Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

  40. “Causes of the American Discontents before 1768,” London Chronicle, Jan. 7, 1768. Although it was anonymous, Franklin indicated his authorship by using as an epigram a line he had used in his 1760 piece on “The Interest of Great Britain Considered”: “The waves never rise but when the winds blow.” With his interest in waves, both scientific and political, he enjoyed this metaphor.

  41. “Preface to Letters from a Farmer,” by N.N. (BF), May 8, 1768, Papers 15:110; BF to WF, Mar. 13, 1768.

  42. BF to Joseph Galloway, Jan. 9, 1768; BF to WF, Jan. 9, 1768; BF to unknown recipient, Nov. 28, 1768; Lib. of Am. 839; Clark 211.

  43. BF to Joseph Galloway, July 2, Dec. 13, 1768; BF to WF, July 2, 1768; Hawke 263, 268; Brands 408.

  44. To Thomas Crowley, by “Francis Lynn” (BF), Public Advertiser, Oct. 21, 1768; “On Civil War,” signed N.N. (BF), Public Advertiser, Aug. 25, 1768; “Queries,” by “NMCNPCH” (BF), London Chronicle, Aug. 18, 1768; “On Absentee Governors,” by Twilight (BF), Public Advertiser, Aug. 27, 1768.

  45. “An American” (BF) to the Gazetteer, Jan. 17, 1769; “A Lion’s Whelp,” Public Advertiser, Jan. 2, 1770.

  46. BF to William Strahan, Nov. 29, 1769.

  47. BF to Charles Thomson, Mar. 18, 1770; BF to Samuel Cooper, June 8, 1770.

  48. Franklin’s account of audience with Hillsborough, Jan. 16, 1771, Papers 18:9; Hawke 290; Brands 431–34.

  49. BF to Samuel Cooper, Feb. 5, June 10, 1771; Strahan to WF, Apr. 3, 1771; BF to Massachusetts Committee of Correspondence, May 15, 1771; Hawke 294–95; Van Doren 387–88.

  50. BF to Thomas Cushing, June 10, 1771; Arthur Lee to Sam Adams, June 10, 1771, in Richard Henry Lee, The Life of Arthur Lee (Boston: Wells and Lilly, 1829); Samuel Cooper to BF, Aug. 25, 1771; Brands 437–38.

  Chapter 11

  1. BF to William Brownrigg, Nov. 7, 1773; Charles Tanford, Ben Franklin Stilled the Waves (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1989), 29; Van Doren 419.

  2. Jonathan Williams (BF’s nephew), “Journal of a Tour Through Northern England,” May 28, 1771, Papers 18:113; BF to Thomas Cushing, June 10, 1771; BF to DF, June 5, 1771; Hawke 295; Brands 438.

  3. BF to Jonathan Shipley, June 24, 1771.

  4. BF to JM, July 17, 1771; BF to Samuel Franklin, July 19, 1771.

  5. John Updike, “Many Bens,” New Yorker, Feb. 22, 1988, 112; Charles Angoff, A Literary History of the American People (New York: Knopf, 1931); Van Doren 415.

  Lemay/Zall Autobiography provides a complete look at the original manuscriptand all of its revisions. The edition produced by Leonard Labaree and the other editors of the Franklin Papers at Yale (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964) is authoritative, filled with useful annotations, and has an introduction that gives a good history of the manuscript. Carl Van Doren, Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiographical Writings (1945; New York: Viking, 2002), 208–11, and Van Doren’s biography of Franklin, 414–15, describe Franklin’s process of writing. Also valuable are various articles by J. A. Leo Lemay: “The Theme of Vanity in Franklin’s Autobiography,” in Lemay Reappraising, 372, and “Franklin and the Autobiography,” Eighteenth Century Studies (1968): 200. For good analyses of the manuscript, which is available at the Huntington Library, see P. M. Zall, “The Manuscript of Franklin’s Autobiography,” Huntington Library Quarterly 39 (1976); P. M. Zall, “A Portrait of the Autobiographer as an Old Artificer,” in The Oldest Revolutionary, ed. J.A.Leo Lemay (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1976), 53. The Norton Critical edition (New York: Norton, 1968), which was edited by Lemay and Zall, contains a bibliography of scholarly articles as well as excerpts of criticism. See also Ormond Seavey, Becoming Benjamin Franklin: The Autobiography and the Life (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1988); Henry Steele Commager, introduction to the Modern Library edition (New York: Random House, 1944); Daniel Aaron, introduction to the Library of America edition (New York: Vintage, 1990).

