Killing England Page 7

  For the next four decades, Franklin nurtured his growing celebrity in the colonies, all due to his printing business and the articles he wrote to fill the journals he circulated. He published the widely read Pennsylvania Gazette, along with a collection of homespun wisdom he named Poor Richard’s Almanack.

  The Doctor also indulged his passion for science and invention, conducting experiments in electricity and designing a stove that provided efficient heat for a small home. He named it after himself, but refused to take out a patent in order that the Franklin stove become widely used. In an amazing series of public-oriented initiatives, Franklin founded Philadelphia’s first library, postal service, hospital, and volunteer fire department. He even redesigned the city’s streetlights so that they would burn more efficiently. His election to the Pennsylvania Assembly in 1751 began the natural progression from civic leader to national figure.

  Despite the mental rigor of publishing, inventing, indulging his curiosities, and founding a colonial militia, Ben Franklin has never lost his affection for the fairer sex.2 “Neither a fortress or a maidenhead will hold out not long after they begin to parley,” is one of the many amorous comments he writes in Poor Richard’s Almanack. Deborah, who runs the postal service when her husband travels, turns a blind eye as Franklin stays out late most nights in the taverns drinking rum and enjoying dalliances with women who are sometimes decades younger. Twenty-three-year-old Catharine Ray made him sugar plums as he arrived in Boston at Christmas to inspect the local postal network. They then traveled together to Rhode Island through deep snow, and kissed in a snowstorm, “pure as your virgin innocence, white as your lovely bosom,” as Franklin would later describe the scene in a letter to Catharine upon his return home to Philadelphia.

  One political enemy will even pen a verse about Franklin’s infidelities.

  Franklin, tho’ plagued with fumbling age,

  Needs nothing to excite him.

  But is too ready to engage

  When younger arms invite him.

  Later, living in England, Franklin will fall not only for his landlady, Margaret Stevenson, but also her daughter, eighteen-year-old Polly. Their relationship will continue to the moment of his death, with Polly sitting at Franklin’s bedside as he breathes his last.3

  * * *

  But, above all, Benjamin Franklin loves the American colonies.

  The septuagenarian spent most of the winter and spring of 1776 traveling to Montreal in a vain effort to convince the Canadians to send a representative to Congress and join the struggle for independence. The journey took him through miles of wilderness and involved deep snow, poor roads, and poor sleep in makeshift accommodations each night. Franklin’s body broke down from the deprivation and hardship, and he was afflicted with gout, boils, and severe dizziness. For a time, he thought he might die.

  “I begin to apprehend that I have undertaken a fatigue that at my time of life may prove too much for me, so I sit down to write to a few friends by way of farewell,” he wrote to good friend Josiah Quincy on April 15.

  Though Franklin did eventually make it to Montreal, the mission failed. His return trip in May brought yet another setback when he was unable to convince the Native American tribes of Canada and New York to join the rebellion.4

  Yet, despite the enormous anguish Franklin endured on that fruitless journey, his physical pain is nothing compared to the emotional suffering he is experiencing because of the great rift with his illegitimate son, William.5

  It is a grief that is about to get far worse.

  * * *

  For the past thirteen years, the colony of New Jersey has known just one governor: William Franklin. In 1762, Benjamin Franklin arranged the royal appointment by King George for his son. William is forty-five years old and well understands that he has made good thanks in great part to the father whom he so closely resembles.

  In a letter to his father in September 1758, William pronounced himself “extremely obliged to you for your care in supplying me with money, and shall ever have a grateful sense of that with the other numberless indulgences I have received from your paternal affection.”

  There was a time when Benjamin and William Franklin were as close as a father and son could be. In William, Benjamin found his most trusted confidant and ally. Their bond began in William’s childhood, when Benjamin doted on the child, buying him a pony and hiring the best and brightest tutors in Philadelphia to educate him. Thanks to his father’s intercession, William secured plum jobs as a clerk for the Pennsylvania Assembly and comptroller of the American postal service. A friend once said of their relationship that Benjamin was William’s “friend, his brother, his intimate, and easy companion.”

