Benjamin Franklin | The rarest form of American Revolutionary military commission

Benjamin Franklin

Letterpress broadside document signed (“BFranklin, Presdt.”) as President of the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention, printed on a half-sheet of laid paper (203 x 325 mm; watermarked wreaths within circle), [Philadelphia,] 7 September 1776, accomplished in a clerical hand, with metalcut seal of the Pennsylvania Council of Safety (a bundle of lictor’s rods set diagonally and surmounted by the word “Seal,” encircled by the motto “Liberty Safety & Peace”); fold separations and chips, some repaired, costing bits of a few letters.

"[F]or the Defence and establishing of American Liberty." Headed “In Convention for the state of Pennsylvania,” the present document reads, “To James Young Gentleman, We reposing especial Trust and Confidence in your Patriotism, Valour, Conduct and Fidelity, Do, by these Presents, constitute and appoint you to be first Lieutenant of a company of Foot from Cumberland County in the Flying Camp for the Middle States of America, for the Protection of the said States against all hostile Enterprizes, and for the Defence and establishing of American Liberty. You are therefore carefully and diligently to discharge the Duty of first Lieutenant as aforesaid by doing and performing all Manner of Things thereunto belonging. And we do strictly charge and require all Officers and Soldiers under your Command, to be obedient to your Orders as first Lieutenant. And you are to observe and follow such Orders and Directions, as you shall receive from the Convention during their Sessions, from the Government now establishing, or from the Council of Safety for this State, or any other your superior Officers, according to the Rules and Discipline of War, in Pursuance of the Trust reposed in you. This Commission to continue in Force until revoked by the Government now establishing for this State, the Council of Safety, or by this or any succeeding Convention. By order of the convention.”

Even for Benjamin Franklin, the eighteen months from May 1775 (when he returned to Philadelphia after a decade in London as colonial agent for Pennsylvania, Georgia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts) and October 1776 (when he departed for Paris as an American commissioner seeking support from, and alliance with, France) were exceptionally busy. In addition to serving as President of the Pennsylvania Committee of Safety, a delegate to the Continental Congress, and the nation’s first Postmaster General, Franklin was also elected President of the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention.

The Convention met from 15 July through 28 September 1776, and while the delegates—including, in addition to Franklin, Robert Whitehill, Timothy Matlack, Dr. Thomas Young, George Bryan, and James Cannon—were drafting the first independent state constitution issued after the Declaration of Independence, the Convention itself assumed responsibility for the day-to-day governance of the commonwealth through the Council of Safety. The Council succeeded the Committee of Safety, expanding its charge to exercise full executive power after the fall of the Penns’ proprietary government. The Council shortly ceded that power to the government established by the new state constitution: a unicameral legislature, with members elected to one-year terms; a thirteen-member Supreme Executive Council to administer the government; and a judiciary appointed by the legislature for seven-year terms, and removable at any time. (Like the Declaration, the Pennsylvania constitution began with a preamble that inveighed against George III and his unlawful war against the Colonies.)

So, the Convention and Council of Safety had a period of just over eight weeks when military commissions could be issued by their authority, which accounts for their great rarity. Rare Book Hub records only one other such appointment in addition to the present, Gabriel Blakeney’s appointment as a Second Lieutenant in a battalion of Cumberland County in the Flying Camp, 11 September 1776, part of the celebrated James S. Copley Library, sold in our rooms, 14 April 2010, lot 54.

The “Flying Camp” was a mobile reserve militia corps authorized by Congress after the British evacuated Boston. Active from July through November 1776 and drawn largely from Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland, units of the Flying Camp served principally in New York and New Jersey. The James Young who received this appointment is presumably the same James Young who was commissioned a first lieutenant in the 7th Pennsylvania Regiment of the Continental Army in March 1777. The 7th Pennsylvania was largely recruited from Cumberland and York counties.

PROVENANCE

Christie’s New York, 27 January 2023, lot 148 (undesignated consignor)