“You justly observe that he has a difficult card to play”

Yesterday I started quoting from Loyalist merchant Richard Lechmere’s 22 May 1775 letter about the beginning of the Revolutionary War, as transcribed and shared a few years ago at Heritage Auctions.

Lechmere was notably ambivalent about the performance of Thomas Gage as both commander of the British army in North America and royal governor of Massachusetts.

On the one hand, he thought the ministry in London was hamstringing Gage by not sending him enough troops and limiting his autonomy:

The fine friends of Government that are hear [sic] impatiently long, for the Arrival of the Troops from Ireland, The Marines and recruits are arriv’d about 1100 in all, when the others arrive we hope, the Rebels may be drove to some distance from the town, tho’ we have our fears that the General has not and will not have Sufficient power from the Minister to act offensively, we form this Opinion from what has (or rather has not) been done, ’tis a pity he had not discretionary powers, the want of this, has, and I fear will again produce some bad Consequences.

On the other hand, Lechmere suspected that Gage was holding his forces back. After describing the previous day’s fighting over Grape Island, the merchant wrote:

in the Hay Expedition ’tis said both the Troops and Schooners had orders not to Fire, this seems very strange, indeed there has been several instances of their firing upon Boats and their not returning it, these little attempts and not succeeding in them, give the Rebels great sprit, and I wish it may not have the opposite Effect upon the Troops, the General is one of the most humane good men that lives, and I wish his tenderness may not in the end hurt him, and the Cause, he feels and Pitys the distresses of the Country

In particular, Lechmere thought Gage had erred in not calling on his Council—a body that Lechmere himself had been appointed to.

As to the Council we have not been call’d together since I wrote you, nor it is it I believe the wish of any one member so to be, but I can’t help saying, the Gov.r miss’d the best Opportunity of having them recogniz’d by the People the day after the 19 April,

town Meeting was call’d with a design to choose a Committee to wait upon the Gov.r to Ask his Leave that the Inhabitants might remove out of town with their Effects, this Committee was [composed?] of the Select Men with the Addition of Mr [James] Bowdin as their Chairman, they went to the Governor towards Evening, and after being with him some time, he Consented that they might remove with their Effects, whenever they pleas’d,

it woul’d have been a lucky circumstance if he had said, he should as it was a matter of a civil nature consult his council, and in the Next day give his answer but unluckily he was in my poor opinion a little to precipitate, in giving his Answer immediately, and they have been constantly moving out every day since I really believe he has done this from good principles, because he could not render us more obnoxious than we were before but in this once instance, I think he was wrong.

you justly observe that he has a difficult card to play, but when he is invested with powers, I hope he will convince the Rebels that he does not want [courage?] to execute them

Gage did cancel permission for people to leave Boston and then negotiated an agreement that they would deposit their firearms with the selectmen at Faneuil Hall before reopening the gates. Naturally, people criticized him for both decisions.

TOMORROW: News from outside.

“I fear Great Brittain will find it difficult to subdue an extensive Continent”

Back in 2008, Heritage Auctions sold a letter from Richard Lechmere (1727–1814) commenting on the first month of the Revolutionary War.

Lechmere was a wealthy merchant, a King’s Chapel vestryman, and a steady supporter of the royal government. The ministers in London had named him to the mandamus Council in 1774. He took that office even though it meant leaving his estate in east Cambridge and moving into Boston.

It’s interesting, therefore, that Lechmere’s letter surfaced in a collection of papers owned by Henry Seymour Conway (1721–1795), a British Member of Parliament and sometime minister who usually opposed stringent measures against the colonies. While Lechmere was a clear “Tory” by Massachusetts standards, in London he might have been among the moderate Whigs who agreed that something had to be done about the colonial resistance but didn’t want the response to be too harsh.

