Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

by Walter Isaacson

  Papers CD = CD-ROM of the Papers of Benjamin Franklin

  prepared by the Packard Humanities Institute in cooperation with the Yale editors. These include all of Franklin’s known writings, including material from 1783 to 1790 that has not yet been published. It is searchable by phrase, correspondent, and chronology, but it does not include the valuable annotations by the Yale editors. I am grateful to David Packard and his staff for giving me a version of the CD-ROM before its release.

  Poor Richard’s = Poor Richard’s: An Almanack

  by Benjamin Franklin. Many versions are available, and quotations are cited by year in the notes below. Searchable electronic versions can be found on the Internet at www.sage-advice.com/Benjamin_Franklin.htm ; www.ku.edu/carrie/stacks/au thors.franklin.html ; itech.fgcu.edu/faculty/wohlpart/alra/franklin.htm ; and www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/bdorsey1/41docs/52-fra.html.

  Silence Dogood = The Silence Dogood essays

  The complete editions of the New England Courant, including these essays, are at ushistory.org/franklin/courant.

  Smyth Writings = The Writings of Benjamin Franklin

  edited by Albert Henry Smyth, first published in 1907 (New York: Macmillan, 1905–7; reprinted New York: Haskell House, 1970). Until the Yale editions, this 10-volume work had been a definitive collection of Franklin’s papers.

  Sparks = The Works of Benjamin Franklin and the Life of Benjamin Franklin

  by Jared Sparks (Boston: Tappan, Whittemore and Mason, 1840). Sparks was a Harvard history professor and president who published a 10-volume collection of Franklin’s papers and a biography in 1836–40; www.ushistory.org/franklin/ biography/index.htm.

  Temple Writings = Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Benjamin Franklin

  by [William] Temple Franklin, 3 volumes (London: Henry Colburn, 1818).

  Other Frequently Cited Sources

  Adams Diary = The Diary and Autobiography of John Adams

  edited by L. H. Butterfield (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961).

  Adams Letters = Adams Family Correspondence

  edited by L. H. Butterfield (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963–73).

  Aldridge French= Franklin and His French Contemporaries

  by Alfred Owen Aldridge (New York: NYU Press, 1957).

  Aldridge Nature= Benjamin Franklin and Nature’s God

  by Alfred Owen Aldridge (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1967).

  Alsop = Yankees at the Court

  by Susan Mary Alsop (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1982).

  Bowen = The Most Dangerous Man in America

  by Catherine Drinker Bowen (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974).

  Brands = The First American

  by H. W. Brands (New York: Doubleday, 2000).

  Buxbaum = Benjamin Franklin and the Zealous Presbyterians

  by Melvin Buxbaum (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1975).

  Campbell = Recovering Benjamin Franklin

  by James Campbell (Chicago: Open Court, 1999).

  Clark = Benjamin Franklin

  by Ronald W. Clark (New York: Random House, 1983).

  Cohen = Benjamin Franklin’s Science

  by I. Bernard Cohen (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990).

  Faÿ = Franklin: The Apostle of Modern Man

  by Bernard Faÿ (Boston: Little, Brown, 1929).

  Fleming = The Man Who Dared the Lightning

  by Thomas Fleming (New York: Morrow, 1971).

  Hawke = Franklin

  by David Freeman Hawke (New York: Harper & Row, 1976).

  Jefferson Papers = Papers of Thomas Jefferson

  edited by Julian Boyd (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950–).

  Lemay Internet Doc= “Benjamin Franklin: A Documentary History”

  by J. A. Leo Lemay, University of Delaware, www.english.udel.edu/lemay/ franklin.

  Lemay Reappraising= Reappraising Benjamin Franklin

  edited by J. A. Leo Lemay (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1993).

  Lopez Cher= Mon Cher Papa

  by Claude-Anne Lopez (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966).

  Lopez Life= My Life with Benjamin Franklin

  by Claude-Anne Lopez (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002).

  Lopez Private= The Private Franklin

  by Claude-Anne Lopez and Eugenia Herbert (New York: Norton, 1975).

  McCullough = John Adams

  by David McCullough (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001).

  Middlekauff = Benjamin Franklin and His Enemies

  by Robert Middlekauff (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996).

  Morgan Franklin= Benjamin Franklin

  by Edmund S. Morgan (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002).

