The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (133 page)

Bedford’s threat elicited an even sharper response from Gouverneur Morris. The larger states would not brook such secessionist talk, Morris asserted. “This country must be united. If persuasion does not unite it, the sword will.” Amplifying his point, he added, “The scenes of horror attending civil commotion can not be described, and the conclusion of
them will be worse than the terms of their continuance. The stronger party will then make traitors of the weaker, and the gallows and halter will finish the work of the sword.”

It was just this kind of acrimony that had elicited Franklin’s call for the help of the Deity; that call having failed of the convention’s approval, he now interposed himself. “The diversity of opinion turns on two points,” he told the delegates. “If a proportional representation takes place, the small states contend that their liberties will be in danger. If an equality of votes is to be put in its place, the large states say their money will be in danger.” The time had come to compromise. “When a broad table is to be made, and the edges of the planks do not fit, the artist takes a little from both, and makes a good joint. In like manner here, both sides must part with some of their demands in order that they may join in some accommodating purpose.”

He thereupon laid before the members a motion:

That the legislatures of the several states shall choose and send an equal number of delegates, namely________, who are to compose the second branch of the general legislature.

Franklin’s motion became the basis for the grand compromise that saved the convention and made the Constitution possible. The large states would have their way with the lower house, to be called the House of Representatives, which would be selected according to population. The interests of the smaller states would be safeguarded in the upper house, called the Senate, which would be chosen by the legislatures of the states, with each state getting two—the number that filled in Franklin’s blank—senators. (More than a century later, of course, the Constitution would be amended to provide for direct election of senators by voters of the states, but the principle of equal representation remained.)

On the eve of
the final vote on the grand compromise, Franklin entertained a visitor to the city. Dr. Manasseh Cutler was a clergyman from Massachusetts, also a botanist (and later a member of Congress). “There was no curiosity in Philadelphia which I felt so anxious to see as this great man, who has been the wonder of Europe as well as the glory of America,” Cutler wrote. “But a man who stood first in the literary world, and had spent so many years in the Courts of Kings, particularly
in the refined Court of France, I conceived would not be of very easy access, and must certainly have much of the air of grandeur and majesty about him. Common folks must expect only to gaze at him at a distance, and answer such questions as he might please to ask.” When delegate Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, who was on his way to Franklin’s house, asked Cutler if he wished to come, Cutler said he certainly did—but, as he told a friend later, “I hesitated; my knees smote together.”

What Cutler found in the Franklin garden was not in the least what he expected.

How were my ideas changed, when I saw a short, fat, trunched old man, in a plain Quaker dress, bald pate, and short white locks, sitting without his hat under the tree, and, as Mr. Gerry introduced me, rose from his chair, took me by the hand, expressed his joy to see me, welcomed me to the city, and begged me to seat myself close to him. His voice was low, but his countenance open, frank, and pleasing…. I delivered him my letters. After he had read them, he took me again by the hand, and, with the usual compliments, introduced me to the other gentlemen, who were most of them members of the Convention.

Here we entered into a free conversation, and spent our time most agreeably until it was dark. The tea-table was spread under the tree, and Mrs. Bache, a very gross and rather homely lady, who is the only daughter of the Doctor, and lives with him, served it out to the company. She had three of her children about her, over whom she seemed to have no kind of command, but who appeared to be excessively fond of their Grandpapa.

The Doctor showed me a curiosity he had just received, and with which he was much pleased. It was a snake with two heads, preserved in a large vial. It was taken near the confluence of the Schuylkill with the Delaware, about four miles from this city. It was about ten inches long, well proportioned, the heads perfect, and united to the body about one-fourth of an inch below the extremities of the jaws….

The Doctor mentioned the situation of this snake, if it was traveling among the bushes, and one head should choose to go on one side of the stem of a bush and the other head should prefer the other side, and that neither of the heads would consent to come back or give way to the other. He was then going to mention a humourous matter that had that day occurred in Convention, in consequence of his comparing the snake to America, for he seemed to forget that every thing in Convention was to be kept a profound secret; but the secrecy of Convention matters was suggested to him, which stopped him, and deprived me of the story he was going to tell.

Doubtless the story involved the dispute over representation, which was on the verge of resolution—without the snake’s starving or either of the heads’ being cut off. Yet the vote was not certain, and the other delegates present definitely did not want the loquacious host to make the compromise settlement any more difficult.

