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Benjamin Franklin

<h2>17 THE CLOSING YEARS</h2> Never had America given a returning hero a more resounding welcome. Booming cannons announced his landing on September 14, 1785, at Philadelphia’s Market Street wharf. Bells rang throughout the city and the whole town was out to greet him. Cheering crowds lined the street as his carriage proceeded to his home at Franklin Court, where Sally and his grandchildren, eight now in all, were waiting for him. Ceremonies in his honor continued for weeks. Old and feeble and almost constantly in pain, he was still not allowed to relax. On October 11, he was made president of the Supreme Executive Council of the Pennsylvania Assembly—an Assembly which would never again have to pay heed to “the proprietors.” On October 29, two weeks later, he was elected president of Pennsylvania. To avoid the agony of riding in a carriage, he had a sedan chair built, so he could be carried to meetings. His eightieth birthday, January 6, 1786, was celebrated at the Bunch of Grapes Tavern by Philadelphia’s now numerous printers. They drank their first toast to their “venerable printer, philosopher, and statesman.” At least once in this period George Washington came to dinner with him. One pleasant afternoon and evening he spent with Thomas Paine, now one of America’s most distinguished citizens; together they worked on inventing a “smokeless candle.” For a while, Franklin kept in his garden a model of an iron bridge which Paine had invented and which attracted droves of curious visitors. He tried vainly to secure a post for Temple, but Congress was still doubtful about him. Later he bought the young man a farm at Rancocas, New Jersey. Temple liked farm life so little he spent most of his time in Philadelphia. For Benjamin Bache he set up a printing press and type foundry, which the youth managed contentedly until at the age of thirty an attack of yellow fever brought his life to a premature end. In July 1786, an Indian chief of the Wyandots, named Scotosh, came to Franklin with a message from his people, bringing strings of white wampum. Franklin received him with the same courtesy due any ambassador. Following the Indian custom, he waited two days to consider the chief’s message, then presented more strings of wampum with his reply. In the Pennsylvania Assembly, that September, he helped revise the penal code. No longer were men to be hanged for robbery, arson, or counterfeiting. By the new act only murder and treason warranted capital punishment. Branding with a hot iron, flogging, the pillory were all abolished. Such barbarities did not belong in a new nation. He was pleased with signs of progress and quick recovery from war. “Our working-people are all employed and get high wages, are well fed and well clad,” he wrote in November. “Buildings in Philadelphia increase rapidly, besides small towns rising in every quarter of the country. The laws govern, justice is well administered, and property is as secure as in any country in the globe.... In short, all among us may be happy who have happy dispositions; such being necessary to happiness even in paradise.” But all was not yet honey and roses in the new United States, as he soon discovered. Much trouble had risen because of the lack of power of the Confederacy. Under the Articles of the Confederation, Congress might declare war, but could not enlist a single soldier. Congress could ask the states for money, but had no authority to raise a dollar by taxation. It could make treaties but could not force the states to recognize them. It could not regulate commerce and each state taxed imports as it wished. Not only the Confederacy, but all the states issued their own money, resulting in endless confusion. To create a strong central government, the Constitutional Convention opened on May 25, 1787, at the Philadelphia State House, in the same room where the Declaration of Independence had been signed. Franklin, who was the oldest delegate here, as he had been at the Second Continental Congress, expressed the hope that good would come from the Convention: “Indeed if it does not do good it must do harm, as it will show that we have not wisdom enough among us to govern ourselves.” There were fifty-five delegates in all, the best minds in America. George Washington was the natural choice as presiding officer. All that hot summer they labored on the task of making a workable constitution. Franklin did not miss a meeting in the four months. As always, he said little. When he had a speech to make, he wrote it out in advance and let James Wilson, or some other delegate, read it for him. He could no longer stand to deliver an address without pain. In the course of the sessions he advocated three ideas—a single legislature, a plural executive, the nonpayment of officers. All three were rejected. He accepted the defeat without rancor. His main role was as a peacemaker. In case of an impasse, as was inevitable with so many contrary views and opinions, it was invariably he who suggested a workable compromise. Once, when feelings were taut to the point of hostility, he moved that the Convention open its sessions with prayer: “I have lived a long time, and the longer I live the more convincing proofs I see of this truth: that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?” His motion was received with respect but no action was taken on it. Perhaps he guessed there would be none. Whether he planned it or not, his proposal had the effect of cooling hot tempers, and work continued with less dissension. The final day of the Convention was Monday, September 17. The great document, which was the fruit of their heavy labor, was read by the secretary. Then James Wilson gave Franklin’s comments: <blockquote> I confess that there are several parts of this Constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them; for, having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information