American Aurora

A Convention in Pennsylvania had adopted a government in one representative assembly, and Dr. Franklin was the President of that Convention. The Doctor, when he went to France in 1776, carried with him the printed copy of that Constitution, and it was immediately propagated through France that this was the plan of government of Mr. Franklin … Mr. Turgot, the Duke de la Rochefoucauld, Mr. Condorcet, and many others, became enamored with the Constitution of Mr. Franklin.

Mr. John Adams, whose want of liberality to Dr. Franklin continued through life, survived his death and carried persecution against his grandson … betrayed a gross malevolence on the subject of this constitution of Pennsylvania …

One legislative assembly and an executive composed of many persons (possessing few powers and no splendor) will soon form the favorite articles of every enlightened politician’s creed. To those who require the sanction of great names before they can adopt any opinion, I will observe that these were the favorite propositions of Rousseau and Franklin.

[Gen. Washington] is very jealous of Dr. Franklin & those who are governed by Republican Principles from which he is very averse.

JOHN ADAMS [is] the advocate of a kingly government and of a titled nobility to form an upper house and to keep down the swinish multitude … JOHN ADAMS … would deprive you of a voice in chusing your president and senate, and make both hereditary …

I only contend that the English Constitution is in theory the most stupendous fabric of human invention, both for the adjustment of its balance and the prevention of its vibrations, and that the Americans ought to be applauded instead of censured for imitating it so far as they have.

The American Revolution is now history. How is that history to be written? What freedom have American soldiers won? What freedom have French soldiers learned? George Washington retires to Mount Vernon. John Adams becomes Minister to Great Britain. Thomas Jefferson becomes Minister to France. Ben Franklin and Benny Bache return to Philadelphia. In my history (written much later, in 1798), I observe:

The negociations at Paris [which ended the American Revolution] in 1783, like the fall of the monarch [in France in 1793,] ten years after, gave the signal for party contest, and the annals of America exhibit the phenomenon in politics of her ministers at the close of their country’s triumph, engaged in a clandestine correspondence and defaming their fellow minister, [Benjamin Franklin,] to secure to themselves the reputation of having accomplished what the character of Franklin only could have ever obtained. History, which disclaims all bias and which owes every tribute to the memory of the glorious dead, will not stoop to name those who were the defamers of Franklin. But it is connected with the present state of America [in 1798] to state the facts, for at that period was laid the foundation of those dangers which now threaten America …

In the secret proceedings of party in America, since the period of 1783, little has been publicly displayed; but … in the convention of 1787 [which wrote the federal Constitution], and from thence to this day, … the same Machiavellian systems of political duplicity have been gradually sapping the foundations of American liberty …

The efforts that were made to reduce the United States to a monarchy were barely unsuccessful. It was to public opinion only that the failure can be with justice attributed; for it has to be acknowledged on all hands that those who proposed a monarchical form were much more alert than the friends of an equal representative government.

The French Revolution opened new objects of hope and of fear … [I]t was not … [that revolution’s] horrors that alarmed men averse to free government; it was the dangers to which ambition was exposed by the prevalence of those equal principles which France had borrowed from America and enlarged and promulgated as the common right of all mankind.¹⁴⁶⁶

PHILADELPHIA, On Wednesday last arrived, in the ship London Packet, Captain Truxtun, His Excellency Doctor FRANKLIN, late Minister Plenipotentiary from the United States of America to the Court of France, after an absence of near nine years.

The important scenes in which this man has been a principal agent … furnish a striking example … how greatly a single individual may dignify a nation. The exalted names of WASHINGTON and FRANKLIN will be the boast of Americans in centuries to come.

The Doctor was received at the wharf by a number of citizens who attended him to his house with acclamations of joy. A discharge of cannon announced his arrival, and the bells rang a joyful peel to his welcome.

With the Doctor came his [grandson] … Master Benjamin Bache …

On Thursday, the Hon. the General Assembly [of Pennsylvania] … presented the following address, which was read by the Speaker …

We are confident, Sir … that your services in the public councils and negociations … will be recorded in history to your immortal honor …

On Friday … the Faculty of the University of Pennsylvania presented the following Address …

Among the many benevolent projections which have held so ample a foundation for the esteem and gratitude of your native country, permit this seminary to reckon her first establishment upon the solid principles of Equal Liberty … restored thro’ the influence of our happy [state] Constitution …

Saturday last the following ADDRESS was presented by a Committee of fifteen members of the Constitutional Society …

In the course of a long and bloody war, we have been deeply indebted to your wisdom and vigilance for the frequent support we have received … from our great and good allies … You must not think yourself flattered when we add that your personal character as a philosopher and a citizen has given weight to your negociation …

It would be endless to enumerate the great variety of instances in which you have benefited the state of Pennsylvania … We cannot, however, omit to express the high veneration with which we view you as the father of our free and excellent constitution. In this great work, we persuade ourselves that you, in conjunction with the other patriots of the convention over which you presided, have erected a strong hold to the sacred cause of liberty which will long continue … to resist the assaults of all its enemies …

WILLIAM ADCOOK, Chairman …

To which the DOCTOR was pleased to present the following

ANSWER …

Gentlemen … I think myself happy in returning to live under the free constitution of this commonwealth and hope with you that we and our posterity may long enjoy it.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

A Committee from a respectable Meeting of Citizens at Byrn’s Tavern having waited on Doctor FRANKLIN to propose to him a Seat in the [state] Executive Council at the ensuing Election; it is with the greatest satisfaction, the Committee announce to the Public his accession to the Proposal, to which they do not apprehend there will be a dissenting voice in the city.

To Honorable Benjamin Franklin, Esq …

It gives me exceeding great pleasure to have the opportunity of congratulating you on your return home …¹⁴⁶⁸

Master Bache was too young when he went away to remember me; but do me the service to make him a sharer of my congratulations.¹⁴⁶⁹

Your kind Congratulations on my safe Return give me a great deal of Pleasure; for I have always valued your friendship …

Be assured, my dear Friend, that instead of Repenting that I was your Introducer into America, I value myself on the Share I had in procuring for it the Acquisition of so useful and valuable a Citizen.

I shall be very glad to see you …¹⁴⁷⁰

Between now and the time Tom Paine leaves for France, he will be a frequent visitor at the Franklin home.¹⁴⁷¹

Sunday, October 30, 1785. Today, eighty-year-old Benjamin Franklin writes his dear friend Mrs. Mary Hewson in London:

I am plung’d again into public Business, as deep as ever … Ben is at College to compleat his Studies …¹⁴⁷²

Saturday, May 6, 1786. Today, in a letter to his friend Mary Hewson, in London, Ben Franklin continues his long-standing pleasantry that Benny Bache will someday marry Mary’s daughter, Elizabeth:

Ben is finishing his studies at college and continues to behave as well as when you knew him, so I think he will make you a good son.¹⁴⁷³

Saturday, August 12, 1786. Today, Benny Bache turns seventeen years old. He studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

Tuesday, August 22, 1786. Today, delegates from fifty towns in Hampshire County, Massachusetts, meet in Hatfield, Massachusetts, to discuss the plight of farmers whose inability to pay debts and taxes subjects them to imprisonment and their farms to foreclosure. From minutes of the meeting:

The convention … were of opinion that many grievances and unnecessary burdens now lying upon the people are the sources of … discontent … throughout this Commonwealth. Among which the following articles were voted as such, viz.

1st. The existence of the Senate.

2d. The present mode of representation.

3d. The officers of the government not being annually dependent on the representatives of the people, in General Court [legislature] assembled for their salaries …

4th. All the civil officers of government not being annually elected by the representatives of the people in General Court [legislature] assembled …

19th. Voted, That whereas several of the above articles of grievances arise from defects in the constitution [of Massachusetts]; therefore a revision of the same ought to take place …¹⁴⁷⁴

These Massachusetts citizens want to discard John Adams’ Massachusetts constitution, to eliminate the Massachusetts senate (leaving a single-chamber legislature), to have that single-chamber legislature choose government officers annually, and to discard wealth qualifications for office-holders, etc. In short, they propose to replace John Adams’ aristocratic government with Ben Franklin’s democratic Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776!

Having served their country and been paid in worthless currency, having incurred debts to recultivate their farms, and now (in the face of a recession) lacking the cash to pay back those debts or even to pay their Massachusetts taxes, these debtor farmers can’t obtain debt relief from the Massachusetts legislature (“The House of Representatives is intended as the Representative of the Persons, and the Senate of the property of the Commonwealth … ”) because the Massachusetts senate, representing (and composed of) their wealthy creditors, won’t agree.

Other Massachusetts counties will meet. Farmers must get debt relief (and constitutional change), or, once again, they’ll take up arms!

Those debtor farmers will no longer allow merchant creditors, fancy lawyers, or even the courts of Massachusetts to jail them or foreclose their farms!

BOSTON … October 7. The General Court [the Massachusetts legislature] is now deeply engaged in devising measures for restoring peace to the deluded inhabitants of the several refractory counties, and for giving efficacy, permanency, and dignity to the laws and constitution of the Commonwealth [of Massachusetts].

BOSTON … Extract of a letter from a Gentleman in Worcester, dated Tuesday evening, December 5, 9 o’clock.

We have been in an alarm for twelve days past. Last week the insurgents in this county and the county of Berkshire, were collected to join those from Middlesex and Bristol, to stop the Courts of Common Pleas and Sessions at Cambridge … They were headed by [Daniel Shays], who, it is said, had about 100 from Hampshire …

On Monday the militia in the town of Worcester was paraded, and 170 men appeared in support of government … I have just heard that the militia from Brookfield are on the march in support of government …

Wednesday morning, 11 o’clock. Insurgents still in town. The post-rider, who brought the above letter, informs, That he was yesterday morning at Patch’s Tavern in Worcester; That … the number of insurgents amounted to 1800 or 2000 men.

Monday, January 1, 1787. New Year’s Day. Today, in London, John Adams completes Volume One of his three-volume response to Frenchmen, like Turgot, and Americans, like Tom Paine and Massachusetts rebel Daniel Shays, who prefer Ben Franklin’s Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 with its simple one-chamber legislative government over Adams’ Massachusetts constitution with a wealthy chief executive and propertied state senate to veto the democratic house of representatives. John Adams:

The intention [of Turgot’s letter] was to celebrate Franklin’s Constitution and condemn mine. I understood it, and undertook to defend my constitution, and it cost me three volumes.¹⁴⁷⁵

In John Adams’ Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America Against the Attack of M. Turgot, in His Letter to Dr. Price, Dated the Twenty-second Day of March, 1778, John Adams reviews ancient and modern governments to conclude that the English constitution, with its two-chamber legislature (including the House of Lords!) and strong executive (the king!), is, at least in theory, the best of all possible forms. John Adams:

M. Turgot had seen only the constitutions of New York, Massachusetts, and Maryland, and the first constitution of Pennsylvania. His principal intention was to censure the three former. From these three, the [federal] constitution of the United States was afterwards almost entirely drawn.

The drift of my whole work was to vindicate these three constitutions …¹⁴⁷⁶

In May, a Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia will decide a new federal Constitution for the United States of America. John Adams’ Defence will be widely circulated and extremely influential at that convention.¹⁴⁷⁷ From Volume One of Adams’ Defence:

M. Turgot, in his letter to Dr. Price, confesses, “that he is not satisfied with the constitutions which have hitherto been formed for the different states of America.” He observes, “that, by most of them, the customs of England are imitated without any particular motive. Instead of collecting all authority into one centre, that of the nation, they have established different bodies, a body of representatives, a council, and a governor, because there is in England a house of commons, a house of lords, and a king. They endeavor to balance these different powers, as if this equilibrium, which in England may be a necessary check to the enormous influence of royalty, could be of any use in republics founded upon the equality of all the citizens, and as if establishing different orders of men was not a source of divisions and disputes.”

There has been, from the beginning of the revolution in America, a party in every state who have entertained sentiments similar to those of M. Turgot. Two or three of them have established governments upon his principle … [I]t becomes necessary to examine it …¹⁴⁷⁸

I … contend that the English constitution is, in theory, … the most stupendous fabric of human invention; and that the Americans ought to be applauded instead of censured, for imitating it as far as they have done … The Americans have not indeed [adequately] imitated it in [failing to give] a negative [an absolute veto] upon their legislature to the executive power; in this respect their balances are incomplete, very much I confess to my mortification …¹⁴⁷⁹

M. Turgot intended to recommend to the Americans … a single assembly of representatives of the people, without a governor and without a senate …

Shortly before the date of M. Turgot’s letter, Dr. Franklin had arrived in Paris with the American [state] constitutions, and, among the rest, that of Pennsylvania, in which there was but one assembly. It was reported, too, that the Doctor had presided in the convention when it was made, and there approved it …

M. Turgot … tells us our republics are “founded on the equality …” But, what are we to understand here by equality? … Was there, or will there ever be, a nation whose individuals were all equal, in natural and acquired qualities, in virtues, talents, and riches? The answer of all mankind must be in the negative. It must then be acknowledged that in every state, [as] in the Massachusetts, for example, there are inequalities which God and nature have planted there …

In this society of Massachusettensians then, there is, it is true, a moral and political equality … [T]here are, nevertheless, inequalities of great moment … 1. There is an inequality of wealth … 2. Birth … In the Massachusetts, then, there are persons descended from some of their ancient governors, counsellors, judges …¹⁴⁸⁰

[T]his natural aristocracy … is a fact essential to be considered in the institution of a government …¹⁴⁸¹

The great question therefore is, What combination … ? The controversy between M. Turgot and me is whether a single assembly of representatives be this form? He maintains the affirmative. I am for the negative …¹⁴⁸²

If there is, then, in society such a natural aristocracy … how shall the legislator avail himself of their influence for the equal benefit of the public? and how, on the other hand, shall he prevent them from disturbing the public happiness? I answer, by arranging them all, or at least the most conspicuous of them, together in one assembly, by the name of a senate; by separating them from all pretensions to the executive power, and by controlling their ambition and avarice by an assembly of representatives on one side and by the executive authority on the other.¹⁴⁸³

In M. Turgot’s single assembly, those who should think themselves most distinguished by blood and education, as well as fortune, would be most ambitious … It is from the natural aristocracy in a single assembly that the first danger is to be apprehended in the present state of manners in America; and with a balance of landed property in the hands of the people, so decided in their favor, the progress to degeneracy … would … grow faster or slower every year …

The only remedy is to throw the rich and the proud into one group, in a separate assembly, and there tie their hands; if you give them scope with the people at large or their representatives, they will destroy all equality and liberty with the consent and acclamations of the people themselves … But placing them alone by themselves, the society avails itself of all their abilities and virtues; they become a solid check to the representatives themselves, as well as to the executive power …¹⁴⁸⁴

In [the constitution of Lacedæmonia], there were three orders, and a balance, not indeed equal to that of England, for want of a negative [veto] in each branch; but the nearest resembling it of any we have yet seen. The king, the nobles, the senate, and the people, in two assemblies, are surely more orders than a governor, senate, and house … The Lacedaemonian republic … had the three essential parts of the best possible government; it was a mixture of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy.¹⁴⁸⁵

Can any one read Mr. Adams’ defence of the American constitutions without seeing he was a monarchist?¹⁴⁸⁶

Sunday, January 7, 1787. John Adams is not the only American with monarchical leanings. Today, New Yorker John Jay writes George Washington about the upcoming Federal Constitutional Convention:

What is to be done? …

Would the giving any further power to Congress do the business? I am much inclined to think it would not …

Large assemblies often misunderstand or neglect the obligations of character, honour, and dignity …

Shall we have a king? Not in my opinion while other experiments remain untried. Might we not have a governor-general limited in his prerogatives and duration? Might not Congress be divided into an upper and lower house—the former appointed for life, the latter annually—and let the governor-general … have a negative on their acts? Our government should in some degree be suited to our manners and circumstances, and they, you know, are not strictly democratical.¹⁴⁸⁷

BOSTON. January 16 … An A D D R E S S to the good people of the Commonwealth [of Massachusetts] …

It is now become evident that the object of the insurgents is to annihilate our present happy constitution, or to force the General Court [Massachusetts legislature] into measures repugnant … If the constitution is to be destroyed, and insurrection stalk unopposed by authority, individuals … will … meet force with force … I must conjure the good people of Massachusetts … to cooperate with government in every necessary action …

Friday, February 9, 1787. Today, in Philadelphia, as if anticipating John Adams’ Defence, Benjamin Franklin, Tom Paine, and other republicans form the “Society for Political Enquiries” to counter monarchical influences.¹⁴⁸⁸ Society president Ben Franklin will host the biweekly meetings at Franklin Court. Tom Paine writes its statement of purpose, including:

Accustomed to look up to those nations from whom we have derived our origin, [we have] … grafted on an infant commonwealth the manner of ancient and corrupted monarchies. In having effected a separate government, we have as yet effected but a partial independence. The Revolution can only be said to be complete when we shall have freed ourselves no less from the influence of foreign prejudices than from the fetters of foreign power … From a desire of supplying this deficency … it is now proposed to establish a society for mutual improvement in the knowledge of government …¹⁴⁸⁹

In justice to myself, I ought to say, that it was not the miserable vanity of justifying my own work [the Massachusetts constitution], or eclipsing the glory of Mr. Franklin’s, that induced me to write [my Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States].

