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BENJAMIN FRANKLIN: A LIFE
FROM BEGINNING TO END
(BIOGRAPHIES OF INVENTORS),
by HOURLY HISTORY.
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Well compiled.
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" ... The French and Indian War, which the British won, gave Britain control of the land east of the Mississippi River."
This author, too, follows the fraudulent nomenclature, of labeling natives of the continent - from Canada to Ushuaia - Indian, despite fully bring aware that they have no connection whatsoever with India and never did.
This is as racist as, say, China labeling all European race 'Japanese '.
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"It took more than a millennium before Europe’s centuries of learning and creativity produced the Renaissance, that golden era when human intellect shone a bright light that cast out the shadows of the Dark Ages. The pace was a little faster in the New World. ... "
Now author explores reasons thereof, admitting that Europe had a caste system without admitting that it was caste system, or that it was stifling to thought and talent precisely because it was not only rigid but built on very bad, primitive foundations, of physical power and landed properties to begin with, apart from titles bestowed by a royalty that was caste at the top of a pyramid social structure
But most of all, author refrains from mentioning the bull in the China shop - the church that stifled Europe actively, especially more so beginning with inquisition, imposing its own primacy and sole right to all but manual labour, disallowing freedom of thought.
" ... Less than two hundred years after the first English settlers set foot on the continent of North America, the United States had produced a Renaissance man, a man of humble beginnings who boldly left his mark in politics, science, education, philosophy, diplomacy, and innovation. That he was able to be so versatile is both a tribute to his natural intelligence and character, but also a testament to the inventiveness of his homeland. It’s true that all subsequent civilizations build upon what went before, but the legacy of Europe was so rigid that, in order to rise to a position of status, a man needed either his own august lineage or wealthy and influential patrons.
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"For Benjamin Franklin, there was no exalted institute of education that provided him with learning; there was no vast store of wealth to bankroll him. He was, in fact, deliberately and enthusiastically, a member of the middle class, a man who had pulled himself up by his own bootstraps and then figured out a way, metaphorically, to make a better bootstrap. He was thrifty, patriotic, shrewd, and virtuous; he had a common-law wife, an illegitimate son, and a reputation as a flirt among the ladies of France, who adored him when he was well past the age for such dalliances. He was a pragmatist, a writer, a statesman, a scientist, an inventor, a philanthropist, a citizen; Benjamin Franklin was so many things that it took eighty-four years for him to bring them all to fruition.
"Benjamin Franklin, American, is a legend. He is also endearingly, unmistakably human. ... Franklin, who has been called “The First American,” remains a fascinating man whose personality has not been dimmed by the passage of time. ... Benjamin Franklin is part of every American entrepreneur, innovator, and crusader who has ever lived because his virtues came not from his time, but from the timelessness of his talents and the boundless rejuvenation of his native soil."
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"“We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.”
"—Benjamin Franklin"
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"The small house on Milk Street, Boston, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, was crowded with children. The birth of Benjamin, on January 6, 1706, made the twelfth of the Franklin offspring born to Josiah, who earned his living by making soap and candles, and Abiah, his second wife, who would contribute ten children to the brood which would eventually number seventeen.
"Education for the Franklins was desirable, but money was tight, and Benjamin’s time in the South Grammar School when he was eight years old only lasted a few months because his father couldn’t afford the cost. He returned to school, this time to George Brownell’s English School, for one year, and wanted to study longer, but formal education was a luxury that the family couldn’t afford.
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"At the age of ten, it was time for young Benjamin to settle on a trade. His father let him watch the Boston tradesmen at their labors, but Benjamin wanted to be a sailor. However, Josiah Franklin had already seen one of his sons go to sea; he was unwilling to permit another do the same. The boy didn’t want to follow in his father’s footsteps making soap and candles, so for a short time, he was indentured as a cutler. Ultimately this didn’t interest him.
"Even with minimal schooling, however, it was obvious that the boy had a lively intellect. He was only eleven years old when he started to read the English novelist Daniel Defoe, the Greek historian Plutarch, and the Puritan minister Cotton Mather.
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"The Franklins were a Puritan family, and his parents hoped that their son would become a clergyman when it was time for him to settle on a career. In colonial Massachusetts, ministers were held in high regard; Franklin would later humorously write in his Autobiography that he was his father’s tithe to the church. That tithe would go unpaid, as Franklin in his youth had no interest in the ministry; as an adult, he had no vocation for it.
"But despite his disinclination for the life of a clergyman, Franklin would absorb the characteristic traits of the Puritan and would exemplify them in his writing and lifestyle. Puritans held to a simple code of behavior: work hard, be honest and diligent, and live simply and frugally in order to obey and serve God. As an adult, Franklin’s motives may not have been directed toward God, but the Puritan creed had taken root in fertile soil.
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"He ended up apprenticed to his half-brother James, a printer, and at the age of twelve, he was signed up for nine years of indenture. Despite his lack of formal learning, Benjamin was a bookish boy who enjoyed reading and liked to write poetry. As an apprentice to a printer, he could further his writing talents, something he did by spending hours creating an outline of the essays he had read in the popular magazine the Spectator, and then rewriting them in his own style, teaching himself how to communicate in a manner that reached his readers. He also wrote a ballad to commemorate the capture of the pirate Blackbeard, who had terrorized the Eastern coast. He had a lively writing style that would mature as he plied his craft, even though his brother displayed no great interest in expanding Benjamin’s literary horizons.
"In 1720, Franklin began to explore his own personal independence. He moved from the family home into a boarding home, and he stopped going to church so that he could use Sundays for more studying. His religious concepts changed; by the next year, he was a Deist. His personal life would change in other ways, too; Franklin, looking for ways to save money so that he could afford to buy books, decided to become a vegetarian."
It's astounding that the concept was even familiar, and that duch a lifestyle was then possible for someone not familiar with India.
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"In 1721, brother James started a newspaper, The New England Courant. What made this newspaper unique was that, unlike the other two Boston newspapers that reprinted articles that originated from Europe, James Franklin recorded news from home: ship schedules, articles, opinions, and advertisements. He was also open to publishing articles that educated and entertained.
"A series of essays, submitted under the pseudonym of Silence Dogood, became popular with readers for their humorous tone and their mockery of Bostonian society. Silence Dogood was a widow who provided advice and criticism of her world, particularly on the subject of the treatment of women. James didn’t know the identity of the author, but Benjamin submitted the articles anonymously because he knew that his brother would not welcome his work. So he wrote the articles at night and stealthily slipped them underneath the door of the print shop, maintaining the mystery of the author’s identity. Sixteen letters from the opinionated Mrs. Dogood were printed before Benjamin confessed his authorship. James didn’t handle his brother’s talent or budding fame well and scolded him for his actions.
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"Benjamin’s talents and precocious ability to work as a printer stood his brother in good stead when James Franklin ended up in prison for three weeks, charged with contempt for the criticisms he printed of the Massachusetts government. Freedom of the press did not exist as a right in the colonies. When a controversy arose over whether or not inoculation against smallpox was a sound medical principle, the Franklins were on the side that opposed inoculation; the powerful and influential Puritan clergy family, the Mathers, supported it. Bostonians tended to agree with the Franklins and believed that inoculation made people sicker, but they looked up to their clergy and didn’t approve of James Franklin’s disrespectful tone.
"While James was in prison, Benjamin published the newspaper under his own name, a taste of freedom that was hard to relinquish when James returned to the helm. The brothers argued, and there were times when James physically beat his apprentice. Finally, Benjamin quit, intending to find work with another of Boston’s printers. However, James had advised his printer colleagues not to hire Benjamin, leaving young Franklin little choice but to seek greener pastures.
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"Apprenticeship was a business contract and running away was not permitted. Not only that but in the clearly defined social order of the times, there was no niche for a runaway, who represented a lawlessness that society did not tolerate. Young Benjamin was regarded as a fugitive from the law.
"At the age of 17, Franklin sailed to New York, but he was unable to find work as a printer, so he walked to New Jersey. From there, he took a boat to Philadelphia. He would return to Boston in 1724 at the age of 18 when he needed a loan from his father in order to start his own print shop, but his father would refuse him the loan. However, that was yet to come: Boston was his past, Philadelphia his future. The bustling city where he would establish his roots would prove to be a nurturing incubator for its dynamic new resident."
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"“Early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”
"—Benjamin Franklin"
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"When Benjamin Franklin arrived in Philadelphia, he did not make a grand entrance. His disheveled state showed the signs of his travels; his clothing was rumpled, his appearance less than refined. He used the little money that he had left to buy rolls to eat. As he walked down the street, a young woman named Deborah Read noticed him and thought that he looked peculiar - and she was probably right. But Franklin’s indomitable character would soon transform him from a down-on-his-luck runaway into a rising businessman.
"Despite Deborah Read’s original opinion of him, Franklin would end up taking lodgings with the Reads, who ran a boarding house on 318 Market Street, and as time passed, Deborah no longer regarded him as odd-looking. In fact, the couple began to spend more time together, long enough for Deborah Read to decide that matrimony was in their future. Franklin was less convinced. He was young, he had his way to make in the world, and marriage was not uppermost in his thoughts.
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"Philadelphia, the largest city in the colonies, offered more opportunity than Boston had, and Franklin was able to find work as an apprentice printer. He attracted the attention of Pennsylvania’s royal governor, Sir William Keith, who offered to set him up in his own business by sending a letter of credit to London if Franklin would travel to Great Britain to purchase printing equipment.
"The money from the royal governor failed to come through, leaving Franklin stranded in London for two years, where he worked with a well-regarded printer, Samuel Palmer, in order to earn money to pay for his return passage home. Benjamin Franklin’s co-workers at the Palmer Print Shop were less dedicated than the young colonial, and while they were getting drunk, he was making a good impression. He made good use of his youth and strength; he could carry two of the heavy lead type trays, while the other printers could only carry a single tray.
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"His skills and ambition led him to leave that printer for a better position when he found employment with James Watts, who ran a larger print shop. Being an enterprising youth, he also earned money by providing swimming lessons in the Thames River and considered making swimming instruction his full-time occupation. In fact, Franklin was an early proponent of physical fitness; he had taught himself to swim during an era when many people regarded the water with apprehension.
"Although his business venture did not turn out as planned, thanks to the failure of the royal governor to send a letter of credit, the young Franklin made good use of his time in Great Britain. The British had established a standard of culture and living that was much more formal than what Franklin was used to, but the attractions of London appealed to him. He continued to be an eager reader, but he also enjoyed attending the theater and spending time in the coffee shops. The Enlightenment was opening up the minds of thinkers who fought against the old, hidebound ideas of the past, and this was galvanizing for a young man of ability and talent. Franklin’s ability to express himself was honed as he began to refine his writing skills, printing the first of his pamphlets, A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain.
