The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin

by H.W. Brands

Revolutions are not made in a morning, nor empires lost in a day. But Britain did itself more damage in those two hours than anyone present imagined. By alienating Franklin, the British government showed itself doubly inept: for making an enemy of a friend, and for doing so of the ablest and most respected American alive. At a moment when independence was hardly dreamed of in America, Franklin understood that to independence America must come.

Had they come from the pen of a mature writer, the Dogood letters would deserve to be considered a delightful example of social satire. Coming as they did from the pen of a mere youth, they reveal emerging genius. Some of what Franklin wrote he might have experienced indirectly; some he extrapolated from his reading; much he must simply have imagined. But the tone is uniformly confident and true to the character he created. Silence is irreverent and full of herself, yet she brings most readers—the proud and powerful excepted—into the realm of her sympathy. They laugh when she laughs, and laugh at whom she laughs at. She is one of the more memorable minor characters of American literature, and all the more memorable for being the creation of a sixteen-year-old boy.

Save a couple of inconsequential notes, the journal is the oldest surviving work of Franklin’s hand written not for publication but for himself. Most of what is known of Franklin’s early years comes from his autobiography, which, like all memoirs, bears the imprint of subsequent experience, reflection, and reconsideration.

Temperamentally, Franklin was a skeptic rather than a rebel. Indeed, his skepticism made him suspicious of many rebels, who were often as zealous in their quest for change as the most ardent defenders of the status quo were in their defense of what was. His skepticism was probably congenital; such central traits of personality typically are.

Calendar-keeping was complicated in Franklin’s era by the confusion that attended the changeover from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian. Catholic Europe had accepted Pope Gregory XIII’s reform in the late sixteenth century, but Protestant Europe, including England, remained behind the times—literally, by about eleven days. The question of when the year started also occasioned confusion: in March, according to the old style, or January, by the new? A person happening upon an antique newspaper bearing such date as “January 6, 1705” needed to know whether this was old style or new, since the difference amounted to nearly a whole year. (Thus Franklin, born January 6, 1705, by the old calendar, was born January 17, 1706, by the new.) Conscientious date-writers solved the problem by the device of “January 6, 1705/6.” Not till 1752 would the British government formally decree the changeover within the British empire.

Franklin was a man of his times. Matters of religion were provoking people all across the American colonies to unusual emotions. During the late 1730s and early 1740s a religious eruption occurred, rending congregations from New England to the Carolinas. This “Great Awakening” grew out of the pietistic preaching of Theodore Frelinghuysen among his Dutch Reformed flock in New Jersey in the 1720s, and of William and Gilbert Tennent among Presbyterians in the same province.

To say Edwards walked in the fear of God would be to put matters mildly (and here he walked away from Franklin); to say that he attempted to instill this same fear in his congregation would be equally bland. Unlike Gilbert Tennent or George Whitefield, Edwards spoke without gestures. His eyes did not search his audience but stayed fixed on the bell-rope at the back of the meeting hall; his words came out in a flat monotone that would have put his listeners to sleep had the message not been so hair-raising:

Whitefield had conceived the idea of an orphanage in Georgia for children left parentless by the hardships of life in that lately founded penal colony. He undertook to raise money to cover the expense of construction. Franklin approved the orphanage in principle but suggested that the donations would be better spent bringing the orphans to Philadelphia than sending the construction materials and workers to Georgia. Whitefield stuck to his plan, causing Franklin to refuse to contribute.

In light of the success he had achieved, and was still achieving, Franklin might have been thought an advocate of this method of schooling—or nonschooling. Teach children to read, provide them access to books (as through a library), and thereafter let them teach themselves. In fact, Franklin’s efforts to educate himself made him an enthusiast of formal education. Like many self-educated people, he was aware of the gaps in his education. He had filled most of them, better than they would have been filled in school. But it had required a great deal of work, more than ought to have been necessary. And it required a sense of discipline, a devotion to learning, and a knack for absorbing information that were not given equally to all. Though he deliberately downplayed it, Franklin understood his own exceptionality; unlike many self-made men, he did not set his own experience as a standard for others.

To some extent Pennsylvania provided a scale model of British North America at large. What the king was to the colonies together, the Penns, mutatis mutandis, were to Pennsylvania. What the London-linked ruling elites were to the British colonies, the Logan-Norris-Pemberton clique was to Pennsylvania. It was no accident that when revolution began to bubble in America against the king and his colonial officers, much of the bubbling could be traced to Pennsylvania. Pennsylvanians had been practicing for years.

