Chapter 10 MINISTER TO FRANCE, II PRISONERS TROUBLE WITH LEE AND OTHERS

No sooner had the war taken on an assured character than many quick-eyed and adventurous Americans, and Franklin among the first, saw irresistible temptation and great opportunity in that enormous British commerce which whitened all the seas. The colonists of that day, being a seafaring people with mercantile instincts, were soon industriously engaged in the lucrative field of maritime captures. Franklin recommended the fortifying of three or four harbors into which prizes could be safely carried.

Nothing else, he said, would give the new nation "greater weight and importance in the eyes of the commercial states." Privateering is not always described by such complimentary and dignified language, but the practical-minded rebel spoke well of that which it was so greatly to the advantage of his countrymen to do. After arriving in France he found himself in a position to advance this business very greatly. Conyngham, Wickes, with others only less famous, all active and gallant men as ever trod a deck, took the neighboring waters as their chosen scene of action, and very soon were stirring up a commotion such as Englishmen had never experienced before. They harried the high, and more especially the narrow, seas with a success at least equal to that of the Alabama, while some of them differed from Semmes and his compeers in being as anxious to fight as the Southern captains were to avoid fighting. Prize after prize they took and carried into port, or burned and sank; prisoners they had more than they knew what to do with; they frightened the underwriters so that in London the insurance against capture ran up to the ruinous premium of sixty per cent. The Lisbon and the Dutch packets fell victims, and insurance of boats plying between Dover and Calais went to ten per cent. Englishmen began to feel that England was blockaded! We are not so familiar as we ought to be with the interesting record of all these audacious and brilliant enterprises, conducted with dare-devil recklessness by men who would not improbably have been hanged both as pirates and as traitors, had fortune led to their capture at this moment of British rage and anxiety.[47]

All this cruising was conducted under the auspices of Franklin. To him these gallant rovers looked for instructions and suggestions, for money and supplies. He had to issue commissions, to settle personal misunderstandings, to attend to questions of prize money, to soothe unpaid mutineers, to advise as to the purchase of ships, and as to the enterprises to be undertaken; in a word, he was the only American government which these independent sailors knew. The tax thus laid upon him was severe, for he was absolutely without experience in such matters.

There was one labor, however, in this connection, which properly fell within his department, and in this his privateersmen gave him abundant occupation. It was to stand between them and the just wrath and fatal interference of the French government. Crude as international law was in those days, it was far from being crude enough for the strictly illegitimate purposes of these vikings. What they expected was to buy, equip, man, and supply their vessels in French ports, to sail out on their prize-taking excursions, and, having captured their fill, to return to these same ports, and there to have their prizes condemned, to sell their booty, to refit and re-supply, and then to sally forth again. In short, an Englishman would have been puzzled to distinguish a difference between the warlike ports of America and the neutral ports of France, save as he saw that the latter, being nearer, were much the more injurious. But de Vergennes had no notion of being used for American purposes in this jeopardizing style. He did not mean to have a war with England, if he could avoid it; so he gave to the harbor masters orders which greatly annoyed and surprised the American captains, "extraordinary" orders, as these somewhat uninstructed sea-dogs described them in their complaining letters to Franklin. They thought it an outrage that the French minister should refuse to have English prizes condemned within French jurisdiction, and that he should not allow them to refit and to take on board cannon and ammunition at Nantes or Rochelle. They called upon Franklin to check these intolerable proceedings. Their audacious and boundless insolence is very entertaining to read, especially if, in connection therewith, we call to mind the history of the "Alabama outrages."

