Walter Isaacson Great Innovators e-book boxed set

by Walter Isaacson

  4. BF to John Franklin, Dec. 8, 1752; “Origin of Northeast Storms,” BF to Jared Eliot, Feb. 13, 1750; BF to Jared Eliot, July 16, 1747; BF to Alexander Small, May 12, 1760; John Cox, The Storm Watchers (New York: Wiley, 2002), 5–7.

  5. Cohen 40–65; BF to Collinson, Mar. 28, 1747; Autobiography 164; Bowen 47–49. Cohen provides detailed evidence on the dates of Dr. Spencer’s lectures, their content, Collinson’s gift, and the errors Franklin made in later recalling the chronology.

  6. BF to Collinson, May 25, July 28, 1747, Apr. 29, 1749; Cohen 22–26;I. Bernard Cohen, Franklin and Newton, 303; Clark 71. J. L. Heilbrun and Heinz Otto Sibum, in Lemay’s Reappraising, 196–242, emphasize the “bookkeeping” nature of Franklin’s theories.

  7. BF to Collinson, Apr. 29, 1749, Feb. 4, 1750; Brands 199; Thomas Pynchon, Mason & Dixon (New York: Holt, 1997), 294.

  8. BF to John Lining, Mar. 18, 1755; BF to Collinson, Mar. 2, 1750; BF to John Winthrop, July 2, 1768; Hawke 86–88; Cohen 121; Van Doren 156–70; Brands 198–202. Andrew White, “History of Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom,” www.human-nature.com/reason/white/chap11.html. Among those, in addition to Newton, who had already noted the similarities between electrical sparks and lightning were Francis Hauksbee, Samuel Wall, John Freke, Johann Heinrich Winkler, and Franklin’s antagonist the Abbé Nollet; see Clark 79–80. None, however, had proposed serious experiments to assess the hypothesis.

  9. BF to John Mitchell, Apr. 29, 1749.

  10. BF to Collinson, July 29, Mar. 2, 1750.

  11. The Gentleman’s Magazine, Jan., May 1750; Experiments and Observations on Electricity, Made at Philadelphia in America, by Mr. Benjamin Franklin (London: 1750, 1756, and subsequent editions); Abbé Guillaume Mazéas to Stephen Hales, May 20, 1752, Papers 4:315 and Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society(1751–52); Autobiography 165–67; Clark 3–5, 83; Cohen 70–72.

  12. “The Kite Experiment,” Pa. Gazette, Oct. 19, 1752; Papers 4:360–65 has a footnote explaining historical issues; Pa. Gazette, Aug. 27, Oct. 19, 1752; Cohen 68–77; Joseph Priestley, The History and Present State of Electricity (1767), www.ushistory.org/franklin/kite/index.htm ; Hawke 103–6.

  13. Cohen 66–109; Van Doren 164; Tom Tucker, Bolt of Fate (New York: Public Affairs, 2003). Tucker charges that “It’s possible that…Franklin dreamed up his own kite claim” and that it was all a “hoax” akin to his literary ones. His book does not address the detailed evidence I. Bernard Cohen cites on this question and is, I think, unpersuasive. Franklin’s kite description is in no ways similar to his literary hoaxes, and if untrue would have been an outright lie rather than a hoax. Tucker also makes the odd allegation that Franklin’s description of his sentry box experiment was a death threat to the president of London’s Royal Society. He also charges that Franklin may have been lying when he publicly reported in 1752 that two lightning rods had been erected on public buildings in Philadelphia that summer (a report that was published in the Royal Society’s journal and would, it seems, have been challenged at the time if it were false). The comprehensive analysis by Cohen, a professor of the history of science who is the foremost authority on Franklin’s electricity work, addresses fully and more convincingly the issues surrounding Franklin’s sentry box, kite, and lightning rods. Other articles about whether Franklin flew the kite that summer include Abbott L. Rotch, “Did Franklin Fly His Electrical Kite before He Invented the Lighting Rod?” American Antiquarian Society Proceedings, 1907; Alexander McAdie, “The Date of Franklin’s Kite Experiment,” American Antiquarian Society Proceedings, 1925.