Of course, the outbreak of war has a way of changing people’s outlooks. In this letter Lechmere wrote:

Blood must be shed, before the Colonies can be brought [to s]ubmission is sufficiently prov’d by the Event of 19 April, [it is] my opinion that large quantities must be spilt before the Continent can be reduc’d and indeed I think it a doubtfull matter, whether it can be ever be effected[.]

the Corsicans without resources gave the french a great deal of trouble by retiring into the Interior Country[.] if they were able to do there under those disadvantages, I fear Great Brittain will find it difficult to subdue an extensive Continent, full of people United in the same cause and abounding with every necessary to defend themselves, if they pursue the same method, as the Corsicans, which I believe to be their plan, and especially while Government move[s] so slow, as to give them time, from discipline, to become good soldiers,

we still remain Blockaded and the Rebels are fortifying every pass and Defile in the neighbourhood of the Town, they have strong and extensive lines at Cambridge and Batteries upon the Hills about Charelstown that command the Roads there[.]

Later Lechmere discussed the British military’s attempts to raid the countryside, starting in September 1774 with the “Powder Alarm”:

The Troops have been unsuccessful in a very late Attempt they have made (except removing the powder at Charlestown) by some means or other, the Rebels got intelligence of their intentions, as soon as the scheme is laid, and with their usual industry find means to prevent their Executing it, 250 Troops were sent to [Salem] to secure some Cannon, they got intellig[ence]…Revmo’d the Cannon, and pulled up the Drawbridge...

Yesterday they [the troops] went to Hingham with an Arm’d s[ch]ooner several Sloops and a number of Boats with thirty…Soldiers) to fetch away about 90 Tons of Hay, from an Island about 500 yards form the shore, the Rebels came down to the shore, fired upon them, wounded one or two men, and oblig’d them to return without the Hay...

That description of actions in the harbor matches the skirmish over Grape Island on 21 May. Together with other mentions of things that had happened, and lack of mentions of things that would happen later, that allowed Heritage to date this letter on 22 May 1775.

TOMORROW: Lechmere’s thoughts on Gov. Gage.

(The photo above shows, courtesy of Find a Grave, the memorial plaque for Richard and Mary Lechmere in Bristol Cathedral, where they are buried.)

Looking at Lexington and Concord through Eighteenth-Century Eyes

Last month Alexander Cain at Historical Nerdery announced a resource for people researching the Battle of Lexington and Concord ahead of next spring’s Sestercentennial: a list of links to eyewitness accounts of the day.

That listing will be very useful, and it can grow. Perforce these are texts that have been digitized in one way or another. I’m sure that more lurk within books, newspapers, and letters. It’s a matter of ferreting them out and/or digitizing them in usable forms.

For instance, here is the list’s link to Gen. Thomas Gage’s instructions to Lt. Col. Francis Smith for the march to Concord on 18–19 April.

We also have what appears to be Gage’s notes or first draft of those instructions, quoted in General Gage’s Informers (1932) by Allan French. A digital version of that book can be borrowed from the Internet Archive, at least for now. Look on pages 29–30.

Since the Massachusetts Historical Society has scanned merchant John Rowe’s diaries, we can see his response to the news coming into Boston here. A transcription of what a descendant thought were the most important parts of that diary was published a century ago. Among the details one can find only in the handwritten journal is that on 20 April Capt. John Linzee, R.N., dined and spent the evening at Rowe’s house after fending off an attack on his ship on the Charles River.

It’s possible to identify the sources of some anonymous accounts. One resource on the list, Ezekiel Russell’s “Bloody Butchery by the British Troops” broadside, includes text headlined “SALEM, April 25.” Those paragraphs commence: “LAST Wednesday, the nineteenth of April, the troops of his Britannic Majesty commenced hostilities upon the people of this province…”

The preceding paragraphs come with a source citation—not coincidentally, to Russell’s own Salem Gazette newspaper. But Russell didn’t give his competition publicity by revealing that he took the second and longer passage from Samuel Hall’s Essex Gazette for 25 April. That text was later imperfectly transcribed in Peter Force’s American Archives.

The 3 May Massachusetts Spy on the list includes an unsourced story about what happened “When the expresses [from Boston] got about a mile beyond Lexington.” That story matches one that William Dawes’s family recalled hearing from him, revealing that Dawes was probably printer Isaiah Thomas’s source.

