Benjamin franklin in one word

Benjamin Franklin FRS FRSA FRSE
Benjamin Franklin by Joseph Duplessis, 1778
6th President of Pennsylvania
In office October 18, 1785 – November 5, 1788
Vice President	Charles Biddle Peter Muhlenberg David Redick
Preceded by	John Dickinson
Succeeded by	Thomas Mifflin
United States Minister to Sweden
In office September 28, 1782 – April 3, 1783
Appointed by	Congress of the Confederation
Preceded by	Position established
Succeeded by	Jonathan Russell
United States Minister to France
In office March 23, 1779 – May 17, 1785
Appointed by	Continental Congress
Preceded by	Position established
Succeeded by	Thomas Jefferson
1st United States Postmaster General
In office July 26, 1775 – November 7, 1776
Preceded by	Position established
Succeeded by	Richard Bache
Delegate from Pennsylvania to Second Continental Congress
In office May 1775 – October 1776
Postmaster General of British America
In office August 10, 1753 – January 31, 1774
Preceded by	Position established
Succeeded by	Vacant
Speaker of the Pennsylvania Assembly
In office May 1764 – October 1764
Preceded by	Isaac Norris
Succeeded by	Isaac Norris
2nd President of the University of Pennsylvania
In office 1749–1754
Preceded by	George Whitefield
Succeeded by	William Smith
Personal details
Born	January 17, 1706 [O.S. January 6, 1705][Note 1] Boston, Massachusetts Bay, British America
Died	April 17, 1790 (aged 84) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Resting place	Christ Church Burial Ground Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Political party	Independent
Spouse	Deborah Read ​ ​ (m. ; died 1774)​
Children	William Francis Sarah
Parent(s)	Josiah Franklin Abiah Folger
Education	Boston Latin School
Signature
Coat of arms of Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin FRS FRSA FRSE (January 17, 1706 [O.S. January 6, 1705]^{[Note 1]} – April 17, 1790) was an American polymath who was active as a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher, forger and political philosopher.^[1] Among the leading intellectuals of his time, Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, a drafter and signer of the Declaration of Independence, and the first Postmaster General.^[2]

As a scientist, he was a major figure in the American Enlightenment and the history of physics for his studies of electricity, and for charting and naming the Gulf Stream current. As an inventor, he is known for the lightning rod, bifocals, and the Franklin stove, among others.^[3] He founded many civic organizations, including the Library Company, Philadelphia’s first fire department,^[4] and the University of Pennsylvania.^[5]
Franklin earned the title of «The First American» for his early and indefatigable campaigning for colonial unity, and as an author and spokesman in London for several colonies. As the first U.S. ambassador to France, he exemplified the emerging American nation.^[6] Franklin was foundational in defining the American ethos as a marriage of the practical 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 historian Henry Steele Commager, «In Franklin could be merged the virtues of Puritanism without its defects, the illumination of the Enlightenment without its heat.»^[7] Franklin has been called «the most accomplished American of his age and the most influential in inventing the type of society America would become.»^[8]

Franklin became a successful newspaper editor and printer in Philadelphia, the leading city in the colonies, publishing the Pennsylvania Gazette at age 23.^[9] He became wealthy publishing this and Poor Richard’s Almanack, which he wrote under the pseudonym «Richard Saunders».^[10] After 1767, he was associated with the Pennsylvania Chronicle, a newspaper that was known for its revolutionary sentiments and criticisms of the policies of the British Parliament and the Crown.^[11]

He pioneered and was the first president of the Academy and College of Philadelphia, which opened in 1751 and later became the University of Pennsylvania. He organized and was the first secretary of the American Philosophical Society and was elected president in 1769. Franklin became a national hero in America as an agent for several colonies when he spearheaded an effort in London to have the Parliament of Great Britain 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. His efforts proved vital for the American Revolution in securing French aid.

He was promoted to deputy postmaster-general for the British colonies on August 10, 1753,^[12] having been Philadelphia postmaster for many years, and this enabled him to set up the first national communications network. He was active in community affairs and colonial and state politics, as well as national and international affairs. From 1785 to 1788, he served as governor of Pennsylvania. He initially owned and dealt in slaves but, by the late 1750s, he began arguing against slavery, became an abolitionist, and promoted education and the integration of African Americans into U.S. society.

His life and legacy of scientific and political achievement, and his status as one of America’s most influential Founding Fathers, have seen Franklin honored more than two centuries after his death on the $100 bill, warships, and the names of many towns, counties, educational institutions, and corporations, as well as numerous cultural references and with a portrait in the Oval Office. Over his lifetime, Franklin wrote or received more than 30,000 letters and other documents, which since the 1950s have been collected in The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, published by both the American Philosophical Society and Yale University.

Ancestry

Benjamin Franklin’s father, Josiah Franklin, was a tallow chandler, soaper, and candlemaker. Josiah Franklin was born at Ecton, Northamptonshire, England, on December 23, 1657, the son of Thomas Franklin, a blacksmith and farmer, and his wife, Jane White. Benjamin’s father and all four of his grandparents were born in England.^[13]

Josiah Franklin had a total of 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 emigration and four after. Following her death, Josiah married Abiah Folger on July 9, 1689, in the Old South Meeting House by Reverend Samuel Willard, and had ten children with her. Benjamin, their eighth child, was Josiah Franklin’s fifteenth child overall, and his tenth and final son.^{[citation needed]}

Benjamin Franklin’s mother, Abiah, was born in Nantucket, Massachusetts Bay Colony, on August 15, 1667, to Peter Folger, a miller and schoolteacher, and his wife, Mary Morrell Folger, a former indentured servant. Mary Folger came from a Puritan family that was among the first Pilgrims to flee to Massachusetts for religious freedom, sailing for Boston in 1635 after King Charles I of England had begun persecuting Puritans. Her father Peter was «the sort of rebel destined to transform colonial America.»^[14] 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.^{[citation needed]}

Early life

Boston

Franklin was born on Milk Street in Boston, Massachusetts on January 17, 1706,^{[Note 1]} and baptized at Old South Meeting House. As a child growing up along the Charles River, Franklin recalled that he was «generally the leader among the boys.»^[17]

Franklin’s father wanted him 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»^[18] for Franklin, his schooling ended when he was ten. He worked for his father for a time, and at 12 he became an apprentice to his brother James, a printer, who taught him the printing trade. When Benjamin was 15, James founded The New-England Courant, which was one of the first American newspapers.^{[citation needed]}

When denied the chance to write a letter to the paper for publication, Franklin adopted the pseudonym of «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 Benjamin when he discovered the popular correspondent was his younger brother. Franklin was an advocate of free speech from an early age. When his brother was jailed for three weeks in 1722 for publishing material unflattering to the governor, young Franklin took over the newspaper and had Mrs. Dogood (quoting Cato’s Letters) proclaim, «Without freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech.»^[19] Franklin left his apprenticeship without his brother’s permission, and in so doing became a fugitive.^{[20][page needed]}

Move to Philadelphia

At age 17, Franklin ran away to Philadelphia, seeking a new start in a new city. When he first arrived, he worked in several printer shops around town, but he was not satisfied by the immediate prospects. After a few months, while working in a printing house, Pennsylvania governor Sir William Keith convinced him to go to London, ostensibly to acquire the equipment necessary for establishing another newspaper in Philadelphia. Discovering that Keith’s promises of backing a newspaper were empty, he 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 him as a clerk, shopkeeper, and bookkeeper in his business.^{[20][page needed]}

Junto and library

In 1727, at age 21, Franklin formed 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.^[21] The Junto was modeled after English coffeehouses that Franklin knew well and which had become the center of the spread of Enlightenment ideas in Britain.^[22][23]

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 after Franklin wrote:

A proposition was made by me that since our books were often referr’d to in our disquisitions upon the inquiries, it might be convenient for us to have them altogether where we met, that upon occasion they might be consulted; and by thus clubbing our books to a common library, we should, while we lik’d to keep them together, have each of us the advantage of using the books of all the other members, which would be nearly as beneficial as if each owned the whole.^{[24][page needed]}

This did not suffice, however. Franklin 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, whose charter he composed in 1731.^[25]

Newspaperman

Upon Denham’s death, Franklin returned to his former trade. In 1728, he set up a printing house in partnership with Hugh Meredith; the following year he 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 he achieved fame as a scientist and statesman, he habitually signed his letters with the unpretentious ‘B. Franklin, Printer.’^[20]

In 1732, he published the first German-language newspaper in America – Die Philadelphische Zeitung – although it failed after only one year because four other newly founded German papers quickly dominated the newspaper market.^[26] Franklin also printed Moravian religious books in German. He often visited Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, staying at the Moravian Sun Inn.^[27] In a 1751 pamphlet on demographic growth and its implications for the Thirteen Colonies, he called the Pennsylvania Germans «Palatine Boors» who could never acquire the «Complexion» of Anglo-American settlers and referred to «Blacks and Tawneys» as weakening the social structure of the colonies. Although he apparently reconsidered shortly thereafter, and the phrases were omitted from all later printings of the pamphlet, his views may have played a role in his political defeat in 1764.^[28]

According to Ralph Frasca, Franklin promoted the printing press as a device to instruct colonial Americans in moral virtue. Frasca argues he saw this as a service to God, because he understood moral virtue in terms of actions, thus, doing good provides a service to God. Despite his own moral lapses, Franklin saw himself as uniquely qualified to instruct Americans in morality. He tried to influence American moral life through the construction of a printing network based on a chain of partnerships from the Carolinas to New England. He thereby invented the first newspaper chain.^{[citation needed]} It was more than a business venture, for like many publishers he believed that the press had a public-service duty.^[29][30]

When he established himself in Philadelphia, shortly before 1730, the town boasted two «wretched little» news sheets, Andrew Bradford’s The American Weekly Mercury, and Samuel Keimer’s Universal Instructor in all Arts and Sciences, and Pennsylvania Gazette.^[31] This instruction in all arts and sciences consisted of weekly extracts from Chambers’s Universal Dictionary. Franklin quickly did away with all of this when he took over the Instructor and made it The Pennsylvania Gazette. The Gazette soon became his characteristic organ, which he freely used for satire, for the play of his wit, even for sheer excess of mischief or of fun. From the first, he had a way of adapting his models to his own uses. The series of essays called «The Busy-Body», which he wrote for Bradford’s American Mercury in 1729, followed the general Addisonian form, already modified to suit homelier conditions. The thrifty Patience, in her busy little shop, complaining of the useless visitors who waste her valuable time, is related to the women who address Mr. Spectator. The Busy-Body himself is a true Censor Morum, as Isaac Bickerstaff had been in the Tatler. And a number of the fictitious characters, Ridentius, Eugenius, Cato, and Cretico, represent traditional 18th-century classicism. Even this Franklin could use for contemporary satire, since Cretico, the «sowre Philosopher», is evidently a portrait of his rival, Samuel Keimer.^{[32][page needed]}

Franklin had mixed success in his plan to establish an inter-colonial network of newspapers that would produce a profit for him and disseminate virtue. Over the years he sponsored two dozen printers in Pennsylvania, South Carolina, New York, Connecticut and even the Caribbean. By 1753, 8 of the 15 English language newspapers in the colonies were published by him or his partners.^[33] He began in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1731. After his second editor died, the widow Elizabeth Timothy took over and made it a success. She was one of the colonial era’s first woman printers.^[34] For three decades Franklin maintained a close business relationship with her and her son Peter Timothy, who took over the South Carolina Gazette in 1746.^[35] The Gazette was impartial in political debates, while creating the opportunity for public debate, which encouraged others to challenge authority. Timothy avoided blandness and crude bias and after 1765 increasingly took a patriotic stand in the growing crisis with Great Britain.^[36] However, Franklin’s Connecticut Gazette (1755–68) proved unsuccessful.^[37] As the Revolution approached, political strife slowly tore his network apart.^[38]

Freemasonry

In 1730 or 1731, Franklin was initiated into the local Masonic lodge. He became a grand master in 1734, indicating his rapid rise to prominence in Pennsylvania.^[39][40] The same year, he edited and published the first Masonic book in the Americas, a reprint of James Anderson’s Constitutions of the Free-Masons. He was the secretary of St. John’s Lodge in Philadelphia from 1735 to 1738.^[40] Franklin remained a Freemason for the rest of his life.^[41][42]

Common-law marriage to Deborah Read

At age 17 in 1723, Franklin proposed to 15-year-old Deborah Read while a boarder in the Read home. At that time, Deborah’s mother was wary of allowing her young daughter to marry Franklin, who was on his way to London at Governor Keith’s request, and also because of his financial instability. Her own husband had recently died, and she declined Franklin’s request to marry her daughter.^[20]

While Franklin was in London, his trip was extended, and there were problems with the governor’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 her behind. Rodgers’s fate was unknown, and because of bigamy laws, Deborah was not free to remarry.^{[citation needed]}

Franklin established a common-law marriage with Deborah on September 1, 1730. They took in his recently acknowledged illegitimate young son and raised him in their household. They had two children together. Their son, Francis Folger Franklin, was born in October 1732 and died of smallpox in 1736. Their daughter, Sarah «Sally» Franklin, was born in 1743 and eventually married Richard Bache.^[43]

Deborah’s fear of the sea meant that she never accompanied Franklin on any of his extended trips to Europe; another possible reason why they spent much time apart is that he may have blamed her for possibly preventing their son Francis from being inoculated against the disease that subsequently killed him.^[44] Deborah wrote to him in November 1769, saying she was ill due to «dissatisfied distress» from his prolonged absence, but he did not return until his business was done.^[45] Deborah Read Franklin died of a stroke on December 14, 1774, while Franklin was on an extended mission to Great Britain; he returned in 1775.^[46]

William Franklin

In 1730, 24-year-old Franklin publicly acknowledged his illegitimate son William and raised him in his household. William was born on February 22, 1730, but his mother’s identity is unknown.^[47] He was educated in Philadelphia and beginning at about age 30 studied law in London in the early 1760s. William himself fathered an illegitimate son, William Temple Franklin, born on the same day and month: February 22, 1760.^[48] The boy’s mother was never identified, and he was placed in foster care. In 1762, the elder William Franklin married Elizabeth Downes, daughter of a planter from Barbados, in London. In 1763, he was appointed as the last royal governor of New Jersey.

A Loyalist to the king, William Franklin saw his relations with father Benjamin eventually break down over their differences about the American Revolutionary War, as Benjamin Franklin could never accept William’s position. Deposed in 1776 by the revolutionary government of New Jersey, William was placed under house arrest at his home in Perth Amboy for six months. After the Declaration of Independence, he was formally taken into custody by order of the Provincial Congress of New Jersey, an entity which he refused to recognize, regarding it as an «illegal assembly».^[49] He was incarcerated in Connecticut for two years, in Wallingford and Middletown, and, after being caught surreptitiously engaging Americans into supporting the Loyalist cause, was held in solitary confinement at Litchfield for eight months. When finally released in a prisoner exchange in 1778, he moved to New York City, which was occupied by the British at the time.^[50]

While in New York City, he became leader of the Board of Associated Loyalists, a quasi-military organization chartered by King George III and headquartered in New York City. They initiated guerrilla forays into New Jersey, southern Connecticut, and New York counties north of the city.^[51] When British troops evacuated from New York, William Franklin left with them and sailed to England. He settled in London, never to return to North America. In the preliminary peace talks in 1782 with Britain, «… Benjamin 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.»^{[52][unreliable source?]}

In 1733, Franklin began to publish the noted Poor Richard’s Almanack (with content both original and borrowed) under the pseudonym Richard Saunders, on which much of his popular reputation is based. He frequently wrote under pseudonyms. He had developed a distinct, signature style that was plain, pragmatic and had a sly, soft but self-deprecating tone with declarative sentences.^[53] Although it was no secret that he 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») and «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 his readers became well prepared. He sold about ten thousand copies per year—it became an institution.^[54] In 1741, Franklin began publishing The General Magazine and Historical Chronicle for all the British Plantations in America. He used the heraldic badge of the Prince of Wales as the cover illustration.

In 1758, the year he ceased writing for the Almanack, he printed Father Abraham’s Sermon, also known as The Way to Wealth. Franklin’s autobiography, begun in 1771 but published after his death, has become one of the classics of the genre.^{[citation needed]} He wrote a letter, «Advice to a Friend on Choosing a Mistress», dated June 25, 1745, in which he gives advice to a young man about channeling sexual urges. Due to its licentious nature, it was not published in collections of his papers during the nineteenth century. Federal court decisions from the mid-to-late twentieth century cited the document as a reason for overturning obscenity laws, using it to make a case against censorship.^[55]

Public life

Early steps in Pennsylvania

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 he had devised. Throughout his career, he 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.^[58]

As he matured, Franklin began to concern himself more with public affairs. In 1743, he first devised a scheme for the Academy, Charity School, and College of Philadelphia. However, the person he had in mind to run the academy, Rev. Richard Peters, refused and Franklin put his ideas away until 1749 when he printed his own pamphlet, Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pensilvania.^[59]: 30 He was appointed president of the Academy on November 13, 1749; the academy and the charity school opened in 1751.^[60]

In 1743, he 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.^[20]

During King George’s War, Franklin raised a militia called the Association for General Defense because the legislators of the city had decided to take no action to defend Philadelphia «either by erecting fortifications or building Ships of War». He raised money to create earthwork defenses and buy artillery. The largest of these was the «Association Battery» or «Grand Battery» of 50 guns.^[61][62]

In 1747, Franklin (already a very wealthy man) retired from printing and went into other businesses.^[63] He formed 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 many new discoveries.

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, he was appointed deputy postmaster-general of British North America. His most notable service in domestic politics was his reform of the postal system, with mail sent out every week.^[20]

In 1751, Franklin and Thomas Bond obtained a charter from the Pennsylvania legislature to establish a hospital. Pennsylvania Hospital was the first hospital in the colonies.^[64] In 1752, Franklin organized the Philadelphia Contributionship, the Colonies’ first homeowner’s insurance company.^[65][66]

Between 1750 and 1753, the «educational triumvirate»^[67] of Franklin, Samuel Johnson of Stratford, Connecticut, and schoolteacher William Smith built on Franklin’s initial scheme and created what Bishop James Madison, president of the College of William & Mary, called a «new-model»^[68] plan or style of American college. Franklin solicited, printed in 1752, and promoted an American textbook of moral philosophy by Samuel Johnson, titled Elementa Philosophica,^[69] to be taught in the new colleges. In June 1753, Johnson, Franklin, and Smith met in Stratford.^[70] They decided the new-model college would focus on the professions, with classes taught in English instead of Latin, have subject matter experts as professors instead of one tutor leading a class for four years, and there would be no religious test for admission.^[71] Johnson went on to found King’s College (now Columbia University) in New York City in 1754, while Franklin hired Smith as provost of the College of Philadelphia, which opened in 1755. At its first commencement, on May 17, 1757, seven men graduated; six with a Bachelor of Arts and one with a Master of Arts. It was later merged with the University of the State of Pennsylvania to become the University of Pennsylvania. The college was to become influential in guiding the founding documents of the United States: in the Continental Congress, for example, over one-third of the college-affiliated men who contributed to the Declaration of Independence between September 4, 1774, and July 4, 1776, were affiliated with the college.^[72]

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.^[73]

In 1753, both Harvard^[74] and Yale^[75] awarded him honorary master of arts degrees.^[76] In 1756, he received an honorary Master of Arts degree from the College of William & Mary.^[77] Later 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.^[78]

Postmaster

Well known as a printer and publisher, Franklin was appointed postmaster of Philadelphia in 1737, holding the office until 1753, when he and publisher William Hunter were named deputy postmasters–general of British North America, the first to hold the office. (Joint appointments were standard at the time, for political reasons.) He was responsible for the British colonies from Pennsylvania north and east, as far as the island of Newfoundland. A post office for local and outgoing mail had been established in Halifax, Nova Scotia, by local stationer Benjamin Leigh, on April 23, 1754, but service was irregular. Franklin opened the first post office to offer regular, monthly mail in Halifax on December 9, 1755. Meantime, Hunter became postal administrator in Williamsburg, Virginia, and oversaw areas south of Annapolis, Maryland. Franklin reorganized the service’s accounting system and improved speed of delivery between Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. By 1761, efficiencies led to the first profits for the colonial post office.^[79]

When the lands of New France were ceded to the British under the Treaty of Paris in 1763, the British province of Quebec was created among them, and Franklin saw mail service expanded between Montreal, Trois-Rivières, Quebec City, and New York. For the greater part of his appointment, he lived in England (from 1757 to 1762, and again from 1764 to 1774)—about three-quarters of his term.^[80] Eventually, his sympathies for the rebel cause in the American Revolution led to his dismissal on January 31, 1774.^[81]

On July 26, 1775, the Second Continental Congress established the United States Post Office and named Franklin as the first United States postmaster general. He had been a postmaster for decades and was a natural choice for the position.^[83] He had just returned from England and was appointed chairman of a Committee of Investigation to establish a postal system. The report of the committee, providing for the appointment of a postmaster general for the 13 American colonies, was considered by the Continental Congress on July 25 and 26. On July 26, 1775, Franklin was appointed postmaster general, the first appointed under the Continental Congress. His apprentice, William Goddard, felt that his ideas were mostly responsible for shaping the postal system and that the appointment should have gone to him, but he graciously conceded it to Franklin, 36 years his senior.^[82] Franklin, however, appointed Goddard as Surveyor of the Posts, issued him a signed pass, and directed him to investigate and inspect the various post offices and mail routes as he saw fit.^[84][85] The newly established postal system became the United States Post Office, a system that continues to operate today.^[86]

