Famous American Statesmen

About this time, the Leyden jar was discovered in Europe by Musschenbroeck, and became the talk of the scientific world. Franklin, always eager for knowledge, began to study electricity, with all the books at his command. Dr. Spence, a gentleman from Great Britain, having come to America to lecture on the subject, Franklin bought all his instruments. So much did he desire to give his entire time to this fascinating subject that he sold his printing-house, paper, and almanac, for ninety thousand dollars, and retired from business. This at forty-two; and at fifteen selling ballads about the streets! Industry, temperance, and economy had paid good wages. He used to say that these virtues, with "sincerity and justice," had won for him "the confidence of his country." And yet Franklin, with all his saving, was generous. The great preacher Whitefield came to Philadelphia to obtain money for an orphan-house in Georgia. Franklin thought the scheme unwise, and silently resolved not to give when the collection should be taken. Then, as his heart warmed under the preaching, he concluded to give the copper coins in his pocket; then all the silver, several dollars; and finally all his five gold pistoles, so that he emptied his pocket into the collector's plate.

Franklin now constructed electrical batteries, introduced the terms "positive" and "negative" electricity, and published articles on the subject, which his friend in London, Peter Collinson, laid before the Royal Society. When he declared his belief that lightning and electricity were identical, and gave his reasons, and that points would draw off electricity, and therefore lightning-rods be of benefit, learned people ridiculed the ideas. Still, his pamphlets were eagerly read, and Count de Buffon had them translated into French. They soon appeared in German, Latin, and Italian. Louis XV. was so deeply interested that he ordered all Franklin's experiments to be performed in his presence, and caused a letter to be written to the Royal Society of London, expressing his admiration of Franklin's learning and skill. Strange indeed that such a scientist should arise in the new world, be a man self-taught, and one so busy in public life.

In 1752, when he was forty-six, he determined to test for himself whether lightning and electricity were one. He made a kite from a large silk handkerchief, attached a hempen cord to it, with a silk string in his hand, and, with his son, hastened to an old shed in the fields, as the thunder-storm approached.

As the kite flew upward, and a cloud passed over, there was no manifestation of electricity. When he was almost despairing, lo! the fibres of the cord began to loosen; then he applied his knuckle to a key on the cord, and a strong spark passed. How his heart must have throbbed as he realized his immortal discovery!

A Leyden jar was charged, and Franklin went home from the old shed to be made a member of the Royal Society of London, to receive the Copley gold medal, degrees from Harvard and Yale Colleges, and honors from all parts of the world. Ah! if Josiah Franklin could have lived to see his son come to such renown! And Abiah, his mother, had been dead just a month! But she knew he was coming into greatness, for she wrote him near the last: "I am glad to hear you are so well respected in your town for them to choose you an alderman, although I don't know what it means, or what the better you will be of it besides the honor of it. I hope you will look up to God, and thank him for all his good providences towards you." Sweetest of all things is the motherhood that never lets go the hand of the child, and always points Godward!

Lightning-rods became the fashion, though there was great opposition, because many believed that lightning was one of the means of punishing the sins of mankind, and it was wrong to attempt to prevent the Almighty from doing his will. Some learned men urged that a ball instead of a point be used at the end of the rod, and George III. insisted that the president of the Royal Society should favor balls. "But, sire," said Sir John Pringle, "I cannot reverse the laws and operations of nature."

"Then, Sir John, you had perhaps better resign," was the reply, and the obstinate monarch put knobs on his conductors.

Through all the scientific discord, Franklin had the rare good-sense to remain quiet, instead of rushing into print. He said, "I have never entered into any controversy in defence of my philosophical opinions; I leave them to take their chance in the world. If they are right, truth and experience will support them; if wrong, they ought to be refuted and rejected. Disputes are apt to sour one's temper and disturb one's quiet."

