An Immigrant’s Advice to Jefferson about Thanksgiving

Benjamin Vaughan (1751-1835) was a British radical politician who in the 1790s both served a term in Parliament and moved to Maine. He made his first appearance on Boston 1775 as a Ben Franklin fanboy.

While in America, Vaughan corresponded with various politicians, including President Thomas Jefferson. Living in New England, Vaughan was acutely aware how many of his pious neighbors distrusted Jefferson’s thoughts on religion.

Worried about the new President’s emphasis on keeping church and government separate might fly in New England, Vaughan wrote to Jefferson on 15 Mar 1801:

I trust that your administration will have few difficulties in these parts, provided it steers clear of religion. You are too wise & just to think of any official attacks upon religion, & too sincere to make any affected overtures in favor of it. You know where you are thought to be in this respect; & there it may be wise to stand.—

If a ruler however at times acts with a view to accommodate himself to the feelings, in which many of the citizens for whom he takes thought, participate; this can neither be considered as a violation of truth or of dignity; and is not likely to prove unacceptable, if done avowedly with this view.—

For example, it is not in, & is perhaps without the constitution, to recommend fasts & thanksgivings from the federal chair, at the seasons respectively when the New Englanders look for those things; & therefore you will not think it perhaps needful for you to meddle with such matters. But, if you did, this example will serve my purpose. You may then I presume safely & acceptably interfere with a view to name a time, when a large proportion of your constituents may be enabled to do the thing in question consentingly & cotemporarily. You certainly may make yourself in this an organ of the general convenience, without departing from any of your own principles; especially as you will take due care to use decorous language, should the occasion be used.

I do not however see any necessity for a federal fast or federal thanksgiving, when these things are open, to the states approving them, to order for themselves.—I treat the case therefore merely for illustration.—

The religion of the New-Englanders will require to be touched with tenderness. Your opinions are known, & in defiance of those opinions you have your office: consequently you m[ay?] continue to hold them, as a privileged person. But it will be wise, as to these parts of the Union, to keep these opinions in the only situation in which they have hitherto been seen; a private one; & for the regulation of your private conduct.

Presidents George Washington and John Adams had each proclaimed two national Thanksgivings. Adams’s proclamations became controversial, and he even blamed them in part for his loss to Jefferson in 1800. Adams had made his proclamations in the spring, which might explain why Vaughan was so eager in March to counsel the new President about how to handle that tradition.

President Jefferson maintained his stance against proclaiming Thanksgivings, but, as he wrote to his attorney general in 1802, he also felt the need to explain his reasons to the public.

Benjamin Franklin and “the bad Effects of Lead taken inwardly”

Earlier in the year I introduced Benjamin Franklin’s fan Benjamin Vaughan, who arranged for the printing of his Works in London during the war and later emigrated to Maine.

Here’s another product of Vaughan’s admiration for Franklin: the older man’s suspicions about lead poisoning, written on 31 July 1786 and quoted here:

I recollect that when I had the great Pleasure of seeing you at Southampton, now a 12 month since, we had some Conversation on the bad Effects of Lead taken inwardly; and that at your Request I promis’d to send you in writing a particular Account of several Facts I then mention’d to you, of which you thought some good Use might be made. I now sit down to fulfil that Promise.

The first Thing I remember of this kind, was a general discourse in Boston when I was a Boy, of a Complaint from North Carolina against New England Rum, that it poison’d their People, giving them the Dry Bellyach, with a Loss of the Use of their Limbs. The Distilleries being examin’d on the Occasion, it was found that several of them used leaden Still-heads and Worms, and the Physicians were of the Opinion that the Mischief was occasion’d by that Use of Lead. The Legislature of the Massachusetts thereupon pass’d an Act prohibiting under severe Penalties the Use of such Still-heads & Worms thereafter. Inclos’d I send you a Copy of the Act, taken from my printed Law book.

Specifically, the law was “An Act for Preventing Abuses in Distilling of Rum and Other Strong Liquors, with Leaden Heads or Pipes,” passed on 3 Sept 1723. Here’s the text from a law book published by Isaiah Thomas. It required every Massachusetts town with distillers to appoint “Assay-Masters” to inspect those stills and ensure they weren’t made with lead.

