Are there accounts of the U.S. Founding Fathers – any of them – ever having to go about wearing a disguise? I was thinking diplomats like Ben Franklin going to France at the height of the Revolutionary War. How did he make it aboard ship to travel to France, if the British were presumably holding most of the major ports–or were sometimes stopping ships on the high seas? Surely they’d want to capture someone of his importance.
Of course, it wasn’t like all of these people were instantly recognizable in a time without photography or multimedia, so maybe even a high ranking American politician could have walked about freely in a place like occupied New York and go unnoticed by the British.
Anyway, just curious. Thanks,
Montag01
But, leona, would Franklin have gotten diplomatic immunity before 1776 as the British would have considered the Colonies to be a rebellious part of the British Empire and ruled Franklin a traitor rather than a legitimate diplomat?
Lesser known persons might attempt to pass themselves off as merchants, but Franklin was well-known by the time he made his trip to France on behalf of the American war effort and would have almost certainly been recognized.
If you were an important person making a trip in tense times you gave preference to the fastest ship you could find. In Franklin’s case this was the Reprisal that made for a short trip to France ( and captured two British merchantmen en route).
If you have an interest in Benjamin Franklin, the following is an interesting read:
The First American by H.W. Brands
The formal status of diplomatic immunity wouldn’t have attached to Franklin, since the British didn’t recognize the United States, but he probably would have been safe anyway. A similar event happened during the Civil War, when the Union seized a British ship carrying two Confederate envoys, Mason and Slidell, who were travelling to Britain and France. Britain didn’t recognize the Confederacy, but they wanted to at least hear what Mason had to say, and they protested to the Lincoln administration in strong terms. Lincoln didn’t want to piss off the British–that would have furthered Mason’s mission more than he himself ever could–so he released Mason and Slidell and allowed them to proceed to Europe.
Britain would have been similarly leery of pissing off France prior to French entry into the Revolutionary War in 1778. Besides, for a variety of reasons, the British never really got serious about imposing a naval blockade on the colonies. The odds probably weren’t that great that they would stumble upon Franklin in the first place.