Page:The Biographical Dictionary of America, vol. 04.djvu/195

 FRANKLIN

FRANK LI X

of commons, closed a personal letter with the significaut sentence "" I hereby wisli you a pios- perous voyage and long health." He reached Philadelphia, May 5, 1775. On his arrival he was elected bj' the Pennsylvania assembly a del- egate to the Continental congress and by subse- quent re-elections sat in that body during 1775- 7G, until Ills departure for FVance. He brought forward a plan for the union of the colonies, and had a place on everj- important committee. He was chairman of the committee to organize a postal system, and as first postmaster-general of the colonies established a system afterward adopted by the United States and which substan- tially becauie permanent. He was chairman of the provincial committee of safety, and with Delegates Lynch and Harrison visited General Washington at Cambridge, Mass., in September,

1775, to confer on miUtary affairs. In 1776 he was sent on a fruitless mission to Montreal, Can- ada, to confer with Arnold; and in the journey he encountered great hardshijjs. He was presi- dent of the Pennsylvania convention in the spring of 1776 to form an independent state con- stitution, and was one of the committee of five appointed by the Continental congress to frame the Declaration of Independence, which instru- ment he signed. With Jolin Adams and Edward Rutledge he was deputed by congress to visit Ad- miral Howe, who had sought the interview with the hope of arranging terms of peace. He was sent to France in 1776 with Arthur Lee of Vir- ginia to join Silas Deane. the three being accred- ited as envoys from the American colonies to the kingdom of France. He reached Paris, Dec. 31,

1776, and was received with demonstrations of great joy. He was then seventy -one years old and his only companion was his grandson, Wil- liam Temple Franklin, a lad of sixteen years, who was his clerk and assistant. He urged a loan from the French government; encouraged American privateering by issuing commissions, settling personal misimderstandings, and seeing to the distribution of prize money; purchased ships, and quieted unpaid mutineers. Jolm Paul Jones found in him a firm friend and owed to him his opportunities to gain renown as a naval hero. Jones said of Franklin "his letters would make a coward brave. " He secured from France the loan of 3,000,000 livres in 1777, and in Jan- uary, 1778, an offer of a treaty of amity and com- merce and another offensive and defensive with the colonies conditional on their not making a separate peace, or relmquishing their indepen- dence. Tills, the treaty of Paris, was signed. Feb. 6. 1778, and secured the nationality of the United States. France sent to the United States M. Gerard as its accredited minister in March, 1778, and in February, 1779, Franklin received his com-

mission from congress as the first U.S. minister plenipotentiary at the French court, and his most delicate work and the one least remembered was obtaining loans from the French court to carry on the War four years longer. The loans thus obtained amounted to over $6,000,000. He asked to be allowed to resign his post in March, 1781, but congress refused to accept his resigna- tion. With John Adams and John Jay he pre- pared provisional articles for a treaty of peace with Great Britain, on the basis of the indejien- dence of the United States, which was signed at Paris, Aug. 30, 1783, and then Franklin again sought from congress an acceptance of his resig- nation, which they delayed to act upon. On Sept. 3, 1783, definite treaties by France and the United States with Great Britain were signed. He then arranged commercial treaties with Den- mark, Portugal and Morocco, and, just as he was leaving Paris, a treaty with Prussia, by which privateering was abolished, and private property by land and sea held secure from destruction in time of war. This treaty Genei'al Washington declared " marked a new era in international morality." In March, 1785, congress allowed FrankHn to return to his home, and Thomas Jefferson succeeded him at the French court. On arriving in Philadelphia in 1785, he was elected to the state council, was made president of Pennsylvania and unanimously re-elected in 1786 and 1787. He was a delegate from Pennsyl- vania to the convention that framed the Federal constitution, May, 1787, where he ojiposed the Federal party in their plans for a centralized government, and when the constitution was framed, used his efforts to have it immediately adapted by the states. When adopted lie named George Washington as his choice for President. His last active days were devoted to the interests of the Abolition society of which he was presi- dent, in praj'ing to congress to provide for the suppression of slavery and the slave-trade. This petition was pi-esented to congress, March 23, 1790, and in replying to the petition. Representa- tive James Jackson of Georgia made a speech in which he quoted Holy scripture in defence of slavery. Franklin while confined to his bed by the infirmities of age, composed a parody on the speech which was extensively published, and was his last public paper. His religious belief was the subject of much controversy among sec- tarian theologians. To President Stiles of Yale college, he wrote in the last year of his life, " As to Jesus of Nazareth, I think His system of morals and His religion as He left them to us the best the world ever saw or is likely to see .... I have, with most of the present dissenters in England, .some doubts as to His divinit}' though it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having