  Morgan Devious= The Devious Dr. Franklin: Benjamin Franklin’s Years in London

  by David Morgan (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1996).

  Parton = Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin

  by James Parton, 2 volumes (New York: Mason Brothers, 1865).

  PMHB = Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography

  Randall = A Little Revenge

  by Willard Sterne Randall (New York: William Morrow, 1984).

  Sanford = Benjamin Franklin and the American Character

  edited by Charles Sanford (Boston: Heath, 1955).

  Sappenfield = A Sweet Instruction: Franklin’s Journalism as a Literary Apprenticeship

  by James Sappenfield (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1973).

  Schoenbrun = Triumph in Paris

  by David Schoenbrun (New York: Harper & Row, 1976).

  Skemp William= William Franklin

  by Sheila Skemp (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).

  Skemp Benjamin= Benjamin and William Franklin

  by Sheila Skemp (New York: St. Martin’s, 1994).

  Smith = Franklin and Bache: Envisioning the Enlightened Republic

  by Jeffery A. Smith (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).

  Stourzh = Benjamin Franklin and American Foreign Policy

  by Gerald Stourzh (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954).

  Tourtellot = Benjamin Franklin: The Shaping of Genius, the Boston Years

  by Arthur Tourtellot (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1977).

  Van Doren = Benjamin Franklin

  by Carl Van Doren (New York: Viking, 1938). The page numbers are the same in the Penguin USA paperback edition, 1991 and subsequent reprints.

  Walters = Benjamin Franklin and His Gods

  by Kerry S. Walters (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998).

  Wright = Franklin of Philadelphia

  by Esmond Wright (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986).

  Notes

  Chapter 1

  1. For a description of the writing of the Autobiography, see pages 254–57 and chapter 11 note 5 on page 542.

  2. David Brooks, “Our Founding Yuppie,” Weekly Standard, Oct. 23, 2000, 31. The word “meritocracy” is an argument-starter, and I have employed it sparingly in this book. It is often used loosely to denote a vision of social mobility based on merit and diligence, like Franklin’s. The word was coined by British social thinker Michael Young (later to become, somewhat ironically, Lord Young of Darlington) in his 1958 book The Rise of the Meritocracy (New York: Viking Press) as a dismissive term to satirize a society that misguidedly created a new elite class based on the “narrow band of values” of IQ and educational credentials. The Harvard philosopher John Rawls, in A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), 106, used it more broadly to mean a “social order [that] follows the principle of careers open to talents.” The best description of the idea is in Nicholas Lemann’s The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy(New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999), a history of educational aptitude tests and their effect on American society. In Franklin’s time, Enlightenment thinkers (such as Jefferson in his proposals for creating the University o
f Virginia) advocated replacing the hereditary aristocracy with a “natural aristocracy,” whose members would be plucked from the masses at an early age based on “virtues and talents” and groomed for leadership. Franklin’s idea was more expansive. He believed in encouraging and providing opportunities for all people to succeed as best they could based on their diligence, hard work, virtue, and talent. As we shall see, his proposals for what became the University of Pennsylvania (in contrast to Jefferson’s for the University of Virginia) were aimed not at filtering a new elite but at encouraging and enriching all “aspiring” young men. Franklin was propounding a more egalitarian and democratic approach than Jefferson by proposing a system that would, as Rawls (p. 107) would later prescribe, assure that “resources for education are not to be allotted solely or necessarily mainly according to their return as estimated in productive trained abilities, but also according to their worth in enriching the personal and social life of citizens.” (Translation: He cared not simply about making society as a whole more productive, but also about making each individual more enriched.)

  Chapter 2

  1. Autobiography 18; Josiah Franklin to BF, May 26, 1739; editor’s note in Papers 2:229; Tourtellot 12. Franklin provides a footnote in the Autobiography showing how the noun and surname “franklin” was used in fifteenth-century England. Some analysts, as well as his French fans, have pointed out that Franquelin was a common name in the province of Picardie, France, in the fifteenth century, and his ancestors may have come from there. His father, Josiah Franklin, wrote, “Some think we are of a French extract which was formerly called Franks; some of a free line (frank line), a line free from that vassalage which was common to subjects in the days of old; some from a bird of long red legs.” Franklin’s own assessment that his surname came from the class of English freemen called franklins is almost surely the correct explanation, and just as important, it was the one he believed. The Oxford English Dictionary defines franklin as “A class of landowners, of free but not noble birth, and ranking next below the gentry.” It is derived from the Middle English word frankeleyn, meaning a freeman or freeholder. See Chaucer’s “The Franklin’s Tale,” or “The Frankeleyn’s Tale,” www.librarius.com/ cantales.htm.