Political London’s central landmark was Westminster, the home of Parliament. Once subordinate to the Crown, Parliament had established its primacy during the seventeenth century, in the Civil War and the Glorious Revolution. Even had there been no civil war or revolution, Parliament probably would have emerged supreme, for the simple reason that by the beginning of the eighteenth century, foreign policy—the sinkhole of British public finance—could no longer be conducted out of the monarch’s own purse.

But Parliament was a legislative body; it had not yet developed an executive arm. The executive power remained with the Crown. In theory this power was simply executive: “the king in Parliament,” in the era’s formulation. Yet as any student of government knows, and any practitioner of government experiences, the line between legislation and execution is often fine and always subject to transgression. An eighteenth-century British monarch could never wield the power the Tudors took for granted in the sixteenth century, but he or she could still make a mark. The size of the mark depended on the talents of the monarch.

George’s death, when it came, was in its own unexalted way similarly indicative of the hazards of ruling-class life. The rich diet of the rich in eighteenth-century England led to gout and other maladies, including constipation. On October 25, 1760, George II awakened at Kensington Palace to his usual cup of chocolate, after which he retired to the royal water closet for his morning effort. The effort proved too much for the royal blood vessels; a critical one burst and killed the king.

The fighting between British and French had hardly ended before fighting erupted between British and the Indians under Pontiac. During the spring and summer of 1763 Pontiac’s forces swept through the region of the Ohio and the Great Lakes, capturing half a dozen British forts and besieging British garrisons at Detroit and Pittsburgh. The British commander for North America, General Jeffrey Amherst, was sufficiently alarmed to suggest employing biological warfare against Pontiac’s soldiers, in the form of smallpox-laced blankets. Whether the local commander complied is unclear (like others in similar positions, Colonel Henry Bouquet feared that his own troops would succumb to the germ attack).

“The Indians are disgusted that so little notice has lately been taken of them, and are particularly offended that rum is prohibited [not all the Indians followed the Prophet in forswearing alcohol], and powder dealt among them so sparingly. They have received no presents. And the plan of preventing war among them, and bringing them to live by agriculture, they resent as an attempt to make women of them, as they phrase it, it being the business of women only to cultivate the ground. Their men are all warriors.”

He could not understand why every post chaise he and Pringle rode in had a hood or canopy so pitched as to make it nearly impossible for the passengers to see out—which, in Franklin’s opinion, was the whole reason for traveling. When he tried to persuade his drivers to change the rigging, they explained that this would be impossible. The chaises were rigged for the safety and benefit of the horses; to change would kill the animals. Franklin thought this absurd and said so, to no avail. “They added other reasons that were no reasons at all, and made me, as upon a hundred other occasions, almost wish that mankind had never been endowed with a reasoning faculty, since they know so little how to make use of it and so often mislead themselves by it; and that they had been furnished with a good sensible instinct instead of it.”

Nothing remained to hold the chaos at bay. “All respect to law and government seems to be lost among the common people, who are moreover continually enflamed by seditious scribblers to trample on authority and every thing that used to keep them in order.” Wilkes symbolized a system beset by cynicism and corruption. Electioneering had become little but bribery and boozing.

“Lead us not into temptation” gave way to “Keep us out of temptation” because the former reflected an outdated view of the relationship of God to man. “The Jews had a notion that God sometimes tempted, or directed or permitted the tempting of people. Thus it was said he tempted Pharoah; directed Satan to tempt Job; and a false prophet to tempt Ahab; &c. Under this persuasion it was natural for them to pray that he would not put them to such severe trials. We now suppose that temptation, so far as it is supernatural, comes from the Devil only.” To blame God for temptation was unworthy of Him.

Status quos had a way of congealing around whatever was not challenged. Regarding the duties said to be on the verge of repeal, such repeal could be assured only by continued pressure from America. “If by time we become so accustomed to these as to pay them without discontent, no minister will afterwards think of taking them off, but rather be encouraged to add others.”

For a final fling that summer of 1771, Franklin joined Richard Jackson for a tour of Ireland and Scotland. The condition of Ireland, which also stood in a colonial position to Britain, had long intrigued Franklin, and his interest only grew with the constitutional controversy between Britain and America. In theory Ireland provided an alternative model for American relations with Britain.

“The appearances of general extreme poverty among the lower people are amazing. They live in wretched hovels of mud and straw, are clothed in rags, and subsist chiefly on potatoes. Our New England farmers of the poorest sort, in regard to the enjoyment of all the comforts of life, are princes when compared to them.”