Decades in London

From the mid-1750s to the mid-1770s, Franklin spent much of his time in London.^{[citation needed]}

Political work

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.^{[citation needed]}

At this time, many members of the Pennsylvania Assembly were feuding with William Penn’s heirs, who controlled the colony as proprietors. After his return to the colony, 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 him to England again to continue the struggle against the Penn family proprietorship. During this trip, events drastically changed the nature of his mission.^[87]

In London, Franklin opposed the 1765 Stamp Act. 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 he testified during the House of Commons proceedings that led to its repeal.^[88] With this, Franklin suddenly emerged as the leading spokesman for American interests in England. He wrote popular essays on behalf of the colonies. Georgia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts also appointed him as their agent to the Crown.^[87]

During his lengthy missions to London between 1757 and 1775, Franklin lodged in a house on Craven Street, just off the Strand in central London.^[89] During his stays there, he 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. The house is now a museum known as the Benjamin Franklin House. Whilst in London, Franklin became involved in radical politics. He belonged to a gentleman’s club (which he called «the honest Whigs»), which held stated meetings, and included members such as Richard Price, the minister of Newington Green Unitarian Church who ignited the Revolution controversy, and Andrew Kippis.^[90]

Scientific work

In 1756, Franklin had become a member of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce (now the Royal Society of Arts), which had been founded in 1754. After his return to the United States in 1775, he became the Society’s Corresponding Member, continuing a close connection. The Royal Society of Arts instituted a Benjamin Franklin Medal in 1956 to commemorate the 250th anniversary of his birth and the 200th anniversary of his membership of the RSA.^[91]

The study of natural philosophy (referred today as science in general) drew him into overlapping circles of acquaintance. Franklin was, for example, a corresponding member of the Lunar Society of Birmingham.^[92] In 1759, the University of St Andrews awarded him an honorary doctorate in recognition of his accomplishments.^[93] In October 1759, he was granted Freedom of the Borough of St Andrews.^[94] He was also awarded an honorary doctorate by Oxford University in 1762. Because of these honors, he was often addressed as «Dr. Franklin».^[1]

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 he regarded as redundant (c, j, q, w, x, and y), and substituted six new letters for sounds he felt lacked letters of their own. This alphabet never caught on, and he eventually lost interest.^[95]

Travels around Europe

Franklin used London as a base to travel. In 1771, he made short journeys through different parts of England, staying with Joseph Priestley at Leeds, Thomas Percival at Manchester and Erasmus Darwin at Lichfield.^[96] In Scotland, he spent five days with Lord Kames near Stirling and stayed for three weeks with David Hume in Edinburgh. In 1759, he visited Edinburgh with his son and later reported that he considered his six weeks in Scotland «six weeks of the densest happiness I have met with in any part of my life».^[97]

In Ireland, he stayed with Lord Hillsborough. Franklin noted of him that «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.»^[98] 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 receive this honor.^[96] While touring Ireland, he was deeply moved by the level of poverty he witnessed. The economy of the Kingdom of Ireland was affected by the same trade regulations and laws that governed the Thirteen Colonies. He feared that the American colonies could eventually come to the same level of poverty if the regulations and laws continued to apply to them.^[99]

Franklin spent two months in German lands in 1766, but his connections to the country stretched across a lifetime. He declared a debt of gratitude to German scientist Otto von Guericke for his early studies of electricity. Franklin also co-authored the first treaty of friendship between Prussia and America in 1785.^[100] In September 1767, he visited Paris with his usual traveling partner, Sir John Pringle, 1st Baronet. 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.^[5]

Defending the American cause

One line of argument in Parliament was that Americans should pay a share of the costs of the French and Indian War and therefore taxes should be levied on them. Franklin became the American spokesman in highly publicized testimony in Parliament in 1766. He stated that Americans already contributed heavily to the defense of the Empire. He said local governments had raised, outfitted and paid 25,000 soldiers to fight France—as many as Britain itself sent—and spent many millions from American treasuries doing so in the French and Indian War alone.^[101][102]

In 1772, Franklin obtained private letters of Thomas Hutchinson and Andrew Oliver, governor and lieutenant governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, proving that they had encouraged the Crown to crack down on Bostonians. Franklin sent them to America, where they escalated tensions. The letters were finally leaked to the public in the Boston Gazette in mid-June 1773,^[103] causing a political firestorm in Massachusetts and raising significant questions in England.^[104] The British began to regard him as the fomenter of serious trouble. Hopes for a peaceful solution ended as he was systematically ridiculed and humiliated by Solicitor-General Alexander Wedderburn, before the Privy Council on January 29, 1774. He returned to Philadelphia in March 1775, and abandoned his accommodationist stance.^[105]

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».^[106]

Agent for British and Hellfire Club membership

Franklin is known to have occasionally attended the Hellfire Club’s meetings during 1758 as a non-member during his time in England. However, some authors and historians would argue he was in fact a British spy. As there are no records left (having been burned in 1774^[107]), many of these members are just assumed or linked by letters sent to each other.^[108] One early proponent that Franklin was a member of the Hellfire Club and a double agent is the historian Donald McCormick,^[109] who has a history of making controversial claims.^[110]

Coming of revolution

In 1763, soon after Franklin returned to Pennsylvania from England for the first time, 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 marched on Philadelphia. Franklin helped to organize a local militia to defend the capital against the mob. He 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?»^[111]

He provided an early response to British surveillance through his own network of counter-surveillance and manipulation. «He waged a public relations campaign, secured secret aid, played a role in privateering expeditions, and churned out effective and inflammatory propaganda.»^[112]

Declaration of Independence

By the time Franklin arrived in Philadelphia on May 5, 1775, after his second mission to Great Britain, the American Revolution had begun—with skirmishes breaking out between colonials and British at Lexington and Concord. The New England militia had forced the main British army to remain inside Boston.^{[citation needed]} The Pennsylvania Assembly unanimously chose Franklin as their delegate to the Second Continental Congress.^{[citation needed]} 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,^{[citation needed]} he made several «small but important» changes to the draft sent to him by Thomas Jefferson.^[114]

At the signing, he is quoted as having replied to a comment by John Hancock that they must all hang together: «Yes, we must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.»^[115]

Ambassador to France (1776–1785)

On October 26, 1776, Franklin was dispatched to France as commissioner for the United States.^[116] He took with him as secretary his 16-year-old grandson, William Temple Franklin. They 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 toward the French nation with great success, which included securing a critical military alliance in 1778 and signing the 1783 Treaty of Paris.^[117]

Among his associates in France was Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau—a French Revolutionary writer, orator and statesman who in 1791 was elected president of the National Assembly.^[118] In July 1784, Franklin met with Mirabeau and contributed anonymous materials that the Frenchman used in his first signed work: Considerations sur l’ordre de Cincinnatus.^[119] The publication was critical of the Society of the Cincinnati, established in the United States. Franklin and Mirabeau thought of it as a «noble order», inconsistent with the egalitarian ideals of the new republic.^[120]

During his stay in France, he was active as a Freemason, serving as venerable master of the lodge Les Neuf Sœurs from 1779 until 1781. 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 Franklin.^[121] In doing so, the committee concluded, through blind trials that mesmerism only seemed to work when the subjects expected it, which discredited mesmerism and became the first major demonstration of the placebo effect, which was described at that time as «imagination».^[122] In 1781, he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.^[123]

Franklin’s advocacy for religious tolerance in France contributed to arguments made by French philosophers and politicians that resulted in Louis XVI’s signing of the Edict of Versailles in November 1787. This edict effectively nullified the Edict of Fontainebleau, which had denied non-Catholics civil status and the right to openly practice their faith.^[124]

Franklin also served as American minister to Sweden, although he never visited that country.^[125] He negotiated a treaty that was signed in April 1783. On August 27, 1783, in Paris, he witnessed the world’s first hydrogen balloon flight.^[126] Le Globe, created by professor Jacques Charles and Les Frères Robert, was watched by a vast crowd as it rose from the Champ de Mars (now the site of the Eiffel Tower).^[127] Franklin became so enthusiastic that he subscribed financially to the next project to build a manned hydrogen balloon.^[128] On December 1, 1783, Franklin was seated in the special enclosure for honored guests when La Charlière took off from the Jardin des Tuileries, piloted by Charles and Nicolas-Louis Robert.^[126][129]

Return to America

When he returned home in 1785, Franklin occupied a position second only to that of George Washington as the champion of American independence. He returned from France with an unexplained shortage of 100,000 pounds in Congressional funds. In response to a question from a member of Congress about this, Franklin, quoting the Bible, quipped, «Muzzle not the ox that treadeth out his master’s grain.» The missing funds were never again mentioned in Congress.^[131]
Le Ray honored him with a commissioned portrait painted by Joseph Duplessis, which now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. After his return, Franklin became an abolitionist and freed his two slaves. He eventually became president of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society.^[99]

President of Pennsylvania and Delegate to the Constitutional convention

Special balloting conducted October 18, 1785, unanimously elected him the sixth president of the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania, replacing John Dickinson. The office was practically that of the governor. He 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 re-elected to a full term on October 29, 1785, and again in the fall of 1786 and on October 31, 1787. In that capacity, he served as host to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 in Philadelphia.^[132]

He also served as a delegate to the Convention. It was primarily an honorary position and he seldom engaged in debate.

Death

Franklin suffered from obesity throughout his middle-age and later years, which resulted in multiple health problems, particularly gout, which worsened as he aged. In poor health during the signing of the US Constitution in 1787, he was rarely seen in public from then until his death.^{[citation needed]}

Benjamin Franklin died from pleuritic attack^[133] at his home in Philadelphia on April 17, 1790.^[134] He was aged 84 at the time of his death. His last words were reportedly, «a dying man can do nothing easy», to his daughter after she suggested that he change position in bed and lie on his side so he could breathe more easily.^[135][136] Franklin’s death is described in the book The Life of Benjamin Franklin, quoting from the account of 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.^[137]

Approximately 20,000 people attended his funeral. He was interred in Christ Church Burial Ground in Philadelphia.^[138][139] Upon learning of his death, the Constitutional Assembly in Revolutionary France entered into a state of mourning for a period of three days, and memorial services were conducted in honor of Franklin throughout the country.^[140] 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.^[141]

Franklin’s actual grave, however, as he specified in his final will, simply reads «Benjamin and Deborah Franklin».^[142]

Inventions and scientific inquiries

Franklin was a prodigious inventor. Among his many creations were the lightning rod, Franklin stove, bifocal glasses and the flexible urinary catheter. He 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.»^[143]

Electricity

Franklin started exploring the phenomenon of electricity in the 1740s, after he met the itinerant lecturer Archibald Spencer who used static electricity in his demonstrations.^[144] He proposed that «vitreous» and «resinous» electricity were not different types of «electrical fluid» (as electricity was called then), but the same «fluid» under different pressures. (The same proposal was made independently that same year by William Watson.) He was the first to label them as positive and negative respectively,^[145][146] and he was the first to discover the principle of conservation of charge.^[147] In 1748, he constructed a multiple plate capacitor, that he called an «electrical battery» (not a true battery like Volta’s pile) by placing eleven panes of glass sandwiched between lead plates, suspended with silk cords and connected by wires.^[148]

In pursuit of more pragmatic uses for electricity, remarking in spring 1749 that he felt «chagrin’d a little» that his experiments had heretofore resulted in «Nothing in this Way of Use to Mankind», he planned a practical demonstration. He proposed a dinner party where a turkey was to be killed via electric shock and roasted on an electrical spit.^[149] After having prepared several turkeys this way, he noted that «the birds kill’d in this manner eat uncommonly tender.»^[150] Franklin recounted that in the process of one of these experiments, he was shocked by a pair of Leyden jars, resulting in numbness in his arms that persisted for one evening, noting «I am Ashamed to have been Guilty of so Notorious a Blunder.»^[151]

Franklin briefly investigated electrotherapy, including the use of the electric bath. This work led to the field becoming widely known.^[152] In recognition of his work with electricity, he received the Royal Society’s Copley Medal in 1753, and in 1756, he became one of the few 18th-century Americans elected 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 advised Harvard University in its acquisition of new electrical laboratory apparatus after the complete loss of its original collection, in a fire that destroyed the original Harvard Hall in 1764. The collection he assembled later became part of the Harvard Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments, now on public display in its Science Center.^[153]

Kite experiment and lightning rod

Franklin published a proposal for an experiment to prove that lightning is electricity by flying a kite in a storm. On May 10, 1752, Thomas-François Dalibard of France conducted Franklin’s experiment using a 40-foot-tall (12 m) iron rod instead of a kite, and he extracted electrical sparks from a cloud. On June 15, 1752, Franklin may possibly have conducted his well-known kite experiment in Philadelphia, successfully extracting sparks from a cloud. He described the experiment in his newspaper, The Pennsylvania Gazette, on October 19, 1752,^[154][155] without mentioning that he himself had performed it.^[156] This account was read to the Royal Society on December 21 and printed as such in the Philosophical Transactions.^[157] Joseph Priestley published an account with additional details in his 1767 History and Present Status of Electricity. Franklin was careful to stand on an insulator, keeping dry under a roof to avoid the danger of electric shock.^[158] Others, such as Georg Wilhelm Richmann in Russia, were indeed electrocuted in performing lightning experiments during the months immediately following his experiment.^[159]

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. He did not perform this experiment in the way that is often pictured in popular literature, flying the kite and waiting to be struck by lightning, as it would have been dangerous.^[160] Instead he used the kite to collect some electric charge from a storm cloud, showing that lightning was electrical.^[161] On October 19, 1752, in a letter to England with directions for repeating the experiment, he wrote:

When rain has wet the kite twine so that it can conduct the electric fire freely, you will find it streams out plentifully from the key at the approach of your knuckle, and with this key a phial, or Leyden jar, may be charged: and from electric fire thus obtained spirits may be kindled, and all other electric experiments [may be] performed which are usually done by the help of a rubber glass globe or tube; and therefore the sameness of the electrical matter with that of lightening [sic] completely demonstrated.^[161]

Franklin’s electrical experiments led to his invention of the lightning rod. He said that conductors with a sharp^[162] rather than a smooth point could discharge silently and at a far greater distance. He surmised that this could help protect 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.^[163]

Population studies

Franklin had a major influence on the emerging science of demography or population studies.^[164] In the 1730s and 1740s, he began taking notes on population growth, finding that the American population had the fastest growth rate on Earth.^[165] Emphasizing that population growth depended on food supplies, he emphasized the abundance of food and available farmland in America. He calculated that America’s population was doubling every 20 years and would surpass that of England in a century.^[166] In 1751, he drafted Observations concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, etc. Four years later, it was anonymously printed in Boston and was quickly reproduced in Britain, where it influenced the economist Adam Smith and later the demographer Thomas Malthus, who credited Franklin for discovering a rule of population growth.^[167] Franklin’s predictions how British mercantilism was unsustainable alarmed British leaders who did not want to be surpassed by the colonies, so they became more willing to impose restrictions on the colonial economy.^[168]

Kammen (1990) and Drake (2011) say Franklin’s Observations concerning the Increase of Mankind (1755) stands alongside Ezra Stiles’ «Discourse on Christian Union» (1760) as the leading works of 18th-century Anglo-American demography; Drake credits Franklin’s «wide readership and prophetic insight».^[169][170] Franklin was also a pioneer in the study of slave demography, as shown in his 1755 essay.^[171] In his capacity as a farmer, he wrote at least one critique about the negative consequences of price controls, trade restrictions, and subsidy of the poor. This is succinctly preserved in his letter to the London Chronicle published November 29, 1766, titled «On the Price of Corn, and Management of the poor».^[172]

Oceanography

As deputy postmaster, Franklin became interested in North Atlantic Ocean circulation patterns. While in England in 1768, he heard a complaint from the Colonial Board of Customs: Why did it take British packet ships carrying mail several weeks longer to reach New York than it took an average merchant ship to reach Newport, Rhode Island? The merchantmen had a longer and more complex voyage because they left from London, while the packets left from Falmouth in Cornwall.^[173] Franklin put the question to his cousin Timothy Folger, a Nantucket whaler captain, who told him that merchant ships routinely avoided a strong eastbound mid-ocean current. The mail packet captains sailed dead into it, thus fighting an adverse current of 3 miles per hour (5 km/h). Franklin worked with Folger and other experienced ship captains, learning enough to chart the current and name it the Gulf Stream, by which it is still known today.^[174]

Franklin published his Gulf Stream chart in 1770 in England, where it was ignored. Subsequent versions were printed in France in 1778 and the U.S. in 1786. The British original edition of the chart had been so thoroughly ignored that everyone assumed it was lost forever until Phil Richardson, a Woods Hole oceanographer and Gulf Stream expert, discovered it in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris in 1980.^[175][176] This find received front-page coverage in The New York Times.^[177] It took many years for British sea captains to adopt Franklin’s advice on navigating the current; once they did, they were able to trim two weeks from their sailing time.^[178][179] In 1853, the oceanographer and cartographer Matthew Fontaine Maury noted that while Franklin charted and codified the Gulf Stream, he did not discover it:

Though it was Dr. Franklin and Captain Tim Folger, who first turned the Gulf Stream to nautical account, the discovery that there was a Gulf Stream cannot be said to belong to either of them, for its existence was known to Peter Martyr d’Anghiera, and to Sir Humphrey Gilbert, in the 16th century.^[180]

An aging Franklin accumulated all his oceanographic findings in Maritime Observations, published by the Philosophical Society’s transactions in 1786.^[181] It contained ideas for sea anchors, catamaran hulls, watertight compartments, shipboard lightning rods and a soup bowl designed to stay stable in stormy weather.

Theories and experiments

Franklin was, along with his contemporary Leonhard Euler, the only major scientist who supported Christiaan Huygens’s wave theory of light, which was basically ignored by the rest of the scientific community. In the 18th century, Isaac Newton’s corpuscular theory was held to be true; it took Thomas Young’s well-known slit experiment in 1803 to persuade most scientists to believe Huygens’s theory.^[182]

On October 21, 1743, according to the popular myth, a storm moving from the southwest denied Franklin the opportunity of witnessing a lunar eclipse. He 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, he 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 that greatly influenced meteorology.^[183] After the Icelandic volcanic eruption of Laki in 1783, and the subsequent harsh European winter of 1784, Franklin made observations on the causal nature of these two seemingly separate events. He wrote about them in a lecture series.^[184]

Though Franklin is famously associated with kites from his lightning experiments, he has also been noted by many for using kites to pull humans and ships across waterways.^[185] George Pocock in the book A Treatise on The Aeropleustic Art, or Navigation in the Air, by means of Kites, or Buoyant Sails^[186] noted being inspired by Benjamin Franklin’s traction of his body by kite power across a waterway.