  2. Autobiography 20; Josiah Franklin to BF, May 26, 1739. The tale of the Bible and stool is in the letter from Josiah Franklin, but BF writes that he heard it from his uncle Benjamin. For a full genealogy, see Papers 1:xlix. The Signet edition of the Autobiography, based on a version prepared by Max Farrand (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1949), uses a somewhat different phrase: “Our humble family early embraced the Reformation.”

  3. As David McCullough does in Truman (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992) and Robert Caro in The Path to Power (New York: Knopf, 1982).

  4. Autobiography 20; “A short account of the Family of Thomas Franklin of Ecton,” by Benjamin Franklin the elder (uncle of BF), Yale University Library; Benjamin Franklin the Elder’s commonplace book, cited in Papers, vol. 1; Tourtellot 18.

  5. BF to David Hume, May 19, 1762.

  6. Tourtellot 42.

  7. John Winthrop, “A Model of Christian Charity” (1630), www.winthrop society.org/charity.htm ; Perry Miller, Errand into the Wilderness (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1956). See also Andrew Delbanco, The Puritan Ordeal(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989); Edmund Morgan, Visible Saints: The History of a Puritan Idea (New York: NYU Press, 1963); Herbert Schneider, The Puritan Mind (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1958).

  8. Perry Miller, “Benjamin Franklin and Jonathan Edwards,” in Major Writers of America (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1962), 84; Tourtellot 41; Cotton Mather, “A Christian at His Calling,” 1701, personal.pitnet.net/primarysources/mather.html; Poor Richard’s, 1736 (drawn from Aesop’s “Hercules and the Wagoner,” ca. 550 B.C., and Algernon Sidney’s Discourses on Government, 1698, among other antecedents).

  9. Tourtellot 47–52; Nian Sheng Huang, “Franklin’s Father Josiah: Life of a Colonial Boston Tallow Chandler, 1657–1745” (Philadelphia: Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 2000) vol. 90, pt. 3.

  10. Lemay Internet Doc for 1657–1705; a drawing of the house is in Papers 1:4.

  11. Edmund Morgan, The Puritan Family (New York: Harper & Row, 1966); Mark Van Doren and Samuel Sewall, eds., Samuel Sewall’s Diary (New York: Macy-Masius, 1927), 208.

  12. Autobiography 24.

  13. Autobiography 25, 91.

  14. Tourtellot 86; Lopez Private 5–7.

  15. Alexander Starbuck, The History of Nantucket (New York: Heritage, 1998), 53, 91, cited in Tourtellot 104.

  16. Peter Folger, “A Looking Glass for the Times,” reprinted in Tourtellot 106; Autobiography 23.

  17. The genealogy of the Franklin and Folger families is in Papers 1:xlix.

  18. Autobiography 23. The Farrand/Signet edition uses the phrase: “that which was not honest could not be truly useful.”

  19. BF to Barbeu Dubourg, April 1773; Tourtellot 161.

  20. BF to Madame Brillon, Nov. 10, 1779 (known as the bagatelle of The Whistle); Autobiography 107; Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis, in Complete Works(Paris: Bossange frères, 1823), 5:222, records it as a lesson learned from his family.

  21. Autobiography 24; Lopez Private 7.

  22. Benjamin Franklin the elder, “To My Name, 1713,” Paper 1:3–5; BF to JM, July 17, 1771; Parton 32–38; Tourtellot 139–40; Autobiography 20.

  23. Autobiography 22; BF to JM, July 17, 1771; Lopez Private, 9.

  24. Autobiography 22; Tourtellot 156. Boston Latin School was then generally called the South Grammar School.

  25. Temple Writings, 1: 447.

  26. Autobiography 25–26.

  27. Autobiography 27; Boston Post, Aug. 7, 1940, cited in Papers 1:6–7. No authenticated copies of these two poems are known to have survived. The Franklin Papers 1:6–7 quote a few possible verses that may have been his.