I never thought of writing till the Assembly of Notables in France had commenced a revolution, with the Duke de la Rochefoucauld and Mr. Condorcet at their head, who I knew would establish a government in one assembly …

At the same time, every western wind brought us news of town and county meetings in Massachusetts, adopting Mr. Turgot’s ideas [of government by a single assembly], condemning my [Massachusetts] Constitution, reprobating the office of governor and the assembly of the Senate as expensive, useless, and pernicious, and not only proposing to toss them off, but rising in rebellion against them …

[I]n this view I wrote my defence of the American Constitutions. I had only the Massachusetts Constitution in view, and such others as agreed with it in the distribution of the legislative power into three branches, in separating the executive from the legislative power …¹⁴⁹⁰

Thursday, February 22, 1787. Today, in Paris, the King of France convenes, for the first time since 1626, a meeting of an Assembly of Notables (144 members, including seven princes of the blood, the leading archbishops, seven dukes, eight marshals, nine marquis, nine counts, a baron, presidents of parliaments, etc.) to deal with the 3-4 billion livres of debt that has put France on the verge of bankruptcy. Former Finance Minister Turgot’s warning, in April of 1775, that France could not afford a protracted war for the independence of the United States has proved to be correct. The 1.225-billion-livre debt incurred in preparing for and fighting the “national war” has created a crisis.¹⁴⁹¹

Monday, March 19, 1787. Today, General Henry Knox writes George Washington concerning the upcoming Constitutional Convention:

As you have thought proper, my dear Sir, to request my opinion respecting your attendance at the [federal constitutional] convention, I shall give it … I take it for granted that … you will be constrained to accept of the president’s chair. Hence the proceedings of the convention will more immediately be appropriated to you … Were the convention to propose only amendments and patchwork to the present defective confederation, your reputation would in a degree suffer. But, were an energetic and judicious system to be proposed with your signature, it would … doubly entitle you to the glorious republican epithet, The Father of your Country.¹⁴⁹³

Tuesday, March 20, 1787. Today, in London, Abigail Adams writes her son, John Quincy Adams:

Your papa enjoys better Health than he has for many years … Before this reaches you, his Book will have arrived. I should like to know its reception. I tell him they will think in America that he is for sitting up a King. He says no, but he is for giving the Governors of every state the same Authority which the British king has under the true British constitution, balancing his power by the two other Branches …¹⁴⁹⁴

Sunday, April 15, 1787. Tom Paine will shortly leave for France. Today, Ben Franklin writes a letter of introduction to the Duc de La Rochefoucauld:

I am glad to see that you are named as one of the general assembly to be convened in France. I flatter myself that great good may accrue to that dear nation from the deliberations of such an assembly …

I send herewith a volume of the transactions of our Philosophical Society, another for M. de Condorcet, and a third for the Academy …

The bearer of this is Mr. Paine, the author of a famous piece entitled Common Sense, published here, with great effect. He is an ingenious honest man, and as such I beg leave to recommend him to your civilities.¹⁴⁹⁵

Tuesday, April 17, 1787. Today, Ben Franklin writes the Marquis François-Jean de Chastellux (who served in the American Revolution with French General Rochambeau):

The newspapers tell us that you are about to have an assembly of Notables to consult on improvements of your government. It is somewhat singular that we should be engaged in the same project here at the same time, but so it is, and a convention for the purpose of revising and amending our constitution is to meet in this place next month. I hope both assemblies will be blessed with success, and that their deliberations and counsels may promote the happiness of both nations.

In the state of Pennsylvania, government, notwithstanding our parties, goes on at present very smoothly … Massachusetts has lately been disturbed by some disorderly people … Mr. Paine whom you know, and who undertakes to deliver this letter to you, can give you full information on our affairs.¹⁴⁹⁶

Thursday, April 26, 1787. Today, one month before the Federal Constitutional Convention, Thomas Paine leaves for France.¹⁴⁹⁷ He will not participate in America’s Constitutional Convention. For Paine, America’s revolution is complete, and France’s revolution is about to begin. He will arrive in France, just as he did in America, with letters of introduction from Benjamin Franklin.

Tuesday, May 8, 1787. Today, Ben Franklin writes a foundry customer, Francis Childs of New York, who has complained about the type fonts he has received from Franklin’s foundry:

You are always complaining of imperfections in the Founts … They were all cast after the best Rules of the Foundries in England … However, to oblige you … you shall have the Sorts you want if you send a List of them in Numbers. My grandson [Ben Bache] will cast them as soon as he has taken his Degree and got clear of the College; for then he purposes to apply himself closely to the Business of Letter founding, and this is expected in July next.¹⁴⁹⁸

Sunday, May 12, 1787. Today, New Yorker John Jay writes John Adams with praise for Adams’ Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America Against the Attack of M. Turgot:

Accept my thanks for the book you were so kind as to send me. I have read it with pleasure and with profit … A new edition of your book is printing in this city and will be published next week.¹⁴⁹⁹

Friday, May 25, 1787. Today, in France, the Assembly of Notables (i.e., high clergy and nobility) adjourns without deciding the taxes to resolve France’s financial crisis. During its meeting, the French hero of the American Revolution the Marquis de Lafayette proposed that the common people (the “Third Estate”) join the clergy (the “First Estate”) and nobility (the “Second Estate”) to decide on any taxes that might be required.¹⁵⁰⁰ The principle is new to France but not to America: no taxation without representation.

Because the Assembly of Notables has declined to act, the king will be forced to convoke the Estates-General (including the Third Estate), so representatives of the common people will come to Paris. They will also begin a democratic revolution.¹⁵⁰¹

Today, in Philadelphia, representatives of thirteen United States of America meet in convention to decide upon a new federal Constitution. Though the deliberations of the convention are in secret, James Madison of Virginia records the debates:

Mr. ROBERT MORRIS … proposed George Washington Esq. late Commander in chief for president of the Convention …

The nomination came with particular grace from Penna. as Doctor Franklin alone could have been thought of as a competitor … [T]he state of the weather and of [Dr. Franklin’s] health confined him to his house.¹⁵⁰²

Saturday, May 26, 1787. Today, Thomas Paine arrives at Havre-de-Grâce in France.¹⁵⁰³

Monday, May 28, 1787. Today, in Philadelphia, four convicts from the Walnut-street prison carry the incapacitated eighty-two-year-old Benjamin Franklin to the Federal Constitutional Convention.¹⁵⁰⁴

Thursday, May 31, 1787. Today, at the Federal Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, James Madison records:

The … Resolution “that the national Legislature ought to consist of two branches” was agreed to without debate or dissent, except that of Pennsylvania, given probably from complaisance to Doctor Franklin who was understood to be partial to a single House of Legislation.¹⁵⁰⁵

Friday, June 1, 1787. Today, at the Federal Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, James Madison records:

The Committee of the whole proceeded to Resolution … “that a national executive be instituted, to be chosen by the national legislature …”

Mr. WILSON moved that the Executive consist of a single person …

A considerable pause ensuing and the Chairman asking if he should put the question, Doctor FRANKLIN observed that it was a point of great importance and wished that the gentlemen would deliver their sentiments on it before the question was put …

Mr. RANDOLPH strenuously opposed a unity in the Executive magistracy. He regarded it as the foetus of monarchy. We had, he said, no motive to be governed by the British Government as our prototype …

Mr. MADISON thought it would be proper, before a choice should be made between a unity and a plurality in the Executive, to fix the extent of the Executive authority …

Mr. SHERMAN was for the appointment [of the Executive] by the Legislature and for making him absolutely dependent on that body, as it was the will of that which was to be executed …¹⁵⁰⁶

Saturday, June 2, 1787. Today, Benjamin Rush, a Pennsylvania delegate to the Federal Constitutional convention, writes Englishman Richard Price:

Mr. Adams’ book [Defence of the Constitutions …] has diffused such excellent principles among us that there is little doubt of our adopting a vigorous and compounded [two-chamber] federal legislature. Our illustrious minister in this gift to his country has done us more service than if he had obtained alliances for us with all the nations of Europe.^1506a

Today, at the Federal Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, James Madison records:

Doct. FRANKLIN moved [that] … the Executive … receive no salary … [T]there will always be a party for giving more to the rulers … Generally indeed the ruling party carries its point, the revenues of princes always increasing … The more the people are discontented with the oppression of taxes; the greater the need the prince has of money to distribute among his partizans and pay the troops that are to suppress all resistance … I am apprehensive, therefore, perhaps too apprehensive, that the Government of these States may in future times end in a Monarchy. But this Catastrophe I think may be long delayed if, in our proposed System, we do not … [make] our posts of honor, places of profit. If we do, I fear that tho’ we do employ at first [for the Executive] a number [of people], and not a single person, the number will in time be set aside [and] it will only nourish the foetus of a King … [S]hall we doubt finding three or four men in all the U. States with public spirit enough … to preside [without pay] over our civil concerns and see our laws are duly executed?¹⁵⁰⁷

Monday, June 4, 1787. Today, at the Federal Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, one hears John Adams in the voice of Alexander Hamilton. James Madison records:

Mr. HAMILTON move[s] … to give the Executive an absolute negative [veto] on the laws …

Doctor FRANKLIN said he was sorry to differ … He had had some experience of this check in the Executive on the Legislature, under the proprietary Government of Penn. The negative of the Governor was constantly made use of to extort money … When the indians were scalping the western people and notice of it arrived, the concurrence of the Governor in the means of self-defence could not be got till it was agreed that his Estate should be exempted from taxation … He was afraid; if a negative should be given as proposed, that more power and money would be demanded, till as last eno’ would be gotten to influence & bribe the Legislature into a compleat subjection to the will of the Executive …

Col. MASON observed … The probable abuses of a negative [veto] had been well explained by Dr. F … The Executive may refuse its assent to necessary measures till new appointments shall be referred to him … We are not indeed constituting a British Government, but a more dangerous monarchy, an elective one …

Doctor FRANKLIN … [said] The first man put at the helm will be a good one. No body knows what sort may come afterwards. The Executive will always be increasing here, as elsewhere, till it ends in Monarchy.¹⁵⁰⁸

Just published, and to be sold by HALL and SELLERS; J. CRUKSHANK; and YOUNG and M’CULLOCH

Monday, June 11, 1787. Today, at the Federal Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin delivers a speech on proportional representation:

I … think the Number of Representatives should bear some Proportion to the Number of the Represented, and that the Decisions should be by the Majority of members, not by the Majority of States …

[T]he present method of voting by States was submitted to originally by Congress under a Conviction of its Impropriety, Inequality, and Injustice …¹⁵⁰⁹

Monday, June 18, 1787. Today, at the Federal Constitutional Convention, Alexander Hamilton echoes the ideas of John Adams. James Madison records:

Mr. HAMILTON had been hitherto silent on the business before the Convention … He was obliged therefore to declare himself … The members of Cong[res]s, being chosen by the States & subject to recall, represent all the local prejudices … It is ag[ain]st all the principles of a good Government to vest the requisite powers in such a body as Cong[res]s …

In his private opinion, he had no scruple in declaring, supported as he was by the opinions of so many of the wise & good, that the British Government was the best in the world; and that he doubted whether any thing short of it would do in America … Their house of Lords is a most noble institution. Having nothing to hope for by a change and a sufficient interest by means of their property in being faithful to the national interest, they form a permanent barrier against every pernicious innovation … No temporary Senate will have firmness eno’ to answer the purpose … Gentlemen … suppose seven years a sufficient period … from not duly considering the amazing violence & turbulence of the democratic spirit …

As to the Executive, it seemed to be admitted that no good one could be established on Republican principles … The English model was the only good one on this subject. The Hereditary interest of the King was so interwoven with that of the Nation and his personal emoluments so great that he was placed above the danger of being corrupted … [O]ne of the weak sides of Republics was their being liable to foreign influence & corruption … Let one branch of the Legislature hold their places for life … Let the Executive also be for life … It will be objected probably that such an Executive will be an elective Monarch … He wd. reply that Monarch is an indefinite term …¹⁵¹⁰

British constitution best form …

[T]wo political divisions—the few and the many …

[T]hey should be separated …

[I]f separated, they will need a mutual check.

This check is a monarch …

There ought to be a principle in government capable of resisting the popular current …

The monarch … ought to be hereditary, and to have so much power that it will not be in his interest to risk much to acquire more.¹⁵¹¹

[A colleague] takes great pain to prove … that Hamilton was no monarchist … This may pass with uninformed readers, but not with those who have had it from Hamilton’s own mouth. I am one of those, and but one of many. At my own table, in presence of Mr. Adams … and myself, in a dispute between Mr. Adams and himself, he avowed his preference of monarchy over every other government, and his opinion that the English was the most perfect model of government ever devised by the wit of man, Mr. Adams agreeing “if its corruptions were done away.”¹⁵¹²

Mr. Adams observed “purge that constitution of its corruption and give to its popular branch equality of representation, and it would be the most perfect constitution ever devised by the wit of man. “Hamilton paused and said “purge it of its corruption and give to its popular branch equality of representation, & it would become an impracticable government: as it stands at present, with all its supposed defects, it is the most perfect government which ever existed.” And this was assuredly the exact line which separated the political creeds of these two gentlemen. The one was for two hereditary branches and an honest elective one: the other for a hereditary king with a house of lords & commons, corrupted to his will and standing between him and the people.¹⁵¹³

George Washington will choose monarchists Hamilton and Adams to preside at the highest posts in his administration. Alexander Hamilton will lead the Federalist party.

