Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

by Walter Isaacson

  This was reflected in a ruminative letter on human nature he sent to his London friend Peter Collinson. “Whenever we attempt to mend the scheme of providence,” Franklin wrote, “we had need be very circumspect lest we do more harm than good.” Perhaps even welfare for the poor was an example. He asked whether “the laws peculiar to England which compel the rich to maintain the poor have not given the latter a dependence.” It was “godlike” and laudable, he added, “to relieve the misfortunes of our fellow creatures,” but might it not in the end “provide encouragements for laziness”? He added a cautionary tale about the New Englanders who decided to get rid of blackbirds that were eating the corn crop. The result was that the worms the blackbirds used to eat proliferated and destroyed the grass and grain crops.

  But these were questions more than assertions. In his political philosophy, as in his religion and science, Franklin was generally non-ideological, indeed allergic to anything smacking of dogma. Instead, he was, as in most aspects of his life, interested in finding out what worked. As one writer noted, he exemplified the Enlightenment’s “regard for reason and nature, its social consciousness, its progressivism, its tolerance, its cosmopolitanism, and its bland philanthropy.” He had an empirical temperament that was generally averse to sweeping passions, and he espoused a kindly humanism that emphasized the somewhat sentimental (but still quite real) earthly goal of “doing good” for his fellow man.3

  What made him a bit of a rebel, and later much more of one, was his inbred resistance to establishment authority. Not awed by rank, he was eager to avoid importing to America the rigid class structure of England. Instead, even as a retired would-be gentleman, he continued in his writings and letters to extol the diligence of the middling class of tradesmen, shopkeepers, and leather-aprons.

  Out of this arose a vision of America as a nation where people, whatever their birth or social class, could rise (as he did) to wealth and status based on their willingness to be industrious and cultivate their virtues. In this regard, his ideal was more egalitarian and democratic than even Thomas Jefferson’s view of a “natural aristocracy,” which sought to pluck selected men with promising “virtues and talents” and groom them to be part of a new leadership elite. Franklin’s own idea was more expansive: he believed in encouraging and providing opportunities for all people to succeed based on their diligence, hard work, virtue, and ambition. 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’s political attitudes, along with his religious and scientific ones, fit together into a rather coherent outlook. But just as he was not a profound religious or scientific theorist—no Aquinas or Newton—neither was he a profound political philosopher on the order of a Locke or even a Jefferson. His strength as a political thinker, as in other fields, was more practical than abstract.

  This was evident in one of his most important political tracts, “Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind,” which he wrote in 1751. The abundance of unsettled land in America, he said, led to a faster population growth. This was not a philosophical surmise but an empirical calculation. He observed that the colonists were only half as likely as the English to remain unmarried, that they married younger (around age 20), and that they averaged twice as many children (approximately eight). Thus, he concluded, America’s population would double every twenty years and surpass that of England in one hundred years.

  He turned out to be right. America’s population surpassed that of England by 1851, and kept doubling every two decades until the frontier ran out at the end of that century. Adam Smith cited Franklin’s tract in his 1776 classic, The Wealth of Nations, and Thomas Malthus, famous for his gloomy views on overpopulation and inevitable poverty, also used Franklin’s calculations.

  Franklin, however, was no Malthusian pessimist. He believed that, at least in America, increased productivity would keep ahead of population growth, thus making everyone better off as the country grew. In fact, he predicted (also correctly) that what would restrain America’s population growth in the future was likely to be wealth rather than poverty, because richer people tended to be more “cautious” about getting married and having children.

  Franklin’s most influential argument—one that would play a significant role in the struggles ahead—was against the prevailing British mercantilist desire to restrain manufacturing in America. Parliament had just passed a bill prohibiting ironworks in America, and it held fast to an economic system based on using the colonies as a source of raw materials and a market for finished products.

  Franklin countered that America’s abundance of open land would preclude the development of a large pool of cheap urban labor. “The danger, therefore, of these colonies interfering with their Mother Country in trades that depend on labor, manufactures, etc., is too remote to require the attention of Great Britain.” Britain would soon be unable to supply all of America’s needs. “Therefore Britain should not too much restrain manufactures in her colonies. A wise and good mother will not do it. To distress is to weaken, and weakening the children weakens the whole family.”4

  The seriousness of this tract on imperial affairs was balanced by a satirical one he wrote around the same time. Britain had been expelling convicts to America, which it justified as a way to help the colonies grow. Writing as Americanus in the Gazette, Franklin sarcastically noted that “such a tender parental concern in our Mother Country for the welfare of her children calls aloud for the highest returns of gratitude.” So he proposed that America ship a boatload of rattlesnakes back to England. Perhaps the change of climate might tame them, which is what the British had claimed would happen to the convicts. Even if not, the British would get the better deal, “for the rattlesnake gives warning before he attempts his mischief, which the convict does not.”5

  Slavery and Race

  One great moral issue historians must wrestle with when assessing America’s Founders is slavery, and Franklin was wrestling with it as well. Slaves made up about 6 percent of Philadelphia’s population at the time, and Franklin had facilitated the buying and selling of them through ads in his newspaper. “A likely Negro woman to be sold. Enquire at the Widow Read’s,” read one such ad on behalf of his mother-in-law. Another offered for sale “a likely young Negro fellow” and ended with the phrase “enquire of the printer hereof.” He personally owned a slave couple, but in 1751 he decided to sell them because, as he told his mother, he did not like having “Negro servants” and he found them uneconomical. Nevertheless, he would later, at times, have a slave as a personal servant.