  14. Cohen 66–109; Van Doren 165–70. Van Doren says that the possibility that Franklin fabricated or embellished his kite experiment would be “quite out of keeping with his record in science, in which he elsewhere appears always truthful and unpretending.”

  15. BF to Collinson, Sept. 1753; BF to DF, June 10, 1758; Dudley Herschbach, “Ben Franklin’s Scientific Amusements,” Harvard Magazine (Nov. 1995): 44; BF to Cadwallader Colden, Apr. 12, 1753; BF to Royal Society, May 29, 1754.

  16. BF to Collinson, July 29, 1750; Van Doren 171; J. J.Thompson, Recollections and Reflections (London: Bell, 1939), 252; BF to Cadwallader Colden, Oct. 11, 1750; Turgot epigram, 1781: Eripuit cœlo fulmen, sceptrumque tyrannis.

  Chapter 7

  1. “On the Need for an Academy,” Pa. Gazette, Aug. 24, 1749; “Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania,” Oct. 1749; BF to Cadwallader Colden, Nov. 1749; Constitutions of the Publick Academy, Nov. 13, 1749; Autobiography 121, 129–31; Van Doren 193; University of Pennsylvania history, www.archives.upenn.edu/histy/genlhistory/brief.html. (The school was originally called the Academy of Philadelphia, then the College of Philadelphia, then in 1779 it was taken over by the state and became the University of the State of Pennsylvania, and finally in 1791 it was named the University of Pennsylvania.)

  2. “Appeal for the Hospital,” Pa. Gazette, Aug. 8, 1751; Autobiography 134.

  3. BF to Peter Collinson, May 9, 1753; Stuart Sherman, “Franklin and the Age of Enlightenment,” in Sanford 75. See also chapter 4, n. 49.

  For more on Franklin’s political thought, see Paul Conner, Poor Richard’s Politicks (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), and Francis Jennings, Benjamin Franklin: Politician (New York: Norton, 1996).

  4. “Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind,” 1751, Papers 4:225; Conner 69–87; Hawke 95.

  5. “Felons and Rattlesnakes,” Pa. Gazette, May 9, 1751.

  6. “Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind,” 1751; BF to Abiah Franklin, Apr. 12, 1750; John Van Horne, “Collective Benevolence,” in Lemay Reappraising, 433–36; Lopez Private, 291–302.

  7. BF to John Waring, Dec. 17, 1763.

  8. BF to Peter Collinson, May 9, 1753.

  9. Autobiography 131.

  10. Autobiography 132.

  11. Autobiography 132; Report of the Treaty of Carlisle, Nov. 1, 1753; Minutes of the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania, Nov. 15, 1753.

  12. Autobiography 140; BF to Collinson, May 21, 1751; John Franklin to BF, Nov. 26, 1753; “Procedures for Postmasters,” 1753, Papers 5:162–77; post office finances, Aug. 10, 1753, Papers 5:18; Wright 85; Hawke 114; Brands 243–45; Clark 100; Lopez Private, 53.

  13. BF to James Parker, Mar. 20, 1751; Pa. Gazette, May 9, 1754.

  14. “Commission to Treat With the Indians,” Pa. Assembly, May 13, 1754, Papers 5:275; “Short Hints towards a Scheme for Uniting the Northern Colonies,” in BF to James Alexander and Cadwallader Colden, June 8, 1754, Papers 5:335.

  15. BF to Peter Collinson, July 29, 1754; BF to Cadwallader Colden, July 14, 1754; “Plan of Proposed Union,” July 10, 1754; Autobiography 141–42; BF to William Shirley, Dec. 4, 22, 1754.

  For overviews: Bernard Bailyn, The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974); Robert Newbold, The Albany Congress and Plan of Union (New York: Vantage, 1955), 95–105; Morgan Franklin, 83–90; Hawke 116–23; Brands 234–40; Wright 89–94. The most colorful popular account is in Catherine Drinker Bowen, The Most Dangerous Man in America (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974), 91–162.

  There is a scholarly dispute on how to apportion credit for the final plan between Franklin and Hutchinson. In a letter years later, Hutchinson referred to it as his plan, but in a history book he wrote that “the plan for a general union was projected by Benjamin Franklin.” Indeed, the final plan was very similar in structure and phrasing to the “Short Hints” paper that Franklin prepared before arriving at Albany. See Papers 5:335; Wright 92. For a pro-Hutchinson view, see Lawrence Gipson, The British Empire before the American Revolution (New York: Knopf, 1936–69), 5:126–38.

