Having hopefully set in the minds
of my readers a somewhat more definite sense of how Benjamin Franklin viewed
the various governors that his fellow colonists had been saddled with, in terms
of the words he used to describe them, it remains to determine, I think,
whether his rather jaundiced view was an accurate one. Granted, this is not a
question that absolutely needs to be answered. Whether Franklin was correct in
his assessment or not weighs very little on whether he believed he was right,
or whether his fellow colonists shared his sentiments. That being said, I
confess myself curious. Was there a basis to Franklin’s characterization in Rules? Where the colonial governors, as
a group, as disreputable as he made them out, or was he exaggerating the degree
of their deficiencies so as to more forcefully make his desired point? While I
don’t suppose even a brief survey of the careers and character of all thirteen
appointed governors as of 1773 is something either of us wants to go through
(my having to write it or your having to read it), perhaps a representative
sample would suffice. To that end let’s lay aside the Crown-appointed governors
of Massachusetts, Virginia, and New York, three of the most populous colonies
under direct royal control, and briefly delve into their lives and livelihoods
as of 1773.
Thomas Hutchinson (1711-1780) was
appointed to govern the Province of Massachusetts Bay in 1771 and remained in
office until 1774. Far from an aristocrat or a court favorite, Hutchinson was a
Boston native who spent most of his life in public service with various
branches of the colonial government, and who took special pride in exploring
and preserving the history of his beloved Massachusetts. In spite of his avowed
love of country, however, his politics did not always endear him to his fellow
citizens. In the 1730s his career suffered as a result of his opposition to the
use of bills of credit in the colony whose value he considered unstable.
Because said bills were favored by certain populist elements in the colony
Hutchinson subsequently lost his position as a Selectman for the city of Boston
in the election of 1739. Similarly, following the death of his wife Margaret in
1754, he became involved in a humanitarian effort to support Acadian refugees
(former inhabitants of French colonial possessions in the Canadian Maritimes) who
had been expelled from their homes in Nova Scotia. Because the Acadians were
Roman Catholics, Hutchinson lost further favor with the mainly-Protestant
inhabitants of his home province. His reputation continued to decline among
more radical sectors of the colonial population following his appointment as
Lieutenant-Governor in 1758, his ascension to the office of Chief Justice of
the Massachusetts Superior Court (in spite of possessing no legal training) in
the early 1760s, and his lukewarm public position concerning the passages of
the Sugar Act (1763) and Stamp Act (1765). Though Hutchinson was in fact
opposed to the imposition of either tax, and sent written warnings to
authorities in London not to proceed, he was nevertheless pegged as a closet
supporter of the Acts because his public comments were restrained by a sense of
propriety concerning his position and feelings of loyalty to the British
government.
Anger towards the
Lieutenant-Governor spiked after his brother-in-law Andrew Oliver was appointed
“stamp master” for Massachusetts, charged with enforcing the tax on stamped
paper goods, in 1765. Though by all accounts Hutchinson had no say in the selection
his opponents charged him with nepotism, and on the evening of August, 26th
a belligerent crowd descended on his mansion and proceeded to ransack the lot. Subsequent
events, including the stationing of British troops in Boston in 1767 and the
resulting Boston Massacre in 1770, drove a deeper wedge between the colonial
population and the man who had been their acting-governor since 1769. Upon his
formal appointment to the post of governor in 1771 he announced that,
commensurate with instructions from London, the colonial legislature was to be
relocated from Boston to Cambridge (away from the influence of the former
city’s radicals). This met with yet another firestorm of criticism, which over
the course of 1772 transitioned into a lengthy and vociferous written debate
between Hutchinson and the Massachusetts General Court over the legitimacy of
his authority, the limits of parliamentary power over the colonies, and the
nature of taxation. As authorities in contemporary Britain rightly observed,
this conflict contributed greatly to increasing the distrust felt by the
colonial population towards their governor, and likely contributed to the
radicalization of more than a few moderate voices.
