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Benjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706 [O.S. January 6, 1705] – April 17, 1790) was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author and printer, satirist, political theorist, politician, scientist, inventor, civic activist, statesman, soldier, and diplomat. As a scientist, he was a major figure in the American Enlightenment and the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity. He invented the lightning rod, bifocals, the Franklin stove, a carriage odometer, and the glass 'armonica'. He formed both the first public lending library in America and the first fire department in Pennsylvania. He was an early proponent of colonial unity, and as a political writer and activist, he supported the idea of an American nation. As a diplomat during the American Revolution, he secured the French alliance that helped to make independence of the United States possible. Franklin
is credited as being foundational to the roots of American values and
character, a marriage of the practical and democratic Puritan values
of thrift, hard work, education, community spirit, self-governing
institutions, and opposition to authoritarianism both political and
religious, with the scientific and tolerant values of the
Enlightenment. In the words of Henry Steele Commager,
"In Franklin could be merged the virtues of Puritanism without its
defects, the illumination of the Enlightenment without its heat." To
Walter Isaacson, this makes Franklin, "the most accomplished American
of his age and the most influential in inventing the type of society
America would become." Franklin became a newspaper editor, printer, and merchant in Philadelphia, becoming very wealthy writing and publishing Poor Richard's Almanack and The Pennsylvania Gazette.
Franklin was interested in science and technology, and gained
international renown for his famous experiments. He played a major role
in establishing the University of Pennsylvania and was elected the first president of the American Philosophical Society. Franklin became a national hero in America when he spearheaded the effort to have Parliament repeal the unpopular Stamp Act.
An accomplished diplomat, he was widely admired among the French as
American minister to Paris and was a major figure in the development of
positive Franco-American relations. From 1775 to 1776, Franklin was the Postmaster General under the Continental Congress and from 1785 to 1788, the President of the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania. Toward the end of his life, he became one of the most prominent abolitionists. His
colorful life and legacy of scientific and political achievement, and
status as one of America's most influential Founding Fathers, have seen
Franklin honored on coinage and money; warships; the names of many
towns, counties, educational institutions, namesakes, and companies;
and more than two centuries after his death, countless cultural
references. Franklin's father, Josiah Franklin, was born at Ecton, Northamptonshire, England, on December 23, 1657, the son of Thomas Franklin, a blacksmith and farmer, and Jane White. His mother, Abiah Folger, was born in Nantucket, Massachusetts, on August 15, 1667, to Peter Folger, a miller and schoolteacher and his wife Mary Morrill, a former indentured servant. A descendant of the Folgers, J.A. Folger, founded Folgers Coffee in the 19th century. Josiah
Franklin had seventeen children with his two wives. He married his
first wife, Anne Child, in about 1677 in Ecton and emigrated with her
to Boston in 1683; they had three children before emigrating, and four
after. After her death, Josiah was married to Abiah Folger on July 9,
1689, in the Old South Meeting House by Samuel Willard. Benjamin, their eighth child, was Josiah Franklin's fifteenth child and tenth and last son. Josiah Franklin converted to Puritanism in the 1670s. Puritanism was a Protestant movement in England to "purify" Anglicanism from elements of the Roman Catholic religion,
which they considered superstitious. Three things were important to the
Puritans: that each congregation be self-governing; that ministers give
sermons instead of performing rituals such as a Mass; and that each
member study the Bible so that each could develop a personal
understanding and relationship with God. Puritanism appealed to
middle-class individuals such as Benjamin Franklin's father, who
enjoyed the governance meetings, discussion, study, and personal
independence. The
roots of American democracy can be seen in these Puritan values of
self-government. These values, which were passed on to Benjamin Franklin and other founding fathers (such as John Adams),
included the importance of the individual and active indignation
against unjust authority. One of Josiah's core Puritan values was that
personal worth is earned through hard work, which makes the industrious
man the equal of kings (Ben Franklin would etch Proverbs 22:29, "Seest
thou a man diligent in his calling, he shall stand before Kings." onto his father's tombstone). Hard work and equality were two Puritan values that Ben Franklin preached throughout his own life and spread widely through Poor Richard's Almanac and his autobiography. Ben
Franklin's mother, Abiah Folger, was born into a Puritan family that
was among the first Pilgrims to flee to Massachusetts for religious freedom, when King Charles I of England began
persecuting Protestants. They sailed for Boston in 1635. Her father was
"the sort of rebel destined to transform colonial America." As clerk of the court,
he was jailed for disobeying the local magistrate in defense of
middle-class shopkeepers and artisans in conflict with wealthy
landowners. Ben Franklin followed in his grandfather's footsteps in his
battles against the wealthy Penn family that owned the Pennsylvania Colony. Benjamin Franklin was born on Milk Street, in Boston, Massachusetts, on January 17, 1706 and baptized at Old South Meeting House. He was the son of Josiah Franklin, a tallow chandler
and soap- and candle-maker, and his second wife, Abiah Folger. Josiah
had 17 children; Benjamin was the fifteenth child and youngest son.
Josiah wanted Ben to attend school with the clergy but only had enough
money to send him to school for two years. He attended Boston Latin School but
did not graduate; he continued his education through voracious reading.