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"In 1726, Franklin obtained a loan from a Quaker merchant in Philadelphia, Thomas Denham, so that he could afford to return home. But during his absence, Deborah Read had found someone else and, encouraged by her mother, she had married John Rogers the year before.
"Franklin found employment as a bookkeeper and shopkeeper, selling imported clothing and hardware. By 1727, Franklin had already found a new job. He had also found a new romantic companion. The woman would become pregnant with a son, William. William’s mother was not identified, but Franklin acknowledged him, and he would grow up with his father.
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"William would, as an adult, become the royal governor of New Jersey. In most circumstances, such a career would herald great things, but this position came when the colonies were separating from the mother country, leaving Franklin father and son on opposite sides of the division. It’s easy to think of the Civil War as the one which split families, but American independence would also create such fissures among families.
"Deborah Read’s 1725 marriage to John Rogers had not proceeded well. He had abandoned her, but because she didn’t know where he had gone, she wasn’t able to divorce him. No one was quite sure where Rogers had gone, and there was no way to find out. There was word that he had gone to the West Indies in 1727 or 1728, and that he had died, but no one had proof. Some said that he had already had a wife when he married Deborah Read, but there was no proof of that either. Deborah was understandably dejected over her ambiguous state, but she and Franklin began to see each other regularly. In his autobiography, Franklin acknowledged that he bore some of the guilt for Deborah’s state: “I pitied poor Miss Read's unfortunate situation, who was generally dejected, seldom cheerful, and avoided company. I considered my giddiness and inconstancy when in London as in a great degree the cause of her unhappiness.”
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"In 1730, because they could not exchange the traditional marriage vows due to Deborah’s previous marriage, Franklin and Read entered a common-law marriage; Franklin’s illegitimate son lived with them. In 1732, a son, Francis Folger Franklin, was born to the couple. He would die at the age of four from smallpox. Their daughter, Sarah Franklin, known as Sally, was born in 1743; she would marry, bear seven children, and would survive her long-lived father. Although Benjamin and William Franklin were estranged, Sally Franklin Bache and her father had a good relationship, and she was a support to him in his patriotic responsibilities, particularly during the American Revolution, when she and a group of women sewed 2,200 shirts for the soldiers of the Continental Army who had gone into winter quarters in 1780. She would also serve as a hostess for her father after the death of her mother in 1774.
"Distance would eventually become a trademark of the Franklin-Read marriage, which lasted for forty-four years until Deborah’s death of a stroke in 1774. Despite the longevity of the union, they would live apart, due to Franklin’s patriotic commitments, for eighteen of those years."
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" ... The Franklins, like other citizens of Philadelphia and the other cities in the thirteen colonies, regarded themselves as British. They were proud of their heritage, and why not? Great Britain was a mighty empire, enlightened and prosperous, and the colonies benefitted from their ties to England. Under the protection of the British Crown, the colonists could concentrate on bettering themselves in a land where there were no social impediments to advancement. The only limit to a man’s success was his own ambition, and Benjamin Franklin did not suffer from that deficiency.
"Benjamin Franklin, a master printer, was intent upon building his career in his adoptive city. He had married wisely. Although his wife was not an intellectual and did not share his interests, she proved to be a good business partner. Franklin was in charge of the print shop, but Deborah oversaw the Franklin book and stationery shop and general store. She was not someone who enjoyed the social network of friends and colleagues that her husband relished, but her ability to maintain the home and help with their business gave Franklin a measure of freedom that he used to pursue his civic interests.
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"Franklin and his business partner had opened their own printing shop in 1728 after James Meredith obtained a loan from his parents. They bought out a competing printer—Franklin’s former employer, Samuel Keimer—who had gone bankrupt, and turned his Pennsylvania Gazette into a successful enterprise. In 1730, the same year that Franklin married, the printing partners won a contract to print the official papers issued by the colony of Pennsylvania. As the business thrived, Franklin was able to buy out Meredith and run the print shop on his own.
"His publication of Poor Richard’s Almanack, beginning in 1733, was both a popular move and a financially successful one. Written under the alias of Richard Saunders, the almanac was presented as the work of a man who needed money because he had a nagging wife. The almanac included, in addition to many sayings that are still familiar in modern times, weather reports, recipes, and homilies.
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"By the time Franklin was thirty years old, the Pennsylvania Gazette was the newspaper that was the most widely read in all the thirteen colonies. Prosperity meant that Franklin could employ his talents by doing more than simply earning a living. So he started or joined organizations dedicated to bettering the life of others and of his city. Before his marriage, he was organizing a Junto, a weekly meeting of tradesmen and artisans who were dedicated to improving the lot of humanity. Franklin’s model for the Junto came out of his familiarity with the London coffeehouses that he had come to know well when he lived in Great Britain as a young man. The Junto was a profitable enterprise for all, because, in addition to its altruistic aims, its members were also able to support each other’s business endeavors by sending patronage to one another.
"The Junto members were voracious readers, and they recognized that many who could benefit from the writings of others were unable to afford such a costly luxury as a book. Franklin proposed that the Junto members should house their books, to which they often referred during their discussions, in a common place. Not only would the books be accessible to the Junto members, but they would all benefit from one another’s personal favorites. This was the nucleus of the subscription library, which would use funds provided by the Junto members to purchase new books to read. The Library Company of Philadelphia, which continues to endure in modern times as a research library, was chartered in 1731 and hired Louis Timothee, the first American librarian, in 1732. Franklin’s love of books and discourse craved the companionship of others of like interest, so in 1743, he founded the American Philosophical Society. This group was a forum for scientists to share their research and ideas, and it was around this time that Franklin began to pursue his interest in electricity.
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"Although Franklin had minimal formal education, he wanted educational opportunities to be available for others. In 1749, he printed Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pensilvania, explaining his ambition to further education in Philadelphia. In 1751, the Academy and the Charity School opened with Franklin as president of the Academy.
"His interested in education continued. In 1752, he printed a textbook, Elementa Philosophica, written by Dr. Samuel Johnson (an American, not the celebrated British writer) which would promote a new educational curriculum. The new college would have classes that were taught in English, not Latin; experts on different courses of study rather than a tutor would teach; and students would not have to take a religious test as part of the admission requirements.
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"The College of Philadelphia opened in 1755. The College would come to have a very special and characteristically American contribution to the new nation; over one-third of the men who had a role to play in the creation of the Declaration of Independence had an affiliation with the College of Philadelphia. The college would survive long past his lifetime; today, it is the University of Pennsylvania. Franklin was sufficiently pragmatic to realize that Philadelphia needed more than books, philosophers, and schools. As one of Philadelphia’s leading citizens, Franklin had a keen perception of the genuine risks the city faced. Fire was a constant colonial threat in communities where so many structures were built of wood, and in 1736, the Union Fire Company, the first volunteer firefighting company in Philadelphia, was organized by Franklin. It was a useful and timely improvement, but firefighters could only do so much. The Philadelphia Contribution for Insurance Against Loss by Fire offered insurance policies so that a person who had lost property in a fire would, if he had purchased an insurance policy, avoid financial destitution. The company, which began in 1752, continues as a business today.
"It’s to be expected that the colonies would enjoy many firsts; what is perhaps unexpected is that so many of those firsts were initiated by Benjamin Franklin. The Pennsylvania Hospital, which would become the first hospital not only in the colony of Pennsylvania but eventually in the country, was established in 1751 when Franklin was able to obtain a charter from the Pennsylvania legislature to establish it.
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"Franklin’s zeal for improvement came from his own character, but also from the values he had been taught by his Puritan parents. Improvement of one’s self and one’s community was a worthy goal.
"So was making a profitable living. Franklin was a shrewd businessman; by 1747, the son of a poor candle-maker had amassed enough wealth to allow him to retire from printing so that he could pursue other business interests. He set up a partnership with his foreman; Franklin would receive half of the profits from the print shop for eighteen years. It’s unlikely that he realized how valuable his leisure time would prove, but with the time to concentrate on his discoveries and his studies, he would build a reputation that would cross the ocean and take his name and his achievements to the courts of Europe."
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"“That, as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously.”
"—Benjamin Franklin"
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"Benjamin Franklin was so innovative that it’s not surprising to see him given credit for inventions that he didn’t actually create. He did not create air conditioning, nor did he devise the idea of daylight savings time. However, that still leaves plenty of achievements which can be credited to him. His to-do list of inventions designed to satisfy his passion for efficiency and the concepts which he furthered represent the eager, fertile mind of a man who, despite his lack of formal education, had an unfettered mind.
"His first invention was made when he was an eleven-year-old. The swim fins, a pair of oval planks of wood with holes in the centers, could be grasped with the hands in order to provide increased momentum when swimming underwater. Although they increased his swimming speed, they tired his wrists, as did the board that he strapped to his feet. They were also uncomfortable, but for an eleven-year-old, they represented an impressive debut into the world of innovation. This invention demonstrates that Benjamin Franklin also valued physical activity and health. As a result, he has the unique honor of being the only Founding Father who was named to the International Swimming Hall of Fame, as well as the United States Swim Schools Association Hall of Fame.
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"As he matured, so did his perception of what innovations were needed. The urinary catheter existed in colonial America, but the metal tube that was inserted into the urethra in order to let urine drain out of the bladder was painful. Having an inventor in the family was opportune for the Franklins, particularly for his older brother John, who was prone to kidney stones and had to insert the unyielding metal catheter daily. Franklin figured that the tube could be flexible if it were made of silver. "It is as flexible as would be expected in a thing of the kind, and I imagine will readily comply with the turns of the passage," he wrote to John Franklin after he had completed his invention.
"Some of his inspiration came from the arts. Franklin’s favorite invention came about when he was representing Pennsylvania in England, and he attended a concert featuring a professional wine glass player. Wine glasses set on a table, each glass containing a different level of water from the others, were played by rubbing the rims of the glasses. Franklin liked the sound but perceived a way to improve it. The dilemma was how to reduce the amount of time it took to set up the glasses and how to relieve the exertion on the wrists. It took two years, but he came up with the glass armonica, which was an assortment of glass bowls of different sizes that were arranged on a rotating shaft. The shaft could be spun with a foot pedals. The wet fingers would then be run over the bowls as they rotated. His invention was a popular one in Europe and America; Mozart and Beethoven wrote compositions for it. However, when people began to believe that the music that the glass armonica created could make the listener go insane, its popularity waned.