  The greatest bond father and son shared was their passion for England, and a deep belief in the need for loyalty to the crown of George III. When Benjamin Franklin sailed to England in 1757, the twenty-six-year-old William at his side, one purpose of the trip was to petition the king to give Pennsylvania the designation “royal” colony, like her neighbors New York and New Jersey.6 Naturally, Benjamin Franklin hoped to be named royal governor when this new status came to pass.

  Franklin had already shown himself loyal to the Crown through his assistance of General Braddock in 1754, and exulted in his royally appointed role as head of the American postal service. Benjamin Franklin once said of George III that he could “scarcely conceive a King of better dispositions, of more exemplary virtues, or more truly desirous of promoting the welfare of his subjects.” In 1762, the British returned the affection when Oxford University presented Benjamin Franklin with an honorary doctorate for his accomplishments in science.

  Even as relations between America and England deteriorated, both Franklins believed that loyalty to England and the throne was an act of patriotism. “You can never place yourself in a happier situation than in your ancient constitutional dependency on Great Britain. No independent state ever was or ever can be so happy as we have been, and might still be, under that government,” William wrote to the New Jersey legislature in 1776 in defense of his Loyalist views.

  “Their government will not be lasting,” he added of the Continental Congress. “It will never suit a people who have once tasted the sweets of British liberty under a British constitution.”

  The young Franklin has never wavered from that belief.

  Benjamin Franklin’s love for England, however, came to an abrupt end on January 29, 1774. He was working relentlessly to prevent war when word of the Boston Tea Party reached London.

  As the colonial agent to Parliament for Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, he was summoned to appear before an elite group of royal advisers known as the Privy Council. The meeting took place late on a Saturday afternoon, in an octagonal room in Whitehall Palace known as “the cockpit.” Centuries before, when Henry VIII ruled the land, he enjoyed cockfights and drinking in this same room. Its eight walls now house a theater, but are still designed so that the eye is drawn to the action at the very center of the room.

  After returning to London in 1764, Franklin reveled in behaving like a proper English gentleman. He purchased fine suits and wigs. He delighted in the shipments of buckwheat, cranberries, and tart green Newtown Pippin apples Deborah sent from home, but he also drank strong coffee with the intellectuals at St. Paul’s Coffee House. His writing style was British to the core, trained by reading and then rewriting articles by British writers Richard Steele and Joseph Addison. He was a fellow at the Royal Society, the nation’s most esteemed intellectual body, thanks to winning the Copley Medal for his experiments in electricity.7

  And yet, as Franklin was led into the cockpit, wearing for the first time a simple crimson-and-yellow suit made of Manchester velvet, he was every bit the American.8 Gone was his powdered wig. Instead, the top of his head was bald. The strands of hair that grew from the side of his skull dangled to his shoulders, rather than being pulled back and tied. In London, a man of such appearance was considered a bumpkin—even a “Yankee Doodle”�
��an American so simple and unsophisticated that he thought that placing a single feather in his hat made him appear a world traveler with knowledge of glamorous indulgences such as Italian macaroni.

  Franklin did not care. At five foot nine, he was not tall, but he stood ramrod straight, unafraid of the attacks that were sure to come.

  He was directed to a long table at the center of the room. He stood next to a fireplace, where he could see the galleries packed with some of the most powerful men in England. Adding to the carnival-like air, many of these “gentlemen” had brought their wives, so that they might enjoy the spectacle of a decent man’s public humiliation. Among the crowd were philosopher Edmund Burke; Prime Minister Lord North; and Lord Hillsborough, the former secretary of state to the colonies, whose disdain for Ben Franklin is widely known. Member of Parliament Horace Walpole once described Hillsborough as “a pompous composition of ignorance and want of judgment.”