Although "his parents talked of the church as a career" for Franklin,
his schooling ended when he was ten. He then worked for his father for
a time and at 12 he became an apprentice to his brother James, a printer, who taught Ben the printing trade. When Ben was 15, James founded The New-England Courant, which was the first truly independent newspaper in the colonies. When denied the chance to write a letter to the paper for publication, Franklin adopted the pseudonym of "Mrs. Silence Dogood",
a middle-aged widow. "Mrs. Dogood"'s letters were published, and became
a subject of conversation around town. Neither James nor the Courant's
readers were aware of the ruse, and James was unhappy with Ben when he
discovered the popular correspondent was his younger brother. Franklin
left his apprenticeship without permission, and in so doing became a
fugitive. At
age 17, Franklin ran away to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, seeking a new
start in a new city. When he first arrived he worked in several printer
shops around town. However, he was not satisfied by the immediate
prospects. After a few months, while working in a printing house,
Franklin was convinced by Pennsylvania Governor Sir William Keith to go to London,
ostensibly to acquire the equipment necessary for establishing another
newspaper in Philadelphia. Finding Keith's promises of backing a
newspaper to be empty, Franklin worked as a typesetter in a printer's shop in what is now the Church of St Bartholomew the Great in the Smithfield area
of London. Following this, he returned to Philadelphia in 1726 with the
help of Thomas Denham, a merchant who employed Franklin as clerk,
shopkeeper, and bookkeeper in his business. In 1727, Benjamin Franklin, then 21, created the Junto,
a group of "like minded aspiring artisans and tradesmen who hoped to
improve themselves while they improved their community." The Junto was
a discussion group for issues of the day; it subsequently gave rise to
many organizations in Philadelphia. Reading
was a great pastime of the Junto, but books were rare and expensive.
The members created a library, initially assembled from their own
books. This did not suffice, however. Franklin then conceived the idea
of a subscription library, which would pool the funds of the members to buy books for all to read. This was the birth of the Library Company of Philadelphia: its charter was composed by Franklin in 1731. In 1732, Franklin hired the first American librarian, Louis Timothee.
Originally, the books were kept in the homes of the first librarians,
but in 1739 the collection was moved to the second floor of the State
House of Pennsylvania, now known as Independence Hall. In 1791, a new building was built specifically for the library. The Library Company is now a great scholarly and research library with 500,000 rare books, pamphlets, and broadsides, more than 160,000 manuscripts, and 75,000 graphic items. Upon
Denham's death, Franklin returned to his former trade. In 1728,
Franklin had set up a printing house in partnership with Hugh Meredith
and the following year became the publisher of a newspaper called The Pennsylvania Gazette. The Gazette gave
Franklin a forum for agitation about a variety of local reforms and
initiatives through printed essays and observations. Over time, his
commentary, and his adroit cultivation of a positive image as an
industrious and intellectual young man, earned him a great deal of
social respect. But even after Franklin had achieved fame as a
scientist and statesman, he habitually signed his letters with the
unpretentious 'B. Franklin, Printer.' In 1731, Franklin was initiated into the local Masonic Lodge. He became Grand Master in 1734, indicating his rapid rise to prominence in Pennsylvania. That same year, he edited and published the first Masonic book in the Americas, a reprint of James Anderson's Constitutions of the Free-Masons. Franklin remained a Freemason for the rest of his life. At the age of 17, Franklin proposed to 15-year-old Deborah Readwhile
a boarder in the Read home. At that time, the mother was wary of
allowing her young daughter to marry Franklin, who was on his way to
London at Governor Sir William Keith's request,
and also because of his financial instability. Her own husband had
recently died, and Mrs. Read declined Franklin's request to marry her
daughter. While
Franklin was in London, his trip was extended, and there were problems
concerning with Sir William's promises of support. Perhaps because of
the circumstances of this delay, Deborah married a man named John
Rodgers. This proved to be a regrettable decision. Rodgers shortly
avoided his debts and prosecution by fleeing to Barbados with her dowry,
leaving Deborah behind. Rodgers' fate was unknown, and because of
bigamy laws, Deborah was not free to remarry. Franklin established a common-law marriage with
Deborah Read on September 1, 1730, and besides taking in young William,
together they had two children. The first, Francis Folger Franklin,
born October 1732, died of smallpox in 1736. Sarah Franklin, familiarly called Sally, was born in 1743. She eventually married Richard Bache, had seven children, and cared for her father in his old age.
Deborah's
fear of the sea meant that she never accompanied Franklin on any of his
extended trips to Europe, despite his repeated requests. However,
Franklin did not leave London to visit Deborah even after she wrote to
him in November 1769 saying her illness was due to “dissatisfied
distress” because of his prolonged absence. Deborah Read Franklin died of a stroke in 1774, while Benjamin was on an extended trip to England. In 1730, at the age of 24, Franklin publicly acknowledged an illegitimate son named William, who would eventually become the last Loyalist governor of New Jersey.
While the identity of William's mother remains unknown, perhaps the
responsibility of an infant child gave Franklin a reason to take up
residence with Deborah Read. William was raised in the Franklin
household but eventually broke with his father over opinions regarding
the treatment of the colonies by the British government. The elder
Franklin could never accept William's decision to declare his loyalty
to the crown. Any
hope of reconciliation was shattered when William Franklin became
leader of the The Board of Associated Loyalists — a quasi-military
organization, headquartered in British occupied New York City,
which, among other things, launched guerilla forages into New Jersey,
southern Connecticut, and New York counties north of the city. In
the preliminary peace talks in 1782 with Britain "...Franklin insisted
that loyalists who had borne arms against the United States would be
excluded from this plea (that they be given a general pardon). He was
undoubtedly thinking of William Franklin." William left New York along with the British troops. He settled in England, never to return. In 1733, Franklin began to publish the famous Poor Richard's Almanack (with
content both original and borrowed) under the pseudonym Richard
Saunders, on which much of his popular reputation is based. Franklin
frequently wrote under pseudonyms. Although it was no secret that
Franklin was the author, his Richard Saunders character repeatedly
denied it. "Poor Richard's Proverbs," adages from this almanac, such as
"A penny saved is twopence dear" (often misquoted as "A penny saved is
a penny earned"), "Fish and visitors stink in three days" remain common
quotations in the modern world. Wisdom in folk society meant the
ability to provide an apt adage for any occasion, and Franklin's
readers became well prepared. He sold about ten thousand copies per
year (a circulation equivalent to nearly three million today). In 1758, the year in which he ceased writing for the Almanack, he printed Father Abraham's Sermon, also known as The Way to Wealth. Franklin's autobiography, published after his death, has become one of the classics of the genre. Daylight saving time (DST) is often erroneously attributed to a 1784 satire that Franklin published anonymously. Modern DST was first proposed by George Vernon Hudson in 1895. Franklin was a prodigious inventor. Among his many creations were the lightning rod, glass armonica (a glass instrument, not to be confused with the metal harmonica), Franklin stove, bifocal glasses and the flexible urinary catheter. Franklin never patented his inventions; in his autobiography he
wrote, "... 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." His inventions also included social innovations, such as paying forward.
