The Elusive Benjamin Franklin

Abstract

Will we ever know the real Benjamin Franklin? Despite the spate of excellent books about Franklin that have appeared in the last decade or so, we seem no closer than ever to plumbing the depths of this elusive and always fascinating founding father. Historians have characterized him as a man of his time and our own, as a quintessential American and as a citizen of the world, as patriotic and self-serving, as democratic and elitist. He was, as everyone is quick to point out, a chameleon who played his personal cards close to his chest, revealing some parts of himself, consciously concealing others, often trimming his sails to catch the latest breeze. This most popular founder, who seems so accessible on the surface, is perhaps the most consistently misunderstood. Both Gordon Wood and David Waldstreicher have given us new and intriguing ways of looking at this complicated man. Above all, both challenge us to view Franklin, not from the perspective of the man he became in subsequent generations, but in terms of what he did and what he believed in his own time.