Such is the effect of the discouragements of industry, the non-residence not only of pensioners but of many original landlords who lease their lands in gross to undertakers that rack the tenants, and fleece them skin and all, to make estates to themselves, while the first rents, as well as most of the pensions, are spent out of the country.

But if they should ever envy the trade of these countries, I can put them in a way to obtain a share of it. Let them with three-fourths of the people of Ireland live the year round on potatoes and butter milk, without shirts, then may their merchants export beef, butter and linen. Let them with the generality of the common people of Scotland go barefoot, then may they make large exports in shoes and stockings. And if they will be content to wear rags like the spinners and weavers of England, they may make cloths and stuffs for all parts of the world. Farther, if my countrymen should ever wish for the honour of having among them a gentry enormously wealthy, let them sell their farms and pay racked rents; the scale of the landlords will rise as that of the tenants is depressed, who will soon become poor, tattered, dirty, and abject in spirit.

Franklin continued to give his admirers cause for admiration. The most superficial knowledge of chemistry and electricity revealed that gunpowder and lightning made bad companions; in 1769 an enormous explosion in Italy followed a lightning strike upon a powder magazine at Brescia, in which a thousand persons perished and much of the town was leveled. The disaster made the London

Franklin disappointed some of those who knew him only by reputation—a group that encompassed nearly the entire membership. He struck no lightning bolts of rhetoric, preferring to sit silent while others orated. Washington cut a far more impressive figure in his soldier’s uniform than Franklin in his philosopher’s coat. The visitors from out of town—again, nearly the entire body—took dinner together in taverns and spent nights about town; Franklin retired to his own house when the Congress recessed, passing evenings with Sally and Richard Bache and his grandchildren.

(Madison possessed a brilliant legal mind but also a penchant for assuming the worst of others. Before maligning Franklin he had castigated Washington as one of a class of tidewater gentry that demonstrated “a pusillanimity little comporting with their professions or the name of Virginian.”)

Washington traveled to Boston to take charge of the mostly Massachusetts force besieging the British there. He required a few weeks to assess his soldiers and reconnoiter the position; molding the militia into a real army took considerably longer. This necessitated the creation of an officer corps that knew its business and could teach the troops. But the troops did not want to learn, considering themselves above discipline and, in many cases, intending to leave the ranks when their brief terms of enlistment expired.

Franklin knew Paine. Indeed Franklin was largely responsible for Paine’s presence in Philadelphia. One of Franklin’s fellows in the Royal Society had introduced young Paine to Franklin in London, and although Paine’s career to date consisted chiefly of failure—at corsetmaking, schoolteaching, shopkeeping, tax-collecting—he was a self-taught seeker of practical knowledge in a variety of fields, with an obvious irreverence toward British authority. In other words, he was a young man of the sort Franklin might wish to encourage. This Franklin did. When Paine in 1774 indicated a desire to emigrate to America, Franklin supplied a letter of introduction to Richard Bache.

Franklin had little to do with the first drafting of the document, which the committee left to Jefferson, partly because of his known felicity of phrasing (“You can write ten times better than I,” John Adams recalled telling Jefferson), partly because Jefferson was a Virginian (and hence would add geographic balance to a conflict provoked by New England), partly because none on the committee appreciated what a momentous document this would be, and partly because Franklin was happy to leave the task to another.

Passy was a comparatively rustic retreat from the crowds, smells, and noises of the capital; a ten-minute carriage ride transported the well-to-do and well connected to the villas and châteaux they had tucked among the wooded hills and vineyards overlooking the Seine. Franklin’s landlord was both well-to-do and well connected—the latter on account of the former. The humble but ambitious Jacques Donatien Leray of Nantes had made a fortune in the India trade, and with his pile had purchased the Loire château of Chaumont, which came with the “de Chaumont” suffix he added to his name. As a nouveau riche, Chaumont worked harder at his responsibilities than the true aristocrats; while they glided smugly toward the doom of the ancien régime, Chaumont improved his properties, winning support of the peasants that would save him from the guillotine.

David Bushnell had tinkered with an underwater boat—“Bushnell’s turtle,” it was called—that would torpedo the enemy below the waterline; when this encountered technical difficulties, Bushnell switched to floating bombs. He stuffed kegs with explosives and surreptitiously drifted them down the river toward the British fleet. Most missed, and the scheme was discovered when a bargeman lifted one of the kegs from the water, setting it off and killing himself and several companions. Although no British ships were destroyed, the very thought of bobbing ruin put the British on edge. Soldiers were arrayed along the riverbank to fire at suspicious objects in the water; by one account, just as the scare was abating, a farmer’s wife accidentally dropped a keg of cheese in the river, sparking a renewed alert and another outpouring of lead into the water.