I arrived at Paris on the 30th of May, and the next day began delivering the letters you were so kind as to honor me with. My reception here, in consequence of them, has been abundantly cordial and friendly. I have received visits and invitations from all who were in town.¹⁵¹⁴

Saturday, June 30, 1787. Today, at the Federal Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin argues the merits of a plural executive (an executive council) rather than a single president:

The steady Course of public Measures is most probably to be expected from a Number [in an executive council].

A single Person’s Measures may be good. The Successor differs in Opinion of those Measures, and adopts others; often is ambitious of distinguishing himself by opposing them, and offering new Projects. One is peaceably dispos’d; another may be fond of War, &c. Hence foreign States can never have that Confidence in the Treaties or Friendship of such a Government, as in that which is conducted by a Number.

The single Head may be Sick; who is to conduct the Public Affairs in that Case? When he dies, who are to conduct till a new election? If a Council, why not continue them?¹⁵¹⁵

In the independent times of the ancient republics, no one thought of giving to a general a supreme command close to the seat of government for four years certain. Yet this and many other high prerogatives, internal and external, are given for this term to the American President … [I]t is sufficient reason for changing the present institution of a solitary president—And what reason is there per contra; what evil in a plural directory, gradually renewed? … The person at present chosen as vice-president would, in this case, no longer as now be an inert person … The executive government would no longer exhibit the fluctuating character of an individual, but approach nearer to the fixed abstract of the American nation.¹⁵¹⁶

Wednesday, July 18, 1787. Today, in London, U.S. Minister to Great Britain John Adams sends the second volume of his Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States to the printer.¹⁵¹⁷ Next Wednesday, John Jay will write him on the success of his first volume.

Your book circulates and does good. It conveys much information … when the defects of our national government are under consideration, and when the strongest arguments are necessary to remove prejudices …¹⁵¹⁸

Wednesday, August 1, 1787. Today, from New York, where he is trying, at his grandfather’s behest, to collect an old foundry debt from Francis Childs (the dissatisfied foundry customer), Benny writes his grandfather:

My father’s letter informs me also, to my great satisfaction, of the raising [up in Franklin Court] of the Printing Office & Foundry. In all probability we shall succeed … provided we make a few alterations in the several founts, so as to suit them a little better to the english taste … I’ll try to procure a specimen of them that you may judge for yourself of their merit …

Childs still keeps out of the way. I suspect on purpose to avoid my making any demands on him. I’ll use however my utmost activity to find him out and recover the debt …¹⁵¹⁹

Thursday, August 9, 1787. Today, at the Federal Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, James Madison records:

Mr. Govr. MORRIS moved to insert 14 instead of 4 years citizenship as a qualification for Senators: urging the danger of admitting strangers into our public Councils …

Doct. FRANKLIN was not against a reasonable time, but should be very sorry to see any thing like illiberality inserted into the Constitution … We found in the course of the Revolution that many strangers served us faithfully and that many natives took part against their Country. When foreigners, after looking about for some other Country in which they can obtain more happiness, give a preference to ours, it is a proof of attachment which ought to excite our confidence & affection.¹⁵²⁰

Friday, August 10, 1787. Today, at the Federal Constitutional Convention, property qualifications for elected officials are discussed. James Madison records:

Mr. PINCKNEY. The Committee as he had conceived were instructed to report the proper qualifications of property for the members of the Nat. Legislature … He was opposed to the establishment of an undue aristocratic influence in the Constitution, but he thought it essential that the members of the Legislature, the Executive, and the Judges, should be possessed of competent property to make them independent & respectable …

Doctr. FRANKLIN expressed his dislike of every thing that tended to debase the spirit of the common people … Some of the greatest rogues he was ever acquainted with were the richest rogues. We should remember the character which the Scripture requires in Rulers, that they should be men hating covetousness. This Constitution will be much read and attended to in Europe, and if it should betray a great partiality to the rich, will not only hurt us in the esteem of the most liberal and enlightened men there but discourage the common people from removing into this Country.¹⁵²¹

Sunday, August 12, 1787. Today, preparing for his final examination at the University of Pennsylvania,¹⁵²² Benny Bache turns eighteen years old. Earlier this month, he wrote his grandfather,

The Convention I hear is adjourned. [I]t must be no small comfort for you to have a short resting spell. I really think your illness was in great measure owing to the fatigue you suffered while it was sitting, but I hope this respite from that business will fortify your health …¹⁵²³

Monday, September 17, 1787. Today, at the Federal Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Ben Franklin delivers a speech:

I confess that I do not entirely approve of this Constitution …

I agree to this Constitution, with all its Faults, if they are such, because I think a General Government necessary for us, and there is no Form of Government but what may be a Blessing to the People if well administred …

The Opinions I have had of its Errors I sacrifice to the Public Good. I have never whisper’d a Syllable of them abroad. Within these Walls they were born, & here they shall die. If every one of us in returning to our Constituents were to report the Objections he has had to it … we might prevent its being generally received and thereby lose all …¹⁵²⁴

though it was not wholly entitled to his admiration, was yet preferable to any hereditary establishment.¹⁵²⁵

[Dr. Franklin] then moved that the Constitution be signed …” … by the unanimous consent of the States present the 17th of Sept. &c …”

This ambiguous form [“of the States”] had been drawn up … in order to gain the dissenting members and put into the hands of Doctor Franklin that it might have the better chance of success …

Mr. RANDOLPH then rose and, with an allusion to the observations of Doc. Franklin, apologized for his refusing to sign the Constitution …

The members then proceeded to sign the instrument.

Whilst the last members were signing it, Doct. FRANKLIN, looking towards the Presidents Chair at the back of which a rising sun happened to be painted, observed to a few members near him that Painters had found it difficult to distinguish in their art between a rising and a setting sun … I have, said he, often … looked at that [sun] behind the President without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting: But now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising sun …

The Constitution being signed by all the members except Mr. Randolph, Mr. Mason, and Mr. Gerry … the Convention dissolved itself by an Adjournment …¹⁵²⁶

George Washington has said virtually nothing at the Federal Constitutional Convention. John Adams will observe,

Washington got the reputation of being a great man because he kept his mouth shut.¹⁵²⁷

The convention has adopted John Adams’ constitution, not Ben Franklin’s. Ben Franklin, it is said, shed a tear when he gave his acquiescence.¹⁵²⁸

John Adams has, in the United States Senate, an aristocratic branch of government resembling the British House of Lords. The United States Senate admits very few members (only two from each state), who won’t have to answer for their actions very frequently (facing reelection only once each six years) and who are chosen, under the new federal constitution, not by the people but by state legislatures, where propertied state senates and wealthy state governors can generally control the choice. (Even should U.S. senators be elected directly by the people, the U.S. Senate would remain the handmaiden of aristocracy, because statewide elections require great wealth and reputation to reach an electorate whose size and dispersion won’t allow the voters to know the candidates personally.^1528a”) Finally, a majority of U.S. senators do not necessarily represent a majority of the people. Like England’s “rotten boroughs,” less populous states have a disproportionate and undemocratic role. John Adams:

Now, sir, let me ask you, whether you can discover no “resemblance of aristocracy in our form of government”? Are not great, and very great, important and essential powers entrusted to a few, a very few?

[The very small number of] senators, composed of two senators from each state, are an integral part of the legislature … These [few men] possess an absolute negative on all the laws of the nation. Nor is this all. These few, these very few … have an absolute negative upon the executive authority in the appointment of all officers … They, moreover, have an absolute negative on all treaties … They are also an absolute judicature in all impeachments …

How are these … senators appointed? Are they appointed by the people? Is the constitution of them democratical? They are chosen by the legislatures of the several states. And who are the legislatures of these separate states? Are they the people? No. They are a selection of the best men among the people, made by the people themselves … Yet there is something more. These legislatures are composed of two bodies, a senate and a house of representatives, each assembly differently constituted, the senate more nearly “resembling aristocracy” than the house. Senators of the United States are chosen, in some states, by a convention of both houses; in others, by separate, independent, but concurrent votes. The senates in the former have great influence, and often turn the vote; in the latter, they have an absolute negative in the choice.¹⁵²⁹

With each state possessing the same Senate vote as every other state, a citizen of one state may have ten times more representation in the United States Senate than the citizen of another state. This is not what Ben Franklin and Tom Paine mean by political “equality.”

The U.S. President has nearly monarchical power. In fact, the President can veto the decisions of a majority in the Congress. This is not the executive power that French democrats prefer. John Adams:

The Prince of Orange, William V., in a conversation with which he honored me … was pleased to say … “Sir, you have given yourselves a king under the title of president.”

Turgot, Rochefoucauld, and Condorcet, Brissot … and Mazzei were all offended that we have given too much eclat to our governors and presidents. It is true, and I rejoice in it, that our presidents, limited as they are, have more power, that is, executive power, than the stadtholders, the doges … or the kings of Lacedæmon or of Poland … [O]ur president’s office has “some resemblance of monarchy,” and God forbid that it should ever be diminished.

All these monarchical powers … are “deduced” from morality and liberty; but if they had been more deliberately considered and better digested, the morality and liberty would have been better secured, and of longer duration, if the senatorial limitation of them had been omitted.¹⁵³⁰

The President is also to be elected not by the people but by presidential electors who are to be chosen as state legislatures decide. Propertied state senates, wealthy governors, and aristocratic caucuses can determine, therefore, the presidential selection, much as they can determine the choice of U.S. Senators. John Adams explains:

[T]he electors are balanced against the people in the choice of the president. And here is a complication and refinement of balances, which, for any thing I recollect, is an invention of our own, and peculiar to us.

The state legislatures can direct the choice of electors by the people at large, or by the people in what districts they please, or by themselves, without consulting the people at all. However, all this complication of machinery … [has] not been sufficient to satisfy the people. They have invented a balance to all balances in their caucuses. We have congressional caucuses, county caucuses, city caucuses, district caucuses … and in these aristocratical caucuses, elections are decided.¹⁵³¹

The President and Senate are not hereditary, though some might find this preferable. They need not be, as John Adams writes John Taylor, Virginia’s farmer-philosopher:

You appear to me, in all your writings to consider hereditary descent as essential to monarchy and aristocracy … But is this correct … ? It may be hereditary, or it may be for life, or it may be for years or only for one year … Monarchy, in this view of it, resembles property. A landed estate may be for years, a year … or any number of years …¹⁵³²

The President and U.S. senators will have terms of office twice and thrice as long as members of the House of Representatives (and, “during good behavior,” can be reelected for life).

Friday, October 5, 1787. Today, an anonymous correspondent writes in a Philadelphia newspaper,

I am fearful that the principles of government inculcated in Mr. Adams’s treatise [Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States], and enforced in the numerous essays and paragraphs in the newspapers, have misled some well designing members of the late Convention …

Mr. Adams’s sine qua non of a good government is three balancing powers … Mr. Adams … has not been able to adduce a single instance of such a government; he indeed says that the British constitution is such in theory [only] … The state of society in England is much more favorable to such a scheme of government than that of America. There they have a powerful hereditary nobility, and real distinctions of rank and interests …

I shall now examine the construction of the proposed general government …

[W]e see the house of representatives are on the part of the people to balance the senate who I suppose will be composed of the better sort, the well born, &c … The senate … is constituted on the most unequal principles … The term and mode of its appointment will lead to permanency … The President, who would be a mere pageant of state unless he coincides with the views of the Senate, would either become the head of the aristocratic junto in that body or its minion; besides, their influence being the most predominant, could the best secure his reelection to office …

[T]he organization of this government … would be in practice a permanent ARISTOCRACY.¹⁵³³

At the time I left America (April, 1787), the Continental Convention that formed the Federal Constitution was on the point of meeting …

It was only to the absolute necessity of establishing some Federal authority … that an instrument so inconsistent … obtained a suffrage …

I declare myself opposed to several matters in the Constitution, particularly to the manner in which what is called the Executive is formed, and to the long duration of the Senate; and if I live to return to America [from France], I will use all my endeavors to have them altered. I have always been opposed to … what is called a single executive … A plurality [a council] is far better … [I]t is necessary to the manly mind of a republic that it loses the debasing idea of obeying an individual …

As the Federal Constitution is a copy, though not quite so base as the original, of the form of the British Government, an imitation of its vices was naturally to be expected …¹⁵³⁴

Had that Convention, or the law members thereof, known the origin of the negativing power used by kings of England, from whence they copied it, they must have seen the inconsistency of introducing it into an American Constitution …

At the time this Constitution was formed, there was a great departure from the principles of the Revolution among those who then assumed the lead, and the country was grossly imposed upon …

The [Pennsylvania] Constitution of 1776 was conformable to the Declaration of Independence and the Declaration of Rights, which the present [U.S.] Constitution is not; for it makes artificial distinctions among men in the right of suffrage, which the principles of equity know nothing of …¹⁵³⁵

Saturday, October 27, 1787. Today, the first of eighty-five articles titled “Federalist” and anonymously signed “Publius” appears in New York newspapers. These anonymous articles urge ratification of the new federal Constitution to resolve interstate issues of commerce and currency, international affairs, national defense, disputes between states, etc. Alexander Hamilton, the New York lawyer and Federalist leader who prefers a hereditary monarch and senators for life, wrote today’s Publius article, as he will write a majority of these so-called Federalist papers. John Jay (who, Tom Paine says, prefers “that the Senate should have been appointed for life”¹⁵³⁶) will also write some, though, for the next decade, Hamilton will be thought to be their exclusive author.¹⁵³⁷ Despite Hamilton’s preference for monarchy, he accepts the new Constitution for its promise of a strong central authority and for its checks and balances against Franklinian democracy. The Publius articles will run through next April, be copied by newspapers throughout the country (including the Pennsylvania Gazette), and be collected in two volumes under the title The Federalist.