Franklin's fascination with innovation could be viewed as altruistic;
he wrote that his scientific works were to be used for increasing
efficiency and human improvement. One such improvement was his effort
to expedite news services through his printing presses. As deputy postmaster, Franklin became interested in the North Atlantic Ocean
circulation patterns. In 1768 Franklin visited England as postmaster
general and there he heard a curious complaint by Colonial Board of
Customs: Why did it take British mail ships (which were called packets)
a couple of weeks longer to reach New York from England than it took an average merchant ship to reach Newport, Rhode Island. This was despite merchants ships leaving London having to sail down Thames and then the length of the English Channel before they sailed across Atlantic, while the packets left from Falmouth in Cornwall right on the ocean's doorstep? Intrigued,
Franklin invited his cousin Timothy Folger, a Nantucket whaler captain
who happened to be in London at that time, for dinner. Folger told him
that merchant ships routinely avoided the then-unnamed Gulf Stream,
while the mail packet captains sailed dead into it. American whalers
had been telling them that they were stemming a three-mile-per-hour
current. Franklin worked with Folger and other experienced ship
captains, learning enough to chart the Gulf Stream, giving it the name by which it is still known today. It
took many years for British sea captains to follow Franklin's advice on
navigating the current; once they did, they were able to gain two weeks
in sailing time. Franklin's
Gulf Stream chart was published in 1770 in England, where it was
completely ignored. Subsequent versions were printed in France in 1778
and the U.S. in 1786. The British edition of the chart, which was the
original, was so thoroughly ignored that everyone assumed it was lost
forever until Phil Richardson, a Woods Hole Oceanographer and Gulf Stream expert, discovered it in Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. This find received front page coverage in the New York Times.
In 1743, Franklin founded the American Philosophical Society to
help scientific men discuss their discoveries and theories. He began
the electrical research that, along with other scientific inquiries,
would occupy him for the rest of his life, in between bouts of politics
and moneymaking.
In
1748, he retired from printing and went into other businesses. He
created a partnership with his foreman, David Hall, which provided
Franklin with half of the shop's profits for 18 years. This lucrative
business arrangement provided leisure time for study, and in a few
years he had made discoveries that gave him a reputation with the
educated throughout Europe and especially in France. His
discoveries resulted from his investigations of electricity. Franklin
proposed that "vitreous" and "resinous" electricity were not different
types of "electrical fluid" (as electricity was called then), but the same electrical fluid under different pressures. He was the first to label them as positive and negative respectively, and he was the first to discover the principle of conservation of charge.
In 1750 he published a proposal for an experiment to prove that lightning is electricity by flying a kite in a storm which appeared capable of becoming a lightning storm. On May 10, 1752, Thomas-François Dalibard of
France conducted Franklin's experiment using a 40-foot (12 m)-tall
iron rod instead of a kite, and he extracted electrical sparks from a
cloud. On June 15 Franklin may have possibly conducted his famous kite
experiment in Philadelphia;
successfully extracted sparks from a cloud, although there are theories
that suggest he never performed the experiment. Franklin's experiment
was not written up until Joseph Priestley's 1767 History and Present Status of Electricity; the evidence shows that Franklin was insulated (not in a conducting path, since he would have been in danger of electrocution in the event of a lightning strike). Others, such as Prof. Georg Wilhelm Richmann of Saint Petersburg, Russia, were electrocuted during the months following Franklin's experiment. In
his writings, Franklin indicates that he was aware of the dangers and
offered alternative ways to demonstrate that lightning was electrical,
as shown by his use of the concept of electrical ground.
If Franklin did perform this experiment, he may not have done it in the
way that is often described, flying the kite and waiting to be struck
by lightning, as it could have been dangerous. The popular television program Myth Busters simulated
the alleged "key at the end of a string" Franklin experiment and
established with a degree of certainty that, if Franklin had indeed
proceeded thus, he would undoubtedly have been killed. Instead he used
the kite to collect some electric charge from a storm cloud, which
implied that lightning was electrical. Franklin's
electrical experiments led to his invention of the lightning rod. He
noted that conductors with a sharp rather than a smooth point were
capable of discharging silently, and at a far greater distance. He
surmised that this knowledge could be of use in protecting buildings
from lightning by attaching "upright Rods of Iron, made sharp as a
Needle and gilt to prevent Rusting, and from the Foot of those Rods a
Wire down the outside of the Building into the Ground;...Would not
these pointed Rods probably draw the Electrical Fire silently out of a
Cloud before it came nigh enough to strike, and thereby secure us from
that most sudden and terrible Mischief!" Following a series of
experiments on Franklin's own house, lightning rods were installed on
the Academy of Philadelphia (later the University of Pennsylvania) and
the Pennsylvania State House (later Independence Hall) in 1752. In recognition of his work with electricity, Franklin received the Royal Society's Copley Medal in 1753 and in 1756 he became one of the few 18th- century Americans to be elected as a Fellow of the Society. The cgs unit of electric charge has been named after him: one franklin (Fr) is equal to one statcoulomb.