Among the lately revealed visual resources is this hand-drawn map in the Library of Congress. I’m convinced by Ed Redmond’s hypothesis that Ens. Henry DeBerniere created this map ahead of the march to Concord. It thus offers a look at what British army officers knew of the countryside west of Boston. (I discussed details of that map starting here.)

TOMORROW: A source from May 1775.

Helping to Shape Two Gifts for Revolutionary History Fans

I autograph copies of my book The Road to Concord for people who order through The History List. Sometimes I also help out polishing the details of its products for fans of the American Revolution.

One of the recent items I advised on is this handsome portrait of the handsome Carpenters’ Hall in Philadelphia by artist and calligrapher Larry Stuart. It’s available as a print, a tea towel, and a magnet.

Two hundred fifty years ago this year, Carpenters’ Hall hosted the Continental Congress. That body was later renamed the First Continental Congress since a follow-up gathering at the nearby Pennsylvania State House ended up lasting for years and overshadowing its namesake. (So much so that that building is now Independence Hall.)

That created a challenge for how to explain the historic significance of what happened in Carpenters’ Hall in 1774. Conveying the mindset of that year meant not reading the First Continental Congress through the lens of the Second. Thus, we usually think the first Congress had delegates from twelve of the “thirteen colonies,” but there were open invitations to more than thirteen, and thirteen didn’t become a meaningful number for another few years.

Likewise, it seemed important to describe the First Continental Congress not as laying the groundwork for independence but as trying to resolve the dispute with Britain while avoiding independence and/or war. I found a quotation from the Congress’s address to the people of Great Britain which summed up the message of 1774:

Permit us to be as free as yourselves, and we shall ever esteem a union with you to be our greatest glory and our greatest happiness

(Of course, in the original eighteenth-century prose, that’s only a fragment of a much longer sentence.)

In addition, The History List just announced its advent calendar, conceived by proprietor Lee Wright.

This calendar counts down the days to 25 December because that was the night Gen. George Washington launched the attack on the Crown forces at Trenton, crossing the Delaware as depicted in the main image. Each window in that picture opens to a new image of some object associated with that event.

For this item, I drafted a brief description of how December 1776 was going for Washington. (Not well.) 

I don’t see any money from my little contributions to History List products, but every so often I do get ice cream.

The Intriguing Portraits of William Williams

[Today’s posting would be simpler if so many of the people involved weren’t named Williams.]

Yesterday I passed on articles about Fara Dabhoiwala’s conclusions about a painting of the Jamaican scholar Francis Williams.

Dabhoiwala hypothesizes that this portrait was made in or shortly after 1759 by the artist William Williams, born in Wales in 1727 but active in the American colonies.

William Williams is known for a couple of other portraits of unusual men in Britain’s American empire.

One portrait, now lost, showed the Haudenosaunee leader Theyanoquin, often called “King Hendrick” by British sources. In January 1755, Theyanoquin was in Philadelphia meeting with Gov. John Penn and the Council about a land dispute. At the time, British authorities were pleased to have the Haudenosaunee as allies in their growing conflict with the French.

The Fishing Company of Fort St. David’s, a genteel men’s club, commissioned William Williams to paint Theyanoquin’s portrait, and club records show it was displayed in their clubhouse. (This club later merged with the Schuylkill Fishing Company, discussed here.)

Later in 1755, Theyanoquin led a contingent of Native soldiers in a British force commanded by Sir William Johnson. Col. Ephraim Williams, Jr., led the Massachusetts contingent. (His brother, Dr. Thomas Williams of Deerfield, came along as a surgeon, and their relative, the Rev. Stephen Williams, as a chaplain.)

That British force clashed with the French beside Lake George on 8 September. Col. Williams and Theyanoquin were both killed, though ultimately Johnson claimed victory.

That event made Theyanoquin, or Hendrick, a martyr for people in Britain. Elizabeth Bakewell and Henry Parker issued an engraved portrait of him titled “The Brave old Hendrick the great Sachem or Chief of the Mohawk Indians” (shown above). That print isn’t dated, and its source is uncertain, but scholars appear to believe that it was most likely based on the William Williams painting. If so, it’s the only remaining version of that image.

