Benjamin Franklin in London: The British Life of America's Founding Father, Benjamin Franklin: The Religious Life of a Founding Father and Benjamin Franklin and the Ends of Empire

Abstract

There has been a resurgence of interest in the life of Founder Benjamin Franklin in recent years, with these three volumes the most recent contributions to the literature. George Goodwin and Carla J. Mulford take different approaches to Benjamin Franklin as a global figure, while Thomas S. Kidd focuses upon the role religion played in Franklin's life and career.Benjamin Franklin in London covers Franklin's life while focusing on the Founder's visits to London, from 1724 to 1726 as a youth and 1757 to 1775 as an adult (with one brief return to Philadelphia, 1762–64). Goodwin notes that Franklin saw himself as British his entire life and openly adapted British customs and ideas to colonial society. During the first visit, Franklin found work as a printer's apprentice, met a bookseller who allowed him to borrow second-hand books, and became exposed to natural philosophy (science), which helped immensely during his future scientific experiments. Franklin quickly realized when he returned in 1757 that both he and London had changed since his previous visit. This time, he represented Pennsylvania's colonial government and had enough money to buy books instead of borrowing them. Franklin mingled with prime ministers and members of Parliament, along with Britain's intellectual elite.Franklin's first challenge in London was dealing with the Penn Family, proprietors of Pennsylvania, whose interests were contrary to those of the Assembly he represented and whose actions Franklin considered deceitful. Ultimately, Franklin chose to deal directly with the Privy Council and other British officials on matters related to the province and avoided interactions with Thomas Penn.When Franklin returned to Philadelphia in 1762 he developed a political partnership with Joseph Galloway, one that ultimately broke down because of differences over the power of the imperial government. His defeat for election to the Assembly in 1764 prompted his return to England. He still represented the Pennsylvania Assembly in London, but this time his instructions were to transition Pennsylvania from proprietary to royal control. Meanwhile, Franklin became embroiled in the Stamp Act controversy; Franklin initially misjudged colonial opposition, and colonists perceived that he had supported the hated act. Instead, his testimony before Parliament contributed toward its repeal in 1766. By 1770, according to Goodwin, Franklin had changed from being a strong supporter of the empire to someone who was beginning to question the economic relationships between the colonists and England. Following Franklin's dismissal as colonial agent, he remained in England to pursue scientific pursuits, returning to Philadelphia a few days before the first meeting of the Second Continental Congress.Franklin's faith—raised in Puritan Massachusetts, he lived most of his life in religiously diverse Philadelphia—is the subject of Thomas S. Kidd's Benjamin Franklin: The Religious Life of a Founding Father. According to Kidd, the common portrayal of Franklin as a deist is one that dismisses Franklin's religious convictions. Indeed, Kidd states that Franklin was the founder of “Doctrineless Christianity,” a faith in which beliefs were not essential.Kidd's volume focuses on Franklin's life from the early 1720s to the late 1770s, particularly the period between the two visits to London described by Goodwin. Franklin's parents had migrated to Boston in the 1680s, seeking both religious freedom and economic opportunity. Young Franklin was a voracious reader, with the works of Cotton Mather and Daniel Defoe especially popular. Unlike most “bookish boys” in Boston, however, he did not become a minister. One reason was that Franklin attacked the religious establishment of Puritan New England as hypocritical through his Silence Dogood essays.Kidd considers Franklin's Autobiography to be “his personal conversion testimony” (48) and his “Plan of Conduct” a “declaration of moral seriousness” (51). Yet Franklin did not attend church regularly, although he did financially support the Presbyterian Church. Franklin's printing business thrived through publishing religious works, along with accounts of witchcraft trials. He took advantage of German immigration to publish German-language hymnals and other texts. Traditional Protestant works, including Bibles, were his most popular items.According to Kidd, Franklin's friendship with George Whitefield helped him understand the power of religious fervor. He assisted Whitefield in taking advantage of the media by printing announcements for the sermons and by publishing tracts written by the evangelist. Franklin also published Whitefield's travel journals, perhaps his most successful publications after the Bible. In other words, to