Franklin & Washington Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Preface: “My Dear Friend”

  BOOK I: CONVERGING LIVES

  One: Great Expectations

  Two: Lessons from the Frontier

  Three: From Subjects to Citizens

  BOOK II: PARTNERS IN A REVOLUTION

  Four: Taking Command

  Five: “The Most Awful Crisis”

  BOOK III: WORKING TOGETHER AND APART

  Six: Rendezvous in Philadelphia

  Seven: Darkness at Dawn

  Epilogue: The Walking Stick

  Notes

  Index

  Photo Section

  About the Author

  Also by Edward J. Larson

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Preface

  “My Dear Friend”

  ON MAY 13, 1787, one day before the scheduled start of the Constitutional Convention, Virginia delegate George Washington arrived in Philadelphia and, as his first formal act, visited Benjamin Franklin at his home. Everyone knew Washington would chair the Convention and, if it succeeded, lead the nation. Franklin then served as president of Pennsylvania, the host state, and stood as the only American with stature comparable to Washington’s. By all accounts, they were the two indispensable authors of American independence and key partners in any attempt to craft a more perfect union at the Convention.

  Although they had different views on what was needed in a new constitution, both men agreed that fundamental reform was essential. Less than a month earlier, Franklin wrote to Thomas Jefferson about the Convention, “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.”1 And after the Convention, Washington repeatedly warned that without the Constitution, political chaos would engulf the land.2 Franklin and Washington had staked their lives and fortunes on the American experiment in liberty and were committed to its preservation.

  Escorted into Philadelphia by a military guard and greeted with the ringing of bells and cheers of townspeople, Washington no sooner unloaded his luggage at Robert Morris’s mansion, where he was staying, than he called upon Franklin. Some historians surmise that, for added dignity, Washington rode the two blocks between the Morris and Franklin homes on Market Street in his fashionable carriage. I suspect he walked. The distance was almost too short to ride, Washington enjoyed walking, and any visit from the general carried dignity. More critically, riding would mean turning into the newly constructed street-front arch and arriving at Franklin’s interior courtyard with an enslaved Black coachman and two liveried slaves serving as footmen. Seven years earlier, Quaker Pennsylvania became the first state to end slavery by statute and, by the time of Washington’s visit, Franklin presided over the state’s leading abolition society. Among his many gifts, Washington was an astute politician and pitch-perfect political actor who knew how to forge alliances. Arriving by carriage would not impress the down-to-earth Franklin and the attendance of slaves might offend him. Having known Franklin for more than thirty years, Washington would have understood how to greet him—just as Franklin would know how to welcome Washington.

  Although not as accomplished an inventor or scientist as Franklin—no one in America was—Washington had an enlightened mind that embraced inventions and appreciated science. While it was modest in comparison to Washington’s Mount Vernon estate, Franklin’s recently remodeled house included features certain to delight Washington. An enlarged second-floor library held more than four thousand books, making it one of the largest private collections in America; a glass armonica of Franklin’s own design, for which he composed music; and his already fabled electrical equipment. “I hardly know how to justify building a Library at an Age that will so soon oblige me to quit it,” Franklin, then eighty, had written to his sister six months earlier but by now had probably forgotten such reservations.3 Boyish in his enthusiasm despite physical infirmities, Franklin also likely showed Washington a mechanical arm used to retrieve books from upper shelves, an early type of copying machine that employed slow-drying ink and a press to duplicate newly written letters, and a reading chair with foot pedals to propel a fan. Few visitors would have appreciated such curiosities more than the mechanically minded Washington. Indeed, he purchased a fan chair while in Philadelphia for use at his Mount Vernon library.

  After the house tour, Franklin likely discussed prospects for the Convention with Washington over tea or wine. It would have been tea in Franklin’s youth, but he had developed a taste for fine wines while serving in Paris during the Revolution. Washington also enjoyed wine. They would reunite for dinner at Franklin’s house three days later, when Franklin opened a cask of dark English beer to everyone’s delight, but wine was more fitting for an afternoon visit. Perhaps reserving the large, remodeled dining room for the later dinner, this talk probably occurred at an outdoor table set under a large mulberry tree in Franklin’s garden. Following his return from Europe, Franklin had turned this space from growing vegetables into a flower garden that would have been in full bloom by mid-May. Over the summer, he frequently entertained Convention delegates there. This would have been its first such use, and perhaps the most important. Franklin and Washington would go out from there to forge a nation from thirteen states.

  “MY DEAR FRIEND” were the last words that Benjamin Franklin addressed to George Washington. They came at the end of a letter written in what Franklin knew would be his final year of life. Washington closed his response to Franklin with the salutation “Your sincere friend.” In this exchange, written in the first year of Washington’s presidency, each expressed his undying “respect and affection” for the other, with Franklin adding “esteem” and Washington topping him with “veneration.” At the time, Franklin and Washington were the two most admired individuals in the United States, and the most famous Americans in the world.