or fuller consideration to change my opinions.... In these sentiments, sir, I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if there are such; because I think a general government necessary for us, and there is no form of government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered.... Thus I consent, sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure that it is not the best.... </blockquote> Then Franklin moved that the Constitution be signed by the delegates as “done in Convention by the unanimous consent of the states present.” While the last delegates were affixing their signature, Franklin’s eyes were on the president’s chair, on the back of which a sunset—or sunrise—was painted. To those near him he said, “I have often and often in the course of the session ... looked at that sun behind the president without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting. But now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting sun.” In the year of the Convention, the Massachusetts delegate, Elbridge Gerry, called on Franklin, bringing a friend named Manasseh Cutler. Later Cutler wrote down his recollections of this first meeting with the philosopher-statesman. He was sitting hatless under a mulberry tree in his garden, “a short, fat, trunched old man in a plain Quaker dress, bald pate, and short white locks.” Present were several men and women, one of whom was Sarah Bache. When Cutler was introduced, Franklin rose, took him by the hand, expressed his joy at seeing him, and begged him to be seated by his side. He spoke in a low voice and his “countenance was open, frank, and pleasing.” Sarah Bache served tea under the tree. She had three of her younger children with her, who “seemed to be excessively fond of their grandpapa.” They talked until dark when Franklin took his guests into his study, “a very large chamber and high-studded.” The walls were lined with bookshelves and there were more books in four alcoves extending two-thirds of the length of the room. Cutler guessed rightly that this was “the largest and by far the best private library in America.” Their host showed them a sort of artificial arm—a long pole with prongs at the end that could be opened or shut with a rope, which he had devised to take down and put up books on the upper shelves. (Previously he had used a chair which could be unfolded into a ladder, but now he was not sufficiently agile.) He had other curiosities in the room, such as a glass machine for “exhibiting the circulation of the blood in the arteries and veins of the human body” and his rocking armchair, with a fan placed over it which he could operate by a small motion of his foot. Because Cutler was a botanist, Franklin showed him a precious folio containing Systema Vegetabilium, by Linnaeus, the founder of systematic botany. Heavy as the folio was, Franklin insisted on lifting it himself, and to Cutler he expressed regret that he had not in his youth given more attention to the science of botany. They discussed many other matters and Cutler was astonished at Franklin’s extensive knowledge, “the brightness of his memory, and clearness and vivacity of all his mental faculties, notwithstanding his age,” and at the “incessant vein of humour ... which seems as natural and involuntary as his breathing.” But his age was catching up with Benjamin Franklin, as no one realized better than he. In February 1788, he fell on the stone steps that led into his garden, bruising himself badly and spraining his wrist, so that temporarily he could not even write to his friends. The accident was followed by a severe attack of his kidney stone ailment. He was still confined to bed when Pennsylvania celebrated gloriously its twelfth Fourth of July. The Pennsylvania Council held meetings at his house during his illness, and in October, Thomas Mifflin, a veteran of the Revolutionary War, was elected to succeed him. To quiet the anxiety of his sister in Boston, Jane Mecom, he wrote, “There are in life real evils enough, and it is a folly to afflict ourselves with imaginary ones.... As to the pain I suffer, about which you make yourself so unhappy, it is, when compared with the long life I have enjoyed of health and ease, but a trifle.” He made his will that summer of 1788. In a codicil, he bequeathed to “my friend, and the friend of mankind, General Washington,” the walking stick with the gold head in the shape of a cap of liberty, which had been given him in France as a symbol of victory. Congress was now allotting many pensions and bonuses to patriots who had sacrificed their personal interests to serve in the cause of freedom. Franklin had hoped that his many years of foreign service might be thought worthy of a grant of a tract of land in the West “which might have been of some use and some honour to my posterity.” This was never given him. Arthur Lee, who had been notably jealous of Franklin and who had written him vitriolic letters in France accusing him of leaving him out of things, was a member of the Treasury Board. He had never forgotten or forgiven Franklin for being the better man. John Adams was finding ears to listen to his long-standing disapproval of Franklin’s “frivolity.” He was being criticized for being too fond of France, as he had once been censored for his attachment to England, and especially for accepting as a gift the King of France’s miniature. There was also a matter of a million livres given by France to the dummy importing concern, Hortalez and Company, which was unaccounted for. Franklin was condemned by innuendo, though time would clear him completely. He was sorrowful about this turn of affairs but he blamed nobody. He knew something of the “nature of such changeable assemblies,” he wrote a friend, “and how little successors are informed of services that have been rendered to the corps before their admission.” Once more he had turned to working on his Autobiography, commenced years before at the Shipley home in England. For