The Glorious Cause - Jeff Shaara [349]
In late 1783, Franklin witnesses a phenomenon that has all of France in an uproar: the launching of a lighter-than-air balloon, and later, the first such launch that bears human passengers. In response to skepticism that a balloon has no usefulness, he says, “What use is a newborn infant?”
His farewell to France inspires universal sorrow in that country, and he returns to America as the most celebrated and famed private citizen in the world. Arriving in Philadelphia, he is received with all the respect and acclaim appropriate to his long years of extraordinary service and accomplishments. His return is marked by an artillery salute and a continuous ringing of church bells. But his public service is far from concluded. Elected to the Pennsylvania State Assembly, he is voted by that body to be “President of Pennsylvania.” As the new nation begins to feel the pains of creating its first true government, in 1787, at age eighty-one, Franklin is selected as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention. As he suffers the increasing strains of age and the stone that torments him, his presence becomes as much ceremonial as practical. Though he proposes several suggestions as the foundation for the new government, including a single house of legislature, none are adopted. He accepts the diminished stature of his role with grace, regards his presence as a post of honor, and behaves accordingly. Though becoming too frail for the grueling debates required to shape the document, for those who seek him out, he is never without humor, counsel, and wisdom.
Increasingly inactive, he only occasionally attends the convention, and as the particulars of the document continue to be disputed, he offers one final bit of counsel: “I cannot help expressing a wish that every member of this Convention who may still have objections to it would, with me, on this occasion doubt a little of his infallibility, and, to make manifest our unanimity, put his name to this instrument.”
He is among the first to sign it, and is a key force behind the ratification of the document by the state of Pennsylvania.
He continues to be sharp of mind, but his body’s failures increasingly confine him to his home. He receives friends and noted visitors, and finds enormous pleasure in the company of his grandchildren. To the amused annoyance of his friends in Philadelphia, he disputes the adoption of the bald eagle as the symbol of the new nation, prefers instead the turkey, “a much more respectable bird.”
Despite the tormenting misery he suffers from the bladder stone, he will not consent to an operation. His daughter Sally remains constantly by his side, and when she seeks to comfort him with the wish that his life will yet be long, he replies, “I hope not.” He is stricken with an infection in his lung and lapses into a coma, from which he never awakes. In the presence of his two grandsons, he dies on April 17, 1790. He is eighty-four.
Franklin’s writings are preserved primarily by the efforts of his grandson, Temple, who serves as editor of a definitive six-volume collection of Franklin’s essays, experiments, and witticisms, published in 1818.
Historian Carl Van Doren writes: “Franklin was not one of those men who owe their greatness merely to the opportunities of their times. In any age, in any place, Franklin would have been great. He moved through the world in a humorous mastery of it. Whoever learns about his deeds remembers longest the man who did them. And sometimes, with his marvelous range . . . he seems to have been more than any single man: a harmonious human multitude.”
The portrait of Franklin stolen from the Franklin home by British Major John André remains in possession of the descendants of General Charles Grey until 1906, when Albert, Earl Grey, Governor of Canada, offers its return. The painting hangs today in the White House in Washington, D.C.
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