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, he conducted experiments. In 1758 on a warm day in Cambridge, England, he and fellow scientist John Hadley experimented by continually wetting the ball of a mercury thermometer with ether and using bellows to evaporate the ether.^[187] With each subsequent evaporation, the thermometer read a lower temperature, eventually reaching 7 °F (−14 °C). Another thermometer showed that the room temperature was 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.»^[188]

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.^[189] However, as reported in 1836 by Franklin’s great-grandson Prof. Alexander Dallas Bache of the University of Pennsylvania, the law of the effect of heat on the conduction of bodies otherwise non-conductors, for example, glass, could be attributed to Franklin. Franklin wrote, «… 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.»^[190]

While traveling on a ship, Franklin had observed that the wake of a ship was diminished when the cooks scuttled their greasy water. He studied the effects on a large pond in Clapham Common, London. «I fetched out a cruet of oil and dropt a little of it on the water … though not more than a teaspoon full, produced an instant calm over a space of several yards square.» He later used the trick to «calm the waters» by carrying «a little oil in the hollow joint of my cane».^[191]

Decision-making

In a 1772 letter to Joseph Priestley, Franklin laid out the earliest known description of the Pro & Con list,^[192] a common decision-making technique, now sometimes called a decisional balance sheet:

… my Way is, to divide half a Sheet of Paper by a Line into two Columns, writing over the one Pro, and over the other Con. Then during three or four Days Consideration I put down under the different Heads short Hints of the different Motives that at different Times occur to me for or against the Measure. When I have thus got them all together in one View, I endeavour to estimate their respective Weights; and where I find two, one on each side, that seem equal, I strike them both out: If I find a Reason pro equal to some two Reasons con, I strike out the three. If I judge some two Reasons con equal to some three Reasons pro, I strike out the five; and thus proceeding I find at length where the Ballance lies; and if after a Day or two of farther Consideration nothing new that is of Importance occurs on either side, I come to a Determination accordingly.^[192]

Political, social, and religious views

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. He felt that organized religion was necessary to keep men good to their fellow men, but rarely attended religious services himself.^[193] When he met Voltaire in Paris and asked his fellow member of the Enlightenment vanguard 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.»^[194]

Franklin’s parents were both pious Puritans.^[195] The family attended the Old South Church, the most liberal Puritan congregation in Boston, where Benjamin Franklin was baptized in 1706.^[196] 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.»^[197] His first pen name, Silence Dogood, paid homage both to the book and to a widely known sermon by Mather. The book preached the importance of forming voluntary associations to benefit society. Franklin learned about forming do-good associations from Mather, but his organizational skills made him the most influential force in making voluntarism an enduring part of the American ethos.^[198]

Franklin formulated a presentation of his beliefs and published it in 1728.^[199] It did not mention many of the Puritan ideas regarding salvation, the divinity of Jesus, or indeed much religious dogma. He classified himself as a deist in his 1771 autobiography,^[200] although he still considered himself a Christian.^[201] He retained a strong faith in a God as the wellspring of morality and goodness in man, and as a Providential actor in history responsible for American independence.^[202]

At a critical impasse during the Constitutional Convention in June 1787, he attempted to introduce the practice of daily common prayer with these words:

… In the beginning of the contest with G. Britain, when we were sensible of danger we had daily prayer in this room for the Divine Protection. Our prayers, Sir, were heard, and they were graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of a Superintending providence in our favor. … And have we now forgotten that powerful friend? or do we imagine that we no longer need His assistance. I have lived, Sir, 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? We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings that «except the Lord build they labor in vain that build it.» I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without his concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than the Builders of Babel: … I therefore beg leave to move—that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business, and that one or more of the Clergy of this City be requested to officiate in that service.^[203]

The motion met with resistance and was never brought to a vote.^[204]

Franklin was an enthusiastic supporter of the evangelical minister George Whitefield during the First Great Awakening. He did not himself subscribe to Whitefield’s theology, but he admired Whitefield for exhorting people to worship God through good works. He published all of Whitefield’s sermons and journals, thereby earning a lot of money and boosting the Great Awakening.^[205]

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.^[206][207]

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».^[208] These Puritan values included his devotion to egalitarianism, education, industry, thrift, honesty, temperance, charity and community spirit.^[209]

The classical authors read in the Enlightenment period taught an abstract ideal of republican government based on hierarchical social orders of king, aristocracy and commoners. It was widely believed that English liberties relied on their balance of power, but also hierarchal deference to the privileged class.^[210] «Puritanism … and the epidemic evangelism of the mid-eighteenth century, had created challenges to the traditional notions of social stratification»^[211] 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.^[211] Franklin, steeped in Puritanism and an enthusiastic supporter of the evangelical movement, rejected the salvation dogma but embraced the radical notion of egalitarian democracy.^{[citation needed]}

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.»^[212] These Puritan values and the desire to pass them on, were one of his quintessentially American characteristics and helped shape the character of the nation. 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.^[213]

One of his notable 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.»^[206] «He helped create a new type of nation that would draw strength from its religious pluralism.»^[214] The evangelical revivalists who were active mid-century, such as Whitefield, were the greatest advocates of religious freedom, «claiming liberty of conscience to be an ‘inalienable right of every rational creature.'»^[215] Whitefield’s supporters in Philadelphia, including Franklin, erected «a large, new hall, that … could provide a pulpit to anyone of any belief.»^[216] 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».^[214] He composed «A Parable Against Persecution», an apocryphal 51st chapter of Genesis in which God teaches Abraham the duty of tolerance.^[217] While he was living in London in 1774, he was present at the birth of British Unitarianism, attending the inaugural session of the Essex Street Chapel, at which Theophilus Lindsey drew together the first avowedly Unitarian congregation in England; this was somewhat politically risky and pushed religious tolerance to new boundaries, as a denial of the doctrine of the Trinity was illegal until the 1813 Act.^[218]

Although his parents had intended for him a career in the church,^[18] Franklin as a young man adopted the Enlightenment religious belief in deism, that God’s truths can be found entirely through nature and reason,^[219] declaring, «I soon became a thorough Deist.»^[220] He rejected Christian dogma in a 1725 pamphlet A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain,^[221] which he later saw as an embarrassment,^[222] while simultaneously asserting that God is «all wise, all good, all powerful.»^[222] 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.^[223] Moreover, because of his proposal that prayers be said in the Constitutional Convention of 1787, many have contended that in his later life he became a pious Christian.^[224][225]

According to David Morgan,^[226] Franklin was a proponent of religion in general. He prayed to «Powerful Goodness» and referred to God as «the infinite». John Adams noted that he 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 states that he believes 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.»^[227]

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:

As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his Religion, as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupt changes, and I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some Doubts as to his divinity; tho’ it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and I think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an Opportunity of knowing the Truth with less Trouble. I see no harm, however, in its being believed, if that belief has the good consequence, as it probably has, of making his doctrines more respected and better observed; especially as I do not perceive that the Supreme takes it amiss, by distinguishing the unbelievers in his government of the world with any particular marks of his displeasure.^[20]

On July 4, 1776, Congress appointed a three-member committee composed of Franklin, Jefferson, and Adams to design the Great Seal of the United States. Franklin’s proposal (which was not adopted) featured the motto: «Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God» and a scene from the Book of Exodus, with Moses, the Israelites, the pillar of fire, and George III depicted as pharaoh. The design that was produced was not acted upon by Congress, and the Great Seal’s design was not finalized until a third committee was appointed in 1782.^[228][229]

Franklin strongly supported the right to freedom of speech:

In those wretched countries where a man cannot call his tongue his own, he can scarce call anything his own. Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech …
Without freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom, and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech, which is the right of every man …

Thirteen Virtues

Franklin sought to cultivate his character by a plan of 13 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 13 virtues as:^[231]

1. Temperance. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.»
2. Silence. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.»
3. Order. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
4. Resolution. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
5. Frugality. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.
6. Industry. Lose no time; be always employ’d in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.
7. Sincerity. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.
8. Justice. Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
9. Moderation. Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
10. Cleanliness. Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation.
11. Tranquility. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
12. Chastity. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.
13. Humility. Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

Franklin did not 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 he did not adhere completely to the enumerated 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 and wrote, «I hope, therefore, that some of my descendants may follow the example and reap the benefit.»^[232]

Slavery

Franklin owned as many as seven slaves, including two men who worked in his household and his shop.^[233][234] He posted paid ads for the sale of slaves and for the capture of runaway slaves and allowed the sale of slaves in his general store. However, he later became an outspoken critic of slavery. In 1758, he advocated the opening of a school for the education of black slaves in Philadelphia.^[235] He took two slaves to England with him, Peter and King. King escaped with a woman to live in the outskirts of London,^[236] and by 1758 he was working for a household in Suffolk.^[237] After returning from England in 1762, Franklin became notably more abolitionist in nature, attacking American slavery. In the wake of Somerset v Stewart, he voiced frustration at British abolitionists:

O Pharisaical Britain! to pride thyself in setting free a single Slave that happens to land on thy coasts, while thy Merchants in all thy ports are encouraged by thy laws to continue a commerce whereby so many hundreds of thousands are dragged into a slavery that can scarce be said to end with their lives, since it is entailed on their posterity!^[238][239]

Franklin, however, refused to publicly debate the issue of slavery at the 1787 Constitutional Convention.^[240]

At the time of the American founding, there were about half a million slaves in the United States, mostly in the five southernmost states, where they made up 40% of the population. Many of the leading American founders – most notably Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and James Madison – owned slaves, but many others did not. Benjamin Franklin thought that slavery was «an atrocious debasement of human nature» and «a source of serious evils.» He and Benjamin Rush founded the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery in 1774.^[241] In 1790, Quakers from New York and Pennsylvania presented their petition for abolition to Congress. Their argument against slavery was backed by the Pennsylvania Abolitionist Society.^[242]

In his later years, as Congress was forced to deal with the issue of slavery, Franklin wrote several essays that stressed the importance of the abolition of slavery and of the integration of African Americans into American society. These writings included:

• An Address to the Public (1789)
• A Plan for Improving the Condition of the Free Blacks (1789)
• Sidi Mehemet Ibrahim on the Slave Trade (1790)^[243]

Vegetarianism

Franklin became a vegetarian when he was a teenager apprenticing at a print shop, after coming upon a book by the early vegetarian advocate Thomas Tryon.^[244] In addition, he would have also been familiar with the moral arguments espoused by prominent vegetarian Quakers in colonial Pennsylvania, such as Benjamin Lay and John Woolman. His reasons for vegetarianism were based on health, ethics, and economy:

When about 16 years of age, I happen’d to meet with a book written by one Tryon, recommending a vegetable diet. I determined to go into it … [By not eating meat] I presently found that I could save half what [my brother] paid me. This was an additional fund for buying books: but I had another advantage in it … I made the greater progress from that greater clearness of head and quicker apprehension which usually attend temperance in eating and drinking.^[245]

Franklin also declared the consumption of meat to be «unprovoked murder».^[246] Despite his convictions, he began to eat fish after being tempted by fried cod on a boat sailing from Boston, justifying the eating of animals by observing that the fish’s stomach contained other fish. Nonetheless, he recognized the faulty ethics in this argument^[247] and would continue to be a vegetarian on and off. He was «excited» by tofu, which he learned of from the writings of a Spanish missionary to South East Asia, Domingo Fernández Navarrete. Franklin sent a sample of soybeans to prominent American botanist John Bartram and had previously written to British diplomat and Chinese trade expert James Flint inquiring as to how tofu was made,^[248] with their correspondence believed to be the first documented use of the word «tofu» in the English language.^[249]

Franklin’s «Second Reply to Vindex Patriae«, a 1766 letter advocating self-sufficiency and less dependence on England, lists various examples of the bounty of American agricultural products, and does not mention meat.^[248] Detailing new American customs, he wrote that, «[t]hey resolved last spring to eat no more lamb; and not a joint of lamb has since been seen on any of their tables … the sweet little creatures are all alive to this day, with the prettiest fleeces on their backs imaginable.»^[250]

View on inoculation

The concept of preventing smallpox by variolation was introduced to colonial America by an African slave named Onesimus via his owner Cotton Mather in the early eighteenth century, but the procedure was not immediately accepted. James Franklin’s newspaper carried articles in 1721^[251] that vigorously denounced the concept.^[252]

However, by 1736 Benjamin Franklin, by then a prominent Boston citizen, was known as a supporter of the procedure. Therefore, when four-year-old «Franky» died of smallpox, opponents of the procedure circulated rumors that the child had been inoculated, and that this was the cause of his subsequent death. When Franklin became aware of this gossip, he placed a notice in the Pennsylvania Gazette, stating: «I do hereby sincerely declare, that he was not inoculated, but receiv’d the Distemper in the common Way of Infection … I intended to have my Child inoculated.». The child had a bad case of flux diarrhea, and his parents had waited for him to get well before having him inoculated. Franklin wrote in his Autobiography: «In 1736 I lost one of my sons, a fine boy of four years old, by the small-pox, taken in the common way. I long regretted bitterly, and still regret that I had not given it to him by inoculation. This I mention for the sake of parents who omit that operation, on the supposition that they should never forgive themselves if a child died under it; my example showing that the regret may be the same either way, and that, therefore, the safer should be chosen.»^[253]

Interests and activities

Musical endeavors

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.^[254] While he was in London, he developed a much-improved version of the glass harmonica, in which the glasses rotate on a shaft, with the player’s fingers held steady, instead of the other way around. He worked with the London glassblower Charles James to create it, and instruments based on his mechanical version soon found their way to other parts of Europe.^[255] Joseph Haydn, a fan of Franklin’s enlightened ideas, had a glass harmonica in his instrument collection.^[256] Mozart composed for Franklin’s glass harmonica,^[257] as did Beethoven.^[258][259] Gaetano Donizetti used the instrument in the accompaniment to Amelia’s aria «Par che mi dica ancora» in the tragic opera Il castello di Kenilworth (1821),^[260] as did Camille Saint-Saëns in his 1886 The Carnival of the Animals.^[261] Richard Strauss calls for the glass harmonica in his 1917 Die Frau ohne Schatten,^[257] and numerous other composers used Franklin’s instrument as well.^{[citation needed]}

Chess

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.^[262] His essay on «The Morals of Chess» in Columbian Magazine in December 1786 is the second known writing on chess in America.^[262] This essay in praise of chess and prescribing a code of behavior for the game has been widely reprinted and translated.^{[263][264][265][266]} He and a friend 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.^[267]

Franklin was able to play chess more frequently against stronger opposition during his many years as a civil servant and diplomat in England, where the game was far better established than in America. He was able to improve his playing standard by facing more experienced players during this period. He regularly attended Old Slaughter’s Coffee House in London for chess and socializing, making many important personal contacts. While in Paris, both as a visitor and later as ambassador, he visited the famous Café de la Régence, which France’s strongest players made their regular meeting place. No records of his games have survived, so it is not possible to ascertain his playing strength in modern terms.^[268]

Franklin was inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in 1999.^[262] The Franklin Mercantile Chess Club in Philadelphia, the second oldest chess club in the U.S., is named in his honor.^[269]

Legacy

Designations
Pennsylvania Historical Marker
Official name	Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790)
Type	City
Criteria	Government & Politics, Government & Politics 18th Century, Invention, Science & Medicine, Professions & Vocations, Publishing & Journalism, Writers
Designated	June 30, 1990[270]
Location	Chestnut St. between 3rd & 4th Sts., at Nat’l. Liberty Mus., Philadelphia 39°56′56″N 75°08′49″W / 39.94881°N 75.14683°W
Marker Text	Printer, author, inventor, diplomat, philanthropist, statesman, and scientist. The eighteenth century’s most illustrious Pennsylvanian built a house in Franklin Court starting in 1763, and here he lived the last five years of his life.

Bequest

Franklin bequeathed £1,000 (about $4,400 at the time, or about $125,000 in 2021 dollars^[271]) 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.^[272] 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.

By 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 entire fund was later dedicated to supporting this institute.^[273][274]

In 1787, a group of prominent ministers in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, proposed the foundation of a new college named in Franklin’s honor. Franklin donated £200 towards the development of Franklin College (now called Franklin & Marshall College).^[275]

Likeness and image

As the only person to have signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776, Treaty of Alliance with France in 1778, Treaty of Paris in 1783, and U.S. Constitution in 1787, Franklin is considered one of the leading Founding Fathers of the United States. His pervasive influence in the early history of the nation has led to his being jocularly called «the only president of the United States who was never president of the United States».^[276]

Franklin’s likeness is ubiquitous. Since 1928, it has adorned American $100 bills. From 1948 to 1963, Franklin’s portrait was on the half-dollar.^[277] He has appeared on a $50 bill and on several varieties of the $100 bill from 1914 and 1918.^[278] Franklin also appears on the $1,000 Series EE savings bond.^[279]

On April 12, 1976, as part of a bicentennial celebration, Congress dedicated a 20-foot (6 m) tall marble statue in Philadelphia’s Franklin Institute as the Benjamin Franklin National Memorial.^[280] Many of Franklin’s personal possessions are on display at the institute. In London, his house at 36 Craven Street, which is the only surviving former residence of Franklin, was first marked with a blue plaque and has since been opened to the public as the Benjamin Franklin House.^[281] In 1998, workmen restoring the building dug up the remains of six children and four adults hidden below the home. A total of 15 bodies have been recovered.^[282] The Friends of Benjamin Franklin House (the organization responsible for the restoration) note that the bones were likely placed there by William Hewson, who lived in the house for two years and who had built a small anatomy school at the back of the house. They note that while Franklin likely knew what Hewson was doing, he probably did not participate in any dissections because he was much more of a physicist than a medical man.^[283]

He has been honored on U.S. postage stamps many times. The image of Franklin, the first postmaster general of the United States, occurs on the face of U.S. postage more than any other notable American save that of George Washington.^[284] He appeared on the first U.S. postage stamp issued in 1847. From 1908 through 1923, the U.S. Post Office issued a series of postage stamps commonly referred to as the Washington–Franklin Issues, in which Washington and Franklin were depicted many times over a 14-year period, the longest run of any one series in U.S. postal history. However, he only appears on a few commemorative stamps. Some of the finest portrayals of Franklin on record can be found on the engravings inscribed on the face of U.S. postage.^[284]

See also

Notes

References

Bibliography

External links

External video
Presentation by H.W. Brands on The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin, October 5, 2000, C-SPAN
Presentation by Walter Isaacson on Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, July 22, 2003, C-SPAN
Presentation by Edmund S. Morgan on Benjamin Franklin, November 12, 2002, C-SPAN
Presentation by Stacy Schiff on A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America, April 12, 2005, C-SPAN
Booknotes interview with James Srodes on Franklin: The Essential Founding Father, May 19, 2002, C-SPAN
Interview with Gordon S. Wood on The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin, June 4, 2004, C-SPAN
Panel discussion on Franklin with Walter Isaacson, Gordon Wood, and Stacy Schiff, hosted by Jim Lehrer, January 8, 2006, C-SPAN

• Benjamin Franklin and Electrostatics Archived August 14, 2017, at the Wayback Machine experiments and Franklin’s electrical writings from Wright Center for Science Education
• Benjamin Franklin Papers, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania.
• Franklin’s impact on medicine – talk by medical historian, Dr. Jim Leavesley celebrating the 300th anniversary of Franklin’s birth on Okham’s Razor ABC Radio National – December 2006
• Video with sheet music of Benjamin Franklin’s string quartet

Biographical and guides

• Biography at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• «Special Report: Citizen Ben’s Greatest Virtues» Time
• «Writings of Benjamin Franklin» from C-SPAN’s American Writers: A Journey Through History
• Afsai, Shai (2019). «Benjamin Franklin’s Influence on Mussar Thought and Practice: a Chronicle of Misapprehension.» Review of Rabbinic Judaism 22, 2: 228–276.
• Benjamin Franklin: A Documentary History by J.A. Leo Lemay
• Benjamin Franklin: An extraordinary life PBS
• Benjamin Franklin: First American Diplomat, 1776–1785 US State Department
• Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). «Franklin, Benjamin» . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
• Finding Franklin: A Resource Guide Library of Congress
• Guide to Benjamin Franklin Archived March 16, 2010, at the Wayback Machine By a history professor at the University of Illinois.
• Online edition of Franklin’s personal library
• The Electric Benjamin Franklin ushistory.org

Online writings

• «A Silence Dogood Sampler» – Selections from Franklin’s Silence Dogood writings
• Abridgement of the Book of Common Prayer (1773), by Benjamin Franklin and Francis Dashwood, transcribed by Richard Mammana
• Franklin’s Last Will & Testament Transcription.
• Library of Congress web resource: Benjamin Franklin … In His Own Words
• Online Works by Franklin
• Works by Benjamin Franklin at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Works by Benjamin Franklin in eBook form at Standard Ebooks
• Works by Benjamin Franklin at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Benjamin Franklin at Internet Archive
• Yale edition of complete works, the standard scholarly edition
  • Online, searchable edition

Autobiography

• The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin at Project Gutenberg
• The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin LibriVox recording

In the arts

• Benjamin Franklin 300 (1706–2006) Official web site of the Benjamin Franklin Tercentenary.
• The Historical Society of Pennsylvania Collection of Benjamin Franklin Papers, including correspondence, government documents, writings and a copy of his will, are available for research use at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

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Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States and a key figure in the American Enlightenment. He was born on January 17, 1706, in Boston, Massachusetts, and was the 15th of 17 children. Franklin was self-educated and started working as a printer at the age of 12. He eventually became a successful newspaper publisher and writer, and his writing helped to shape the American colonies’ views on a variety of issues, including politics, economics, and science.

Franklin was also a leading figure in the scientific community and made significant contributions to the fields of electricity and meteorology. He is best known for his experiments with electricity, which led to his discovery of the fundamental principles of static electricity and the development of the lightning rod.

In addition to his scientific and writing achievements, Franklin was also a political leader and played a key role in the American Revolution. He was a delegate to the Continental Congress and helped to draft the Declaration of Independence. After the war, Franklin served as the United States’ first ambassador to France and played a key role in negotiating the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Revolutionary War.

Franklin died on April 17, 1790, at the age of 84. He is remembered as one of the greatest figures in American history and as a symbol of the nation’s Enlightenment values of reason, science, and progress.

Текст на английском языке с переводом. Benjamin Franklin — Бенджамин Франклин

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Текст на английском	Перевод
Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States and a key figure in the American Enlightenment.	Бенджамин Франклин был одним из отцов-основателей Соединенных Штатов и ключевой фигурой американского Просвещения.
He was born on January 17, 1706, in Boston, Massachusetts, and was the 15th of 17 children.	Он родился 17 января 1706 года в Бостоне, штат Массачусетс, и был 15-м из 17 детей.
Franklin was self-educated and started working as a printer at the age of 12.	Франклин самостоятельно получил образование и начал работать печатником в возрасте 12 лет.
He eventually became a successful newspaper publisher and writer, and his writing helped to shape the American colonies’ views on a variety of issues, including politics, economics, and science.	Со временем он стал успешным издателем газет и писателем, а его труды помогли сформировать взгляды американских колоний на целый ряд вопросов, включая политику, экономику и науку.
Franklin was also a leading figure in the scientific community and made significant contributions to the fields of electricity and meteorology.	Франклин также был ведущей фигурой в научном сообществе и внес значительный вклад в области электричества и метеорологии.
He is best known for his experiments with electricity, which led to his discovery of the fundamental principles of static electricity and the development of the lightning rod.	Он наиболее известен своими экспериментами с электричеством, которые привели к открытию фундаментальных принципов статического электричества и разработке молниеотвода.
In addition to his scientific and writing achievements, Franklin was also a political leader and played a key role in the American Revolution.	Помимо научных и писательских достижений, Франклин также был политическим лидером и сыграл ключевую роль в Американской революции.
He was a delegate to the Continental Congress and helped to draft the Declaration of Independence.	Он был представителем Континентального конгресса и помогал составлять Декларацию независимости.
After the war, Franklin served as the United States’ first ambassador to France and played a key role in negotiating the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Revolutionary War.	После войны Франклин служил первым послом Соединенных Штатов во Франции и сыграл ключевую роль в переговорах по Парижскому договору, который положил конец Революционной войне.
Franklin died on April 17, 1790, at the age of 84.	Франклин умер 17 апреля 1790 года в возрасте 84 лет.
He is remembered as one of the greatest figures in American history and as a symbol of the nation’s Enlightenment values of  reason, science, and progress.	Его помнят как одну из величайших фигур в американской истории и как символ ценностей Просвещения — разума, науки и прогресса.