six months off and on he kept at it, even while his kidney stone was causing him such acute pain he had to resort to opium. He brought his life story up to the time of his first meetings with the Penn brothers in England. It remained unfinished. By the summer of 1789 he was so emaciated that, in his words, “little remains of me but a skeleton covered with a skin,” and philosophic as always, commented, “In this world, nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes,” tossing off another epigram that would survive. The long fermenting discontent of the French working classes exploded in the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789. Franklin seems not to have realized the extent of the misery in France during his stay there. Most of his intimate friends had been wealthy, or at least well-to-do. His own life had been so idyllic he had come to think of his foster country almost as a utopia. Moreover, he was deeply grateful to the French King for his generosity to America. But his belief in the rights of the common man was firm and if the people of France felt they needed a change, he was with them. When rumors of their Revolution reached him, he wrote, “Disagreeable circumstances might attend the convulsions in France ... but if by the struggle she obtains and secures for her nation its future liberty, and a good constitution, a few years’ enjoyment of those blessings will amply repair all the damages their acquisition may have occasioned.” Since 1787 he had been president of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, founded by the Quakers, and his signature was on a memorial which the society sent to Congress on February 12, 1790, advocating the abolition of slavery. Congress dismissed the memorial on the grounds that it had no authority to interfere in the internal affairs of the states. Whereupon Franklin promptly published an essay, “On the Slave Trade,” in which a mythical Algerian, Sidi Mehemet Ibrahim, used the same arguments as the Negro slave owners to defend his right to Christian slaves! The piece showed the same barbs of wit and satire as his earlier writings. His campaign against slavery was his last public activity. His pain now kept him bedridden, but he did some work, using Benjamin Bache as his secretary, and he found the energy to listen to his nine-year-old granddaughter Deborah recite lessons from her Webster spelling book. In March, Thomas Jefferson, on his way to accept his post as Secretary of State under President George Washington, came to see him, and on April 8, he wrote Jefferson his last letter, a clear account of the map which he and the other peace commissioners used in fixing the boundary between Maine and Nova Scotia. He was now running a high temperature. Breathing became so difficult that he nearly suffocated. When, briefly, he felt a little better, he rose from his bed, begging that it might be made up fresh for him so he could die in a decent manner. His daughter Sally told him she hoped he would recover and live many years longer. “I hope not,” he said calmly. They put him back to bed and his physician advised him to change his position so he could breathe more easily. “A dying man can do nothing easy,” he commented. Soon afterwards he fell in a coma. Temple and Benjamin Bache, his grandsons, were alone with him when, on April 17, 1790, at the age of eighty-four and three months, the end came. His death brought an abrupt halt to the petty recriminations that had saddened his last months. In Philadelphia, the city that had grown up with him and because of him, muffled bells tolled, and flags on the ships in the harbor hung at half mast. Some 20,000 attended his funeral, the greatest number the city had ever seen gathered in one spot. As he was lowered into his grave in the Christ Church burying ground beside his wife, a company of militia artillery fired funeral guns in honor of the man who had organized Pennsylvania’s first militia. In New York, by a motion passed unanimously, the United States House of Representatives voted to wear mourning for a month. Neither the Senate nor the Executive Council followed the example of the House. Ironically, the man chosen to pronounce his funeral eulogy at the Lutheran German Church in Philadelphia was William Smith, his ancient enemy. Although Smith did not do him justice, the crowd before the pulpit sobbed openly. But it was in France, his adopted country, where the expressions of grief and loss were most tumultuous. The National Assembly proclaimed a period of three months of national mourning for the “benefactor and hero of humanity.” “Antiquity would have raised altars to this mighty genius,” cried the revolutionary leader Mirabeau. Splendid orations in his honor were delivered by the Jacobins, the Friends of the Constitution, the Academy of Science, the Royal Society of Medicine, the National Guard, the Masonic lodges, the printers of France, and uncounted other societies. All over the country, women wept for him. It is said that one enterprising businessman became rich by selling statuettes of him, made from the stones of the Bastille. Franklin’s contributions to his country, to science, to better understanding between nations and peoples were immense. His maxims on thrift and moral virtues have been extolled to generations of school children. His wit and wisdom have added to the world’s riches. He was many men in one—statesman, scientist, inventor, writer, humorist, philosopher, and a friend of humanity who shared himself with all around him. “Who that know and love you can bear the thoughts of surviving you in this gloomy world?” cried out Jane Mecom, his beloved sister, shortly before his death. Posterity would provide her answer. Because Benjamin Franklin lived and enjoyed life, the world would be a little less gloomy and a little more pleasant for all who came after him. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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