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FRANKLIN, Benjamin
(1706–90), American printer, author, diplomat, philosopher,
and scientist, whose many contributions to the cause of the American
Revolution, and the newly formed federal government that followed,
rank him among the country’s greatest statesmen.
Franklin was born on Jan. 17, 1706, in Boston. His father,
Josiah Franklin (1658–1745), a tallow chandler by trade,
had 17 children; Benjamin was the 15th child and the 10th son. His
mother, Abiah Folger (1667–1752), was his father’s
second wife. The Franklin family lived modestly, like most New Englanders
of the time. After his attendance at grammar school from age eight
to ten, Benjamin was taken into his father’s business. Finding
the work uncongenial, he entered the employ of a cutler. At age
13 he was apprenticed to his brother James (1697–1735),
who had recently returned from England with a new printing press.
Benjamin learned the printing trade, devoting his spare time to
the advancement of his education. His reading included Pilgrim’s Progress by
the British preacher John Bunyan, Parallel Lives, the
work of the Greek essayist and biographer Plutarch, Essay
on Projects by the English journalist and novelist Daniel
Defoe, and the Essays to Do Good by Cotton Mather,
the American Congregational clergyman. When he acquired a copy of
the third volume of the Spectator by the British
statesmen and essayists Sir Richard Steele and Joseph Addison, he
set himself the goal of mastering its prose style.
In 1721 his brother James Franklin established the New
England Courant, and Benjamin, at the age of 15, was busily
occupied in delivering the newspaper by day and in composing articles
for it at night. These articles, published anonymously, won wide
notice and acclaim for their pithy observations on the current scene.
Because of its liberal bias, the New England Courant frequently
incurred the displeasure of the colonial authorities. In 1722, as
a consequence of an article considered particularly offensive, James
Franklin was imprisoned for a month and forbidden to publish his
paper, and for a while it appeared under Benjamin’s name.
As a result of disagreements with James, Benjamin left Boston and
made his way to Philadelphia, arriving in October 1723. There he
worked at his trade and made numerous friends, among whom was Sir
William Keith (1680–1749), the provincial governor of Pennsylvania. He
persuaded Franklin to go to London to complete his training as a
printer and to purchase the equipment needed to start his own printing
establishment in Philadelphia. Young Franklin took this advice,
arriving in London in December 1724. Not having received from Keith
certain promised letters of introduction and credit, Franklin found
himself, at age 18, without means in a strange city. With characteristic
resourcefulness, he obtained employment at two of the foremost printing
houses in London, Palmer’s and Watt’s. His appearance,
bearing, and accomplishments soon won him the recognition of a number
of the most distinguished figures in the literary and publishing
world.
In October 1726, Franklin returned to Philadelphia and resumed
his trade. The following year, with a number of his acquaintances,
he organized a discussion group known as the Junto, which later
became the American Philosophical Society. In September 1729, he
bought the Pennsylvania Gazette, a dull, poorly edited
weekly newspaper, which he made, by his witty style and judicious
selection of news, both entertaining and informative. In 1730 he
married Deborah Read (1705–74), a Philadelphia woman whom
he had known before his trip to England.
Franklin engaged in many public projects. In 1731 he founded
what was probably the first public library in America, chartered
in 1742 as the Philadelphia Library. He first published Poor
Richard’s Almanack in 1732, under the pen name
Richard Saunders. This modest volume quickly gained a wide and appreciative
audience, and its homespun, practical wisdom exerted a pervasive
influence upon the American character. In 1736 Franklin became clerk
of the Pennsylvania General Assembly and the next year was appointed
deputy postmaster of Philadelphia. About this time, he organized the
first fire company in that city and introduced methods for the improvement
of street paving and lighting. Always interested in scientific studies,
he devised means to correct the excessive smoking of chimneys and invented,
around 1744, the Franklin stove, which furnished greater heat with
a reduced consumption of fuel.
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Library of Congress LC-USZ62-30750
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Benjamin Franklin and his kite
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In 1747 Franklin began his electrical experiments with a simple
apparatus that he received from Peter Collinson (1694–1768)
in England. He advanced a tenable theory of the Leyden jar, supported
the hypothesis that lightning is an electrical phenomenon, and proposed
an effective method of demonstrating this fact. His plan was published
in London and carried out in England and France before he himself
performed his celebrated experiment with the kite in 1752. He invented
the lightning rod and offered what is called the “one-fluid” theory
in explanation of the two kinds of electricity, positive and negative.
In recognition of his impressive scientific accomplishments, Franklin
received honorary degrees from the University of Saint Andrews and
the University of Oxford. He also became a fellow of the Royal Society
of London for Improving Natural Knowledge and, in 1753, was awarded
its Copley Medal for distinguished contributions to experimental
science. Franklin also exerted a great influence on education in
Pennsylvania. In 1749 he wrote Proposals Relating to the
Education of Youth in Pennsylvania; its publication led
to the establishment in 1751 of the Philadelphia Academy, later
to become the University of Pennsylvania. The curriculum he suggested was
a considerable departure from the program of classical studies then
in vogue. English and modern foreign languages were to be emphasized
as well as mathematics and science.
