The Compleated Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (1757-1790)

by Benjamin Franklin

  OLD MAN’S WISH

  I FEEL A GROWING CURIOSITY TO BE ACQUAINTED WITH SOME OTHER LIFE

  Appendix - The Last Will and Testament of Benjamin Franklin

  Afterword

  Sources

  Important Dates

  Cast of Characters

  About the Compiler and Editor

  Index

  Copyright Page

  DEDICATED TO

  My wife, Jo Ann Skousen,

  our five children,

  Valerie Lee, Timothy Mark, Lesley Ann,

  Todd Franklin, and Hayley Elizabeth,

  and all other descendants of Benjamin Franklin

  Acknowledgments

  “If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing.”

  —BEN FRANKLIN

  Finishing the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin has been a longtime adventure. Many people have been involved in this project over the years, and I would like to acknowledge them here.

  First, appreciation goes to the editors and staff at Yale University in charge of compiling and editing the Papers of Benjamin Franklin. In particular, the current editor, Ellen Cohn, answered many questions and provided me the Franklin Papers Reader CD that contains virtually the entire collection of published and unpublished Franklin papers, including a translation of many of Franklin’s letters in French, an invaluable tool in compiling and editing this manuscript. I wish to thank Yale University Library, the American Philosophical Society, and the Library of Congress, among others, for granting permission to publish copies of the original documents related to Franklin.

  The staff at the various libraries at Columbia University were also helpful in locating materials related to Franklin’s autobiographical writings. Thanks also to the historian Carl Van Doren, who not only wrote the definitive biography Benjamin Franklin (New York: Viking Press, 1938), but collected Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiographical Writings (New York: Viking Press, 1945), which I found useful in my own efforts. I also depended on Thomas Fleming’s excellent compilation, Benjamin Franklin: A Biography in His Own Words (New York: Harper & Row, 1972); Claude-Anne Lopez’s Mon Cher Papa, Franklin and the Ladies of Paris (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990); and The Private Franklin: The Man and His Family, by Claude-Anne Lopez and Eugenia W. Herbert (New York: W. W. Norton, 1975).

  I would like to thank my mother, Helen Louise McCarty Skousen, for passing down the legend of our family’s relationship to Ben Franklin. She is responsible for my early fascination with Franklin’s life and work. As a young man, I collected proverbs from Poor Richard’s Almanac, and as an adult, I gained a great deal of pleasure posing as Franklin from time to time, visiting the Franklin House in Philadelphia and Craven Street in London, and writing a little book, The Wit and Wisdom of Benjamin Franklin (London: Pickering & Chatto, 1996).

  Special appreciation also goes to my wife and lifelong editor, Jo Ann Skousen, who taught me years ago how to “know a participle from a predicate.” Her professional editing and arranging skills helped make this work, and all of my writings, flow smoothly and naturally. Without her extraordinary efforts, this work would have remained unfinished.

  Lastly, I would like to thank Jeff Carneal, president of Eagle Publishing; Marji Ross, the publisher; and Stephen Thompson, the senior editor, who recognized at once the value of bringing to life the final thirty-three years of Franklin’s illustrious career in a challenging new format.

  To all these, I quote the words of Franklin, “a true friend is the best possession.”

  MARK SKOUSEN

  New York, New York

  Introduction

  “Had Franklin been able to write about every period of his life and all of his achievements, his Autobiography would have been one of the most remarkable documents ever produced.”

  —ROBERT W. MOORE

  “And yet he by no means left the great remainder of his life untold.”

