Mark​​​​ Canada, Ph.D.​

One account reads, "Congress yesterday received from Mr. Adams several letters not remarkable for any thing unless it be a display of his vanity, his prejudice against the French Court & his venom against Doctr. Franklin."  Those words were written by James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, and lest we ascribe them entirely to Madison's own feelings about Adams, we should note what Adams himself wrote about his fellow diplomat in France: 

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The life of Dr. Franklin was a scene of continual dissipation . . . It was late when he breakfasted, and as soon as breakfast was over, a crowd of carriages came to his levee . . . Some philosophers, academicians, and economists; some of his small tribe of humble friends in the literary way whom he employed to translate some of his ancient compositions… But by far the greater part were women and children, come to have the honor to see the great Franklin, and to have the pleasure of telling stories about his simplicity, [and] his bald head . . ."

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The last sentence reveals the real reason for Adams's "venom."  Franklin biographer H. W. Brands has written that "Adams could never forgive Franklin for receiving too much credit for events" and that the "acid of Adams’s envy continued to corrode his impression of Franklin."

Franklin, for his part, found Adams an exasperating annoyance and, worse, a threat to the American cause.  Apparently referring to Adams, who loathed everything French, Franklin wrote, "I hope the ravings of a certain mischievous madman here against France and its ministers, which I hear every day, will not be regarded in America."  The comically tempestuous relations of Adams and Franklin could fill an entire column (and eventually probably will), but I will wrap up this relationship with Franklin's characterization of his younger colleague as "always an honest man, often a wise one, but sometimes and in some things, absolutely out of his senses."

A colleague of Adams and Franklin also seems to have allowed an inferiority complex to color his feelings about Franklin--and perhaps others around him.  Arthur Lee was not a signer of the Declaration of Independence, but he was part of the larger "we" fighting for independence.  He served alongside Franklin in France and, like Adams, drove Franklin to distraction--even to the point that Franklin wrote, but never sent, a note in which he tried to pinpoint the source of Lee's dyspepsia:

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It is true I have omitted answering some of your Letters.  I do not like to answer angry Letters.  I hate Disputes.  I am old, cannot have long to live, have much to do and no time for Altercation.  If I have often receiv’d and borne your Magisterial Snubbings and Rebukes without Reply, ascribe it to the right Causes, my Concern for the Honour and Success of our Mission, which would be hurt by our Quarrelling, my Love of Peace, my Respect for your good Qualities, and my Pity of your Sick Mind, which is forever Tormenting itself, with its Jealousies, Suspicions and Fancies that others mean you ill, wrong you, or fail in Respect for you.  If you do not cure your self of this Temper it will end in Insanity, of which it is the Symptomatick Forerunner, as I have seen in several Instances.  God preserve you from so terrible an Evil, and for his sake pray suffer me to live in quiet.

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I've never met Lee, but I've met a few people like him, and Franklin's characterization is spot on.  It's enough to make you believe in reincarnation.

Not all of the dissent around the Declaration was personal. Some of it was–would you believe it?–political.  Recounting the consternation around the Declaration in his autobiography, Thomas Jefferson mentioned the fate of some of his language that was critical of slavery.  "The clause . . . reprobating the enslaving the inhabitants of Africa," he wrote, "was struck out in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who, on the contrary, still wished to continue it. Our northern brethren also, I believe, felt a little tender under those censures; for though their people had very few slaves themselves, yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others."

Through all of these tumultuous times, rancorous relationships, and provincial politics, Americans managed to create something unified. The "we" prevailed. 

There’s another "we," though. Franklin alluded to it when he responded to a woman who asked him after the Constitutional Convention, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"

“A republic," Franklin replied, "if you can keep it."

Let us remember Franklin's admonition. That "you" is "we."