Franklin Whitefield was both a spiritual leader and a source of income. Franklin also published pamphlets related to the Moravians, who drew the interest of Whitefield's converts after his departure.Franklin's faith became an issue when it came time to baptize his children. His wife Deborah was a devout Anglican, so their children were baptized at Christ Church. When Franklin became involved with scientific experiments, Christ Church became important to him, but not for religious reasons. Instead, the building's steeple made it one of the highest structures in the city, and Franklin saw it as a site for more electrical experiments and not merely a house of worship. Kidd notes that over time, as Franklin became more involved in politics, he returned to his religious upbringing and attempted to use prayer and Bible verses to achieve his goal of a solid new nation.Carla J. Mulford's Benjamin Franklin and the Ends of Empire, in contrast, is not a traditional historical biography of the Founder but a “literary biography” that addresses Franklin's thoughts through his writings. Mulford does more than focus on the intellectual side of Franklin's life; she also effectively examines his influence on Pennsylvania, imperial, and global politics in the eighteenth century. According to Mulford, Franklin thought everyone in the empire had the same political rights, regardless of whether they lived in England or its overseas colonies. Of course, this perception of equality might have stemmed from Franklin's background, as he not only was an American but also was not from the upper class, and thus was not viewed in England as someone worthy of their time. For this reason, Mulford views Franklin as the founder of early modern liberalism, as it described his views on political and individual liberty, particularly freedom of speech and freedom of conscience. His thirst for knowledge naturally led him to serve an apprenticeships at his brother James's printing shop, where he read everything published (in addition to books in his father's and his uncle's libraries).When Franklin moved to Philadelphia, economic issues dominated his pamphlet writing. He particularly noted the relationship between imperial politics and economic policy in the colonies, focusing on Pennsylvania's diversity and the need for international cooperation. He especially concentrated on the value of the productivity of land and the need for paper currency. Writings such as A Modest Enquiry Into the Nature and Necessity of a Paper-Currency (1729) and Plain Truth: Or, Serious considerations on the Present State of the City of Philadelphia and Province of Pennsylvania (1747) represented Franklin's views on economics and politics in the eighteenth century. His Observations on the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, etc. (1754) addressed the economic role of the American colonies in the British empire, focusing not merely on trade but also on labor, particularly slavery. Observations was most often considered a pamphlet about population (with remarks about the ethnic and national groups that contributed to Pennsylvania's diversity), and Mulford contends that Franklin focused on other issues such as the economy, environment, labor, and society, although his comments about German-speaking settlers perpetuated English stereotypes about immigrants from outside the empire.Franklin's writings entered imperial discussions about what to do with the territory acquired following the Seven Years' War with The Interest of Great Britain Considered, with Regard to Her Colonies and the Acquisitions of Canada or Guadeloupe (1760), in which he advocated “the usefulness of keeping colonies together that were both geographically conjoined and similar in terms of their commodity extraction and production” (190). The pamphlet, according to Mulford, “cemented Franklin's reputation as an important imperial strategist who analyses bore up under examination, even if his message was lost on those in administration” (205). Cool Thoughts on the Present Situation of Our Public Affairs (1764) reflected Franklin's views upon his brief return to Philadelphia in the mid-1760s, particularly as they related to efforts to make Pennsylvania a royal colony.Franklin's return to London in late 1764 removed him from internal colonial affairs and instead placed him in the midst of larger imperial issues. Articles published in the Gentlemen's Magazine and London Chronicle represented Franklin's arguments condemning British revenue measures in the 1760s. Franklin's experiences in England, especially in the Cockpit, turned him from a supporter of imperial policies to a staunch defender of liberty who stated, “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God” (280). Following the war, Franklin focused on the new nation's commercial potential, counteracting negative propaganda about the country's economic and political stability.One distinctive feature of