  Their final letters to each other represented a fitting end to a three-decade-long partnership that, more than any other pairing, would forge the American nation. Their relationship began during the French and Indian War, when Franklin supplied the wagons for British general Edward Braddock’s ill-fated assault on Fort Duquesne and Washington buried the general’s body under the dirt road traveled by those retreating wagons. Both had warned Braddock against the frontier attack. Rekindled in 1775 during the Second Continental Congress, this friendship continued through the American Revolution, the Constitutional Convention, and the establishment of the new federal government. Perhaps because of differences in their background, age, manner, and public image, their relationship was not widely commented on then, and it remains little discussed today. But it existed, and helped to shape the course of American history. Both men have been called “the first American,” but they were friends first and, unlike John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, never rivals.

  Their relationship gained historical significance during the American Revolution, when Franklin led America’s diplomatic mission in Europe and Washington commanded the Continental Army. Victory required both of these efforts to succeed, and their success required coordination and cooperation. No less an authority than Jefferson testified to the success of their efforts when, after the Revolution, he observed that, in terms of their contributions to the patriot cause, the world had drawn a broad line between Washington and Franklin “on the one side, and the residue of mankind on the other.”4 Their successful collaboration during the Revolution, especially when coupled with their role as two of the most prominent delegates at the Constitutional Convention, helped to found a nation and propel a global experiment with individual liberty and republican rule.

  Leadership at this level is a rare quality and well worth study.
Leadership studies, however, typically focus on individuals, either singly or in comparative analysis. Pairs or teams are less often the center of study unless they collaborate in some formal institutionalized manner, such as members of a cabinet or business partners. Franklin and Washington never had official ties, yet they worked together toward a common cause with extraordinary success. To explore their historic collaboration, this book traces their shared history in a dual biography that looks for overlaps and stresses connections.

  Despite differences in public image and private style, striking similarities emerge. Both men had successful business and political careers in late colonial America and led their respective colonies’ defense during the French and Indian War. After long supporting royal rule in the colonies, both became key early proponents of independence. Both then sought to strengthen the union of the states, leading to the framing and ratification of the Constitution. Instinctively, each worked to forge consensus and lead through others.

  In the United States, leadership studies often privilege the founders, with the bias increasing in times, such as now, when founding institutions appear under stress. What would Washington, or Franklin, or Alexander Hamilton, or James Madison say or do in these times? Of course, any such quest is ahistorical, and not the object of this book. Yet current events inevitably color history as it is written and read, no matter how much the writer or the reader seeks to avoid or minimize it. The endless flow of books about either Franklin or Washington—and no American save Abraham Lincoln has generated more—typically do not deal extensively with their relationship. Biographers are much more likely to pair Washington and Hamilton or Jefferson and Madison or Franklin and Jefferson than Franklin and Washington. As I researched and wrote this book, however, I was repeatedly surprised by the extent of the links between them. As I proceeded, each man became more understandable in light of the other.

  In a sense, it became clear that I had been working on this book throughout my academic career. At Williams College, presidential historian James MacGregor Burns introduced me to leadership studies, and, as his research expanded to include Washington, I benefited from his collaboration with his partner and my friend Susan Dunn. In graduate school at the University of Wisconsin, I studied the founders with Norman Risjord, Paul Boyer, and (for Franklin’s science) Ronald Numbers. Law school brought study of the Constitution with Laurence Tribe, John Hart Ely, and others, with opportunities to cross Harvard Yard and learn about Franklin with historian of science I. Bernard Cohen. Various teaching opportunities and research fellowships deepened my appreciation of Franklin, Washington, and the founders, including terms at the Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington at Mount Vernon, holding the John Adams Chair in American Studies in the Netherlands and the Douglas Southall Freeman Chair in history at the University of Richmond, and teaching at Stanford University with legal historian Lawrence Friedman and in proximity to Madison scholar Jack Rakove and historian of the American Revolution Ray Raphael.

  I am particularly thankful that for this book, I had the inestimable advantage of working with the same editor at HarperCollins, Peter Hubbard, as for my earlier monograph on Washington. This time, our manuscript benefited from meticulous copy editing by Trent Duffy, who brought with him local knowledge as a native of Morristown, New Jersey. I also wish to thank archivists and research librarians at UCLA’s Charles E. Young Research Library, the Library of Congress, the National Archives, the Pepperdine University libraries, Stanford’s Cecil H. Green Library, the American Antiquarian Society, and the American Philosophical Society and Mary Thompson at Mount Vernon. When I began studying Franklin and Washington, the incomplete status of the extraordinarily ambitious projects to collect and publish their papers frustrated me. Over the years, however, I grew to anticipate and then enjoy each volume in those series as they appeared. I am still not sure if I will live to see the end of these projects as they grind through successive years of letters, papers, and publications—but if I do, I will miss the anticipation and discovery that comes with each succeeding volume. I would like to dedicate this book to those projects. They, more than any other single resource, made this work possible.