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"The Franklin stove, which bears his name, addressed both safety and efficiency in a society which lacked central heating. Fireplaces were standard in colonial homes, but they were inefficient, with most of the heat produced by burning wood escaping up the chimney. The Franklin stove enclosed the fire within a cast-iron box that could be located in the center of the room to be heated. Heat radiated from all four sides of the box; by making adjustments to the air flow, the rate at which the wood burned could be controlled. Enclosing the flames helped to reduce the chance that a stray spark could ignite a fire.
"Glasses for the near-sighted and far-sighted were already in existence, but Franklin sought a solution for the problem of what to do when one needed lenses that accommodated both myopia and farsightedness. As he aged, he found himself experiencing this optical dilemma, and he sought a solution. Switching from the glasses that he needed to see something close to the ones he needed for distance was a constant nuisance; Franklin’s solution was to cut the two lenses in half, then combine them together in one frame. By looking through the lens at the top of the glasses, he was able to see long distance. When he wanted to read something close, he looked through the bottom of the lens.
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"Along with fire, lightning also presented an obstacle to safety of life and property in colonial America. Because a church was likely to be the tallest structure in a city, lightning seemed peculiarly designed to strike them. Franklin had become interested in the study of electricity shortly before his retirement from the print shop. He proposed to fly a kite in a storm to prove the lightning was in fact, electricity.
"Taking care to avoid the risk of being struck, Franklin conducted his experiment in 1752. He then invented the lightning rod, which would protect buildings from lightning strikes, based on his theory that if a metal rod were attached to the top of a building and wired with a cable to the ground, the rod would attract the lightning from storm clouds before damage could be done. He conducted some of his lightning rod experiments in his own home, finding that his theories were correct. Lightning rods were installed in the Academy of Philadelphia and the Philadelphia State House.
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"The news of Franklin’s invention crossed the Atlantic to be put to use in Europe; French cathedrals were particularly interested in the device. Accolades came Franklin’s way as the world learned of his achievements. In addition to receiving honorary degrees from the colonial universities at Harvard and Yale, Franklin was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1756, one of the few Americans to be recognized in that manner. His contributions to the research on electricity also had a linguistic benefit for today’s electronics vocabulary, adding the words battery, charge, and positive and negative to the lexicon.
"He was already a wealthy man and didn’t need the money that he could certainly have earned, had he applied for a patent for his inventions. However, Benjamin Franklin didn’t apply for patents for any of them. That decision was deliberate - he felt that inventors should be glad to benefit society with their creations and that those inventions should be shared with others."
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"“Rebellious against tyrants is obedience to God.”
"—Benjamin Franklin"
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"The ability of the colonies to bestow upon a man a fresh pedigree was clearly shown in Benjamin Franklin. Retired from his labors, imbued with a lively interest in every conceivable facet of life from education to science to public service, it probably surprised no one when politics enticed his interest. There, as in the other areas of his life, he soon exhibited the acute insights and problem-solving abilities that characterized him. However, politics was destined to provide a foundation for a much more intricate and revolutionary turn of career.
"In 1748, a year after his retirement, he was chosen as a councilman for the Philadelphia government. The year after that, he became a justice of the peace. In 1751, he was elected to serve in the Pennsylvania Assembly. He began to defend the rights of the elected representatives to regulate the Pennsylvania government as a leader in the Quaker political party which opposed the other party, which was dedicated to maintaining the power of the Penn family. At this time, Franklin and most of his fellow colonials were firmly on the side of the British. The French and Indian War, which the British won, gave Britain control of the land east of the Mississippi River."
This author, too, follows the fraudulent nomenclature, of labeling natives of the continent - from Canada to Ushuaia - Indian, despite fully bring aware that they have no connection whatsoever with India and never did.
This is as racist as, say, China labeling all European race 'Japanese '.
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"But the war was costly. Franklin helped to persuade the Pennsylvania government to budget money for defense. His position in government alerted him that the British were not necessarily as dedicated to the well-being of their colonial citizens as he felt they should have been, and he began to wonder if the destinies of Americans and the British were truly in tandem. The ponderings of separation which Franklin was experiencing were not unique to him; the time when British and American interests would blend together was shrinking.
"But if his international view was gloomy, Franklin’s domestic agenda flourished. Appointed the deputy postmaster general of British North America, it fell to Franklin to improve the postal system. This was the kind of assignment which was ideal for Franklin’s inborn sense of efficiency because the postal system was in definite need of improvement.
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"In Franklin’s time, mail service was precarious. Coastal routes were the most reliable means of mail delivery because the roads connecting the colonies were in abysmal condition. The favored manner of sending and receiving mail was by hand. It could take as long as two weeks for a letter sent from New York to reach an address in Philadelphia. The persons who were entrusted with delivering a letter could be travelers, friends, or even slaves, and they would leave the letters at taverns, inns, and coffee houses, places which saw a steady stream of visitors; the letter could be picked up there by the intended recipients. It was worse for mail delivery across the ocean because there was no guarantee that a letter would reach its intended recipient. It was not unknown for a person in Europe to mail multiple copies of a letter that was being sent to the colonies, in the hopes that at least one letter would arrive safely.
"Franklin realized that his challenge was a consuming one. First, he conducted a tour of the all the colonial post offices. He authorized the placement of milestones along the main roads after surveying the routes. He established more direct routes between the colonies so that mail would travel more efficiently. By having the weekly mail wagon travel both during the day and at night, he was able to improve the speed of mail delivery between New York and Philadelphia.
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"He instituted postal rates based on distance and weight, which were standardized throughout the thirteen colonies. The results created a system of postal roads running from Maine to Florida, with regular mail service from the colonies to England. Franklin served as Joint Postmaster General for the Crown until 1774; by that time, events in the colonies were no longer conducive to support the Crown.
"In 1754, Franklin was made the head of the delegation from Pennsylvania, which was heading to the Albany Congress. The impetus for the gathering came from England’s Board of Trade, in the hopes that the colonies would be able to defend themselves against the French as well as improve relations with the native tribes. Franklin’s suggestion was a Plan of Union. His plan was not adopted, but it would influence two later documents which would have significance as the colonies sought to create a central government: the Articles of Confederation and ultimately, the Constitution.
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"Pennsylvania called upon its leading citizen in 1757 to travel to England to represent the colony against the Penn family. The struggle was to determine who should represent the colony: the Penns, whose ancestor William had founded the colony, or the legislature. While in Great Britain, he would also serve as the representative for the colonies of Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Georgia. He asked his wife to join him, and later to visit him, but she was fearful of ocean journeys.
"Upon his arrival, Franklin remembered how much English society had to offer in the way of its philosophers, culture, theater, and style of living. For a time, as his love affair with the Old World resumed, Franklin considered moving to England to live permanently. His evaluation of the charms of England would undergo a change as his time there continued.
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"Although Franklin failed to be re-elected to the Pennsylvania Assembly, losing his seat in 1764, he was sent back to England with the request to have Pennsylvania designated as a royal colony. These were contentious times; the British Parliament had passed the Stamp Act in 1765, and Americans were furious in their opposition to the direct tax, which required many of the items printed in the colonies to bear an embossed stamp on paper produced in London. Franklin spoke before Parliament to explain why the colonists opposed the act. He represented the colonial viewpoint well; the law was repealed.
"However, Franklin was beginning to notice flaws in the British governmental and social structure. The corruption in politics and the stratified social structure made him wonder if America was best served by continuing to remain subordinate to Great Britain. It was a bold thought for a man who had always regarded himself as a British subject.
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"Matters came to a head when Franklin obtained letters that had been written by Thomas Hutchinson, the governor of Massachusetts, who took the side of the British against his own constituents. Franklin sent the letters to America with the instructions that they were to be kept confidential; against his advice, the letters were published in Massachusetts. Franklin was summoned by British government officials and publicly reprimanded. He risked being jailed for treason, but he continued to try to negotiate for peaceful relations between the British and the colonists, even though he was removed from his position as postmaster general.
"Perhaps becoming a royal colony would not present the advantages that Pennsylvania had hoped. Franklin opted not to make the request of the British government. The time for royal governors had passed; what was in store was not thirteen colonies but one country, dedicated to principles which had been hewn out of an American philosophy which espoused hard work, freedom, faith in God, and resistance to tyranny."
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"“Yes, we must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately”
"—Benjamin Franklin"
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"By the time Franklin left Great Britain and returned to Philadelphia in 1775, the British saw him as a troublemaker. For his part, Franklin realized that the British and the colonists could not remain joined. Many in the colonies had already come to that conclusion and the battle for independence had already begun, with blood being shed at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts. When Franklin was unanimously elected by the Pennsylvania Assembly to the Second Continental Congress, he was part of the Committee of Five assigned to write the Declaration of Independence in June 1776.
"Franklin was suffering from gout during many of the Committee of Five meetings, but he did have changes to make to Thomas Jefferson’s draft. Franklin recognized that with the dramatic document, and the signatures of the leading men of the colonies plainly visible for all to see, the colonies had made a significant and dangerous choice. It’s said that, during the signing of the Declaration, Boston’s John Hancock commented that all the signers must hang together. Franklin agreed, stating that they must indeed hang together or they would surely hang separately, a reference to the hangman’s noose that would await them if the bid for independence failed.
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"Franklin was sent to France in December 1776 to serve as a commissioner for the United States. Traveling with him was his grandson, William Temple Franklin, the son of Franklin’s illegitimate son William Franklin, who was the royal governor of New Jersey. Benjamin Franklin only learned of his grandson’s existence while he was in London when the child was four years old. The boy’s father and his grandfather had broken over the issue of American independence; William Franklin remained a loyalist, while Benjamin Franklin supported independence. William Franklin had placed the boy in foster care but Franklin, taking custody, took his grandson, who like William, had been born out of wedlock, back to the United States with him and raised him in his home.
"Franklin’s reputation had preceded him, and his popularity aided the American cause. He was careful to appear to the French as they perceived him to be: simple and honest, an emissary from a country which appeared exotic for its republican ideas.
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"They knew of his scientific experiments, they appreciated his wit, and they loved the image that he presented of the rustic colonial who had proven that he was equal to any titled European. They also appreciated his affection for the ladies. Now a widower since his wife Deborah’s death the year before, Franklin greatly enjoyed the repartee of flirtation.
"He also was befriended by French notables, included the Comte de Mirabeau who would, following the onset of the French Revolution, be elected president of the National Assembly. With the affection of the ladies, the professional support of French scientific colleagues, and the favor of King Louis XVI, Franklin had a place at the French court and in the hearts of the French people. His input was sought after and valued. He weighed in on the subject of religious tolerance that was endorsed by French philosophers and led to the Edict of Versailles in 1787, which replaced a previous edict that had denied those who were not Catholic the right to observe their personal religious beliefs. While in France, he continued his support of scientific achievement. He was so impressed by the sight of the first hydrogen balloon flight that he provided financial support for the project. Just as he had when he lived in Great Britain, Franklin knew how to appreciate the features of his foreign host country.