Полезные слова:

• self-educated — получивший самообразование, самоучка.
• printer — печатник.
• eventually — в итоге.
• newspaper publisher — издатель газеты.
• to shape smb’s views — формировать чьи-либо взгляды.
• economics — экономика.
• scientific community — научное сообщество.
• meteorology — метеорология.
• static electricity — статическое электричество.
• fundamental principles — фундаментальные принципы.
• lighting rod — громоотвод.
• achievement — достижение.
• political leader — политический лидер.
• ambassador — посол.
• to negotiate — вести переговоры.
• symbol — символ.

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Benjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706 – April 17, 1790) was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to a tallow-maker. He became a newspaper editor, printer, merchant, and philanthropist in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was one of the most prominent of Founders and early political figures and statesmen of the United States. As a «self-made man» noted for his curiosity, ingenuity, generosity, and diversity of interests, he became an inspiration and model for many early Americans. As a broad-minded thinker and political leader able to embrace all Americans, he helped unite the people of the colonies into one United States. As a philosopher and scientist, who had discovered electricity, he was at one point the most famous man in Europe. As a statesman in London before the Revolution, and Minister to France during the Revolution, he defined the new nation in the minds of Europe. His success in securing French military and financial aid, and recruiting military leaders in Europe was decisive for the American victory over Britain.

He published the famous stories of Poor Richard’s Almanack and the Pennsylvania Gazette. He organized the first public lending library and fire department in America, the Junto, a political discussion club, the American Philosophical Society, and public schools. His support for religion and morality was broad; he donated to all denominational churches (liberal and conservative) and the synagogue in Philadelphia.

He became a national hero in America when he convinced Parliament to repeal the hated Stamp Act. A diplomatic genius, Franklin was almost universally 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 Postmaster General under the Continental Congress and from 1785 to his death in 1790 was President of the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania.

Franklin was interested in science and technology, carrying out his famous electricity experiments and invented the Franklin stove, medical catheter, lightning rod, swimfins, glass harmonica, and bifocals. He also played a major role in establishing the higher education institutions that would become the Ivy League’s University of Pennsylvania and the Franklin and Marshall College. In addition, Franklin was a noted linguist, fluent in five languages, including Greek and Latin. Towards the end of his life, he became one of the most prominent early American abolitionists. Today, Franklin is pictured on the U.S. $100 bill.

Ancestry

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.

Around 1677, Josiah married Anne Child at Ecton, and over the next few years had three children. These half-siblings of Benjamin Franklin included Elizabeth (March 2, 1678), Samuel (May 16, 1681), and Hannah (May 25, 1683). In 1683, the Franklins left England for Boston, Massachusetts. In Boston, they had several more children, including Josiah Jr. (August 23, 1685), Ann (January 5, 1687), Joseph (February 5, 1688), and Joseph (June 30, 1689) (the first Joseph having died soon after birth). Josiah’s first wife Anne died in Boston on July 9, 1689.

He was remarried to a woman called Abiah on November 25, 1689 in the Old South Church of Boston by the Rev. Samuel Willard. They had the following children: John (December 7, 1690), Peter (November 22, 1692), Mary (September 26, 1694), James (February 4, 1697), Sarah (July 9, 1699), Ebenezer (September 20, 1701), Thomas (December 7, 1703), Benjamin (January 17, 1706), Lydia (August 8, 1708), and Jane (March 27, 1712).

Early life

Benjamin Franklin was born on Milk Street in Boston on January 17, 1706. His father, Josiah Franklin, was a tallow chandler, a maker of candles and soap, who married twice. Josiah’s marriages produced 17 children; Benjamin was the tenth and youngest son. He attended Boston Latin School but did not graduate. His schooling ended at ten and at 12 he became an apprentice to his brother James, a printer who published the New England Courant, the first truly independent newspaper in the colonies.

Benjamin was an aspiring writer, but his brother would not publish anything he wrote. So, the apprentice wrote letters under the pseudonym of «Silence Dogood,» ostensibly a middle-aged widow. These letters became famous and increased circulation of the paper, but when James found out Ben was the author he became furious. Ben quit his apprenticeship without permission, becoming a fugitive under the law, so he fled from Massachusetts.

At the age of 17, Franklin ran away to Philadelphia, seeking a new start in a new city. When he first arrived he worked in several print shops. Franklin was noticed and induced 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 financial backing a newspaper to be empty, Franklin was stranded in England, so he worked as a compositor in a printer’s shop in Smithfield. With some savings and with the help of a merchant named Thomas Denham, who gave Franklin a position as clerk, shopkeeper, and bookkeeper in his merchant business, Franklin returned to Philadelphia in 1726.

Upon Denham’s death, Franklin returned to his former trade. By 1730, Franklin had set up his own printing house with the help of a financial backer and became the publisher of a newspaper called The Pennsylvania Gazette. The Gazette gave Franklin a forum to write about a variety of local reforms and initiatives. His commentary, industriousness, personal growth, and financial success earned him great social respect at a very young age.

Marriage

Franklin established a common law marriage with Deborah Read in September, 1730. In 1724, while a boarder in her mother’s home, Franklin had courted Debby before going to London at Governor Keith’s behest. At that time, Miss Read’s mother was somewhat wary of allowing her daughter to wed a seventeen-year old who was on his way to London. She did not allow Debby to accept Franklin’s offer of marriage. While Franklin was stranded in London, Deborah married a man named John Rodgers, who shortly after absconded to avoid his debts and prosecution by fleeing to Barbados, left Deborah legally married but without a husband. With bigamy an offense punishable by public whipping and imprisonment, Deborah was not free to remarry.

While Debby was married, Franklin fathered an illegitimate son named William, whom he chose to raise. Franklin still had feelings for Debby, whom he could not legally marry, so he took up residence with her. She helped to raise William, who eventually became the last Loyalist governor of New Jersey. William eventually broke with his father over the treatment of the colonies at the hands of the crown.

In colonial America such situations were not uncommon. Most colonial families had six or more children, but Benjamin and Deborah had only two together. The first was Francis Folger Franklin (Franky), born October 1732. Franky died of smallpox in the fall of 1736, and Benjamin Franklin struck with grief and guilt, never forgave himself for not having the boy immunized. His daughter, Sarah Franklin, was born in 1743. She eventually married Richard Bache, had seven children, and cared for her father in his old age.

While Benjamin is known for liaisons with other women before and after his marriage to Deborah, he said he was never unfaithful to her as long as she lived, despite lengthy periods of separation during diplomatic assignments overseas. They made a good team; Deborah faithfully and skillfully managed the family affairs during Benjamin’s periods abroad.

Civic Virtue

Franklin strongly promoted the idea of civic virtue and strove to be an exemplary leader. Franklin was an avid reader, self-taught in several languages and fluent in the classics. He read and conversed with Enlightenment thinkers in England, and became a leader of the Freemasons in Philadelphia, who promoted public service, erection of large public buildings, and religious tolerance. He also founded the American Philosophical Association.

Franklin and several other local leaders joined their resources in 1731 and began the first public library, in Philadelphia, inventing the concept of lending books and library cards. The newly founded Library Company ordered its first books in 1732, mostly theological and educational tomes, but by 1741 the library included works on history, geography, poetry, exploration, and science. The success of this library encouraged the opening of libraries in other American cities.

In 1733, he began to publish the famous Poor Richard’s Almanack (with content both original and borrowed) on which much of his popular reputation is based. His own views on self-discipline and industriousness were promoted in adages from this almanac such as, «A penny saved is twopence clear» (often misquoted as «A penny saved is a penny earned»), «The early bird gets the worm,» and «Fish and visitors stink after three days,» which remain common quotations in the modern world.

In 1736, he created the Union Fire Company, the first volunteer firefighting company in America.

In 1743, he set forth ideas 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, today a member of the Ivy League.

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.

Religious Toleration

Pennsylvania was founded by William Penn who was known for his insistence on religious toleration. Philadelphia was known as a city where every type of belief, church, and sect flourished. Franklin was a great promoter of religious toleration and worked to create a city, and later a national culture, where people of all religious and cultural backgrounds could live together in harmony.

Franklin worked out his own moral code and belief system at an early age and it evolved with his experience. He was called a Deist because he was a free thinker who did not take the miracles in the Bible literally. However, unlike the deists who viewed God as the «clockmaker» who wound up the universe and left, Franklin believed in God’s active Providence in human affairs.

Franklin believed that all religions helped to fortify the personal self-discipline and morality required for self-governance and democracy. He told his daughter Sarah to attend church every Sunday, but that he didn’t care which one she chose to attend. At one time or another Franklin gave money to every church in Philadelphia. He owned a pew in the Episcopal Church, he built a church for evangelist George Whitfield when he came to Philadelphia, and he contributed to the building of the first Jewish synagogue. Such generosity and tolerance earned Franklin many friends and a reputation for having a big mind and heart that could transcend the petty bickering so common in human affairs and make him a successful politician who earned the respect and could represent the interests of all Americans.

Scientific Inquiry

Inspired by the scientific discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton and other European contemporaries, Franklin engaged in scientific inquiries when not heavily occupied by money-making or politics.

In 1748, he retired from printing and went into other businesses. He created a partnership with his foreman, David Hill, 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 made him famous throughout Europe, especially in France.

Electricity

These include 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 (see electrical charge). He is also often credited with labeling them as positive and negative, respectively. In 1750, he published a proposal for an experiment to prove that lightning is electricity by flying a kite in a storm that appeared capable of becoming a lightning storm. On May 10, 1752, Thomas Francois d’Alibard of France conducted Franklin’s experiment (using a 40-foot-tall iron rod instead of a kite) and extracted electrical sparks from a cloud. On June 15, Franklin conducted his famous kite experiment and also successfully extracted sparks from a cloud (unaware that d’Alibard had already done so, 36 days earlier). Franklin’s experiment was not written up until Joseph Priestley’s History and Present Status of Electricity (1767); the evidence shows that Franklin was insulated (not in a conducting path, as he would have been in danger of electrocution in the event of a lightning strike). (Others, such as Prof. Georg Wilhelm Richmann of St. Petersburg, Russia, were spectacularly 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 invention of the lightning rod, an application of the use of electrical ground. If Franklin did perform this experiment, he did not do it in the way that is often described (as it would have been dramatic but fatal). Instead he used the kite to collect some electric charge from a storm cloud, which implied that lightning was electrical. See, for example, the 1805 painting by Benjamin West of Benjamin Franklin drawing electricity from the sky.

In recognition of his work with electricity, Franklin was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and received its Copley Medal in 1753. The cgs unit of electric charge has been named after him: one franklin (Fr) is equal to one statcoulomb.

Meteorology

Franklin established two major fields of physical science, electricity and meteorology. In his classic work (A History of The Theories of Electricity & Aether), Sir Edmund Whittaker (p. 46) refers to Franklin’s inference that electric charge is not created by rubbing substances, but only transferred, so that «the total quantity in any insulated system is invariable.» This assertion is known as the “principle of conservation of charge.”

As a printer and a publisher of a newspaper, Franklin frequented the farmers’ markets in Philadelphia to gather news. One day Franklin inferred that reports of a storm elsewhere in Pennsylvania must be the storm that visited the Philadelphia area in recent days. This initiated the notion that some storms travel, eventually leading to the synoptic charts of dynamic meteorology, replacing sole dependence upon the charts of climatology.

Other Sciences and Accomplishments

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. On one warm day in Cambridge, England in 1758, 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.”

His other inventions include the Franklin stove, medical catheter, lightning rod, swimfins, the glass harmonica, and bifocals.

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 is currently undergoing renovation and conversion to a Franklin museum). 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 in the RSA.

During a trip to England in 1757, Franklin was awarded an honorary doctorate for his scientific accomplishments by Oxford University, and from then on went by «Doctor Franklin.»

In 1758, the year in which he ceased writing for the Almanac, he printed «Father Abraham’s Sermon,» one of the most famous pieces of literature produced in Colonial America.

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, and substituted six new letters for sounds he felt lacked letters of their own; however, his new alphabet never caught on and he eventually lost interest. [1]

Political Leadership

In politics Franklin was very able, both as an administrator and as a diplomat. His most notable service in domestic politics was his reform of the postal system, but his fame as a statesman rests chiefly on his diplomatic services in connection with the relations of the colonies with Great Britain, and later with France.

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, The United Colonies of America. While the plan was not adopted, elements of it found their way into the Articles of Confederation and later the Constitution. Franklin’s newspaper, which was distributed throughout the colonies, was instrumental in creating a national identity before the American Revolution.

In 1757, Franklin was sent to England to protest against the influence of the Penn family in the government of Pennsylvania, and for five years he remained there, striving to enlighten the people and the ministry of the United Kingdom about colonial conditions. He also managed to secure a post for his son, William Franklin, as Colonial Governor of New Jersey.

On his return to America (1762), Franklin played an honorable part in the Paxton affair, through which he lost his seat in the Assembly. But in 1764, he was again dispatched to England as agent for the colony, this time to petition the King to resume the government from the hands of the proprietors.

Revolutionary times

In London, he actively opposed the proposed Stamp Act, but lost the credit for this and much of his popularity because he had secured for a friend the office of stamp agent in America. This perceived conflict of interest, and the resulting outcry, is widely regarded as a deciding factor in Franklin’s never achieving higher elected office. Even his effective work in helping to obtain the repeal of the act did not increase his popularity, but he continued to present the case for the colonies as the troubles escalated toward the crisis which would result in the Revolution. This also led to an irreconcilable conflict with his son, who remained ardently loyal to the British Government.

In September 1767, he visited Paris, France, where he was received with great honor.

In 1773 or 1774, Thomas Paine visited Franklin in England and enthusiastically discussed his book manuscript critical of many religious doctrines. Franklin, while personally agreeing that many of the miracles in the Bible were unbelievable, argued that the moral teachings in the Bible were the highest teachings known, and to undermine them without providing a better replacement would ruin personal character and destroy society. Franklin told Paine to burn the manuscript, but he sent Paine back to America full of ideas about an independent United States.

Before his return home in 1775, he lost his position as postmaster and broke with England after leaking information about Thomas Hutchinson, the English-appointed governor of Massachusetts. Although Hutchinson pretended to take the side of the people of Massachusetts in their complaints against England, he was actually still working for the King. Franklin acquired letters in which Hutchinson called for «an abridgment Liberties» in America and sent them to America causing outrage. Franklin was called to Whitehall, the English Foreign Ministry, where he was condemned in public.

In December of 1776, he 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 would become a friend and the most important foreigner to help the United States win the War of Independence. Franklin secured the support of the King of France for the American Revolution and recruited military leaders to train and lead soldiers.

Franklin remained in France until 1785, and was such a favorite of French society that it became fashionable for wealthy French families to decorate their parlors with a painting of him. He conducted the affairs of his country towards that nation with great success, including securing a critical military alliance and negotiating the Treaty of Paris (1783). When he finally returned home in 1785, he received a place only second to that of George Washington as the champion of American independence. Le Ray honored him with a commissioned portrait painted by Joseph Siffred Duplessis that now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.

Last Years

After his return from France, Franklin became an ardent abolitionist, freeing both of his slaves. He eventually became president of The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage. [2]

In 1787, while in retirement, he was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention that would produce the United States Constitution to replace the Articles of Confederation. It met in Pennsylvania under the leadership of George Washington, who struggled to guide the discussion above the petty and selfish interests of the states and delegates. At one point discussions broke down and Alexander Hamilton went home. Progress remained elusive until wise elder statesman Franklin stood up and gave a prescient speech in which he stated that creation of the Constitution was a unique opportunity for a people to create a government based on reason and goodness, not the will and power of a military conqueror. He pleaded for humility and recommended the Convention begin each day with prayer to orient them to a higher purpose. This speech marks the turning point for drafting the Constitution.

He is the only Founding Father who is a signatory of all three of the major documents of the founding of the United States: The Declaration of Independence, The Treaty of Paris, and the United States Constitution. Franklin also has the distinction of being the oldest signer of both the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution. He was 70 years old when he signed the Declaration and 81 when he signed the Constitution.

Also 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 would later merge with Marshall College in 1853. It is now called Franklin and 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 Africans into American society. These writings included:

• An Address to the Public from the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, (1789),
• Plan for Improving the Condition of the Free Blacks, (1789), and
• Sidi Mehemet Ibrahim on the Slave Trade [3](1790).

On February 11, 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. Because of his involvement in abolition, its cause was greatly debated around the states, especially in the House of Representatives.

Quotations

Just before Franklin affixed his signature to the Declaration of Independence, he said, «We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.»

He is also credited with the statement, «They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security deserve neither liberty or security.»

Legacy

Benjamin Franklin died on April 17, 1790 at the age of 84. 20,000 people attended the funeral. He was interred in Christ Church Burial Ground in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

At his death, Franklin bequeathed £1000 (about $4,400 at the time) each to the cities of Boston and Philadelphia, in trust for 200 years. The trust began after Charles-Joseph Mathon de la Cour, a Frenchman, wrote a parody of Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanack called Fortunate Richard. The Frenchman wrote a piece about Fortunate Richard willing a sum of money to be used only after it collected interest for 500 years. The 79-year-old Franklin wrote back to the Frenchman, thanking him for a great idea, and telling him that he was leaving a bequest of 1,000 pounds each to Boston and Philadelphia. However, the period would be 200 years. In 1990, over $2,000,000 had accumulated in Franklin’s Philadelphia trust. During the lifetime of the trust, Philadelphia used it for a variety of loan programs 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, and eventually was used to establish a trade school that, over time, became the Franklin Institute of Boston. (Source: Clark De Leon, Philadelphia Inquirer)

Franklin’s image adorns the American $100 bill. From 1948 to 1964, Franklin’s portrait was also on the half dollar. He has also appeared on a $50 bill in the past, as well as several varieties of the $100 bill from 1914 and 1918, and every $100 bill from 1928 to the present. Franklin also appears on the $1,000 Series EE Savings bond.

In 1976, as part of a bicentennial celebration, Congress dedicated a 20-foot high marble statue in Philadelphia’s Franklin Institute as the Benjamin Franklin National Memorial. Many of Franklin’s personal possessions are also on display at the institute. It is one of the few national memorials located on private property.

Franklin’s London home (Benjamin Franklin House) at 36 Craven Street in London, England, has been restored as a Franklin museum.

Fiction

• Benjamin Franklin is one of the main inventors in Gregory Keyes’* Age of Unreason trilogy.
• A fictionalized but fairly accurate version of Franklin appears as a main character in the stage musical 1776. The film version of 1776 features Howard da Silva, who originated the role of Franklin on Broadway.
• A young Benjamin Franklin appears in Neal Stephenson’s novel of seventeenth-century science and alchemy, «Quicksilver.»
• In Walt Disney’s National Treasure, Benjamin Franklin was part of the Freemasons, descendents of the Knights Templar, who brought and hid a treasure in the United States.
• Walt Disney’s cartoon “Ben and Me” (1953) counterfactually explains to children that Ben Franklin’s achievements were actually the ideas of a mouse named Amos.
• Franklin surprisingly appears as a character in Tony Hawk’s Underground 2, a skateboarding video game. Players encounter Franklin in his hometown of Boston and are able to play as him thereafter.
• Proud Destiny by Lion Feuchtwanger, a novel mainly about Pierre Beaumarchais and Benjamin Franklin beginning in 1776 Paris.
• Ben Franklin appears in the LucasArts Entertainment Company Game Day Of The Tentacle.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

Scholarly secondary sources

• Anderson, Douglas. The Radical Enlightenments of Benjamin Franklin (1997).
• Becker, Carl. «Franklin» (1931).
• Brands, H. W. The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (2000).
• Buxbaum, M. H., ed. Critical Essays on Benjamin Franklin (1987).
• Cohen, I. Bernard. Benjamin Franklin’s Science (1990).
• Conner, Paul W. Poor Richard’s Politicks (1965).
• Ford, Paul Leicester. «Franklin as Printer and Publisher» in The Century (April 1899) v. 57 pp. 803-18.
• Ford, Paul Leicester. «Franklin as Scientist» in The Century (Sept 1899) v.57 pp. 750-63.
• Ford, Paul Leicester. «Franklin as Politician and Diplomatist» in The Century (Oct 1899) v. 57 pp. 881-899.
• Isaacson, Walter. Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (2002). *Ketcham, Ralph L. Benjamin Franklin (1966). Online at Questia.
• Morgan, Edmund S. Benjamin Franklin (2003).
• Schiff, Stacy. A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America (2005).
• Sherman, Stuart. «Franklin» in A.W. Ward & W.P. Trent, et al. The Cambridge History of English and American Literature. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1907–21; New York: Bartleby.com, 2000.
• Van Doren, Carl. Benjamin Franklin (1938; reprinted 1991).
• Wood, Gordon. The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin (2005).

Primary sources

• A Benjamin Franklin Reader. Edited by Walter Isaacson. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003.
• On Marriage.
• Poor Richard’s Almanack. Peter Pauper Press: November 1983. ISBN 0880889187
• Satires and Bagatelles.
• The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. Dover Publications: June 7, 1996. ISBN 0486290735
• [4] The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, 37 vols. to date (1959-2003), definitive edition, through 1781. Edited by Leonard Labaree, et al. This massive collection of Benjamin Franklin’s writings, and letters to him, is available in large academic libraries. It is most useful for detailed research on specific topics. The “Index” is online. [5]
• The Poetry of Minor Connecticut Wits. Scholars Facsimilies & Reprint: September 2000. ISBN 0820110663
• The Way to Wealth. Applewood Books: November 1986. ISBN 0918222885
• Writings. ISBN 0940450291
• Writings (The Library of America edition) (1987), available online at [6]

External links

All links retrieved January 20, 2022.