Mulford's biography is her reinforcement of Franklin's positive views of Native peoples, especially the need to develop alliances to protect American territorial interests from British Canada and Spain. Franklin particularly expressed concern during the Constitutional Convention about the settlers' treatment of the Cherokees, whom he considered a sovereign nation. He also became more active in the abolitionist movement later in life. Franklin had owned slaves because of the instability of European-born servants, but by the time of the Revolution, unlike most Founders, he was unable to reconcile slavery and liberty and eagerly joined the Pennsylvania Abolition Society.As a literary biography, Mulford's work effectively articulates how Franklin's expression of thoughts through his writings demonstrated the evolution of his understanding of the colonies' role in imperial society and why independence was the only viable solution to Britain's oppressive policies. She relies more on Franklin's writings in her work than do Goodwin and Kidd, particularly focusing on his thoughts about the colonies' relationship with the British empire. In his analysis of Franklin's religious beliefs Kidd relies heavily on Franklin's autobiography, other biographies of Franklin, his writings in the New England Courant and Pennsylvania Gazette, and published writings. Goodwin went beyond these traditional sources and consulted published papers and correspondence of Franklin's contemporaries.For someone who teaches a course on researching family history, the authors' discussion of Franklin's family history was quite illuminating. In Benjamin Franklin in London, Goodwin notes that Franklin's father, Josiah, and his uncle Benjamin had shared some family legends with him, some of which he confirmed during his travels. Goodwin further relates how Franklin's tour of England with his son William in 1758 included visiting with an English cousin in Wellingsborough and seeing the parish register at Ecton. There, Franklin found out that he was descended from the youngest son of the youngest son for five generations. He also learned that one of his ancestors, Thomas Franklin, strongly resembled him with an interest in education and technology. Benjamin and William Franklin also visited his wife Deborah's relatives in Birmingham.In contrast, Kidd's volume focused on the Franklin family's involvement in England's religious upheavals of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. His great-great-grandfather Thomas Francklyne hid an English Bible during Queen Mary's reign, one of the family stories told by his uncle Benjamin. While Franklin's family were officially members of the Church of England, his father and uncle attended the dissenters' worship services before moving to New England in the 1660s. When Franklin was young, his father Josiah and Uncle Benjamin instructed him on religious matters, especially the tenets of dissenters. According to Kidd, Franklin used his father's experience with intolerance in developing his passion for liberty.Mulford focuses on the Franklin family during the English Civil War, using the family's involvement with Parliamentarians to explain his reluctance to go to war in the 1770s. She further explains that Franklin had used the opportunity to visit relatives in the summer of 1758 to collect more information about the family's history and notes that when Franklin began writing his memoirs in 1771, he focused on the family's tradition of religious nonconformity, first as Protestants under Queen Mary, then as dissenters under Charles I. Franklin proudly reveled in associating himself with those who opposed the monarchy, just like he fought against political tyranny. This view, Mulford contends, linked Franklin and his family with the liberals of the era, all of whom challenged political and religious authority.All three books effectively portray different aspects of Franklin's life. Of the three works, Benjamin Franklin and the Ends of Empire provides a more thorough treatment of Franklin's life and would be the most useful for a course in eighteenth-century American literature, colonial and revolutionary America, or Pennsylvania history. Unfortunately, the current price limits its accessibility for college course adoption; hopefully Oxford University Press will soon publish an affordable paper edition for faculty to assign students (similar to the prices for books in the Critical Historical Encounters Series). Meanwhile, Benjamin Franklin: The Religious Life of a Founding Father would be an excellent supplemental reading for a course on American religious history, and Benjamin Franklin in London: The British Life of America's Founding Father would be an appropriate supplemental reading for a course in early American history or eighteenth-century British history. Overall, Goodwin, Kidd, and Mulford all succeed in their contributions to the growing literature on Benjamin Franklin.