  16. BF to John Franklin, Mar. 16, 1755; BF to Catherine Ray, Mar. 4, Mar.–Apr., Sept. 11, Oct. 16, 1755; Catherine Ray to BF, June 28, 1755. (She signed her name “Caty,” but Franklin tended to address her as “Katy” or “Katie.”)

  17. The best analysis is in Lopez Private, 55–57, and Lopez Life, 25–29. The q
uote from Lopez is from the former book, but it is repeated in similar form in the latter. See also William Roelker, Benjamin Franklin and Catherine Ray Greene(Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1949). Also worth noting is J. A. Leo Lemay’s astute analysis in PMHB 126:2 (Apr. 2002): 336: “Biographers who read Franklin’s flirtations as serious attempts to have sexual affairs seem to me to be either unsophisticated about human psychology or as prudish as John Adams in Paris.”

  18. BF to Catherine Ray, Mar. 2, 1789.

  19. Autobiography 143–47; Hawke 124–62; BF to Peters, Sept. 17, 1754; BF to Collinson, Aug. 25, 1755.

  20. Autobiography 151–52, 148–51; “Advertisement for Wagons,” Apr. 26, 1755; Papers 6:19. (It is misdated in the Autobiography.)

  21. BF to Peter Collinson, June 26, 1755; Autobiography 144; Robert Hunter Morris to Thomas Penn, June 16, 1755.

  22. Autobiography 154–56; Assembly reply to Governor Morris, Aug. 8, 19, Nov. 11, 1755.

  23. Autobiography 156; Brands 262; Pa. Gazette, Dec. 18, 1755; BF to James Read, Nov. 2, 1755; BF to Richard Partridge, Nov. 27, 1755.

  24. BF to DF, Jan. 25, 1756; Autobiography 160–62; Brands 267–69; J. Bennett Nolan, General Benjamin Franklin (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1936), 62.

  25. Autobiography 162–63; Brands 270–71; BF to Collinson, Nov. 5, 1756.

  26. BF to George Whitefield, July 2, 1756; BF to DF, Mar. 25, 1756; Autobiography 169; Assembly reply, by BF, Oct. 29, 1756; Assembly appointment of Franklin, Jan. 29, Feb. 3, 1757, Papers 7:109; Wright 105; Thomas Penn to Richard Peters, May 14, 1757.

  Chapter 8

  1. BF to William Brownrigg, Nov.7,1773;“Everything is soothed by oil,” Pliny the Elder (A.D. 23–79) wrote in his work Natural History, book 2, section 234. He was, in addition to being a scientist and senator, a commander of the Roman imperial fleet near Naples, and was killed at an eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

  2. BF to DF, July 17, 1757; Autobiography 175–77.

  3. Lopez Private, 86.

  4. The Craven Street house where Franklin spent most of his time, now number 36, still exists, and in 2003 work began on converting it into a small museum. The plan is to have each of the tiny rooms feature a different aspect of his stay in London: his diplomacy, science, social life, and writings. The house, which has a nineteenth-century brick façade but is otherwise structurally similar to the way it was in Franklin’s time, is a few hundred yards from Charing Cross station and Trafalgar Square. www.thersa.org/franklin/default.html ; www.rsa.org.uk/projects/ project_closeup.asp?id=1001 ; www.cs.mdx.ac.uk/wrt/Siteview/project.html.

  5. BF to PS May 4, 1759, and undated 1759, May 1, Sept. 13, 1760.

  6. BF to PS, Sept. 13, 1759, May 1, June 11 (includes the “prudent moderation” excerpt), Sept. 13, and undated Nov., 1760; PS to BF, June 23, 1760, undated Aug., and Sept. 16, 1760. See also their letters throughout 1761–62.