In the same decade, Williams painted the radical Quaker Benjamin Lay. The earliest trace of this portrait appears to be a remark in Benjamin Franklin’s 10 June 1758 letter from London to his wife Deborah. The retired printer wrote: “I wonder how you came by Ben. Lay’s Picture.”

Unfortunately, Deborah’s letters to Benjamin before and after that one don’t survive, so we don’t know what she’d told him about that picture or how she answered his query. Franklin had published some of Lay’s writing decades earlier, but the man wrote a lot, and I don’t see signs of a close friendship.

Deborah Franklin might have commissioned William Williams to paint Lay because she sensed public interest in an engraved portrait. At some point such an engraving appeared, credited to painter “W. Williams” and engraver “H.D.” That was Henry Dawkins, another British-born craftsman who had come to the Middle Colonies of America to be a bigger fish in a smaller pond. (It’s also possible Dawkins published that engraving himself and the “Picture” Benjamin Franklin wrote about was a print, not the painting.)

That brings us back to Francis Williams, the Jamaican polymath. Did William Williams paint his portrait with an eye toward its eventual engraving? No such engraving survives.

The painting went into the hands of the planter and lawyer Edward Long (1734–1813), who published a history of Jamaica in 1774. That book includes a poem by Francis Williams and a short, inaccurate, racist biography of him. Did Long at some point also think of putting an illustration of Williams into the book?

For more about those unusual portrait subjects, see Eric Hinderaker’s The Two Hendricks: Unraveling a Mohawk Mystery, Marcus Rediker’s The Fearless Benjamin Lay, and Vincent Carretta’s article “Who Was Francis Williams?” in Early American Literature.

New Light on the Portrait of Francis Williams

Last month Artnet and the Guardian reported on historian Fara Dabhoiwala’s findings about a painting I discussed in 2009.

The painting shows Francis Williams (1697–1762), a Jamaican of African ancestry. Born into a free and prospering family with special legal status, he went to London for education and then returned to the family estate.

The painting is in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, and fifteen years ago I quoted its webpage as saying:

Some writers have suggested that the painting is a caricature of Francis as he has been depicted with a large head and skinny legs. . . . Other critics have considered that the ‘unnaturalistic’ depiction may have been intended to emphasise the subject’s intellectual skills over his physical stature (Francis was alive at the time of the painting’s creation and may even have commissioned it). It may, more simply, be a reflection of the artist’s limited skills.

The new research connects the creation of the painting to a specific historical, and astronomical event.

The Guardian report explains:

Dabhoiwala…discovered the significance of the page number carefully inscribed on the book Williams is reading: it is the page in the third edition of Newton’s Principia that discusses how to calculate the trajectory of a comet by reference to the constellations around it.

An X-ray of the window scene depicted in the background of the painting showed lines intersecting what appears to be a luminous white comet, streaking through the sky at dusk, and connecting – with stunning accuracy – to constellations of stars. These stars would have been visible in that position in the firmament when Halley’s comet was in the sky over Jamaica in 1759, according to research by Dabhoiwala.

In other words, this picture shows a particular moment when Halley’s comet appeared over Williams’s estate, and it shows him as an educated gentleman who knew how to calculate the path of that comet.

Artnet adds:

As for the painting’s creator, Dabhoiwala is confident it’s the work of William Williams, an English-American artist who traveled to Jamaica in the 1760s. The comet together with the appearance [in the bookcase] of [Dr. Samuel] Johnson’s Dictionary, which was first published in 1755, align with this timing and the painting’s style is similar to other early Williams portraits of Benjamin Lay, a Quaker abolitionist, and Hendrick Theyanoguin, a Mohawk Indian.

The Lay portrait, now at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, also shows a man “with a large head and skinny legs.” Like Williams, Lay (c. 1681–1759) was notable for standing out in British-American society rather than fitting in. Williams (1727–1791) might have specialized in such subjects.

TOMORROw: More on William Williams’s work.

“On peut tromper quelques hommes…”

According to Quote Investigator, the fourth volume of the Encyclopédie, issued in 1754 by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert (shown here), contained this line:

…on peut tromper quelques hommes, ou les tromper tous dans certains lieux & en certains tems, mais non pas tous les hommes, dans tous les lieux & dans tous les siécles.

