The British government, through its excellent espionage system, knew what was happening but could not prevent it. “Powder cruises,” these ventures were called. They were only one phase of American sea activity. There was in time a Continental Navy, which was never very effective. Individual colonies had their own navies. There were also the romantic privateers, privately owned vessels with commissions from Congress, which by the first twenty months of the war had captured over 700 English vessels—and made fortunes for their owners and crews. The powder cruises alone were planned for the sole purpose of getting war materials for the fighting forces. They were a long-range project. It took time to fit and man and load the ships, more time for them to make their journeys and return. Not for two years would the Americans have enough ammunition to win a major engagement. Before this happened, there were hard days ahead. On October 4, Franklin rode off to visit Washington’s camp at Cambridge, on a Congressional mission with Thomas Lynch of South Carolina and Benjamin Harrison of Virginia. If he was a little flabbergasted at the motley assembly of backwoodsmen, farmers and teenage youths to whom Washington was trying to teach military discipline, he did not say so. These were his people. He was proud of them and what they had set out to do. On his return, he stopped in Warwick, Rhode Island, where his sister Jane Mecom, an old woman now, had taken refuge from British-occupied Boston with their old friends, the Greenes. Besides himself, she was the only one of Josiah Franklin’s seventeen children who was still living. Happily, she did not yet know that her Boston home was being looted in her absence. “Sorrows roll over me like the waves of the sea,” she had written Franklin a few years before on the death of her adored daughter Polly. She was worried now about her son Benjamin, who was unable to hold a job and whose wife and children were destitute (the same whom Debby had written her husband that she had had to tea). Only a few months later, his mind completely gone, Benjamin wandered out in the dark, never to be seen again. In spite of the repeated blows of a cruel fate, Jane had remained warmhearted and thoughtful. Franklin, who had the tenderest affection for her, brought her back to Philadelphia, where she stayed with him for the next year. Always he had humored her, given her and her inevitably needy family material help, written her long and loving letters—and occasionally fretted at her constant solicitude. On this same trip he distributed a hundred pounds, sent by English friends to aid the wounded of Lexington and Concord and the widows and orphans of those who had been killed. It is possible that one of the generous donors was Joseph Priestley, to whom Franklin wrote about this time: “Britain, at the expense of three millions, has killed one hundred and fifty Yankees in this campaign, which is twenty thousand pounds a head.... During the same time sixty thousand children have been born in America.” His letter was quoted throughout England, where the hearts of many lay not with their own corrupt Parliament, but with those who had the courage to oppose it. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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