Thursday, November 6, 1787. Today, a letter from “An Officer of the Late Continental Army” appears in a Philadelphia newspaper:

[T]he very men who advocate so strongly the new plan of government and support it with the infallibility of Doctor Franklin affect to despise the present constitution of Pennsylvania which was dictated and avowed by that venerable patriot. They are conscious that he does not entirely approve of the new plan, whose principles are so different from those he established in our ever-glorious constitution, and there is no doubt that it is the reason that has induced them to leave his respected name out of the ticket for the approaching election.¹⁵³⁸

Thursday, November 22, 1787. Today, Benny Bache graduates from the University of Pennsylvania and receives his Bachelor of Arts degree.¹⁵³⁹

Thursday, December 6, 1787. Today, a letter from “Z” appears in a Boston newspaper:

When I read Dr. FRANKLIN’S address to the President of the late Convention, in the last Monday’s Gazette, I was at a loss …

[S]ays the Doctor, “In these sentiments I agree to this Constitution, with all its faults, if they are such, because I think a general government necessary for us, and there is no FORM of government but what may be a blessing to the people, if well administered.” But are we to accept a form of government which we do not entirely approve of, merely in the hopes that it will be administered well? …

He evidently, I think, builds his hopes that the Constitution proposed will be a blessing to the people,—not on the principles of the government itself, but on the possibility that, with all its faults, it may be well administered … No wonder he shed a tear, as it is said he did, when he gave his sanction to the New Constitution.¹⁵⁴⁰

Saturday, December 29, 1787. Today, from Paris, Thomas Paine reports the reaction abroad to America’s new Constitution:

It seems a wish with all the Americans on this side of the water, except Mr. John Adams, that the President-General has not been perpetually eligible. Mr. Adams, who has some strange ideas, finds fault because the President is not for life, and because the Presidency does not devolve by hereditary succession.¹⁵⁴¹

Saturday, February 2, 1788. Today, from Paris, the Marquis de Lafayette writes his American comrade-in-arms Henry Knox:

We are Anxiously Waiting for the [ratifying] results of the State Conventions. The new [American] Constitution is an Admirable Work—, although I take the liberty to wish for some Amendments—[but] the point is to have it first adopted by Nine States—and then you may get the dissention by means of some improvements which Mr. Jefferson, Common Sense [Tom Paine], and myself are debating in a Convention of our own as honestly as if as if we were to decide upon it …¹⁵⁴²

I live in a good House which I built 25 Years ago … A dutiful and affectionate Daughter, with her Husband and Six Children compose my Family. The Children are all promising … The eldest, Benjamin, you may remember. He has finish’d his Studies at our University, and is preparing to enter into Business as a Printer, the original occupation of his Grandfather … I do not expect to continue much longer a Sojourner in this World, and begin to promise myself much Gratification of my Curiosity in soon visiting some other.¹⁵⁴³

Sunday, April 20, 1788. Today, John Adams departs England for New York aboard the Lucretia, Captain Callahan.¹⁵⁴⁴

If Pennsylvania’s Federalists can get their state to ratify the proposed British-style federal Constitution, they should also be able to get Pennsylvania to abandon Ben Franklin’s Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776, with its single-chamber legislature, and adopt John Adams’ more aristocratic British model.

Saturday, July 12, 1788. Today, from Paris, the Duc de La Rochefoucauld writes Benjamin Franklin:

While you are busy in these great matters, France, whom you left talking zealously of liberty for other nations, begins to think that a small portion of this same liberty would be a good thing for herself. Good works for the last thirty years, and your good example for the last fourteen, have enlightened us much …¹⁵⁴⁵

Thursday, July 31, 1788. Today, George Washington answers a letter from American Magazine publisher Noah Webster on the planning for Yorktown:

I … can only answer very briefly, and generally from memory: that a combined operation of the land and naval forces of France in America, for the year 1781, was preconcerted the year before … that it was determined by me (nearly twelve months beforehand) at all hazards to give out and cause it to be believed by the highest military as well as civil Officers that New York was the destined place of attack, for the important purpose of inducing the Eastern & Middle States to make greater exertions in furnishing specific supplies than they otherwise would have done, as well as for the interesting purpose of rendering the enemy less prepared elsewhere … I can add that it never was in contemplation to attack New York …¹⁵⁴⁶

Colonel [Timothy] Pickering made me a visit [on one occasion], and, finding me alone, spent a long evening with me. We had a multitude of conversation. I had then lately purchased [a book] … and there was a letter in it that he was extremely unhappy to see there. I asked what letter is that? Col. Pickering answered, “It is a letter from General Washington [of July 31, 1788]” …

Colonel Pickering said he was extremely sorry to see that letter in print. I asked him why? What do you see amiss in it? What harm will it do? Col. Pickering said, “It will injure General Washington’s character.” How will it injure him? Stratagems are lawful in war. Colonel Pickering answered me, “It will hurt his moral character. He has been generally thought to be honest … [T]hat letter is false, and I know it to be so. I knew him to be vain and weak and ignorant, but I thought he was well-meaning; but that letter is a lie, and I know it to be so.” I objected and queried.

Pickering explained and descended to particulars. He said it was false in Washington to pretend that he had meditated beforehand to deceive the enemy and to that end to deceive the officers and soldiers of his own army; that he had seriously meditated an attack upon New York for near a twelve month and had made preparations at an immense expense for that purpose. Washington never had a thought of marching to the southward, till the Count de Grasse’s fleet appeared upon the coast. He knew it, and Washington knew it; consequently that letter was a great disgrace …

[H]e dwelt … on Washington’s ignorance, weakness, and vanity. He was so ignorant that he had never read anything, not even on military affairs; he could not write a sentence of grammar, nor spell his words, &c., &c., &c. To this I objected. I had been in Congress with Washington in 1774 and in May and part of June 1775 and read all his letters to Congress in 1775, 1776, 1777 and had formed a quite different opinion of his literary talent. His letters were well written and well spelled. Pickering replied, “He did not write them, he only copied them.” Who did write them? “His secretaries and aides …”¹⁵⁴⁷

Friday, August 8, 1788. Today, in France, prompted by cries for popular participation in a decision to impose new taxes, the King of France calls for representatives of the three French estates (including the Third Estate, meaning the common people) to meet next May at the court at Versailles.¹⁵⁴⁸

Saturday, August 9, 1788. Today, from Paris, U.S. Minister to France Thomas Jefferson writes Virginia Governor James Monroe:

This nation is at present under great internal agitation. The authority of the crown on one part and that of the parliaments on the other … The moderation of government has … [yielded] daily one right after another to the nation. They have given them provincial assemblies which … stand somewhat in the place of our state assemblies. They have … acknowledged the king cannot lay a new tax without the consent of the states general, and they will call the states general the next year. The object of this body when met will be a bill of rights, … a national assembly … and some other matters of that kind. So that I think it probable this country will within two or three years be in enjoiment of a tolerably free constitution …

I heartily rejoice that 9 states have accepted the new [U.S.] constitution … This constitution forms a basis which is good, but not perfect. I hope the states will annex to it a bill of rights, securing those which are essential against the federal government; particularly freedom of religion, freedom of the press …¹⁵⁴⁹

Tuesday, August 12, 1788. Today, in Philadelphia, Benny Bache turns nineteen years old. Under the watchful eye of his grandfather, he manages the printing house and foundry his grandfather built.

Friday, October 24, 1788. Today, from Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin writes his friend M. le Veillard, now the Mayor of Passy:¹⁵⁵⁰

Never was any measure so thoroughly discussed as our proposed new [federal] Constitution … You seem to me to be so apprehensive about our President’s being perpetual. Neither he nor we have any such intention. What danger there may be of such an event we are all aware of … As to the two chambers [of the legislature], I am of your opinion that one alone would be better …¹⁵⁵¹

Saturday, January 24, 1789. Today, in France, the French government announces rules by which delegates to the Estates General will be elected and provides that each body of electors may send a cahier de doléances (list of grievances) with its delegates for the government to consider.¹⁵⁵²

Wednesday, February 4, 1789. Today, in the United States, presidential electors, chosen by state legislatures, cast their votes for President and Vice President of the United States.

I am too old to follow printing again myself, but, loving the business, I have brought up my grandson Benjamin to it, and have built and furnished a printing-house for him, which he now manages under my eye.¹⁵⁵³

Friday, March 13, 1789. Today, in Paris, Thomas Jefferson writes Francis Hopkinson with his concerns about the newly ratified Constitution of the United States:

I disapproved from the first moment … the want of a bill of rights to guard liberty against the legislative as well as executive branches of the [federal] government, that is to say, to secure freedom in religion, freedom of the press, freedom from monopolies, freedom from unlawful imprisonment, freedom from a permanent military, and a trial by jury in all cases determinable by the laws of the land. I disapproved also the perpetual reeligibility of the President … With respect to the declaration of rights, I suppose the majority of the United states are of my opinion … These my opinions I wrote within a few hours after I had read the constitution …

P. S. Affectionate respects to Dr. Franklin …¹⁵⁵⁴

Monday, April 6, 1789. Today, in New York, the electoral votes for President and Vice President of the United States are counted. Sixty-nine electors (chosen by the states) have unanimously cast one of their two electoral votes to make George Washington the first President of the United States. They have cast less than half (thirty-four) of their remaining votes for John Adams, yet that number is the second highest and so makes him Vice President. The Federalists assume power. Benny Bache will write:

Tall and imposing in his person, silent and reserved in his manners, opulent in his fortune, and attached by a high post to a successful cause: Mr. Washington … found indeed no rival to his reputation in his own particular army; for he had condemned his own army to such complete inaction or had allowed so little opportunity to those who commanded under him to become signalized (unless by misfortunes occasioned chiefly by his own bad arrangements) that he had become the sole remarkable person in it.¹⁵⁵⁵

Feeling no unkindness to G. Washington during the years of the war after 1777 and after the peace, I cordially joined in all the marks of gratitude and respect showed to him … At no time after the year 1777, however, did I believe him to be the “first in war” in our country. In addition to the testimonies of Stephen, Reed, and Mifflin, I had directly or indirectly the testimonies of [General Nathanael] Greene, [Alexander] Hamilton, Colonel [Tench], your son-in-law, and of many of the most intelligent officers who served under him to the contrary. Nor have I ever dared to join in the profane and impious incense which has been ever offered to his patriotism and moral qualities by many of our citizens. Were I to mention all that I have heard of his “heart,” and from some of his friends too, it would appear that he was not possessed of all the divine attributes that have been ascribed to him. But enough of this hateful subject! … I earnestly request that you destroy this letter as soon as you read it. I do not wish it to be known that General W.[ashington] was deficient …¹⁵⁵⁶

Except for Timothy Pickering’s indiscretions, Washington’s former army officers won’t tarnish his image. John Adams:

That Washington was not a schollar is certain. That he was too illiterate, unlearned, unread for his station and reputation is equally beyond dispute. He had derived little Knowledge from Reading, none from Travel …

The most experienced and scientific Officers about him, Lee, Gates, Steuben, Conway, etc. thought little of him: some of them despised him too much. Green, Knox, Clinton, without thinking highly of him … were his sworn and invariable Friends. Mifflin, one of his Generals, Hamilton, Burr have been very discreet, Pickering, his Quarter Master, has at times been outrageous …¹⁵⁵⁷

AN ADDRESS from the Subscribers, [certain] Members of the Legislature of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania …

Friends and Fellow-Citizens!

[A] majority of your present legislators have entered into a number of resolutions calculated to induce you to call a convention for the purpose of altering the constitution of this commonwealth … You can easily remember that this is the fourth attempt of the same aristocratic party to betray you into a voluntary surrender of your liberties by the alteration of your frame of government … [Y]ou can all see that the establishment of a second house of the legislature, in which the better born may be separated from the common countrymen in their deliberations, which is the avowed object of the opposers of your simple constitution … will greatly increase the expences and burdens of your government … [C]ailing a convention to alter your form of government [because] … “… it is in many cases contradictory to the federal constitution of the United States;” is equally frivolous …

THOMAS KENNEDY, THOMAS BEALE [&c.]

Like Benjamin Franklin, the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 will soon be gone.

Wednesday, April 15, 1789. Today, in New York City, John Fenno publishes his first issue of his Federalist newspaper, the Gazette of the United States.¹⁵⁵⁸

Tuesday, April 21, 1789. Today, at the opening session of the new United States Senate, Vice President John Adams addresses the members, including:

It is with satisfaction that I congratulate the people of America on the formation of a National Constitution … on the acquisition of a House of Representatives chosen by themselves, of a Senate thus composed by their own State Legislatures, and on the prospect of an executive authority in the hands of one whose portrait I shall not presume to draw.¹⁵⁵⁹

Friday, May 1, 1789. Today, in the U.S. Senate, Pennsylvania Senator William Maclay objects to the way John Adams refers to the President as “His most gracious …” William Maclay:

I must speak or nobody would. “Mr. President [of the Senate, John Adams], we have lately had a hard struggle for our liberty against kingly authority … The words [you have] prefixed to the President’s speech [“His most gracious speech”] are the same that are usually placed before the speech of his Britannic Majesty. I know they will give offence … I therefore move that they be struck out …”

Mr. Adams rose in his chair and expressed the greatest surprise that anything should be objected to on account of its being taken from the practice of that [British] Government under which we had lived so long and happily formerly … that, for his part he was one of the first in the late contest [the American Revolution] and, if he could have thought of this, he never would have drawn his sword …

The unequivocal declaration that he would never have drawn his sword, etc. has drawn my mind to the following remarks: That the motives of the actors in the late Revolution were various can not be doubted. The abolishing of royalty, the extinguishment of patronage and dependencies attached to that form of government, were the exalted motives of many … Yet there were not wanting a party whose motives were different. They wished for the … creation of a new monarchy in America, and to form niches for themselves in the temple of royalty.

This spirit manifested itself strongly among the officers at the close of the war … This spirit they developed in the Order of the Cincinnati, where I trust it will spend itself in a harmless flame and soon become extinguished. That Mr. Adams should, however, so unequivocally avow this motive … ¹⁵⁶⁰

Tuesday, May 5, 1789. Today, outside Paris, a French monarch addresses representatives of the common people (the Third Estate) for the first time in nearly three centuries. Twelve hundred deputies of the three Estates General of France (the clergy, nobility, and common people) are assembled for the opening ceremony at the Hall of Menus in the Versailles Palace. France’s middle class, through its representatives, must face the national debt which, as King Louis XVI explains, was accumulated “in an honorable cause.”¹⁵⁶¹

NEW-YORK, May 1 …
Yesterday [April 30] at two o’clock was solemnly Inaugurated into office, our ILLUSTRIOUS PRESIDENT.

The ceremony was begun by the following procession from the Federal State-House to the President’s house, viz.

Troop of Horse.

Assistants.

Committee of Representatives.

Committee of Senate.

Gentlemen to be admitted in the Senate Chamber.

Gentlemen in coaches.

Citizens on foot.

On their arrival, the President joined the procession in his carriage and four, and the whole moved through the principal streets to the State-House …

When the van reached the State-House, the troops opening their ranks formed an avenue, through which, after alighting, the President advancing to the door, was conducted to the Senate Chamber, where he was received by both branches of Congress, and by them accompanied to the balcony or outer gallery in front of the State-House, which was decorated with a canopy and curtains of red interstreaked with white for the formal occasion. In this manner the oath of office required by the constitution was administered by the Chancellor of this state, and the illustrious WASHINGTON thereupon declared by the said Chancellor PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

Today, May 6th, in Paris, Thomas Jefferson advises the Marquis de Lafayette, who is participating in the meeting of the Estates General, to disregard fellow noblemen and to serve the common people (the Third Estate):

Your principles are decidedly with the tiers etat [third estate], and your instructions against them … You will in the end go over wholly to the tiers etat, because it will be impossible for you to live in a constant sacrifice of your own sentiments to the prejudices of the Noblesse [nobility] …¹⁵⁶²

Saturday, May 9, 1789. Today, in the United States Senate, Pennsylvania Senator William Maclay records debate concerning a title for America’s chief executive:

At length the committee came in and reported a title—His Highness, the President of the United States of America and Protector of the Rights of the Same.

Mr. Few had spoke a word … I got up and expressed my opinion … Mr. Reed got up … Mr. Strong spoke … Mr. Dalton, after some time, spoke … Mr. Izard … was for a postponement. I could see that the President [of the Senate, John Adams] kindled at him …

Up now got the President [of the Senate, John Adams], and for forty minutes did he harangue us from the chair … On he got on his favorite topic of titles, and over the old ground of the immense advantage, of the absolute necessity of them.