  In “Observations on the Increase of Mankind,” he attacked slavery on economic grounds. Comparing the costs and benefits of owning a slave, he concluded that it made no sense. “The introduction of slaves,” he wrote, was one of the things that “diminish a nation.” But he mainly focused on the ill effects to the owners rather than the immorality done to the slaves. “The whites who have slaves, not laboring, are enfeebled,” he said. “Slaves also pejorate the families that use them; white children become proud, disgusted with labor.”

  The tract was, in fact, quite prejudiced in places. He decried German immigration, and he urged that America be settled mainly by whites of English descent. “The number of purely white people in the world is proportionally very small,” he wrote. “Why increase the sons of Africa by planting them in America, where we have so fair an opportunity, by excluding all blacks and tawneys, of increasing the lovely white and red? But perhaps I am partial to the complexion of my country, for such kind of partiality is natural to mankind.”

  As the final sentence indicates, he was beginning to reexamine his “partiality” to his own race. In the first edition of “Observations,” he remarked on “almost every slave being by nature a thief.” When he reprinted it eighteen years later, he changed it to say that they became thieves “from the n
ature of slavery.” He also omitted the entire section about the desirability of keeping America mainly white.6

  What helped shift his attitude was another of his philanthropic endeavors. In the late 1750s, he became active in an organization that established schools for black children in Philadelphia and then elsewhere in America. After visiting the Philadelphia school in 1763, he would write a reflective letter about his previous prejudices:

  I was on the whole much pleased, and from what I then saw have conceived a higher opinion of the natural capacities of the black race than I had ever before entertained. Their apprehension seems as quick, their memory as strong, and their docility in every respect equal to that of white children. You will wonder perhaps that I should ever doubt it, and I will not undertake to justify all my prejudices.7

  In his later life, as we shall see, he became one of America’s most active abolitionists, one who denounced slavery on moral grounds and helped advance the rights of blacks.

  As indicated by the phrase he used in “Observations” about increasing “the lovely white and red” faces in America, Franklin’s feelings about the Indians were generally positive. He marveled, in a letter to Collinson, that the simplicity of the Indians’ wilderness life had a romantic appeal. “They have never shown any inclination to change their manner of life for ours,” he wrote. “When an Indian child has been brought up among us, taught our language and habituated to our customs, yet if he goes to see his relations and make one Indian ramble with them, there is no persuading him ever to return.”

  White people also sometimes feel this preference for the Indians’ way of living, Franklin noted. When white children were captured and raised by Indians, then later returned to white society, “in a short time they become disgusted with our manner of life, and the care and pains that are necessary to support it, and take the first good opportunity of escaping again into the woods.”

  He also told the story of some Massachusetts commissioners who invited the Indians to send a dozen of their youth to study free at Harvard. The Indians replied that they had sent some of their young braves to study there years earlier, but on their return “they were absolutely good for nothing, being neither acquainted with the true methods for killing deer, catching beaver, or surprising an enemy.” They offered instead to educate a dozen or so white children in the ways of the Indians “and make men of them.”8

  Assemblyman, Indian Diplomat,

  and Postmaster

  Serving as clerk of the Pennsylvania Assembly, as he had since 1736, frustrated Franklin. Unable to take part in the debates, he amused himself by concocting his numerical magic squares. So when one of the members from Philadelphia died in 1751, Franklin readily accepted election to the seat (and passed on the clerkship to his unemployed son, William). “I conceived my becoming a member would enlarge my powers of doing good,” he recalled, but then admitted: “I would not, however, insinuate that my ambition was not flattered.”9

  Thus began Franklin’s career in politics, which would last for most of thirty-seven years until his retirement as president of the Pennsylvania Executive Council. As a private citizen, he had proposed various civic improvement schemes, such as the library, fire corps, and police patrol. Now, as a member of the Assembly, he could do even more to be, as he put it, “a great promoter of useful projects.”

  The quintessence of these was his effort to sweep, pave, and light the city streets. The endeavor began when he became bothered by the dust in front of his house, which faced the farmers’ market. So he found “a poor industrious man” who was willing to sweep the block for a monthly fee and then wrote a paper that described all the benefits of hiring him. Houses on the block would remain cleaner, he noted, and shops would attract more customers. He sent the paper around to his neighbors, who all agreed to contribute a portion of the street sweeper’s pay each month. The beauty of the scheme was that it opened the way for grander civic improvements. “This raised a general desire to have all the streets paved,” Franklin recalled, “and made the people more willing to submit to a tax for that purpose.”