  The memoir written by Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1583–1648) had been published by Franklin’s friend Horace Walpole in 1764, seven years before Franklin began his own work. Gilbert Burnet was a great English clergyman and historian who described the revolution of 1688 in his History of My Own Time, a copy of which was owned by Franklin’s Library Company.

  6. BF to Anna Shipley, Aug. 13, 1771; BF to Georgiana Shipley, Sept. 26, 1772; BF to DF, Aug. 14, 1771; Van Doren 416–17.

  7. BF to Thomas Cushing, Jan. 13, 1772; BF to Joshua Babcock, Jan. 13, 1772; Brands 440.

  8. BF to Thomas Cushing, Jan. 13, 1772; BF to WF, Jan. 30, 1772.

  9. J. Bennett Nolan, Benjamin Franklin in Scotland and Ireland (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1956). This small book is a detailed and well-researched account of Franklin’s activities on these trips. There is some disagreement about whether Adam Smith showed Franklin chapters of the Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, but one of Smith’s relatives said this was the case.

  10. PS to BF, Oct. 31, 1771; SF to RB, Dec. 2, 1771; RB to DF, Dec. 3, 1771; Mary Bache to BF, Dec. 3, 1771, Feb. 5, 1772; Lopez Private, 143–44.

  11. BF to DF, Jan. 28, 1772; BF to SF, Jan. 29, 1772; Lopez Private, 146; RB to BF, Apr. 6, 1773; Van Doren 392; Brands 455.

  12. BF to DF, Oct. 3, 1770; BF to PS, Nov. 25, 1771; BF to DF, Feb. 2, 1773; Brands 456; Van Doren 404, 411.

  13. BF to William Brownrigg, Nov. 7, 1773; Stanford 78–80; C. H. Giles, “Franklin’s Teaspoon of Oil,” Chemistry & Industry (1961): 1616–34; Stephen Thompson, “How Small Is a Molecule?” SHiPS News, Jan. 1994, www1.umn.edu/ ships/words/avogadro.htm ; “Measuring Molecules: The Pond on Clapham Common,” www.rosepetruck.chem.brown.edu/Chem10-01/Lab3/Chem10_lab3.htm.

  14. BF to Benjamin Rush, July 14, 1773.

  15. BF to WF, Aug. 19, 1772.

  16. BF to Cadwalader Evans, Feb. 20, 1768.

  17. BF to John Pringle, May 10, 1768.

  18. BF to Peter Franklin, May 7, 1760.

  19. BF to Giambatista Beccaria, July 13, 1762; www.gigmasters.com/armonica/ index.asp.

  20. Franklin to Collinson, May 9, 1753.

  21. Medius (BF), “On the Labouring Poor,” The Gentleman’s Magazine, Apr. 1768.

  22. Campbell 236.

  23. “A Conversation on Slavery,” Public Advertiser, Jan. 30, 1770.

  24. Lopez Private, 292–98; Gary Nash, “Slaves and Slaveowners in Colonial Philadelphia,” William and Mary Quarterly (Apr. 1973): 225–56. Lopez and Herbert say that one out of five families owned slaves, which is wrong; however, it is true that slaves accounted for roughly one-fifth of the population in 1790, which is not quite the same thing. According to the 1790 census, the first conducted in America, the country had a population of 3,893,874, of which 694,207 were slaves. There were 410,636 families, of which 47,664 owned slaves. In 1750, it is estimated there were 1.2 million people in the thirteen colonies, of which 236,000 were slaves. See fisher.lib.virginia.edu/census/; www.eh.net/encyclopedia/wahl.slavery. us.php; Stanley Engerman and Eugene Genovese, Race and Slavery in the Western Hemisphere: Quantitative Studies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975).

  25. Anthony Benezet to BF, Apr. 27, 1772; BF to Anthony Benezet, Aug. 22, 1772; BF to Benjamin Rush, July 14, 1773; “The Somerset Case and the Slave Trade,” London Chronicle, June 20, 1772; Lopez Private, 299.