It’s noteworthy that the Massachusetts General Court didn’t expect distillers to upgrade their equipment just because of market pressure. For the sake of public health, and the good reputation of “New England Rum,” they instituted a government solution. Of course, colonial New England was a highly regulated society.

Back to Franklin:

In 1724, being in London, I went to work in the Printing-House of Mr. [Samuel] Palmer, [in the neighborhood of] Bartholomew Close, as a Compositor. I there found a Practice I had never seen before, of drying a Case of Types, (which are wet in Distribution) by placing it sloping before the Fire. I found this had the additional Advantage, when the Types were not only dry’d but heated, of being comfortable to the Hands working over them in cold weather. I therefore sometimes heated my Case when the Types did not want drying. But an old Workman observing it, advis’d me not to do so, telling me I might lose the Use of my Hands by it, as two of our Companions had nearly done, one of whom that us’d to earn his Guinea a Week could not then make more than ten Shillings and the other, who had the Dangles, but Seven & sixpense. This, with a kind of obscure Pain that I had sometimes felt as it were in the Bones of my Hand when working over the Types made very hot, induc’d me to omit the Practice. But talking afterwards with Mr. James, a Letter-founder in the same Close, and asking him if his People, who work’d over the little Furnaces of melted Metal, were not subject to that Disorder; he made light of any Danger from the Effluvia, but ascrib’d it to Particles of the Metal swallow’d with their Food by slovenly Workmen, who went to their Meals after handling the Metal, without well-washing their Fingers, so that some of the metalline Particles were taken off by their Bread and eaten with it. This appear’d to have some Reason in it. But the Pain I had experienc’d made me still afraid of those Effluvia.

Being in Derbishire at some of the Furnaces for Smelting of Lead Ore, I was told that the Smoke of those Furnaces was pernicious to the neighboring Grass and other Vegetables. But I do not recollect to have heard any thing of the Effect of such Vegetables eaten by Animals. It may be well to make the Enquiry. . . .

I have of a Case in Europe, I forgot the Place, where a whole Family was afflicted with what we call the Dry-Bellyach, or Colica Pictonum, by drinking Rain Water. It was at a Country Seat, which being situated too high to have the Advantage of a Well, was supply’d with Water from a Tank which receiv’d the Water from the leaded Roofs. This had been drank several Years without Mischief; but some young Trees planted near the House, growing up above the Roof, and shedding their Leaves upon it, it was suppos’d that an Acid in those Leaves had corroded the Lead they cover’d, and furnish’d the Water of that Year with its baneful Particles & Qualities.

When I was in Paris with Sir John Pringle in 1767, he visited La Charite, a Hospital particularly famous for the Cure of that Malady, and brought from thence a Pamphlet, containing a List of the Names of Persons, specifying their Professions or Trades, who had been cured there. I had the Curiosity to examine that List, and found that all the Patients were of Trades that some way or other use or work in Lead; such as Plumbers, Glasiers, Painters, &c. excepting only two kinds, Stonecutters and Soldiers. These I could not reconcile to my Notion that Lead was the Cause of that Disorder. But on my mentioning this Difficulty to a Physician of that Hospital, he inform’d me that the Stonecutters are continually using melted Lead to fix the Ends of Iron Balustrades in Stone; and that the Soldiers had been emply’d by Painters as Labourers in Grinding of Colours.

This letter was published in The American Museum, or, Universal Magazine in May 1790, one month after Franklin died at the age of eighty-four. Working with lead had evidently not slowed him down too much.

Benjamin Vaughan, Franklin Fanboy

The Englishman who edited Benjamin Franklin’s essays for the press in 1779 was his admirer Benjamin Vaughan (1751-1835). Like Franklin, he had family in Boston.

Born in Jamaica, Vaughan was a grandson of the Massachusetts merchant captain Benjamin Hallowell, Sr. (The captain’s namesake son became one of the most hated of the royal Customs Commissioners in Boston.)