  I close this preface, and with it the writing of this book on founding friends, as I look over Lake Geneva not far from Château d’Hauteville, the country seat of Pierre-Philippe Cannac, who installed Franklin’s lightning rods on the château when he built it during the 1760s. In 1794, the château passed through marriage and inheritance to Daniel Grand, the youngest son of Franklin’s French banker Rodolphe-Ferdinand Grand, whose descendants live there to this day. Much of Franklin’s correspondence with the father moved to the château with the son. The now 250-year-old lightning rods—the first installed in Switzerland—still protect the château from the thunderstorms that rake the region, much as Franklin’s works and example during the founding era, along with those of Washington, help the American people weather the political storms that at times beset them. From here, when the weather clears, I can see the sun set over the lake better than I can see it rise, but, like Franklin at the Constitutional Convention, I hope that it is still rising over the American experiment in liberty.

  EJL

  Lausanne, Switzerland

  Book I

  Converging Lives

  One

  Great Expectations

  THEIRS ARE THE TWO most recognizable portraits ever painted of any Americans. Benjamin Franklin, his body turned left but face looking forward, appears eminently approachable, with a slight grin; loose, flowing hair; and a twinkle in his large, soft eyes. He might have just cracked a joke or told a witty remark to the painter, Joseph Duplessis. George Washington, his shoulders turned right in the original but also facing forward, looks coldly statuesque—a marble bust—with tight, drawn lips; formal, powdered hair; and narrow, piercing eyes. He had rebuked the painter, Gilbert Stuart, for suggesting a more informal pose.

  “Now sir, you must let me forget that you are General Washington,” the renowned portraitist breezily offered.

  You need not forget “who General Washington is,” came the sitter’s terse reply.1

  These images adorn America’s two most widely circulated banknotes: Stuart’s 1796 Athenaeum portrait of Washington (flipped to turn left) on the ubiquitous American one-dollar bill and Duplessis’s 1785 painting of Franklin on the widely hoarded hundred. Together, they account for more than three-fifths of all U.S. banknotes in circulation, with “Franklins” constituting some 80 percent of the total value of all American paper money.

  Franklin’s portrait expands beyond the bill’s borders—his expressive face looking fleshy and open. Clearly aged, Franklin nevertheless appears vibrant and alive. “He . . . possesses an activity of mind equal to a youth of 25,” a fellow delegate said of the eighty-one-year-old Franklin at the Constitutional Convention, two years after the picture was painted.2 Washington, in contrast, glares out from a tight central oval on the one-dollar bill, his craggy, colorless visage looking like a plaster mask animated only by those intense eyes, which Stuart painted as bluer than they really were. Once told that his expression showed emotion, Washington shot back, “You are wrong. My countenance never yet betrayed my feelings!”3 Stuart saw something in that face, however. “All his features,” the painter commented, “were indicative of the strongest and most ungovernable passions.”4 Yet Washington governed them with a granite, tight-lipped self-control that made him the stoic father figure for a nation that adopted Franklin as its favorite uncle. Together, they midwifed a republic.

  Stamped on the national consciousness as the definitive representation of the episode it captures, Howard Chandler Christy’s Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States conveys the enduring sense that Franklin and Washington stood at the crossroads of American history and shaped its course. Commissioned by Congress during the Great Depression, this historical painting artfully arranges the Constitution’s thirty-seven other signers in imaged pos
es around Franklin and Washington inside Philadelphia’s Independence Hall. Of all the delegates, only Franklin, seated at center, looks directly forward, as if to engage modern viewers. Alexander Hamilton leans in to catch his ear. Half obscured at Franklin’s side, James Madison looks up toward Washington, who stands in near profile on a dais to the viewer’s right, head and shoulders above the other signers as he gazes beyond them, as if to some distant shore.

  Here too, as in their individual portraits, the blue-garbed Franklin appears warm and gregarious while the black-suited Washington looks cold and aloof. Ignoring their placement on the canvas, the painting’s official key, supplied to identify those pictured, designates Washington by the number 1, Franklin by 2, Madison 3, and Hamilton 4. Others follow in an order that seemingly reflects their relative contributions to the nation’s founding. If so, then pairing Franklin and Washington at top perpetuates the popular view.

  Of all the public art linking and extolling the two principal founders, surely the most dramatic is The Apotheosis of Washington. Situated in the concave apex or “eye” of the U.S. Capitol’s rotunda, the painting depicts Washington in flowing robes rising to heaven flanked by the goddesses of liberty and victory along with thirteen classically garbed maidens. A rainbow descending toward earth from Washington’s feet alights on the shoulder of Franklin, who is toiling in the garden of science and invention. At more than twice their actual heights and looking fit, Washington and Franklin are the largest historical figures in the picture and portrayed so as to be recognizable by viewers looking upward from some 180 feet below on the rotunda floor. Painted in the true fresco technique by Vatican artist Constantino Brumidi in 1865 at the end of the Civil War, the circular canopy, which is more than 200 feet in circumference, captures the historical consensus of a remote godlike Washington and a pragmatic earth-bound Franklin towering over the nation’s founding.