Benjamin Franklin
Ben Franklin - born Jan.17 [Jan. 6, Old Style], 1706, Boston d. April 17, 1790, Philadelphia - pseudonym Richrd Saunders - American printer and publisher, author, inventor and scientist, and diplomat.
Franklin, next to George Washington possibly the most famous 18th-century American, by 1757 had made a small fortune, established the Poor Richard of his almanacs (written under his pseudonym) as an oracle on how to get ahead in the world, and become widely known in European scientific circles for his reports of electrical experiments and theories.
What is more, he was then just at the beginning of a long career as a politician, in the course of which he would be chief spokesman for the British colonies in their debates with the king's ministers about self-government and would have a hand in the writing of the Declaration of Independence, the securing of financial and military aid from France during the American Revolution, the negotiation of the treaty by which Great Britain recognized its former 13 colonies as a sovereign nation, and the framing of the Constitution, which for more than two centuries has been the fundamental law of the United States of America.
And as impressive as Franklin's public service was, it was perhaps less remarkable than his contributions to the comfort and safety of daily life. He invented a stove, still being manufactured, to give more warmth than open fireplaces; the lightning rod and bifocal eyeglasses also were his ideas. Grasping the fact that by united effort a community may have amenities which only the wealthy few can get for themselves, he helped establish institutions people now take for granted: a fire company, a library, an insurance company, an academy, and a hospital. In some cases these foundations were the first of their kind in North America.
One might expect universal admiration for a man of such breadth and apparent altruism. Yet Franklin was disliked by some of his contemporaries and has ever since occasionally been attacked as a materialist or a hypocrite. D.H. Lawrence, the English novelist, regarded him as the embodiment of the worst traits of the American character. Max Weber, the German sociologist, made him the exemplar of the "Protestant ethic," a state of mind that contributed much, Weber thought, to the less admirable aspects of modern capitalism. Those who admire Franklin believe that his detractors have mistakenly identified him with Poor Richard, a persona of his own creation, or that they have relied too largely upon the incomplete self-portrait of his posthumously published Autobiography.
Early life (1706-23)
Franklin was born the 10th son of the 17 children of a man who was both soapmaker and candlemaker. He learned to read very early and had one year in grammar school and another under a private teacher, but his formal education ended when he was 10. At 12 he was apprenticed to his brother James, a printer. His mastery of the printer's trade, of which he was proud to the end of his life, was achieved between 1718 and 1723. In the same period he read tirelessly and taught himself to write effectively.
His first enthusiasm was for poetry, and in the first years of his apprenticeship he wrote two occasional ballads, no copies of which have survived. His father told him that "Verse-makers were always Beggars," and thereafter his interest in poetry was sporadic. Prose was another matter.
The Spectator, Joseph Addison and Richard Steele's famous periodical of essays, had appeared in England in 1711-12 and was to be imitated for the greater part of a century but seldom with the persistence of Franklin, the printer's apprentice.
He would read an essay, make a short note of the idea of each sentence, lay aside his notes for a few days, and then try to rewrite the essay. Comparison of his version with the original showed him the need to enlarge his vocabulary. Turning some Spectator papers into verse, and some days later reconverting them into prose, helped.
In 1721 James Franklin founded a Spectator-like weekly newspaper, the New-England Courant, to which readers were invited to contribute. Benjamin, now 16, read and perhaps set in type these contributions and decided that he could do as well himself.
In 1722 he wrote a series of 14 essays signed "Silence Dogood." Satire of New England funeral elegies and of the lip service paid the learned languages at Harvard College foreshadowed later literary techniques to be used by Franklin.
Late in 1722 James Franklin got into trouble with the provincial authorities and was forbidden to print or publish the Courant.
To keep the paper going, he discharged his younger brother from his original apprenticeship and made him the paper's nominal publisher. New indentures were drawn up but not made public. Some months later, after a bitter quarrel, Benjamin walked out, sure that James would not go to law and reveal the subterfuge he had devised. "It was not fair in me to take this Advantage," he wrote later, "and this I therefore reckon one of the first Errata [mistakes, in printer's lingo] of my Life."
Youthful adventures (1723-26)
Failing to find work in Boston or New York City, Franklin proceeded to Philadelphia. One of the dramatic scenes of the Autobiography is the description of his arrival on a Sunday morning, tired and hungry.