  As a result, Franklin was able to draw up a bill in the Assembly to pay for street paving, and he accompanied it with a proposal to install street lamps in front of each house. With his love of science and detail, Franklin even worked on a design for the lamps. The globes imported from London, he noticed, did not have a vent on the bottom to allow air in, which meant the smoke collected and darkened the glass. Franklin invented a new model with vents and a chimney, so that the lamp remained clean and bright. He also designed the style of lamp, common today, that had four flat panes of glass rather than one globe, making it easier to repair if broken. “Some may think these trifling matters not worth minding,” Franklin said, but they should remember that “human felicity is produced…by little advantages that occur every day.”10

  There were, of course, more momentous issues to debate. The Assembly was dominated by Quakers, who were generally pacifist and frugal. They were often at odds with the family of the Proprietors, led by the great William Penn’s not-so-great son Thomas, who didn’t help relations when he married an Anglican and drifted away from the Quaker faith. The main concerns of the Proprietors were getting more land from the Indians and making sure that their property remained exempt from taxation.

  (Pennsylvania was a Proprietary colony, which meant that it was governed by a private family that owned most of the unsettled land. In 1681, Charles II granted such a charter to William Penn, in repayment of a debt. A majority of the colonies started out as Proprietary ones, but by the 1720s most had become Royal colonies directly ruled by the king and his ministers. Only Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware remained under their Proprietors until the Revolution.)

  Two big issues faced Pennsylvania at the time: forging good relations with the Indians and protecting the colony from the French. These were related, because alliances with the Indians became all the more important whenever the recurring wars with the French flared up.

  Remaining on good terms with the Indians required significant sums of money for gifts, and colonial defense was also costly. This led to complex political struggles in Pennsylvania. The Quakers opposed military spending on principle, and the Penns (acting through a series of appointed lackey governors) opposed anything that would cost them much money or subject their lands to taxes.

  Franklin had been instrumental in finessing these issues in 1747, when he formed the voluntary militia. But by the early 1750s, tensions with France over control of the Ohio valley were rising again and would soon erupt into the French and Indian War (an offshoot of what was known in Europe as the Seven Years’ War). The situation would lead Franklin to take two momentous initiatives that were to shape not only his political career but also the destiny of America:

  He became an increasingly fervent opponent of the Proprietors, and eventually of the British, as they stubbornly asserted their right to control the taxes and government of the colony, a stance that reflected his anti-authoritarian and populist sentiments.

  He became a leader of the effort to get the colonies, heretofore truculently independent of one another, to join together and unite for common purposes, which reflected his penchant for forging associations, his nonparochial view of America, and his belief that people could accomplish more when they worked together than when they stood separately.

  The process began in 1753, when Franklin was appointed one of three commissioners from Pennsylvania to attend a summit conference with a congregation of Indian leaders at Carlisle, halfway between Philadelphia and the Ohio River. The goal was to secure the allegiance of the Delaware Indians, who were angry with the Penns for cheating them in what was known as the “Walking Purchase.” (An old deed had given the Penns a tract of Indian land that was defined as what a man could walk in a day and a half, and Thomas Penn had hired three fleet runners to sprint for thirty-six hours, thus claiming far more land than intended.) Allied on the side of the Pennsylvanians were the Six Nation
s of the Iroquois confederacy, which included the Mohawk and Seneca tribes.

  More than a hundred Indians came to the Carlisle conference. After the Pennsylvanians presented the traditional string of wampum, in this case, a whopping £800 worth of gifts,* the Iroquois chief Scaroyady proposed a peace plan. The white settlers should pull back to the east of the Appalachians, and their traders should be regulated to operate honestly and sell the Indians more ammunition and less rum. They also wanted assurances that the English would help defend them from the French, who were militarizing the Ohio valley.

  The Pennsylvanians ended up pledging little more than a stricter regulation of their traders, which eventually caused the Delaware to drift over to the French side. On the last night, Franklin saw a frightening display of the dangers of rum. The Pennsylvanians had refused to offer the Indians any until the summit was over, and when the ban was lifted, a bacchanal erupted. As Franklin described the scene:

  They had made a great bonfire in the middle of the square. They were all drunk, men and women, quarreling and fighting. Their dark-colored bodies, half naked, seen only by the gloomy light of the bonfire, running after and beating one another with firebrands, accompanied by their horrid yellings, formed a scene the most resembling our ideas of hell that could well be imagined.

  Franklin and his fellow commissioners wrote an angry report decrying the white traders who regularly sold rum to the Indians. By doing so they threatened to “to keep these poor Indians continually under the force of liquor” and “entirely estrange the affections of the Indians from the English.”11

  Upon his return, Franklin learned that he had been appointed by the British government to share, along with William Hunter of Virginia, the top post office job in America, known as the Deputy Postmaster for the Colonies. He had been eagerly seeking the position for two years and had even authorized Collinson to spend up to £300 lobbying on his behalf in London. “However,” Franklin joked, “the less it costs the better, as it is for life only, which is an uncertain tenure.”