Founding Fathers: Complete Biographies, Their Articles, Historical & Political Documents. Emory Speer
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remained in England eleven years as the agent of the colonies, opposing the encroachments of the crown upon the rights of Americans; and, during the whole time, all the combined efforts of malice, flattery, and intrigue, were unable to ensnare or intimidate him. He became acquainted with the etiquette, corruptions, and devices of diplomacy; but never bent his knee to Baal, or kissed the hand of a crowned head.
Matters had now arrived at a crisis that induced his departure for his long neglected home. His personal safety in England, and the need of his public services in his own country, admonished him to return. He accordingly embarked, and arrived at Philadelphia in the beginning of May, 1775. He was received with marked attention and esteem, and immediately elected to the continental congress, adding new lustre and dignity to that august body, and enrolling his name among the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Notwithstanding he had used every exertion to reconcile difficulties with Great Britain, and believed his country was yet too weak to achieve its independence, his course was now onward, resolved, with his patriotic colleagues, on liberty or death.
The talents of Franklin were now had in constant requisition, both by his own state and in the general congress. He was always selected to meet the agents of the crown, who were at various times commissioned to offer terms of inglorious peace. They always found in him the firm uncompromising advocate of liberty; the shrewd and wary politician; the bold and zealous defender of the rights of his bleeding country. The disasters of the American army during the campaign of 1778, induced congress to apply to France for assistance. All eyes were turned on Franklin to perform this important mission. In October, 1776, he embarked upon this delicate embassy, and, after a most vigilant intercession, succeeded in concluding a treaty of alliance with that nation, on the 6th of February, 1778, to the great joy of himself and his suffering countrymen. When the news of this alliance reached England, the ministry were much alarmed, and despatched messengers to Paris to endeavour to induce Franklin to enter into a compromise. All was in vain. To Mr. Hutton and others, who came to him with the olive branch of peace, he replied: “I never think of your ministry and their abettors, but with the image strongly painted in my view of their hands red and dropping with the blood of my countrymen, friends and relations. No peace can be signed by those hands, unless you drop all pretensions to govern us, meet us on equal terms, and avoid all occasions of future discord.”
He met all their intrigues at the threshold, and they became convinced that the hardy yeomanry of America were not to be dragooned, flattered, or driven from the bold position they had assumed. During the numerous interviews he had with these emissaries, (I can call them by no milder term,) Franklin was cautioned by Mr. Heartley to beware of his personal safety, which had been repeatedly threatened. He thanked his friend and assured him he felt no alarm, that he had nearly finished a long life, and that the short remainder was of no great value. He ironically remarked: “Perhaps the best use such an old fellow can be put to, is to make a martyr of him.”
If it required much skill and perseverance to negociate an alliance with France, it required more to preserve it. A republican form of government is ever repugnant to kingly power. That the French in America would imbibe liberal principles, was a matter of course. That the thrones of Europe would be endangered on their return, was truly predicted. By this course of ingenious reasoning, the British ministers exerted a powerful influence against the continuation of the alliance. But the eagle eye of Franklin penetrated, anticipated, and frustrated all their dark schemes of intrigue; and, in the event, they were compelled to comply with his terms of peace, acknowledge the independence of the colonies, and retire, defeated, disgraced, and humbled. In the arduous duties of settling definitive preliminaries of peace, Franklin was aided by Messrs. Adams, Jay, and Laurens. These duties were closed, and a definitive treaty concluded with Great Britain and the United States at Paris on the 3d of September, 1783.
Although anxious to be discharged from further public service, it was not until 1785, that Franklin was permitted to return to his beloved country, where he could breathe the pure air of republican freedom, no longer polluted by kingly power. During this time he had concluded treaties between the United States and the kings of Sweden and Prussia. On his departure from Europe every mark of respect was paid to him by kings, by courts, by the literati, and by all classes of society that the most towering ambition could desire. He was clothed with the mantle of love and unfading glory. His reputation was perched sublimely on the loftiest pinnacle fame could rear. He had been a pillow of fire to the American cause, and a pillar of smoke to the enemies of human rights.
At the age of eighty years, borne down by fatigue and disease, he returned to Philadelphia. He was hailed with enthusiastic joy, esteem, and respect by all the friends of liberty, from the humblest citizen up to the illustrious Washington.
Notwithstanding his advanced age, and his great anxiety to retire from the public gaze, he was soon appointed Governor of Pennsylvania — and subsequently, in 1787, elected a delegate to the convention that framed the federal constitution. Many of the bright traits of that matchless instrument received their finishing stroke from his master hand. Early in 1790, his infirmities of body confined him to his room, but his immortal mind remained unimpaired. When approaching rapidly the confines of eternity, he still looked with anxious solicitude upon the interests of the young republic. He still continued to benefit mankind by his writings and counsels. Some of the strongest and most vivid productions from his pen were written during his confinement. His diseases continued to increase, and on the 17th of April, 1790, calm and resigned, cool and collected, peaceful and happy, he resigned his spirit into the hands of his Creator — quitted this vale of tears, and slumbered, quietly and sweetly, in the arms of death — in the full faith of rising to a glorious immortality in realms of bliss beyond the skies.
By his will he prohibited all pomp and parade at his funeral. He was anxious that the plain republican manner of his long and useful life, should be strictly observed in the mournful obsequies of his interment. He was buried on the 21st of April, in the north-west corner of Christ Church yard, where a plain marble slab, even with the surface of the earth, points to where he lies. With his, moulders the dust of his wife, with whom he had lived in harmony and peace. No other inscription is upon the tomb except his and her name.
His death was deeply lamented throughout the civilized world. Congress ordered mourning to be observed throughout the United States one month. The event was solemnized, and many eulogies pronounced in France. The National Assembly decreed that each of its members should wear a badge of mourning on the occasion for three days. The sensations produced there by his death, were as imposing and interesting, and celebrated with as much devotion as those recently witnessed in our own country on the death of La Fayette.
In reviewing the life of this great benefactor of mankind, we find a richer variety to admire than in that of any individual upon the historic page. In whatever station he moved he was a luminary of the first magnitude. He entered upon the stage of action at a time when the world needed just such a man; and continued upon it just long enough to finish all he had begun. He was found just equal to every work he undertook, and always stopped at the golden point of the finishing stroke — a modest hint for me to close. You who profess to admire his virtues, talents, and usefulness, prove your sincerity by imitating his examples.
Alexander Hamilton
"Man's sociality of nature," writes Carlyle, "evinces itself, in spite of all that can be said, with abundant evidence by this one fact, were there no other: the unspeakable delight he takes in Biography. It is written, 'The proper study of mankind is man'; to which study, let us candidly admit, he, by true or by false methods, applies himself, nothing loth. Man is perennially interesting to man; nay, if we look strickly to it, there is nothing else interesting."
These thoughts of this profound thinker are indisputably true, when the man we contemplate is the Greek Anax Andron, a leader of men. Such an one is the topic for our consideration this evening.
On the island of St. Nevis in the West Indies, the 11th of January, 1757,