Those same lines had appeared (with an older spelling) in Jacques Abbadie’s Traité de la Vérité de la Religion Chrétienne, published in 1684.

A modern English translation of those words is:

One can fool some men, or fool all men in some places and times, but not all men in all places and in all ages.

In the 1880s, some campaigners for Prohibition in America started to quote a different version:

You can fool all the people part of the time, or you can fool some people all the time, but you cannot fool all people all the time.

In our culture, certain historical figures are magnets for unattributed quotations: Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain, Will Rogers, Dorothy Parker. For folksy political wisdom, Abraham Lincoln is one of those quote magnets. (As opposed to sober political wisdom, often attributed to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, or another Founder.)

Because of that phenomenon, within just a few years authors and speakers were crediting Lincoln with that saying about fooling some of the people all of the time. Nothing of the sort appears in any of his writings, nor in any memoir about him until decades later.

Instead, that piece of wisdom has its roots in the French Enlightenment.

The Marching Society in 1976

As long as I’m thinking back to 1976, I’ll highlight the Mighty Marvel Bicentennial Calendar.

This was published before I read more than a handful of comic books, so I didn’t see it at the time. The “’Taint the Meat…It’s the Humanity!” blog has a thorough overview.

The Stan Lee Papers at the University of Wyoming hold memos from Marvel Comics editor Tony Isabella to different artists, commissioning them to create the pictures for each month. (Start on page 37 of this digitized file.)

For example, to Gil Kane in January 1975:

Gil, this scene should show Conan and some Minute Men fighting British troops at Lexington. The British troops are wielding bayonets. I’m enclosing some reference (an old engraving) for you to (what else) refer to and whatever information on the battle at Lexington I can dig up. We’ll try to get you some additional reference before the end of the week.

Deadline for sketch: IMMEDIATELY!

That image ended up not showing any British troops at all, just the Cimmerian warrior urging on the Minute Men as they fired from behind a rather flat stone wall.

Isabella linked pictures to events in each month of 1776 (or 1775) where he could. January shows the Invaders of World War 2 with a man supposed to be Commodore Esek Hopkins, sailing out with the first Continental Navy. Isabella sent artist Frank Robbins “a pretty bad French engraving” of Hopkins. The result looks dimly like the engraving. But that engraving probably looked nothing like Hopkins, whom the artist in Europe had almost certainly never seen.

It’s rather funny to see the company’s effort to be historically accurate while inserting giant green monsters and flaming men into the Revolutionary War.

“Deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”

The earliest Presidential election I remember following in the news was during the Bicentennial year of 1976. I collaborated with classmates on an elaborate political cartoon about the Democratic primaries in the unforgiving medium of the mimeograph.

I think that was also the year I learned about the odd workings of the Electoral College. We calculated how a candidate could win the Presidency by winning just the eleven biggest states, as I recall.

(Since then I’ve seen more sophisticated analysis than my fifth-grade crew could muster, pointing out that the way to win the Electoral College with the fewest votes isn’t to win the eleven biggest and therefore underrepresented states but the forty smallest ones by narrow margins.)

At the time, most people saw the Electoral College as a curious relic. It was something political reporters brought up in the last weeks of the campaign as they ran out of fresh topics. Not since 1888 had the front-runner in the popular vote been kept out of the White House because of the Electoral College, and that guy came back and won four years later.

As Election Day approached in 2000, those stories about the anomaly of the Electoral College resurfaced as usual. One of my college roommates passed on pundit speculation about Al Gore losing the popular vote but winning the Electors. I replied that that wouldn’t be a good outcome since the winner of a democratic election should have a popular mandate.

As we all know, that election went the other way: George W. Bush lost the popular vote but won through the Electors (and the Supreme Court’s decision to stop Florida’s recounts). For the first time in more than a century, the Electoral College was more than a curiosity.

That’s why I’ve felt confident in opposing that form of election distortion—I knew that I had opposed it even when it would hypothetically benefit my preferred candidate. I wrote about the problems of the Electoral College on this blog in 2006, and then again in 2008, 2012, 2016, 2017, 2019 (twice), and 2020 (multiple times).