• Works by Benjamin Franklin. Project Gutenberg
• Website for PBS Franklin Television Series
• Published physics papers — Letter IV: Farther Experiments and Observations in Electricity and Letter XI
• US State Department
• Benjamin Franklin House in London
• Franklin, Benjamin (1706-1790), The Literary Encyclopedia
• e-texts of Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography
  • HTML version at The Electric Ben Franklin

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Preceded by: None	Postmaster General of the United States Under the Continental Congress 1775–1776	Succeeded by: Richard Bache
Preceded by: John Dickinson	Presidents of the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania 1785–1790	Succeeded by: none

Benjamin Franklin (17 January 1706 – 17 April 1790) was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A renowned polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, statesman, and a diplomatic scientific and novice electricican; he was a major figure in the U.S. Enlightenment and the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity. As an inventor, he is known for the lightning rod, for keeping bifocals fog-free, and the Franklin stove, among other inventions. He facilitated many civic organizations, including Philadelphia’s fire department and the University of Pennsylvania.

Franklin earned the title of «The First American» for his early and indefatigable campaigning for colonial unity, first as an author and spokesman in London for several colonies. As the first U.S. Ambassador to France, he exemplified the emerging U.S. nation. Franklin was foundational in defining the U.S. ethos as a marriage of the practical 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.

See also:

Poor Richard’s Almanack (1733–1758).

Quotes[edit]

1720s[edit]

• Mankind naturally and generally love to be flatter’d: Whatever sooths our Pride, and tends to exalt our Species above the rest of the Creation, we are pleas’d with and easily believe, when ungrateful Truths shall be with the utmost Indignation rejected. «What! bring ourselves down to an Equality with the Beasts of the Field! with the meanest part of the Creation! ‘Tis insufferable!» But, (to use a Piece of common Sense) our Geese are but Geese tho’ we may think ’em Swans; and Truth will be Truth tho’ it sometimes prove mortifying and distasteful.
  • «A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain» (1725).

• I believe there is one Supreme most perfect being. … I believe He is pleased and delights in the happiness of those He has created; and since without virtue man can have no happiness in this world, I firmly believe He delights to see me virtuous.
  • «Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion» (1728).

1730s[edit]

• If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.
  • «Apology for Printers» (1730); later in Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiographical Writings (1945) edited by Carl Van Doren

• Ambition has its disappointments to sour us, but never the good fortune to satisfy us.
  • «On True Happiness», Pennsylvania Gazette (20 November 1735).

• Freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government; when this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved, and tyranny is erected on its ruins. Republics and limited monarchies derive their strength and vigor from a popular examination into the action of the magistrates.
  • «On Freedom of Speech and the Press», Pennsylvania Gazette (17 November 1737).

1740s[edit]

• If you would keep your Secret from an enemy, tell it not to a friend.
  Up, Sluggard, and waste not life; in the grave will be sleeping enough.
  • September 1741. “Poor Richard, 1741,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed 27 May 2020. [Original source: The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, vol. 2, January 1, 1735, through December 31, 1744, ed. Leonard W. Labaree. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961, pp. 292–300.]

• The Face first grows lank and wrinkled; then the Neck; then the Breast and Arms; the lower Parts continuing to the last as plump as ever: So that covering all above with a Basket, and regarding only what is below the Girdle, it is impossible of two Women to know an old from a young one. And as in the dark all Cats are grey, the Pleasure of corporal Enjoyment with an old Woman is at least equal, and frequently superior, every Knack being by Practice capable of Improvement.
  • 25 June 1745, «Advice to a Friend on Choosing a Mistress»

• Remember that time is money. He that can earn ten shillings a day by his labor, and goes abroad, or sits idle, one half of that day, though he spends but sixpence during his diversion or idleness, ought not to reckon that the only expense; he has really spent, rather thrown away, five shillings, besides.
  “Remember, that credit is money. If a man lets his money lie in my hands after it is due, he gives me interest, or so much as I can make of it during that time. This amounts to a considerable sum where a man has good and large credit, and makes good use of it.
  “Remember, that money is of the prolific, generating nature. Money can beget money, and its offspring can beget more, and so on. Five shillings turned is six, turned again it is seven and three pence, and so on, till it becomes a hundred pounds. The more there is of it, the more it produces every turning, so that the profits rise quicker and quicker. He that kills a breeding sow, destroys all her offspring to the thousandth generation. He that murders a crown, destroys all that it might have produced, even scores of pounds.”
  “Remember this saying, The good paymaster is lord of another man’s purse . He that is known to pay punctually and exactly to the time he promises, may at any time, and on any occasion, raise all the money his friends can spare. This is sometimes of great use. After industry and frugality, nothing contributes more to the raising of a young man in the world than punctuality and justice in all his dealings; therefore never keep borrowed money an hour beyond the time you promised, lest a disappointment shut up your friend’s purse for ever.
  “The most trifling actions that affect a man’s credit are to be regarded. The sound of your hammer at five in the morning, or eight at night, heard by a creditor, makes him easy six months longer; but if he sees you at a billiard table, or hears your voice at a tavern, when you should be at work, he sends for his money the next day; demands it, before he can receive it, in a lump. ‘It shows, besides, that you are mindful of what you owe; it makes you appear a careful as well as an honest man, and that still increases your credit.’
  “Beware of thinking all your own that you possess, and of living accordingly. It is a mistake that many people who have credit fall into. To prevent this, keep an exact account for some time both of your expenses and your income. If you take the pains at first to mention particulars, it will have this good effect: you will discover how wonderfully small, trifling expenses mount up to large sums, and will discern what might have been, and may for the future be saved, without occasioning any great inconvenience.
  “For six pounds a year you may have the use of one hundred pounds, provided you are a man of known prudence and honesty.
  “He that spends a groat a day idly, spends idly above six pounds a year, which is the price for the use of one hundred pounds.
  “He that wastes idly a groat’s worth of his time per day, one day with another, wastes the privilege of using one hundred pounds each day.
  “He that idly loses five shillings’ worth of time, loses five shillings, and might as prudently throw five shillings into the sea.
  “He that loses five shillings, not only loses that sum, but all the advantage that might be made by turning it in dealing, which by the time that a young man becomes old, will amount to a considerable sum of money.”

• Advice to a Young Tradesman, Written by an Old One (1748), as quoted by Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Chapter II: The Spirit of Capitalism, 1905. [1][2], [3]

• History will also afford frequent Opportunities of showing the Necessity of a Publick Religion, from its Usefulness to the Publick; the Advantage of a Religious Character among private Persons; the Mischiefs of Superstition, &c. and the Excellency of the Christian Religion above all others antient or modern.
  History will also give Occasion to expatiate on the advantage of Civil Orders and Constitutions, how men and their properties are protected by joining in Societies and establishing Government; their Industry encouraged and rewarded, Arts invented, and Life made more comfortable: the Advantages of Liberty, Mischiefs of Licentiousness, Benefits arising from good Laws and a due Execution of Justice &c. Thus may the first Principles of sound Politics be fixed in the minds of youth.
  On Historical occasions, Questions of Right and Wrong, Justice and Injustice, will naturally arise, and may be put to Youth, which they may debate in Conversation and in Writing. When they ardently desire of Victory, for the Sake of the Praise attending it, they will begin to feel the want, and be sensible of the use of the Use of Logic, or the Art of Reasoning to discover Truth, and of Arguing to defend it, and convince adversaries.
  • Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pensilvania (1749), p. 22; the statement relates to the teaching of History as a subject, and the last quoted paragraph concludes with the footnote «†»: Public Disputes warm the Imagination, whet the Industry, and strengthen the natural Abilities.

1750s[edit]

• There is something however in the experiments of points, sending off, or drawing on, the electrical fire, which has not been fully explained, and which I intend to supply… For the doctrine of points is very curious, and the effects of them truly wonderfull; and, from what I have observed on experiments, I am of opinion, that houses, ships, and even towns and churches may be effectually secured from the stroke of lightening by their means; for if, instead of the round balls of wood or metal, which are commonly placed on the tops of the weathercocks, vanes or spindles of churches, spires or masts, there should be put a rod of iron 8 or 10 feet in length, sharpen’d gradually to a point like a needle, and gilt to prevent rusting, or divided into a number of points, which would be better—the electrical fire would, I think, be drawn out of a cloud silently, before it could come near enough to strike…
  • Letter to Peter Collinson (March 2, 1750)

• The Game of Chess is not merely an idle amusement; several very valuable qualities of the mind, useful in the course of human life, are to be acquired and strengthened by it, so as to become habits ready on all occasions; for life is a kind of Chess, in which we have often points to gain, and competitors or adversaries to contend with, and in which there is a vast variety of good and ill events, that are, in some degree, the effect of prudence, or the want of it. By playing at Chess then, we may learn: 1st, Foresight, which looks a little into futurity, and considers the consequences that may attend an action … 2nd, Circumspection, which surveys the whole Chess-board, or scene of action: — the relation of the several Pieces, and their situations; … 3rd, Caution, not to make our moves too hastily…
  • «The Morals of Chess» (article) (1750).

• why should the Palatine Boors be suffered to swarm into our Settlements, and by herding together establish their Language and Manners to the Exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion. 24. Which leads me to add one Remark: That the Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably very small. All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new Comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English, make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth. I could wish their Numbers were increased. And while we are, as I may call it, Scouring our Planet, by clearing America of Woods, and so making this Side of our Globe reflect a brighter Light to the Eyes of Inhabitants in Mars or Venus, why should we in the Sight of Superior Beings, darken its People? why increase the Sons of Africa, by Planting them in America, where we have so fair an Opportunity, by excluding all Blacks and Tawneys, of increasing the lovely White and Red? But perhaps I am partial to the Complexion of my Country, for such Kind of Partiality is natural to Mankind.
  • 1751 Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind

• Make a small Cross of two light Strips of Cedar, the Arms so long as to reach to the four Corners of a large thin Silk Handkerchief when extended; tie the Corners of the Handkerchief to the Extremities of the Cross, so you have the Body of a Kite; which being properly accommodated with a Tail, Loop and String, will rise in the Air, like those made of Paper; but this being of Silk is fitter to bear the Wet and Wind of a Thunder Gust without tearing. To the Top of the upright Stick of the Cross is to be fixed a very sharp pointed Wire, rising a Foot or more above the Wood. To the End of the Twine, next the Hand, is to be tied a silk Ribbon, and where the Twine and the silk join, a Key may be fastened. This Kite is to be raised when a Thunder Gust appears to be coming on, and the Person who holds the String must stand within a Door, or Window, or under some Cover, so that the Silk Ribbon may not be wet; and Care must be taken that the Twine does not touch the Frame of the Door or Window. As soon as any of the Thunder Clouds come over the Kite, the pointed Wire will draw the Electric Fire from them, and the Kite, with all the Twine, will be electrified, and the loose Filaments of the Twine will stand out every Way, and be attracted by an approaching Finger. And when the Rain has wet the Kite and Twine, so that it can conduct the Electric Fire freely, you will find it stream out plentifully from the Key on the Approach of your Knuckle. At this Key the Phial may be charg’d; and from Electric Fire thus obtain’d, Spirits may be kindled, and all the other Electric Experiments be perform’d, which are usually done by the Help of a rubbed Glass Globe or Tube; and thereby the Sameness of the Electric Matter with that of Lightning compleatly demonstrated.
  • «Franklin’s statement», The Pennsylvania Gazette , October 19, 1752.

• These Thoughts, my dear Friend, are many of them crude and hasty, and if I were merely ambitious of acquiring some Reputation in Philosophy, I ought to keep them by me, ’till corrected and improved by Time and farther Experience. But since even short Hints, and imperfect Experiments in any new Branch of Science, being communicated, have oftentimes a good Effect, in exciting the attention of the Ingenious to the Subject, and so becoming the Occasion of more exact disquisitions (as I before observed) and more compleat Discoveries, you are at Liberty to communicate this Paper to whom you please; it being of more Importance that Knowledge should increase, than that your Friend should be thought an accurate Philosopher.
  • Letter from Benjamin Franklin to Peter Collinson, September 1753.

• Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
  • This was first used^[1] by Franklin for the Pennsylvania Assembly in its «Reply to the Governor» (11 Nov. 1755)
  • This quote was used as a motto on the title page of An Historical Review of the Constitution and Government of Pennsylvania (1759); the book was published by Franklin; its author was Richard Jackson, but Franklin did claim responsibility for some small excerpts that were used in it.
  • In 1775 Franklin again used this phrase in his contribution to Massachusetts Conference (Objections to Barclay’s Draft Articles of February 16.) — «They who can give up essential Liberty to obtain a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.«
  • An earlier variant by Franklin in Poor Richard’s Almanack (1738): «Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power.«
  • Many paraphrased derivatives of this have often become attributed to Franklin:
    • They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
      They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
      Those Who Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither.
      He who would trade liberty for some temporary security, deserves neither liberty nor security.
      He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither.
      People willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both.
      If we restrict liberty to attain security we will lose them both.
      Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
      He who gives up freedom for safety deserves neither.
      Those who would trade in their freedom for their protection deserve neither.
      Those who give up their liberty for more security neither deserve liberty nor security.

• How much more than is necessary do we spend in Sleep! forgetting that The sleeping Fox catches no Poultry,^{[Sept. 1743]} and that there will be sleeping enough in the Grave,^{[Sept. 1741]} as Poor Richard says.
  • “Father Abraham’s Speech,” preface to: “Poor Richard Improved, 1758,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed 27 May 2020. [Original source: The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, vol. 7, October 1, 1756 through March 31, 1758, ed. Leonard W. Labaree. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963, pp. 326–355.]

1760s[edit]

• [T]he waters moved away from the North American Coast towards the coasts of Spain and Africa, whence they get again into the Power of the Trade Winds, and continue the Circulation. …so long and so strong a Current as that of the Gulph Stream, thro’ all the Latitudes of variable Winds, can only be accounted for, by its having a considerable Descent, and moving from Parts where the Water is higher, to Parts where it is lower.
  • Letter to John Pringle (May 27, 1762) See also Louis De Vorsey, «Pioneer of the Gulf Stream: The Contributions of Benjamin Franklin and William Gerard De Brahm» Imago Mundi (1976) 28: p. 106.

• I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer. There is no country in the world where so many provisions are established for them; so many hospitals to receive them when they are sick or lame, founded and maintained by voluntary charities; so many alms-houses for the aged of both sexes, together with a solemn general law made by the rich to subject their estates to a heavy tax for the support of the poor. Under all these obligations, are our poor modest, humble, and thankful; and do they use their best endeavours to maintain themselves, and lighten our shoulders of this burthen? On the contrary, I affirm that there is no country in the world in which the poor are more idle, dissolute, drunken, and insolent. The day you passed that act, you took away from before their eyes the greatest of all inducements to industry, frugality, and sobriety, by giving them a dependence on somewhat else than a careful accumulation during youth and health, for support in age or sickness. In short, you offered a premium for the encouragement of idleness, and you should not now wonder that it has had its effect in the increase of poverty.
  • On the Price of Corn and Management of the Poor (29 November 1766).

• The good particular men may do separately, in relieving the sick, is small, compared with what they may do collectively.
  • Appeal for the Hospital The Pennsylvania Gazette (8 August 1751).

• [Referring to private hospital funding alone:] That won’t work, it will never be enough, good health care costs a lot of money, remembering ‘the distant parts of this province’ in which ‘assistance cannot be procured, but at an expense that neither [the sick-poor] nor their townships can afford.’ … ‘[This] seems essential to the true spirit of Christianity, and should be extended to all in general, whether deserving or undeserving, as far as our power reaches.’
  • In 1751, Franklin’s friend, Dr. Thomas Bond, convinced him to champion the building of a public hospital. Through his hard work and political ingenuity, Franklin brought the skeptical legislature to the table, bargaining his way to use public money to build what would become Pennsylvania Hospital. Franklin proposed an institution that would provide — ‘free of charge’ —the finest health care to everybody, ‘whether inhabitants of the province or strangers,’ even to the ‘poor diseased foreigners»‘ (referring to the immigrants of German stock that the colonials tended to disparage and discriminate). Countering the Assembly’s insistence that the hospital be built only with private donations, Franklin made the above statement. Various articles by Franklin supporting his Appeal for the Hospital in The Pennsylvania Gazette (1751) as quoted in Pulphead: Essays by John Jeremiah Sullivan. ^{[citation needed]}

1770s[edit]

• That the vegetable creation should restore the air which is spoiled by the animal part of it, looks like a rational system, and seems to be of a piece with the rest. Thus fire purifies water all the world over. It purifies it by distillation, when it raises it in vapours, and lets it fall in rain; and farther still by filtration, when keeping it fluid, it suffers that rain to percolate the earth. We knew before that putrid animal substances were converted into sweet vegetables when mixed with the earth and applied as manure; and now, it seems, that the same putrid substances, mixed with the air, have a similar effect. The strong, thriving state of your mint, in putrid air, seems to show that the air is mended by taking something from it, and not by adding to it. I hope this will give some check to the rage of destroying trees that grow near houses, which has accompanied our late improvements in gardening, from an opinion of their being unwholesome. I am certain, from long observation, that there is nothing unhealthy in the air of woods; for we Americans have everywhere our country habitations in the midst of woods, and no people on earth enjoy better health or are more prolific.
  • «Letter to Joseph Priestley» in response to Priestley’s «experiments on the restoration of air [by plants] made noxious by animals breathing it, or putrefying it…» read in Philosophical Transactions LXII 147-267 of the Royal Society (1772) and quoted in John Towill Rutt, Life and Correspondence of Joseph Priestley… Vol.1 (1831).

• But our great security lies, I think, in our growing strength, both in numbers and wealth; … unless, by a neglect of military discipline, we should lose all martial spirit …; for there is much truth in the Italian saying, Make yourselves sheep, and the wolves will eat you.
  • Letter to Thomas Cushing (1773).

• [A] great Empire, like a great Cake, is most easily diminished at the Edges.
  • «Rules By Which A Great Empire May Be Reduced To A Small One»; The Public Advertiser (September 11, 1773).

• He has paid dear, very dear, for his whistle.
  • The Whistle (November, 1779); reported in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

• Can sweetening our tea, &c. with sugar, be a circumstance of such absolute necessity? Can the petty pleasure thence arising to the taste, compensate for so much misery produced among our fellow creatures, and such a constant butchery of the human species by this pestilential detestable traffic in the bodies and souls of men?—Pharisaical Britain! to pride thyself in setting free a single Slave that happens to land on thy coasts, while thy Merchants in all thy ports are encouraged by thy laws to continue a commerce whereby so many hundreds of thousands are dragged into a slavery that can scarce be said to end with their lives, since it is entailed on their posterity!
  • For The London Chronicle (20 June 1772). The Somersett Case and the Slave Trade As quoted in Let This Voice Be Heard — Anthony Benezet, Father of Atlantic Abolitionism (2010), p. 113.

1780s[edit]

• They appeared all to have made considerable progress in reading for the time they had respectively been in the school, and most of them answered readily and well the questions of the catechism. They behaved very orderly, and showed a proper respect and ready obedience to the mistress, and seemed very attentive to, and a good deal affected by, a serious exhoration with which Mister Sturgeon concluded our visit. I was on the whole much pleased, and from what I then saw, have conceived a higher opinion of the natural capacities of the black race, than I had ever before entertained. Their apprehension seems as quick, their memory as strong, and their docility in every respect equal to that of white children.
  • Letter to Waring (17 December 1783), after visiting a school, as quoted in The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (March 2002), by H.W. Brands, p. 355.

• Much less is it adviseable for a Person to go thither [to America], who has no other Quality to recommend him but his Birth. In Europe it has indeed its Value; but it is a Commodity that cannot be carried to a worse Market than that of America, where people do not inquire concerning a Stranger, What is he? but, What can he do?
  • March 1784 Information to Those Who Would Remove to America.

• The first man put at the helm will be a good one. No body knows what sort may come afterwards. The Executive will be always increasing here, as elsewhere, till it ends in a Monarchy.
  • Records of the Federal Convention (which resulted in the United States Constitution), June 4, 1787

Constitutional Convention of 1787[edit]

• I’ve lived, Sir, 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? We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings, that except the Lord build the House they labor in vain who build it. I firmly believe this, — and I also believe that without his concurring Aid, we shall succeed in this political Building no better than the Builders of Babel: We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our Projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a Reproach and Bye word down to future Ages.
  • Speech to the Constitutional Convention (28 June 1787); Manuscript notes by Franklin preserved in the Library of Congress

• The more the people are discontented with the oppression of taxes; the greater need the prince has of money to distribute among his partisans and pay the troops that are to suppress all resistance, and enable him to plunder at pleasure. There is scarce a king in a hundred who would not, if he could, follow the example of Pharaoh, get first all the peoples money, then all their lands, and then make them and their children servants for ever. . .
  • Speech to the Constitutional Convention, (June 2, 1787).

• I confess that there are several parts of this Constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them. For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information, or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise.
  • Speech in the Constitutional Convention, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (September 17, 1787); reported in James Madison, Journal of the Federal Convention, ed. E. H. Scott (1893), p. 741.

• 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; and I believe, farther, that 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.
  • Speech to the Constitutional Convention (September 17, 1787); reported in James Madison, Journal of the Federal Convention, ed. E. H. Scott (1893), p. 742.

• 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 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 signing of the United States Constitution, Journal of the Constitutional Convention (17 September 1787).