Virginia, meanwhile, was governed
between 1771 and 1775 by John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore
(1730-1809). Born in Tymouth, Scotland, Murray took part in the ill-fated
Jacobite uprising of 1745 at the age of 15, was subsequently put under house
arrest along with the rest of his family for their disloyalty to the Crown (the
Murray’s having supported the pretender to the throne Charles Francis Stuart),
joined the British Army in 1750, and inherited his father’s earldom in 1756. In
1770 Murray was appointed governor of the Province of New York and in 1771 left
that post to become governor of the Province of Virginia. In spite of his brief
tenure in this second office Lord Dunmore accomplished a great deal in only a
few short years to disabuse the colonists under his authority of any lingering
affection for Britain and its ministers. In an act which might have otherwise
ingratiated him to the colonists, he made war on the Shawnee inhabitants of the
Ohio Valley in an attempt to shore up Virginia’s claims there. Because he had
previously attempted to govern while ignoring the elected House of Burgesses
(the lower house of the colonial legislature), however, Dunmore was accused of
colluding with the Shawnee to engineer a war as a means of depleting the
colonial militia and preventing a potential rebellion. When he was finally
forced to convene the Burgesses in 1773 as a means of securing the necessary
tax revenue to fund the war in Ohio, the assembled delegates instead set about
forming a committee of correspondence so as to communicate their displeasure
concerning the enforcement of the Townshend Acts to the appropriate authorities
in Britain. Dunmore immediately postponed the Assembly, whose members proceeded
to convene at the nearby Raleigh Tavern and discuss their various grievances
concerning taxation, perceived corruption, and Britain’s apparent lack of
interest in the concerns of its North American citizens. The House of Burgesses
were subsequently dissolved by Dunmore upon a second unsuccessful reconvention
in mid-1774.
The governor of the Province of New
York in 1773 was a British former soldier named William Tryon (1729-1788) who
had previously served as governor of the Province of North Carolina between
1765 and 1771. Born on the Norbury Park, Surrey estate of his father Charles
Tryon, William purchased a commission as a lieutenant in the 1st
Regiment of Foot at age 22, and served in France during the Seven Years War
(during which time he was wounded). In 1757 he married the daughter of the East
India Company’s governor of Bombay, Margaret Wake, and received an accompanying
dowry of £30,000 (the equivalent of £5,400,000 in 2013). Thanks to his abundant
family connections Tryon was able to secure an appointment to the post of
Lieutenant-Governor of North Carolina in 1764, and upon the death of incumbent
governor Arthur Dobbs succeeded to the vacated office in 1765. Though
personally opposed to the passage of the Stamp Act, Tryon prevented the
colonial legislature from meeting between May, 1765 and November, 1766 so that
the assembled delegates could not pass any resolutions expressing their
opposition to the same. He further inflamed colonial opinion in late 1766 and
early 1767 when he demanded at least double the £5000 authorized by the
colonial assembly for the construction of a new governor’s mansion. Tryon
claimed that even a modest structure would require at least £10,000, personally
hired an architect to oversee the project, and sent to Philadelphia for workers
because he claimed South Carolina artisans lacked the expertise to construct
the dwelling he envisioned. Though Tryon was able to convince the provincial
assembly to agree to an increased construction budget the taxes that had to be
subsequently raised further tarnished his reputation in the eyes of North
Carolinians. Consequently the new governor’s mansion, located in the town of New
Bern, became sardonically known upon its completion in 1770 as “Tryon Palace.”
