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Benjamin Franklin and His Enemies

University of California Press

A few days after Franklin's death, Thomas Jefferson wrote Ferdinand Grand that "the good old Doctor Franklin, so long the ornament of our country and I may say of the world, has at length closed his eminent career." In suggesting that Franklin belonged not just to America but to the world, Jefferson sounded a theme that echoed throughout Europe and America. The next year he sent a few lines to William Smith, once Franklin's enemy but now his eulogist, in which he referred to Franklin "as our great and dear friend, whom time will be making greater while it is spunging us from it's records." Time has not erased Thomas Jefferson from its records, though it has not been so kind to William Smith. But Jefferson was fight about Franklin, who seems even larger now than he did in his own century,1

Fame of the sort Franklin enjoyed, even in his own day, is uncommon. It commonly prevents friendship because it keeps men at a distance. George Washington was as well known as Franklin from the Revolution on, but those who knew him-and those who did not-spoke of him in a language different from what they used in describing Franklin. Washington was a remote figure, a legend, a monument while he lived. To most men he appeared great and mighty-and a little cold. Franklin was great, all agreed, but though he had enormous intellectual and moral power, no one

thought of him as mighty, and only rarely did anyone think him cold.

Joseph Priestley, the great English chemist, noted that strangers sometimes found Franklin reserved, but such reactions were not common enough to evoke frequent comment. Not that Franklin was a hail-fellow-well-met. He could keep himself at a distance, and in fact he never showed all of himself to anyone. But very few men do, and complete openness is not necessary for friendship-indeed it might discourage it (a genial hypocrisy has its uses)-and Franklin met everyone he was not bound to distrust with directness and honesty. He was a good judge of others and normally brought a friendly and warm spirit to his exchanges with them. His curiosity about virtually everything under the sun tended to draw others out, and he was notably successful in his attempts to learn about the human as well as the natural world.2

Franklin seems to have been born curious; his capacity for friendship, though appearing early in his life, was actually an acquired characteristic. He tells us in his Autobiography that as a youth he was "fond" of argument, was in fact of a "disputatious turn," a bad habit, he soon realized, "productive of disgusts and perhaps enmities where you may have occasion for friendship." He had "caught it by reading my father's books of dispute on religion. Persons of good sense, I have since observed, seldom fall into it, except lawyers, university men, and men of all sorts who have been bred at Edinburgh." Giving up his taste for argument, he next "put on the humble enquirer." This role he learned first from an English grammar and then from Xenophon's Memorable Things of Socrates. The Socratic method reinforced his natural hunger for trapping his adversaries in positions they really did not wish to defend-"entangling them in difficulties out of which they could not extricate themselves, and so obtaining victories that neither

myself nor my cause always deserved." He liked to win he gave no quarter even in chess-but he soon saw that scoring in this fashion was pointless. It convinced no one, and it cost him friends. He then adopted "the habit of expressing myself in terms of modest diffidence," a practice he followed all his life that, one suspects, allowed a freer expression of his own desire to learn. It also helped draw men and women as well as children to him. And in time it became his natural style; what began in artfulness led him to what he really was.3

Among other things he was a good friend to all sorts, ranks, and ages of people. He made friends all his life and with rare exceptions kept them. When he was young, they tended to come from his own class, though he soon attracted the interest of a number of men of the better sort-William Keith, for example, the governor of Pennsylvania. Shortly after he arrived in Philadelphia, Franklin formed the Junto, an organization of young craftsmen who had aspirations to rise, to talk with others of their own kind about business and public service, and to do good. The members included Hugh Meridith, like Franklin an apprentice in Samuel Keimer's print shop. The two soon left Keimer and with the aid of Meridith's father set up on their own. Meridith's fondness for strong drink and his aversion to work soon shattered this partnership. Franklin, however, did not abandon him but lent him money and for several years after their parting attempted to help him in business. The Junto and Franklin also attracted Joseph Breintall, a small merchant and copyist. Breintall worked on another of Franklin's favorite projects by serving as secretary of the Library Company of Philadelphia from 1731 until his death in 1746. There was also William Parson, a shoemaker by trade and an original member of the Junto, who as librarian guarded the books in the company. The others were not really different: Stephen Potts, from Keimer's shop; George Webb, once a scholar at Oxford;

William Maugridge, a joiner by trade; and William Coleman, a merchant's clerk.4

After Franklin became well known in Europe and America, he did not scorn such men. He considered himself a printer all his life, though he did not follow his calling. Artisans everywhere recognized that in some sense he was one of their own. A group of ship carpenters, the White Oaks, came to his rescue in Philadelphia in 1766 when for a time the public believed that he favored the Stamp Act, a notorious and hated measure of parliamentary taxation.5

In the years of fame and reputation, Franklin naturally found most of his friends in other circles. Many were in public life, and some had reputations that rivaled his own, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, for example. But his closest friends, in England and France as well as America, shared more than political interests with him.

Margaret Stevenson, Franklin's landlady in Craven Street, London, for two extended periods was one. She did not have Franklin's interest in politics, but she offered a warm family life to him. Her daughter, Mary, usually called Polly, also became Franklin's friend. Mrs. Stevenson did much to make his life comfortable. She cooked and baked for him and saw to it that his clothes were cared for, his linen clean; she worried over his health and shopped for him and for his wife, though Deborah Franklin was three thousand miles away. Soon after Franklin first came to Craven Street, in 1757, he grew fond of Margaret Stevenson. He also loved Polly Stevenson, who was eighteen years of age when he first met her.6

Polly delighted him. With all the enthusiasm and happiness of the young, she displayed a lively spirit. She also impressed him with her fine intelligence, and he was soon acting as her tutor, giving advice on what to study and read and challenging her to

use her gifts to the fullest. He wrote poems to her and letters when they were apart; he teased her and talked with her...