The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin

703 Pages·2000·3.15 MB·English

by  H. W. Brands

ACCLAIM FOR H. W. BRANDS’
The First American
“A vivid portrait of the 18th-century milieu and of the 18th-century man…. [Brands is] a
master storyteller.”
—The Christian Science Monitor
“A thorough biography of Benjamin Franklin, America’s first Renaissance man…. In graceful,
even witty prose … Brands relates the entire, dense-packed life.”
—The Washington Post
“A comprehensive, lively biography…. The largest, most detailed Franklin biography in more
than sixty years…. [Brands] is a skilled narrator who believes in making good history
accessible to the non-specializing book lover, and the general reader can read this book with
sustained enjoyment.”
—The Boston Globe
“Supremely readable…. Deserves unstinting praise…. A fine example of a particular type of
historical writing, the presentation of history as narrative…. Brands shows [Franklin] in lively
detail at each stage of his life…. An excellent history.”
—The London Free Press
“A rousing, first-rate life of a Founding Father…. Brands is the best sort of popularizer….
[He] adds flesh to a hallowed ghost, and the result is that the reader admires Benjamin
Franklin all the more. Superb.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Engaging…. Brands is a skilled biographer…. [He] deftly fills in the contours of Franklin’s
extraordinary life.”
—The Star-Ledger (Newark, New Jersey)
“A fluid, clear, and nicely paced book…. Enjoyable to read.”
—The Weekly Standard
“Stunning…. Brands, with admirable insight and arresting narrative, constructs a portrait of a
complex and influential man … in a highly charged world…. [He] does an excellent job of
capturing Franklin’s exuberant versatility as a writer who adopted countless personae … that
not only predestined his prominence as a man of letters but also as an agile man of politics.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Stirring and eloquent.”
—The News & Observer (Raleigh, North Carolina)
“Worthwhile reading on an American worth remembering.”
—BookPage
“A humanizing biography that enhances … the founding fathers’ greatness.”
—Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale)
“Eminently readable…. [Brands] create[s] an absorbing portrait of the 18th-century world that
was the backdrop—and the stage—for America’s multidimensional journalist, inventor,
diplomat, propagandist, moralist, humorist, and revolutionary.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
“A logical choice for anyone who wants to learn about Franklin’s life.”
—The Oregonian
“Informative…. Brands writes in a clear, lively, novelistic style and is especially good at
revealing Franklin, the living, breathing, flawed human being.”
—Book
“Highly praised…. A frank account of the remarkable Renaissance man.”
—Gene Shalit, NBC Today
“A delightful mosaic…. Brands gives new life to the mythic hero we thought we already
knew.”
—American History
H. W. BRANDS
The First American
H. W. Brands is Distinguished Professor and Melbern G. Glasscock Chair of History at Texas
A&M University. He is the author of many books, among them T.R.: The Last Romantic, the
critically acclaimed biography of Theodore Roosevelt; The Reckless Decade: America in the
1890s; and The Strange Death of American Liberalism. He lives in Austin, Texas.
ALSO BY H. W. BRANDS
The Strange Death of American Liberalism
The Selected Letters of Theodore Roosevelt (editor)
Critical Reflections on the Cold War: Linking Rhetoric and History (editor, with Martin J.
Medhurst)
The Use of Force after the Cold War (editor)
Beyond Vietnam: The Foreign Policies of Lyndon Johnson (editor)
Masters of Enterprise: Giants of American Business from John Jacob Astor and J. P. Morgan
to Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey
What America Owes the World: The Struggle for the Soul of Foreign Policy
T.R.: The Last Romantic
Since Vietnam: The United States in World Affairs, 1973–1995
The Wages of Globalism: Lyndon Johnson and the Limits of American Power
The Reckless Decade: America in the 1890s
The United States in the World: A History of American Foreign Policy
Into the Labyrinth: The United States and the Middle East, 1945–1993
The Devil We Knew: Americans and the Cold War
Bound to Empire: The United States and the Philippines
Inside the Cold War: Loy Henderson and the Rise of the American Empire, 1918–1961
India and the United States: The Cold Peace
The Specter of Neutralism: The United States and the Emergence of the Third World, 1947–
1960
Cold Warriors: Eisenhower’s Generation and American Foreign Policy