  7. BF to PS, Jan. 27, 1783; Wright 110; Clark 140; Lopez Private, 83; Randall 123.

  8. William Strahan to DF, Dec. 13, 1757.

  9. BF to DF, Jan. 14, Feb. 19, June 10, 1758; Lopez Private, 80; Clark 142–43, 147.

  10. BF to DF, Nov. 22, Dec. 3, 1757, June 10, 1758, June 27, 1760; Lopez Private, 172.

  11. Verner Crane, “The Club of Honest Whigs,” William and Mary Quarterly23 (1966): 210; Leonard Labaree, “Benjamin Franklin’s British Friendships,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 108 (1964): 423; Clark 142; Brands 279; Morgan Devious, 15; Hawke 163.

  12. Strahan to DF, Dec. 13, 1757; BF to DF, Nov. 27, 1757.

  13. Wright 114–15, 216–17.

  14. Thomas Penn to Richard Peters, May 14, 1757.

  15. Autobiography 177–79.

  16. Autobiography 178.

  17. Autobiography 179; “Heads of Complaint,” BF to the Penns, Aug. 20, 1757; answer to “Heads of Complaint” by Ferdinand John Paris, Nov. 28, 1758, Papers 8:184; Cecil Currey, Road to Revolution (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor, 1968), 35.

  18. “Pennsylvania Charter of Privileges,” Oct. 28, 1701, www.constitution.org/ bcp/penncharpriv.htm ; BF to Isaac Norris, Jan. 14, 1758; Clark 144; Middlekauff 65–66; Brands 301.

  19. Thomas Penn to Richard Peters, July 5, 1758; BF to Joseph Galloway, Feb. 17, 1758; Brands 302; Wright 117.

  20. WF to the Printer of the Citizen, from the Pennsylvania Coffee-house in London, Sept. 16, 1757.

  21. BF to DF, June 10, 1758; Skemp William,30–31.

  22. Lopez Private, 61–69; Skemp William, 24–26, 37; Randall 102–15; WF to Elizabeth Graeme, Feb. 26, Apr. 7, Dec. 9, 1757; WF to Margaret Abercrombie, Oct. 24, 1758. The True Conduct of Persons of Quality was written by Nicolas Rémond des Cours and translated from the French and published in London in 1694.

  23. BF to Abiah Franklin, Apr. 12, 1750; WF to BF, Sept. 3, 1758.

  24. BF to DF, Sept. 6, 1758, Aug. 29, 1759.

  25. Dr. Thomas Bray, “Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts Among the Negroes in the Colonies,” docsouth.dsi.internet2.edu/church/ pierre/pierre.html ; BF to John Lining, Apr. 14, 1757, June 17, 1758; BF to Cadwallader Colden, Feb. 25, 1763.

  26. BF to DF, Sept. 6, 1758.

  27. Answer to Heads of Complaint by Ferdinand John Paris, Nov. 28, 1758; Thomas and Richard Penn to the Assembly, Nov. 28, 1758; BF to Isaac Norris, Jan. 19, 1759. See Papers 8:178–86; Middlekauff 68–70; Hawke 173; Morgan Devious, 38.

  28. Morgan Franklin, 102, 130; Gordon Wood, “Wise Men,” New York Review, Sept. 26, 2002, 44. In this review of Morgan’s book, Wood argues that Franklin’s actions can be readily explained by his loyalty to the Crown, and he faults Morgan for being blinded by hindsight when he accuses Franklin of blindness. “His account of Franklin seems at times subtly infused with what historians call ‘whiggism,’ the anachronistic foreshortening that makes the past an anticipation of the future,” Wood writes. On balance, I feel that Franklin’s anger at the Proprietors did, in fact, cause him to lose his perspective at a time when others, both supporters and foes of the Penns, were able to see more clearly that there was not enough support on either side of the ocean to turn Pennsylvania into a royal colony and that the fundamental problem was the general attitude among British leaders that the colonies ought to be economically and politically submissive.

  29. BF to the Privy Council, Sept. 20, 1758; Hawke 176.

  30. BF to Thomas Leech, May 13, 1758; Hawke 169, 177; Papers 8:60.

  31. Autobiography 180; Report of the Board of Trade, June 24, 1760, in Papers 9:125–73; Privy Council order, Sept. 2, 1760; Morgan Devious, 56–57; Middlekauff 73.