Finding a bakery, he asked for three pennies' worth of bread and got "three great Puffy Rolls." Carrying one under each arm and munching on the third, he walked up Market Street past the door of the Read family, where stood Deborah, his future wife. She saw him "& thought I made as I certainly did a most awkward ridiculous Appearance."
A few weeks later he was rooming at the Reads' and employed as a printer. By the spring of 1724 he was enjoying the companionship of other young men with a taste for reading and he was also being urged to set up in business for himself by the governor of Pennsylvania, Sir William Keith. At Keith's suggestion, Franklin returned to Boston to try to raise the necessary capital.
His father thought him too young for such a venture, so Keith offered to foot the bill himself and arranged Franklin's passage to England so that he could choose his type and make connections with London stationers and booksellers. Franklin exchanged "some promises" with Deborah Read and, with a young friend, James Ralph, as companion, boarded the London Hope in November, expecting to find the letters of credit and introduction that Keith had promised. Not until the ship was well out at sea did he realize that the governor had not kept his promise.
A fellow passenger, a Quaker merchant by the name of Thomas Denham, told him that Keith was unreliable; eventually Franklin could write charitably: "He wish'd to please every body; and, having little to give, he gave Expectations."
In London Franklin quickly found employment in his trade and was able to lend money to Ralph, who was trying to establish himself as a writer. The two young men enjoyed the theatre and the other pleasures of the city; before long Ralph found a milliner for a mistress.
When Ralph was in the country, teaching school, the milliner occasionally borrowed money from Franklin. "I grew fond of her Company," he remembered, "and being at this time under no Religious Restraints, & presuming on my Importance to her, I attempted Familiarities (another Erratum) which she repulsed with a proper Resentment, and acquainted him with my Behaviour."
Still another "erratum" in retrospect was A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain (1725), a deistical pamphlet he was inspired to write after having set type for William Wollaston's moral tract The Religion of Nature Delineated. Franklin argued therein that since man has no real freedom of choice he is not morally responsible for his actions, perhaps consoling himself for his treatment of Deborah, to whom he had written only once.
By 1726 Franklin was tiring of London.
He considered becoming an itinerant teacher of swimming, but when Denham offered him a clerkship in his store in Philadelphia, with a prospect of fat commissions in the West Indian trade, he decided to return home.
Achievement of security and fame (1726-52)
Denham died, however, a few months after Franklin entered his store. The young man, now 20, returned to his trade and in 1728 was able to set up a partnership with a friend. Two years later he borrowed money to become sole proprietor.
His private life at this time was extremely complicated. Deborah Read had married, but her husband had deserted her and disappeared. One matchmaking venture failed because Franklin wanted a settlement to pay off his business debt.
A strong sexual drive, "that hard-to-be-govern'd Passion of Youth," was sending him to "low Women," and in the winter of 1730-31 he had a son, William, whose mother has never been identified. Franklin must have known that the child was expected when, his affection for Deborah having "revived," he "took her to Wife" on Sept. 1, 1730. Their common-law marriage lasted until Deborah's death in 1774. They had a son, who died at age four, and a daughter, Sarah, who survived them both. William was brought up in the household.
Franklin and his partner's first coup was securing the printing of Pennsylvania's paper currency. Franklin helped get this business by writing A Modest Enquiry into the Nature and Necessity of a Paper Currency (1729), and later he also became public printer of New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland.
Other money-making ventures included the Pennsylvania Gazette, published by Franklin from 1729 and generally acknowledged as among the best of the colonial newspapers, and the Poor Richard's Almanacs, printed annually from 1732 to 1757.
Some failures, of course, occurred: a German-language newspaper that lasted less than a year and a monthly magazine that expired after six issues in 1741. Franklin was nevertheless generally prosperous; he made enough to invest capital in real estate and in partnerships or working arrangements with printers in the Carolinas, New York, and the British West Indies.
In 1748 he became a silent partner in the printing firm of Franklin and Hall, realizing in the next 18 years an average profit of almost £500 annually.
The first of his projects for social improvement by collective effort was the Junto, or Leather Apron club, organized in 1727 to debate questions of morals, politics, and natural philosophy and to exchange knowledge of business affairs.
The need of Junto members for easier access to books led in 1731 to the organization of the Library Company of Philadelphia. Through the Junto, Franklin proposed a paid city watch, or police force. A paper read to the same group resulted in the organization of a volunteer fire company.
In 1743 he called for a "constant correspondence" of men with scientific interests throughout the colonies, and later that year the American Philosophical Society was functioning.
