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Benjamin Franklin (2002)

No one can rejoice more sincerely than I do on the Reduction of Canada; and this, not merely as I am a Colonist, but as I am a Briton. I have long been of Opinion, that the Foundations of the future Grandeur and Stability of the British Empire, lie in America; and tho', like other Foundations, they are low and little seen, they are nevertheless, broad and Strong enough to support the greatest Political Structure Human Wisdom ever yet erected. I am therefore by no means for restoring Canada. If we keep it, all the Country from St. Laurence to Missisipi, will in another Century be fill'd with British People; Britain itself will become vastly more populous by the immense Increase of its Commerce; the Atlantic Sea will be cover'd with your Trading Ships; and your naval Power thence continually increasing, will extend your Influence round the whole Globe, and awe the World! If the French remain in Canada, they will continually harass our Colonies by the Indians, impede if not prevent their Growth; your Progress to Greatness will at best be slow, and give room for many Accidents that may for ever prevent it. But I refrain, for I see you begin to think my Notions extravagant, and look upon them as the Ravings of a mad Prophet.
-Benjamin Franklin, letter to Lord Kames (January 3, 1760)

It seems entirely predictable that the adult hero of the new PBS kids show, Liberty's Kids, set during the American Revolution, is Benjamin Franklin. Portly, bald, bespectacled, so easy to imagine smudged with printer's ink, or flying his kite in a storm--Franklin seems the most accessible of the Founders. In our imaginations, hasn't the rough edges of a John Adams, the tragic mien of an Alexander Hamilton, the slavery defending taint of a Thomas Jefferson, or the forbidding reserve of a George Washington. Now some of this, of course, is simply the product of how he's been portrayed in popular history--he did, after all, own slaves himself; had at least friendly relationships with many women while an ocean away from his wife; and lived by the adage "let all men know thee, but no man know thee thoroughly"--but he was also, at least as portrayed here, an uncommonly decent man, accessible to all, even though the most famous man of his day, and apparently devoid of a dark side. In fact, considering the Franklin who emerges from this almost hagiographic account, it's easy to see why he's remained sort of the mascot of the Revolution.

Renowned historian Edmund S. Morgan is 86 now and has more than his share of laurels that he could rest upon. Here, from his review of this book, is historian Gordon S. Wood on Edmund Morgan's signal contribution to the study of history:

    For over a half-century prior to the publication of the Morgans' The Stamp Act Crisis, scholars such as Arthur Schlesinger, Sr. had described
    the Revolution as the product of underlying forces, mostly economic in nature. These Progressive scholars dismissed the revolutionaries'
    own explanation of their motives--that they were revolting on behalf of their rights against parliamentary power--as bombastic and inconsistent
    propaganda, not to be taken seriously by any hard-headed realist. But writing in the face of decades of economic determinist scholarship,
    the Morgans did take seriously what the American colonists had to say about Parliamentary power and their rights. And they thus set in
    motion a generation of historical scholarship that began by revealing the richness of the ideas of the revolutionaries and ended by turning the
    American Revolution into one of the great intellectual achievements of modern times.

For anyone who's majored in history or has a layman's interest, or both, it is impossible to adequately express our debt to Mr. Morgan. As Mr. Wood says, he played a central role in rescuing us from the economic determinism of the Marxists and helped to restore the centrality of ideas to the study of history. Had he done nothing else but this, Mr. Morgan would be worthy of reverence. But in addition he's written any number of excellent texts and now, at an age when few would still be writing worthwhile books, Mr. Morgan offers this delightful biographical essay, inspired by and largely derived from the work he's overseeing as chairman of the Administrative Board of the Papers of Benjamin Franklin, a project centered at Yale University, where he is Sterling Professor of History Emeritus.

Mr. Morgan briefly sketches out Franklin's early life, his work as a printer and publisher, his involvement in an incredible array of civic improvements in Philadelphia, and the experiments with electricity that won him his world-wide fame. But then the bulk of the shortish book is taken up by Franklin's time in Europe, first in England, where in addition to trying to make Pennsylvania a royal colony, he waged a virtually solo campaign to preserve Anglo-American ties. Then, after a hiatus in America, one that converted him to a full bore American patriot and saw him collaborate on the drafting of the Declaration of Independence, it's back overseas, this time to France, where he played the vital role in keeping French loans coming and getting the French to send military assistance, then stayed on to negotiate the 1782 peace between America and Britain. In his final years, back in America, Franklin attended the Constitutional Convention, though Mr. Morgan barely mentions it, and he wrote on topics both political and scientific.