Franklin was, along with his contemporary Leonard Euler, the only major scientist who supported Christiaan Huygens' wave theory of light, which was basically ignored by the rest of scientific community. In the 18th century Newton's corpuscular theory was held to be true; only after the famous Young's slit experiment were most of the scientists persuaded to believe Huygens' theory.
On
October 21, 1743, according to popular myth, a storm moving from the
southwest denied Franklin the opportunity of witnessing a lunar eclipse. Franklin was said to have noted that the prevailing winds were
actually from the northeast, contrary to what he had expected. In
correspondence with his brother, Franklin learned that the same storm
had not reached Boston until after the eclipse, despite the fact that
Boston is to the northeast of Philadelphia. He deduced that storms do
not always travel in the direction of the prevailing wind, a concept
which would have great influence in meteorology.
Franklin noted a principle of refrigeration by
observing that on a very hot day, he stayed cooler in a wet shirt in a
breeze than he did in a dry one. To understand this phenomenon more
clearly Franklin conducted experiments. In 1758 on a warm day in Cambridge, England, Franklin and fellow scientist John Hadley experimented by continually wetting the ball of a mercury thermometer with ether and using bellows to evaporate the ether. With each subsequent evaporation,
the thermometer read a lower temperature, eventually reaching
7 °F (−14 °C). Another thermometer showed the room temperature to be constant at 65 °F (18 °C). In his letter Cooling by Evaporation, Franklin noted that "one may see the possibility of freezing a man to death on a warm summer’s day."
According to Michael Faraday,
Franklin's experiments on the non-conduction of ice are worth
mentioning although the law of the general effect of liquefaction on
electrolytes is not attributed to Franklin. However,
as reported in 1836 by Prof. A.D. Bache of the University of
Pennsylvania, the law of the effect of heat on the conduction of bodies
otherwise non-conductors, e.g. glass, could be attributed to Franklin.
Franklin writes, "...A certain quantity of heat will make some bodies
good conductors, that will not otherwise conduct..." and again, "...And
water, though naturally a good conductor, will not conduct well when
frozen into ice."
An aging Franklin accumulated all his oceanographic findings in Maritime Observations, published by the Philosophical Society's transactions in 1786. It contained ideas for sea anchors, catamaran hulls, watertight compartments, shipboard lighting rods and a soup bowl designed to stay stable in stormy weather.
Franklin is known to have played the violin, the harp, and the guitar. He also composed music, notably a string quartet in early classical style, and invented a much-improved version of the glass harmonica,
in which each glass was made to rotate on its own, with the player's
fingers held steady, instead of the other way around; this version soon
found its way to Europe.
Franklin was an avid chess player. He was playing chess by around 1733, making him the first chess player known by name in the American colonies. His essay on the "Morals of Chess" in Columbian magazine, in December 1786, is the second known writing on chess in America. This essay in praise of chess and prescribing a code of behavior for it has been widely reprinted and translated. He and a friend also used chess as a means of learning the Italian language,
which both were studying; the winner of each game between them had the
right to assign a task, such as parts of the Italian grammar to be
learned by heart, to be performed by the loser before their next
meeting. Franklin was posthumously inducted into the US Chess Hall of Fame in 1999. In 1736, Franklin created the Union Fire Company, one of the first volunteer firefighting companies in America. In the same year, he printed a new currency for New Jersey based on innovative anti-counterfeiting techniques which he had devised. Throughout his career, Franklin was an advocate for paper money, publishing A Modest Enquiry into the Nature and Necessity of a Paper Currency in
1729, and his printer printed money. He was influential in the more
restrained and thus successful monetary experiments in the Middle
Colonies, which stopped deflation without causing excessive inflation.
In 1766 he made a case for paper money to the British House of Commons. As he matured, Franklin began to concern himself more with public affairs. In 1743, he set forth a scheme for The Academy and College of Philadelphia. He was appointed president of the academy in November 13, 1749, and it
opened on August 13, 1751. At its first commencement, on May 17, 1757,
seven men graduated; six with a Bachelor of Arts and one as Master of Arts. It was later merged with the University of the State of Pennsylvania to become the University of Pennsylvania. Franklin
became involved in Philadelphia politics and rapidly progressed. In
October 1748, he was selected as a councilman, in June 1749 he became a Justice of the Peace for Philadelphia, and in 1751 he was elected to the Pennsylvania Assembly.
On August 10, 1753, Franklin was appointed joint deputy
postmaster-general of North America. His most notable service in
domestic politics was his reform of the postal system,
but his fame as a statesman rests chiefly on his subsequent diplomatic
services in connection with the relations of the colonies with Great
Britain, and later with France. In 1751, Franklin and Dr. Thomas Bond obtained a charter from the Pennsylvania legislature to establish a hospital. Pennsylvania Hospital was the first hospital in what was to become the United States of America. In 1753, both Harvard and Yale awarded him honorary degrees. In
1754, he headed the Pennsylvania delegation to the Albany Congress.
