Mind-Munitions

140
Propaganda in the Age of Revolutionary Warfare
General Clinton reported that the André affair created ‘such a rage
for revenge’ amongst his troops that he was finding it difficult to
restrain them. However, successive British defeats, combined with
news of Britain’s growing international predicament, meant that
the Americans invariably retained the propaganda initiative.
The wide-ranging propaganda campaign launched by Congress
extended not only to Canada, but also to England and France. In
charge of wooing the French was Benjamin Franklin who, together
with Silas Deane and Arthur Lee, proved highly effective in winning
sympathizers in Paris. Exploiting anti-British feeling left over from
the Seven Years War (and indeed dating back centuries), Franklin’s
popularity in France manifested itself in the reproduction of his
image in portraits and prints, in statues and on snuffboxes. In fact,
to the French, Franklin was the American Revolution, and the
ageing philosopher-scientist appeared as an American Voltaire,
although the anti-monarchical elements of revolutionary ideology
had to be watered down for fear of offending Louis XVI. Yet as
Franklin realized:
Now, by the press, we can speak to nations; and good books and well
written pamphlets have great and general influence. The facility with
which the same truths may be repeatedly enforced by placing them
daily in different lights in newspapers, which are everywhere read,
gives a great chance of establishing them. And we now find that it is
not only right to strike while the iron is hot but that it may be very
practicable to heat it by continually striking.
As in so many other areas, these words reveal just how great a
pioneer of propaganda Franklin was. He recognized that it was
much better to speak to foreigners through foreigners, that peoples
resented being told what to think by outsiders; and so Franklin
worked through the French Press and through the official publication
Affaires de l’Angleterre et de l’Amérique, which reprinted
many of his own essays and American newspaper articles supplied
by him.
Franklin may also lay claim to being one of the first modern
practitioners of black propaganda – that is, propaganda which
appears to come from one source but in fact comes from somewhere
else. When The Sale of the Hessians, a document purportedly
written by a German prince to the German commander of the
Hessian troops in America, appeared in France in 1777 it caused a