  —CARL VAN DOREN1

  As a young reader, I was fascinated with Benjamin Franklin’s success as an entrepreneur, inventor, civil servant, and philosopher-wit. When I came to the end of his unfinished Autobiography, I wanted desperately to read about his life in London as a colonial agent, his role in the Declaration of Independence, his service as America’s first ambassador to France, and his part in creating a new constitution and a new nation. But it was not to be. The official autobiography of Benjamin Franklin ends abruptly in 1757, when he was just 51 years old. Another 33 years of his life were still to be recorded when he died in 1790, leaving out the most eventful years of his illustrious political career. What occurred over the next three decades made him a famous man, whom one biographer called “the most beloved and celebrated American of his age, or indeed of any age.”2

  That Franklin intended to complete his memoirs is without question. On the second day of writing his Autobiography, while visiting the Jonathan Shipley family in Twyford, near Winchester, England, he made an outline of his entire career. He divided each manuscript page into two columns, leaving the right-hand columns blank for making future additions and changes. Franklin addressed the material he had written so far to the “more general use [of] young readers” in pursuing a “life of business.”3 By 1757, Franklin was already known as an accomplished figure who had achieved fame and fortune as a publisher, postmaster, scientist, inventor, and public citizen of Philadelphia, and he desired to pass along his “prudent and imprudent” experiences to future generations. But the hard lessons he learned as a diplomat and revolutionary were left unrecorded when Franklin’s mortal pen stopped on April 17TH, 1790, at the age of 84.

  William Temple Franklin recognized soon after the death of his grandfather the need for a completed autobiography, and he in fact attempted to compile the remaining account, hoping to draw on Franklin’s extensive outline, journals, copies of letters, and published materials to finish the job. The result was the publication, after endless delays, of Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Benjamin Franklin in three volumes in 1817–18.

  Now, generations later, I make another attempt. I conceived the idea of finishing the Autobiography while reading The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, a joint project of the American Philosophical Society and Yale University, and published by Yale University Press. While perusing his papers, I made a remarkable discovery: Franklin had virtually written—albeit in bits and pieces—the remainder of his illustrious life through his journals, essays, and letters to his relatives and friends about family life, politics, science, business, literature, and philosophy. As Carl Van Doren, Franklin’s premier biographer, explains, “For Franklin, the most widely read of autobiographers, was an autobiographer by instinct and habitual practice.”4 There was much to work with. Franklin kept a series of diaries. In letters to his close friends and relatives, he gave charming details of his domestic existence, and related many behind-the-scenes political maneuvers in London and Paris. In one instance, Franklin wrote a three-page letter to Lord Kames, summarizing his two years in America, 1762-64. Not all his letters survive, but those that do paint a full picture of the man and his colorful career and character.

  In addition to these letters, Franklin composed three important chapters he intended to include, in whole or in part, in his Autobiography : First, his Tract Relative to the Affair of Hutchinson’s Letters; second, an Account of the Negotiations in London for Effecting a Reconciliation between Great Britain and the American Colonies; and third, Journal of the Negotiation for Peace with Great Britain from March 21ST to July 1ST, 1782. He showed the second of these papers to Thomas Jefferson in March 1790, as a sample of the history of his own life Franklin was preparing. All three were written after he wrote the first part of the Autobiography (in 1771), and he no doubt was planning to incorporate them when he reached the years in which these events took place. I have included all three monographs in condensed form in the Compleated Autobiography.5

  It is important to note that t
hese three essays were “further fragments of a work which is itself a fragment.”6 Van Doren makes this important point, one that should not be overlooked by those who think completing Franklin’s Autobiography is an impossible or inappropriate task. Franklin frequently revised the Autobiography, and in some ways, the entire book should be considered an unfinished work, in need of further revisions.

  THE MAKING OF THE COMPLEATED AUTOBIOGRAPHY

  From the beginning of this project, my objective was to create a work entirely in the hand and voice of Franklin. After extensive research into his life and papers, I became more and more optimistic that my lofty goal could be achieved. Now, at the end of this journey, I have the happiness to conclude that Franklin’s entire personal history can be told in his own words.

