He is inventor, diplomat, statesman,
author. Skilled in the craft of
negotiation, unequalled in the art of courtship and love. If we understand any of the founding fathers,
surely we know him—his temperament, his beliefs, his motivations—better than any
of the men whose vision, resolve, and oratory united colonists of disparate
purpose into a single mind. Yet, in
flagrant challenge to our long-held beliefs, the greatest of the architects of
rebellion considered himself first of all an Englishman. Deeper, bewildering shocks await as we peer
into this man’s life, accomplishments, and failures.
Following through history the
cascade of events he set in motion late in the summer of 1774, we are not
surprised to hear the shot heard ‘round the world on April 19, 1775, nor see
with our own eyes the unanimous declaration he and his congressional colleagues
signed a year later, during the hot summer days of July, 1776. Perhaps, though, we are not only surprised,
but shocked, to learn that this printer from Philadelphia—this Englishman—was
almost single-handedly responsible for a greater number of American deaths and a
deeper obligation of debt than any single person prior to the 1980s. In fact, it is specifically because of the
engrained Englishness of him that the American Revolution did not end in the
spring of 1777, but instead engulfed the new United States, four European
countries, and seven North American First Nations in a war that dragged on for
eight and a half years, and became the inexorable trajectory that led to the
French Revolution six years later, the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s, and the
debt crisis of the early 21st century. It is because Benjamin Franklin embodied an
oxymoron—because of his treasonous loyalty—that French, not American English,
to this very day is spoken in Montréal, Sherbrooke, and Québec, and the Stars
and Stripes flies neither in Vancouver nor in Toronto.
The Englishman
The famous woodcut above does not
represent a newly-patriotic Benjamin Franklin calling for united resistance to
British overlords during the Revolutionary War, but rather a much younger
Franklin’s appeal to fellow Englishmen to gather behind an earlier, but no less
urgent, common cause. Franklin’s
stirring call to arms was not issued in 1775, nor even in the Stamp Act days of
1765. Franklin created the woodcut in
the early spring of 1754 (the version above was embellished by Samuel Kneeland
of the Boston Gazette and published in May of that year) not in response to
British tyranny, but in reply to French attempts to secure the continent. The tone of Franklin’s oratory and written
discourse was strongly in keeping with Kneeland’s sentiment, expressed by the
scroll emanating from the snake’s open mouth:
Unite and Conquer. Unite against
Canada, and conquer the French.
Franklin spoke of Frenchmen as
representing a race distinct and inferior from the civilized humanity found
only among gentlemen obedient to the British monarch. The French had strange laws and customs, the
unnatural and subordinate nature of which was proven by French Canadians’
perverse ability to bring an entire continent of savages to their cause, which
Franklin understood to be the removal of English colonies from what was
otherwise a continent owned entirely by France.
Franklin’s way of looking at the long conflict in the 1750s has carried
through to modern times, though we no longer think of the French as members of
a distinct “race,” and we are not as likely to refer to Native Americans as
“savages.” Nevertheless, our
interpretation of the events of that time is distinctly American, as indicated
by the name we apply to the conflict.
While historians in Europe and Canada know the battles of 1750s North
America as The Seven Years’ War, American historians refer to the conflict as
“The French and Indian Wars.”
Franklin’s energy and passion in
rallying opposition to the French was no sideline in a life otherwise devoted
to scientific investigation. His early
immersion in science was not the sign of any infatuation with disembodied
objectivity, but indication of a deeper sense of social propriety. Political and social intercourse in his mind
were paramount to the fullest expression of humanity. He believed in the widest possible expression
of arts and sciences, as long as creativity and industry were tempered by the
greater call to civility and cohesive society.
France, to Franklin, was an impediment both to human freedom and to
proper social order.
Social health could only be achieved
in a milieu which rewarded those who lived life according to natural laws. English customs were superior to all others
in this regard, since rewards were not only possible, but could be expected to
accrue to those who led virtuous lives.
No such rewards were possible under French custom and law, in Franklin’s
mind. In the colonies, and in England,
there were gentlemen and commoners. In
France, on the other hand, there were peasants and nobles. Franklin had started life a commoner, and in
fact, one of the last of seventeen children born to a soap maker, he was not
expected to have any impact on society.
But Franklin early on recognized the immutable underpinnings of English
culture, and applied himself in earnest to the task of rising from the
anonymous ranks of common men to become a respected and even revered English
gentleman. He knew instinctively that
such a rise in social standing would never have been possible had he been born
into the highly stratified and stagnant French socio-political system, and he
came to despise French custom as destructive of the human spirit. Once a peasant, always a peasant, always
under the crushing thumb of hereditary nobility. In the freedom-loving British Empire, on the
other hand, social position was a matter of individual initiative.
More on Treasonous Loyalty: Benjamin Franklin, the Intolerable Acts, and the National Debt, coming soon.
More on Treasonous Loyalty: Benjamin Franklin, the Intolerable Acts, and the National Debt, coming soon.