The taxes raised to fund the
construction of Tryon’s Palace, along with the notoriously corrupt practices of
the county officials responsible for their collection, sparked the formation of
a protest movement known to history as the Regulators. Intent on purging the
colonial government of corrupt practices (aimed at wealthy urbanites) and
reduce the tax burden on North Carolina’s least wealthy inhabitants (aimed at
poor rural dwellers), the Regulators gained widespread support in what were
then the western counties of Orange, Anson and Granville. Acts of minor
mischief by Regulators gave way to vandalism of government property, which gave
way to organized resistance to colonial tax collectors and surveyors. This
campaign culminated in Governor Tryon’s call for the colonial militia to quell
the nascent uprising before it escalated further, which they did in 1771 at the
Battle of Alamance. Thereafter, known supporters of the failed campaign were
made to swear loyalty oaths, the property of active Regulators was seized and
destroyed, further taxes were levied to pay for the militia’s salaries, and six
of the uprising’s leaders were tried, convicted of treason, and hanged. Tryon
departed North Carolina later in 1771 to take up the post of governor of New
York, whereupon he promptly convinced the provincial assembly there to
appropriate funds for the quartering of British troops, the establishment of a
militia, and rebuilding of the fortifications surrounding New York City. In
1772 Tryon came out in favor of the Tea Act, though his plans to comply with
its provisions were ultimately foiled by a powerful and widespread public
sentiment to the contrary.
Taking these three men, their
lives, and their careers as a yardstick, it would seem that the veiled denunciation Franklin offered in Rules of the quality of British
America’s colonial governor’s represent something on an exaggeration. Tryon
seems to at least lean in the direction of Franklin’s prodigal, pettifogging,
stock-jobbing, gamester. He came from wealth, married into wealth, and seemed
little concerned by the prospect of spending colonists’ money on his own lavish
domicile. He wasn’t a lawyer, or a financier of any kind, but a spendthrift,
perhaps. Dunmore wasn't a legal professional either, wrangling or otherwise. He
and Tryon both waged war during their tenure in office – one against Natives on
the frontier, the other against rebellious members of the colonial population –
and suffered for trying to raise the appropriate funds. Both also attempted to
silence their respective colonial assemblies in their attempts to speak out
against contemporary British tax policy. Admittedly Tryon seemed willing to
negotiate with his legislators, often quite successfully. Perhaps this
qualified him as wrangling or pettifogging. Dunmore conversely tried to govern
by cutting the House of Burgesses out of the loop altogether, an act which I'm
sure Franklin disapproved of but which he failed to find an epithet to
describe. Certainly neither man came away from their time in colonial governance
with a reputation for sterling honesty and integrity, though this perhaps had
less to do with inherent defects in their character than Franklin intimated in
1773. Rather, it would seem their respective responses to the increasingly
volatile state of colonial public opinion in the 1760s and 1770s are what
shaped how they were perceived by the people they attempted to govern.
Hutchinson, who you’ll notice I set
aside until just now, strikes me as a somewhat exceptional, and rather tragic,
case. He fits none of the molds that Franklin laid out in Rules, being neither a profligate gambler nor a financier or a
legal professional of any stripe. Rather, he was a scholar, a public servant,
and an amateur historian. He was also not a well-born British transplant, the
youngest scion of some distinguished house or other sent to the colonies
because their family was too important for the Crown to deny a request of
employment. He was, as aforementioned, a native son of Massachusetts, and very
proudly that. He was not, in his manner of governance, overly obsessed with
minute details, though his dealings with the colonial legislature might be
taken to constitute either wrangling or very brisk debate. In all I’d peg him
as a dedicated, hardworking, compassionate man who cared a great deal about his
country (Massachusetts, I mean) and whose greatest desire was to serve. His
great sin, the unpardonable transgression for which he was lambasted by
contemporary Bostonians, was that his political sensibilities were somewhat out
of step with those of his fellow colonists.