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"But the American war against the British was going badly, and the United States desperately needed French support. France wanted to see its traditional enemy Great Britain defeated, but it was unwilling to risk supporting a weak ally whose success seemed unlikely. Franklin continued to labor for the supplies that his country needed as he worked for political support on the diplomatic stage. Finally, when the French learned that the American forces had defeated the British troops at the Battle of Saratoga, France agreed to offer an official alliance to the young country.
"On February 6, 1778, Franklin and his fellow commissioners signed a Treaty of Alliance and a Treaty of Amity and Commerce with their French allies. The treaty included a clause making sure that neither France nor the United States would make its own separate peace with Great Britain. The French agreed to provide military support as well, and their soldiers and ships were soon on their way to assist the Americans.
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"Their efforts helped to turn the tide, and the British surrendered to George Washington’s Continental Army in October 1781. The negotiations for the peace treaty got underway in April 1782. Franklin was one of the negotiators of the peace treaty, along with fellow Americans John Adams, John Jay, and Henry Laurens.
"The war had been an expensive one for France. However, the alliance during wartime was not so smooth when it was time to negotiate peace terms. France proposed that, although the United States would continue to be independent, the country’s boundaries would be confined to the east of the Appalachian Mountains; Great Britain would control the territory north of the Ohio River; south of that area, the Spanish would control an independent state for the Native American tribes.
"Disliking the terms, John Jay opted to negotiate directly with the British, cutting out France and Spain. The British, recognizing the opportunity to drive a wedge between the United States and France while building a strong trade partnership between Great Britain and the Americans, offered more enticing terms. The U. S. would claim the land east of the Mississippi, north of Florida and south of Canada. The Americans would allow British merchants and loyalists to attempt to recover their property. The treaty was a boon for the Americans and promised a profitable trading future for Great Britain. The Treaty of Paris that ended the war was signed in 1783. Peace was declared. Now it was up to the United States to create a form of government which could support its lofty rhetoric."
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"“ Slavery is such an atrocious debasement of human nature, that its very extirpation, if not performed with solicitous care, may sometimes open a source of serious evils. ”
"—Benjamin Franklin"
"As the young country came to define itself in the Constitution which would govern it, the issue of slavery would not go away. The new country’s glorious proclamation, the Declaration of Independence, affirmed the equality of all. Yet both Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin were slave owners; Franklin owned slaves for over 40 years. He was not alone in this; during Franklin’s years in Philadelphia, slavery was a way of life. Of the men who worked on the Philadelphia docks, approximately fifteen percent were enslaved. In his print shop, Franklin ran advertisements on the sale of slaves. Slaves were sold in his general store. When slaves ran off to join the British Army during the colonial period, Franklin was critical. However, there was a dichotomy in his views, even then. When any of his slaves ran away, Franklin did not attempt to recapture them, a stark contrast to the practices of other slaveholders, for whom the loss of a slave was a loss of property.
"He owned two slaves, husband and wife, who worked well, but Franklin decided to sell them because he did not like Negro servants. He was of the opinion that slave owners were enfeebled, and the parents of children who were idle, proud, and unfit to earn their own living with their labor.
"But as time went on, his views on slavery evolved. When he returned from Great Britain in 1762, his abolitionist views were becoming more prominent in his thinking. When he saw African-American schoolchildren in a school that had been established for them, he provided financial assistance for another school to be opened in Philadelphia because he had been left with a higher opinion of the ability of the race to learn. It’s interesting to wonder whether his views were influenced by his wife; Deborah had a cousin who was married to the abolitionist Anthony Benezet.
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"Prior to when the colonies had announced their independence and their resolve to cast off their obedience to their king, Pennsylvania had passed a law opposing slavery. However, King George III refused to allow the law to be adopted, and the attempt to bring an end to slavery failed. Determined to do something, Benjamin Franklin and fellow Founding Father Benjamin Rush began Pennsylvania’s first Abolition Society.
"Although he had owned as many as seven slaves, Franklin had freed them by 1770. Despite his personal views, he did not voice his opinions on the controversy during the Constitutional Convention debate. The slavery issue threatened to imperil the efforts to create a working government: if the campaign to end the slave trade was successful, the Southern states would not have supported the Constitution. Finally, the delegates reached a compromise, agreeing to end the slave trade in 1808, adopting the words of James Madison, who declared that although the slave trade was evil, splitting the Union would be worse.
"It was in 1787 that Franklin was named the president of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage. This was the issue, as Franklin neared the end of his life, upon which he focused his crusading spirit.
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"There were also the examples of young men of African-American ancestry who were becoming influential in the abolition movement. Richard Allen, one such young man, was a former slave who later helped to organize the African Methodist Episcopal Church. His home was only six blocks away from where Franklin lived.
"Franklin was old, often in pain and frequently suffering from gout and kidney stones. However, perhaps it was his conscience which suffered the most. He held that a government which treated its citizens differently was not a just government. In 1790, he submitted a petition on behalf of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society; the petition was presented to the United States House of Representatives. The petition called for the gradual abolition of slavery and the end of the slave trade because slavery and freedom were incompatible with Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution. The document’s “general welfare” clause, Franklin argued, permitted Congress to eliminate the slave trade and abolish the institution of slavery.
"The ensuing debate was vehement. Representatives from South Carolina and Georgia argued against the petition; Georgia’s representative claimed that slavery was permitted according to the teachings of the Bible. Slaves, he insisted, were needed in order to maintain the economy of the South. But in his view, the two races could not live together and needed to be kept separate from each other; the implication was obvious that the African race would also be kept in subjugation. Franklin, although his body was showing the signs of age, had not lost his wits, and submitted an article to the Federal Gazette which compared the Georgia congressman’s defense of slavery with the argument posed by an Algerian pirate for why he was permitted to enslave Christians.
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"When Franklin died on April 17, 1790, the petition died with him. With its demise went any hope for a plan to gradually abolish slavery in the United States. Did Franklin sense that the issue of slavery, about which he had become so passionate, would be the one which would split the country and bring about a bloody and hostile civil war in the next century? Was he concerned about the future of the country he had helped to create, and did he fear that a virtuous nation could not participate in an immoral practice?
"Whatever his thoughts, he did not make the issue a source of debate curing the Constitutional Convention. His health problems had begun to overtake him, and he seldom appeared in public after the signing of the Constitution. He died of pleurisy at the age 84, on April 17, 1790. His funeral was attended by 20,000 mourners as Philadelphia bid farewell to its most famous citizen, the man who had represented his country on the world stage.
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"When he was still a young man of twenty-two years, he had written an epitaph: The Body of B. Franklin Printer Like the Cover of an old Book, Its Contents torn out, And stript of its Lettering and Gilding, Lies here, Food for Worms. But the Work shall not be wholly lost: For it will, as he believ'd, appear once more, In a new & more perfect Edition, Corrected and Amended By the Author .
"That was the younger Franklin, a man who was vigorous and confident of his abilities to influence his fate. However, his will established a less ornate message for his grave: Benjamin and Deborah Franklin. He was not, either in life or in death, a flamboyant man."
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"Benjamin Franklin was an old man, but his work on behalf of his state and his country was not yet finished. He was elected to serve as the sixth president of the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania, a post similar to that of a governor. He would serve in that role for three years, and it was in that capacity that he played host to the Constitutional Convention of 1787, which was held in Philadelphia.
"His position was honorary, and he did not contribute greatly to the creation of the Constitution. However, he signed it, just as he had signed the other three major documents that created the United States, and is the only Founding Father to sign all four: the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Alliance with the French, the Treaty of Paris, and the United States Constitution.
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"There was a point during the Convention when matters were at an impasse when Franklin proposed daily prayer during the proceedings. He reminded the delegates that when the conflict with Great Britain began, the nation’s leaders prayed daily for divine protection. He asked, “And have we now forgotten that powerful friend? Or do we imagine that we no longer need His assistance? . . . And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?” Despite his plea to have prayers begin every morning’s deliberations, the motion was opposed and did not come to a vote.
"Although Franklin was a Deist and no longer a Puritan, the theology in which he had been raised, he believed passionately in virtue and morality and felt that it was only by conducting one’s life according to principles of goodness that a man could prosper. He had stopped attending church in his youth so that he would have more time for his studies, but his faith didn’t waver. He explained, “I never doubted . . . the existence of the Deity . . . that the most acceptable service of God was the doing good to man; that our souls are immortal; and that all crime will be punished, and virtue rewarded, either here or hereafter.”
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"He believed not in doctrine but in ethics; it was with this philosophy that he strenuously supported religious tolerance. Puritan values had formed him, and he would remain, throughout his life, a powerful advocate for education, frugality, work, temperance, charity, and concern for the community. As he aged, he seemed to become more convinced that churches were a necessary tool if men and women were to be able to live ethical lives.
"John Adams observed that Franklin had a chameleon-like ability to reflect the religious views of others personally. "The Catholics thought him almost a Catholic. The Church of England claimed him as one of them. The Presbyterians thought him half a Presbyterian, and the Friends believed him a wet Quaker." ... "
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"Benjamin Franklin has sometimes been described as “the first American.” He represented American ethics imprinted on American determination. He forged his own destiny, leaving Boston as a youth to make his own way in the world, venturing to Philadelphia where he created a profitable career as a printer and an altruistic vocation as a civic leader. Although he was not a young man when the American Revolution got underway, he can clearly be seen as a man who was an American and not an Englishman. At the same time, he was the first American who was comfortable in other environments, bringing his American identity with him when he traveled to Europe, but not letting it blind him to the attributes of French and British society. He was a man of reason rather than ideology, who believed in the betterment of humanity through work, education, and faith.
"Perhaps his identity as the first American resembles his affinity with his nation, presenting the very best that America had and continues to offer, based on the hope that ultimately, goodness will triumph so that all men and women, created equal, can live together in freedom and harmony."