In 1749 he published Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsilvania; in 1751, the Academy of Philadelphia, from which grew the University of Pennsylvania, was founded. So successful was Franklin as a promoter that anyone with a good cause in mind was likely to turn to him for help.
Franklin was also early involved in politics. He was clerk of the Pennsylvania legislature from 1736 until 1751 and postmaster of Philadelphia from 1737 until 1753. Prior to 1748, though, his most important political service was his part in organizing a militia for the defense of the colony against possible invasion by the French and the Spaniards, whose privateers were operating in the Delaware River. His skill in appealing to the self-interest of the various factions in the commonwealth is demonstrated in Plain Truth; or, Serious Considerations on the Present State of the City of Philadelphia and Province of Pennsylvania (1747).
In the 1740s electricity was a novel and fashionable subject.
It was introduced to Philadelphians by an electrical machine sent to the Library Company by one of Franklin's English correspondents. In the winter of 1746-47, Franklin and three of his friends began to investigate electrical phenomena.
The Philadelphia weather favored them, as did the availability of talented instrument makers. Ingenious experiments and machines were devised and described in personal letters to England, which were relayed to the Royal Society of London or the Gentleman's Magazine.
These papers were collected in 1751 as Experiments and Observations on Electricity and were translated into French (1752), German (1758), and Italian (1774).
Franklin's fame spread rapidly.
The experiment he suggested to prove the identity of lightning and electricity was first made in France before he is believed to have tried the simpler but dangerous expedient of flying a kite in a thunderstorm. He and his associates concluded early that the "Electrical Fire" was "an Element diffused among, and attracted by other matter, particularly by Water and Metals." When a body with an overquantity approached one with an underquantity, a discharge equalized the electrical fire in the two.
This "one fluid" theory accounted for more of the observable phenomena than had any previous hypothesis, and his suggestion that buildings be protected from lightning by erecting pointed iron rods proved both practical and dramatic. Franklin may not have been as original as some admirers have thought, and his collaborators may not have received their full share of credit, but he invented many terms still used in discussing electricity (positive, negative, battery, conductor, and so on) and described the experiments with lucidity.
Public service (1753-85)
In 1753 Franklin became deputy postmaster general, in charge of mail in all the northern colonies. Thereafter he began to think in intercolonial terms. His "Plan of Union," adopted by the Albany Congress in 1754, would have established a general council, with representatives from the several colonies, to organize the common defense against the encroaching French and to supervise Indian relations with new settlements.
Reason was on Franklin's side, but neither the colonial legislatures nor the king's advisers were ready for such union, and this conflict has been regarded by some authorities as the key to his entire political career.
In 1755 Franklin was nearly ruined when he promised to stand good for the loss of horses and wagons supplied by Pennsylvania farmers to support General Edward Braddock's ill-fated campaign against Fort-Duquesne in the French and Indian War. For more than two months he faced the possibility of having to pay almost £20,000 out of his own pocket. The government eventually paid.
The need for funds to defend the frontier led the Pennsylvania legislature to seek to tax the lands of the Penn family, the proprietors under the colony's charter.
Either their consent or a change in the form of government was required. In the spring of 1757 Franklin was chosen to represent the legislature in this matter, which occupied him in London for most of his time until August 1762.
He negotiated a compromise, under which the Penns agreed to taxation of improved lands but not those unsurveyed. During this first mission he made close friends in England and wrote The Interest of Great Britain Considered with Regard to Her Colonies and the Acquisitions of Canada and Guadaloupe (1760). It was designed to urge the annexation of Canada when the war was over.
There were Englishmen who preferred to leave Canada to the French, as a check on the growing strength of the 13 colonies. A simpler check, Franklin wrote, would be for Parliament to pass a law requiring midwives to stifle every third or fourth child as soon as it was born.
The Treaty of Paris (1763), ending the Seven Years' War, gave Canada to Great Britain. By that time Franklin was back in Philadelphia, where, in conflict with the proprietors, the legislature decided that Pennsylvania ought to become a crown colony, and by the end of 1764 Franklin was back in London to negotiate in vain for a new charter.
The tribulations of Pennsylvania were submerged, however, in the flood of feeling surrounding the so-called Stamp Act crisis. Franklin opposed the Stamp Act, asserting that taxation ought to be the prerogative of the representative legislatures, but when it had been passed he made the mistake of underestimating American emotions; he ordered stamps for Franklin and Hall and nominated a friend for the post of stamp officer in Philadelphia. His fellow citizens were so outraged that Deborah, fearful of her house being mobbed, called on male relatives for armed defense.