  Yet it was not an easy task. Given the complexity, disparity, and mammoth volume of Franklin’s writings, the construction of the Compleated Autobiography required considerable judgment as to what should be included and what should not. Finishing his memoirs entailed much more than simply gathering and reprinting his papers. He left behind hundreds of thousands of documents, which, when finally gathered and published, will exceed fifty printed volumes. My edited compilation probably represents less than two percent of his writings. Yet it is in large measure a complete story. All along, I felt as though I was assembling a giant jigsaw puzzle, not knowing precisely what the final image would be. Now, after months of effort, I see the big picture.... a smiling Franklin.

  After reading through his papers and major biographies, I tried to put myself into Franklin’s way of thinking and sought to imitate his selection process, as seen in his autobiographical writings. Like Franklin himself, I decided to “omit . . . facts and transactions that may not have a tendency to benefit the . . . reader, . . . [hoping] that the book will be found entertaining, interesting, and useful.”7

  I have relied on Franklin’s detailed outline of his memoirs, which he referred to himself when writing the Autobiography. Just as he injected historical events into his account to make a philosophical or moral point, so too have I inserted Franklin’s stories into the Compleated Autobiography. And like Franklin in his memoirs, I have omitted his published essays, such as The Way to Wealth, and focused on his personal commentaries on events, individuals, ideas, and pursuits.

  In a few cases, I have relied on letters from friends about Franklin rather than by him. For example, it is unfortunate that few if any documents survive about his involvement in the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the Constitutional Convention in 1787. He apparently chose not to write about these singular events, privately or publicly, much to our loss. So I have had to rely mostly on several third party sources for Franklin’s perspective. Franklin’s lengthy commentary on the American Revolution, for example, comes from the diary of Arthur Lee, one of the commissioners to France, who spent an evening reminiscing and discussing with Franklin the events of the year and a half following the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and then recorded the conversation in his own diary.8

  Sometimes I discovered a reference Franklin made of an important event, such as his wife’s death, written years after the fact and buried in some obscure letter to a friend or relative. In these and other cases, a paragraph in The Compleated Autobiography may draw from several sources in order to create a chronologically accurate and full record of Franklin’s life. As the reader will note in the citations at the end of the book, I often drew upon a half dozen references to tell the full story of an incident. In short, The Compleated Autobiography is thoroughly Franklin.

  Some have wondered if it might be better simply to reprint Franklin’s letters and essays rather than attempt to finish his autobiography in a single volume, which only he could do to his complete satisfaction. Indeed, many of his famous letters, journals, and essays have been reprinted as appendages to the Autobiography in various editions, or as Franklin anthologies.9 Yet most of these anthologies are out of print, while the Autobiography continues to be reprinted and sold in bookstores. In my mind, it suggests a need for a newly fashioned memoir as a better way of recording the colorful and controversial later years of the charismatic, wise, and clever Dr. Franklin.

  I have corrected much of the spelling, grammar, and sentence structure to reflect modern English usage, and have made structural changes in tense and person to create a seamless flow of writing. In no circumstances do these minor changes affect the meaning or style of Franklin’s prose. At the same time, I have maintained some of the old English spelling and abbreviations that Franklin used, to give the work a sense of history. Occasionally, I insert clearly identified footnotes, brackets and short historical summaries to provide needed background. I have also included an alphabetized “Cast of Characters” at the end of the book. The sources of Franklin’s writings are provided at the end of the book for those interested in locating the exact citation for further study. PBF refers to The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, published by Yale University Press, followed by volume and page number. Note that citations after around 1782 do not refer to volumes from the Papers of Benjamin Franklin. Citations after this period have not been published in the Papers of Benjamin Franklin, and here I relied heavily upon printed copies of Franklin’s unpublished letters and other documents in their possession, as well as extensive correspondence in French that the editors have had translated into English. I wish to thank in particular Ellen Cohn, the current editor of the Papers of Benjamin Franklin, for her assistance and guidance, although I alone take responsibility for compiling and editing the Compleated Autobiography.