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Table of Contents
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Introduction
Born in Boston
From Philadelphia to London
Benjamin Franklin, the Citizen
Benjamin Franklin, the Inventor
Franklin and Colonial Politics
Franklin the American
Franklin: The Conscience of America
Conclusion
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REVIEW
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Introduction
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"It took more than a millennium before Europe’s centuries of learning and creativity produced the Renaissance, that golden era when human intellect shone a bright light that cast out the shadows of the Dark Ages. The pace was a little faster in the New World. ... "
Now author explores reasons thereof, admitting that Europe had a caste system without admitting that it was caste system, or that it was stifling to thought and talent precisely because it was not only rigid but built on very bad, primitive foundations, of physical power and landed properties to begin with, apart from titles bestowed by a royalty that was caste at the top of a pyramid social structure
But most of all, author refrains from mentioning the bull in the China shop - the church that stifled Europe actively, especially more so beginning with inquisition, imposing its own primacy and sole right to all but manual labour, disallowing freedom of thought.
" ... Less than two hundred years after the first English settlers set foot on the continent of North America, the United States had produced a Renaissance man, a man of humble beginnings who boldly left his mark in politics, science, education, philosophy, diplomacy, and innovation. That he was able to be so versatile is both a tribute to his natural intelligence and character, but also a testament to the inventiveness of his homeland. It’s true that all subsequent civilizations build upon what went before, but the legacy of Europe was so rigid that, in order to rise to a position of status, a man needed either his own august lineage or wealthy and influential patrons.
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"For Benjamin Franklin, there was no exalted institute of education that provided him with learning; there was no vast store of wealth to bankroll him. He was, in fact, deliberately and enthusiastically, a member of the middle class, a man who had pulled himself up by his own bootstraps and then figured out a way, metaphorically, to make a better bootstrap. He was thrifty, patriotic, shrewd, and virtuous; he had a common-law wife, an illegitimate son, and a reputation as a flirt among the ladies of France, who adored him when he was well past the age for such dalliances. He was a pragmatist, a writer, a statesman, a scientist, an inventor, a philanthropist, a citizen; Benjamin Franklin was so many things that it took eighty-four years for him to bring them all to fruition.
"Benjamin Franklin, American, is a legend. He is also endearingly, unmistakably human. ... Franklin, who has been called “The First American,” remains a fascinating man whose personality has not been dimmed by the passage of time. ... Benjamin Franklin is part of every American entrepreneur, innovator, and crusader who has ever lived because his virtues came not from his time, but from the timelessness of his talents and the boundless rejuvenation of his native soil."
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December 13, 2022 - December 13, 2022.
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Chapter 1. Born in Boston
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"“We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.”
"—Benjamin Franklin"
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"The small house on Milk Street, Boston, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, was crowded with children. The birth of Benjamin, on January 6, 1706, made the twelfth of the Franklin offspring born to Josiah, who earned his living by making soap and candles, and Abiah, his second wife, who would contribute ten children to the brood which would eventually number seventeen.
"Education for the Franklins was desirable, but money was tight, and Benjamin’s time in the South Grammar School when he was eight years old only lasted a few months because his father couldn’t afford the cost. He returned to school, this time to George Brownell’s English School, for one year, and wanted to study longer, but formal education was a luxury that the family couldn’t afford.
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"At the age of ten, it was time for young Benjamin to settle on a trade. His father let him watch the Boston tradesmen at their labors, but Benjamin wanted to be a sailor. However, Josiah Franklin had already seen one of his sons go to sea; he was unwilling to permit another do the same. The boy didn’t want to follow in his father’s footsteps making soap and candles, so for a short time, he was indentured as a cutler. Ultimately this didn’t interest him.
"Even with minimal schooling, however, it was obvious that the boy had a lively intellect. He was only eleven years old when he started to read the English novelist Daniel Defoe, the Greek historian Plutarch, and the Puritan minister Cotton Mather.
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"The Franklins were a Puritan family, and his parents hoped that their son would become a clergyman when it was time for him to settle on a career. In colonial Massachusetts, ministers were held in high regard; Franklin would later humorously write in his Autobiography that he was his father’s tithe to the church. That tithe would go unpaid, as Franklin in his youth had no interest in the ministry; as an adult, he had no vocation for it.
"But despite his disinclination for the life of a clergyman, Franklin would absorb the characteristic traits of the Puritan and would exemplify them in his writing and lifestyle. Puritans held to a simple code of behavior: work hard, be honest and diligent, and live simply and frugally in order to obey and serve God. As an adult, Franklin’s motives may not have been directed toward God, but the Puritan creed had taken root in fertile soil.
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"He ended up apprenticed to his half-brother James, a printer, and at the age of twelve, he was signed up for nine years of indenture. Despite his lack of formal learning, Benjamin was a bookish boy who enjoyed reading and liked to write poetry. As an apprentice to a printer, he could further his writing talents, something he did by spending hours creating an outline of the essays he had read in the popular magazine the Spectator, and then rewriting them in his own style, teaching himself how to communicate in a manner that reached his readers. He also wrote a ballad to commemorate the capture of the pirate Blackbeard, who had terrorized the Eastern coast. He had a lively writing style that would mature as he plied his craft, even though his brother displayed no great interest in expanding Benjamin’s literary horizons.
"In 1720, Franklin began to explore his own personal independence. He moved from the family home into a boarding home, and he stopped going to church so that he could use Sundays for more studying. His religious concepts changed; by the next year, he was a Deist. His personal life would change in other ways, too; Franklin, looking for ways to save money so that he could afford to buy books, decided to become a vegetarian."
It's astounding that the concept was even familiar, and that duch a lifestyle was then possible for someone not familiar with India.
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"In 1721, brother James started a newspaper, The New England Courant. What made this newspaper unique was that, unlike the other two Boston newspapers that reprinted articles that originated from Europe, James Franklin recorded news from home: ship schedules, articles, opinions, and advertisements. He was also open to publishing articles that educated and entertained.
"A series of essays, submitted under the pseudonym of Silence Dogood, became popular with readers for their humorous tone and their mockery of Bostonian society. Silence Dogood was a widow who provided advice and criticism of her world, particularly on the subject of the treatment of women. James didn’t know the identity of the author, but Benjamin submitted the articles anonymously because he knew that his brother would not welcome his work. So he wrote the articles at night and stealthily slipped them underneath the door of the print shop, maintaining the mystery of the author’s identity. Sixteen letters from the opinionated Mrs. Dogood were printed before Benjamin confessed his authorship. James didn’t handle his brother’s talent or budding fame well and scolded him for his actions.
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"Benjamin’s talents and precocious ability to work as a printer stood his brother in good stead when James Franklin ended up in prison for three weeks, charged with contempt for the criticisms he printed of the Massachusetts government. Freedom of the press did not exist as a right in the colonies. When a controversy arose over whether or not inoculation against smallpox was a sound medical principle, the Franklins were on the side that opposed inoculation; the powerful and influential Puritan clergy family, the Mathers, supported it. Bostonians tended to agree with the Franklins and believed that inoculation made people sicker, but they looked up to their clergy and didn’t approve of James Franklin’s disrespectful tone.
"While James was in prison, Benjamin published the newspaper under his own name, a taste of freedom that was hard to relinquish when James returned to the helm. The brothers argued, and there were times when James physically beat his apprentice. Finally, Benjamin quit, intending to find work with another of Boston’s printers. However, James had advised his printer colleagues not to hire Benjamin, leaving young Franklin little choice but to seek greener pastures.
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"Apprenticeship was a business contract and running away was not permitted. Not only that but in the clearly defined social order of the times, there was no niche for a runaway, who represented a lawlessness that society did not tolerate. Young Benjamin was regarded as a fugitive from the law.
"At the age of 17, Franklin sailed to New York, but he was unable to find work as a printer, so he walked to New Jersey. From there, he took a boat to Philadelphia. He would return to Boston in 1724 at the age of 18 when he needed a loan from his father in order to start his own print shop, but his father would refuse him the loan. However, that was yet to come: Boston was his past, Philadelphia his future. The bustling city where he would establish his roots would prove to be a nurturing incubator for its dynamic new resident."
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December 14, 2022 - December 14, 2022.
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Chapter 2. From Philadelphia to London
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"“Early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”
"—Benjamin Franklin"
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"When Benjamin Franklin arrived in Philadelphia, he did not make a grand entrance. His disheveled state showed the signs of his travels; his clothing was rumpled, his appearance less than refined. He used the little money that he had left to buy rolls to eat. As he walked down the street, a young woman named Deborah Read noticed him and thought that he looked peculiar - and she was probably right. But Franklin’s indomitable character would soon transform him from a down-on-his-luck runaway into a rising businessman.
"Despite Deborah Read’s original opinion of him, Franklin would end up taking lodgings with the Reads, who ran a boarding house on 318 Market Street, and as time passed, Deborah no longer regarded him as odd-looking. In fact, the couple began to spend more time together, long enough for Deborah Read to decide that matrimony was in their future. Franklin was less convinced. He was young, he had his way to make in the world, and marriage was not uppermost in his thoughts.
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"Philadelphia, the largest city in the colonies, offered more opportunity than Boston had, and Franklin was able to find work as an apprentice printer. He attracted the attention of Pennsylvania’s royal governor, Sir William Keith, who offered to set him up in his own business by sending a letter of credit to London if Franklin would travel to Great Britain to purchase printing equipment.
"The money from the royal governor failed to come through, leaving Franklin stranded in London for two years, where he worked with a well-regarded printer, Samuel Palmer, in order to earn money to pay for his return passage home. Benjamin Franklin’s co-workers at the Palmer Print Shop were less dedicated than the young colonial, and while they were getting drunk, he was making a good impression. He made good use of his youth and strength; he could carry two of the heavy lead type trays, while the other printers could only carry a single tray.
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"His skills and ambition led him to leave that printer for a better position when he found employment with James Watts, who ran a larger print shop. Being an enterprising youth, he also earned money by providing swimming lessons in the Thames River and considered making swimming instruction his full-time occupation. In fact, Franklin was an early proponent of physical fitness; he had taught himself to swim during an era when many people regarded the water with apprehension.
"Although his business venture did not turn out as planned, thanks to the failure of the royal governor to send a letter of credit, the young Franklin made good use of his time in Great Britain. The British had established a standard of culture and living that was much more formal than what Franklin was used to, but the attractions of London appealed to him. He continued to be an eager reader, but he also enjoyed attending the theater and spending time in the coffee shops. The Enlightenment was opening up the minds of thinkers who fought against the old, hidebound ideas of the past, and this was galvanizing for a young man of ability and talent. Franklin’s ability to express himself was honed as he began to refine his writing skills, printing the first of his pamphlets, A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain.
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"In 1726, Franklin obtained a loan from a Quaker merchant in Philadelphia, Thomas Denham, so that he could afford to return home. But during his absence, Deborah Read had found someone else and, encouraged by her mother, she had married John Rogers the year before.
