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 Verbatim
Franklin's words of wisdom still resonate today
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| ARCHITECT OF THE CAPITOL |
| VICTORY: The French, at left, and the Americans, right, accept the surrender of the British redcoats at Yorktown |
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If not for a superstar diplomat who charmed all of Paris, America might have lost its war for independence
By Stacy Schiff |
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Posted Sunday, June 29, 2003; 2:31 a.m. EST
Ben Franklin arrived in Paris in
December 1776 to a public frenzy that would not be matched by another American landing until Charles Lindbergh set down there more than 150 years later. Instantly Franklin was surrounded, celebrated, applauded in the streets and theaters. He spoke, and Paris purred. His likeness blossomed everywhere, on clocks and rings and walking sticks. Terra-cotta Franklin medallions were served up by the thousand but could not satisfy the demand. The portraitists wore him out. He could be held responsible for a riotous explosion of bad poetry.
He did not travel to France for the reasons that have impelled Americans since 1776: for a sentimental education, a cultural polish, for sexual or artistic or racial freedom, to perfect the language of Molière, Flaubert and Proust. He went because there was as yet no independent America and because it was painfully clear to the Continental Congress that without the assistance of a European power, there would not be. The colonies had no munitions, no money and no credit but had resolved all the same to battle the mother country. There was something of a difference between declaring independence and achieving it.
France was the logical accomplice, given its historic rivalry with England, to which America owed its birth. Rarely has it been so baldly true that the enemy of one's enemy is one's friend. In the name of expediency, the colonies were willing to put aside their traditional aversion to Papist France. And in the name of expediency, the French monarchy—which saw in America some delicious trade advantages and an equally appealing chance to humble England—was willing to underwrite a republic. Its doing so was in large part Franklin's work.
Ninety percent of the gunpowder used in the first years of the Revolution came from France, as did tens of millions of dollars in aid. In 1781 British commanding General Charles Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown to a greater number of French than American troops. For the better part of his years in France, Franklin heard little from Congress aside from variations on a single refrain: the war hung by French assistance alone. As Robert Morris wrote, "In a word, Sir, we must have it, or we are undone."
That 13 rebel colonies were willing to throw themselves on the mercy of one foreign power in order to dissolve their political bonds with another stood as the first of many ironies. That the nascent republic sent Franklin—stout, balding and 70—to play the role of seductive ingenue was another. Here was the man who believed that necessity never makes a good bargain, that God helps those who help themselves, sent off to perform a spectacular tin-cup routine.
It was all the more spectacular in that Franklin had grave doubts about the proposition. He was firmly of the opinion that America should not flounce about "suitoring for alliances." As it turned out, the maxim-defying years he spent begging in France saw the greatest political feat of his life and one of the greatest political triumphs of American history, yielding the only alliance America forged for 170 years. And Franklin held on to his post as American representative for eight years, despite regular attempts on the part of his enemies to recall him and of his government to undermine him. What a French volunteer in the Continental Army said of George Washington was no less true of Franklin: "Congress expects him to do great things and at the same time refuses him the means of doing them."
The crucial embrace of the two nations—it is telling that neither side could agree on when, precisely, it was over—is all the more astonishing for having been based on mutual illusion. What was for France a revenge and a romance was for America a solemn matter of principles and practicalities. Effecting and sustaining that marriage of convenience required Franklin to leave many of those famed Franklinian virtues—the aversion to tyranny, the commitment to tolerance—at home. It was his job to court an absolute monarchy on behalf of a country to which civil liberties, freedom of the press and the right to dissent were to be sacred. Nowhere is the majestic suppleness of his character on better display. It was his task as well to offer a gentle crash course on America, correcting French misconceptions.
Franklin could have begun with those about himself. America's original back-room operator was welcomed in France as a "noble savage," in sense and sensibility a joint production of Voltaire and Rousseau. The French embraced him as a frontier philosopher, which Franklin was not on either count. When consulted for information on farming, he confessed to thorough ignorance, having lived in cities all his life. His pages of political philosophy make for a skimpy offering. He was dismissive when his sister inquired after these: "I could as easily make a collection for you of all the past parings of my nails."
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