  “A MAN WHO BOASTS OF HIS ANCESTORS”

  What drove me to finish Ben Franklin’s memoirs? I’ve had a lifelong interest in the “grandfather” of our nation. I find him the most creative, successful, entertaining, and approachable of the Founding Fathers. His multifaceted career and personal life are endlessly fascinating, and Franklin would be famous today even without the role he played in the American Revolution.

  My personal interest in Franklin goes back to a long standing tradition in my mother’s family of being descendants of Franklin through his daughter, Sally. My mother even looks like Franklin’s profile. For years no one knew exactly how we were related other than the fact that it was rumored to be through an illegitimate line. In the late 1970s, I decided to do some genealogical work and discovered a will proving that we were direct descendants through Ben Franklin’s grandson Louis Bache, who, according to his will, had two “natural sons” from an unmarried servant, one of whom was also named Louis. This Louis Jr. was raised by his father (shades of Ben and his illegitimate son William), and is my direct ancestor. It turns out that Ben Franklin is my eighth-generation grandfather through the Louis Bache line. Coincidentally, my career has sometimes followed Franklin’s as a publisher, author, financial advisor, teacher, father, public servant, and world traveler. Several years ago I wrote a little book, The Wit and Wisdom of Ben Franklin, and on several occasions I have appeared as Ben Franklin, escorted to the podium by two lovely “French” ladies. Nonetheless, when I think of being related to such a famous Founding Father, I am always reminded of Poor Richard’s refrain, “A man who makes boast of his ancestors doth but advertise his own insignificance.”

  Still, I would like to think that old grandpa Ben would find this work by one of his descendants to be “most agreeable,” especially as it is presented in honor of the 300th year of his birth.

  Benjamin Franklin and His Autobiography

  A Summary

  “Benjamin Franklin was perhaps the most beloved and celebrated American of his age, or indeed of any age.”

  —H. W. BRANDS10

  “Benjamin Franklin was the most versatile genius in all of history.”

  —MICHAEL H. HART11

  Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) was the quintessential man of the eighteenth century Enlightenment and the most famous American of his age—a world renowned inventor, essayist, philosopher, diplomat, wit and the only founding f
ather to sign the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Paris, and the U.S. Constitution. The youngest of ten sons of a Boston soap and candle maker, Franklin was born January 17, 1706, in Puritan Boston and became apprenticed as a printer. At seventeen he ran away to Philadelphia, where he became so successful publishing almanacs, pamphlets, and newspapers that he was able to retire in his early forties, to become a gentleman of leisure engaged in scientific pursuits and civic affairs. For the next forty years, Franklin would devote himself largely to politics and diplomacy, becoming the first postmaster general and representing the colonies on two missions to England. He received many honorary degrees and was referred to as “Dr. Franklin.” He repudiated the Stamp Act before the English Parliament, then returned home to become a leading revolutionary in the Continental Congress and signer of the Declaration of Independence. In the fall of 1776, he became America’s first ambassador, negotiating an alliance with France, where he became the toast of French society. France’s resultant support of America in its war of independence from Great Britain may have been the deciding factor in achieving victory in 1781. After negotiating a peace treaty, Franklin returned to America triumphantly in 1785 and inspired the delegates at the Constitutional Convention to adopt the Constitution before he died in 1790.

  WRITING HIS MEMOIRS

  Franklin worked on his much-anticipated Autobiography at four different times of his adult life. He wrote all or most of Part One during a two-week stay at the house of Bishop Jonathan Shipley near Twyford in Hampshire, England, in August 1771. He was then 65 and colonial agent to England. These memoirs cover his birth in 1706 through 1730. He wrote Part Two (including his list of virtues) in 1784 in Paris, where he was minister to France, at age 78. Part Three (covering 1732-57) was written in 1788, when Franklin, age 82, was living in Philadelphia. And Part Four, only a few pages long, discusses his first few months as colonial agent in London and was written when he was between 83 and 84 years old, between November 1789, and March 1790, soon before his death. He made additions and corrections to the manuscripts at various times. The original manuscript is located at the Henry E. Huntington Library in San Marino, California.