"Franklin found employment as a bookkeeper and shopkeeper, selling imported clothing and hardware. By 1727, Franklin had already found a new job. He had also found a new romantic companion. The woman would become pregnant with a son, William. William’s mother was not identified, but Franklin acknowledged him, and he would grow up with his father.
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"William would, as an adult, become the royal governor of New Jersey. In most circumstances, such a career would herald great things, but this position came when the colonies were separating from the mother country, leaving Franklin father and son on opposite sides of the division. It’s easy to think of the Civil War as the one which split families, but American independence would also create such fissures among families.
"Deborah Read’s 1725 marriage to John Rogers had not proceeded well. He had abandoned her, but because she didn’t know where he had gone, she wasn’t able to divorce him. No one was quite sure where Rogers had gone, and there was no way to find out. There was word that he had gone to the West Indies in 1727 or 1728, and that he had died, but no one had proof. Some said that he had already had a wife when he married Deborah Read, but there was no proof of that either. Deborah was understandably dejected over her ambiguous state, but she and Franklin began to see each other regularly. In his autobiography, Franklin acknowledged that he bore some of the guilt for Deborah’s state: “I pitied poor Miss Read's unfortunate situation, who was generally dejected, seldom cheerful, and avoided company. I considered my giddiness and inconstancy when in London as in a great degree the cause of her unhappiness.”
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"In 1730, because they could not exchange the traditional marriage vows due to Deborah’s previous marriage, Franklin and Read entered a common-law marriage; Franklin’s illegitimate son lived with them. In 1732, a son, Francis Folger Franklin, was born to the couple. He would die at the age of four from smallpox. Their daughter, Sarah Franklin, known as Sally, was born in 1743; she would marry, bear seven children, and would survive her long-lived father. Although Benjamin and William Franklin were estranged, Sally Franklin Bache and her father had a good relationship, and she was a support to him in his patriotic responsibilities, particularly during the American Revolution, when she and a group of women sewed 2,200 shirts for the soldiers of the Continental Army who had gone into winter quarters in 1780. She would also serve as a hostess for her father after the death of her mother in 1774.
"Distance would eventually become a trademark of the Franklin-Read marriage, which lasted for forty-four years until Deborah’s death of a stroke in 1774. Despite the longevity of the union, they would live apart, due to Franklin’s patriotic commitments, for eighteen of those years."
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December 14, 2022 - December 14, 2022.
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Chapter 3. Benjamin Franklin, the Citizen
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" ... The Franklins, like other citizens of Philadelphia and the other cities in the thirteen colonies, regarded themselves as British. They were proud of their heritage, and why not? Great Britain was a mighty empire, enlightened and prosperous, and the colonies benefitted from their ties to England. Under the protection of the British Crown, the colonists could concentrate on bettering themselves in a land where there were no social impediments to advancement. The only limit to a man’s success was his own ambition, and Benjamin Franklin did not suffer from that deficiency.
"Benjamin Franklin, a master printer, was intent upon building his career in his adoptive city. He had married wisely. Although his wife was not an intellectual and did not share his interests, she proved to be a good business partner. Franklin was in charge of the print shop, but Deborah oversaw the Franklin book and stationery shop and general store. She was not someone who enjoyed the social network of friends and colleagues that her husband relished, but her ability to maintain the home and help with their business gave Franklin a measure of freedom that he used to pursue his civic interests.
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"Franklin and his business partner had opened their own printing shop in 1728 after James Meredith obtained a loan from his parents. They bought out a competing printer—Franklin’s former employer, Samuel Keimer—who had gone bankrupt, and turned his Pennsylvania Gazette into a successful enterprise. In 1730, the same year that Franklin married, the printing partners won a contract to print the official papers issued by the colony of Pennsylvania. As the business thrived, Franklin was able to buy out Meredith and run the print shop on his own.
"His publication of Poor Richard’s Almanack, beginning in 1733, was both a popular move and a financially successful one. Written under the alias of Richard Saunders, the almanac was presented as the work of a man who needed money because he had a nagging wife. The almanac included, in addition to many sayings that are still familiar in modern times, weather reports, recipes, and homilies.
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"By the time Franklin was thirty years old, the Pennsylvania Gazette was the newspaper that was the most widely read in all the thirteen colonies. Prosperity meant that Franklin could employ his talents by doing more than simply earning a living. So he started or joined organizations dedicated to bettering the life of others and of his city. Before his marriage, he was organizing a Junto, a weekly meeting of tradesmen and artisans who were dedicated to improving the lot of humanity. Franklin’s model for the Junto came out of his familiarity with the London coffeehouses that he had come to know well when he lived in Great Britain as a young man. The Junto was a profitable enterprise for all, because, in addition to its altruistic aims, its members were also able to support each other’s business endeavors by sending patronage to one another.
"The Junto members were voracious readers, and they recognized that many who could benefit from the writings of others were unable to afford such a costly luxury as a book. Franklin proposed that the Junto members should house their books, to which they often referred during their discussions, in a common place. Not only would the books be accessible to the Junto members, but they would all benefit from one another’s personal favorites. This was the nucleus of the subscription library, which would use funds provided by the Junto members to purchase new books to read. The Library Company of Philadelphia, which continues to endure in modern times as a research library, was chartered in 1731 and hired Louis Timothee, the first American librarian, in 1732. Franklin’s love of books and discourse craved the companionship of others of like interest, so in 1743, he founded the American Philosophical Society. This group was a forum for scientists to share their research and ideas, and it was around this time that Franklin began to pursue his interest in electricity.
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"Although Franklin had minimal formal education, he wanted educational opportunities to be available for others. In 1749, he printed Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pensilvania, explaining his ambition to further education in Philadelphia. In 1751, the Academy and the Charity School opened with Franklin as president of the Academy.
"His interested in education continued. In 1752, he printed a textbook, Elementa Philosophica, written by Dr. Samuel Johnson (an American, not the celebrated British writer) which would promote a new educational curriculum. The new college would have classes that were taught in English, not Latin; experts on different courses of study rather than a tutor would teach; and students would not have to take a religious test as part of the admission requirements.
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"The College of Philadelphia opened in 1755. The College would come to have a very special and characteristically American contribution to the new nation; over one-third of the men who had a role to play in the creation of the Declaration of Independence had an affiliation with the College of Philadelphia. The college would survive long past his lifetime; today, it is the University of Pennsylvania. Franklin was sufficiently pragmatic to realize that Philadelphia needed more than books, philosophers, and schools. As one of Philadelphia’s leading citizens, Franklin had a keen perception of the genuine risks the city faced. Fire was a constant colonial threat in communities where so many structures were built of wood, and in 1736, the Union Fire Company, the first volunteer firefighting company in Philadelphia, was organized by Franklin. It was a useful and timely improvement, but firefighters could only do so much. The Philadelphia Contribution for Insurance Against Loss by Fire offered insurance policies so that a person who had lost property in a fire would, if he had purchased an insurance policy, avoid financial destitution. The company, which began in 1752, continues as a business today.
"It’s to be expected that the colonies would enjoy many firsts; what is perhaps unexpected is that so many of those firsts were initiated by Benjamin Franklin. The Pennsylvania Hospital, which would become the first hospital not only in the colony of Pennsylvania but eventually in the country, was established in 1751 when Franklin was able to obtain a charter from the Pennsylvania legislature to establish it.
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"Franklin’s zeal for improvement came from his own character, but also from the values he had been taught by his Puritan parents. Improvement of one’s self and one’s community was a worthy goal.
"So was making a profitable living. Franklin was a shrewd businessman; by 1747, the son of a poor candle-maker had amassed enough wealth to allow him to retire from printing so that he could pursue other business interests. He set up a partnership with his foreman; Franklin would receive half of the profits from the print shop for eighteen years. It’s unlikely that he realized how valuable his leisure time would prove, but with the time to concentrate on his discoveries and his studies, he would build a reputation that would cross the ocean and take his name and his achievements to the courts of Europe."
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December 14, 2022 - December 14, 2022.
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Chapter 4. Benjamin Franklin, the Inventor
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"“That, as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously.”
"—Benjamin Franklin"
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"Benjamin Franklin was so innovative that it’s not surprising to see him given credit for inventions that he didn’t actually create. He did not create air conditioning, nor did he devise the idea of daylight savings time. However, that still leaves plenty of achievements which can be credited to him. His to-do list of inventions designed to satisfy his passion for efficiency and the concepts which he furthered represent the eager, fertile mind of a man who, despite his lack of formal education, had an unfettered mind.
"His first invention was made when he was an eleven-year-old. The swim fins, a pair of oval planks of wood with holes in the centers, could be grasped with the hands in order to provide increased momentum when swimming underwater. Although they increased his swimming speed, they tired his wrists, as did the board that he strapped to his feet. They were also uncomfortable, but for an eleven-year-old, they represented an impressive debut into the world of innovation. This invention demonstrates that Benjamin Franklin also valued physical activity and health. As a result, he has the unique honor of being the only Founding Father who was named to the International Swimming Hall of Fame, as well as the United States Swim Schools Association Hall of Fame.
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"As he matured, so did his perception of what innovations were needed. The urinary catheter existed in colonial America, but the metal tube that was inserted into the urethra in order to let urine drain out of the bladder was painful. Having an inventor in the family was opportune for the Franklins, particularly for his older brother John, who was prone to kidney stones and had to insert the unyielding metal catheter daily. Franklin figured that the tube could be flexible if it were made of silver. "It is as flexible as would be expected in a thing of the kind, and I imagine will readily comply with the turns of the passage," he wrote to John Franklin after he had completed his invention.
"Some of his inspiration came from the arts. Franklin’s favorite invention came about when he was representing Pennsylvania in England, and he attended a concert featuring a professional wine glass player. Wine glasses set on a table, each glass containing a different level of water from the others, were played by rubbing the rims of the glasses. Franklin liked the sound but perceived a way to improve it. The dilemma was how to reduce the amount of time it took to set up the glasses and how to relieve the exertion on the wrists. It took two years, but he came up with the glass armonica, which was an assortment of glass bowls of different sizes that were arranged on a rotating shaft. The shaft could be spun with a foot pedals. The wet fingers would then be run over the bowls as they rotated. His invention was a popular one in Europe and America; Mozart and Beethoven wrote compositions for it. However, when people began to believe that the music that the glass armonica created could make the listener go insane, its popularity waned.
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"The Franklin stove, which bears his name, addressed both safety and efficiency in a society which lacked central heating. Fireplaces were standard in colonial homes, but they were inefficient, with most of the heat produced by burning wood escaping up the chimney. The Franklin stove enclosed the fire within a cast-iron box that could be located in the center of the room to be heated. Heat radiated from all four sides of the box; by making adjustments to the air flow, the rate at which the wood burned could be controlled. Enclosing the flames helped to reduce the chance that a stray spark could ignite a fire.
