13. Hawke 225; Brands 358; Van Doren 316; Buxbaum 12; “Remarks on a Late Protest,” Nov. 5, 1764.
14. BF to Richard Jackson, May 1, 1764; BF to SF, Nov. 8, 1764; Hawke 222–26.
Chapter 10
1. BF to PS, Dec. 12, 1764.
2. BF to DF, Dec. 27, 1764, Feb. 9, 14, 1765. For good overviews on Franklin’s mission, see Middlekauff; Morgan Devious; Cecil Currey, Road to Revolution (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor, 1968); Theodore Draper, The Struggle for Power (New York: Times Books, 1996); Edmund Morgan and Helen Morgan, The Stamp Act Crisis (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1953).
3. BF to PS, July 20, 1768; PS to BF, Sept. 26, 1768; Noah Webster to BF, May 24, 1786; BF to Webster, June 18, 1786; Van Doren 426; Noah Webster, Dissertations on the English Language: With Notes, Historical and Critical, to Which Is Added, by Way of Appendix, an Essay on a Reformed Mode of Spelling, with Dr. Franklin’s Arguments on That Subject (Boston: Isaiah Thomas, 1789), edweb.sdsu.edu/people/ DKitchen/new_655/webster_language.htm.
4. Lopez Private, 152; WF to BF, Jan. 2, 1769; PS to Barbara Hewson, Oct. 4, 1774; PS to BF, Sept. 5, 1776.
5. Cadwalader Evans to BF, Mar. 15, 1765; John Penn to Thomas Penn, Mar. 16, 1765; Morgan Devious, 94.
6. BF to Joseph Galloway, Oct. 11, 1766; Morgan Devious, 102. Morgan and Morgan, The Stamp Act Crisis, 89–91; Brands 360–63; Van Doren 320.
7. BF to John Hughes, Aug. 9, 1765; Morgan Devious, 106; Thomas Penn to William Allen, July 13, 1765.
8. BF to Charles Thomson, July 11, 1765; Morgan Devious, 105; Charles Thomson to BF, Sept. 24, 1765; John Hughes to BF, Sept. 17, 1765.
9. David Hall to BF, Sept. 6, 1765; Morgan Devious, 106; Wright 188.
10. Samuel Wharton to BF, Oct. 13, 1765; John Hughes to BF, Sept. 12, 1765; DF to BF, Sept. 22, 1765; Morgan Devious, 107; BF to DF, Nov. 9, 1765; Brands 368.
11. Patrick Henry to the Virginia House of Delegates, May 30, 1765; BF to John Hughes, Aug. 9, 1765;Thomas Hutchinson to BF, Nov. 18, 1765; Brands 368.
12. BF to Pennsylvania Assembly committee, Apr. 12, 1766; Thomas Penn to John Penn, Nov. 30, 1765.
13. BF to David Hall, Nov. 9, 1765; BF to Joseph Galloway, Oct. 11, 1766; John Fothergill to James Pemberton, Feb. 27, 1766; “Defense of Indian Corn and a Reply,” The Gazetteer, Jan. 2, 15, 1766.
14. Public Advertiser, May 22, 1765, Jan. 2, 1766.
15. William Warner, “Enlightened Anonymity,” University of California Santa Barbara, lecture, Mar. 8, 2002, dc-mrg.english.ucsb.edu/conference/ 2002/documents/william_warner_anon.html.
16. BF to JM, Mar. 1, 1766; BF to WF, Nov. 9, 1765; Brands 373; Hawke 235–37.
17. BF to unknown recipient, Jan. 6, 1766; see also BF to Cadwalader Evans, May 1766; Wright 187; Van Doren 333.
18. Testimony to the House of Commons, Feb. 13, 1766, Papers 13:129–62; Brands 374–76; Van Doren 336–52.
19. William Strahan to David Hall, May 10, 1766; Joseph Galloway to BF, May 23, June 7, 1766; Charles Thomson to BF, May 20, 1766; Van Doren 353; Clark 195; Hawke 242.
20. BF to DF, Apr. 6, 1766.
21. DF to BF, Feb. 10, Oct. 8, 13, 1765; BF to DF, June 4, 1765; Lopez Private,126.
22. David Hall to BF, Jan. 27, 1767; BF to Hall, Apr. 14, 1767.
23. BF to DF, June 22, 1767.
24. Lopez Private, 134, citing E. D. Gillespie, A Book of Remembrance (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1901), 25.
25. DF to BF, Apr. 25, 1767; BF to DF, May 23, June 22, 1767; Brands 390; Hawke 255.
26. WF to BF, May 1767; RB to BF, May 21, 1767; Brands 391.
27. BF to RB, Aug. 5, 1767; BF to DF, Aug. 5, 1767.
28. MS to DF, Sept. 18, 1767; Lopez Private, 139.
29. BF to DF, Aug. 28, 1767; BF to PS, Sept. 14, 1767.
30. BF to PS, Aug. 28, 1767; Van Doren 367–69.
31. BF to DF, Nov. 2, 17, 1767; BF to PS, Oct. 9, 1767; Brands 395–96; Van Doren 368; Hawke 258.
32. JM to BF, Dec. 1, 1767; BF to JM, Feb. 21, 1768.
33. BF to RB, Aug. 13, 1768; BF to DF, Aug. 9, 1768; Lopez Private, 141.
34. BF to DF, Jan. 26, 1769; Thomas Bond to BF, June 7, 1769; DF to BF, Nov. 27, 1769; Van Doren 404; Lopez Private, 143; Brands 456.
35. PS to BF, Sept. 1, 1769; BF to PS, Sept. 2, 1769, May 31, 1770; Lopez Private, 154.
36. “Craven Street Gazette,” Sept. 22–25, 1770, in Papers 17:220–26.
37. BF to Barbeu Dubourg, July 28, 1768; Lopez Private, 27.
38. BF to MS, Nov. 3, 1772, misdated 1767 in Papers.
39. “A Friend to Both Countries,” London Chronicle, Apr. 9, 1767; “Benevolues,” London Chronicle, Apr. 11, 1767; Brands 386; Hawke 252; Cecil Currey, Road to Revolution, 222.
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,” H
untington 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.
Walter Isaacson Great Innovators e-book boxed set Page 135