  Yet men such as Hillsborough now stood in judgment of Benjamin Franklin.

  Led by Solicitor General Alexander Wedderburn, the Privy Council insulted Franklin for about an hour. Wedderburn was known as one of the great orators of his time, and he put those skills on display as he pounded on the table for dramatic emphasis while vilifying Franklin as the true conspirator behind the troubles in Massachusetts. The primary issue was a scandal known as the Hutchinson letters, in which postmaster-general Franklin diverted letters Massachusetts governor Thomas Hutchinson had written to the British government requesting a greater British military presence to quash colonial rebellion. Franklin showed the letters to his fellow dissidents under the condition that they not be made public. John Adams, however, published Hutchinson’s writings in the Boston Gazette in June 1773. Hutchinson was forced to flee to England for his safety. It was only later, after three innocent men were accused of leaking the documents, that Franklin stepped forth to reveal his duplicity.

  Franklin never moved a muscle, remaining silent and composed, a thin smile pasted on his lips. He stayed that way even when the gallery erupted in taunts, heckling, and mocking laughter.

  “The Doctor … stood conspicuously erect, without the smallest movement of any part of his body. The muscles of his face had been previously composed as to afford a placid tranquil expression of countenance, and he did not suffer the slightest alteration of it to appear,” Fellow American Dr. Edward Bancroft, one of Franklin’s only allies in the cockpit that day, would later write.9

  “He kept his countenance as immovable as if he had been made of wood.”

  When asked if he would like to make a statement in his own defense, Benjamin Franklin demurred. He would have none of that. As he exited the cockpit, Franklin attempted to convey the appearance of stoicism and of being unsettled by the attack. Yet, as a man acutely aware of the power of his good reputation, he found such public humiliation devastating. He had lost all status in London, of that he was sure.

  From that moment forward, Franklin’s fondness for all things English vanished.

  It would take time, but the Doctor would get his revenge against those famous faces in the gallery who’d mocked him. He made a vow never again to wear the spotted velvet suit until that moment arrived.

  Two days later, King George added insult to injury. A letter was delivered to Franklin’s home on Craven Street, informing him that the king no longer had use for his services as deputy postmaster-general in America. Enraged, Franklin wrote to his sister Jane that the attacks would only make him stronger: “Intending to disgrace me, they have rather done me honor.”

  The painful split with William began soon after. Franklin hoped his son would step down as royal governor of New Jersey once he heard how badly his father had been insulted. But William refused to leave his post. Franklin seethed, writing to his son that he was disloyal, a “thorough courtier.”10

  Upon Dr. Franklin’s return to America from London, the split between father and son grew worse. At the time, Americans identified themselves as either patriots or Loyalists.

  Benjamin Franklin, however, will soon be known as a superpatriot.

  William went in the opposite direction, resolute in his loyalty to King George. He began sending intelligence reports to the British Army, even writing to inform them of his father’s journey to Canada.

  William had become not just an embarrassment to his father, but also an ally to his enemies, the many who spread rumors that the Doctor was himself a spy for King George. For a deeply prideful man like Franklin, the personal attacks instigated by his son were searing.

  So, when the Congress finally moved to take away William’s governorship, Benjamin Franklin did nothing to stop them. When the New Jersey militia enforced the removal by placing the younger Franklin under house arrest, Benjamin Franklin once again refused to intercede, despite having advance knowledge that William would be arrested and taken to prison.

  In Benjamin Franklin’s mind, his son no longer existed.

  * * *

  Now, on June 24 in Philadelphia, Secretary Charles Thomson, the Irish-born Philadelphian who records the minutes of every session, apprises the Continental Congress of William’s current situation.

  At 10:00 a.m. on Friday, June 21, two members of the New Jersey Provincial Congress arrived at the former governor’s lodgings with orders to transport him to their governing body for questions. William refused. An armed guard of more than twenty men was required to take him away.

