The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin

by H.W. Brands

The rich trade routes of the European powers to the West Indies ran right by American shores, making the merchant vessels of those powers tempting targets for American craft. But privateering under any flag was a heinous business, starting with theft and ending with murder. “It is high time, for the sake of humanity, that a stop be put to this enormity.” He and his fellow commissioners were trying to include antiprivateering clauses in all their treaties. “This will be a happy improvement in the law of nations. The humane and the just cannot but wish general success to the proposition.” Franklin’s opposition to privateering suggested that he thought America would be involved in war rarely if ever; otherwise he would not so lightly have bargained away a potentially important American advantage. Indeed, a true son of the Enlightenment, he believed that wars would become less frequent—if national leaders employed their reason rather than their passions. To a correspondent who registered disapproval of war on grounds of its inhumanity, he agreed, then added that war was not simply inhumane but foolish. “I think it wrong in point of human prudence, for whatever advantage one nation would obtain from another, whether it be part of their territory, the liberty of commerce with them, free passage on their river, &c., it would be much cheaper to purchase such advantage with ready money, than to pay the expense of acquiring it by war.” An army was a “devouring monster” that had to b...