Franklin knew, just as well as de Vergennes did, that the French ministry was all the time favoring the privateersmen and cruisers far beyond the law, and that it was ready to resort to as many devices as ingenuity could concoct for that purpose; also that the Americans by their behavior persistently violated all reason and neutral toleration. Nevertheless he stood gallantly by his own, and in one case after another he kept corresponding with de Vergennes under pretense of correcting misrepresentations, presenting requests, and arguing points, until, by the time thus gained, the end was achieved. The truth was that Franklin's duty was to get from France just as much aid, direct and indirect, as could be either begged or filched from her. Such orders could not be written down in plain words in his instructions, but none the less they lurked there not illegible to him among the lines. He obeyed them diligently. France was willing to go fully as far as she could with safety; his function was to push, to pull, to entice, even to mislead, in order to make her go farther. Perhaps it was a fair game; France had her interest to see Great Britain dismembered and weakened, but not herself to fight other people's battles; the colonies had their interest to get France into the fight if they possibly could. It was a strictly selfish interest, and was pursued almost shamelessly. The colonial policy and the details of its execution are defensible simply on the basis that nations in their dealings with each other are always utterly selfish and generally utterly unscrupulous. By and by, when it comes to the treating for peace between England and the colonies, we shall find de Vergennes much reviled because he pursued exclusively French interests; but it will be only fair to reflect that little more can be charged against him than that he was playing the game with cards drawn from the same pack which the Americans had used in these earlier days of the war.

A matter which grew out of privateering gave Franklin much trouble. The American captains, who were cruising on the European side of the Atlantic prior to the treaty of alliance with France, had no place in which to deposit their prisoners. They could not often send them to the States, neither of course could they accumulate them on board their ships, nor yet store them, so to speak, in France and Spain; for undeveloped as were the rules of neutrality they at least forbade the use of neutral prisons for the keeping of English prisoners of war in time of peace. Meanwhile the colonial captives, in confinement just across the Channel, in the prisons at Plymouth and Portsmouth, were subjected to very harsh treatment; and others were even being sent to the fort of Senegal on the coast of Africa, and to the East Indies, whence they could not hope ever to regain their homes. Franklin immediately resolved, if possible, to utilize these assets in the shape of English sailors in the usual course of exchange. A letter was accordingly addressed by him to Lord Stormont, asking whether it would be worth while to approach the British court with an offer to exchange one hundred English prisoners in the hands of the captain of the Reprisal for a like number of American sailors from the English prisons. The note was a simple interrogatory in proper form of civility. No answer was received. After a while a second letter was prepared, less formal, more forcible in statement and argument, and in the appeal to good sense and decent good feeling. This elicited from his lordship a brief response: "The king's ambassador receives no applications from rebels, unless they come to implore his majesty's mercy." The commissioners indignantly rejoined: "In answer to a letter which concerns some of the most material interests of humanity, and of the two nations, Great Britain and the United States of America, now at war, we received the inclosed indecent paper, as coming from your lordship, which we return for your lordship's more mature consideration."

The technical position of the English in this business was that the captured Americans were not prisoners of war, but traitors. Their practical position was that captains of American privateers, not finding it a physical possibility to keep their prisoners, would erelong be obliged to let them go without exchange. This anticipation turned out to be correct, and so far justified their refusal; for soon some five hundred English sailors got their freedom as a necessity, without any compensatory freeing of Americans. Each of them gave a solemn promise in writing to obtain the release of an American prisoner in return; but he had as much authority to hand over the Tower of London, and the British government was not so romantically chivalrous as to recognize pledges entered into by foremast hands.

All sorts of stories continued to reach Franklin's ears as to the cruelty which his imprisoned countrymen had to endure. He heard that they were penniless and could get no petty comforts; that they suffered from cold and hunger, and were subjected to personal indignities; that they were not allowed to read a newspaper or to write a letter; that they were all committed by a magistrate on a charge of high treason, and were never allowed to forget their probable fate on the gibbet; that some of them, as has been said, were deported to distant and unwholesome English possessions. For the truth of these accounts it is not necessary to believe that the English government was intentionally brutal; but it was neglectful and indifferent, and those who had prisoners in charge felt assured that no sympathy for rebels would induce an investigation into peculations or unfeeling behavior. Moreover there was a deliberate design, by terror and discouragement, to break the spirit of the so-called traitors and persuade them to become real traitors by entering the English service.