Franklin was not long permitted to enjoy his life of study. This same year, 1752, he was elected a member of the Pennsylvania Assembly, and reëlected every year for ten years, "without," as he says, "ever asking any elector for his vote, or signifying, either directly or indirectly, any desire of being chosen." He was also, with Mr. William Hunter of Virginia, appointed postmaster-general for the colonies, having been the postmaster in Philadelphia for nearly sixteen years. So excellent was his judgment, and so conciliatory his manner, that he rarely made enemies, and accomplished much for his constituents. He cut down the rates of postage, advertised unclaimed letters, and showed his rare executive ability and tireless energy.

For many years the French and English had been quarrelling over their claims in the New World, till finally the "French and Indian War," or "Seven Years' War," as it was named in Europe, began. Delegates from the various colonies were sent to Albany to confer with the chiefs of the Six Nations about the defence of the country. Naturally, Franklin was one of the delegates. Before starting, he drew up a plan of union for the struggling Americans, and printed it in the Gazette, with the now well known wood-cut at the bottom; a snake cut into as many pieces as there were colonies, each piece having upon it the first letter of the name of a colony, and underneath the words, "Join or Die." He presented his plan of union to the delegates, who, after a long debate, unanimously adopted it, but it was rejected by some of the colonies because they thought it gave too much power to England, and the king rejected it because he said, "The Americans are trying to make a government of their own."

Franklin joined earnestly in the war, and commanded the forces in his own State, but was soon sent abroad by Pennsylvania, as her agent to bring some troublesome matters before royalty. He reached London, July 27, 1757, with his son William, no longer the friendless lad looking for a position in a printing-house, but the noted scientist, and representative of a rising nation. Members of the Royal Society hastened to congratulate him; the universities at Oxford and Edinburgh conferred degrees upon him. While he attended to matters of business in connection with his mission, he entertained his friends with his brilliant electrical experiments, and wrote for several magazines on politics and science.

After five years of successful labor, Doctor Franklin went back to Philadelphia to receive the public thanks of the Assembly, and a gift of fifteen thousand dollars for his services. His son was also appointed governor of New Jersey, by the Crown. Franklin was now fifty-seven, and had earned rest and the enjoyment of his honors. But he was to find little rest in the next twenty-five years.

The "Seven Years' War" had been terminated by the Treaty of Paris, February 10, 1763. Of course, great expenses had been incurred. The following year, Mr. Grenville, Prime Minister of England, proposed that a portion of the enormous debt be paid by America through the Stamp Act. The colonies had submitted already to much taxation without any representation in Parliament, and had many grievances. The manufacture of iron and steel had been forbidden. Heavy duties had been laid upon rum, sugar, and molasses, and constables had been authorized to search any place suspected of avoiding the duties.

When the Stamp Act was suggested, the colonies, already heavily in debt by the war, remonstrated in public meetings, and sent their protests to the king. Franklin, having been reappointed agent for Pennsylvania, used all possible effort to prevent its passage, but to no avail. The bill passed in March, 1765. By this act, deeds and conveyances were taxed from thirty-seven cents to one dollar and twenty-five cents apiece; college degrees, ten dollars; advertisements, fifty cents each, and other printed matter in proportion.

At once, the American heart rebelled. Bells were tolled, and flags hung at half-mast. In New York, the Stamp Act was carried about the streets, with a placard, "The folly of England and the ruin of America." The people resolved to wear no cloth of English manufacture. Agents appointed to collect the hated tax were in peril of their lives. Patrick Henry electrified his country by the well known words, "Cæsar had his Brutus, Charles I. had his Cromwell, and George III." – and when the loyalists shouted, "Treason!" he continued, "may profit by their example. If that be treason, make the most of it."

Grenville saw, too late, the storm he had aroused. Franklin was now, as he wrote to a friend, "extremely busy, attending members of both houses, informing, explaining, consulting, disputing, in a continual hurry from morning till night." His examination before the House of Commons filled England with amazement and America with joy. When asked, "If the Stamp Act should be repealed, would it induce the Assemblies of America to acknowledge the rights of Parliament to tax them, and would they erase their resolutions?" he replied, "No, never!"