This meeting of several colonies had been requested by the Board of Trade in England to improve relations with the Indians and defense against the French. Franklin proposed a broad Plan of Union for the colonies. While the plan was not adopted, elements of it found their way into the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution. In
1756, Franklin organized the Pennsylvania Militia. He used Tun Tavern as
a gathering place to recruit a regiment of soldiers to go into battle
against the Native American uprisings that beset the American colonies.
Reportedly Franklin was elected "Colonel" of the Associated Regiment
but declined the honor. Also in 1756, Franklin became a member of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce (now Royal Society of Arts or RSA, which had been founded in 1754), whose early meetings took place in coffee shops in London's Covent Garden district,
close to Franklin's main residence in Craven Street (the only one of
his residences to survive and which opened to the public as the Benjamin Franklin House museum
on January 17, 2006). After his return to America, Franklin became the
Society's Corresponding Member and remained closely connected with the
Society. The RSA instituted a Benjamin Franklin Medal in 1956 to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Franklin's birth and the 200th anniversary of his membership of the RSA. In
1757, he was sent to England by the Pennsylvania Assembly as a colonial
agent to protest against the political influence of the Penn family,
the proprietors of the colony. He remained there for five years,
striving to end the proprietors' prerogative to overturn legislation
from the elected Assembly, and their exemption from paying taxes on
their land. His lack of influential allies in Whitehall led to the failure of this mission. Whilst in London, Franklin became involved in radical politics. He was a member of the Club of Honest Whigs, alongside thinkers such as Richard Price, the minister of Newington Green Unitarian Church who ignited the Revolution Controversy.
During his stays at Craven Street between 1757 and 1775, Franklin
developed a close friendship with his landlady, Margaret Stevenson and
her circle of friends and relations, in particular her daughter Mary,
who was more often known as Polly. In 1759, he visited Edinburgh with his son, and recalled his conversations there as "the densest happiness of my life.". In February 1759, the University of St Andrews awarded him an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree and in October of the same year he was granted Freedom of the Borough of St. Andrews. 1761. By Memorandum William Ponsonby, 2nd Earl of Bessborough and Robert Hampden-Trevor, 1st Viscount Hampden joint
Postmasters General of Britain, a Commission dated 12 August 1761
Benjamin Franklin Esq. and William Hunter Esq. are reappointed Deputy
Post Masters General of North America. In 1762, Oxford University awarded
Franklin an honorary doctorate for his scientific accomplishments and
from then on he went by "Doctor Franklin." He also managed to secure a
post for his illegitimate son, William Franklin, as Colonial Governor of New Jersey. He also joined the influential Birmingham based Lunar Society with whom he regularly corresponded and on occasion, visited in Birmingham in the West Midlands. In 1763, soon after Franklin returned to Pennsylvania, the western frontier was engulfed in a bitter war known as Pontiac's Rebellion. The Paxton Boys, a group of settlers convinced that the Pennsylvania government was not doing enough to protect them from American Indian raids, murdered a group of peaceful Susquehannock Indians
and then marched on Philadelphia. Franklin helped to organize the local
militia in order to defend the capital against the mob, and then met
with the Paxton leaders and persuaded them to disperse. Franklin wrote
a scathing attack against the racial prejudice of the Paxton Boys. "If an Indian injures me," he asked, "does it follow that I may revenge that Injury on all Indians?" At this time, many members of the Pennsylvania Assembly were feuding with William Penn's heirs, who controlled the colony as proprietors. Franklin led the "anti-proprietary party" in the struggle against the Penn family, and was elected Speaker of the Pennsylvania House in
May 1764. His call for a change from proprietary to royal government
was a rare political miscalculation, however: Pennsylvanians worried
that such a move would endanger their political and religious freedoms.
Because of these fears, and because of political attacks on his
character, Franklin lost his seat in the October 1764 Assembly
elections. The anti-proprietary party dispatched Franklin to England to
continue the struggle against the Penn family proprietorship, but
during this visit, events would drastically change the nature of his
mission. In London, Franklin opposed the 1765 Stamp Act,
but when he was unable to prevent its passage, he made another
political miscalculation and recommended a friend to the post of stamp
distributor for Pennsylvania. Pennsylvanians were outraged, believing
that he had supported the measure all along, and threatened to destroy
his home in Philadelphia. Franklin soon learned of the extent of
colonial resistance to the Stamp Act, and his testimony before the
House of Commons led to its repeal. With this, Franklin suddenly
emerged as the leading spokesman for American interests in England. He
wrote popular essays on behalf of the colonies, and Georgia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts also appointed him as their agent to the Crown. In September 1767, Franklin visited Paris with his usual traveling partner, Sir John Pringle.
News of his electrical discoveries was widespread in France. His
reputation meant that he was introduced to many influential scientists
and politicians, and also to King Louis XV. While living in London in 1768, he developed a phonetic alphabet in A Scheme for a new Alphabet and a Reformed Mode of Spelling.