By all these tales Franklin's zeal in the matter of exchange was greatly stimulated. His humane soul revolted at keeping men who were not criminals locked up in wasting misery, when they might be set free upon terms of perfect equality between the contending parties. Throughout his correspondence on this subject there is a magnanimity, a humanity, a spirit of honesty and even of honor so extraordinary, or actually unique, in dealings between diplomats and nations, that the temptation is irresistible to give a fuller narrative than the intrinsic importance of the subject would warrant. For after all there were never many English prisoners in France to be exchanged; after a while they might be counted by hundreds, but perhaps they never rose to a total of one thousand.

There was at this time in England a man to whose memory Americans ought to erect statues. This was David Hartley. He was a gentleman of the most liberal and generous sentiments, an old and valued friend of Franklin, member of Parliament for Hull, allied with the opposition in this matter of the American war, but personally on good terms with Lord North. He had not very great ability; he wrote long letters, somewhat surcharged with morality and good-feeling. One would expect to hear that he was on terms of admiring intimacy with his contemporary, the good Mrs. Barbauld. But he had those opportunities which come only to men whose excellence of character and purity of motive place them above suspicion,-opportunities which might have been shut off from an abler man, and which he now used with untiring zeal and much efficiency in behalf of the American prisoners. Lord North did not hesitate to permit him to correspond with Franklin, and he long acted as a medium of communication more serviceable than Lord Stormont had been. Furthermore Hartley served as almoner to the poor fellows, and pushed a private subscription in England to raise funds for securing to them reasonable comforts. There were responsive hearts and purses, even for rebels, among his majesty's subjects, and a considerable sum was collected.

Franklin's first letter to Hartley on this subject, October 14, 1777, has something of bitterness in its tone, with much deep feeling for his countrymen, whose reputed woes he narrates. "I can assure you," he adds, "from my certain knowledge, that your people, prisoners in America, have been treated with great kindness, having had the same rations of wholesome provisions as our own troops," "comfortable lodgings" in healthy villages, with liberty "to walk and amuse themselves on their parole." "Where you have thought fit to employ contractors to supply your people, these contractors have been protected and aided in their operations. Some considerable act of kindness towards our people would take off the reproach of inhumanity in that respect from the nation and leave it where it ought with more certainty to lie, on the conductors of your war in America. This I hint to you out of some remaining good will to a nation I once loved sincerely. But as things are, and in my present temper of mind, not being over-fond of receiving obligations, I shall content myself with proposing that your government should allow us to send or employ a commissary to take some care of those unfortunate people. Perhaps on your representations this might be obtained in England, though it was refused most inhumanly at New York."

In December following he had arranged with Major Thornton, "who appears a man of humanity," to visit the prisons and give relief to the prisoners, and he hopes that Thornton "may obtain permission for that purpose." "I have wished," he added, "that some voluntary act of compassion on the part of your government towards those in your power had appeared in abating the rigors of their confinement, and relieving their pressing necessities, as such generosity towards enemies has naturally an effect in softening and abating animosity in their compatriots, and disposing to reconciliation." Of such unconventional humanity was he!

Hartley met Franklin's ardent appeals with responsive ardor. May 29, 1778, he writes that he will press the point of exchange as much as he can, "which in truth," he says, "I have done many times since I saw you; but official departments move slowly here. A promise of five months is yet unperformed." But a few days later, June 5, he is "authorized" to propose that Franklin should send to him "the number and rank of the prisoners, upon which an equal number shall be prepared upon this side for the exchange." Franklin at once demanded lists from his captains, and replied to Hartley: "We desire and expect that the number of ours shall be taken from Forton and Plymouth, in proportion to the number in each place, and to consist of those who have been longest in confinement." He then made this extraordinary suggestion: "If you think proper to clear all your prisoners at once, and give us all our people, we give you our solemn engagement, which we are sure will be punctually executed, to deliver to Lord Howe in America, or to his order, a number of your sailors equal to the surplus, as soon as the agreement arrives there." It is easy to fancy a British minister thrusting his tongue into his cheek as this simple-minded proposal of the plain-dealing colonist was read to him. The only occasion on which Franklin showed ignorance of diplomacy was in assuming, in this matter of the prisoners, that honesty and honor were bases of dealing between public officials in international matters.