  26. BF to WF, Jan. 30, Aug. 19, 1772.

  27. BF to WF, Aug. 17, 1772, July 14, 1773; BF to Joseph Galloway, Apr. 6, 1773; Van Doren 394–98.

  28. BF to Thomas Cushing, Dec. 2, 1772; BF, Tract Relative to the Affair of the Hutchinson Letters, 1774, Papers 21:414. An excellent account of the affair is in Bernard Bailyn, The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974), 221–49. See also Brands 452; Van Doren 461; Wright 224.

  29. BF to Thomas Cushing, Mar. 9, May 6, 1773.

  30. “Rules by Which a Great Empire May Be Reduced to a Small One,” Public Advertiser, Sept. 11, 1773.

  31. “An Edict by the King of Prussia,” Public Advertiser, Sept. 23,
1773.

  32. Baron Le Despencer, “Franklin’s Contributions to an Abridged Version of a Book of Common Prayer,” Aug. 5, 1773, Dashwood Papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford, Papers 20:343; “A New Version of the Lord’s Prayer,” Papers 15:299; BF to WF, Oct. 6, 1773. Sir Francis Dashwood became Lord Le Despencer in 1763.

  33. BF to Joseph Galloway, Nov. 3, 1773; BF to Thomas Cushing, Feb. 2, 1774.

  34. BF to Thomas Cushing, July 25, 1773; BF to London Chronicle, Dec. 25, 1773, Papers 20:531; BF, Tract Relative to the Affair of the Hutchinson Letters, 1774, Papers 21:414; Bailyn, The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson, 255.

  35. BF to Thomas Cushing, Feb. 15, 1774; BF to Thomas Walpole, Jan. 12, 1774; Van Doren 462–63.

  36. The record of hearings and the speech by Wedderburn, Jan. 29, 1774, are in Papers 21:37. There are numerous reconstructions, notably, Fleming 248–50; Hawke 324–27; Brands 470–74; Van Doren 462–76.

  37. BF to Thomas Cushing, Feb. 15, 1774; BF to WF, Feb. 2, 1774; BF to JM, Feb. 17, 1774.

  38. BF to Jan Ingenhousz, Mar. 18, 1774; “A Tract Relative to the Hutchinson Letters,” 1774, Papers 21:414; Hawke 327; Van Doren 477.

  39. Homo Trium Literarum (A Man of Letters, BF), “The Reply,” Public Advertiser, Feb. 16, 1774; Boston Gazette, Apr. 25, 1774; Brands 477–78.

  40. Public Advertiser, Apr. 15, May 21, 1774.

  41. BF to RB, Feb. 17, 1774; Hawke 329; BF to JM, Sept. 26, 1774.

  42. WF to BF, May 3, 1774; WF to Lord Dartmouth, May 31, 1774; Lord Dartmouth to WF, July 6, 1774; Randall 282–84.

  43. BF to WF, June 30, May 7, 1774. The May 7 letter is dated 1775, and many authors accept that it was written then, which was just a couple of days after Franklin’s arrival back in America. In fact, it seems to be misdated, as the Yale editors have concluded. On May 7, 1775, a Sunday, he did not write any other letters, but on May 7, 1774, he was busily engaged in correspondence. The letter fits into the pattern of letters he was writing at that time.

  44. BF to undisclosed recipient, July 27, 1774; BF to Thomas Cushing, Mar. 22, 1774; WF to BF, July 5, 1774; BF to WF, Sept. 7, Oct. 12, 1774.

  45. BF to DF, Sept. 10, 1774; WF to BF, Dec. 24, 1774.

  46. “Journal of the Negotiations in London,” BF to WF, Mar. 22, 1775, in Papers 21:540; Sparks, ch. 8.

  47. Morgan Devious, 241.

  48. This section is drawn from Franklin’s Mar. 22, 1775, journal (cited above) of negotiations and the notes he inserted into it, Papers 21:540. Also, BF to Charles Thomson, Feb. 5, Mar. 13, 1775; BF to Thomas Cushing, Jan. 28, 1775; BF to Joseph Galloway, Feb. 5, 25, 1775; Thomas Walpole to BF, Mar. 16, 1775; Van Doren 495–523.