This reformed alphabet discarded six letters Franklin regarded as
redundant (c, j, q, w, x, and y), and substituted six new letters for
sounds he felt lacked letters of their own. His new alphabet, however,
never caught on and he eventually lost interest. In 1771, Franklin made short journeys through different parts of England, staying with Joseph Priestley at Leeds, Thomas Percival at Manchester and Dr. Darwin at Litchfield. Franklin
belonged to a gentleman's club (designated "honest Whigs" by Franklin)
which held stated meetings, and included members such as Richard Price and Andrew Kippis. He was also a corresponding member of the Lunar Society of Birmingham, which included such other scientific and industrial luminaries as Matthew Boulton, James Watt, Josiah Wedgewood and Erasmus Darwin. He had never been to Ireland before, and met and stayed with Lord Hillsborough, whom he believed was especially attentive, but of whom he noted all
the plausible behaviour I have described is meant only, by patting and
stroking the horse, to make him more patient, while the reins are drawn
tighter, and the spurs set deeper into his sides. In Dublin, Franklin was invited to sit with the members of the Irish Parliament rather than in the gallery. He was the first American to be given this honor. While
touring Ireland, he was moved by the level of poverty he saw. Ireland's
economy was affected by the same trade regulations and laws of Britain
which governed America. Franklin feared that America could suffer the
same effects should Britain’s "colonial exploitation" continue. In Scotland, he spent five days with Lord Kames near Stirling and stayed for three weeks with David Hume in Edinburgh. In 1773, Franklin published two of his most celebrated pro-American satirical essays: Rules by Which a Great Empire May Be Reduced to a Small One, and An Edict by the King of Prussia. He also published an Abridgment of the Book of Common Prayer, anonymously with Francis Dashwood. Among the unusual features of this work is a funeral service reduced to six minutes in length, "to preserve the health and lives of the living." By the time Franklin arrived in Philadelphia on May 5, 1775, the American Revolution had begun with fighting at Lexington and Concord. The New England militia had trapped the main British army in Boston. The Pennsylvania Assembly unanimously chose Franklin as their delegate to the Second Continental Congress. In June 1776, he was appointed a member of the Committee of Five that drafted the Declaration of Independence. Although he was temporarily disabled by gout and unable to attend most meetings of the Committee, Franklin made several small changes to the draft sent to him by Thomas Jefferson. At the signing, he is quoted as having replied to a comment by Hancock that they must all hang together: "Yes, we must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately." In December 1776, Franklin was dispatched to France as commissioner for the United States. He lived in a home in the Parisian suburb of Passy, donated by Jacques-Donatien Le Ray de Chaumont who
supported the United States. Franklin remained in France until 1785. He
conducted the affairs of his country towards the French nation with
great success, which included securing a critical military alliance in
1778 and negotiating the Treaty of Paris (1783). During his stay in France, Benjamin Franklin as a freemason was Grand Master of the Lodge Les Neuf Sœurs from 1779 until 1781. His number was 24 in the Lodge. He was also a Past Grand Master of Pennsylvania. In 1784, when Franz Mesmer began to publicize his theory of "animal magnetism", which was considered offensive by many, Louis XVI appointed a commission to investigate it. These included the chemist Antoine Lavoisier, the physician Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, the astronomer Jean Sylvain Bailly, and Benjamin Franklin. In Paris, Franklin met the Swedish Ambassador to France, Count Gustaf Philip Creutz. So, as fate would have it, Sweden was the first country (after Great Britain) who recognized the young American republic, and Creutz and Franklin drafted the first Treaty of Amity and Commerce between the two nations. On August 27, 1783 in Paris Franklin witnessed the world's first hydrogen balloon flight. Le Globe, created by professor Jacques Charles and Les Frères Robert, was watched by a vast crowd as it launched from the Champ de Mars (now the site of the Eiffel Tower). This so enthused Franklin that he subscribed financially to the next project to build a manned hydrogen balloon. On December 1, 1783 Franklin was seated in the special enclosure for honoured guests when La Charlière took off from the Jardin des Tuileries, piloted by Jacques Charles and Nicolas-Louis Robert. When he finally returned home in 1785, Franklin occupied a position only second to that of George Washington as the champion of American independence. Le Ray honored him with a commissioned portrait painted by Joseph Duplessis that now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. After his return, Franklin became an abolitionist, freeing both of his slaves. He eventually became president of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society. In 1787, Franklin served as a delegate to the Philadelphia Convention.
He held an honorary position and seldom engaged in debate. He is the
only Founding Father who is a signatory of all four of the major
documents of the founding of the United States: the Declaration of
Independence, the Treaty of Paris, the Treaty of Alliance with France, and the United States Constitution. In 1787, a group of prominent ministers in Lancaster, Pennsylvania,
proposed the foundation of a new college to be named in Franklin's
honor. Franklin donated £200 towards the development of Franklin
College, which is now called Franklin & Marshall College. Between 1771 and 1788, he finished his autobiography. While it was at first addressed to his son, it was later completed for the benefit of mankind at the request of a friend. In his later years, as Congress was forced to deal with the issue of slavery, Franklin wrote several essays that attempted to convince his readers of the importance of the abolition of slavery and of the integration of blacks into American society. These writings included: An Address to the Public (1789); A Plan for Improving the Condition of the Free Blacks (1789) and Sidi Mehemet Ibrahim on the Slave Trade (1790). In
1790, Quakers from New York and Pennsylvania presented their petition
for abolition. Their argument against slavery was backed by the
Pennsylvania Abolitionist Society and its president, Benjamin Franklin.
Special balloting conducted October 18, 1785 unanimously elected Franklin the sixth President of the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania, replacing John Dickinson. The office of President of Pennsylvania was analogous to the modern position of Governor.
It is not clear why Dickinson needed to be replaced with less than two
weeks remaining before the regular election. Franklin held that office
for slightly over three years, longer than any other, and served the
Constitutional limit of three full terms. Shortly after his initial
election he was reelected to a full term on October 29, 1785, and again
in the fall of 1786 and on October 31, 1787. Officially, his term
concluded on November 5, 1788, but there is some question regarding the de facto end
of his term, suggesting that the aging Franklin may not have been
actively involved in the day-to-day operation of the Council toward the
end of his time in office. Like the other advocates of republicanism,
Franklin emphasized that the new republic could survive only if the
people were virtuous. All his life he explored the role of civic and
personal virtue, as expressed in Poor Richard's aphorisms.