In London Franklin, recognizing his error, quickly did an about-face and threw himself into the campaign for repeal of the statute. He regained his prestige by a dramatic appearance before the House of Commons, where he answered 174 questions from an audience partly friendly and partly hostile. The stenographic report of the exchange showed him returning often to the right of the colonies to levy internal taxes by their own legislation.
Although he failed to get the new charter, Franklin was kept on as London agent for Pennsylvania, and three other colonies relied on him to represent their interests--Georgia (1768), New Jersey (1769), and Massachusetts (1770). With this support and that of the British Whigs, the party of industrialists and dissenters in favor of parliamentary and philanthropic reform, he weathered the succession of crises ending with armed clashes at Lexington and Concord.
He was gradually forced to the realization that there could be no reconciliation and that his dream of a British empire of self-governing nations would not come true.
He did his best to present the American case to the British. Between 1765 and 1775 he published 126 newspaper articles on current controversies. At the end he was bitter, in such articles as "Rules by Which a Great Empire May Be Reduced to a Small One" and "An Edict by the King of Prussia," both first printed in 1773.
Taken together, they are a capsule history of the long-drawn-out contest. In January 1774, because he had helped publish the letters of Thomas Hutchinson, governor of Massachusetts, to his British superiors, Franklin was dismissed from the post office. In March 1775, aware that there might be war, he left for Philadelphia. The day after his arrival he was a delegate to the Second Continental Congress, for which he served on committees for the organization of a postal system and for the drafting of the Declaration of Independence and on a commission that vainly attempted to bring Canada into the war as an ally.
In September 1776, the Congress agreed to send a commission to France to seek economic and military assistance. As one of three commissioners, Franklin arrived in Paris just before Christmas and was immediately engaged in secret negotiations with Charles Gravier, Count de Vergennes, minister of foreign affairs.
Spies and informers infested his house, but Franklin was soon the hero of France, personifying the unsophisticated nobility of the New World, leading his people to freedom from the feudal past. His portrait was everywhere, on objets d'art from snuffboxes to chamber pots, his society sought after by diplomats, scientists, Freemasons, and fashionable ladies alike.
The adulation was not without its ridiculous side, but Franklin, with his fur hat and spectacles, rose to the occasion with wit and social grace.
The sought-for treaties were signed in February 1778 after the British general John Burgoyne and 5,000 men surrendered at Saratoga, N.Y., and it was clear that the rebellion would not be crushed easily. Substantial loans were given to the revolutionists, and by the final victory at Yorktown in 1781, an estimated 12,000 soldiers and 32,000 sailors had left France to support General George Washington.
Despite these strong bonds, the peace was difficult. Spain had entered the war in 1779, hoping to recover Gibraltar, but, because of the conflict of interests in Florida and Louisiana, refused to recognize American independence.
France had guaranteed that there would be no separate peace. Franklin worked with Vergennes until his fellow commissioners, John Adams and John Jay, overruled him on procedure, signing preliminary agreements with Great Britain late in 1782 without prior consultation with France.
The formal treaty was signed Sept. 3, 1783.
Franklin wanted to return home but was kept in Paris for two more years to help make trade treaties. His popularity unabated, he observed the first balloon ascension and served on a committee appointed by Louis XVI to report on "animal magnetism," or hypnotism, thought by a German physician to cure many, if not all, diseases.
Last years (1785-90)
At 79, with a large stone in his bladder that made travel by carriage an agony, Franklin was carried to the port of Le Havre in a litter. Back in Philadelphia he lived quietly but continued to take some part in public life. His most important service was as a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1787.
There he failed to convince his associates that an executive committee would be better than a president as head of state and that there should be a unicameral legislature. On the last day of the convention, a colleague read for him a plea that objections to the new form of government, his own among them, should be forgotten and that delegates should unanimously support the instrument that they had hammered out. Franklin's motion was promptly carried.
For the last year of his life he was bedridden, escaping severe pain only by the use of opium.
He died in 1790 at age 84.
Philadelphia gave him the most impressive funeral the city had ever seen, and in France, where Louis XVI was imprisoned, eulogies poured forth to the man who, to the French, was the symbol of enlightenment and freedom.
All Europeans remembered the epigram of Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, the French economist: "He snatched the lightning from the skies and the sceptre from tyrants."