  49. BF to Charles Thomson, Feb. 5, 1775.

  50. Van Doren 521, citing J. T. Rutt, ed., The Life and Correspondence of Joseph Priestley (1817; New York: Thoemmes Press, 1999), 1:227.

  Chapter 12

  1. “Benjamin Franklin and the Gulf Stream,” podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/kids/ history.html.

  2. BF to TF, June 13, 1775; Brands 499.

  3. Adams Diary 2:127; William Rachel, ed., Papers of James Madison (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), 1:149; Lopez Private, 200; Van Doren 530; Hawke 351; Brands 499.

  4. BF to Joseph Galloway, Feb. 25, May 8, 1775; Van Doren 527; Peter Hutchinson, ed., The Diary of Thomas Hutchinson (1884; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1991), 2:237.

  5. WF to William Strahan, May 7, 1775. There is some uncertainty about when the Franklins first reunited. Some assume it was within days of Benjamin Franklin’s return, though I find no evidence for this. See Hawke 292, and Clark 273. Sheila Skemp, in two books about William Franklin, concludes that William remained in New Jersey until the end of the May 15–16 legislative session and traveled to Pennsylvania for the first time shortly thereafter. See Skemp William, 167, 173; Skemp Benjamin, 127. Brands 524 accepts that chronology. Also, see ch. 11 n. 43 regarding the May 7 letter from Benjamin to William Franklin that some authors (notably Hawke 349), though not the Yale editors, date as being written in 1775, just after Franklin’s arrival.

  6. Peter Hutchinson, The Diary of Thomas Hutchinson, 2: 237; Hawke 349; Skemp William, 173–79; Fleming 292; Lopez Private, 199. See also Bernard Bailyn, The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974).

  7. BF to William Strahan, unsent, July 5, 1775; BF to Strahan, July 7, 1775, quoted by Strahan to BF, Sept. 6, 1775.

  8. William Strahan to BF, July 5, Sept. 6, Oct. 4, 1775; BF to Strahan, Oct. 3, 1775; Lopez Private, 198; Clark 276–77.

  9. BF to Jonathan Shipley, July 7, 1775.

  10. BF to Joseph Priestley, July 7, 1775.

  11. “Intended Vindication and Offer from Congress to Parliament,” July 1775, in Smyth Writings, 412–20 and Papers 22:112; Proposed preamble, before Mar. 23, 1776, Papers 22:388.

  12. Adams to Abigail Adams, July 23, 1775; Brands 500; Hawke 354.

  13. “Proposed Articles of Confederation,” July 21, 1775, Papers 22:120; www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/contcong/07-21-75.htm ; Articles of Confederation of the United Colonies of New England, May 19, 1643, religiousfreedom.lib. virginia.edu/sacred/colonies_of_ne_1643.html.

  14. WF to BF, Aug. 14, Sept. 6, 1775; Lopez Private, 202; Skemp William, 181.

  15. BF to MS, July 17, 1775; Lopez Private, 201; Dorothea Blount to BF, Apr. 19, 1775.

  16. BF to Joseph Priestley, July 7, 1775; BF to Charles Lee, Feb. 11, 1776; Van Doren 532–36.

  17. BF to David Hartley, Oct. 3, 1775; BF to Joseph Priestley, July 7, Oct. 3, 1775.

  18. Minutes of Conference with General Washington, Oct. 18–24, 1775, in Papers 22:224.

  19. BF to RB, Oct. 19, 1775.

  20. Abigail to John Adams, Nov. 5, 1775, Adams Letters, 1:320; Van Doren 537.

  21. Lopez Private, 204; JM to Catherine Ray Greene, Nov. 24, 1775.

  22. JM to Catherine Ray Greene, Nov. 24, 1775; Elizabeth Franklin to TF, Nov. 9, 1775.

  23. “The Rattle-Snake as a Symbol of America,” by An American Guesser (BF), Pa. Journal, Dec. 27, 1775; www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/us-ratt.html.