Contents
PROLOGUE: JANUARY 29, 1774
1. BOSTON BEGINNINGS: 1706–23
2. FRIENDS AND OTHER STRANGERS: 1723–24
3. LONDON ONCE: 1724–26
4. AN IMPRINT OF HIS OWN: 1726–30
5. POOR RICHARD: 1730–35
6. CITIZEN: 1735–40
7. ARC OF EMPIRE: 1741–48
8. ELECTRICITY AND FAME: 1748–51
9. A TASTE OF POLITICS: 1751—54
10. JOIN OR DIE: 1754–55
11. THE PEOPLE’S COLONEL: 1755—57
12. A LARGER STAGE: 1757–58
13. IMPERIALIST: 1759–60
14. BRITON: 1760–62
15. RISING IN THE WEST: 1762–64
16. STAMPS AND STATESMANSHIP: 1764–66
17. DUTIES AND PLEASURES: 1766–67
18. REASON AND RIOT: 1768–69
19. THE RIFT WIDENS: 1770–71
20. TO KICK A LITTLE: 1772–73
21. THE COCKPIT: 1774–75
22. REBEL: 1775–76
23. SALVATION IN PARIS: 1776–78
24. BONHOMME RICHARD: 1778–79
25. MINISTER PLENIPOTENTIARY: 1779–81
26. BLESSED WORK: 1781–82
27. SAVANT: 1783–85
28. HOME: 1785–86
29. SUNRISE AT DUSK: 1786–87
30. TO SLEEP: 1787-90
EPILOGUE: APRIL 17, 1990
SOURCE NOTES
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Prologue
January 29, 1774
A lesser man would have been humiliated.
Humiliation was the purpose of the proceeding. It was the outcome
eagerly anticipated by the lords of the Privy Council who constituted the
official audience, by the members of the House of Commons and other
fashionable Londoners who packed the room and hung on the rails of the
balcony, by the London press that lived on scandal and milled outside to see
how this scandal would unfold, by the throngs that bought the papers,
savored the scandals, rioted in favor of their heroes and against their
villains, and made politics in the British imperial capital often
unpredictable, frequently disreputable, always entertaining. The proceeding
today would probably be disreputable. It would certainly be entertaining.
The venue was fitting: the Cockpit. In the reign of Henry VIII, that most
sporting of monarchs in a land that loved its bloody games, the building on
this site had housed an actual cockpit, where Henry and his friends brought
their prize birds and wagered which would tear the others to shreds. The
present building had replaced the real cockpit, but this room retained the
old name and atmosphere. The victim today was expected to depart with his
reputation in tatters, his fortune possibly forfeit, his life conceivably at
peril.
Nor was that the extent of the stakes. Two days earlier the December
packet ship from Boston had arrived with an alarming report from the royal
governor of Massachusetts, Thomas Hutchinson. The governor described an
organized assault on three British vessels carrying tea of the East India
Company. The assailants, townsmen loosely disguised as Indians, had
boarded the ships, hauled hundreds of tea casks to deck, smashed them
open, and dumped their contents into the harbor—forty-five tons of tea,
enough to litter the beaches for miles and depress the company’s profits for
years. This rampage was the latest in a series of violent outbursts against
the authority of Crown and Parliament; the audience in the Cockpit, and in
London beyond, demanded to know what Crown and Parliament intended
to do about it.
Alexander Wedderburn was going to tell them. The solicitor general
possessed great rhetorical gifts and greater ambition. The former had made
him the most feared advocate in the realm; the latter lifted him to his
present post when he abandoned his allies in the opposition and embraced
the ministry of Lord North. Wedderburn was known to consider the Boston
tea riot treason, and if the law courts upheld his interpretation, those behind
the riot would be liable to the most severe sanctions, potentially including
death. Wedderburn was expected to argue that the man in the Cockpit today
was the prime mover behind the outburst in Boston. The crowd quivered
with anticipation.
They all knew the man in the pit; indeed, the whole world knew
Benjamin Franklin. His work as political agent for several of the American
colonies had earned him recognition around London, but his fame far
transcended that. He was, quite simply, one of the most illustrious scientists
and thinkers on earth. His experiments with electricity, culminating in his
capture of lightning from the heavens, had won him universal praise as the
modern Prometheus. His mapping of the Gulf Stream saved the time and
lives of countless sailors. His ingenious fireplace conserved fuel and
warmed homes on both sides of the Atlantic. His contributions to
economics, meteorology, music, and psychology expanded the reach of
human knowledge and the grip of human power. For his accomplishments
the British Royal Society had awarded him its highest prize; foreign
societies had done the same. Universities queued to grant him degrees. The
ablest minds of the age consulted him on matters large and small. Kings and
emperors summoned him to court, where they admired his brilliance and
basked in its reflected glory.
Genius is prone to producing envy. Yet it was part of Franklin’s genius
that he had produced far less than his share, due to an unusual ability to
disarm those disposed to envy. In youth he discovered that he was quicker
of mind and more facile of pen than almost everyone he met; he also
discovered that a boy of humble birth, no matter how gifted, would block
his own way by letting on that he knew how smart he was. He learned to
deflect credit for some of his most important innovations. He avoided
arguments wherever possible; when important public issues hinged on
others’ being convinced of their errors, he often argued anonymously,
adopting assumed names, or Socratically, employing the gentle questioning
of the Greek master. He became almost as famous for his sense of humor as