"What used to be the pride of the Americans?"

"To indulge in the fashions and manufactures of Great Britain."

"What is now their pride?"

"To wear their old clothes over again, till they can make new ones," said the fearless Franklin.

The great commoners William Pitt and Edmund Burke were our stanch friends. A cry of distress went up from the manufacturers of England, who needed American markets for their goods, and in 1766 the Stamp Act was repealed.

America was overjoyed, but her joy was of short duration; for in the very next year a duty was placed on glass, tea, and other articles. Then riots ensued. The duty was repealed on all save tea. When the tea arrived in Boston Harbor, the indignant citizens threw three hundred and forty chests overboard; in Charlestown, the people stored it in cellars till it mildewed; and from New York and Philadelphia they sent it home again to Old England.

In 1774, the Boston Port Bill, which declared that no merchandise should be landed or shipped at the wharves of Boston, was received by the colonists with public mourning. September 5 of this year, the First Continental Congress met at Philadelphia, and again a manly protest was sent to George III. Again the great Pitt, Earl of Chatham, poured out his eloquence against what he saw was close at hand – "a most accursed, wicked, barbarous, cruel, unjust, and diabolical war." But George III. was immovable.

The days for Franklin were now bitter in the extreme. Ten thousand more troops had been sent to General Gage in Boston, to compel obedience. Franklin's wife was dying in Philadelphia, longing to see her husband, who had now been absent ten years, each year expecting to return, and each year detained by the necessities of the colonies. At last he started homeward, landing May 5, 1775. His daughter had been happily married to Mr. Richard Bache, a merchant, but his wife was dead, and buried beside Franky. The battles of Lexington and Concord had been fought; the War for Freedom was indeed begun.

Franklin was now almost seventy, but ready for the great work before him. He loved peace. He said: "All wars are follies, very expensive and very mischievous ones. When will mankind be convinced of this, and agree to settle their differences by arbitration? Were they to do it, even by the cast of a die, it would be better than by fighting and destroying each other." But now war was inevitable. With the eagerness of a boy he wrote to Edmund Burke: "General Gage's troops made a most vigorous retreat, – twenty miles in three hours, – scarce to be paralleled in history; the feeble Americans, who pelted them all the way, could scarce keep up with them."

He was at once made a member of the Continental Congress, called to meet May 10, at Philadelphia. George Washington and Patrick Henry, John and Samuel Adams, were in the noted assemblage. They came with brave hearts and an earnest purpose. Franklin served upon ten committees: to engrave and print Continental money, to negotiate with the Indians, to send another but useless petition to George III., to find out the source of saltpetre, and other matters. He was made postmaster-general of the United States, and was also full of work for Pennsylvania.

England had voted a million dollars to conquer the colonies, and had hired nearly twenty thousand Hessians to fight against them, besides her own skilled troops. The army under Washington had no proper shelter, little food, little money, and no winter clothing. Franklin was Washington's friend and helper in these early days of discouragement. At first the people had hoped to keep united to the mother country; now the time had arrived for the Declaration of Independence, by which America was to become a great nation. Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, and Robert R. Livingston of New York were appointed to draw up the document. Jefferson wrote the Declaration, and Franklin and Adams made a few verbal changes. And then, with the feeling so well expressed by Franklin, "We must hang together, or else, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately," the delegates fearlessly signed their names to what Daniel Webster well called the "title-deed of our liberties."

And now another important work devolved upon Franklin. The colonies believed that the French were friendly and would assist. He was unanimously chosen commissioner to France, to represent and plead the cause of his country. Again the white-haired statesman said good-bye to America, and sailed to Europe. As soon as he arrived, he was welcomed with all possible honor. The learned called upon him; his pictures were hung in the shop-windows, and his bust placed in the Royal Library. When he appeared on the street a crowd gathered about the great American. He was applauded in every public resort.