"Glasses for the near-sighted and far-sighted were already in existence, but Franklin sought a solution for the problem of what to do when one needed lenses that accommodated both myopia and farsightedness. As he aged, he found himself experiencing this optical dilemma, and he sought a solution. Switching from the glasses that he needed to see something close to the ones he needed for distance was a constant nuisance; Franklin’s solution was to cut the two lenses in half, then combine them together in one frame. By looking through the lens at the top of the glasses, he was able to see long distance. When he wanted to read something close, he looked through the bottom of the lens.
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"Along with fire, lightning also presented an obstacle to safety of life and property in colonial America. Because a church was likely to be the tallest structure in a city, lightning seemed peculiarly designed to strike them. Franklin had become interested in the study of electricity shortly before his retirement from the print shop. He proposed to fly a kite in a storm to prove the lightning was in fact, electricity.
"Taking care to avoid the risk of being struck, Franklin conducted his experiment in 1752. He then invented the lightning rod, which would protect buildings from lightning strikes, based on his theory that if a metal rod were attached to the top of a building and wired with a cable to the ground, the rod would attract the lightning from storm clouds before damage could be done. He conducted some of his lightning rod experiments in his own home, finding that his theories were correct. Lightning rods were installed in the Academy of Philadelphia and the Philadelphia State House.
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"The news of Franklin’s invention crossed the Atlantic to be put to use in Europe; French cathedrals were particularly interested in the device. Accolades came Franklin’s way as the world learned of his achievements. In addition to receiving honorary degrees from the colonial universities at Harvard and Yale, Franklin was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1756, one of the few Americans to be recognized in that manner. His contributions to the research on electricity also had a linguistic benefit for today’s electronics vocabulary, adding the words battery, charge, and positive and negative to the lexicon.
"He was already a wealthy man and didn’t need the money that he could certainly have earned, had he applied for a patent for his inventions. However, Benjamin Franklin didn’t apply for patents for any of them. That decision was deliberate - he felt that inventors should be glad to benefit society with their creations and that those inventions should be shared with others."
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December 14, 2022 - December 14, 2022.
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Chapter 5. Franklin and Colonial Politics
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"“Rebellious against tyrants is obedience to God.”
"—Benjamin Franklin"
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"The ability of the colonies to bestow upon a man a fresh pedigree was clearly shown in Benjamin Franklin. Retired from his labors, imbued with a lively interest in every conceivable facet of life from education to science to public service, it probably surprised no one when politics enticed his interest. There, as in the other areas of his life, he soon exhibited the acute insights and problem-solving abilities that characterized him. However, politics was destined to provide a foundation for a much more intricate and revolutionary turn of career.
"In 1748, a year after his retirement, he was chosen as a councilman for the Philadelphia government. The year after that, he became a justice of the peace. In 1751, he was elected to serve in the Pennsylvania Assembly. He began to defend the rights of the elected representatives to regulate the Pennsylvania government as a leader in the Quaker political party which opposed the other party, which was dedicated to maintaining the power of the Penn family. At this time, Franklin and most of his fellow colonials were firmly on the side of the British. The French and Indian War, which the British won, gave Britain control of the land east of the Mississippi River."
This author, too, follows the fraudulent nomenclature, of labeling natives of the continent - from Canada to Ushuaia - Indian, despite fully bring aware that they have no connection whatsoever with India and never did.
This is as racist as, say, China labeling all European race 'Japanese '.
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"But the war was costly. Franklin helped to persuade the Pennsylvania government to budget money for defense. His position in government alerted him that the British were not necessarily as dedicated to the well-being of their colonial citizens as he felt they should have been, and he began to wonder if the destinies of Americans and the British were truly in tandem. The ponderings of separation which Franklin was experiencing were not unique to him; the time when British and American interests would blend together was shrinking.
"But if his international view was gloomy, Franklin’s domestic agenda flourished. Appointed the deputy postmaster general of British North America, it fell to Franklin to improve the postal system. This was the kind of assignment which was ideal for Franklin’s inborn sense of efficiency because the postal system was in definite need of improvement.
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"In Franklin’s time, mail service was precarious. Coastal routes were the most reliable means of mail delivery because the roads connecting the colonies were in abysmal condition. The favored manner of sending and receiving mail was by hand. It could take as long as two weeks for a letter sent from New York to reach an address in Philadelphia. The persons who were entrusted with delivering a letter could be travelers, friends, or even slaves, and they would leave the letters at taverns, inns, and coffee houses, places which saw a steady stream of visitors; the letter could be picked up there by the intended recipients. It was worse for mail delivery across the ocean because there was no guarantee that a letter would reach its intended recipient. It was not unknown for a person in Europe to mail multiple copies of a letter that was being sent to the colonies, in the hopes that at least one letter would arrive safely.
"Franklin realized that his challenge was a consuming one. First, he conducted a tour of the all the colonial post offices. He authorized the placement of milestones along the main roads after surveying the routes. He established more direct routes between the colonies so that mail would travel more efficiently. By having the weekly mail wagon travel both during the day and at night, he was able to improve the speed of mail delivery between New York and Philadelphia.
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"He instituted postal rates based on distance and weight, which were standardized throughout the thirteen colonies. The results created a system of postal roads running from Maine to Florida, with regular mail service from the colonies to England. Franklin served as Joint Postmaster General for the Crown until 1774; by that time, events in the colonies were no longer conducive to support the Crown.
"In 1754, Franklin was made the head of the delegation from Pennsylvania, which was heading to the Albany Congress. The impetus for the gathering came from England’s Board of Trade, in the hopes that the colonies would be able to defend themselves against the French as well as improve relations with the native tribes. Franklin’s suggestion was a Plan of Union. His plan was not adopted, but it would influence two later documents which would have significance as the colonies sought to create a central government: the Articles of Confederation and ultimately, the Constitution.
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"Pennsylvania called upon its leading citizen in 1757 to travel to England to represent the colony against the Penn family. The struggle was to determine who should represent the colony: the Penns, whose ancestor William had founded the colony, or the legislature. While in Great Britain, he would also serve as the representative for the colonies of Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Georgia. He asked his wife to join him, and later to visit him, but she was fearful of ocean journeys.
"Upon his arrival, Franklin remembered how much English society had to offer in the way of its philosophers, culture, theater, and style of living. For a time, as his love affair with the Old World resumed, Franklin considered moving to England to live permanently. His evaluation of the charms of England would undergo a change as his time there continued.
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"Although Franklin failed to be re-elected to the Pennsylvania Assembly, losing his seat in 1764, he was sent back to England with the request to have Pennsylvania designated as a royal colony. These were contentious times; the British Parliament had passed the Stamp Act in 1765, and Americans were furious in their opposition to the direct tax, which required many of the items printed in the colonies to bear an embossed stamp on paper produced in London. Franklin spoke before Parliament to explain why the colonists opposed the act. He represented the colonial viewpoint well; the law was repealed.
"However, Franklin was beginning to notice flaws in the British governmental and social structure. The corruption in politics and the stratified social structure made him wonder if America was best served by continuing to remain subordinate to Great Britain. It was a bold thought for a man who had always regarded himself as a British subject.
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"Matters came to a head when Franklin obtained letters that had been written by Thomas Hutchinson, the governor of Massachusetts, who took the side of the British against his own constituents. Franklin sent the letters to America with the instructions that they were to be kept confidential; against his advice, the letters were published in Massachusetts. Franklin was summoned by British government officials and publicly reprimanded. He risked being jailed for treason, but he continued to try to negotiate for peaceful relations between the British and the colonists, even though he was removed from his position as postmaster general.
"Perhaps becoming a royal colony would not present the advantages that Pennsylvania had hoped. Franklin opted not to make the request of the British government. The time for royal governors had passed; what was in store was not thirteen colonies but one country, dedicated to principles which had been hewn out of an American philosophy which espoused hard work, freedom, faith in God, and resistance to tyranny."
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December 14, 2022 - December 14, 2022.
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Chapter 6. Franklin the American
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"“Yes, we must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately”
"—Benjamin Franklin"
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"By the time Franklin left Great Britain and returned to Philadelphia in 1775, the British saw him as a troublemaker. For his part, Franklin realized that the British and the colonists could not remain joined. Many in the colonies had already come to that conclusion and the battle for independence had already begun, with blood being shed at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts. When Franklin was unanimously elected by the Pennsylvania Assembly to the Second Continental Congress, he was part of the Committee of Five assigned to write the Declaration of Independence in June 1776.
"Franklin was suffering from gout during many of the Committee of Five meetings, but he did have changes to make to Thomas Jefferson’s draft. Franklin recognized that with the dramatic document, and the signatures of the leading men of the colonies plainly visible for all to see, the colonies had made a significant and dangerous choice. It’s said that, during the signing of the Declaration, Boston’s John Hancock commented that all the signers must hang together. Franklin agreed, stating that they must indeed hang together or they would surely hang separately, a reference to the hangman’s noose that would await them if the bid for independence failed.
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"Franklin was sent to France in December 1776 to serve as a commissioner for the United States. Traveling with him was his grandson, William Temple Franklin, the son of Franklin’s illegitimate son William Franklin, who was the royal governor of New Jersey. Benjamin Franklin only learned of his grandson’s existence while he was in London when the child was four years old. The boy’s father and his grandfather had broken over the issue of American independence; William Franklin remained a loyalist, while Benjamin Franklin supported independence. William Franklin had placed the boy in foster care but Franklin, taking custody, took his grandson, who like William, had been born out of wedlock, back to the United States with him and raised him in his home.
"Franklin’s reputation had preceded him, and his popularity aided the American cause. He was careful to appear to the French as they perceived him to be: simple and honest, an emissary from a country which appeared exotic for its republican ideas.
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"They knew of his scientific experiments, they appreciated his wit, and they loved the image that he presented of the rustic colonial who had proven that he was equal to any titled European. They also appreciated his affection for the ladies. Now a widower since his wife Deborah’s death the year before, Franklin greatly enjoyed the repartee of flirtation.
"He also was befriended by French notables, included the Comte de Mirabeau who would, following the onset of the French Revolution, be elected president of the National Assembly. With the affection of the ladies, the professional support of French scientific colleagues, and the favor of King Louis XVI, Franklin had a place at the French court and in the hearts of the French people. His input was sought after and valued. He weighed in on the subject of religious tolerance that was endorsed by French philosophers and led to the Edict of Versailles in 1787, which replaced a previous edict that had denied those who were not Catholic the right to observe their personal religious beliefs. While in France, he continued his support of scientific achievement. He was so impressed by the sight of the first hydrogen balloon flight that he provided financial support for the project. Just as he had when he lived in Great Britain, Franklin knew how to appreciate the features of his foreign host country.