Gentlemen [he said], I must tell you that it is you and the President that have the making of titles …¹⁵⁶³

John Adams will lead the Senate (the “aristocratic chamber”) to seek titles, but the House of Representatives (the “democratical chamber”) will oppose them. Following a deadlock of the two houses,¹⁵⁶⁴ no legislation for special titles will be adopted.

Monday, May 11, 1789. Today, in the United States Senate, John Adams suffers some embarrassment from the harangue he delivered Saturday on titles. Pennsylvania Senator William Maclay:

[S]undry gentlemen of the Senate [were] dissatisfied with our Vice-President … His grasping after titles has been observed by everybody. Mr. Izard, after describing his air, manner, deportment, and personal figure in the chair, concluded by applying the title of [His] Rotundity to him.¹⁵⁶⁵

Saturday, May 23, 1789. Today, U.S. Congressman James Madison of Virginia writes his friend, Thomas Jefferson, in Paris:

J. Adams espoused the cause of tides with great earnestness … The projected title was—His Highness the President of the U.S. and protector of their liberties. Had the project succeeded it would have … given a deep wound to our infant government.¹⁵⁶⁶

Thursday, June 4, 1789. Today, Dr. Benjamin Rush writes his friend John Adams:

I find you and I must agree not to disagree, or we must cease to discuss political questions …

Why should we accelerate the progress of our government towards monarchy? Every part of the conduct of the Americans tends to it. We shall have but one deliverer, one great, or one good man in our country. For my part, I cannot help ascribing the independence and new government to thousands …

I shall add … that I am as much a republican as I was in 1775 and 6, that I consider hereditary monarchy and aristocracy as rebellion against nature, that I abhor titles and everything that belongs to the pageantry of government …¹⁵⁶⁷

No! you and I will not cease to discuss political questions …

That every Part of the Conduct and Feelings of the Americans tends to that species of Republick called a limited Monarchy I agree. They were born and brought up in it …

I also am as much a Republican as I was in 1775. I do not “consider hereditary Monarchy or Aristocracy as Rebellion against Nature.” On the contrary, I esteem them both as Institutions of admirable wisdom and exemplary Virtue in a certain stage of Society in a great nation. The only Institutions that can possibly preserve the laws and Liberties of the People, and I am clear that America must resort to them as an asylum during discord, Seditions and Civil War, and that at no very distant period of time. I shall not live to see it—but you may. I think it therefore impolitick to cherish prejudices against Institutions which must be kept in view as the hope of our Posterity. I am by no means for attempting any such thing at present. Our country is not ripe for it in many respects, and it is not yet necessary, but our ship must ultimately land on that shore or be cast away.

I do not abhor Titles, nor the Pageantry of Government. If I did I should abhor Government itself, for there never was, and never will be, because there never can be, any government without Titles and Pageantry.¹⁵⁶⁸

Wednesday, June 17, 1789. Today, in France, representatives of the Third Estate (the common people) refuse to recognize a second “upper chamber” of nobility and clergy to veto their decisions. They declare that they constitute the sole National Assembly, that they fully represent the general will of the nation, that existing taxes are null and void until ratified by their assembly, and that the nobility and clergy must join them. As I write in my history,

From the moment of this event … may justly be dated the commencement of the revolution—when privileged orders and feudal distinctions—the stupendous fabric of ecclesiastical authority and the magnificence and power of the hoary monarchy of France, crumbled into ruin beneath the breath of a nation awakened into action …¹⁵⁶⁹

What do you mean … by Republican systems? … You seem determined not to allow a limited monarchy to be a republican system, which it certainly is, and the best that has ever been tryed …

How can you say that Factions have been few in America? Have they not rendered Property insecure? … have not Majorities voted property out of the pocketts of others into their own with the most decided Tyranny?¹⁵⁷⁰

Friday, June 26, 1789. Today, John Adams writes that government leaders must have titles:

Why will you afflict the modesty of any gentlemen by expecting that they will give themselves titles[?] They expect that you their creators will do them honor. They … will not be offended if you assert your own majesty by giving your own representatives in the executive authority the title of majesty. Many … think Highness not high enough, among whom I am one …¹⁵⁷²

You say you “abhor all titles.” … There is no person and no Society to whom Forms and Titles are indifferent … [W]e shall find national Titles essential to national Government … It is to make offices and laws respected; and not so much by the virtuous parts of the Community, as by the Profligate, the criminal and abandoned, who have little reverence for Reason, Right or Law, divine or human. They are overawed by Titles frequently, when Laws and Punishments cannot restrain them …¹⁵⁷³

Saturday, July 11, 1789. Today, from Paris, U.S. Minister to France Thomas Jefferson sends Tom Paine news of the French Revolution:

A conciliatory proposition from the king having been accepted by the Nobles … the Commons [Third Estate] voted it to be a refusal and proceeded to give a last invitation to the clergy and nobles to join them … This done, they declared themselves a National Assembly, resolved that all the subsisting taxes were illegally imposed … The aristocratical party made a furious effort … The Common chamber (that is the Tiers [Third Estate] and the majority of clergy who joined them) bound themselves together by a solemn oath never to separate till they had accomplished the work for which they met. Paris and Versailles were thrown into tumult and riot … 48 of the Nobles left their body and joined the common chamber … [T]he next day the king wrote a letter with his own hand to the Chamber of Nobles and the minority of the Clergy, desiring them to join immediately the common chamber. They did so, and thus the victory of the Tiers [Third Estate] became complete … The National Assembly then (for this is the name they take) … are now in complete and undisputed possession of the sovereignty. The executive and aristocracy are now at their feet: the mass of the nation, the mass of the clergy, and the army are with them. They have prostrated the old government and are now beginning to build a new one from the foundation.¹⁵⁷⁴

Tuesday, July 14, 1789. Today, in an act of violence that will come to symbolize the French Revolution, a throng of ordinary French citizens seize Paris’ old arsenal and prison (the Bastille), kill its guards, and release its prisoners. Henceforth, the French Revolution will be celebrated annually on July 14th (“Bastille Day”).¹⁵⁷⁵

Thursday, July 16, 1789. Today, Paris delegates to the French Assembly proclaim the hero of the American Revolution the Marquis de Lafayette as “commander of the militia” (now the National Guard).¹⁵⁷⁶ Lafayette has designed a new emblem of democracy for his militiamen, the king, and everyone else to wear. It’s a tricolored cockade. Colors are red, white, and blue.¹⁵⁷⁷

The people of Paris forced the prisons of St. Lazare, where they got some arms. On the 14th, they took the Invalids, and Bastille … The city committee is determined to embody 48,000 Bourgeois and named the Marquis de la Fayette commander in chief.¹⁵⁷⁸

Friday, July 24, 1789. Today, in the United States, John Adams writes Benjamin Rush:

I deny that there is or ever was in Europe a more free Republic than England or that any liberty on earth ever equalled English liberty … I agree with you that hereditary Monarchy and hereditary Aristocracy ought not yet to be attempted in this Country—and that three balanced Branches ought to be at stated Periods elected by the People. This must and will and ought to continue till intrigue and Corruption, Faction and Sedition shall appear in those elections to such a degree as to render hereditary Institutions a Remedy against a greater evil …

The Nation ought not to degrade its conductor by too low a Title … I totally deny that there is any Thing in Reason or religion against Titles proportioned to Rank and Truth, and I affirm that they are indispensably necessary to give Dignity and Energy to Government …

The most modest Title you can give [your national Conductor] in any reasonable Proportion to the wealth, Power, and population of this Country and to the constitutional authority and Dignity of his office is “His Majesty, the President.” This is my opinion, and I scorn to be hypocrite enough to disguise it.¹⁵⁷⁹

Wednesday, July 29, 1789. Today, from Paris, Thomas Jefferson answers James Madison’s letter of May 23rd:

The [American] President’s title as proposed by the senate was the most superlatively ridiculous thing I ever heard of. It is a proof the more of the justice of the character given by Doctr. Franklin of my friend [John Adams]: “Always an honest man, often a great one, but sometimes absolutely mad.” I wish [John Adams] could have been here [in Paris] during the late scenes. If he could then have had one fibre of aristocracy left in his frame, he would have been a proper subject for bedlam.¹⁵⁸⁰

Tuesday, August 4, 1789. Tonight, two noblemen, the Viscount Louis-Marie-Antoine de Noailles (Lafayette’s brother-in-law, who volunteered with him in the American Revolution) and the Duc de La Rochefoucauld (president of the Constituent Assembly, who first translated and published Ben Franklin’s Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 in France), both admirers of Franklin and America, lead the French Constituent Assembly to end feudalism and attendant seignorial privilege in France. Property will no longer create special rights or personal servitudes.¹⁵⁸¹ As I write in my history,

several of the nobility … offered, as a sacrifice on the altar of liberty, those privileges the late declaration had left them; declaring that they considered the title of a citizen of France as the most honourable dignity they could possess.¹⁵⁸²

Sunday, August 9, 1789. Today, in Paris, Thomas Jefferson passes on to William Carmichael, former assistant to the American commissioners, some news Jefferson received from America:

The Senate and Representatives differed [and deadlocked] about the title of the President … I hope the terms of Excellency, Honor, Worship, Esquire forever disappear from among us from that moment. I wish that “Mr.” would follow …

Congress were to proceed … to propose amendments to the new [U.S. federal] constitution. The principal would be the annexing a Declaration of Rights to satisfy the minds of all on the subject of their liberties …

To detail you the events of this country … The [French] legislature will certainly have no hereditary branch, probably not even a select one (like our Senate) … [V]ery many are for a single house, and particularly the Turgoists … Their representation will be an equal one, in which every man will elect …¹⁵⁸³

Wednesday, August 12, 1789. Today, in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin Bache turns twenty years old. He spends much time at the bedside of his eighty-four-year-old grandfather, transcribing the last chapter of Ben Franklin’s autobiography.¹⁵⁸⁴

Sunday, August 23, 1789. Today, in France, the French Constituent Assembly sets forth principles to guide a new French constitution. As I write in my history,

It was on the twenty-third that the majority completed the decrees which were to form the foundation of a constitution for France and condensed them for general information in the following important nineteen resolutions—1st. That all power originally was derived from the people, and would continue to flow from that source alone … 4th. That the national assembly shall be permanent. 5th. That the national assembly shall be composed of only one chamber. 6th. That the return [term] of the deputies to the national assemblies shall be for two years … 10th. The king can refuse his assent to any act of the legislative body. 11th. In that case where the king shall interpose his negative, that negative shall be considered only as suspensive. 12th. The negative of the king shall cease to exist on the election of the national assembly which next follows that in which the law was proposed. 5th. No tax or contribution in kind, or in money, can be levied … by any other means than by an express decree of the assembly …¹⁵⁸⁵

Thursday, August 27, 1789. Today, in Paris, a majority of the new French Constituent Assembly adopts a “Declaration of the Rights of Man” which the Marquis de Lafayette drafted with the help of U.S. Minister to France Thomas Jefferson.¹⁵⁸⁶ From the “Rights of Man” (as I report in my history):

The Constitution of the United States of America has yet to have such a Declaration or Bill of Rights to limit the power of government.

Friday, August 28, 1789. Today, in Paris, U.S. Minister to France Thomas Jefferson writes Congressman James Madison:

Their declaration of rights is finished … I think they will … take up [the plan] of the constitution … [O]urs has been professedly their model …

It is impossible to desire better dispositions toward [the United States] than prevail in this [French] assembly. Our proceedings have been viewed as a model for them on every occasion … and treated like that of the bible, open to explanation but not to question. I am sorry … anything should come from us to check it.

The placing them on a mere [equal] footing with the English will have this effect. When, of two nations, one has spent her blood and money to save us … while the other has moved heaven, earth, and hell to exterminate us in war … to place these two nations on a[n equal] footing is to give a great deal more to one than to the other, if the maxim be true that to make unequal quantities equal, you must add more to the one than the other. To say, in excuse, that gratitude is never to enter into the motives of national conduct is to revive a principle which has been buried … with its kindred principles of the lawfulness of assassination, poison, perjury, &c … I know but one code of morality for man whether acting singly or collectively …¹⁵⁸⁸

Thursday, September 10, 1789. Today, the French Constituent Assembly votes 849 to 89 to have a single-chamber legislature (simply to represent the people) à la Franklin and refuses to have a second, “upper” chamber (like the British House of Lords) to represent nobility or property.¹⁵⁸⁹

Friday, September 11, 1789. Today, the French Constituent Assembly votes (673 to 325) to subordinate the wishes of the King of France to the wishes of the single-chamber national legislature, making his veto of legislation subject to override by a simple majority vote in two succeeding legislatures.¹⁵⁹⁰

Wednesday, September 16, 1789. Today, from New York, unaware that France has already decided on a single-chamber legislature, John Adams writes a French nobleman, Count Sarsfield:

We are very anxious about the state of Europe and that of France in particular. Will the States general claim authority to controul the Crown, or will they be contented to advise it? Mixed in one assembly with the commons, will not the nobles be lost? Out numbered and out acted on all occasions? If in earnest a constitution is to be established, you must separate the Nobles by themselves, and the Commons must be placed in another assembly … In short, your government must have three branches and your Executive and Legislative must be ballanced against each other, or you will have confusions. Let my acquaintance, the Marquis of Condorcet, say what he will …¹⁵⁹¹

Friday, September 18, 1789. Today, in New York, U.S. Senator William Maclay writes in his journal:

By this and yesterday’s papers France seems traveling to the birth of freedom. Her throes and pangs of labor are violent. God give her a happy delivery! Royalty, nobility, and vile pageantry, by which a few of the human race lord it over and tread on the necks of their fellowmortals, seem likely to be demolished with their kindred Bastille, which is said to be laid in ashes. Ye gods, with what indignation do I review the late attempt of some creatures among us to revive the vile machinery! O Adams, Adams, what a wretch art thou!¹⁵⁹²

Saturday, September 26, 1789. Today, with lower-class mob violence (against bread shortages, salt prices, unsafe mining conditions, vestiges of aristocracy, etc.) continuing to increase in Paris and the rest of France, Thomas Jefferson leaves for the United States. He will receive and accept President Washington’s invitation to become the first U.S. Secretary of State.¹⁵⁹³

Thursday, November 5, 1789. Today, in Philadelphia, an aged and ill Benjamin Franklin writes an English correspondent,

I hope the fire of liberty, which you mention as spreading itself over Europe, will act upon the inestimable rights of man, as common fire does upon gold; purify without destroying them; so that a lover of liberty may find a country in any part of Christendom.¹⁵⁹⁴

Saturday, November 21, 1789. Today, Pennsylvania opens a state constitutional convention to revise Ben Franklin’s Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776. With the new federal Constitution as their model, influential Pennsylvanians want to divide the Pennsylvania state legislature between an upper house to represent property and a lower house to represent the people. Despite illness, Ben Franklin publishes a pamphlet this month that argues for retaining his Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776:

I am sorry to see the Signs … of a Disposition among some of our People to commence an Aristocracy by giving the Rich a predominancy in Government, a Choice peculiar to themselves in one half of the Legislature to be proudly called the UPPER House, and the other Branch, chosen by the Majority of the People, degraded by the Denomination of the LOWER; and giving this upper House a Permanency of four Years and but two to the lower …¹⁵⁹⁵

As Pennsylvanians prepare to abandon Franklinian democracy, Ben Franklin suffers gastrointestinal distress and takes to bed. During his remaining months, his grandson, Benny Bache, will remain at his bedside to transcribe his autobiographical recollections.¹⁵⁹⁶

Friday, December 4, 1789. Today, from his bed, Ben Franklin writes his British friend David Hartley,

The Convulsions in France are attended with some disagreeable Circumstances; but if by the Struggle she obtains and secures for the Nation its future Liberty, and a good Constitution, a few Years’ Enjoyment of those Blessings will amply repair all the Damages their Acquisition may have occasioned. God grant that not only the love of liberty, but a thorough knowledge of the rights of man, may pervade all Nations of the Earth, so that a Philosopher may set his Foot anywhere on its Surface, and say, “This is my Country.”¹⁵⁹⁷

Sunday, December 6, 1789. Today, Benny Bache writes his future wife, Peggy Mar koe:

You may remember that, from the first of our more intimate Acquaintance with one another, I promised to make known … every Circumstance that might in the least tend to throw some light on my Character, disposition, Circumstances, Expectations, &c …

In conversing with a Friend of yours … [she] betrayed an idea that I was or was to be a Man of Fortune … By my conversation, I found my excellent Grand Father the Source of this ideal … on supposition of my being a Favorite with him …

The trouble [my Grand Father] took in my Education, the circumstance of my being under his care since seven years of age, etc. were undoubtedly Grounds for the supposition to people in General, but to those who are acquainted with Dr. F—– would rather give Rise to an opinion directly contrary; the true one that ought to be entertained by those who wish not to be disappointed. The profession [of printing] I have been brought up in and am intended for might have convinced many that I was never intended to be made a Man of Fortune, but rather to endeavor at becoming one …

The Position of the Building erected for containing my Printing Materials … might have also had an improper influence [in creating the false impression] …¹⁵⁹⁸

Thursday, December 24, 1789. Today, the French Constituent Assembly takes a giant step toward religious freedom by decreeing non-Catholics (except Jews) the same civil rights (to vote, to hold office, to become a military officer, etc.) as Catholics.¹⁵⁹⁹

Tuesday, February 2, 1790. Today, Vice President John Adams writes a Pennsylvania friend,

I congratulate you on the prospect of a new Constitution for Pensilvania. Poor France I fear will bleed for too exactly copying your old one.