"Franklin's reputation," said John Adams, "was more universal than that of Leibnitz or Newton, Frederick or Voltaire; and his character more beloved and esteemed than any or all of them. His name was familiar to government and people, to kings, courtiers, nobility, clergy, and philosophers, as well as plebeians, to such a decree that there was scarcely a peasant or a citizen, a valet de chambre, coachman or footman, a lady's chamber-maid or a scullion in a kitchen, who was not familiar with it, and who did not consider him a friend to humankind. When they spoke of him they seemed to think he was to restore the golden age." Royalty made him welcome at court, and Marie Antoinette treated him with the graciousness which had at first won the hearts of the French to the beautiful Austrian. France made a treaty of alliance with America, and recognized her independence, February 6, 1778, which gave joy and hope to the struggling colonies. Franklin was now made minister plenipotentiary. What a change from the hated work of moulding tallow candles!

The great need of the colonies was money to carry on the war, and, pressed as was France in the days preceding her own revolution, when M. Necker was continually opposing the grants, she loaned our country – part of it a gift – over five million dollars, says James Parton, in his admirable life of Franklin. For this reason, as well as for the noble men like Lafayette who came to our aid, the interests of France should always be dear to America. When the Revolutionary War was over, Franklin helped negotiate the peace, and returned to America at his own request in the fall of 1785, receiving among his farewell presents a portrait of Louis XVI., set with four hundred and eight diamonds. Thomas Jefferson became minister in his stead. When asked if he had replaced Dr. Franklin, he replied, "I succeed; no one can ever replace him."

He was now seventy-nine years old. He had been absent for nine years. When he landed, cannon were fired, church-bells rung, and crowds greeted him with shouts of welcome. He was at once made President of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and at eighty-one a delegate to the convention that framed our Constitution, where he sat regularly five hours a day for four months. To him is due the happy suggestion, after a heated discussion, of equal representation for every State in the Senate, and representation in proportion to population in the House.

At eighty-four, in reply to a letter to Washington, he received these tender words: —

"If to be venerated for benevolence, if to be admired for talents, if to be esteemed for patriotism, if to be beloved for philanthropy, can gratify the human mind, you must have the pleasing consolation to know that you have not lived in vain. And I flatter myself that it will not be ranked among the least grateful occurrences of your life to be assured that, so long as I retain my memory, you will be recollected with respect, veneration, and affection, by your sincere friend,

"George Washington."

The time for the final farewell came, April 17, 1790, near midnight, when the gentle and great statesman, doubly great because so gentle, slept quietly in death. Twenty thousand persons gathered to do honor to the celebrated dead. Not only in this country was there universal mourning, but across the ocean as well. The National Assembly of France paid its highest eulogies.

By his own request, Franklin was buried beside his wife and Franky, under a plain marble slab, in Christ Church Cemetery, Philadelphia, with the words, —

He was opposed to ostentation. He used to quote the words of Cotton Mather to him when he was a boy. On leaving the minister's house, he hit his head against a beam. "'Stoop,' said Mather; 'you are young, and have the world before you; stoop as you go through it, and you will miss many hard thumps!' This advice, thus beat into my head, has frequently been of use to me, and I often think of it when I see pride mortified, and misfortunes brought upon people by their carrying their heads too high."

Tolerant with all religions, sweet-tempered, with remarkable tact and genuine kindness, honest, and above jealousy, he adopted this as his rule, which we may well follow: "To go straight forward in doing what appears to me to be right, leaving the consequences to Providence."

THOMAS JEFFERSON

Five miles east of Charlottesville, Virginia, near where the River Rivanna enters the James, Thomas Jefferson was born, April 13, 1743, the third in a family of eight children.

Peter Jefferson, his father, descended from a Welsh ancestry, was a self-made man. The son of a farmer, with little chance for schooling, he improved every opportunity to read, became, like George Washington, a surveyor, and endured cheerfully all the perils of that pioneer life. Often, in making his survey across the Blue Ridge Mountains, he was obliged to defend himself against the attacks of wild beasts, and to sleep in hollow trees. When the provisions gave out, and his companions fell fainting beside him, he subsisted on raw flesh, and stayed on until his work was completed.

