Congressional Factionalism and the Attempt to Recall Benjamin Franklin

BV ENJAMIN Franklin's reputation as an anchor of American Revolutionary diplomacy is doubtless established, and deservedly so. Neither the ambivalence of his earlier politics as antiproprietary agent during the resistance nor the opportunism of his business dealings in land and stocks during the Revolution have diminished the historian's recognition that the presence of Franklin in Paris during the eight years i776 to i783 steadied American relations with France. If there was some truth in the charges by Arthur Lee that Franklin was compliant as well as cordial in his dealings with French policymakers, the success of the alliance muted the criticism, then as now, as did also the characteristic extravagance of the accusations by the irascible and acutely suspicious Lee. It is not sufficiently appreciated, however, that Franklin's ministry was sustained in the Continental Congress by the narrowest of margins. Indeed, in the spring of I779 when Revolutionary diplomacy almost foundered under the impact of the Lee-Deane controversy, a resolution to recall Franklin was considered as part of a wholesale revamping of the diplomatic agency. There is good evidence that the recall motion was rejected less because of general enthusiasm for his continuance than because the delicate balance between opposing factions prohibited agreement about a successor. It is also quite possible that the resolution was advanced with the tacit approval of Conrad Alexandre Gerard, the influential minister to the United States from France. The frenzied argument between Arthur Lee and Deane has often been examined, most recently and ably by Julian P. Boyd in his series of articles, Silas Deane: Death by a Kindly Teacher of Treason

Cognitive psychology · Political science · Recall · American Constitutional Law and Politics · American History and Culture · History · Psychology

• Silas Deane

  Open Access•Kalman Goldstein•Historian•1980

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