America’s founding generation left us the power to reform the original electoral system. They also left us their example of doing so, with the Twelfth Amendment. And they left us a mandate to do so in the Declaration of Independence, which says:

—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,

—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

For decades, clear majorities of the American population have supported the idea of getting rid of the Electoral College and deciding the Presidential election by popular vote, the way we fill every other elected office. The “consent of the governed” should not be determined by inertia or the stubbornness of a minority insisting on keeping an unfair advantage.

“Demagogues never were nor will be Patriots”

The way the Federalists told it, the biggest danger to the new American republic would be some form of “anarchy” leading to a demagogue gaining power.

This was, they warned the voting public, more likely than some form of aristocracy or oligarchy leading to a tyrant gaining power.

That fear motivated George Washington to come out of retirement and chair the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, as he explained to Lafayette on 6 June 1787:

The pressure of the public voice was so loud, I could not resist the call to a convention of the States which is to determine whether we are to have a Government of respectability under which life—liberty, and property secured to us, or whether we are to submit to one which may be the result of chance or the moment, springing perhaps from anarch⟨ie⟩ Confusion, and dictated perhaps by some aspiring demagogue who will not consult the interest of his Country so much as his own ambitious views.

That convention produced a blueprint for government with a stronger national chief executive than anyone had envisioned before, albeit not as strong as it would become later. And of course the Federalists felt they were the best qualified to exercise those powers.

The fear of demagogues remained, now directed at any popular opposition to their policies. After negotiating a treaty with Britain that he knew would provoke complaints, John Jay wrote home to President Washington on 25 Feb 1795:

Demagogues will constantly flatter the Passions and Prejudices of the multitude; and will never cease to employ improper arts against those who will not be their Instruments. I have known many Demagogues, but I have never known one honest man among them. These are among the Evils which are incident to human Life, and none of them shall enduce me to decline or abandon Pursuits, in which I may concieve it to be my Duty to embark or persevere. All creatures will act according to their nature, and it would be absurd to expect that a man who is not upright will act like one that is.

Over a decade later, Jay was a retired jurist, diplomat, and New York governor, but he still expressed distaste for politicians who played to the public in an 18 Apr 1807 letter:

All Parties have their Demagogues, and Demagogues never were nor will be Patriots—Self Interest excites and directs all their Talents and Industry; and…by that Principle they regulate their conduct towards Men and Measures—nor is this all—They not only act improperly themselves, but they diligently strive to mislead the weak the Ignorant and the unwary—as to the corrupt they like to have it so—it makes a good market for them.

While I share these Federalists’ worry about demagogues, I think they directed that worry at the wrong targets, their view distorted by class prejudices and (try as they might) their own self-interests.

Firstly, the politicians the Federalists of the 1790s feared would be demagogues, such as Thomas Jefferson or even Matthew Lyon, didn’t threaten the republic, only Federalist domination of that republic.

Beyond that, history has shown that bigoted inertia was a bigger obstacle to liberty and economic growth than allowing the American government to be more responsive to the whole American people.

“A sotish, stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish man”

Having whole-heartedly adopted the American cause, Thomas Paine embedded himself with the Continental Army in the fall of 1776.

That was not a good time for the Continental Army.

Returning to Philadelphia, Paine started to publish The Crisis, urging Americans not to let themselves fall back under the control of a tyrant:

Let them call me rebel, and welcome, I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul by swearing allegiance to one whose character is that of a sotish, stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish man.

I conceive likewise a horrid idea in receiving mercy from a being, who at the last day shall be shrieking to the rocks and mountains to cover him, and fleeing with terror from the orphan, the widow and the slain of America.

There are cases which cannot be overdone by language, and this is one. There are persons, too, who see not the full extent of the evil which threatens them; they solace themselves with hopes that the enemy, if he succeed, will be merciful.

It is the madness of folly, to expect mercy from those who have refused to do justice; and even mercy, where conquest is the object, is only a trick of war: The cunning of the fox is as murderous as the violence of the wolfe, and we ought to guard equally against both.