  32. Brands 305–6; “A Parable on Brotherly Love,” 1755, Papers 6:124; BF to Lord Kames, May 3, 1760.

  33. BF to David Hume, May 19, 1762.

  34. BF to David Hume, Sept. 27, 1760; David Hume to BF, May 10, 1762.

  35. BF to Lord Kames, Jan. 3, 1760; Brands 287; St. Andrew’s citation, Oct. 1, 1759, Papers 8:277.

  36. BF to DF, Mar. 5, 1760.

  37. Temple Franklin’s tombstone refers to his birthdate as Feb. 22, 1762, but family correspondence indicates that he was born in February 1760. Lopez Private,93; Van Doren 290.

  38. BF to Jared Ingersoll, Dec. 11, 1762; WF to SF, Oct. 10, 1761.

  39. “Humorous Reasons for Restoring Canada,” London Chronicle, Dec. 27, 1759; “The Interest of Great Britain Considered,” Apr. 1760, Papers 9:59–100; Jack Greene, “Pride, Prejudice and Jealousy,” in Lemay Reappraising, 125.

  40. BF to William Strahan, Aug. 23, 1762.

  41. Aldridge French, 169, from Pierre Cabanis, Complete Works (Paris: Bossange frères, 1825), 5:222.

  42. Temple Franklin, “Memoirs of Benjamin Franklin,” 1:75; Randall 180; Skemp William, 38; Brands 328; BF to JM, Nov. 25, 1752; BF to PS, Aug. 11, 1762.

  43. BF to John Pringle, Dec. 1, 1762.

  Chapter 9

  1. Skemp William, 48; Thomas Penn to James Hamilton, Sept. 1762; Clark 170.

  2. BF to Benjamin Waller, Aug. 1, 1763.
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  3. BF to Lord Bessborough, Oct. 1761; Lopez Private, 100; BF to DF, June 16, 1763.

  4. BF to PS, June 10, 1763; Lopez Private, 100.

  5. Hawke 202; BF to JM, June 19, 1763; BF to Catherine Ray Greene, Aug. 1, 1763; BF to William Strahan, Aug. 8, 1763.

  6. Lopez Private, 114; WF to William Strahan, Apr. 25, 1763; BF to William Strahan, Dec. 19, 1763.

  7. BF to Peter Collinson, Dec. 19, 1763; “A Narrative of the Late Massacres, in Lancaster County, of a Number of Indians, Friends of this Province, by Persons Unknown,” Jan. 1764; Van Doren 307; Hawke 208; Brands 352.

  There is an interesting historical dispute over Franklin’s sympathies for the Indians and prejudice toward the frontier Presbyterians and ethnic Germans. Buxbaum 185–219 is among those who play up Franklin’s prejudice toward Presbyterians and take him to task for making the Indians seem “human beings not essentially different from Englishmen.” Brooke Hindle, in “The March of the Paxton Boys,” William and Mary Quarterly (Oct. 1946), takes a similar approach. They are opposed by Francis Jennings in Benjamin Franklin: Politician (New York: Norton, 1996), 158–59. He calls Buxbaum “learnedly confused” and accuses Hindle of “absolute ignorance” and of making “bigoted asinine” comments.

  8. BF to John Fothergill, Mar. 14, 1764; BF to Richard Jackson, Feb. 11, 1764; Hawke 208.

  9. BF to Lord Kames, June 2, 1765; John Penn to Thomas Penn, May 5, 1764; BF to John Fothergill, Mar. 14, 1764; Hawke 211; Brands 356; Van Doren 311.

  10. Assembly reply to the governor, Mar. 24, 1764.

  11. Van Doren 314; Buxbaum 192; Cecil Currey, Road to Revolution (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor, 1968), 58.

  12. Resolutions of the Pennsylvania Assembly, Mar. 24, 1764; “Cool Thoughts on the Present Situation of Our Public Affairs,” Apr. 12, 1764; BF to Richard Jackson, Mar. 14, 29, Sept. 1, 1764; BF to William Strahan, Mar. 30, 1764; J. Philip Gleason, “A Scurrilous Election and Franklin’s Reputation,” William and Mary Quarterly (Oct. 1961); Brands 357; Van Doren 313; Morgan Devious, 80–83. The anti-Franklin pamphlets are in Papers 11:381.