(Their concern also reflected their fear of the convention’s president. During one early session, copies of the Virginia propositions were circulated, with the injunction that these were for the delegates’ eyes only and must be guarded with strictest care. Some while later a copy was discovered on the floor of the State House and turned over to Washington. The general placed the copy in his pocket and said nothing until the end of that day’s debates. Thereupon he rose from his seat and addressed the delegates in the sternest tones. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I am sorry to find that some member of this body has been so neglectful of the secrets of the Convention as to drop in the State House a copy of their proceedings, which by accident was picked up and delivered to me this morning. I must entreat gentlemen to be more careful, lest our transactions get into the newspapers and disturb the public repose by premature speculations. I know not whose paper it is, but there it is.” Throwing the paper down on the table, he concluded, “Let him who owns it, take it.” Then he bowed, picked up his hat, and left the room—“with a dignity so severe that every person seemed alarmed,” said William Pierce. Significantly, no one claimed the paper, although Pierce’s heart leaped into his throat when, reaching in his pocket, he could not find his own copy. To his immense relief, it turned up later in the pocket of his other coat.)

After dark, Franklin suggested he and Cutler go inside.

The Doctor invited me into his library, which is likewise his study. It is a very large chamber, and high studded. The walls were covered with book-shelves filled with books; besides, there are four large alcoves, extending two-thirds the length of the chamber, filled in the same manner. I presume [and Cutler was in a position to know] this is the largest, and by far the best, private library in America.

He showed us a glass machine for exhibiting the circulation of the blood in the arteries and veins of the human body. The circulation is exhibited by the passing of a red fluid from a reservoir into numerous capillary tubes of glass, ramified in every direction, and then returning in similar tubes to the reservoir, which was done with great velocity, without any power to act visibly on the fluid, and had the appearance of perpetual motion.

Another great curiosity was a rolling press, for taking the copies of letters or any other writing. A sheet of paper is completely copied in less than two minutes, the copy as fair as the original, and without effacing it in the smallest degree. It is an invention of his own, and extremely useful in many situations in life.

He also showed us his long, artificial arm and hand, for taking down and putting up books on high shelves which are out of reach; and his great armed chair, with rockers, and a large fan placed over it, with which he fans himself, keeps off the flies, etc., while he sits reading, with only a small motion of his foot; and many other curiosities and inventions, all his own, but of lesser note. Over his mantel-tree, he has a prodigious number of medals, busts, and casts in wax or plaster of Paris, which are the effigies of the most noted characters in Europe.

Franklin particularly wanted to show Cutler a volume on botany, which contained the whole of Linnaeus’s
Systema Vegetabilium,
with colored plates to accompany the text. The volume was so heavy that Franklin could lift it only with difficulty, but he took pleasure in Cutler’s obvious appreciation of it. “It was a feast to me,” Cutler said. “I wanted for three months at least to have devoted myself entirely to this one volume. But fearing I should be tedious to him, I shut up the volume, though he urged me to examine it longer.”

Cutler was entranced by his octogenarian host. “I was highly delighted with the extensive knowledge he appeared to have of every subject, the brightness of his memory, and clearness and vivacity of all his mental faculties, notwithstanding his age (eighty-four) [eighty-three and a half, actually]. His manners are perfectly easy, and every thing about him seems to diffuse an unrestrained freedom and happiness. He has an incessant vein of humour, accompanied with an uncommon vivacity, which seems as natural and involuntary as his breathing.”

Breathing
came easier that summer for Franklin, who was used to Philadelphia’s climate, than for some of the delegates from out of town. The southerners arrived dressed for the heat, but the northerners, in their woolen suits, suffered badly. The State House was comparatively cool when the sessions began at ten in the morning, but by midday the green baize on the tables where the delegates sat began to show dark spots from their sweat. The windows had to be kept closed, partly against the prying eyes and ears of outsiders but mostly against the flies that battened on the horse dung in the streets and the offal in the gutters. “A veritable torture during Philadelphia’s hot season” was how a French visitor described “the innumerable flies which constantly light on the face and hands, stinging everywhere and turning everything black because of the filth they leave wherever they light.” There was no escape, even at night. “Rooms must be kept closed unless one wishes to be tormented in his bed at the break of day, and this need of keeping everything shut makes the heat of the night even more unbearable and sleep more difficult. And so the heat of the day makes one long for bedtime because of weariness, and a single fly which has gained entrance to your room in spite of all precautions, drives you from bed.”