My quick guess is that it is so dim, that our eyes are seeing it mostly with the rods (instead of the cones), which only see black and white. „In the night all cats are gray“
From reading the text, I speculate that Franklin was alluding to the preexisting saying as well -- alluding to the cat in the dark as an accepted axiom.
I think a better example probably would just be the night sky (at least in places with non-optimal conditions). Where I'm at there is very little color even when it's clear enough to see galactic features (interstellar cloud/nebulae, clusters of dimmer stars etc).