  24. WF to TF, Mar. 14, June 3, 1776; WF to Lord Germain, Mar. 28, 1776; BF to Josiah Quincy, Apr. 15, 1776.

  25. Franklin’s Journal in Passy, Oct. 4, 1778; BF to Charles Carroll and Samuel Chase, May 27, 1776; Allan Everest, ed., The Journal of Charles Carroll (1776; New York: Champlain–Upper Hudson Bicentennial Commission, 1976), 50; BF to John Hancock, May 1, 8, 1776; BF to George Washington, June 21, 1776; Brands 506–8; Van Doren 542–46; Clark 281–84.

  26. BF to RB, Sept. 30, 1774; Thomas Paine, Common Sense, Feb. 14, 1776, www.bartleby.com/133/.

  27. WF to TF, June 25, 1776; Skemp William, 206–15.

  28. The literature on the writing of the Declaration of Independence is voluminous. This section draws from Pauline Maier, American Scripture (New York: Knopf, 1997); Garry Wills, Inventing America (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1978); and Carl Becker, The Declaration of Independence (New York: Random House, 1922; Vintage paperback, 1970). See also McCullough, 119–36; Adams Diary 2:392, 512–15; Jefferson to James Madison, Aug. 30, 1823, in Jefferson Papers 10:267–69; drafts and revisions of the Declaration of Independence, www.walika.com/sr/drafting.htm. See also n. 34 below.

  29. Adams Diary 3:336, 2:512–15; Jefferson Papers 1:299; Maier 100; “Thomas Jefferson’s Recollection,” www.walika.com/sr/jeff-tells.htm.

  30. Maier, American Scripture, 38.

  31. Sparks, ch. 9 n. 62; Preamble to a Congressional Resolution, Papers 22:322. The document in Sparks’s work is more complete than the one in the Franklin papers.

  32. Becker, The Declaration of Independence, 24–25; Adams Diary 2:512; Jefferson Papers 7:304.

  33. Jefferson to BF, June 21, 1776.

  34. The “original rough draught” of the Declaration shows the evolution of the text from the initial “fair copy” draft by Thomas Jefferson to the final text adopted by Congress. It can be viewed at the Library of Congress and on the Internet at www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/trt
001.html and www.lcweb.loc.gov/exhibits/ declara/declara4.html. See also odur.let.rug.nl/˜usa/D/1776-1800/independence/ doitj.htm and www.walika.com/sr/drafting.htm.

  I am grateful to Gerhard Gawalt, the historian of the Library of Congress, for personally showing me the “original rough draft” and sharing his knowledge about each of the edit changes. I am also grateful to James Billington, Librarian of Congress, and Mark Roosa, the director of preservation, who arranged the presentation. Dr. Gawalt has edited and written a preface to an updated version of a useful illustrated book showing the various drafts: Julian Boyd, The Declaration of Independence: The Evolution of the Text (1945; Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1999).

  35. Franklin’s alterations are noted in Becker, The Declaration of Independence,142; Van Doren 550; Maier, American Scripture, 136. See also Wills, Inventing America, 181 and passim. Wills does not discuss Franklin’s role in changing Jefferson’s words to “self-evident,” but he does discuss the definition used by Locke. Wills also gives a fascinating analysis of the influences of the Scottish Enlightenment philosophers.

  36. Maier, American Scripture, appendix C, 236–40, shows all of the revisions made by Congress. Garry Wills argues that the changes made did not improve the document as much as other scholars have contended; Wills, Inventing America, 307 and passim.

  37. Thomas Jefferson to Robert Walsh, Dec. 4, 1818, Jefferson Papers 18:169.

  38. Sparks 1:408, ch. 9.

  39. Franklin speech of July 31, 1776, in Adams Diary 2:245; Van Doren 557–58.

  40. Smyth Writings, 10:57; Papers CD 46:u344 has the speech reused in his Nov. 3, 1789, remarks on the Pennsylvania Constitution. For a description of Franklin’s design of the Great Seal, see James Hutson, Sara Day, and Jaroslav Pelikan, Religion and the Founding of the American Republic (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1998), 50–52; Jefferson Papers, LCMS-27748, 181–82.

  41. Richard Howe to BF, written June 20, sent July 12, 1776.

  42. BF to Lord Howe, July 30, 1776.