  28. Lemay Internet Doc for 1719–20, citing Early Boston Booksellers, by George Emery Littlefield (Boston: Antiquarian Society, 1900), 150–55;Tourtellot 230–32. Franklin incorrectly states that the Courant was the second newspaper in Boston. See Yale Autobiography 67n.

  29. Perry Miller, The New England Mind: From Colony to Province (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), 344. See also E. Digby Baltzell, Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia (New York: Free Press, 1979).

  30. John Blake, “The Inoculation Controversy in Boston: 1721–1722,” New England Quarterly (1952): 489–506; New England Courant, Aug. 7, 1721, and following, ushistory.org/franklin/courant ; Tourtellot 252.

  31. Lemay Internet Doc for 1721; Perry Miller, The New England Mind: From Colony to Province, 337.

  32. Autobiography 26. Analysis of Franklin’s childhood reading can be found in Parton 1:44–51, 60–72; Ralph Ketcham, Benjamin Franklin (New York: Washington Square Press, 1965), 8–31; Tourtellot 166.

  33. Autobiography 27; BF to Samuel Mather, July 7, 1773, May 12, 1784; John Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress, 1678, www.ccel.org/b/bunyan/progress/; Plutarch, Parallel Lives, ca.A.D. 100, ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext96/plivs10.txt ; Cotton Mather, Bonifacius, also known as Essays to Do Good and An Essay upon the Good, 1710, edweb.sdsu.edu/people/DKitchen/new_655/mather.htm ; Tourtellot 187–89.

  34. Daniel Defoe, An Essay upon Projects, 1697, ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext03/ esprj10.txt ; Tourtellot 185.

  35. Autobiography 28.

  36. The Spectator, Mar. 13, 1711, harvest.rutgers.edu/projects/spectator/mark up.html ; Autobiography 29.

  37. The Spectator, Mar. 1, 1711; Silence Dogood #1, Apr. 2, 1722; Silence Do-good #2, Apr. 16, 1722; Silence Dogood #3, Apr. 30, 1722; ushistory.org/frank lin/courant ; Papers 1:8–11. These dates, unlike others, are in the Old Style because they refer to editions of the Courant as dated at the time.

  38. Silence Dogood #4, May 14, 1722; The Spectator, Mar. 3, 1711.

  39. Autobiography 34; New England Courant, June 18, 25, July 2, 9, 1722. The excerpt is from The London Journal
.

  40. New England Courant, July 16, 23, 1722.

  41. New England Courant, Sept. 14, 1722, Feb. 11, 1723; Autobiography 33. Franklin compresses the chronology by recalling that his name went on top of the paper right after his brother’s release from jail, which was in July 1722; in fact, it occurred after James got into another dispute in January 1723. Oddly, his name remained atop the paper until at least 1726, which was three years after he had run away to Philadelphia. See New England Courant, June 25, 1726, and Yale Autobiography 70n.

  42. Autobiography 34–35.

  43. Claude-Anne Lopez, an editor of Franklin’s papers at Yale, discovered a scrap of paper on which Franklin, in 1783, jotted down some dates and places designed to pinpoint his itinerary of sixty years earlier. In the Norton edition of the Autobiography, J. A. Leo Lemay and P. M. Zall note that the only boat leaving Boston for New York that week was a sloop on September 25. Franklin’s editing of the “naughty girl” passage is noted in the Signet edition, 35. James Franklin’s forlorn ad appears in New England Courant, Sept. 30, 1723.

  Chapter 3

  1. The Way to Health was written by Thomas Tryon (1634–1703) and first published in 1683; Autobiography 29.

  2. Autobiography 49.

  3. Autobiography 38.

  4. Autobiography 79; Jonathan Yardley, review of Edmund Morgan’s Benjamin Franklin, in Washington Post Book World, Sept. 15, 2002, 2.

  5. Autobiography 41.

  6. Autobiography 52.

  7. Autobiography 42. Franklin later politely revised the phrase in his autobiography to read, “stared with astonishment.” Lemay/Zall Autobiography provides a complete look at the original manuscript and all of its revisions. The governors sent to Pennsylvania were sometimes referred to as lieutenant governors.

  8. Franklin recounted this tale twice to Mather’s son: BF to Samuel Mather, July 7, 1773, and May 12, 1784.

  9. Autobiography 104.

  10. Autobiography 48.

  11. Autobiography 54.

  12. Autobiography 55–58.