In 1748 Franklin sold his printing business and, in 1750,
was elected to the Pennsylvania Assembly, in which he served until
1764. He was appointed deputy postmaster general for the colonies
in 1753, and in 1754 he was the delegate from Pennsylvania to the
intercolonial congress that met at Albany to consider methods of
dealing with the threatened French and Indian War. His Albany Plan,
in many ways prophetic of the 1787 U.S. Constitution, provided for
local independence within a framework of colonial union, but was
too far in advance of public thinking to obtain ratification. It
was his staunch belief that the adoption of this plan would have
averted the American Revolution.
When the French and Indian War broke out, Franklin procured
horses, wagons, and supplies for the British commander Gen. Edward
Braddock by pledging his own credit to the Pennsylvania farmers,
who thereupon furnished the necessary equipment. The proprietors
of Pennsylvania Colony, descendants of the Quaker leader William
Penn, in conformity with their religious opposition to war, refused
to allow their landholdings to be taxed for the prosecution of the
war. Thus, in 1757, Franklin was sent to England by the Pennsylvania
Assembly to petition the king for the right to levy taxes on proprietary
lands. After completing his mission, he remained in England for
five years as the chief representative of the American colonies. During
this period he made friends with many prominent Englishmen, including
the chemist and clergyman Joseph Priestley, the philosopher and
historian David Hume, and the philosopher and economist Adam Smith.
Franklin returned to Philadelphia in 1762, where he remained
until 1764, when he was once again dispatched to England as the
agent of Pennsylvania. In 1766 he was interrogated before the House
of Commons regarding the effects of the Stamp Act upon the colonies;
his testimony was largely influential in securing the repeal of
the act. Soon, however, new plans for taxing the colonies were introduced
in Parliament, and Franklin was increasingly divided between his
devotion to his native land and his loyalty as a subject of George
III of Great Britain. Finally, in 1775, his powers of conciliation
exhausted, Franklin sorrowfully acknowledged the inevitability of
war. Sailing for America after an absence of 11 years, he reached
Philadelphia on May 5, 1775, to find that the opening engagements
of the Revolution—the battles of Lexington and Concord—had
already been fought. He was chosen a member of the Second Continental Congress,
serving on ten of its committees, and was made postmaster general,
an office he held for one year.
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Library of Congress LC-USZC4-9904
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Benjamin Franklin working on the Declaration of Independence with Thomas Jefferson & John Adams
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In 1775 Franklin traveled to Canada, suffering great hardship
along the way, in a vain effort to enlist the cooperation and support
of Canada in the Revolution. Upon his return, he became one of the
committee of five chosen to draft the Declaration of Independence. He
was also one of the signers of that historic document, addressing
the assembly with the characteristic statement: “We must
all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.” In
September of the same year, he was chosen, with two other Americans,
Arthur Lee and Silas Deane, to seek economic assistance in France.
His scientific reputation, his integrity of character, and his wit
and gracious manner made him extremely popular in French political,
literary, and social circles, and his wisdom and ingenuity secured
for the U.S. aid and concessions that perhaps no other man could
have obtained. Against the vigorous opposition of the French minister
of finance, Jacques Necker, and despite the jealous antagonism of
his coldly formal American colleagues, he managed to obtain liberal
grants and loans from Louis XVI of France. Franklin encouraged and
materially assisted American privateers operating against the British
navy, especially John Paul Jones. On Feb. 6, 1778, Franklin negotiated
the treaty of commerce and defensive alliance with France that represented,
in effect, the turning point of the American Revolution. Seven months
later, he was appointed by Congress as the first minister plenipotentiary
from the U.S. to France.
In 1781 Franklin, John Adams, and John Jay were appointed
to conclude a treaty of peace with Great Britain. The final treaty
was signed at Versailles on Sept. 3, 1783. During the remainder
of his stay in France, Franklin was accorded a number of honorary
distinctions. His scientific standing won him an appointment from
the French king as one of the commissioners investigating the Austrian
physician Franz Anton Mesmer and the phenomenon of animal magnetism.
As a dignitary of one of the most distinguished Freemason lodges in
France, Franklin met some of the philosophers and leading figures
of the French Revolution, upon whose political thinking he exerted
a profound influence. Although he favored a liberalization of the
French government, he opposed change through violent revolution.
In March 1785, Franklin, at his own request, left his duties in
France and returned to Philadelphia, where he served (1785–87)
as president of the Pennsylvania executive council. In 1787 he was
elected a delegate to the convention that drew up the U.S. Constitution.
Franklin was deeply interested in philanthropic projects, and one
of his last public acts was to sign a petition to the U.S. Congress,
on Feb. 12, 1790, as president of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society,
urging the abolition of slavery and the suppression of the slave
trade. Two months later, on April 17, Franklin died in his Philadelphia
home at 84 years of age.
Franklin’s most notable service to his country was
the result of his great skill in diplomacy. To his common sense,
wisdom, wit, and industry, he joined great firmness of purpose,
matchless tact, and broad tolerance. Both as a brilliant conversationalist
and a sympathetic listener, Franklin had a wide and appreciative following
in the intellectual salons of the day. For the most part, his literary
reputation rests on his unfinished Autobiography, which
is considered by many the epitome of his life and character.