Vaughan, Benjamin, 1751-1835

Benjamin Vaughan lived through all the vicissitudes of an enlightened life during the age of revolution. Born in Jamaica to Samuel Vaughan, a merchant and planter, and Sarah Hallowell, a native Bostonian, Vaughan was raised in London and educated at Cambridge and Lincoln's Inn. At university, he fell in with the coterie of Joseph Priestley, Benjamin Franklin, Jeremy Bentham, and William Petty, the Earl of Shelburne, and imbibed many of their unorthodox, perhaps radical political, social, and religious views. Whether a product of his own colonial origins or his contact with Franklin, Priestley, and Price, Vaughan took a particularly keen interest in American affairs, advocating reconciliation throughout the Revolutionary conflict. In 1783, as a result of his connections to then-Prime Minister Shelburne and his association with Franklin (having seen to the English publication of the first volume of Franklin's political writings), Vaughan was dispatched to Paris to mollify Franklin and the American negotiators and assure them of good English intentions. Although he was barred as a dissenter from any official role in the negotiations, Vaughan played an important unofficial role in quickening the closure of the treaty and the formalization and recognition of American independence.

As Vaughan's political and diplomatic star was rising, his improbable pursuit of the hand of Sarah Manning, the daughter of an ardent Tory, led him to study medicine in Edinburgh to establish his name as a reputable suitor. Although he never completed his studies, he did marry Sarah in 1781, joining her father's mercantile business shortly thereafter, and he maintained an active interest in medical affairs for much of the remainder of his life. He remained loyal to Shelburne after Shelburne's departure from the ministry in 1784, and was elected to represent Calne in Parliament in 1793. However in the backlash against republicanism, Vaughan's political views and his sympathy for the French Revolution conspired to make him obnoxious to the majority of the government, if not the people, and when war with France erupted in February, 1793, he began to feel the heat. As a result, when called before the Privy Council in May, 1794, he decided that flight was the better part of valor and took off for America, where his popularity was undiminished, by way of France. Ironically, as a foreign national arriving in Paris during the most radical phase of the Revolution, he was immediately arrested and imprisoned. Released in July, Vaughan remained in Switzerland and France for over three years before receiving a passport to join his wife and children in the United States.

Settling on family lands in the nether reaches of Hallowell, Maine, Vaughan worked his land, speculated (like many of his contemporaries) in real estate, and maintained an active correspondence with his wide circle of intellectual acquaintances, including his brother John long-time Librarian of the American Philosophical Society. In this remote outpost, he amassed one of the largest private libraries in New England, almost 12,000 volumes, and continued to take part in political discussions with American officials at the highest level, though he never again held elective office. A committed Federalist and a proponent of harmonious relations between England and America, he was a vocal critic of the War of 1812 and his social and political philosophy led him consistently to oppose American westward and southward expansion. Vaughan died in 1835.

From the guide to the Benjamin Vaughan Papers, 1746-1900, (American Philosophical Society)