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Benjamin Franklin

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<h2>8 THE WHITE CHRISTIAN SAVAGES</h2> “Benjamin Franklin has lost all his Philadelphia friends.” That was the rumor which his “enemy,” William Smith, had been spreading. It had reached Franklin’s ears but he had not worried about it nor did he have reason to. As his ship sailed into port, in November 1762, the docks were bright with waving flags and packed with cheering crowds. Five hundred horsemen escorted him home. Waiting for him were Debby, his “plain country Joan,” stout, beaming, and vociferous in her greeting, and his daughter Sally, pretty and elegant in the London frocks he had sent her. From morning to night in the next days, his Philadelphia friends, those whom Smith said he did not have, were filling his house, boisterous and hearty, slapping him on the back, congratulating him on the job he had done, in every way possible showing him their warm and lasting affection. Did he find their manners a bit rough, their horizon of knowledge limited after his cultured and learned English friends? Nostalgically he wrote to Polly Stevenson: “Why should that little island (England) enjoy in almost every neighbourhood more sensible, virtuous, and elegant minds than we can collect in ranging a hundred leagues of our vast forests?” Not that America would always remain behind England in the arts: “Already some of our young geniuses begin to lisp attempts at painting poetry and music.” And with his letter he proudly included some American verse he thought might find favor in England. The supporters of the proprietors were still criticizing him, claiming now that Benjamin Franklin had lived extravagantly and wasted public money in England. They were disappointed rather than gratified when he submitted to the Assembly a bill for his five years’ expenses—for just 714 pounds, ten shillings, seven pence. The Assembly, too embarrassed to accept such a modest estimate, promptly voted him 3,000 pounds. In February, William arrived to take up his office as New Jersey’s royal governor, bringing with him a beautiful and dignified new bride, Elizabeth, who had been born in the West Indies. Franklin toured New Jersey with them, along with an escort of cavalry and gentlemen on sleighs. His heart filled with pride as he saw the respect and affection with which they were welcomed by rich and poor alike, and his fears about William were for the moment put aside. He did some 1,600 miles traveling of his own from the Spring to the fall of 1763, the first year of his return, taking up where he had left off in expanding and improving the colonial postal services. Sally went with him on one trip up to New England, when they stayed with the former Catherine Ray, now Mrs. William Greene, her husband a future governor of Rhode Island. When he dislocated his shoulder in a fall from his horse, it was Catherine who nursed him. The friendships of Benjamin Franklin—how much could be said of them! He guarded them all, men and women alike, more preciously than jewels, nourished them with letters during separations, and with personal warmth during reunions. In February 1763, the Treaty of Paris brought the French and Indian Wars to a formal close in England’s favor, but did not solve the tensions between colonists and Indians which the struggle had fomented. Though the treaty granted the Indians the lands from the Allegheny Mountains to the Mississippi, the Indians had learned to be suspicious of the white man’s treaties and rightly feared that future settlers would drive them back further and further. Out of desperation, they attacked English garrisons from Detroit to Fort Pitt. The English reciprocated ruthlessly. One British general suggested that blankets inoculated with smallpox be presented to them “to extirpate this execrable race.” As contagious as any disease was the racial hatred that spread along the frontiers. In Lancaster County, certain Scotch-Irish settlers of Paxton and Donegal townships met together and vowed vengeance on the “redskins.” “The only good Indian is a dead Indian,” they said. If the warring Indians vanished into the forests after each assault, why then there were plenty of others—such as those living under the protection of the good Moravians. In December, the Paxton Boys, as they called themselves, attacked a tiny hamlet of peaceful Conestoga Indians. Six were killed outright. Fourteen others, old people, women and children, who had been out selling baskets, brooms and bowls to their white neighbors, were taken captive and lodged at the Lancaster workhouse. Two days after Christmas, the rioters broke into the workhouse, killing all of them with hatchets. Streams of other peaceful Indians poured into Philadelphia for protection. William Penn’s grandson, John Penn, was now Pennsylvania’s governor. He ordered the arrest of the murderers but did nothing to enforce his order. Made bold by this seeming lack of concern, the Paxton Boys, their ranks swollen by a lawless mob, voted to go to Philadelphia and force the Assembly to turn over the Indian refugees to their untender mercies. Franklin’s war activities had shown he condemned atrocities against the frontiersmen, but he was outraged that Indians who had kept faith with the white men should have been betrayed. By mid-January he had both written and printed a pamphlet, “Narrative