Your best
fortune will be to fall under the power of commanders of
king's ships, able to control the mariners, and not into the
hands of licentious privateers.

"Who can without the utmost horror, conceive the miseries of
the latter when your persons, fortunes, wives and daughters,
shall be subject to the wanton and unbridled rage, rapine,
and lust, of negroes, mulattoes, and others, the vilest and
most abandoned of mankind?"

This warning effectually roused the community. A public meeting was
summoned, in the immense building erected to accommodate the crowds
who flocked to hear Whitefield. Here Franklin harangued the multitude.
An Association of Defence was organized. Ten thousand persons enrolled
their names. In a few days nearly every man in the province, who was
not a Quaker, had joined some military organization. Each man
purchased for himself a weapon, and was learning how to use it.

Eighty companies were organized and disciplined. The companies in
Philadelphia united in a regiment, and chose Franklin their colonel.
Wisely he declined the office, "conceiving myself unfit," he says. A
battery was thrown up below the town. Some cannon were sent for from
Boston. Several eighteen-pounders were obtained in New York, and more
were ordered from London. In manning the battery, Franklin took his
turn of duty as a common soldier.

There was not a little opposition to these measures, but still the
strong current of popular opinion was in their favor. Even the young
Quakers, though anxious to avoid wounding the feelings of their
parents, secretly gave their influence to these preparations of
defence. The peace of Aix la Chapelle in 1748, terminated these
alarms. But the wisdom and energy which Franklin had displayed, caused
him to be regarded as the most prominent man in Pennsylvania. The
masses of the people regarded him with singular homage and confidence.

In 1744, Franklin had a daughter born, to whom he gave the name of
Sarah. His motherless son William, who was destined to give his father
great trouble, was growing up, stout, idle, and intractable. Early in
the war he had run away, and enlisted on board a privateer. With much
difficulty his father rescued him from these engagements. Franklin was
evidently embarrassed to know what to do with the boy. He allowed him,
when but sixteen years of age, to enlist as a soldier in an
expedition against Canada.

About this time Fra