When I see such miserable crudities approved [in France] by such Men as Rochefoucauld and Condorcet, I am disposed to think very humbly of human understanding. ¹⁶⁰⁰

Monday, February 15, 1790. Today, as President of the Society for the Abolition of Slavery, Benjamin Franklin submits a memorial against slavery to the United States Senate.¹⁶⁰¹ A Pennsylvania Senator records,

Attended in Senate. Our Vice-President [Mr. Adams] produced the petitions and memorials of the Abolition Society [against Slavery]. He did it rather with a sneer … Izard, in particular, railed at the society; called them fanatics, etc. Butler made a personal attack on Dr. Franklin, and charged the whole proceeding to anti-Federal motives; that the Doctor, when member of the [constitutional] convention, had consented to the Federal compact. Here he was acting in direct violation of it. The whole business was designed to overturn the Constitution …¹⁶⁰²

Saturday, February 27, 1790. Today, Vice President John Adams writes Francis Adrian Vanderkemp, his Mennonist pastor friend from the Netherlands who translated Adams’ Defence of the Constitutions … into Dutch:

I can say for myself, and I believe for most others who have been called “Leading Men” in the late revolution, that we were compelled against our inclinations to cut off the hands which united us to England and that we should have been very happy to have had our grievances resolved, and our dependence continued …

I will candidly confess that an hereditary Senate without an hereditary Executive would diminish the Prerogatives of the president and the liberties of the people. But I contend that hereditary descent in both when controlled by an independent representation of the people is better than corrupted, turbulent and bloody elections; and the knowledge you have of the human heart will concur with your knowledge of the history of nations to convince you that elections of Presidents and Senators cannot be long conducted in a populous, oppulent, and commercial nation without corruption, sedition, and civil war.¹⁶⁰³

The CONSTITUTION of the Commonwealth of PENNSYLVANIA, as altered and amended by the CONVENTION … and by them proposed for the consideration of their constituents.

ARTICLE I.

Sect. I. The legislative power of this commonwealth shall be vested in a General Assembly which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.

Sect. 2. The Representatives shall be chosen annually …

Sect. 5. The Senators shall be chosen for four years … and shall never be … more than one third the number of Representatives …

Sect. 22. Every bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate shall, before it becomes a law, be presented to the Governor … [I]f he shall not approve it, he shall return it … If two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the bill … [a]nd if approved by two-thirds of [the Senate] … it shall be a law …

ARTICLE II.

Sect. I. The Supreme Executive Power of the commonwealth shall be vested in a Governor … Sect. 3. The Governor shall hold his office during three years …

Sect. 7. He shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of this commonwealth …

Sect. 8. He shall appoint all officers …

By this new Pennsylvania Constitution of 1790, Pennsylvania’s government will now resemble the British model that Vice President John Adams so favors. Though Pennsylvania will not institute property qualifications for voters or for office holders, the larger constituencies and longer terms of office for Pennsylvania state senators and for the Pennsylvania governor (as for U.S. senators and for the U.S. President) will have the same effect. The larger a candidate’s constituency, the more wealth, reputation, and influence he must have to become known to his constituents. The longer an officeholder’s term of office, the less is he immediately accountable to the people and the more he becomes susceptible to wealthy interest groups. Though Pennsylvania continues to have a lower (“people’s”) house of representatives, with small voting districts and annual elections, this assembly will be subject to veto by an independent governor and by the state senate. Franklin’s vision of democratic government has died in Pennsylvania. Soon too will Franklin. Tom Paine:

The [Pennsylvania] Constitution formed by the [Pennsylvania] Convention of 1776, of which Benjamin Franklin (the greatest and most useful man America has yet produced) was president, had many good points in it which were overthrown by the [Pennsylvania] Convention of 1790 under the pretense of making the Constitution conformable to that of the United States …

Investing any individual, by whatever name or official title he may be called, with a negative over the formation of the laws is copied from the English Government, without ever perceiving the inconsistency and absurdity of it when applied to the representative system …

The complaint respecting the Senate is the length of its duration, being four years. The sage Franklin has said, “Where annual election ends, tyranny begins” …¹⁶⁰⁴

With respect to the French revolution, be assured that every thing is going on right. Little inconveniences, the necessary consequences of pulling down and building up, may arise; but even these are much less than ought to have been expected. Our friend, the Marquis [de Lafayette] is … acting a great part. I take over with me to London the key to the Bastile, which the Marquis entrusts to my care as his present to General Washington and which I shall send by the first American vessel to New York. It will be yet some months before the new Constitution will be completed, at which time there is to be a procession, and I am engaged to return to Paris to carry the American flag.¹⁶⁰⁵

Saturday, March 27, 1790. Today, Vice President Adams writes Francis Adrian Vanderkemp, his friend from the Netherlands:

With all your compliments and elogiums of my “Defence [of the Constitutions of Government of the United States],” would you believe that neither the whole nor any part of it has been translated into French? … No! The popular leaders have views that one assembly may favor but three branches would obstruct. Such is the lot of humanity. A Demagogue may hope to overawe a majority in a single elective assembly, but may dispair of overawing a majority of independent hereditary Senators, especially if they can be reinforced in case of necessity by an independent executive …

Our experience in America corresponds … The last year, a writer in Boston under the signature of Laro attacked the Governor, Mr. Hancock in a course of Newspapers … [A]n accident might have blown up these coals to aflame, and produced broken heads …

In the national election this last year, there was a very subtle but a very daring intrigue … Letters were written to the southern states representing that the Northern States would not vote for Washington and … that Adams was likely to have a unanimous vote, and Washington not; the effect was that [the southern states did not vote for Adams and that] Adams had not even a majority for fear of his having unanimity. The tendency of these things to confusion is obvious …

I confess Sir I can think of no remedy, but another [Constitutional] Convention. When bribery, corruption, intrigue, maneuver, violence, force, shall render elections too troublesome and too dangerous, another Convention must be called, who may prolong the period of Senators from six years to twelve or twenty or thirty or forty or for life; or if necessary propose the establishment of hereditary Senators … Let the people of [a state] elect their number of Senators or authorize the President to appoint them to hold their places for life descendible to their Eldest male heirs … And if the election of President should become terrible, I can conceive of no other method to preserve liberty, but to have a national convention called for the express purpose of electing an hereditary President. These appear to me the only hopes of our posterity …¹⁶⁰⁶

Sunday, April 4, 1790. Today, Vice President Adams writes his friend Benjamin Rush:

The History of our [American] Revolution will be one continued Lye from one end to the other. The essence of the whole will be that Dr. Franklin’s electrical Rod smote the Earth and out sprung General Washington. That Franklin electrified him with his rod—and thence forward these two conducted all the Policy, Negotiations, Legislatures and War … If this Letter should be preserved, and read in an hundred years hence, the Reader will say “the envy of this J. A. could not bear to think of the Truth …” …

Limited Monarchy is founded in Nature. No Nation can adore more than one Man at a time. It is a happy Circumstance that the object of our Devotion [George Washington] is so well deserving of it …

If I said in 1777 that “we should never be qualified for Republican Government till we were ambitious to be poor” I meant to … say that No Nation under Heaven ever was, now is, or ever will be qualified for a Republican Government, unless you mean … resulting from a Ballance of three powers, the Monarchical, Aristocratical, and Democratical. I meant more, and I repeat more explicitly, that Americans are particularly unfit for any Republic but the Aristo-Democratical-Monarchy …¹⁶⁰⁷

In my notebook, I have recorded a conversation that passed between Mr. Jefferson and myself on the 17th of March, of which you were the principal subject. We both deplored your attachment to monarchy and both agreed that you had changed your principles since the year 1776…¹⁶⁰⁸

Saturday, April 17, 1790. Today, at his home in Franklin Court, Dr. Benjamin Franklin dies at the age of eighty-five. His twenty-year-old grandson, Benjamin Franklin Bache, is at his side.¹⁶⁰⁹ Benny Bache:

He has left us, I hope, to live in a happier Country. If he only sleeps, he has forgotten his pain & sleeps quietly.—After an illness of about two Weeks added to his old Complaint he expired … [H]e could not resist; he struggled with death, however, longer than his Friends could wish.

Ten Days before his Death, when the Disorder was near its Height, he called me to his Bedside … From that day he grew worse & worse, and took but little Food.—In the morning of the 17th of April he refused all sustenance by shaking his head, for the Day before he spoke for the last time.—Whenever I approached his Bed, he held out his hand & having given him mine, he would take & hold it for some time … He did not change his Position that Day. And at a quarter before eleven at Night, his breathing was quicker & more feeble … This alarmed me and occasioned my calling my Father … but he came too late. My Grand Father gave a Sigh, breathed a few seconds & died without Pain.¹⁶¹⁰

Thursday, April 22, 1790. Today, in the U.S. House of Representatives, the Annals of Congress report:

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

Mr. MADISON rose and addressed the House as follows;

Mr. Speaker: As we have been informed, not only through the channel of the newspapers but by a more direct communication, of the decease of an illustrious character whose … patriotic exertions have contributed in a high degree to the independence and prosperity of this country … I therefore move …

“The House being informed of the decease of BENJAMIN FRANKLIN … that the members wear the customary badge of mourning for one month.”

Which was agreed to.¹⁶¹²

Tuesday, April 27, 1790. Today, Thomas Jefferson writes William Short, American chargé d’affaires in Paris:

You will see, in the newspapers which accompany this, the details of Dr. Franklin’s death. The house of representatives resolved to wear mourning and do it. The Senate neither resolved it nor do it.¹⁶¹³

Under the leadership of Vice President John Adams (who presides as Senate president), the U.S. Senate (the aristocratic branch of government that Benjamin Franklin opposed) refuses to mourn Franklin’s death. President Washington also refuses to let the executive branch mourn.¹⁶¹⁴ Only the “People’s House” (the House of Representatives) and the people themselves will mourn the loss of their champion.

Today, April 28th, the Gazette of the United States publishes the first of thirty-two articles to appear through next April under the title “Discourses on Davila.”¹⁶¹⁵ In these articles, Vice President of the United States John Adams resumes his attack on Franklinian democracy which the Marquis de Condorcet (who is an honorary citizen of New Haven, Connecticut) has championed in his recently published Letters from a Common Citizen of New Haven to a Citizen of Virginia on the Uselessness of Dividing Legislative Power between Several Bodies.¹⁶¹⁶ In this work, Condorcet urges France to adopt a single-chamber legislature with a plural executive chosen by and accountable to that legislature. In today’s “Discourse on Davila,” Vice President Adams answers Condorcet:

[I]f the common people are advised to aim at collecting the whole sovereignty in single national assemblies, as they are by the Duke de la Rochefoucauld and the Marquis of Condorcet; or at the abolition of the regal executive authority; or at a division of the executive power, as they are by a posthumous publication of the Abbé de Mably, they will fail of their desired liberty … [I]t is a sacred truth, and as demonstrable as any proposition whatsoever, that a sovereignty in a single assembly must necessarily, and will certainly be exercised by a majority, as tyrannically as any sovereignty was ever exercised by kings or nobles.¹⁶¹⁷

If the people have not the understanding and public virtue enough, and will not be persuaded of the necessity of supporting an independent executive authority, an independent senate, and an independent judiciary power, as well as an independent house of representatives, all pretensions to a balance are lost, and with them all hopes of security to our dearest interests, all hopes of liberty.¹⁶¹⁸

Saturday, May 1, 1790. Today, from London, Tom Paine writes President George Washington:

Our very good friend, the Marquis de Lafayette, has intrusted to my care the key of the Bastille, and a drawing handsomely framed, representing the demolition of that detestable prison, as a present to your Excellency … I feel myself happy in being the person through whom the Marquis has conveyed this early trophy of the spoils of despotism, and the first ripe fruits of American principles transplanted into Europe …

I returned from France to London about five weeks ago; and I am engaged to return to Paris, when the Constitution shall be proclaimed, and to carry the American flag in the procession. I have not the least doubt of the final and complete success of the French Revolution. Little ebbings and flowings, for and against, the natural companions of revolutions, sometimes appear, but the full current of it is, in my opinion, as fixed as the Gulf Stream …¹⁶¹⁹

Saturday, May 22, 1790. Today, in the French Constituent Assembly, as I write in my history,

it was decreed that the right of peace and war belonged to the nation, and that war could not be declared but by a decree of the national assembly …¹⁶²⁰

The great and perpetual distinction in civilized societies has been between the rich who are few and the poor who are many … The inference of wisdom is that neither poor nor the rich should ever be suffered to be masters. They should have equal power … The French must finally become my disciples …

In this country the pendulum had vibrated too far to the popular side, driven by men without experience or judgment, and horrid ravages have been made upon property by arbitrary multitudes or majorities of multitudes. France has severe trials to endure from the same cause. Both have found, or will find, that to place property at the mercy of a majority who have no property is “committere agnum lupo.” My fundamental maxim of government is never to trust the lamb to the wolf.¹⁶²¹

Today, in Paris, on the floor of the French Constituent Assembly, the Comte de Mirabeau announces Franklin’s death:

Franklin is dead. He has returned to the bosom of the Divinity, the genius who freed America and shed torrents of light upon Europe …

The sciences owe Franklin their tears, but it is Liberty—it is the French people who should mourn him most deeply; the liberty that we enjoy he aided us to attain, and the sparks of his genius glow in the Constitution that is our boast …

Congress has ordered in the fourteen confederated states a mourning period of two months …

Would it not be worthy of you, gentlemen, to … participate in this homage rendered before the entire world to the rights of man and to the philosopher who has contributed most to spreading them throughout the world … Free and enlightened Europe owes at least a token of remembrance and regret to one of the greatest men who have ever served philosophy and liberty.

