Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/365

Rh The battle of Lexington had been fought, and the peaceable Philosophical Society was eagerly studying methods of making saltpeter. Franklin found himself greeted as a revolutionary leader, and he had slept only one night on dry land when the general assembly of Pennsylvania appointed him a member of the Continental Congress. The old philosopher—for he was then sixty-nine—was kept prodigiously busy. He had to plan a new postal system and was made Postmaster-General, at a salary of $1000 a year. He was put at the head of the Commissioners of Indian Affairs, and made a member of several of the busiest committees. While doing all these things in Congress, he was put at the head of the committee of safety of Pennsylvania, which had to make the militia ready for war and fortify the river—a committee which met at six o'clock every morning. But more. He was hurried off to General Washington's headquarters to devise a system of army organization—and, a little too late, to Canada to attach the Canadians to the American cause. A busy time for the old philosopher, then seventy. And then, scarcely returned, he was made a member of the Committee to draft the Declaration of Independence—he the only member from Pennsylvania who was stoutly for independence the year before. The Declaration of Independence being adopted and signed, he made his famous historic joke. “We must be unanimous,” said John Hancock, “there must be no pulling different ways; we must all hang together.” “Yes,” said Franklin dryly, “we must, indeed, all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”

And then he took an important part in framing the plan of confederation, insisting, against the judgment of his associates, that it would not do to give the small states the same power in Congress as the large and populous ones, and that, if they had an equal vote without