Franklin was a non-dogmatic believer, who felt that organized religion
was necessary to keep men good to their fellow men, but rarely attended
church himself. His faith in God was an important factor in his support
for the American Revolution. When Ben Franklin met Voltaire in
Paris and asked this great apostle of the Enlightenment to bless his
grandson, Voltaire said in English, “God and Liberty,” and added, “this
is the only appropriate benediction for the grandson of Monsieur
Franklin.” Franklin’s parents were both pious Puritans. The
family attended the old South Church, the most liberal Puritan
congregation in Boston, where Benjamin Franklin was baptized in 1706. The Revolutionary War generation of this historic congregation include Samuel Adams; Samuel Sewall, judge and diarist; Thomas Prince, minister and book collector; William Dawes, Paul Revere’s fellow rider in 1775. Old South Church played a significant role in the revolution through the bold actions of the Sons of Liberty at the Old South Meeting House. There, in 1773, Samuel Adams gave the signal for the “war whoops” that started the Boston Tea Party. As poet John Greenleaf Whittier wrote, “So long as Boston shall Boston be, And her bay tides rise and fall,
Shall freedom stand in the Old South Church, And plead for the rights
of all.” Franklin’s
Puritan upbringing was a central factor throughout his life, as a
philanthropist, civic leader and activist in the Revolutionary War. Franklin
rejected much of his Puritan upbringing: belief in salvation, hell,
Jesus Christ’s divinity, and indeed most religious dogma. He retained a
strong faith in God as the wellspring of morality and goodness in man,
and as a Providential actor in history responsible for American
independence. He often invoked God as being in support of the American Revolution, as did most of the founding generation. Franklin wrote, “Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God.” Ben
Franklin’s father, a poor chandler, owned a copy of a book,
"Bonifacius: Essays to Do Good," by the Puritan preacher and family
friend Cotton Mather, which “Franklin often cited as a key influence” on his life. “”If
I have been,” Franklin wrote to Cotton Mather’s son seventy years
later, “a useful citizen, the public owes the advantage of it to that
book.” Franklin’s first pen name, Silence Dogood, paid homage both to
the book and to a famous sermon by Mather.” The
book preached the importance of forming voluntary associations to
benefit society. Cotton Mather personally founded a neighborhood
improvement group, that Franklin’s father joined. “Franklin picked up
his penchant for forming do-good associations from Cotton Mather and
others, but his organizational fervor and galvanizing personality made
him the most influential force in instilling this as an enduring part
of American life.” It was Ben Franklin who during a critical impasse during the Constitutional Convention,
28 June 1787, attempted to introduce the practice of daily common
prayer at the Convention. However, the motion met with resistance from Alexander Hamilton, Hugh Williamson and others, and was never brought to a vote. Franklin briefly belonged to a Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. Shortly thereafter, he became an enthusiastic supporter of one of America’s great evangelical ministers, George Whitefield, “the most popular of the Great Awakening’s roving preachers.” Franklin
did not subscribe to Whitefield’s theology, but he admired Whitefield
for exhorting people to worship God through good works. Franklin
printed Whitefield’s sermons on the front page of his Gazette. He
arranged to publish all of Whitefield’s sermons and journals. Half of
Franklin’s publications in 1739-41 were of Whitefield, and helped the
success of the evangelical movement in America. Franklin was a lifelong
friend and supporter of Whitefield, until his death in 1770. When he stopped attending church, Franklin wrote in his autobiography: ...Sunday
being my studying day, I never was without some religious principles. I
never doubted, for instance, the existence of the Deity; that He made
the world, and governed it by His providence; 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. Franklin
retained a lifelong commitment to the Puritan virtues and political
values he had grown up with, and through his civic work and publishing,
he succeeded in passing these values into the American culture
permanently. He had a “passion for virtue.” These Puritan values included his devotion to egalitarianism, education, industry, thrift, honesty, temperance, charity and community spirit. The
classical authors read in the Enlightenment period taught an abstract
ideal of republican government based on hierarchical social orders of
king, aristrocracy and commoners. It was widely believed that English
liberties relied on their balance of power, but also hierarchal
deference to the privileged class. “Puritanism ...