I propose that it be decreed that the National Assembly for three days wear mourning for Benjamin Franklin.¹⁶²²

The Duc de La Rochefoucauld seconds Mirabeau’s motion. The French Constituent Assembly will notify the U.S. Congress of its decision to mourn Franklin’s death.¹⁶²³ Thomas Jefferson:

No greater proof of his estimation in France can be given than the late letters of condoleance on his death from the National assembly of that country and the community of Paris, to the President of the U.S. and to Congress, and their public mourning on that event. It is I believe the first instance of that homage having been paid by a public body of one nation to a private citizen of another.¹⁶²⁴

This year, the Marquis de Luchet publishes a list of those responsible for the French Revolution. He writes:

FRANKLIN. It is impossible to give the tableau of a revolution without including this immortal name. This philosophical republican enlightened the heroes of liberty. Before him, the majority of publicists had reasoned like educated slaves of their masters; like Montesquieu [who argued for checks and balances in government] they used all their wit to justify the status quo and to coat our institutions with deceptive poison; he alone, studying the natural rights of man, sweeping away the dust and sand, that is, the external circumstances of weakness and poverty, of inequality, of all kinds of aristocracy, discovered the foundations of society; he demonstrated that the edifice was unsound wherever it was not based on the common accord of men and reciprocal agreements. No, one may never speak of liberty without paying a tribute of homage to this immortal defender of human nature.¹⁶²⁵

Sunday, June 13, 1790. Today, in France, in an address before the Society of 1789, the Duc de La Rochefoucauld pays tribute to Benjamin Franklin:

[T]he world has not [adequately] reflected on Franklin’s bold legislative effort. Having declared their independence and placing themselves in rank of nations, each of the different colonies, today the United States of America, chose a new structure of government. Maintaining their old admiration for the British constitution, nearly all of these new states composed their governments with the same British elements, variously modified. FRANKLIN alone, ridding the political machine of its numerous wheels, of the admired counterweights which complicated it, proposed to reduce it to the simplicity of a single legislative body. This grand idea frightened the Pennsylvania legislators, but the philosopher reassured half and caused the adoption of this principle, which THE FRENCH NATIONAL ASSEMBLY has made the basis for the French constitution.¹⁶²⁶

Saturday, June 19, 1790. Today, in France, the Journal de la Société de 1789 publishes the Duc de La Rochefoucauld’s explanation of why he prefers a single-chamber legislature:

Franklin was the first to propose to put the idea into practice: the respect the Pennsylvanians bore him made them adopt it, but it alarmed the other states and even the constitution of Pennsylvania has since been changed. In Europe this opinion has had more success … I dare admit that I was one of the small number of those who was struck by the beauty of the simple plan which he had delineated and that I did not need to change my opinion when the judgment of the profound thinkers and eloquent orators who have treated the subject before the National Assembly led that body to establish as a principle of the French constitution that the legislation shall be entrusted to a single body of representatives … France will not retrogress toward a more complicated system, and doubtless she will have the glory of maintaining the one she has established.¹⁶²⁷

Other leaders of the French Revolution testify to their admiration for Franklin’s Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776. Ben Franklin’s friend,¹⁶²⁸ Jacques-Pierre Brissot de Warville:¹⁶²⁹

I regard the Constitution of Pennsylvania as the model of an excellent government …

The code of Pennsylvania will prove that America had philosophers and statesmen when she threw off the yoke of Great Britain …

There they exclude forever the authority of a single person. There they confine the power to make laws to a general assembly of the representatives of the state and give the right to enforce the laws to a removable council …¹⁶³⁰

Today, the French Constituent Assembly abolishes all titles and coats of arms in France.¹⁶³¹ As I write in my history,

While titles and distinctions remained … the constitution and its preamble appeared but an unsubstantial theory … M. Foucault opposed the motion, as tending to destroy the most powerful motives to emulation—“What he asked would you do with the man whose brevet recited—that he was created a count for saving the state?” M. La Fayette instantly replied, “I would omit the word ‘created a count’ and insert only that he had saved the state.” … [T]he viscount of Noaille concurred … “We do not speak of … the marquis Franklin, but of Benjamin Franklin …” … Thus in one moment were three hundred thousand persons torn from those proud titles inherited or acquired which had monopolized into their hands all the places of trust and honor of a great nation …¹⁶³²

Saturday, July 24, 1790. Today, in France, the Journal de la Société de 1789 attacks the idea of a hereditary hierarchy in France by publishing Ben Franklin’s letter against George Washington’s “Order of the Cincinnati.” In the coming years of the French Revolution, other French journals will also cite and translate Franklin’s letter.¹⁶³³

Thursday, August 12, 1790. Today, Benny Bache turns twenty-one years old. He is now of age. He will preside over the printing house his grandfather built. He has already announced plans to publish a newspaper.¹⁶³⁴

Saturday, October 2, 1790. Today, Benny Bache publishes the first issue of the Philadelphia Aurora.¹⁶³⁵

Friday, December 10, 1790. Today, U.S. Senator William Maclay of Pennsylvania writes in his journal:

This day was unimportant in the Senate …

A packet arrived a few days ago from France, directed to the President and members of Congress … It contained a number of copies of the eulogiums delivered on Dr. Franklin by order of the [French] National Assembly. Our Vice-President [John Adams] looked over the letter some time and then began reading the additions that followed the President [of the French National Assembly]’s name. These appellations of office he chose to call “titles” and then said some sarcastic things against the [French] National Assembly for abolishing titles. I could not help remarking that this whole matter was received and transacted with a coldness and apathy that astonished me; and the letter and all the pamphlets were sent down to the [House of] Representatives as if unworthy of our body [the Senate].¹⁶³⁶

Wednesday, January 26, 1791. Today, the U.S. Senate receives a message from the president of the French National Assembly. The Annals report:

A message was received from … the President of the National Assembly of France …

Mr. President,

The National Assembly has worn, during three days, mourning for Benjamin Franklin …

The name of Benjamin Franklin will be immortal in the records of Freedom and Philosophy …

It will be remembered that every success which he obtained in his important negociations [in France] was applauded and celebrated … all over France as so many crowns conferred on genius and virtue.

Even then the sentiment of our rights existed in the bottom of our souls …

At last the hour of the French has arrived;—we love to think that the citizens of the United States have not regarded with indifference our first steps towards liberty …

We hope they will learn with interest the funeral homage which we have rendered to the Nestor of America.

SIEYES, President.¹⁶³⁷

The U.S. Senate responds coldly to the message! U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania William Maclay writes today in his journal:

A letter from the National Assembly of France, on the death of Franklin, was communicated from them and received [by the Senate] with coldness that was truly amazing. I can not help painting to myself the disappointment that awaits the French patriots … anticipating the complimentary echoes of our answers, when we, cold as clay, care not a fig for them, Franklin or freedom. We deserve—what do we deserve? To be d—–d!¹⁶³⁸

On the death of Dr. Franklin, the King & Convention of France went into mourning. So did the House of Reps. of the U.S.: the Senate refused. I proposed to General Washington that the executive department should wear mourning; he declined it …¹⁶³⁹

Wednesday, March 16, 1791. Today, Tom Paine’s extraordinary book The Rights of Man (Part One) appears in the bookstalls of England.¹⁶⁴⁰ Excerpts:

As it was impossible to separate the military events which took place in America from the principles of the American Revolution, the publication of those events in France necessarily connected themselves with the principles which produced them. Many of the facts were in themselves principles; such as the declaration of American independence and the treaty of alliance between France and America which recognized the natural right of man and justified resistance to oppression. The then Minister of France, Count Vergennes was not the friend of America … Count Vergennes was the personal and social friend of Dr. Franklin; and the Doctor had obtained, by his sensible gracefulness, a sort of influence over him …

The situation of Dr. Franklin as Minister from America to France should be taken into the chain of circumstances … He was not the diplomatist of a court, but of a MAN. His character as a philosopher had been long established, and his circle of society in France was universal.

Count Vergennes resisted for a considerable time the publication in France of the American [state] Constitutions, translated into the French language; but even in this he was obliged to give way to public opinion and a sort of propriety in admitting to appear what he had undertaken to defend. The American [state] Constitutions were to liberty what a grammar is to language: they define its parts of speech and practically construct them into syntax …

When the war closed a vast reinforcement to the cause of liberty spread itself over France by the return of the French officers and soldiers [from America] …

[French Finance Minister] M. Necker was displaced in May, 1781 … [T]he revenue of France … was become unequal to the expenditure … because the expenses [with the cost of helping the Americans] had increased; and this was the circumstance which the nation laid hold of to bring forward a revolution.¹⁶⁴¹

[O]ne of the first works of the [French] National Assembly … published a Declaration of the Rights of Man …

I. Men are born, and always continue, free and equal …

II. The end of all political associations is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man …

III. The nation is essentially the source of all sovereignty …¹⁶⁴²

The two modes of government which prevail in the world are first, government by election and representation: Secondly, government by hereditary succession. The former is generally known by the name of republic; the latter by that of monarchy and aristocracy.

Those two distinct and opposite forms erect themselves on the two distinct and opposite bases of Reason and Ignorance …

[W]e have next to consider … that species of government which is called mixed government … A mixed government is an imperfect everything, cementing and soldering the discordant parts together … In mixed governments there is no responsibility: the parts cover each other till responsibility is lost … In this rotary motion, responsibility if thrown off from the parts, and from the whole …

But in a well constituted republic … [t]he parts are not foreigners to each other, like democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy …¹⁶⁴³

Tuesday, April 26, 1791. Today, in Philadelphia, Thomas Jefferson sends a copy of Tom Paine’s Rights of Man to Jonathan Smith of Philadelphia, whose brother plans to publish an American edition of Paine’s work. Jefferson also sends Smith an accompanying note:

Th: Jefferson presents his compliments … [H]e sends him Mr. Paine’s pamphlet. He is extremely pleased to find it will be reprinted here, and that something is at length to be publicly said against the political heresies which have sprung up among us. He has no doubt our citizens will rally a second time round the standard of Common Sense.¹⁶⁴⁴

In the end, Benny Bache will publish the first American edition of Tom Paine’s Rights of Man in the Aurora’s printshop.¹⁶⁴⁵ To Thomas Jefferson’s surprise, however, Benny will choose to include Jefferson’s note. Thomas Jefferson:

I thought no more of this … till the pamphlet appeared, to my astonishment with my note at the head of it … [By “political heresies”] I had in view certainly the doctrines of Davila. I tell the writer [John Adams] freely that he is a heretic, but certainly never meant to step into a public newspaper with that in my mouth …¹⁶⁴⁶

George Washington’s secretary, Tobias Lear, reports John Adams’ reaction to Tom Paine’s book:

After a little hesitation, [Mr. Adams] laid his hand upon his breast, and said in a very solemn manner, “I detest that book and its tendency from the bottom of my heart.”¹⁶⁴⁷

Wednesday, April 27, 1791. Today, the Gazette of the United States publishes the last of Vice President Adams’ “Discourses on Davila”:

Mankind had tried all possible experiment of elections of governors and senates … but they had almost unanimously been convinced that hereditary succession was attended with fewer evils than frequent elections. This is the true answer, and the only one, as I believe …

Many are outraged at Adams’ monarchical and aristocratical preaching. John Adams:

The rage and fury of the Jacobinical journals against these discourses [on Davila] increased as they proceeded, intimidated the printer, John Fenno, and convinced me that to proceed would do more hurt than good.¹⁶⁴⁸

Mr. Adams had originally been a republican. The glare of royalty and nobility, during his mission to England, had made him believe their fascination a necessary ingredient in government, and Shays’ rebellion, not sufficiently understood where he then was, seemed to prove that the absence of want and oppression was not a sufficient guarantee of order. His book on the American constitutions, having made known his political bias, he was taken up by the monarchical federalists in his absence, and, on his return to the U.S., he was by them made to believe that the general disposition of our citizens was favorable to monarchy. He here wrote his Davila, as a supplement to the former work …¹⁶⁴⁹

June, 1791. In Paris, Tom Paine writes the Marquis de Condorcet, Paris’ leading representative in the Constituent Assembly:

Being the citizen of a land that recognizes no majesty but that of the people, no government except that of its own representatives, and no sovereignty except that of the laws, I tender you my services in helping forward the success of those principles which honor a nation and contribute to the advancement of the entire world; and I tend them not only because my country is bound to yours by the ties of friendship and gratitude, but because I venerate the moral and political character of those who have taken part in the present enterprise …¹⁶⁵⁰

Wednesday, July 20, 1791. Today, in Philadelphia, the eighth of eleven newspaper articles anonymously signed “Publicola” appears in the Gazette of the United States (as well as other newspapers throughout the United States). These articles challenge Tom Paine’s Rights of Man and depreciate Paine’s vision of democracy. Everyone assumes “Publicola” is John Adams (resuming the heresies of his “Discourses on Davila”), but his son, John Quincy Adams, has been writing the “Publicola” articles (presumably with his father’s help). From today’s “Publicola”:

VIII … Mr. Paine has undertaken to compare the English and French constitutions, upon the article of representation. He has of course admired the latter, and censured the former … To attempt to govern a nation like this, under the form of democracy, to pretend to establish over such beings a government which according to Rousseau is calculated only for a republic of Gods, and which requires the continual exercise of virtues beyond the reach of human infirmity, even in its best state; it may possibly be among the dreams of Mr. PAINE, but is what even the [French] National Assembly have not ventured to do …¹⁶⁵¹

Saturday, September 27, 1791. Today, in proof of the inviolability of France’s new religious freedom, the Constituent Assembly removes all reservations upon Jews becoming citizens.¹⁶⁵²

Tuesday, September 30, 1791. Today, in Paris, the French Constituent Assembly adjourns. The French Constitution of 1791 is now operative and calls for a single-chamber French Legislative Assembly with the power to override any royal veto.¹⁶⁵³

Friday, October 7, 1791. Today, La Rochefoucauld addresses the new French Legislative Assembly on its single-chamber structure:

Your most important debt perhaps is to justify your predecessors in the bold resolution they have taken for the nation in confiding the lawmaking authority to a single body. Franklin is the first to have proposed it and the citizens of Pennsylvania listened to his voice—but since that time … the powerful influences of ancient habits—have made them return to the complications of the British system of government. The National Constituent Assembly has seized upon this great idea; it has seen, moreover, in its adoption the inestimable advantage of cementing the principles of equality …¹⁶⁵⁴

Thursday, December 15, 1791. Today, almost three years after America adopted its new U.S. Constitution, more than two years after America inaugurated its first president, and a year and a half after France adopted Thomas Jefferson and the Marquis de Lafayette’s “Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen,” America finally ratifies ten amendments to its new Constitution. These we call the “Bill of Rights.” From the first five:

FIRST ARTICLE: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

SECOND ARTICLE: A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

THIRD ARTICLE: No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

FOURTH ARTICLE: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause …

FIFTH ARTICLE: No person … shall be … deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law …

[M]y objection to the constitution was that it wanted a bill of rights, securing freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom from standing armies, trial by jury and a constant Habeas corpus act. Colo [nel] Hamilton’s was that it wanted a king and house of lords. The sense of America has approved my objection and added the bill of rights, not the king and lords.¹⁶⁵⁵

The Bill of Rights responds to many Americans, like Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, who fear the federal government’s drift toward monarchy. The First Article prohibits the government from establishing a state church or restricting the free expression of ideas. The Second Article discourages the government from replacing citizen militias with a government army to hold the people in fear. The Third, Fourth, and Fifth Articles prohibit the government from wrongly intruding, through an army or otherwise, on the lives and property of the people.