Vaughan’s immediate family were Unitarians, not fitting in with either New England Congregationalists or the established church in Britain. He attended dissenting grammar schools in Britain, and his faith limited the possibilities of a university degree.

Vaughan studied science under the Quaker scholar Joseph Priestley, then law, and finally medicine when he was trying to impress his future wife’s father that he could earn a steady living. But what really excited him was politics. He became a radical, which in Britain meant a republican. Vaughan stood somewhere between activists like John Horne and more establishment figures like the Earl of Shelburne. All that was going on while he collected Franklin’s older books and circulating manuscripts and prepared them for the press in 1779.

When Shelburne became prime minister in 1782, he asked Vaughan to go to Paris and use his relationship to Franklin to create a sort of back-door channel for news and reassurances. He wasn’t officially part of the British diplomatic delegation but seems to have contributed to the peace of 1783.

Vaughan served in Parliament from 1792 to 1794. Despite coming from the left, he opposed the idea of ending slavery in the British West Indies (his own family’s fortune was of course based on slave labor). When the old rivalry between Britain and France heated up again, this time with France as a militant republic, Vaughan came under suspicion of being a French sympathizer and fled the country.

Unfortunately, he arrived in France just as the “Terror” gave way to the “Thermidor” reaction, consuming one set of leaders after another. Vaughan was locked up on suspicion of being a British spy—I can’t tell exactly when and how his treatment fit with the swift changes in the French government at the time. But after a brief stretch in prison Vaughan made it out to Switzerland, then sailed for Boston in 1795.

Vaughan soon settled for life in Hallowell, Maine, where he had inherited land through his mother. His personal library was said to contain 10,000 books, one of the largest in the country. In American politics Vaughan became a firm Federalist, thus on the right. He finally started practicing medicine and promoted the use of Francis Jenner’s smallpox vaccine. He also built up his area of Maine with mills, wharfs, and stores.

There are papers related to Vaughan and his family at the Massachusetts Historical Society, the American Philosophical Society, the Clements Library, and elsewhere, given his correspondence with many early American statesmen. Vaughan’s house in Maine is now a historic site, though it’s not open to tours this summer. 

Benjamin Franklin’s “Present Hostile Character”

Yesterday’s posting mentioned almost in passing that Benjamin Franklin’s Political, Miscellaneous, and Philosophical Pieces was published in London in 1779. Think about that.

At that time, Franklin was the rebel American states’ minister to Paris, doing his best to increase French aid, recruit Continental military talent, and thwart British espionage. His last major public appearance in London was being castigated in front of the Privy Council for helping to leak confidential letters on Massachusetts politics.

Yet Dr. Franklin’s major essays were collected and published in the capital of the British Empire. And with his participation: he reviewed the early printed pages and provided an appendix of “Addenda & Corrigenda.”

Many eighteenth-century books came out anonymously, but this collection didn’t hide its author’s identity or status. A profile of Franklin appeared opposite the title page, the author bio identified him as “Minister Plenipotentiary at the Court of Paris for the United States of America,” and the contents listed essays on “American Politics before the Troubles” and “American Politics during the Troubles.”

The 1779 collection was not an inexpensive venture: it filled nearly 600 pages, and the editor commissioned special type to reproduce Franklin’s phonetic alphabet in print for the first time. That required a type cutter to carve the new symbols and cast them, and the printers to go to extra trouble in setting those pages.

The editor’s preface addresses Franklin’s status in the British Empire directly:

Can Englishmen read these things and not sigh at recollecting that the country which could produce their author was once without controversy their own!—Yet he who praises Dr. Franklin for mere ability, praises him for that quality of his mind which stands lowest in his own esteem. Reader, whoever you are and how much soever you think you hate him, know that this great man loves you enough to wish to do you good:

His country’s friend, but more of human kind.

The Monthly Review reprinted those words about Franklin in a positive review of the book that started by acknowledging “the present hostile character he bears to this country.”

TOMORROW: Who edited and published Franklin’s essays in 1779?