He suggested also retaining a distinction between sailors of the navy and of the commercial marine. After repeated applications to the Board of Admiralty, Hartley was only able to reply to all Franklin's proposals that no distinction could be made between the naval and merchant services, because all the Americans were "detained under commitments from some magistrate, as for high treason."

July 13, 1778, Franklin remitted to Hartley the lists of English prisoners. September 14 he recurs again to the general release: "You have not mentioned whether the proposition of sending us the whole of those in your prisons was agreed to. If it is, you may rely on our sending immediately all that come to our hands for the future; or we will give you, [at] your option, an order for the balance to be delivered to your fleet in America. By putting a little confidence in one another, we may thus diminish the miseries of war." Five days later he took a still more romantic position: heretofore, he said, the American commissioners had encouraged and aided the American prisoners to try to escape; "but if the British government should honorably keep their agreement to make regular exchanges, we shall not think it consistent with the honor of the United States to encourage such escapes, or to give any assistance to such as shall escape."

Yet at the same time he showed himself fully able to conduct business according to the usual commonplace method. This same letter closes with a threat under the lex talionis: "We have now obtained permission of this government to put all British prisoners, whether taken by continental frigates or by privateers, into the king's prisons; and we are determined to treat such prisoners precisely as our countrymen are treated in England, to give them the same allowance of provisions and accommodations, and no other." He was long obliged to reiterate the like menaces.[48]

October 20, 1778, he reverts to his favorite project: "I wish their lordships could have seen it well to exchange upon account; but though they may not think it safe trusting to us, we shall make no difficulty in trusting to them;" and he proposes that, if the English will "send us over 250 of our people, we will deliver all we have in France;" if these be less than two hundred and fifty, the English may take back the surplus Americans; but if these be more than two hundred and fifty, Franklin says that he will nevertheless deliver them all in expectation that he will receive back an equivalent for the surplus. "We would thus wish to commence, by this first advance, that mutual confidence which it would be for the good of mankind that nations should maintain honorably with each other, tho' engaged in war."

November 19, 1778, nothing has been achieved, and he gets impatient: "I have heard nothing from you lately concerning the exchange of the prisoners. Is that affair dropt? Winter is coming on apace." January 25, 1779: "I a long time believed that your government were in earnest in agreeing to an exchange of prisoners. I begin now to think I was mistaken. It seems they cannot give up the pleasing idea of having at the end of the war 1000 Americans to hang for high treason." Poor Hartley had been working with all the energy of a good man in a good cause; but he was in the painful position of having no excuse to offer for the backwardness of his government.

February 22, 1779, brought more reproaches from Franklin. Months had elapsed since he had heard that the cartel ship was prepared to cross the Channel, but she had never come. He feared that he had been "deceived or trifled with," and proposed sending Edward Bancroft on a special mission to England, if a safe conduct could be procured. At last, on March 30, Hartley had the pleasure of announcing that the exchange ship had "sailed the 25th instant from Plymouth." Franklin soon replied that the transaction was completed, and gave well-earned thanks to Hartley for his "unwearied pains in that affair."

Thus after infinite difficulty the English government had been pushed into conformity with the ordinary customs of war among civilized nations. Yet subsequent exchanges seem to have been effected only after every possible obstacle had been contumaciously thrown in the way by the English and patiently removed by Franklin. The Americans were driven to various devices. The captains sometimes released their prisoners at sea upon the written parole of each either to secure the return of an American, or to surrender himself to Franklin in France. In November, 1781, Franklin had about five hundred of these documents, "not one of which," he says, "has been regarded, so little faith and honor remain in that corrupted nation." At last, after France and Spain had joined in the war, Franklin arranged that the American captors might lodge their prisoners in French and Spanish prisons.