Thursday, February 9, 1792. Today, in London, Thomas Paine finishes Part Two of his Rights of Man, inscribing it to the Marquis de Lafayette “in Gratitude for your services to my beloved America.” Excerpts:

With respect to the organization of the legislative power, … [i]n America, it is generally composed of two houses. In France it consists of but one …

The objections against two houses are … [t]hat two houses arbitrarily checking or controlling each other is inconsistent; because it cannot be proved, on principles of just representation, that either should be wiser or better than the other. They may check in the wrong as well as in the right …¹⁶⁵⁶

I proceed in the next place to aristocracy.

What is called the [British] House of Peers [Lords] … amounts to a combination of persons in one common interest. No reason can be given why a house of legislation should be composed entirely of men whose occupation consists in letting landed property than why it should be composed of those who hire, or of brewers, or bakers, or any other separate class of men …

The only use to be made of this power (and which it has always made) is to ward off taxes from itself and throw the burden upon such articles of consumption by which itself would be least affected …

Men of small or moderate estates are more injured by the taxes being thrown on articles of consumption than they are eased by warding it from landed property … They consume more of the productive taxable articles in proportion to their property than those of large estates …¹⁶⁵⁷

It has been customary to call the Crown the executive power, and the custom has continued, though the reason has ceased …

[I]t is the laws that govern, and not the man.¹⁶⁵⁸

Saturday, June 16, 1792. Today, from the United States, Thomas Jefferson, now U.S. Secretary of State, writes the Marquis de Lafayette:

Behold you then, my dear friend, at the head of a great army, establishing the liberties of your country against a foreign enemy … While you are exterminating the monster aristocracy, and pulling out the teeth and fangs of its associate, monarchy, a contrary tendency is discovered in some here. A sect has shewn itself among us who declare they espoused our new constitution … only as a step to an English constitution, the only thing good and sufficient in itself in their eye...¹⁶⁵⁹

Tuesday, June 19, 1792. Today, from the United States, U.S. Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson writes Tom Paine:

I received with great pleasure the present of your pamphlets [six copies of Part Two of The Rights of Man] … Would you believe it possible that in this country there should be high and important characters who need your lessons in republicanism, and who do not heed them? It is but too true that we have a sect preaching up and panting after an English constitution of King, lords, and commons and whose heads are itching for crowns, coronets and mitres …¹⁶⁶⁰

Wednesday, September 19, 1792. Today, no longer safe from the British monarch in his native England, Tom Paine returns to Paris.¹⁶⁶¹ He is a popular figure in France. The Marquis de Condorcet has published Tom Paine’s views on a well-constituted government in the June–July issue of Chronique du Mois,¹⁶⁶² and, though Paine is not a French citizen, he has been chosen by four departments (districts) of France to represent them at the French National Convention (which opens in two days). As I write in my history,

Thomas Paine, whose illustrious writings so much promoted the cause of freedom in the American revolution, and in his development of the deformity of the English government, had been elected by four departments, L’Aisne, L’Oise, Puy de Domme, and Pays de Calais; he chose the latter.¹⁶⁶³

Thursday, September 20, 1792. Today, at Valmy in France, the French army—singing “Ça Ira” (the song of the French Revolution which honors Benjamin Franklin and the American Revolution)—marches to a great victory over the Austrian and Prussian armies, which have entered France at the invitation of the French king. By inviting foreign armies to subdue his own people and to crush their democratic revolution, French King Louis XVI has sealed his fate.¹⁶⁶⁴

Saturday, September 22, 1792. Today, the French National Convention unanimously votes to end the monarchy in France, and today Tom Paine writes,

You have before this time heard that the National Convention met punctual to the day appointed. The Members verified their powers on the 20th and met in Convention the 21st ult. The first business done was to abolish the bagatelle of Royalty which was decreed unanimously. This day, the Convention will appoint a Committee of Constitution to consist of nine Members who are to bring in a plan of the new Constitution. Affairs are turning round fast …¹⁶⁶⁵

A committee was appointed to revise and new model the constitution, consisting of … [nine including] Thomas Paine, Brissot, … and Condorcet.¹⁶⁶⁶

France is no longer a monarchy. France is a republic. France needs and will have her first republican constitution!

I receive with affectionate gratitude the honor which the late National Assembly has conferred upon me by adopting me a citizen of France: and the additional honor of being elected by my fellow citizens a member of the National Convention …

It has been my fate to have borne a share in the commencement and complete establishment of one revolution (I mean the Revolution of America). The success and events of that revolution are encouraging to us …

The principles on which that Revolution began have extended themselves to Europe; and an overruling Providence is regenerating the old world by the principles of the new. The distance of America from all the other parts of the globe did not admit of her carrying those principles beyond her own situation. It is to the peculiar honor of France that she now raises the standard of liberty for all nations; and infighting her own battles, contends for the rights of all mankind …

[W]hen … the Constitution is made conformable to the Declaration of Rights; when the bagatelles of monarchy, royalty, regency, and hereditary succession, shall be exposed with all their absurdities, a new ray of light will be thrown over the world …¹⁶⁶⁷

Monday, October 22, 1792. Today, in Paris, Jacques-Pierre Brissot de Warville’s journal, Le Patriote François, publishes Tom Paine’s “Essay for the Use of New Republicans in Their Opposition to Monarchy.” Tom Paine writes:

From one point of view, we should not perhaps censure kings for their savage cruelty, their brutality and their oppressions; it is not they who are in fault; it is hereditary succession; a swamp breeds serpents; hereditary succession breeds oppressors …

Let the Rights of Man be established, Equality enthroned, a sound Constitution drafted, with its powers clearly defined; let all privileges, distinctions of birth, and monopolies be annulled …

[T]he presence of a king entails the presence of an aristocracy and of taxation reaching thirty millions. This is doubtless why Franklin styled Royalism “a crime as bad as poisoning.”¹⁶⁶⁸

Friday, November 2, 1792. Today, in Paris, Thomas Paine writes William Short, former private secretary to Thomas Jefferson:

I received your favor conveying a letter from Mr. Jefferson and the answers to Publicola for which I thank you. I had John Adams in my mind when I wrote the pamphlet [The Rights of Man] and it has hit as I expected.¹⁶⁷¹

Saturday, December 15, 1792. Today, the French National Convention proclaims that France will end aristocracy and feudalism in any country the French army occupies.¹⁶⁷²

Tuesday, December 18, 1792. Today, in London’s Guildhall, the British Crown tries Tom Paine in absentia for his “seditious” writings against the monarchy.¹⁶⁷³ From a trial account:

The Attorney General read the contents of a third letter, which he received from THE SECOND PERSON in America (Mr. [John] Adams). “Having the honour of his acquaintance,” the Attorney General said, “I wrote to him relative to the prosecution and in answer I was informed that it is the wish of Thomas Paine to convene the people of Great Britain … to adopt a constitution similar to that of France and to establish a government proceeding directly from the sovereignty of the people …”¹⁶⁷⁴

Partly on the basis of U.S. Vice President John Adams’ testimony, Britain convicts Tom Paine of seditious libel, permanently exiles him, orders his Rights of Man suppressed for all time, and threatens to imprison any British bookseller who sells Rights of Man.¹⁶⁷⁵

Monday, January 21, 1793. Today, to the cries of Vive la nation! and by the swift descent of the guillotine’s blade, the King of France pays with his life for the independence he gave America.¹⁶⁷⁶ Had the French king not entered America’s war against the British monarch, he would not have bankrupted his kingdom, he would not have had to call the Third Estate to Paris, and he would not have inspired so many Frenchmen (more than forty thousand came to America!) with the idea of democratic revolution. Had Louis XVI not chosen to help America, the British monarch would still rule America, and the French monarch would still rule France. Perhaps it was emotion, not reason, that put Louis XVI on the path to his own destruction. Perhaps, under the spell of a balding American in the garb of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the king and his people succumbed to the highest ideals of a changing age. John Adams:

[F]our of the finest writers that Great Britain produced, Shaftesbury, Bolingbroke, Hume, and Gibbon … and three of the most eloquent writers that ever lived in France … Voltaire, Rousseau, and Raynal, seem to have made … strenuous exertions to render mankind in Europe discontented with their situation in life and with the state of society, both in religion and government. Princes and courtiers as well as citizens and countrymen, clergy as well as laity, became infected. The King of Prussia, the Empress Catherine, were open and undisguised. The Emperor Joseph the Second was suspected, and even the excellent King of France grew impatient and uneasy under the fatiguing ceremonies of the Catholic Church. All these and many more were professed admirers of Mr. Franklin. He was considered as a citizen of the world, a friend to all men and an enemy to none …

When the association of Encyclopedists [Enlightenment philosophers] was formed, Mr. Franklin was considered as a friend and zealous promoter of that great enterprise which engaged all their praises. When the society of economists was commencing, he became one of them, and was solemnly ordained a knight of the order by the laying on the hands of Dr. Quesnay, the father and founder of that sect … Throughout his life he courted and was courted by the printers, editors, and correspondents of reviews, magazines, journals, and pamphleteers and those little busy meddling scribblers that are always buzzing about the press in America, England, France, and Holland. These, together with some of the clerks in the Count of Vergennes’s office of interpreters (bureau des interprètes) filled all the gazettes of Europe with incessant praises of Monsieur Franklin. If a collection could be made of all the Gazettes of Europe for the latter half of the eighteenth century, a greater number of panegyrical paragraphs upon “le grand Franklin” would appear, it is believed, than upon any other man that ever lived …

“Eripuit cœlo fulmen;

mox sceptra tyrannis. ”

By the first line, the rulers of Great Britain and their arbitrary oppressions of the Colonies were alone understood. By the second was intimated that Mr. Franklin was soon to destroy or at least to dethrone all kings and abolish all monarchical governments. This, it cannot be disguised, flattered at that time the ruling passion of all Europe …

Hence the popularity of all the insurrections against the ordinary authority of government during the last century … When, where, and in what manner all this will end, God only knows. To this cause Mr. Franklin owed much of his popularity. He was considered to be in his heart no friend to kings, nobles or prelates. He was thought a profound legislator, and a friend of democracy. He was thought to be the magician who had excited the ignorant Americans to resistance. His mysterious wand had separated the Colonies from Great Britain. He had framed and established all the American constitutions of government, especially all the best of them, i.e., the most democratical. His plans and his example were to abolish monarchy, aristocracy and hierarchy throughout the world. Such opinions as these were entertained by the Duke de La Rochefoucauld, M. Turgot, M. Condorcet, and a thousand other men of learning and eminence in France, England, Holland, and all the rest of Europe …

Such was the real character, and so much more formidable was the artificial character, of Dr. Franklin when he entered into partnership with the Count de Vergennes, the most powerful minister of State in Europe, to destroy the character and power of [John Adams,] a poor man almost without a name, unknown in the European world, born and educated in the American wilderness, out of which he had never set foot til 1778 …¹⁶⁷⁷

Friday, February 1, 1793. Today, the War of the French Revolution between Britain and France begins. Britain will attempt, through another war, this time with France, to end the democratic revolution that began in America almost twenty years ago. The British monarch will fight to end democracy and restore monarchy in France and will lead Europe’s other monarchies against Europe’s only democracy and against America’s only ally.

Friday, February 15, 1793. Today, as France faces a war crisis that will, for a time, radicalize French politics, a nine-man drafting committee, chaired by the Marquis de Condorcet and composed of Condorcet, Tom Paine, Brissot de Warville, and other admirers of Benjamin Franklin, submits The French Constitution of 1793 to the entire French National Convention.¹⁶⁷⁸

Smith says my Books [Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States] are upon the Table of every Member of the Committee for framing a Constitution of Government for France except Tom Paine …¹⁶⁷⁹

This may be true, but the committee’s chairman, Condorcet, has agreed with Tom Paine to model the constitution of the French Republic after Ben Franklin’s Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776.¹⁶⁸⁰ John Adams:

The political and literary world are much indebted for the invention of the new word IDEOLOGY … It was taught in the school of folly; but alas! Franklin, Turgot, Rochefoucauld, and Condorcet, under Tom Paine, were the great masters of that academy.¹⁶⁸¹

Monday, April 22, 1793. Today, despite America’s treaty of alliance with France (promising to defend the French West Indies, etc.), the onetime Fabius who is President of the United States issues a Proclamation of Neutrality (drafted by U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Jay) which declines to support France’s war for democracy against the British monarch. As I write in my history

[T]he disposition that dictated it and the latent principle upon which it was predicated were in direct opposition to the obligations of treaties and contrary to the common principles of liberality which entitle men to a return for good offices conferred in critical circumstances.¹⁶⁸²

Thomas Jefferson, who opposes the proclamation, respects the French alliance, but will not endure the heat of political wrangling,¹⁶⁸³ will soon offer his resignation as Washington’s Secretary of State.

Wednesday, April 24, 1793. Today, in the largest typeface the Philadelphia Aurora has used to date, Benjamin Franklin Bache publishes the French Constitution of 1793. His grandfather would be very pleased. Excerpts from the French Constitution of 1793, as translated in the Aurora:

Primary Assemblies.

In the primary assemblies, every man aged 21 years has a right to vote, provided that his name is inscribed on the civic table and that he shall have resided one year in France.

The primary assemblies shall be so distributed in each department [state] that none shall consist of less than 400 [representatives], or more than 900, members …

Administrative Bodies.

There shall be in each department an administrative council of 18 members … to correspond with the executive government …

The administrators are to be elected in the private assemblies, and the half renewed every two years.

Executive Council.

I. The executive council of the Republic shall be composed of seven general agents or ministers …

III. Each of the ministers shall alternatively preside in the executive council, and the president shall be changed every fifteen days. To this council it belongs to execute all the laws and all the decrees passed by the legislative body …

The ministers are to be chosen in the primary assemblies …

The ministers are to be chosen for two years. The half shall be renewed every year … The executive council are accountable to … the legislative body.

Legislative Body.

The [national] legislative body is to consist of one chamber, and to be renewed annually by elections …

The number of deputies … is to be newly fixed every ten years according to the increase or decrease in population …¹⁶⁸⁴

Federalists may claim their Fabius as the “Father of His Country” and applaud the Duke of Braintree for America’s British-style constitution, but France honors America’s true “Papa”¹⁶⁸⁵ and adopts his vision of democracy at the founding of the French Republic. The Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 is alive today in France.¹⁶⁸⁶ So, too, is Franklinian democracy.

Armed cavalry on Philadelphia’s High-street during America’s Reign of Terror.¹⁶⁸⁷

CHAPTER TEN

THE RIGHTS OF MAN