Hutchinson objected in the 1730s to
the use of paper currency because he felt it was unstable. This was not an
inherently reprehensible position to take, though it earned him derision
because it was not in keeping with the views of the progressive majority of
Boston’s merchant class. He advised London against the passage of the Sugar and
Stamp act, but did not think it his place as governor to publicly voice
opposition to policies set by Parliament. Again, this was not an immoral or
malevolent policy, but it cost Hutchinson a great deal of favor because it was
at odds with contemporary public sentiment. Unlike Dunmore or Tryon, who both
acted somewhat imperiously when confronted with an increasingly discontented
colonial public, Hutchinson behaved in a manner he believed was commensurate
with the dignity of his office and consistent with its attendant duties. Yet his
conception of the British Empire and the place that Massachusetts occupied
within it were ill at ease with the activist political culture that was
emerging in the British American in the 1770s. For that reason he was pilloried
and denounced, and in 1773 his recalled was requested by the Massachusetts
colonial assembly. He departed for London a year later in order to defend
himself before a meeting of the Board of Trade. He would never return to his
native Massachusetts, and died in exile six years later.
As you doubtless wipe away a tear
for poor Hutchinson I ask you to consider what all of this means. As I
described at the end of last week’s post, many of Franklin’s fellow
revolutionaries, the men with which he is most closely associated, could have
been fairly described in terms as harsh as those he reserved for the governors
of Britain’s North American colonies. And, in light of the above outlines of
the lives and careers of three of those governors, it would seem that not all
of the magistrates assigned by Britain to positions of power in said colonies
were indolent wastrels, unscrupulous financiers, or the 18th-century
equivalent of ambulance-chasers. Rather they were, like the Founders
themselves, a varied group of men whose backgrounds and personalities could not
be fairly summed up in a single adjective, save perhaps for “human.” Tryon
spent a great deal of money belonging to the citizens of North Carolina on a
lavish residence for himself, and Robert Morris attempted to use his knowledge
of government policy in order to increase his already sizeable wealth. Yet,
which was the prodigal? Which was the broken gamester? Thomas Hutchinson was in
many ways a better man, by the standard that Franklin laid out in Rules, than some of the best-regarded
among the Founding Fathers. Indeed, Franklin had even collaborated with the
future governor during the Seven Years War on an aborted plan for uniting the
various colonies under a centralized government. This man was a cause of
tension between the Thirteen Colonies and the Crown? His behavior was so
reprehensible as to help bring about a severing of the former from the latter?
To this I have two further points
to contribute before I call this series of posts to a close.
The first, and most immediate, is
in answer to Franklin’s apparent hypocrisy. How could he have accused the
governors of colonial America of possessing such low character when some of the
leading lights among his fellow colonists were guilty of the same? Well, it has
to do again with the nature of Franklin’s chosen art. I mean, if you recall,
satire. Perhaps Franklin knew that not every governor assigned to oversee
affairs in the Thirteen Colonies was a completely reprehensible example of
humanity. Indeed, I rather think he was aware of this. Few people as perceptive
as he was, who had lived as long and shaken as many hands, could have come away
from their experiences without developing a keen appreciation for the strengths
and weaknesses inherent in mankind and the near-infinite variety in which they
occur. For the same reason I would find it very hard to believe indeed that
Franklin was not cognizant of the flaws possessed by his own friends,
collaborators, and fellow revolutionaries. He had, after all, made his bones as
a young printer and editorialist by poking fun at the deficiencies he perceived
in the people around him, their manners, and their pretensions. Among the
Founding Generation, few were more perceptive, more attuned to the quirks of
human nature, or more capable of tapping into people’s desires, prejudices and
sensibilities than he. To this Franklin owed his success as an editorialist,
his success as a public intellectual, and his success as independent America’s
first and foremost diplomat.