Under flags of truce two cargoes of English sailors were dispatched from Boston to England; but the English refused to reciprocate. "There is no getting anything from these barbarians," said Franklin, "by advances of civility or humanity." Then much trouble arose because the French borrowed from Franklin some English prisoners for exchange in Holland, and returned to him a like number a little too late for delivery on board the cartel ship, which had brought over one hundred Americans. Thereupon the Englishmen charged Franklin with "breach of faith," and with "deceiving the Board," and put a stop to further exchanging. This matter was, of course, set right in time. But the next point made by the admiralty was that they would make no exchanges with Franklin except for English sailors taken by American cruisers, thus excluding captives taken by the privateersmen. Franklin, much angered at the thwarting of his humane and reasonable scheme, said that they had "given up all pretensions to equity and honor." In his disappointment he went a little too far; if he had said "liberality and humanity" instead of "equity and honor" he would have kept within literal truth. To meet this last action on the part of England he suggested to Congress: "Whether it may not be well to set apart 500 or 600 English prisoners, and refuse them all exchange in America, but for our countrymen now confined in England?"

Another thing which vexed him later was that the English government would not give the Americans an "equal allowance" with the French and Spanish prisoners. He suggested retaliation upon a certain number of English prisoners in America. He himself was constantly remitting money to be distributed to the American prisoners, at the rate of one shilling apiece each week. But he had the pain to hear that the wretched fellow, one Digges, to whom he sent the funds, embezzled much of them. "If such a fellow is not damned," he said, "it is not worth while to keep a devil." One prisoner of distinction, Colonel Laurens, captured on his way to France, complained that Franklin did not show sufficient zeal in his behalf. But he made the assertion in ignorance of Franklin's efforts, which for a long while Franklin had reason to believe had been successful in securing kind and liberal treatment for this captive.

In all this business Franklin ought to have received efficient assistance from Thomas Morris, who held the position of commercial agent for the States at Nantes, and who might properly have extended his functions to include so much of the naval business as required personal attention at that port. But he turned out to be a drunken rascal, active only in mischief. Thereupon, early in 1777, Franklin employed a nephew of his own from Boston, Jonathan Williams, not to supersede Morris in the commercial department, but to take charge of the strictly naval affairs, which were construed to include all matters pertaining to warships, privateers, and prizes. This action became the source of much trouble. It was a case of nepotism, of course, which was unfortunate; yet there was an absolute necessity to engage some one for these duties, and there was scant opportunity for choice. During the year that Williams held the office there is no reason to believe that he did not prove himself both efficient and honest. Robert Morris, however, whose brother Thomas was, and who had obtained for him the commercial office, was much offended, and it was not until in the course of time he received masses of indisputable evidence of his brother's worthlessness, that he was placated. Then at length he wrote a frank, pathetic letter, in which he acknowledged that he had been misled by natural affection, and that his resentment had been a mistake.

Arthur Lee also poured the destructive torrent of his malignant wrath over the ill-starred Williams. For William Lee pretended to find his province and his profits also trenched upon. The facts were that he was appointed to the commercial agency jointly with Thomas Morris; but shortly afterward he was promoted to the diplomatic service, and left Nantes for a permanent stay in Paris. He did not formally vacate his agency, but practically he abandoned it by rendering himself unable to attend to its duties. So even if by any construction he could have established a show of right to conduct the naval business, at least he never was on hand to do so. These considerations, however, did not in the least mitigate the rage of the Lee brethren, who now brought a great variety of charges. Franklin, they said, had no authority to make the appointment, and Williams was a knave engaged in a scandalous partnership with Deane to make money dishonestly out of the public business, especially the prizes. The quarrel continued unabated when John Adams arrived, in 1778, as joint commissioner with Franklin and Arthur Lee. At once the active Lee besieged the ear of the newcomer with all his criminations; and he must have found a ready listener, for so soon as the fourth day after his arrival Adams felt himself sufficiently informed to take what was practically judicial action in the matter. He declared upon Lee's side. The two then signed an order for Williams's dismissal, and presented it to Franklin. It was discourteous if not insulting behavior to an old man and the senior commissioner; but Franklin wisely said not a word, and added his signature to those of his colleagues. The rest of the story is the familiar one of many cases: the agent made repeated demands for the appointment of an accountant to examine his accounts, and Franklin often and very urgently preferred the same request. But the busy Congress would not bother itself ever so little with a matter no longer of any practical moment. Lee's charges remained unrefuted, though not a shadow of justifiable suspicion rested upon Franklin's unfortunate nephew.

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