and the epidemic evangelism of the mid-eighteenth century, had created
challenges to the traditional notions of social stratification” by
preaching that the Bible taught all men are equal, that the true value
of a man lies in his moral behavior, not his class, and that all men
can be saved. Franklin,
steeped in Puritanism and an enthusiastic supporter of the evangelical
movement, rejected the salvation dogma, but embraced the radical notion
of egalitarian democracy. Franklin’s
commitment to teach these values was itself something he gained from
his Puritan upbringing, with its stress on “inculcating virtue and
character in themselves and their communities.” These
Puritan values and the desire to pass them on, were one of Franklin’s
quintessentially American characteristics, and helped shape the
character of the nation. Franklin's writings on virtue were derided by some European authors, such as Jackob Fugger in his critical work Portrait of American Culture. Max Weber considered Franklin's ethical writings a culmination of the Protestant ethic, which ethic created the social conditions necessary for the birth of capitalism. One
of Franklin's famous characteristics was his respect, tolerance and
promotion of all churches. Referring to his experience in Philadelphia, he wrote in his autobiography,
"new Places of worship were continually wanted, and generally erected
by voluntary Contribution, my Mite for such purpose, whatever might be
the Sect, was never refused." “He helped create a new type of nation that would draw strength from its religious pluralism.” The
first generation of Puritans had been intolerant of dissent, but by the
early 1700’s, when Franklin grew up in the Puritan church, tolerance of
different churches was the norm, and Massachusetts was known, in John
Adams' words, as “’the most mild and equitable establishment of
religion that was known in the world.’” The
evangelical revivalists who were active mid-century, such as Franklin’s
friend and preacher, George Whitefield, were the greatest advocates of
religious freedom, “claiming liberty of conscience to be an
‘inalienable right of every rational creature.’” Whitefield’s
supporters in Philadelphia, including Franklin, erected “a large, new
hall, that...could provide a pulpit to anyone of any belief.” Franklin’s rejection of dogma and doctrine and his stress on the God of ethics and morality and civic virtue, made him the “prophet of tolerance.” Although
Franklin's parents had intended for him to have a career in the church,
Franklin as a young man adopted the Enlightenment religious belief in Deism, that God’s truths can be found entirely through nature and reason. "I soon became a thorough Deist." As a young man he rejected Christian dogma in a 1725 pamphlet A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain, which he later saw as an embarrassment, while simultaneously asserting that God is “all wise, all good, all powerful.” He
defended his rejection of religious dogma with these words: "I think
opinions should be judged by their influences and effects; and if a man
holds none that tend to make him less virtuous or more vicious, it may
be concluded that he holds none that are dangerous, which I hope is the
case with me." After the disillusioning experience of seeing the decay
in his own moral standards, and those of two friends in London whom he
had converted to Deism, Franklin turned back to a belief in the
importance of organized religion, on the pragmatic grounds that without
God and organized churches, man will not be good. According to David Morgan, Franklin was a proponent of religion in general. He prayed to "Powerful Goodness" and referred to God as "the infinite". John Adams noted that Franklin was a mirror in which people saw their own religion: "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." Whatever else Franklin was,
concludes Morgan, "he was a true champion of generic religion." In a
letter to Richard Price, Franklin stated that he believed that religion
should support itself without help from the government, claiming; "When
a Religion is good, I conceive that it will support itself; and, when
it cannot support itself, and God does not take care to support, so
that its Professors are oblig'd to call for the help of the Civil
Power, it is a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one." In 1790, just about a month before he died, Franklin wrote a letter to Ezra Stiles, president of Yale University, who had asked him his views on religion: On July 4, 1776, Congress appointed a committee that included Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams to design the Great Seal of the United States. Franklin's
proposal featured a design with the motto: "Rebellion to Tyrants is
Obedience to God." His design portrayed a scene from the Book of Exodus, with Moses, the Israelites, the pillar of fire, and George III depicted as Pharaoh. Franklin
sought to cultivate his character by a plan of thirteen virtues, which
he developed at age 20 (in 1726) and continued to practice in some form
for the rest of his life. His autobiography lists his thirteen virtues as: Franklin
didn't try to work on them all at once. Instead, he would work on one
and only one each week "leaving all others to their ordinary chance".
While Franklin didn't live completely by his virtues and by his own
admission, he fell short of them many times, he believed the attempt
made him a better man contributing greatly to his success and
happiness, which is why in his autobiography, he devoted more pages to
this plan than to any other single point; in his autobiography Franklin
wrote, "I hope, therefore, that some of my descendants may follow the
example and reap the benefit." Franklin died on April 17, 1790, at age 84. Approximately 20,000 people attended his funeral. He was interred in Christ Church Burial Ground in Philadelphia. In 1728, aged 22, Franklin wrote what he hoped would be his own 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. Franklin's actual grave, however, as he specified in his final will, simply reads "Benjamin and Deborah Franklin." In
1773, when Franklin's work had moved from printing to science and
politics, he corresponded with a French scientist on the subject of
preserving the dead for later revival by more advanced scientific
methods, writing: I
should prefer to an ordinary death, being immersed with a few friends
in a cask of Madeira, until that time, then to be recalled to life by
the solar warmth of my dear country! But in all probability, we live in
a century too little advanced, and too near the infancy of science, to
see such an art brought in our time to its perfection. His death is described in the book The Life of Benjamin Franklin, quoting from the account of Dr. John Jones: ...when
the pain and difficulty of breathing entirely left him, and his family
were flattering themselves with the hopes of his recovery, when an
imposthume, which had formed itself in his lungs, suddenly burst, and
discharged a quantity of matter, which he continued to throw up while
he had power; but, as that failed, the organs of respiration became
gradually oppressed; a calm, lethargic state succeeded; and on the 17th
instant (April 1790), about eleven o'clock at night, he quietly
expired, closing a long and useful life of eighty-four years and three
months. Franklin bequeathed £1,000 (about $4,400 at the time, or about $55,000 in 2010 dollars)
each to the cities of Boston and Philadelphia, in trust to gather
interest for 200 years. The trust began in 1785 when the French
mathematician Charles-Joseph Mathon de la Cour, who admired Franklin greatly, wrote a friendly parody of
Franklin's "Poor Richard's Almanack" called "Fortunate Richard." The
main character leaves a smallish amount of money in his will, five lots
of 100 livres,
to collect interest over one, two, three, four or five full centuries,
with the resulting astronomical sums to be spent on impossibly
elaborate utopian projects. Franklin,
who was 79 years old at the time, wrote thanking him for a great idea
and telling him that he had decided to leave a bequest of
1,000 pounds each to his native Boston and his adopted
Philadelphia. As of 1990, more than $2,000,000 had accumulated in
Franklin's Philadelphia trust, which had loaned the money to local
residents. From 1940 to 1990, the money was used mostly for mortgage
loans. When the trust came due, Philadelphia decided to spend it on
scholarships for local high school students. Franklin's Boston trust
fund accumulated almost $5,000,000 during that same time; at the end of
its first 100 years a portion was allocated to help establish a trade school that became the Franklin Institute of Boston and the whole fund was later dedicated to supporting this institute. |