• A lady asked Franklin: «Well, Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?». Franklin replied: «A Republic, if you can keep it.»
  • From a note of uncertain date by Dr. James McHenry. In a footnote he added that «The lady here aluded to was Mrs. Powel of Philada.» Published in The American Historical Review, v. 11, p. 618. At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787

Decade unclear[edit]

• Has not the famous political Fable of the Snake, with two Heads and one Body, some useful Instruction contained in it? She was going to a Brook to drink, and in her Way was to pass thro’ a Hedge, a Twig of which opposed her direct Course; one Head chose to go on the right side of the Twig, the other on the left, so that time was spent in the Contest, and, before the Decision was completed, the poor Snake died with thirst.
  • Queries and Remarks Respecting Alterations in the Constitution of Pennsylvania reported in Albert H. Smyth, ed., The Writings of Benjamin Franklin (1907), vol. 10, pp. 57–58.

• Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.
  • As quoted in Dictionary of Thoughts (1908) by Tryon Edwards, p. 22.

• The art of concluding from experience and observation consists in evaluating probabilities, in estimating if they are high or numerous enough to constitute proof. This type of calculation is more complicated and more difficult than one might think. It demands a great sagacity generally above the power of common people. The success of charlatans, sorcerors, and alchemists — and all those who abuse public credulity — is founded on errors in this type of calculation.
  • Benjamin Franklin and Antoine Lavoisier, Rapport des commissaires chargés par le roi de l’examen du magnétisme animal (1784), as translated in «The Chain of Reason versus the Chain of Thumbs», Bully for Brontosaurus (1991) by Stephen Jay Gould,. p. 195.

• Slavery is such an atrocious debasement of human nature, that its very extirpation, if not performed with solicitious care, may sometimes open a source of serious evils. The unhappy man who has been treated as a brute animal, too frequently sinks beneath the common standard of the human species. The galling chains, that bind his body, do also fetter his intellectual faculties, and impair the social affections of his heart… To instruct, to advise, to qualify those, who have been restored to freedom, for the exercise and enjoyment of civil liberty… and to procure for their children an education calculated for their future situation in life; these are the great outlines of the annexed plan, which we have adopted.
  • For the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery (1789). As quoted in Writings (1987), p. 1154-1155.

• God grant, that not only the Love of Liberty, but a thorough Knowledge of the Rights of Man, may pervade all the Nations of the Earth, so that a Philosopher may set his Foot anywhere on its Surface, and say, ‘This is my Country.’
  • Letter to David Hartley (December 4, 1789); reported in Albert H. Smyth, ed., The Writings of Benjamin Franklin (1907), Volume 10, p. 72; often quoted as, «Where liberty dwells, there is my country«.

• It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it.

Benjamin Franklin

• As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his Religion, as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupt changes, and I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some Doubts as to his divinity; tho’ it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and I think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an Opportunity of knowing the Truth with less Trouble.
  • As quoted in Benjamin Franklin: An Exploration of a Life of Science and Service (1938) by Carl Van Doren, p. 777.
  • Variation: «The moral and religious system which Jesus Christ transmitted to us is the best the world has ever seen, or can see.», as quoted in John Wallis (1856), The British Millennial Harbinger, p. 428.

• Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.
  • Benjamin Franklin proposed this as the motto on the Great Seal of the United States. It is often falsely attributed to Thomas Jefferson because he endorsed the motto. It may have been inspired by a similar quote made by Simon Bradstreet after the 1688 overthrow of Edmund Andros. Bradstreet’s quote is found in two sources: Official Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the State Convention: assembled May 4th, 1853 (1853) by the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention, p. 502 and A Book of New England Legends and Folk Lore (1883) by Samuel Adams Drake. p. 426.

• Man [is a] tool-making animal.
  • Quoted by James Boswell in The Life of Samuel Johnson, April 7, 1778 (1791).

• Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
  • Quoted by Gerald Gawalt in «In His Own Words: Library Exhibition Celebrates Tercentenary of Benjamin Franklin’s Birth»

Poor Richard’s Almanack (1733-1758)[edit]

• Distrust & caution are the parents of security.
  • Poor Richard’s Almanack (1733)

• If you desire many things, many things will seem but a few.
  • Poor Richard’s Almanack (1736), November

• A penny saved is two pence clear.
  • «Hints For Those That Would Be Rich», Poor Richard’s Almanack (1737)

• Well done is better than well said.
  • Poor Richard’s Almanack (1737)

• Let all Men know thee, but no man know thee thoroughly: Men freely ford that see the shallows.
  • Poor Richard’s Almanack (1743)

• Love your Enemies, for they tell you your Faults.
  • Poor Richard’s Almanack (1756); this has also been quoted in a paraphrased form used by Bill Clinton in [1998 address to Beijing University, as «Our critics are our friends, they show us our faults».

• A penny saved is a penny got.
  • Preface, Poor Richard’s Almanack (1758)

• The Way to ſee by Faith is to ſhut the Eye of Reaſon: The Morning Daylight appears plainer when you put out your Candle.
  • «July. VII Month.«, Poor Richard’s Almanack (1758), Philadelphia: B. Frankin and D. Hall

• It would be thought a hard Government that should tax its People one-tenth Part of their Time, to be employed in its Service.
  • Poor Richard’s Almanack (1758), “The Way to Wealth”

Petition from the Pennsylvania Society (1790)[edit]

«Petition from the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery» (3 February 1790)

• [M]ankind are all formed by the same Almighty being, alike objects of his Care & equally designed for the Enjoyment of Happiness the Christian Religion teaches us to believe & the Political Creed of America fully coincides with the Position.
• [B]lessings ought rightfully to be administered, without distinction of Colour, to all descriptions of People, so they indulge themselves in the pleasing expectation, that nothing, which can be done for the relive of the unhappy objects of their care, will be either omitted or delayed.
• From a persuasion that equal liberty was originally the Portion, It is still the Birthright of all men.

The Autobiography (1818)[edit]

Various incomplete editions of this work were published from 1791 onwards; Franklin is known to have worked on it intermittently from 1771 to 1789. The work is traditionally divided into four parts, based on the time of writing. The page references given below are taken from Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography (1986).

• Indeed I scarce ever heard or saw the introductory Words, Without Vanity I may say, etc. but some vain thing immediately follow’d. Most People dislike Vanity in others whatever Share they have of it themselves, but I give it fair Quarter wherever I meet with it, being persuaded that it is often productive of Good to the Possessor and to others that are within his Sphere of Action: And therefore in many Cases it would not be quite absurd if a Man were to thank God for his Vanity among the other Comforts of Life.
  • Part I, p. 2.

• From a Child I was fond of Reading, and all the little Money that came into my Hands was ever laid out in Books.
  • Part I, p. 9.

• I believe I have omitted mentioning that in my first Voyage from Boston, being becalm’d off Block Island, our People set about catching Cod and haul’d up a great many. Hitherto I had stuck to my Resolution of not eating animal Food and on this Occasion, I consider’d with my Master Tryon, the taking every Fish as a kind of unprovok’d Murder, since none of them had or ever could do us any Injury that might justify the Slaughter. All this seem’d very reasonable. But I had formerly been a great Lover of Fish, and when this came hot out of the Frying Pan, it smelt admirably well. I balanc’d some time between Principle and Inclination: till I recollected, that when the Fish were opened, I saw smaller Fish taken out of their Stomachs: Then, thought I, if you eat one another, I don’t see why we mayn’t eat you. So I din’d upon Cod very heartily and continu’d to eat with other People, returning only now and then occasionally to a vegetable Diet. So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.
  • Part I, p. 28.

• My Parents had early given me religious Impressions, and brought me through my Childhood piously in the Dissenting Way. But I was scarce 15 when, after doubting by turns of several Points as I found them disputed in the different Books I read, I began to doubt of Revelation itself. Some Books against Deism fell into my Hands; they were said to be the Substance of Sermons preached at Boyle’s Lectures. It happened that they wrought an Effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by them: For the Arguments of the Deists which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much Stronger than the Refutations. In short I soon became a thorough Deist.
  • Part I, p. 45.

• This Library afforded me the Means of Improvement by constant Study, for which I set apart an Hour or two each Day; and thus repair’d in some Degree the Loss of the Learned Education my Father once intended for me. Reading was the only Amusement I allow’d myself. I spent no time in Taverns, Games, or Frolics of any kind. And my Industry in my Business continu’d as indefatigable as it was necessary.
  • Part II, p. 64.

• Some volumes against Deism fell into my hands … they produced an effect precisely the reverse to what was intended by the writers; for the arguments of the Deists, which were cited in order to be refuted, appeared to me much more forcibly than the refutation itself; in a word, I soon became a thorough Deist.
  • p. 74

• These Names of Virtues with their Precepts were
  • 1. TEMPERANCE. Eat not to Dulness. Drink not to Elevation.
  • 2. SILENCE. Speak not but what may benefit others or your self. Avoid trifling Conversation.
  • 3. ORDER. Let all your Things have their Places. Let each part of your Business have its Time.
  • 4. RESOLUTION. Resolve to perform what you ought. Perform without fail what you resolve.
  • 5. FRUGALITY. Make no Expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e. Waste nothing.
  • 6. INDUSTRY. Lose no Time. Be always employ’d in something useful. Cut off all unnecessary actions.
  • 7. SINCERITY. Use no hurtful Deceit. Think innocently and justly; and, if you speak, speak accordingly.
  • 8. JUSTICE. Wrong none, by doing Injuries or omitting the Benefits that are your Duty.
  • 9. MODERATION. Avoid Extremes. Forbear resenting Injuries so much as you think they deserve.
  • 10. CLEANLINESS. Tolerate no Uncleanliness in Body, Clothes, or Habitation.
  • 11. TRANQUILLITY. Be not disturbed at Trifles, or at Accidents common or unavoidable.
  • 12. CHASTITY. Rarely use Venery but for Health or Offspring; Never to Dulness, Weakness, or the Injury of your own or another’s Peace or Reputation.
  • 13. HUMILITY. Imitate Jesus and Socrates. [Part II, pp. 67-68]
    • The last of Franklin’s chart of 13 virtues: «My List of Virtues contain’d at first but twelve; but a Quaker Friend having kindly inform’d me that I was generally thought proud; … I determined endeavouring to cure myself if I could of this Vice or Folly among the rest, and I added Humility to my List…»
  • Part II, p. 75.

• In reality there is perhaps no one of our natural Passions so hard to subdue as Pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and will every now and then peep out and show itself. You will see it perhaps often in this History. For even if I could conceive that I had completely overcome it, I should probably be proud of my Humility. [Part II, p. 76]
  • Written in Passy (1784), Ch. VI

• In 1736 I lost one of my Sons, a fine Boy of 4 Years old, by the Smallpox taken in the common way. I long regretted bitterly and still regret that I had not given it to him by Inoculation. This I mention for the Sake of Parents who omit that Operation on the Supposition that they should never forgive themselves if a Child died under it; my Example showing that the Regret may be the same either way, and that therefore the safer should be chosen.
  • On Immunization, Part III, p. 83.

• Upon one of his [George Whitefield’s] Arrivals from England at Boston, he wrote to me that he should come soon to Philadelphia, but knew not where he could lodge when there …. My Answer was; You know my House, if you can make shift with its scanty Accommodations you will be most heartily welcome. He replied, that if I made that kind of Offer for Christ’s sake, I should not miss of a Reward. And I return’d, Don’t let me be mistaken; it was not for Christ’s sake, but for your sake. One of our common Acquaintance jocosely remark’d, that knowing it to be the Custom of the Saints, when they receiv’d any favor, to shift the Burden of the Obligation from off their own Shoulders, and place it in Heaven, I had contriv’d to fix it on Earth.
  • Part III, p. 89.

• Governor Thomas was so pleas’d with the Construction of this Stove, as describ’d in it, that he offer’d to give me a Patent for the sole Vending of them for a Term of Years; but I declin’d it from a Principle which has ever weigh’d with me on such Occasions, viz. That as we enjoy great Advantages from the Inventions of Others, we should be glad of an Opportunity to serve others by any Invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously.
  • Part III, p. 98.

• Human Felicity is produc’d not so much by great Pieces of good Fortune that seldom happen, as by little Advantages that occur every Day.
  • Part III, p. 108.

The Autobiography (1916)[edit]

• Franklin is a good type of our American manhood. Although not the wealthiest or the most powerful, he is undoubtedly, in the versatility of his genius and achievements, the greatest of our self-made men. The simple yet graphic story in the Autobiography of his steady rise from humble boyhood in a tallow-chandler shop, by industry, economy, and perseverance in self-improvement, to eminence, is the most remarkable of all the remarkable histories of our self-made men. It is in itself a wonderful illustration of the results possible to be attained in a land of unequaled opportunity by following Franklin’s maxims.

• • Written by Frank Woodworth Pine in his introduction to the 1916 publication of The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. Pine, F.W. (editor). Henry Holt and Company via Gutenberg Press. (1916). Introduction.

Epistles[edit]

• I think opinions should be judged of 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.
  • Letter to his father, 13 April 1738, printed in Memoirs of Benjamin Franklin (Philadelphia, 1834), volume 1, p. 233. Also quoted in Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (2003) by Walter Isaacson

• We are a kind of posterity in respect to them.
  • Letter to William Strahan (1745); reported in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

• Marriage is the proper Remedy. It is the most natural State of Man and therefore the State in which you are most likely to find solid Happiness… [W]hen Women cease to be handsome, they study to be good… [Y]ou should prefer old Women to young ones.
  • Advice to a Young Man on the Choice of a Mistress (25 June 1745)

• But I must own that I am much in the Dark about Light. I am not satisfy’d with the doctrine that supposes particles of matter call’d light continually driven off from the Sun’s Surface, with a Swiftness so prodigious!
  • Letter to Cadwallader Colden (23 April 1752).

• When an Indian Child has been brought up among us, taught our language and habituated to our Customs, yet if he goes to see his relations and makes one Indian Ramble with them, there is no perswading him ever to return, and that this is not natural to them merely as Indians, but as men, is plain from this, that when white persons of either sex have been taken prisoners young by the Indians, and lived a while among them, tho’ ransomed by their Friends, and treated with all imaginable tenderness to prevail with them to stay among the English, yet in a Short time they become disgusted with our manner of life, and the care and pains that are necessary to support it, and take the first good Opportunity of escaping again into the Woods, from whence there is no reclaiming them.
  • Letter to London merchant Peter Collinson (9 May 1753); reported in Labaree: «Papers of Benjamin Franklin», vol 4, pp 481-482.

• For my own Part, when I am employed in serving others, I do not look upon myself as conferring Favours, but as paying Debts. In my Travels, and since my Settlement, I have received much Kindness from Men, to whom I shall never have any Opportunity of making the least direct Return. And numberless Mercies from God, who is infinitely above being benefited by our Services. Those Kindnesses from Men, I can therefore only Return on their Fellow Men; and I can only shew my Gratitude for these mercies from God, by a readiness to help his other Children and my Brethren. For I do not think that Thanks and Compliments, tho’ repeated weekly, can discharge our real Obligations to each other, and much less those to our Creator.
  • Letter to Joseph Huey (6 June 1753); published in Albert Henry Smyth, The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, volume 3, p. 144.

• The Faith you mention has doubtless its use in the World. I do not desire to see it diminished, nor would I endeavour to lessen it in any Man. But I wish it were more productive of good Works, than I have generally seen it: I mean real good Works, Works of Kindness, Charity, Mercy, and Publick Spirit; not Holiday-keeping, Sermon-Reading or Hearing; performing Church Ceremonies, or making long Prayers, filled with Flatteries and Compliments, despis’d even by wise Men, and much less capable of pleasing the Deity. The worship of God is a Duty; the hearing and reading of Sermons may be useful; but, if Men rest in Hearing and Praying, as too many do, it is as if a Tree should Value itself on being water’d and putting forth Leaves, tho’ it never produc’d any Fruit.
  • Letter to Joseph Huey (6 June 1753); published in Albert Henry Smyth, The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, volume 3, p. 145.

• Every Body cries, a Union is absolutely necessary, but when they come to the Manner and Form of the Union, their weak Noddles are perfectly distracted.
  • Letter to Peter Collinson (29 December 1754); published in The Writings of Benjamin Franklin (1905), edited by Albert Henry Smyth, Vol. III, p. 242; also misquoted using «Noodles» for «Noddles».

• I have read your Manuscript with some Attention. By the Arguments it contains against the Doctrine of a particular Providence, tho’ you allow a general Providence, you strike at the Foundation of all Religion: For without the Belief of a Providence that takes Cognizance of, guards and guides and may favour particular Persons, there is no Motive to Worship a Deity, to fear its Displeasure, or to pray for its Protection. I will not enter into any Discussion of your Principles, tho’ you seem to desire it; At present I shall only give you my Opinion that tho’ your Reasonings are subtle, and may prevail with some Readers, you will not succeed so as to change the general Sentiments of Mankind on that Subject, and the Consequence of printing this Piece will be a great deal of Odium drawn upon your self, Mischief to you and no Benefit to others. He that spits against the Wind, spits in his own Face. But were you to succeed, do you imagine any Good would be done by it? You yourself may find it easy to live a virtuous Life without the Assistance afforded by Religion; you having a clear Perception of the Advantages of Virtue and the Disadvantages of Vice, and possessing a Strength of Resolution sufficient to enable you to resist common Temptations. But think how great a Proportion of Mankind consists of weak and ignorant Men and Women, and of inexperienc’d and inconsiderate Youth of both Sexes, who have need of the Motives of Religion to restrain them from Vice, to support their Virtue, and retain them in the Practice of it till it becomes habitual, which is the great Point for its Security; And perhaps you are indebted to her originally that is to your Religious Education, for the Habits of Virtue upon which you now justly value yourself. You might easily display your excellent Talents of reasoning on a less hazardous Subject, and thereby obtain Rank with our most distinguish’d Authors. For among us, it is not necessary, as among the Hottentots that a Youth to be receiv’d into the Company of Men, should prove his Manhood by beating his Mother. I would advise you therefore not to attempt unchaining the Tyger, but to burn this Piece before it is seen by any other Person, whereby you will save yourself a great deal of Mortification from the Enemies it may raise against you, and perhaps a good deal of Regret and Repentance. If Men are so wicked as we now see them with Religion what would they be if without it?
  • Letter to unknown recipient (13 December 1757). The letter was published as early as 1817 (William Temple Franklin, The Works of Benjamin Franklin, volume VI, pp. 243-244). In 1833 William Wisner («Don’t Unchain the Tiger,» American Tract Society, 1833) identified the recipient as probably Thomas Paine, which was echoed by Jared Sparks in his 1840 edition of Franklin’s works (volume x, p. 281). (Presumably it would have been directed against The Age of Reason, his deistic work which criticized orthodox Christianity.) Calvin Blanchard responded to Wisner’s tract in The Life of Thomas Paine (1860), pp. 73-74, by noting that Franklin died in 1790, while Paine did not begin writing The Age of Reason until 1793, and incorrectly concluded that the letter did not exist. Paul F. Boller, Jr., and John George, included it in They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, & Misleading Attributions (1989), on p. 28. Moncure Daniel Conway pointed out (The Life of Thomas Paine, 1892, vol I, p. vii) that the recipient could not be Thomas Paine, in that he, unlike Paine, denied a «particular providence». The intended recipient remains unidentified.
  • Parts of the above have also been rearranged and paraphrased:
    • I would advise you not to attempt Unchaining The Tiger, but to burn this piece before it is seen by any other person.
    • If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be if without it?
    • If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be Without it? Think how many inconsiderate and inexperienced youth of both sexes there are, who have need of the motives of religion to restrain them from vice, to support their virtue, and retain them in the practice of it till it becomes habitual.

• That Being, who gave me existence, and through almost threescore years has been continually showering his favors upon me, whose very chastisements have been blessings to me ; can I doubt that he loves me? And, if he loves me, can I doubt that he will go on to take care of me, not only here but hereafter? This to some may seem presumption ; to me it appears the best grounded hope ; hope of the future built on experience of the past.
  • Letter to George Whitefield (19 June 1764), published in The Works of Benjamin Franklin (1856).

• Idleness and Pride Tax with a heavier Hand than Kings and Parliaments; If we can get rid of the former we may easily bear the Latter.
  • Letter to Charles Thomson, 11 July 1765; also quoted in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). The last sentence is sometimes misquoted as «If we can get rid of the former, we can get rid of the latter».

• But your Squabbles about a Bishop I wish to see speedily ended. … Each Party abuses the other, the Profane and the Infidel believe both sides, and enjoy the Fray; the Reputation of Religion in general suffers, and its enemies are ready to say, not what was said in the primitive Times, Behold how these Christians love one another, but, Mark how these Christians hate one another! Indeed when religious People quarrel about Religion, or hungry People about their Victuals, it looks as if they had not much of either among them.
  • Letter to Jane Mecom, 23 February 1769

• Here Skugg lies snug
  As a bug in a rug.
  • Letter to Miss Georgiana Shipley (September, 1772); reported in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

• In 200 years will people remember us as traitors or heros? That is the question we must ask.
  • Letter to Thomas Jefferson (March 16th, 1775).

• You and I were long friends: you are now my enemy, and I am yours.
  • Letter to William Strahan (5 July 1775); reported in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

• We hear of the conversion of water into wine at the marriage in Cana as of a miracle. But this conversion is, through the goodness of God, made every day before our eyes. Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards; there it enters the roots of the vines, to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy. The miracle in question was only performed to hasten the operation, under circumstances of present necessity, which required it.
  • Letter to Abbé Morellet (1779).

• Here you would know and enjoy what posterity will say of Washington. For a thousand leagues have nearly the same effect with a thousand years.
  • Letter to Washington (5 March 1780); reported in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

• All Wars are Follies, very expensive, and very mischievous ones. When will Mankind be convinced of this, and agree to settle their Differences by Arbitration? Were they to do it, even by the Cast of a Dye, it would be better than by Fighting and destroying each other.
  • Letter to Mary Hewson (27 January 1783).