  Just as when his father was led into the cockpit, William appeared before the assembled members of the Provincial Congress to explain his behavior. The stakes, however, were much higher for William Franklin. Instead of merely losing his reputation, like his father, he stood to lose his freedom—and perhaps his life.

  Nonetheless, William remained haughty during the ensuing interrogation, even when his inquisitor, the Scottish-born John Witherspoon, alluded to his beginnings as a bastard. When questioned about his Loyalist stance, William refused to explain himself, calling the Provincial Congress a powerless and illegal governing body.

  William was taken from the room and returned to house arrest. A motion was then passed that he be removed from New Jersey altogether and sent to prison in another colony.

  This required the permission of the Continental Congress.

  Thus, in Philadelphia, three days after William’s questioning, congressional secretary Charles Thomson now reads the transcript of William’s interrogation. To underscore why such an interrogation was deemed necessary, the New Jersey request describes William as “a virulent enemy to this country, and a person that may prove dangerous.”

  The appeal concludes “that said William Franklin be confined in such place and manner the Continental Congress shall direct.”

  Once again, Benjamin Franklin refuses to help his son.

  The Congress dictates that William be bounded over to Governor John Trumbull of Connecticut for incarceration. William will soon be confined to a series of prisons, among them a hellhole in Litchfield, Connecticut, with a filthy, rat-infested dungeon usually reserved for men sentenced to death. He will sleep on a straw mat that reeks of urine, sweat, and human filth. His cell will be without bed, chair, or toilet. But most damaging of all, he will be alone, held in solitary confinement in order that he might have plenty of time to consider his actions.

  “I suffer so much in being thus buried alive, having no one to speak to day or night,” he will write from prison, “and for the want of air and exercise, that I should deem it a favor to be immediately taken out and shot.”

  It gets worse.

  William Franklin will lose every tooth and all his hair from malnutrition. In agony because his wife is dying, he will petition George Washington directly, asking that he be temporarily freed to be with his ailing wife.

  But, behind the scenes, Benjamin Franklin will intercede. At his direction, Congress will vote that William not be paroled to be by the side of his beloved Elizabeth as she breathes her last.

  The harsh treatment of hi
s son will haunt Benjamin Franklin his entire life. But the Doctor feels his actions are justified: “Nothing has hurt me so much and affected me with such keen sensations as to find myself deserted in my old age by my only son; and not only deserted, but to find him taking up arms against me, in a cause wherein my good fame, fortune and life were at stake,” he will later write to his son directly.

  This is the dark side of Benjamin Franklin: those who cross him will pay a price.

  6

  NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK

  JUNE 28, 1776

  11:00 A.M.

  Soon the noose will take another life.

  Twenty thousand New Yorkers are now aware that George Washington has Sgt. Thomas Hickey’s death warrant. Much of Manhattan has come to watch the disgraced soldier hang by the neck until dead. Men, women, and children; black and white; rich and poor—all have traveled to Washington’s military encampment.1 They came on foot, horseback, pushcart, or by carriage to indulge in colonial America’s favorite form of mass entertainment: public execution.

  On this warm Friday morning, some spectators even enjoy a picnic. Others stumble across the greenery of the common, very drunk despite the early morning hour. Pickpockets, of which there are many, enjoy a busy and prosperous day.

  These are Thomas Hickey’s last moments as a terrestrial being, but there is little sympathy for him. Some in the crowd call out to the condemned man, asking him to account for his sins. But most hecklers are more delighted to taunt the handsome Irishman on his slow procession to the hangman’s rope.

  LEGEND HERE

  Washington stands near the gallows, which he has purposely set atop a hill for maximum spectator viewing. Columns of soldiers stand in formation on three sides, there to serve as eyewitnesses to the execution. On Washington’s orders, construction of the gallows was the Quartermaster Corps’ first duty upon making camp at this large open field two months ago. Once the British sailed away from Boston in March, destination unknown, Washington marched the Continental Army to Manhattan, where he believes the British will attack next.