So strong was he physically that when two hogsheads of tobacco, each weighing a thousand pounds, were lying on their sides, he could raise them both upright at once. Besides this great strength of body, he developed great strength of mind. Shakespeare and Addison were his favorites. It was not strange that by and by he became a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses.

When Peter Jefferson was thirty-one, he married into a family much above his own socially – Jane, the daughter of Isham Randolph, a rich and cultured gentleman. She was but nineteen, of a most cheerful and hopeful temperament, with a passionate love of nature in every flower and tree.

From these two the boy Thomas inherited the two elements that make a man's character beautiful, not less than a woman's – strength and sweetness. With his mother's nature, he found delight in every varying cloud, every rich sunset or sunrise, and in that ever new and ever wonderful change from new moon to full and from full to new again. How tender and responsive such a soul becomes! How it warms toward human nature from its love for the material world!

When Thomas was five years old, he was sent to a school where English only was taught. The hours of confinement doubtless seemed long to a child used to wander at will over the fields, for one day, becoming impatient for school to be dismissed, he went out-of-doors, knelt behind the house, and repeated the Lord's Prayer, thus hoping to expedite matters!

At nine he entered the family of Rev. William Douglas, a Scotch clergyman, where he learned Greek, Latin, and French. So fond did he become of the classics that he said, years later, if he were obliged to decide between the pleasure derived from them and the estate left him by his father, he would have greatly preferred poverty and education.

All these early years at "Shadwell," the Jefferson home, – so named after his mother's home in England, where she was born, – Thomas had an especially dear companion in his oldest sister, Jane. Her mind was like his own, quick and comprehensive, and her especial delight, like his, was in music. Three things, he said, became a passion with him, "Mathematics, music, and architecture." Jane had a charming voice, and her brother became a skilled performer on the violin, often practising three hours a day in his busy student life.

Peter Jefferson, the strong, athletic Assemblyman, died suddenly when Thomas was but fourteen, urging, as his dying request, that this boy be well educated. There was but one other son, and he an infant. The sweet-tempered Mrs. Jefferson, under forty, was left with eight children to care for; but she kept her sunny, hopeful heart.

When Thomas was a little more than sixteen, he entered the college of William and Mary, at Williamsburg. He was a somewhat shy, tall, slight boy, eager for information, and warm-hearted. It was not surprising that he made friends with those superior to himself in mental acquirements. He says, in his Memoirs: "It was my great good-fortune, and what, perhaps, fixed the destinies of my life, that Dr. William Small of Scotland was the professor of mathematics, a man profound in most of the useful branches of science, with a happy talent of communication, correct and gentlemanly manners, and an enlarged and liberal mind. He, most happily for me, became soon attached to me, and made me his daily companion when not engaged in the school; and from his conversation I got my first views of the expansion of science and of the system of things in which we are placed. Fortunately, the philosophical chair became vacant soon after my arrival at college, and he was appointed to fill it per interim; and he was the first who ever gave in that college regular lectures in ethics, rhetoric, and belles-lettres. He returned to Europe in 1762, having previously filled up the measure of his goodness to me by procuring for me, from his most intimate friend, George Wythe, a reception as a student of law under his direction, and introduced me to the acquaintance and familiar table of Governor Fauquier, the ablest man who had ever filled that office."

The governor, though an accomplished scholar and great patron of learning, was very fond of card-playing, and of betting in the play. In this direction his influence became most pernicious to Virginia. Strangely enough, young Jefferson never knew one card from another, and never allowed them to be played in his house.

He devoted himself untiringly to his books. He worked fifteen hours a day, allowing himself only time to run out of town for a mile in the twilight, before lighting the candles, as necessary exercise. Though, from the high social position of his mother, he had many acquaintances at Williamsburg, Thomas went little in society, save to dine with the prominent men above mentioned. These were a constant stimulant to him. A great man, or the written life of a great man, becomes the maker of other great men. The boy had learned early in life one secret of success; to ally one's self to superior men and women.