• There never was a good war or a bad peace.
  • Letter to Josiah Quincy (11 September 1783).

• All Property indeed, except the Savage’s temporary Cabin, his Bow, his Matchcoat, and other little Acquisitions absolutely necessary for his Subsistence, seems to me to be the Creature of publick Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents & all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity & the Uses of it. All the Property that is necessary to a Man for the Conservation of the Individual & the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property of the Publick, who by their Laws have created it, and who may therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire & live among Savages. — He can have no right to the Benefits of Society who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it.
  • Letter to Robert Morris (25 December 1783).

• I wish the Bald Eagle had not been chosen as the representative of our country; he is a bird of bad moral character; like those among men who live by sharping and robbing, he is generally poor, and often very lousy. The turkey is a much more respectable bird.
  • letter to Sarah Bache (26 January 1784).

• Let me add, that only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.
  • letter to the Abbés Chalut and Arnaud (17 April 1787).

• Remember me affectionately to good Dr. Price and to the honest heretic Dr. Priestly. I do not call him honest by way of distinction; for I think all the heretics I have known have been virtuous men. They have the virtue of fortitude or they would not venture to own their heresy; and they cannot afford to be deficient in any of the other virtues, as that would give advantage to their many enemies; and they have not like orthodox sinners, such a number of friends to excuse or justify them. Do not, however, mistake me. It is not to my good friend’s heresy that I impute his honesty. On the contrary, ’tis his honesty that has brought upon him the character of heretic.
  • Letter to Benjamin Vaughan (24 October 1788).

• That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a maxim that has been long and generally approved; never, that I know of, controverted.
  • Letter to Benjamin Vaughan, on Blackstone’s Ratio (14 March 1785).

• Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes!
  • Letter to Jean-Baptiste Le Roy (13 November 1789)
  • First published in The Private Correspondence of Benjamin Franklin (1817)p.266
    • The Yale Book of Quotations quotes “‘Tis impossible to be sure of any thing but Death and Taxes,” from Christopher Bullock, The Cobler of Preston (1716). The YBQ also quotes “Death and Taxes, they are certain,” from Edward Ward, The Dancing Devils (1724).

Attributed[edit]

Attributed: Quotes found in a reputable secondary source but not sourced to an original work. Read more at Wikiquote:Sourced and Unsourced sections.

• We must, indeed, all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.
  • Statement at the signing of the Declaration of Independence (1776-07-04), quoted as an anecdote in The Works of Benjamin Franklin by Jared Sparks (1840). However, this had earlier been attributed to Richard Penn in Memoirs of a Life, Chiefly Passed in Pennsylvania, Within the Last Sixty Years (1811, p. 116). In 1801, «If we don’t hang together, by Heavens we shall hang separately» appears in the English play Life by Frederick Reynolds (Life, Frederick Reynolds, in a collection by Mrs Inchbald, 1811, Google Books first published in 1801 [4]), and the remark was later attributed to ‘An American General’ by Reynolds in his 1826 memoir p.358. A comparable pun on «hang alone … hang together» appears in Dryden’s 1717 The Spanish Fryar Google Books. The pun also appears in an April 14, 1776 letter from Carter Braxton to Landon Carter,Letters of Members of the Continental Congress, Vol.1 (1921), p.421, as «a true saying of a Wit — We must hang together or separately.»

• What is the good of a newborn baby?
  • Widely attributed response to a questioner doubting the usefulness of hot air balloons. See Seymor L. Chapin, «A Legendary Bon Mot?: Franklin’s ‘What is the Good of a Newborn Baby?'», Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 129:3 (September 1985), pp. 278–290. Chapin argues (pp. 286–287) that the «evidence overwhelmingly suggests that he said something rather different» and that the attributed quotation is «a probably much older adage».

• Every man of the commonalty (excepting infants, insane persons, and criminals) is, of common right, and by the laws of God, a freeman, and entitled to the free enjoyment of liberty. …liberty or freedom consists in having an actual share in the appointment of those who are to frame the laws and who are to be the guardians of every man’s life, property, and peace. For the all of one man is as dear to him as the all of another; and the poor man has an equal right, but more need to have representatives in the Legislature than the rich one. …they who have no voice or vote in the electing of representatives, do not enjoy liberty, but are absolutely enslaved to those who have votes and their representatives; for to be enslaved is to have governors whom other men have set over us, and to be subject to laws made by the representatives of others, without having had representatives of our own to give consent in our behalf.
  • «Some Good Whig Principles. Declaration of those Rights of the Community of Great Britain, without which they cannot be Free,» as quoted in Memoirs of the Llife and Writings of Benjamin Franklin (1818) by Benjamin Franklin and William Temple Franklin

• Fish and visitors stink in three days.
  • Adapted 16th century writer John Lyly’s line found in Euphues – the Anatomy of Wit: Fish and guests in three days are stale.

• Today a man owns a jackass worth fifty dollars and he is entitled to vote; but before the next election the jackass dies. The man in the mean time has become more experienced, his knowledge of the principles of government, and his acquaintance with mankind, are more extensive, and he is therefore better qualified to make a proper selection of rulers — but the jackass is dead and the man cannot vote. Now gentlemen, pray inform me, in whom is the right of suffrage? In the man or in the jackass?
  • Colonial Advocate, article on «Elective Franchise» in the issue of December 27, 1827.

• A republic, if you can keep it.
  • James McHenry diary entry on September 18,1787, the day after the signing of the United States Constitution: «A lady asked Dr. Franklin Well Doctor what we got a republic or a monarchy — A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it.»

Quotes about Franklin[edit]

• The year was 1748, the place was Philadelphia, and the book was The Instructor, a popular British manual for everything from arithmetic to letter-writing to caring for horses’ hooves. Benjamin Franklin had set himself to adapting it for the American colonies.
  Though Franklin already had a long and successful career by this point, he needed to find a way to convince colonial book-buyers—who for the most part didn’t even formally study arithmetic—that his version of George Fisher’s textbook was worth the investment. Franklin made all sorts of changes throughout the book, from place names to inserting colonial histories, but he made one really big change: adding John Tennent’s The Poor Planter’s Physician to the end. Tennent was a Virginia doctor whose medical pamphlet had first appeared in 1734. By appending it to The Instructor (replacing a treatise on farriery) Franklin hoped to distinguish the book from its London ancestor. Franklin advertised that his edition was “the whole better adapted to these American Colonies, than any other book of the like kind.” In the preface he goes on to specifically mention his swapping out of sections, insisting that “in the British Edition of this Book, there were many Things of little or no Use in these Parts of the World: In this Edition those Things are omitted, and in their Room many other Matters inserted, more immediately useful to us Americans.” One of those useful “Matters” was a how-to on at-home abortion, made available to anyone who wanted a book that could teach the ABCs and 123s.
  • Molly Farrell, ”Ben Franklin Put an Abortion Recipe in His Math Textbook”, Slate, (May 05, 2022)

• The monetary experiments of Pennsylvania and its neighbors were by no means an unconsidered reaction to circumstance. They were extensively debated and had the energetic support of Benjamin Franklin, the most intelligent political man in the colonies and an ardent exponent of paper money. In 1729 he published his A Modest Enquiry into the Nature and Necessity of Paper Currency, a brief on behalf of paper currency… In 1736, Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette printed an apology for its irregular appearance because its printer was «with the Press, labouring for the publick Good, to make Money more plentiful.» The press was busy printing money.
  • John Kenneth Galbraith, Money: Whence it Came, Where it Went (1975) Ch. V, Of Paper, p. 54.

• The prime exponent of paper money in those years was Benjamin Franklin. He thought it a good and useful thing, and his advocacy had an intensely practical touch. He printed money for the colonial governments on his own printing press.
  • John Kenneth Galbraith, The Age of Uncertainty (1977) Chapter 6, p. 180.

• America has sent us many good things, gold, silver, sugar, tobacco; but you are the first philosopher for whom we are beholden to her. It is our own fault that we have not kept him; whence it appears that we do not agree with Solomon, that wisdom is above gold; for we take good care never to send back an ounce of the latter, which we once lay our fingers upon.
  • David Hume, as quoted in The Eve of the Revolution by Carl L. Becker (1918).

• Franklin was the first scientist to propose that the identity of lightning and electricity could be proved experimentally, but he was not the first to suggest that identity, nor even the first to perform the experiment.
  • Joseph Priestley; The Kite Experiment, The Pennsylvania Gazette, October 19, 1752; also copy: The Royal Society. II. Printed in Joseph Priestley, The History and Present State of Electricity, with Original Experiments (London, 1767), pp. 179–81

• To demonstrate, in the completest manner possible, the sameness of the electric fluid with the matter of lightning, Dr. Franklin, astonishing as it must have appeared, contrived actually to bring lightning from the heavens, by means of an electrical kite, which he raised when a storm of thunder was perceived to be coming on.
• Using the Leyden jar, Franklin “collected electric fire very copiously,” Priestley recounted. That “electric fire”—or electricity—could then be discharged at a later time.
  • Joseph Priestley; The Kite Experiment, The Pennsylvania Gazette, October 19, 1752; also copy: The Royal Society. II. Printed in Joseph Priestley, The History and Present State of Electricity, with Original Experiments (London, 1767), pp. 179–81; as qtd. in “Benjamin Franklin and the Kite Experiment”, Franklin Institute.

• Benjamin Franklin did a great many notable things for his country, and made her young name to be honored in many lands as the mother of such a son. It is not the idea of this memoir to ignore that or cover it up. No; the simple idea of it is to snub those pretentious maxims of his, which he worked up with a great show of originality out of truisms that had become wearisome platitudes as early as the dispersion from Babel.
  • Mark Twain, «The Late Benjamin Franklin», The Galaxy, July 1870, as reprinted in Essays and Sketches of Mark Twain (1995), ed. Stuart Miller, ISBN 1566198798

• Eripuit Coelo fulmen, mox Sceptra Tyrannis.
  • He seized the lightning from Heaven and the scepter from the Tyrants.
    • Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Baron de Laune, as quoted in The Monthly Anthology, and Boston Review (November 1803 — April 1804; 1811), p.167. This has also been quoted in several other variants of Latin or French expression, and been translated into English in various ways. Though it has probably incorrectly been cited as a remark of 1775, the earliest published reference to it appears to have occurred in April 1778.
  • Variants:
  • Eripuit fulmen coelo, mox sceptra tyrannis.
  • Eripuit coelo fulmen sceptrumque tyrannis.
  • He snatched lightning from the sky and scepters from tyrants.
• Francklin repéta plus d’une fois à ses éleves de Paris, que celui qui transporterait dans l’état politique les principes du christianismê primitif, changerait la face de la société. Egalité absolue des conditions, communauté des biens, République de pauvres et de frères, association sans Gouvernement, enthousiasme pour les dogmes et soumission à des chefs électifs, choisis entre des Pairs; voilà sans doute à quoi le presbytérien de Philadelphie réduisait la religion chrétienne…
  • Franklin often told his disciples in Paris, that whoever would introduce the principles of primitive Christianity, into the political state, would change the whole order of society. An absolute equality of condition; a community of goods; a Republic of the poor and of brethren; associations without a Government; enthusiasm for dogmas, and submission to chiefs to be elected from their equals,—this is the state to which the Presbyterian of Philadelphia reduced the Christian Religion.
    • Jacques François Mallet du Pan (born 1749) in Considérations sur la nature de la Révolution de France’,’ 1793 edition, p.22 at Google Books.
    • French historian Henri Martin first turned part of this into a direct quotation of Franklin’s, at the same time changing «la face de la société» (the face of society) into “la face du monde” (the face of the world) in Histoire de France depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu’en 1789, volume 16 (1862), p. 489. A contemporary English translation of the passage reads, «A royalist publicist, Mallet-Dupan, has preserved for us a great saying, which Franklin, he says, repeated more than once to his pupils at Paris: ‘He who shall carry into politics the principles of primitive Christianity will change the face of the world.’» George Bancroft (History of the United States, 1866) translated the saying as Henri Martin gave it in the form «He who shall introduce into public affairs the principles of primitive Christianity will change the face of the world,» likewise attributing it to Franklin. In this wording it has often been quoted as Franklin’s since. The date of March 1778 sometimes given with it appears to have been taken from Bancroft’s margin.

• A man in Philadelphia in America, bred a tradesman, remote from the learned world, had hit upon a secret which enabled him, and other men, to catch and tame the lightning, so dread that it was still mythological.
  • Carl Van Doren, Benjamin Franklin (1938) p. 170.

• Scientists have long suspected that volcanoes can affect the global climate. The first to make the connection between a major eruption and the weather was… Benjamin Franklin. Franklin’s efforts to negotiate a peace treaty to end the Revolutionary War took him to Europe during the year 1783. …he was among many to notice the peculiar blue haze or «dry fog» that cloaked the land that summer and fall. The following winter turned out to be unusually harsh. Soon afterwards Franklin published an article that attributed these events to the eruption of Iceland’s Laki Fissure.
  • Shawna Vogel, Naked Earth: the New Geophysics (1995).

• In fact, the summum bonum of his ethic, the earning of more and more money, combined with the strict avoidance of all spontaneous enjoyment of life, is above all completely devoid of any eudaemonistic, not to say hedonistic, admixture. It is thought of so purely as an end in itself, that from the point of view of the happiness of, or utility to, the single individual, it appears entirely transcendental and absolutely irrational. Man is dominated by the making of money, by acquisition as the ultimate purpose of his life. Economic acquisition is no longer subordinated to man as the means for the satisfaction of his material needs. This reversal of what we should call the natural relationship, so irrational from a naive point of view, is evidently as definitely a leading principle of capitalism as it is foreign to all peoples not under capitalistic influence. At the same time it expresses a type of feeling which is closely connected with certain religious ideas. If we thus ask, why should “money be made out of men,” Benjamin Franklin himself, although he was a colorless deist, answers in his autobiography with a quotation from the Bible, which his strict Calvinistic father drummed into him again and again in his youth: “Seest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before kings” (Prov. xxii. 29). The earning of money within the modern economic order is, so long as it is done legally, the result and the expression of virtue and proficiency in a calling; and this virtue and proficiency are, as it is now not difficult to see, the real Alpha and Omega of Franklin’s ethic, as expressed in the passages we have quoted, as well as in all his works without exception.
  • Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Chapter II: The Spirit of Capitalism, 1905.
• One famous delegate, Benjamin Franklin, was elected to all three bodies and played a leading role in shaping both the Declaration of Independence and the new Pennsylvania constitution. At seventy, Franklin was among the older patriot leaders, and the oldest to sign the Declaration. He was also the most renowned, thanks to his scientific discoveries and “Poor Richard” writings, as well as his long political service. And he was proving to be, in some respects, among the most democratic. Franklin’s work at the Continental Congress —as an esteemed delegate, a member of the select committee that helped Jefferson draft the Declaration, and a major contributor to the debates over the new Articles of Confederation —is well known. After independence was declared, he pushed to create a strong federal government run by a popularly elected legislature based on proportional representation. (Few of those ideas got far.) Much less familiar is Franklin’s contribution as president of the now-obscure State Convention that drafted and approved the most egalitarian constitution produced anywhere in Revolutionary America.
  • Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy (p. 13-14), 2005

See also[edit]

Social and political philosophers
Classic	Aristotle • Aurelius • Averroes • Chanakya • Cicero • Confucius • Laozi • Mencius • Mozi • Plato • Plutarch • Polybius • Socrates • Sun Tzu • Thucydides • Xenophon • Xun Zi
Conservative	Bolingbroke • Bonald • Bossuet • Burke • Burnham • Carlyle • Coleridge • Comte • Cortés • Dmowski • Durkheim • Evola • Fichte • Filmer • Gentile • Hamann • Hegel • Herder • Hobbes • Hoppe • Hume • Huntington • Jünger • Kirk • Le Bon • Leibniz • Kuehnelt-Leddihn • Maistre • Mansfield • More • Mosca • Oakeshott • Pareto • Peterson • Renan • Santayana • Schmitt • Scruton • Sowell • Spengler • Strauss • Taine • Tocqueville • Vico
Liberal	Arendt • Aron • Bastiat • Beccaria • Bentham • Berlin • Boétie • Camus • Condorcet • Constant • Dworkin • Emerson • Erasmus • Franklin • Fukuyama • Hayek • Jefferson • Kant • Locke • Machiavelli • Madison • Mill • Milton • Mises • Montaigne • Montesquieu • Nietzsche • Nozick • Ortega • Popper • Rand • Rawls • Rothbard • Rousseau • Sade • Schiller • Simmel • Smith • Spencer • Spinoza • de Staël • Stirner • Thoreau • Tocqueville • Tucker • Voltaire • Weber • Wollstonecraft
Religious	al-Ghazali • Ambedkar • Aquinas • Augustine • Aurobindo • Calvin • Dante • Gandhi • Girard • Gregory • Guénon • Jesus • John of Salisbury • Jung • Kierkegaard • Kołakowski • Lewis • Luther • Maimonides • Malebranche • Maritain • Muhammad • Müntzer • Niebuhr • Ockham • Origen • Philo • Pizan • Qutb • Radhakrishnan • Shariati • Solzhenitsyn • Taylor • Tertullian • Vivekananda • Weil
Socialist	Adorno • Agamben • Badiou • Bakunin • Baudrillard • Bauman • Bernstein • Butler • Chomsky • de Beauvoir • Debord • Deleuze • Dewey • Du Bois • Engels • Fanon • Foucault • Fourier • Fromm • Godwin • Goldman • Gramsci • Habermas • Kropotkin • Lenin • Luxemburg • Mao • Marcuse • Marx • Mazzini • Negri • Owen • Paine • Rousseau • Russell • Saint-Simon • Sartre • Skinner • Sorel • Trotsky • Walzer • Žižek

External links[edit]

• The Papers of Benjamin Franklin — Sponsored by The American Philosophical Society and Yale University, Digital Edition by The Packard Humanities Institute.
• The Papers of Benjamin Franklin — The Papers of Benjamin Franklin available via founders.archives.gov.
• US State Department – Benjamin Franklin: First American Diplomat (Internet Archive Date: 2009-11-30)
• Ben Franklin at PBS
• Finding Franklin: A Resource Guide, Library of Congress (Internet Archive Date: 2014-05-04)
• Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography:
  • HTML version at The Electric Ben Franklin
  • Project Gutenberg edition
  • Harvard Classics edition
• Poor Richard’s Almanac at The Library of Congress (Internet Archive Date: 2007-11-14)
  • 1733 (Internet Archive Date: 2007-11-16)
  • 1734 (Internet Archive Date: 2007-11-16)
  • 1735 (Internet Archive Date: 2007-11-16)
  • 1736 (Internet Archive Date: 2007-11-14)
  • 1737 (Internet Archive Date: 2007-11-16)
  • 1738 (Internet Archive Date: 2007-11-14)
  • 1739 (Internet Archive Date: 2007-11-16)
  • 1742 (Internet Archive Date: 2007-11-16)
  • 1753 (Internet Archive Date: 2007-11-16)
  • 1758 (Internet Archive Date: 2007-11-16)
• Poor Richard’s Almanac (1733-1758) (Internet Archive Date: 2007-07-13)
• Benjamin Franklin: A Documentary History by J. A. Leo Lemay (Internet Archive Date: 2012-05-02)
• Portrait of Benjamin Franklin (PD) (Internet Archive Date: 2008-09-21)
  • Large version (Internet Archive Date: 2008-09-15)
• Benjamin Franklin Religious Quotes (long in-context quotes) (Internet Archive Date: 2008-04-17)
• Benjamin Franklin quotes on the website of Kevin Stilley, Vice President of Finance at Criswell College
• Text of Franklin’s «Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pensilvania, Philadelphia, 1749» (Internet Archive Date: 2018-10-23)
  • Facsimile of «Proposals»

Benjamin Franklin’s Early Years

Benjamin Franklin was born on January 17, 1706, in colonial Boston. His father, Josiah Franklin (1657-1745), a native of England, was a candle and soap maker who married twice and had 17 children. Franklin’s mother was Abiah Folger (1667-1752) of Nantucket, Massachusetts, Josiah’s second wife. Franklin was the eighth of Abiah and Josiah’s 10 offspring.

Did you know? Benjamin Franklin is the only Founding Father to have signed all four of the key documents establishing the U.S.: the Declaration of Independence (1776), the Treaty of Alliance with France (1778), the Treaty of Paris establishing peace with Great Britain (1783) and the U.S. Constitution (1787).

Franklin’s formal education was limited and ended when he was 10; however, he was an avid reader and taught himself to become a skilled writer. In 1718, at age 12, he was apprenticed to his older brother James, a Boston printer. By age 16, Franklin was contributing essays (under the pseudonym Silence Dogood) to a newspaper published by his brother. At age 17, Franklin ran away from his apprenticeship to Philadelphia, where he found work as a printer. In late 1724, he traveled to London, England, and again found employment in the printing business.