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"But the American war against the British was going badly, and the United States desperately needed French support. France wanted to see its traditional enemy Great Britain defeated, but it was unwilling to risk supporting a weak ally whose success seemed unlikely. Franklin continued to labor for the supplies that his country needed as he worked for political support on the diplomatic stage. Finally, when the French learned that the American forces had defeated the British troops at the Battle of Saratoga, France agreed to offer an official alliance to the young country.
"On February 6, 1778, Franklin and his fellow commissioners signed a Treaty of Alliance and a Treaty of Amity and Commerce with their French allies. The treaty included a clause making sure that neither France nor the United States would make its own separate peace with Great Britain. The French agreed to provide military support as well, and their soldiers and ships were soon on their way to assist the Americans.
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"Their efforts helped to turn the tide, and the British surrendered to George Washington’s Continental Army in October 1781. The negotiations for the peace treaty got underway in April 1782. Franklin was one of the negotiators of the peace treaty, along with fellow Americans John Adams, John Jay, and Henry Laurens.
"The war had been an expensive one for France. However, the alliance during wartime was not so smooth when it was time to negotiate peace terms. France proposed that, although the United States would continue to be independent, the country’s boundaries would be confined to the east of the Appalachian Mountains; Great Britain would control the territory north of the Ohio River; south of that area, the Spanish would control an independent state for the Native American tribes.
"Disliking the terms, John Jay opted to negotiate directly with the British, cutting out France and Spain. The British, recognizing the opportunity to drive a wedge between the United States and France while building a strong trade partnership between Great Britain and the Americans, offered more enticing terms. The U. S. would claim the land east of the Mississippi, north of Florida and south of Canada. The Americans would allow British merchants and loyalists to attempt to recover their property. The treaty was a boon for the Americans and promised a profitable trading future for Great Britain. The Treaty of Paris that ended the war was signed in 1783. Peace was declared. Now it was up to the United States to create a form of government which could support its lofty rhetoric."
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December 14, 2022 - December 14, 2022.
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Chapter 7. Franklin: The Conscience of America
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"“ Slavery is such an atrocious debasement of human nature, that its very extirpation, if not performed with solicitous care, may sometimes open a source of serious evils. ”
"—Benjamin Franklin"
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"As the young country came to define itself in the Constitution which would govern it, the issue of slavery would not go away. The new country’s glorious proclamation, the Declaration of Independence, affirmed the equality of all. Yet both Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin were slave owners; Franklin owned slaves for over 40 years. He was not alone in this; during Franklin’s years in Philadelphia, slavery was a way of life. Of the men who worked on the Philadelphia docks, approximately fifteen percent were enslaved. In his print shop, Franklin ran advertisements on the sale of slaves. Slaves were sold in his general store. When slaves ran off to join the British Army during the colonial period, Franklin was critical. However, there was a dichotomy in his views, even then. When any of his slaves ran away, Franklin did not attempt to recapture them, a stark contrast to the practices of other slaveholders, for whom the loss of a slave was a loss of property.
"He owned two slaves, husband and wife, who worked well, but Franklin decided to sell them because he did not like Negro servants. He was of the opinion that slave owners were enfeebled, and the parents of children who were idle, proud, and unfit to earn their own living with their labor.
"But as time went on, his views on slavery evolved. When he returned from Great Britain in 1762, his abolitionist views were becoming more prominent in his thinking. When he saw African-American schoolchildren in a school that had been established for them, he provided financial assistance for another school to be opened in Philadelphia because he had been left with a higher opinion of the ability of the race to learn. It’s interesting to wonder whether his views were influenced by his wife; Deborah had a cousin who was married to the abolitionist Anthony Benezet.
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"Prior to when the colonies had announced their independence and their resolve to cast off their obedience to their king, Pennsylvania had passed a law opposing slavery. However, King George III refused to allow the law to be adopted, and the attempt to bring an end to slavery failed. Determined to do something, Benjamin Franklin and fellow Founding Father Benjamin Rush began Pennsylvania’s first Abolition Society.
"Although he had owned as many as seven slaves, Franklin had freed them by 1770. Despite his personal views, he did not voice his opinions on the controversy during the Constitutional Convention debate. The slavery issue threatened to imperil the efforts to create a working government: if the campaign to end the slave trade was successful, the Southern states would not have supported the Constitution. Finally, the delegates reached a compromise, agreeing to end the slave trade in 1808, adopting the words of James Madison, who declared that although the slave trade was evil, splitting the Union would be worse.
"It was in 1787 that Franklin was named the president of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage. This was the issue, as Franklin neared the end of his life, upon which he focused his crusading spirit.
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"There were also the examples of young men of African-American ancestry who were becoming influential in the abolition movement. Richard Allen, one such young man, was a former slave who later helped to organize the African Methodist Episcopal Church. His home was only six blocks away from where Franklin lived.
"Franklin was old, often in pain and frequently suffering from gout and kidney stones. However, perhaps it was his conscience which suffered the most. He held that a government which treated its citizens differently was not a just government. In 1790, he submitted a petition on behalf of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society; the petition was presented to the United States House of Representatives. The petition called for the gradual abolition of slavery and the end of the slave trade because slavery and freedom were incompatible with Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution. The document’s “general welfare” clause, Franklin argued, permitted Congress to eliminate the slave trade and abolish the institution of slavery.
"The ensuing debate was vehement. Representatives from South Carolina and Georgia argued against the petition; Georgia’s representative claimed that slavery was permitted according to the teachings of the Bible. Slaves, he insisted, were needed in order to maintain the economy of the South. But in his view, the two races could not live together and needed to be kept separate from each other; the implication was obvious that the African race would also be kept in subjugation. Franklin, although his body was showing the signs of age, had not lost his wits, and submitted an article to the Federal Gazette which compared the Georgia congressman’s defense of slavery with the argument posed by an Algerian pirate for why he was permitted to enslave Christians.
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"When Franklin died on April 17, 1790, the petition died with him. With its demise went any hope for a plan to gradually abolish slavery in the United States. Did Franklin sense that the issue of slavery, about which he had become so passionate, would be the one which would split the country and bring about a bloody and hostile civil war in the next century? Was he concerned about the future of the country he had helped to create, and did he fear that a virtuous nation could not participate in an immoral practice?
"Whatever his thoughts, he did not make the issue a source of debate curing the Constitutional Convention. His health problems had begun to overtake him, and he seldom appeared in public after the signing of the Constitution. He died of pleurisy at the age 84, on April 17, 1790. His funeral was attended by 20,000 mourners as Philadelphia bid farewell to its most famous citizen, the man who had represented his country on the world stage.
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"When he was still a young man of twenty-two years, he had written an epitaph: The Body of B. Franklin Printer Like the Cover of an old Book, Its Contents torn out, And stript of its Lettering and Gilding, Lies here, Food for Worms. But the Work shall not be wholly lost: For it will, as he believ'd, appear once more, In a new & more perfect Edition, Corrected and Amended By the Author .
"That was the younger Franklin, a man who was vigorous and confident of his abilities to influence his fate. However, his will established a less ornate message for his grave: Benjamin and Deborah Franklin. He was not, either in life or in death, a flamboyant man."
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December 14, 2022 - December 14, 2022.
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Conclusion
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"Benjamin Franklin was an old man, but his work on behalf of his state and his country was not yet finished. He was elected to serve as the sixth president of the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania, a post similar to that of a governor. He would serve in that role for three years, and it was in that capacity that he played host to the Constitutional Convention of 1787, which was held in Philadelphia.
"His position was honorary, and he did not contribute greatly to the creation of the Constitution. However, he signed it, just as he had signed the other three major documents that created the United States, and is the only Founding Father to sign all four: the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Alliance with the French, the Treaty of Paris, and the United States Constitution.
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"There was a point during the Convention when matters were at an impasse when Franklin proposed daily prayer during the proceedings. He reminded the delegates that when the conflict with Great Britain began, the nation’s leaders prayed daily for divine protection. He asked, “And have we now forgotten that powerful friend? Or do we imagine that we no longer need His assistance? . . . And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?” Despite his plea to have prayers begin every morning’s deliberations, the motion was opposed and did not come to a vote.
"Although Franklin was a Deist and no longer a Puritan, the theology in which he had been raised, he believed passionately in virtue and morality and felt that it was only by conducting one’s life according to principles of goodness that a man could prosper. He had stopped attending church in his youth so that he would have more time for his studies, but his faith didn’t waver. He explained, “I never doubted . . . the existence of the Deity . . . that the most acceptable service of God was the doing good to man; that our souls are immortal; and that all crime will be punished, and virtue rewarded, either here or hereafter.”
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"He believed not in doctrine but in ethics; it was with this philosophy that he strenuously supported religious tolerance. Puritan values had formed him, and he would remain, throughout his life, a powerful advocate for education, frugality, work, temperance, charity, and concern for the community. As he aged, he seemed to become more convinced that churches were a necessary tool if men and women were to be able to live ethical lives.
"John Adams observed that Franklin had a chameleon-like ability to reflect the religious views of others personally. "The Catholics thought him almost a Catholic. The Church of England claimed him as one of them. The Presbyterians thought him half a Presbyterian, and the Friends believed him a wet Quaker." ... "
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"Benjamin Franklin has sometimes been described as “the first American.” He represented American ethics imprinted on American determination. He forged his own destiny, leaving Boston as a youth to make his own way in the world, venturing to Philadelphia where he created a profitable career as a printer and an altruistic vocation as a civic leader. Although he was not a young man when the American Revolution got underway, he can clearly be seen as a man who was an American and not an Englishman. At the same time, he was the first American who was comfortable in other environments, bringing his American identity with him when he traveled to Europe, but not letting it blind him to the attributes of French and British society. He was a man of reason rather than ideology, who believed in the betterment of humanity through work, education, and faith.
"Perhaps his identity as the first American resembles his affinity with his nation, presenting the very best that America had and continues to offer, based on the hope that ultimately, goodness will triumph so that all men and women, created equal, can live together in freedom and harmony."
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December 14, 2022 - December 14, 2022.
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BENJAMIN FRANKLIN: A LIFE
FROM BEGINNING TO END
(BIOGRAPHIES OF INVENTORS),
by HOURLY HISTORY.
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December 09, 2022 - December 14, 2022.
Purchased December 09, 2022.
ASIN:- B01N631C6P
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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5153687510
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