of the Late Massacres in Lancaster County.” The first part retold the story of Indian relations in Pennsylvania. How members of the Six Nations had first settled in Conestoga, how its messengers had welcomed the English with presents of venison, corn and skins, how the tribe had entered into a treaty of friendship with William Penn, to last “as long as the sun should shine or the waters run in the rivers.” It was an “enormous wickedness,” he continued, to assassinate these Conestoga Indians for the sins of the “rum-debauched, trader-corrupted vagabonds and thieves on the Susquehanna and Ohio.” It was as illogical as if the Dutch should seek revenge on the English for injuries done by the French, merely because both English and French were white. To what good, he asked, had Old Shehaes, so ancient he had been present at Penn’s Treaty in 1701, been cut to pieces in his bed? What was to be gained by shooting or killing with a hatchet little boys and girls—and a one-year-old baby? “This is done by no civilized nation in Europe. Do we come to America to learn and practise the manners of barbarians?” The Conestoga Indians would have been safe among the ancient heathen, the Turks, the Saracens, the Moors, the Spanish, the Negroes—anywhere in the world “except in the neighborhood of the Christian white savages.” Christian white savages! That was a phrase to make people wince. Those who shared the prejudices of the Paxton Boys were highly indignant. But the Quakers agreed with him, and the pamphlet convinced a surprising number of others that it was their duty to defend their city and protect the Indians who had sought refuge with them. Panic spread as the Paxton rioters, armed and in an ugly mood, approached Philadelphia. In the emergency Governor John Penn turned to Franklin to reorganize his militia. Almost overnight a thousand citizens rallied to arms, among them Junto members and firemen. On February 8, word came that the mob was at the city limits. The governor, with his councilors, rushed to Franklin at midnight, seeking advice. His house became their temporary headquarters. The ford over the Schuylkill River was guarded. The Paxton group bypassed it, turned north, crossed the river at another ford, and came noisily into Germantown some ten miles from Philadelphia. “You go talk to them, Franklin,” pleaded the frightened governor. Benjamin rode off to Germantown with only three of his men, and spoke with the mob’s leaders so reasonably and sternly they agreed to turn back. Three days later they had all gone home and quiet was restored to the city. “For about 48 hours, I was a very great man,” he wrote Lord Kames. To Dr. Fothergill in London, he tersely described his activities: “Your old friend was a common soldier, a councillor, a kind of dictator, an ambassador to a country mob, and, on his returning home, nobody again.” The help he had given in a delicate situation did not win him the governor’s approval. To his Uncle Thomas Penn he wrote on May 5 that there would never be “any prospect of ease and happiness while that villain has the liberty of spreading about the poison of that inveterate malice and ill nature which is deeply implanted in his own black heart.” Instead of bringing the Paxton criminals to justice, John Penn launched a bitter attack on the Pennsylvania Assembly, whom he called “arrogant usurpers.” The Assembly membership promptly voted as president their most controversial member, Benjamin Franklin. The annual elections for Assembly seats were held in October 1764. Two parties sprang up: Old Ticket, which supported Franklin and Joseph Galloway, another liberal, as candidates; New Ticket, the conservatives, the supporters of the Penns, and the Indian haters in whose hearts still rankled Franklin’s phrase, “white Christian savages.” The campaign was stormy and there was mud slinging on both sides. In Philadelphia, Old Ticket lost by 25 votes out of 4,000. Galloway was upset. Franklin merely shrugged and went home to bed. Only in Philadelphia had the New Ticket won. When the returns came in from the rest of the province, Old Ticket still had a majority in the Assembly. They convened on October 26, and voted to send the King a petition begging him to take back the province from the Penns, making it a royal province. Franklin prepared the petition and was selected to take it in person to England. John Penn was blind with fury but helpless. Franklin was engaged in having a new house built on Market Street between Third and Fourth. It was of brick, thirty-four feet square, with three rooms to each floor, and it had a pleasant garden. The kitchen was in the cellar with a special arrangement of pipes “to carry off steam and smell and smoke.” It would naturally be protected by a lightning rod and would be heated by the now celebrated Franklin stoves. He did not like to leave his house unfinished and he dreaded another separation from Debby, who was still terrified at the thought of an Atlantic crossing. But the long political squabble had bored and wearied him, and he looked forward to seeing England and his English friends again. “I will be gone only a few months,” he assured his wife and his pretty daughter, when he left them in November 1764. He could not then guess that the few months would stretch to more than ten years. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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