That being said, Rules by Which a Great Empire May Be Reduced
to a Small One was not intended to be a treatise on the nuances of human
behavior or the universality of human weakness. It was, again, a piece of
satire. A sober and matter-of-fact assessment of the state of affairs in
colonial American as of 1773 was no doubt well within Franklin’s capability to
produce, but to what end? He was not a journalist. He did not seek to merely
inform people. He wanted to move them, shock them, force them to consider an
issue they had not previously deemed urgent. He wanted to show people how
ridiculous their own behavior really was, make them self-conscious, and force
them to change. He wanted people who had not considered themselves involved in
the crisis then unfolding between the Thirteen Colonies and the Crown to feel
compelled to choose a side. Rules was
a mechanism of persuasion, an attempt to check the behavior of those in power,
and exaggeration was the means by which it functioned. Informing his audience
that the various governors assigned to the colonies were at best mixed bag –
some rather indiscreet, others a bit too conservative for their own good, but
on the whole not a bad sort – would likely not have moved anyone to sympathize
with the plight of the beleaguered colonists. Calling them profligate and
wasteful, however, and accusing them of mercenary financial manipulation and legalistic
pomposity doubtless went a damn sight further towards grabbing and holding the
attention of a reader and ultimately cultivating their sympathy and support. Call
it hyperbole, sensationalism, or even outright falsification, but to Franklin
it was just business.
The second, and last, point I
want to make concerns a theme I've touched on already but would like very much
to reiterate. In spite of how they are often portrayed in media and how they
are often talked about, the Founding Fathers of the United States were human
beings. They were not perfect, nor did they claim to be, and it’s extremely
important to try to come to an understanding of their flaws as well as their
virtues if any of what they did is to have any real meaning. There would be
nothing remarkable, after all, in men who were blessed with almost supernatural
intellect and wisdom guiding a series of backwater colonies towards
independence. There would be very little to celebrate in men who were literally
infallible sitting down to craft a constitution that has stood the test of
centuries. When gods move mountains it should come as no surprise. But the
Founders were not gods, as I’ve tried to point out. The Founding Fathers were
not great because they were born that way. They were great because they were
born men, and found ways to surmount their limitations in order to do great
things. Franklin was no different. He was a moralist who became notorious for
his roving eye. He greatly valued truth and reason, and yet as a satirist
engaged in the most fantastic hyperbole in order to get across his desired
point. He was a man, and his accomplishments shine brighter for it.
That being said, discussing the
qualities of the various colonial governors Franklin attempted to excoriate in Rules calls to mind a further
admonition. The Founders were emphatically human, but so too were their
opponents. As members of the Founding Generation are often portrayed or spoken
of as heroes, saints or demigods, the British colonial officials, government
ministers, and Loyalists who opposed them are generally viewed in popular
imagination as unsympathetic, thoughtless, or greedy. They are the villains in
the story of America’s founding, stock figures who cackle and drink tea and try
to stamp out freedom because it offends their delicate sensibilities. But they
were men, too. They were complex individuals, possessing flaws and virtues in
equal measure, and it’s as important to understand their thoughts and
motivations as those of the Founders themselves. William Tryon may well have
been something of a spendthrift, but he had also been a soldier who risked his
life in service to his country. The Earl of Dunmore attempted to disregard the
will of the elected representatives of Virginia, yet in his youth he took up arms
against what he felt was a false and tyrannical monarch. Thomas Hutchinson
defended the traditional prerogatives of the British Crown and stood in
steadfast opposition to what he viewed as the chaos of populism, though he was
a Massachusetts man to the core and sought to serve his country all his life. These
men, and so many like them, worked, and struggled, and fought for what they
believed in. That we judge them now to have been on the “wrong side of history”
should in no way stop us from attempting to develop a nuanced understanding of
who they were, where they came from, and why they did what they did. Because
the American Revolution was not a battle between good and evil, but a clash
between differing interpretations of contemporary politics, diplomacy,
commerce, and philosophy. We may each of us hold our opinion of who was right
and who was wrong, but even to those we disagree with we owe the courtesy of
trying to grasp them for all that they were and all that they stood for.
That’s all I have to say about
that.
For now.
As always, in the man’s own
words: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Rules_By_Which_A_Great_Empire_May_Be_Reduced_To_A_Small_One
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