Benjamin Franklin: Printer and Publisher

Benjamin Franklin returned to Philadelphia in 1726, and two years later opened a printing shop. The business became highly successful producing a range of materials, including government pamphlets, books and currency. In 1729, Franklin became the owner and publisher of a colonial newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette, which proved popular—and to which he contributed much of the content, often using pseudonyms. Franklin achieved fame and further financial success with “Poor Richard’s Almanack,” which he published every year from 1733 to 1758. The almanac became known for its witty sayings, which often had to do with the importance of diligence and frugality, such as “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”

In 1730, Franklin began living with Deborah Read (c. 1705-74), the daughter of his former Philadelphia landlady, as his common-law wife. Read’s first husband had abandoned her; however, due to bigamy laws, she and Franklin could not have an official wedding ceremony. Franklin and Read had a son, Francis Folger Franklin (1732-36), who died of smallpox at age 4, and a daughter, Sarah Franklin Bache (1743-1808). Franklin had another son, William Franklin (c. 1730-1813), who was born out of wedlock. William Franklin served as the last colonial governor of New Jersey, from 1763 to 1776, and remained loyal to the British during the American Revolution. He died in exile in England.

Benjamin Franklin and Philadelphia

As Franklin’s printing business prospered, he became increasingly involved in civic affairs. Starting in the 1730s, he helped establish a number of community organizations in Philadelphia, including a lending library (it was founded in 1731, a time when books weren’t widely available in the colonies, and remained the largest U.S. public library until the 1850s), the city’s first fire company, a police patrol and the American Philosophical Society, a group devoted to the sciences and other scholarly pursuits. 

Franklin also organized the Pennsylvania militia, raised funds to build a city hospital and spearheaded a program to pave and light city streets. Additionally, Franklin was instrumental in the creation of the Academy of Philadelphia, a college which opened in 1751 and became known as the University of Pennsylvania in 1791.

Franklin also was a key figure in the colonial postal system. In 1737, the British appointed him postmaster of Philadelphia, and he went on to become, in 1753, joint postmaster general for all the American colonies. In this role he instituted various measures to improve mail service; however, the British dismissed him from the job in 1774 because he was deemed too sympathetic to colonial interests. In July 1775, the Continental Congress appointed Franklin the first postmaster general of the United States, giving him authority over all post offices from Massachusetts to Georgia. He held this position until November 1776, when he was succeeded by his son-in-law. (The first U.S. postage stamps, issued on July 1, 1847, featured images of Benjamin Franklin and George Washington.)

In 1748, Franklin, then 42 years old, had expanded his printing business throughout the colonies and become successful enough to stop working. Retirement allowed him to concentrate on public service and also pursue more fully his longtime interest in science. In the 1740s, he conducted experiments that contributed to the understanding of electricity, and invented the lightning rod, which protected buildings from fires caused by lightning. In 1752, he conducted his famous kite experiment and demonstrated that lightning is electricity. Franklin also coined a number of electricity-related terms, including battery, charge and conductor.

In addition to electricity, Franklin studied a number of other topics, including ocean currents, meteorology, causes of the common cold and refrigeration. He developed the Franklin stove, which provided more heat while using less fuel than other stoves, and bifocal eyeglasses, which allow for distance and reading use. In the early 1760s, Franklin invented a musical instrument called the glass armonica. Composers such as Ludwig Beethoven (1770-1827) and Wolfgang Mozart (1756-91) wrote music for Franklin’s armonica; however, by the early part of the 19th century, the once-popular instrument had largely fallen out of use.

READ MORE: 11 Surprising Facts About Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin and the American Revolution

In 1754, at a meeting of colonial representatives in Albany, New York, Franklin proposed a plan for uniting the colonies under a national congress. Although his Albany Plan was rejected, it helped lay the groundwork for the Articles of Confederation, which became the first constitution of the United States when ratified in 1781.

In 1757, Franklin traveled to London as a representative of the Pennsylvania Assembly, to which he was elected in 1751. Over several years, he worked to settle a tax dispute and other issues involving descendants of William Penn (1644-1718), the owners of the colony of Pennsylvania. After a brief period back in the U.S., Franklin lived primarily in London until 1775. While he was abroad, the British government began, in the mid-1760s, to impose a series of regulatory measures to assert greater control over its American colonies. In 1766, Franklin testified in the British Parliament against the Stamp Act of 1765, which required that all legal documents, newspapers, books, playing cards and other printed materials in the American colonies carry a tax stamp. Although the Stamp Act was repealed in 1766, additional regulatory measures followed, leading to ever-increasing anti-British sentiment and eventual armed uprising in the American colonies.

Franklin returned to Philadelphia in May 1775, shortly after the Revolutionary War (1775-83) had begun, and was selected to serve as a delegate to the Second Continental Congress, America’s governing body at the time. In 1776, he was part of the five-member committee that helped draft the Declaration of Independence, in which the 13 American colonies declared their freedom from British rule. That same year, Congress sent Franklin to France to enlist that nation’s help with the Revolutionary War. In February 1778, the French signed a military alliance with America and went on to provide soldiers, supplies and money that proved critical to America’s victory in the war.

As minister to France starting in 1778, Franklin helped negotiate and draft the 1783 Treaty of Paris that ended the Revolutionary War.

Benjamin Franklin’s Later Years

In 1785, Franklin left France and returned once again to Philadelphia. In 1787, he was a Pennsylvania delegate to the Constitutional Convention. (The 81-year-old Franklin was the convention’s oldest delegate.) At the end of the convention, in September 1787, he urged his fellow delegates to support the heavily debated new document. The U.S. Constitution was ratified by the required nine states in June 1788, and George Washington (1732-99) was inaugurated as America’s first president in April 1789.

Franklin died a year later, at age 84, on April 17, 1790, in Philadelphia. Following a funeral that was attended by an estimated 20,000 people, he was buried in Philadelphia’s Christ Church cemetery. In his will, he left money to Boston and Philadelphia, which was later used to establish a trade school and a science museum and fund scholarships and other community projects.

More than 200 years after his death, Franklin remains one of the most celebrated figures in U.S. history. His image appears on the $100 bill, and towns, schools and businesses across America are named for him.

Benjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706–April 17, 1790) was a scientist, publisher, and statesman in colonial North America, where he lacked the cultural and commercial institutions to nourish original ideas. He dedicated himself to creating those institutions and improving everyday life for the widest number of people, making an indelible mark on the emerging nation.

Early Life

Benjamin Franklin was born on January 17, 1706, in Boston, Massachusetts, to Josiah Franklin, a soap and candlemaker, and his second wife Abiah Folger. Josiah Franklin and his first wife Anne Child (m. 1677–1689) immigrated to Boston from Northamptonshire, England in 1682. Anne died in 1689 and, left with seven children, Josiah soon married a prominent colonist named Abiah Folger.

Benjamin was Josiah’s and Abiah’s eighth child and Josiah’s 10th son and 15th child—Josiah would eventually have 17 children. In such a crowded household, there were no luxuries. Benjamin’s period of formal schooling was less than two years, after which he was put to work in his father’s shop at the age of 10.

Colonial Newspapers

Franklin’s fondness for books finally determined his career. His older brother James Franklin (1697–1735) was the editor and printer of the New England Courant, the fourth newspaper published in the colonies. James needed an apprentice, so in 1718 the 13-year-old Benjamin Franklin was bound by law to serve his brother. Soon after, Benjamin began writing articles for this newspaper. When James was put in jail in February 1723 after printing content considered libelous, the newspaper was published under Benjamin Franklin’s name.

Escape to Philadelphia

After a month, James Franklin took back the de facto editorship and Benjamin Franklin went back to being a poorly treated apprentice. In September 1723, Benjamin sailed for New York and then Philadelphia, arriving in October 1723.

In Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin found employment with Samuel Keimer, an eccentric printer just beginning a business. He found lodging at the home of John Read, who would become his father-in-law. The young printer soon attracted the notice of Pennsylvania Governor Sir William Keith, who promised to set him up in his own business. For that to happen, however, Benjamin had to go to London to buy a printing press.

London and ‘Pleasure and Pain’

Franklin set sail for London in November 1724, engaged to John Read’s daughter Deborah (1708–1774). Governor Keith promised to send a letter of credit to London, but when Franklin arrived he discovered that Keith had not sent the letter; Keith, Franklin learned, was known to have been a man who dealt primarily in «expectations.» Benjamin Franklin remained in London for nearly two years as he worked for his fare home.

Franklin found employment at the famous printer’s shop owned by Samuel Palmer and helped him produce «The Religion of Nature Delineated» by William Wollaston, which argued that the best way to study religion was through science. Inspired, Franklin printed the first of his many pamphlets in 1725, an attack on conservative religion called «A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain.» After a year at Palmer’s, Franklin found a better paying job at John Watt’s printing house; but in July 1726, he set sail for home with Thomas Denham, a sensible mentor and father figure he had met during his stay in London.

During the 11-week voyage, Franklin wrote «Plan for Future Conduct,» the first of his many personal credos describing what lessons he had learned and what he intended to do in the future to avoid pitfalls.

Philadelphia and the Junto Society

After returning to Philadelphia in late 1726, Franklin opened a general store with Thomas Denham and when Denham died in 1727, and Franklin went back to work with the printer Samuel Keimer.

In 1727 he founded the Junto Society, commonly known as the «Leather Apron Club,» a small group of middle-class young men who were engaged in business and who met in a local tavern and debated morality, politics, and philosophy. Historian Walter Isaacson described the Junto as a public version of Franklin himself, a «practical, industrious, inquiring, convivial, and middle-brow philosophical [group that] celebrated civic virtue, mutual benefits, the improvement of self and society, and the proposition that hardworking citizens could do well by doing good.»

Becoming a Newspaper Man

By 1728, Franklin and another apprentice, Hugh Meredith, set up their own shop with funding from Meredith’s father. The son soon sold his share, and Benjamin Franklin was left with his own business at the age of 24. He anonymously printed a pamphlet called «The Nature and Necessity of a Paper Currency,» which called attention to the need for paper money in Pennsylvania. The effort was a success, and he won the contract to print the money.

In part driven by his competitive streak, Franklin began writing a series of anonymous letters known collectively as the «Busy-Body» essays, signed under several pseudonyms and criticizing the existing newspapers and printers in Philadelphia—including one operated by his old employer Samuel Keimer, called The Universal Instructor in All Arts and Sciences and Pennsylvania Gazette. Keimer went bankrupt in 1729 and sold his 90-subscriber paper to Franklin, who renamed it The Pennsylvania Gazette. The newspaper was later renamed The Saturday Evening Post.

The Gazette printed local news, extracts from the London newspaper Spectator, jokes, verses, humorous attacks on rival Andrew Bradford’s American Weekly Mercury, moral essays, elaborate hoaxes, and political satire. Franklin often wrote and printed letters to himself, either to emphasize some truth or to ridicule some mythical but typical reader.

A Common Law Marriage

By 1730, Franklin began looking for a wife. Deborah Read had married during his long stay in London, so Franklin courted a number of girls and even fathered an illegitimate child named William, who was born between April 1730 and April 1731. When Deborah’s marriage failed, she and Franklin began living together as a married couple with William in September 1730, an arrangement that protected them from bigamy charges that never materialized.

A Library and ‘Poor Richard’

In 1731, Franklin established a subscription library called the Library Company of Philadelphia, in which users would pay dues to borrow books. The first 45 titles purchased included science, history, politics, and reference works. Today, the library has 500,000 books and 160,000 manuscripts and is the oldest cultural institution in the United States.

In 1732, Benjamin Franklin published «Poor Richard’s Almanack.» Three editions were produced and sold out within a few months. During its 25-year run, the sayings of the publisher Richard Saunders and his wife Bridget—both aliases of Benjamin Franklin—were printed in the almanac. It became a humor classic, one of the earliest in the colonies, and years later the most striking of its sayings were collected and published in a book.

Deborah gave birth to Francis Folger Franklin in 1732. Francis, known as «Franky,» died of smallpox at the age of 4 before he could be vaccinated. Franklin, a fierce advocate of smallpox vaccination, had planned to vaccinate the boy but the illness intervened.

Public Service

In 1736, Franklin organized and incorporated the Union Fire Company, based on a similar service established in Boston some years earlier. He became enthralled by the Great Awakening religious revival movement, rushing to the defense of Samuel Hemphill, attending George Whitefield’s nightly outdoor revival meetings, and publishing Whitefield’s journals between 1739 and 1741 before cooling to the enterprise.

During this period in his life, Franklin also kept a shop in which he sold a variety of goods. Deborah Read was the shopkeeper. He ran a frugal shop, and with all his other activities, Benjamin Franklin’s wealth rapidly increased.

American Philosophical Society

About 1743, Franklin moved that the Junto society become intercontinental, and the result was named the American Philosophical Society. Based in Philadelphia, the society had among its members many leading men of scientific attainments or tastes from all over the world. In 1769, Franklin was elected president and served until his death. The first important undertaking was the successful observation of the transit of Venus in 1769; since then, the group has made several important scientific discoveries.

In 1743, Deborah gave birth to their second child Sarah, known as Sally.

An Early ‘Retirement’

All of the societies Franklin had created up to this point were noncontroversial, in so far as they kept with the colonial governmental policies. In 1747, however, Franklin proposed the institution of a volunteer Pennsylvania Militia to protect the colony from French and Spanish privateers raiding on the Delaware River. Soon, 10,000 men signed up and formed themselves into more than 100 companies. It was disbanded in 1748, but not before word of what Pennsylvania colony’s leader Thomas Penn called «a part little less than treason» was communicated to the British governor.

In 1748 at the age of 42, with a comparatively small family and the frugality of his nature, Franklin was able to retire from active business and devote himself to philosophical and scientific studies.

Franklin the Scientist

Although Franklin had neither formal training nor grounding in math, he now undertook a vast amount of what he called «scientific amusements.» Among his many inventions was the «Pennsylvania fireplace» in 1749, a wood-burning stove that could be built into fireplaces to maximize heat while minimizing smoke and drafts. The Franklin stove was remarkably popular, and Franklin was offered a lucrative patent that he turned down. In his autobiography, Franklin 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.» He never patented any of his inventions.

Benjamin Franklin studied many different branches of science. He studied smoky chimneys; he invented bifocal glasses; he studied the effect of oil upon ruffled water; he identified the «dry bellyache» as lead poisoning; he advocated ventilation in the days when windows were closed tight at night, and with patients at all times; and he investigated fertilizers in agriculture. His scientific observations show that he foresaw some of the great developments of the 19th century.

Electricity

His greatest fame as a scientist was the result of his discoveries in electricity. During a visit to Boston in 1746, he saw some electrical experiments and at once became deeply interested. His friend Peter Collinson of London sent him some of the crude electrical apparatuses of the day, which Franklin used, as well as some equipment he had purchased in Boston. He wrote in a letter to Collinson: «For my own part, I never was before engaged in any study that so engrossed my attention and my time as this has lately done.»

Experiments conducted with a small group of friends and described in this correspondence showed the effect of pointed bodies in drawing off electricity. Franklin decided that electricity was not the result of friction, but that the mysterious force was diffused through most substances, and that nature always restored its equilibrium. He developed the theory of positive and negative electricity, or plus and minus electrification.

Lightning

Franklin carried on experiments with the Leyden jar, made an electrical battery, killed a fowl and roasted it upon a spit turned by electricity, sent a current through water to ignite alcohol, ignited gunpowder, and charged glasses of wine so that the drinkers received shocks.

More importantly, he began to develop the theory of the identity of lightning and electricity and the possibility of protecting buildings with iron rods. He brought electricity into his house using an iron rod, and he concluded, after studying electricity’s effect on bells, that clouds were generally negatively electrified. In June 1752, Franklin performed his famous kite experiment, drawing down electricity from the clouds and charging a Leyden jar from the key at the end of the string.

Peter Collinson gathered Benjamin Franklin’s letters together and had them published in a pamphlet in England, which attracted wide attention. The Royal Society elected Franklin a member and awarded him the Copley medal with a complimentary address in 1753.

Education and the Making of a Rebel

In 1749, Franklin proposed an academy of education for the youth of Pennsylvania. It would be different from the existing institutions (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, William & Mary) in that it would be neither religiously affiliated nor reserved for the elites. The focus, he wrote, was to be on practical instruction: writing, arithmetic, accounting, oratory, history, and business skills. It opened in 1751 as the first nonsectarian college in America, and by 1791 it became known as the University of Pennsylvania.

Franklin also raised money for a hospital and began arguing against British restraint of manufacturing in America. He wrestled with the idea of enslavement, personally enslaving and then selling an African American couple in 1751, and then keeping an enslaved person as a servant on occasion later in life. But in his writings, he attacked the practice on economic grounds and helped establish schools for Black children in Philadelphia in the late 1750s. Later, he became an ardent and active abolitionist.

Political Career Begins

In 1751, Franklin took a seat on the Pennsylvania Assembly, where he (literally) cleaned up the streets in Philadelphia by establishing street sweepers, installing street lamps, and paving.

In 1753, he was appointed one of three commissioners to the Carlisle Conference, a congregation of Native American leaders at Albany, New York, intended to secure the allegiance of the Delaware Indians to the British. More than 100 members of the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy (Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora) attended; the Iroquois leader Scaroyady proposed a peace plan, which was dismissed almost entirely, and the upshot was that the Delaware Indians fought on the side of the French in the final struggles of the French and Indian War.

While in Albany, the colonies’ delegates had a second agenda, at Franklin’s instigation: to appoint a committee to «prepare and receive plans or schemes for the union of the colonies.» They would create a national congress of representatives from each colony, who would be led by a «president general» appointed by the king. Despite some opposition, the measure known as the «Albany Plan» passed, but it was rejected by all of the colonial assemblies as usurping too much of their power and by London as giving too much power to voters and setting a path toward union.

When Franklin returned to Philadelphia, he discovered the British government had finally given him the job he had been lobbying for: deputy postmaster for the colonies.

Post Office

As deputy postmaster, Franklin visited nearly all the post offices in the colonies and introduced many improvements into the service. He established new postal routes and shortened others. Postal carriers now could deliver newspapers, and the mail service between New York and Philadelphia was increased to three deliveries a week in summer and one in winter.

Franklin set milestones at fixed distances along the main post road that ran from northern New England to Savannah, Georgia, to enable the postmasters to compute postage. Crossroads connected some of the larger communities away from the seacoast with the main road, but when Benjamin Franklin died, after also serving as postmaster general of the United States, there were still only 75 post offices in the entire country.

Defense Funding

Raising funds for the defense was always a grave problem in the colonies because the assemblies controlled the purse-strings and released them with a grudging hand. When the British sent General Edward Braddock to defend the colonies in the French and Indian war, Franklin personally guaranteed that the required funds from the Pennsylvania farmers would be repaid.

The assembly refused to raise a tax on the British peers who owned much of the land in Pennsylvania (the «Proprietary Faction») in order to pay those farmers for their contribution, and Franklin was outraged. In general, Franklin opposed Parliament levying taxes on the colonies—no taxation without representation—but he used all his influence to bring the Quaker Assembly to vote for money for the defense of the colony.

In January 1757, the Assembly sent Franklin to London to lobby the Proprietary faction to be more accommodating to the Assembly and, failing that, to bring the issue to the British government.

Statesman

Franklin reached London in July 1757, and from that time on his life was to be closely linked with Europe. He returned to America six years later and made a trip of 1,600 miles to inspect postal affairs, but in 1764 he was again sent to England to renew the petition for a royal government for Pennsylvania, which had not yet been granted. In 1765, that petition was made obsolete by the Stamp Act, and Franklin became the representative of the American colonies against King George III and Parliament.

Benjamin Franklin did his best to avert the conflict that would become the American Revolution. He made many friends in England, wrote pamphlets and articles, told comical stories and fables where they might do some good, and constantly strove to enlighten the ruling class of England upon conditions and sentiment in the colonies. His appearance before the House of Commons in February 1766 hastened the repeal of the Stamp Act. Benjamin Franklin remained in England for nine more years, but his efforts to reconcile the conflicting claims of Parliament and the colonies were of no avail. He sailed for home in early 1775.

During Franklin’s 18-month stay in America, he sat in the Continental Congress and was a member of the most important committees; submitted a plan for a union of the colonies; served as postmaster general and as chairman of the Pennsylvania Committee of Safety; visited George Washington at Cambridge; went to Montreal to do what he could for the cause of independence in Canada; presided over the convention that framed a constitution for Pennsylvania; and was a member of the committee appointed to draft the Declaration of Independence and of the committee sent on the futile mission to New York to discuss terms of peace with Lord Howe.

Treaty With France

In September 1776, the 70-year-old Benjamin Franklin was appointed envoy to France and sailed soon afterward. The French ministers were not at first willing to make a treaty of alliance, but under Franklin’s influence they lent money to the struggling colonies. Congress sought to finance the war with paper currency and by borrowing rather than by taxation. The legislators sent bill after bill to Franklin, who continually appealed to the French government. He fitted out privateers and negotiated with the British concerning prisoners. At length, he won from France recognition of the United States and then the Treaty of Alliance.

The U.S. Constitution

Congress permitted Franklin to return home in 1785, and when he arrived he was pushed to keep working. He was elected president of the Council of Pennsylvania and was twice reelected despite his protests. He was sent to the 1787 Constitutional Convention, which resulted in the creation of the Constitution of the United States. He seldom spoke at the event but was always to the point when he did, and all of his suggestions for the Constitution were followed.

Death

America’s most famous citizen lived until near the end of the first year of President George Washington’s administration. On April 17, 1790, Benjamin Franklin died at his home in Philadelphia at age 84.

Sources

• Clark, Ronald W. «Benjamin Franklin: A Biography.» New York: Random House, 1983.
• Fleming, Thomas (ed.). «Benjamin Franklin: A Biography in His Own Words.» New York: Harper and Row, 1972.
• Franklin, Benjamin. «The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.» Harvard Classics. New York: P.F. Collier & Son, 1909.
• Isaacson, Walter. «Benjamin Franklin: An American Life.» New York, Simon and Schuster, 2003.
• Lepore, Jill. «Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin.» Boston: Vintage Books, 2013. 

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