The book is entirely beguiling and I'd encourage everyone to read it. The attention that Mr. Morgan pays to people's own ideas provides one of the real treats of the book, his nuanced discussion of Franklin's personal religious views. As Mr. Morgan portrays it, Franklin's brand of Christianity may have been peculiar--he seems not to have believed that the Bible was revealed nor that Christ was the son of God--but it was enduring and was central to his character, for what Franklin believed in was Christian morality and he believed "that tho' certain Actions might not be bad because they were forbidden by [the Bible], or good because it commanded them, yet probably those Actions might be forbidden because they were bad for us, or commanded because they were beneficial to us." While Franklin's personal behavior, particularly with regard to women, may not have been as chaste as Mr. Morgan would (unnecessarily) have us believe, he seems to have lived an otherwise upright life and to have never lost sight of the need for society to be structured around such religious morality. Though seldom discussed, the Founders, for all the variety of their religious views and practices, were largely unified in their belief in the necessity for religion to provide America's moral order.

One wonders though if Mr. Morgan doesn't make something of a misstep in his treatment of another big idea: Franklin's long attachment to the "long-term goal of an Anglo-American empire of equals". Mr. Morgan demonstrates how during the two long stretches that Franklin spent in England prior to the Revolution--1757-62 and 1764-75--he worked very hard to preserve or restore friendly relations between the colonies and the British. But for Franklin, even then, it had to be a relationship between equals. He considered himself the equal of any Englishman, and wanted only that he and his fellow colonists be treated as such. In Mr. Morgan's view, this led Franklin to stay too long on the side of accommodation, when other Americans had already moved over fully to the side of Independence. On returning home, Franklin indeed realized that the situation on the ground was too far gone for his hopes to prevail and he too became an ardent advocate of independence. Mr. Morgan treats as error Franklin's failure to come to this view sooner, and then raises no questions when Franklin, during his time in France (1776-83), sought to forge tight ties to the French. In fact, the harshest criticism in the book is reserved for John Adams, who was far less willing to bind America's fortunes to the French.

Mr. Morgan's attitude here is perfectly understandable from a patriot's retrospective view. Because of the way events played out, it's easy to say that Franklin should have seen the demand for independence coming and been on board earlier and obviously the entanglement with France did the Revolution much good and no harm. However, if one extends the historical perspective and looks at things with a less parochial eye, it's possible to make the argument that Franklin was right in the beginning and wrong to abandon his dream.

Even assuming that war between America and England was necessary--to prove that the former was in fact the equal of the latter--wiser heads might have sought to preserve a formal relationship between the old and the new nation after the war. Franklin, even at that early date, understood that America was destined to be the "greater" nation--mostly for reasons of demographics and his prescience about America's population growth . He envisioned a future where the English Empire would endure, but its focus of power would gradually shift across the Atlantic. In effect, that is what happened over the ensuing centuries. However, because there was no official, institutional structure that united the two, each was at times left to shift for itself when the other could have helped. There's little real value in speculating about alternate histories, but it's irresistible to imagine how much differently America might have handled the slavery question had there been some institutional outlet for British pressure to oppose it and had the South not held out hope that Britain might take their side in the Civil War. Equally intriguing is the thought of whether WWI and, even more so, WWII would have seemed so attractive to the Germans had they known that war with England necessarily implicated war with America.

As regards Franklin's dalliance with France, perhaps he just correctly intuited that America would have little to fear from the French, but as the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Era would soon show, there was little to recommend a long term Franco-American relationship. America is a product of the English belief in freedom, with which French demands for equality are ultimately incompatible. That America was able to avoid the malefic influence of France can not excuse entirely the danger Franklin may have taken in courting it, and the adulation with which he was received in France may well have blinded him to the danger.

At any rate, while Mr. Morgan treats the idea of permanent British/American unity as a weakness on Franklin's part, maybe even little more than a fetish, it seems pretty attractive from the distance of two centuries, a time during which the "special relationship" has proven so important to the cause of freedom in the world.

This criticism is minor though in comparison to what is a very readable and immensely enjoyable book. Once again we are indebted to Mr. Morgan. It's a debt that I, for one, have been happy to incur.

(Reviewed:15-Nov-02)

Grade: (A)

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Benjamin Franklin (2002)

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