Franklin, Benjamin

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Franklin, Benjamin

FRANKLIN, BENJAMIN. (1706–1790). American statesman. Signer. Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. At the start of the Revolution, Franklin was almost 70 years old. He had an international reputation as a scientist, inventor, writer, and editor, to mention but some of his achievements. Yet in the last fifteen years of his life, Franklin played as prominent a role in attaining and securing American independence as anyone.

Born in Boston on 6 January 1706, Franklin attended school only a short time before going to work, first in his father's tallow shop and then in his brother's printshop. After breaking with his brother in 1723, Franklin quit his indenture and fled to Philadelphia. Within six years he owned the Pennsylvania Gazette. In 1730 he moved in with, but did not marry, Deborah Read, with whom he had several children.

Poor Richard's Almanack began appearing in 1732, and was edited by Franklin until 1757. He edited the Gazette until 1748. The Junto, a debating club he founded in 1727, became the American Philosophical Society in 1743. He established a circulating library (1731), Philadelphia's first fire company (1736), and an academy (1751) that was the nucleus of what eventually became the University of Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania having no militia, Franklin led a group of citizens in creating the "Philadelphia Associators." Turning down an officer's rank in this militia, Franklin insisted on serving as a private soldier, which only enhanced his reputation with the anti-Quaker party. In the scientific field, which gained him fame abroad, he invented the woodstove that still bears his name (1742) and conducted a series of significant experiments into the nature of electricity.

Franklin served as clerk of the Pennsylvania Assembly from 1736 to 1751, was a member of that body from 1751 to 1764, deputy postmaster at Philadelphia from 1737 to 1753, and, with William Hunter, was postmaster general of the colonies from 1753 to 1774. He attended the Albany Convention of 1754 and submitted his famous plan of union. He served as agent for Pennsylvania from 1757 to 1762, and renewed his service from 1764 to 1775. He served in the same capacity for Georgia from 1768 to 1774, and for Massachusetts from 1770 to 1774.

Preceded by his scientific reputation, Franklin enjoyed a warm welcome in England and on the Continent. He was accompanied to London by his son, William. William became a Loyalist who would earn appointment as New Jersey's last royal governor. Benjamin Franklin moved in the opposite political direction from his son, becoming the prime representative in Britain for the Patriot position. Instrumental in securing repeal of the Stamp Act (1766), Franklin met regularly with sympathetic British politicians to argue the American cause, wrote dozens of pamphlets and newspaper articles, and endured a highly unusual grilling before the entire House of Commons in 1766. When it was suggested by a Member of Parliament that troops might be needed to deal with the American uprising, Franklin replied, "They will not find a rebellion; they may indeed make one." He was publicly censured in England in 1774 for his part in the Hutchinson letters affair and dismissed shortly thereafter as postmaster general by the British government.

Franklin returned to Philadelphia in May 1775, just in time for the start of the military conflict with Britain. He was immediately chosen as a member of the Second Continental Congress, was appointed the first Postmaster General (1775–1776), and was one of the three men sent to Canada by Congress in 1776. He helped draft the Declaration of Independence, and was a signer of that document. In September 1776, Congress appointed Franklin, along with Arthur Lee and Silas Deane, to negotiate a treaty with the French.

Already known for his scientific works, Franklin arrived in Paris in December 1776 and was lionized by the public. Although the government could not openly receive him as an official American representative, the foreign minister, the comte de Vergennes, singled Franklin out as the only one of the three with whom he would deal, so the chief burden of negotiations with the French government fell on him. His popularity did much to expedite secret aid and to bring about the French alliance. The former went a long way toward arming the Continental army and bringing about the American victory at Saratoga, which in turn effected the goal of alliance. Franklin worked tirelessly for the American cause, securing munitions and arranging vital loans for the American states; acquiring ships for the new U.S. navy and securing them safe harbors in European ports; issuing letters of marquee for American privateers; negotiating for humane treatment of American prisoners of war and effecting prisoner exchanges; and heading up an extensive, though not always effective intelligence network, while pouring forth a stream of propaganda. All the while, he was charming his way through the European elite. Meanwhile he suffered the "magisterial snubbings and rebukes" of the psychotic Arthur Lee, but got along well enough with the third commissioner, Silas Deane.

By September 1778, Congress realized its mistake in having appointed three commissioners to France. It made Franklin the sole plenipotentiary. On 8 June 1781 Franklin was named one of three American commissioners for peace negotiations, in which he played the major role. Probably no American has ever been as successful in the conduct of diplomatic affairs.

On 26 December 1783, Franklin reminded Congress of their promise to recall him after the peace was made (the treaty had been signed 3 September), but he did not get his authority to leave until 2 May 1785. Finally reaching Philadelphia in September 1785, Franklin was elected president of the Pennsylvania Executive Council, which office he held until 1788. He was a member of the Constitutional Convention that met in Philadelphia in May 1787; and although none of his cardinal ideas was adopted—for instance, he favored a single chamber and an executive board—he made a considerable contribution in bringing about the necessary compromises among the delegates. He did not like the way the Constitution was finally worded, but urged its unanimous adoption. "The older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment," he said with the whimsy that had ironed out other controversies of the convention. He asked the others to join him in doubting a little of their own infallibility and "to make manifest our unanimity, put his name to the instrument." Unlike most people, Franklin became more radical as he grew older. By the time of the Constitutional Convention, he was calling for the establishment of a humane American criminal justice system and urging the extension of the logic of the Revolution to women and blacks, calling for an end of slavery and legal rights for women. Though often ignored at home, he inspired reformers in Europe and South America. After his death on 17 April 1790, the French Assembly voted a three-day mourning period. The U.S. Senate rejected a similar proposal.