Players must exercise good sportsmanship. “You must not, when you have gained a victory, use any triumphing or insulting expression, nor show too much pleasure; but endeavour to console your adversary, and make him less dissatisfied with himself by every kind and civil expression.” Finally, players must remember that the best victory was not over the opponent but over oneself. A player might point out where the other slipped and graciously suggest a more effective move. “You may indeed happen to lose the game to your opponent, but you will win what is better: his esteem, his respect, and his affection, together with the silent approbation and good will of impartial spectators.”

in August 1784 the other missing commissioner, Thomas Jefferson, arrived. The contrast between Adams and Jefferson could hardly have been greater. Adams was jealous of Franklin (and of every other successful person he met); Jefferson easily accepted Franklin’s status as the greatest American of all. Adams embodied the prudishness of New England; Jefferson lived the tolerance of Virginia. Adams cared little for philosophy or speculation; Jefferson was a philosopher and scientist second among Americans only to Franklin. Adams distrusted France and inclined toward England; Jefferson felt just the opposite.

In his final months in Paris, Franklin oversaw negotiation of treaties with various countries; one, with Prussia, contained an article he thought should be generalized. In the event of war between them, the United States and Prussia would forgo the use of privateers. Although privateers had played a critical role for America in the late war, with Franklin urging the privateers on, he disliked this form of licensed lawlessness. Privateers were nothing better than pirates, and to allow—indeed encourage—their depredations was to foster disrespect for law and order.

From classical times the argument against republicanism was that it degenerated into democracy—government not simply in the name of the people but by the people themselves. And democracy degenerated into anarchy, because the people were not fit to govern themselves. In Massachusetts the name of anarchy was Daniel Shays, and the lesson Shays taught was that if American republicanism did not take preventive measures soon, it might be lost.

“How has it happened, sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the Father of Lights to illuminate our understandings?” At the onset of the troubles with Britain, the Continental Congress, meeting in this very room, had daily requested divine help in finding its way. “Our prayers were heard, sir, and they were graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed the frequent instances of a superintending Providence in our favour.” Without Heaven’s help the delegates would not be where they were, attempting what they were attempting. “Have we now forgotten that powerful Friend? Or do we imagine we no longer need its assistance?” Franklin remarked that he had lived a long time. “And the longer I live the more convincing proofs I see of this truth, that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid?”

“In these sentiments, Sir, I agree to this constitution with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a general government necessary for us, and there is no form of government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered.” He reminded once more that the strength of any government rested on the virtue of the people. “This is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other.”

Franklin doubted whether any convention could have done better. “When you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views. From such an assembly can a perfect production be expected?” The wonder was how well the present assembly had done. “I think it will astonish our enemies, who are waiting with confidence to hear that our councils are confounded like those of the builders of Babel, and that our states are on the point of separation, only to meet hereafter for the purpose of cutting one another’s throats. Thus I consent, sir, to this constitution, because I expect no better, and because I am not sure that it is not the best.”

George Washington signed first, followed by thirty-seven others, state by state. James Madison related the convention’s close: Whilst the last members were signing it, Doctor Franklin, looking towards the president’s chair, at the back of which a rising sun happened to be painted, observed to a few members near him, that painters had often found it difficult to distinguish in their art a rising from a setting sun. I have, said he, often and often in the course of the session, and the vicissitudes of my hopes and fears as to its issue, looked at that behind the president, without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting. But now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting sun.

At the precocious age of twenty-two Franklin wrote what became one of the most famous epitaphs in that lapidary genre: 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 believed, appear once more, In a new & more perfect Edition, Corrected and amended By the Author. When the time came, however, he preferred something simpler. In his will he directed that only “Benjamin and Deborah Franklin 1790” adorn the headstone he shared with his dear country Joan.

A life as full as Franklin’s could not be captured in a phrase—or a volume. Yet if a few words had to suffice, a few words that summarized his legacy to the America he played such a central role in creating—and that, not incidentally, illustrated his wry, aphoristic style—they were those he uttered upon leaving the final session of the Constitutional Convention. A matron of Philadelphia demanded to know, after four months’ secrecy, what he and the other delegates had produced. “A republic,” he answered, “if you can keep it.”