In that quotation I followed the spelling and punctuation of the broadside issued “opposite the Court-House, Queen Street,” in Boston. That was how Edward Eveleth Powars and Nathaniel Willis, publishers of the Independent Chronicle, described their print shop, in a space originally used by James Franklin. The town hadn’t yet gotten around to giving the street a new, non-monarchical name.

“Apprehensive, that the Government of these States, may in future times, end in a Monarchy”

Last month the Journal of the American Revolution published Ray Raphael’s article “A Kingly Government?: Benjamin Franklin’s Great Fear.”

Franklin and James Madison were among the most vocal of the men at the Constitutional Convention wary of assigning too much power to the executive branch, or investing too much of that power in one man.

Ray Raphael writes:

Madison opened the bidding. Wouldn’t it be “proper,” he asked, “before a choice should be made between a unity and plurality in the Executive, to fix the extent of the Executive authority?” Madison proposed minimal powers: “to carry into execution the national laws” and “to appoint offices in cases not otherwise provided for.” With little dissent, state delegations agreed. Executive authority was subservient to legislative demands, save only for some lesser appointments. Most significantly, he/they would not possess the “powers of war and peace.”

Later the debate turned to whether there would be a single executive and how long one man would hold that office:

Franklin stewed over the prospect of a single executive serving for seven years. “Being very sensible of the effect of age on his memory,” he told the Convention the next morning, he carefully wrote down his objections. Saddled with a weakened voice and failing eyes, he would find it difficult to read aloud what he had just penned, so James Wilson offered to read it for him:

It will be said, that we don’t propose to establish Kings. I know it. But there is a natural inclination in mankind to Kingly Government. It sometimes relieves them from Aristocratic domination. They had rather have one tyrant than five hundred. It gives more of the appearance of equality among Citizens, and that they like. I am apprehensive therefore, perhaps too apprehensive, that the Government of these States, may in future times, end in a Monarchy.

I’d like to refute Franklin’s belief in “a natural inclination in mankind to Kingly Government.” However, too many people speak of U.S. Presidents as solely responsible for laws, court decrees, wars, and other actions that the Constitution explicitly assigns to other branches. And a smaller but still too large number of people are attracted to obvious strongmen.

Back in 1787, as the convention went on, however, most delegates seem to have let those worries subside a bit. The example of George Washington in the chair probably had an influence. No better solutions presented themselves.

We know that Franklin and Mason opposed a single executive, fearing the extent of his powers. They had sounded the alarm at the outset of the convention, and [George] Mason’s opposition to ratification would highlight the dangers of a single executive as well as the absence of a bill of rights. But Madison’s concern has received scant attention. A chief architect of the Constitution’s checks and balances, he failed to gain traction for this protection against an executive who put himself over country. Convention fatigue might well have played a role.

The Constitution did explicitly reserve “powers of war and peace” for the legislature, and limited the single executive to a four-year term. While the British Crown could veto legislation, a U.S. President’s veto could be overridden. Still, the fear of a President taking on monarchical powers and the rest of the government being unable or unwilling to stop it remained.

Ray Raphael’s article ends with Franklin’s exchange with Elizabeth Powel, as recorded by James McHenry:

Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy. A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it.

(I’ve discussed that anecdote at length since 2017.)

“Whether societies of men are really capable or not, of establishing good government”

From the first “Publius” essay, written by Alexander Hamilton and published on 27 October 1787 in the Independent Journal of New York:

It has been frequently remarked, that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not, of establishing good government from ref[l]ection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend, for their political constitutions, on accident and force.

If there be any truth in the remark, the crisis, at which we are arrived, may with propriety be regarded as the æra in which that decision is to be made; and a wrong election of the part we shall act, may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind.. . . .

…a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidden appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. History will teach us that the former has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the latter, and that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants.

In 1788 most of those essays were collected as The Federalist: A Collection of Essays, with eight more appearing in the New York newspapers after that.

A French edition of 1792 named the authors behind “Publius” as Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay.

In the late 1800s authors began to refer to the essays as “the Federalist papers,” and eventually they came to have the title most people use for them now: The Federalist Papers.