Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (73 page)

47
. Cotton Mather, “Two Brief Discourses,” 1701; A. Whitney Griswold, “Two Puritans on Prosperity,” 1934, in Sanford 42; Campbell 99, 166–74; Ziff,
Puritanism in America,
218; Aldridge, “The Alleged Puritanism of Benjamin Franklin,” in Lemay
Reappraising,
370; Lopez
Private,
104. Perry Miller notes: “This child of New England Puritanism simply dumped the whole theological preoccupation overboard; but, not the slightest ceasing to be a Puritan, went about his business”; see “Ben Franklin, Jonathan Edwards,”
Major Writers of America
(New York: Harcourt Brace, 1962), 86. See chapter 4, n. 37 for sources on deism and the Enlightenment.

48
. See chapter 18 for details of the Romantic-era view of Franklin.

49
. John Updike, “Many Bens,”
The New Yorker,
Feb. 22, 1988, 115; Henry Steele Commager,
The American Mind
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950), 26.

The strongest argument that Franklin was a pure exemplar of the Enlightenment is in historian Carl Becker’s masterful essay on him in the
Dictionary of American Biography
(New York: Scribner’s, 1933), in which he called Franklin “a true child of the Enlightenment, not indeed of the school of Rousseau, but of Defoe and Pope and Swift, of Fontenelle and Montesquieu and Voltaire. He spoke their language, although with a homely accent…He accepted without question all the characteristic ideas [of the Enlightenment]: its healthy, clarifying skepticism; its passion for freedom and its humane sympathies; its preoccupation with the world that is evident to the senses; its profound faith in common sense, in the efficacy of Reason for the solution of human problems and the advancement of human welfare.” See also Stuart Sherman, “Franklin and the Age of Enlightenment,” in Sanford.

50
. Autobiography 139; Albert Smyth,
American Literature
(Philadelphia: Eldredge, 1889), 20; BF to Benjamin Vaughan, Nov. 9, 1779; BF to DF, June 4, 1765. For additional words of disgust about metaphysics, see BF to Thomas Hopkinson, Oct. 16, 1746. For a fuller assessment of Franklin’s religious and moral beliefs, see the final chapter of this book. The ideas here draw in part from the following: Campbell 25, 34–36, 137, 165, 169–72, 286; Charles Angoff,
Literary History of the American People
(New York: Knopf, 1931), 295–310; Van Wyck Brooks,
America’s Coming of Age
(Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor, 1934), 3–7; Lopez
Private,
26; Alan Taylor, “For the Benefit of Mr. Kite,”
The New Republic,
Mar. 19, 2001, 39; Vernon Parrington,
Main Currents in American Thought
(New York: Harcourt, 1930), 1:178; David Brooks, “Our Founding Yuppie,”
The Weekly Standard,
Oct. 23, 2000, 31. “In its naive simplicity this hardly seems worthy of study as a philosophy,” writes Herbert Schneider, “yet as a moral regime and outline of the art of virtue, it has a clarity and a power that command respect.” Herbert Schneider,
The Puritan Mind
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1958), 246.

51
. Alan Taylor, “For the Benefit of Mr. Kite,” 39.

52
. Poor Richard’s 1733–58, by Franklin, plus editor’s note in Papers 1:280; Faÿ 159–73; Sappenfield 121–77; Brands 124–31. There was also a real Richard Saunders who appears in the account books as a customer of Franklin’s. Van Doren 107.

53
. Pa. Gazette, Dec. 28, 1732.

54
. Poor Richard’s, 1733; Autobiography 107.

55
. Poor Richard’s, 1734, 1735; Titan Leeds’s
American Almanack,
1734; Jonathan Swift, “Predictions for the Ensuing Year by Isaac Bickerstaff, esq.,” 1708, ftp://sailor.gutenberg.org/pub/gutenberg/etext97/bstaf10.txt. Swift’s piece was a parody of an almanac by John Partridge; he predicted Partridge’s death, and then engaged in a running jest similar to the one Franklin perpetrated on Leeds.

56
. Poor Richard’s, 1734, 1735, 1740; Papers 2:332n; Sappenfield 143; Brands 126.

57
. Poor Richard’s, 1736, 1738, 1739. See also the verses by “Bridget Saunders, my duchess” about lazy men in 1734 (“God in his mercy may do much to save him/ But woe to the poor wife whose lot is to have him”), which “Poor Richard” prints as a response to his own 1733 verses about lazy women.

58
. Mark Twain, “The Late Benjamin Franklin,”
The Galaxy,
July 1870, www.twainquotes.com/Galaxy/187007e.html ; Groucho Marx,
Groucho and Me
(New York: Random House, 1959), 6.

59
. For an exhaustive study of the provenance of “early to bed and early to rise” see Wolfgang Mieder, “Early to Bed and Early to Rise,” in the Web-based journal
De Proverbio,
www.utas.edu.au/docs/flonta/DP,1,1,95/FRANKLIN.html.
Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations
(1882; Boston: Little, Brown, 2002) in its thirteenth edition (1955) and previous editions attributes the phrase to Franklin but also cites John Clarke’s
Proverbs
(1639); it drops the reference to Clarke in subsequent editions.

60
. The most detailed work on the origins of the maxims is Robert Newcombe, “The Sources of Benjamin Franklin’s Sayings of Poor Richard,” Ph.D. diss., University of Maryland, 1957. See also Papers 1:281–82; Van Doren 112–13; Wright 54; Frances Barbour,
A Concordance to the Sayings in Franklin’s Poor Richard
(Detroit: Gale Research, 1974). Franklin’s greatest reliance is on Jonathan Swift, James Howell’s
Proverbs
(1659), and Thomas Fuller’s
Gnomologia
(1732).

61
. Philomath (BF), “Talents Requisite in an Almanac Writer,” Pa. Gazette, Oct. 20, 1737. “Philomath” was a term used for almanac writers.

62
.
Poor Richard Improved,
1758.

63
. Autobiography 107; Wright 55; Van Doren 197; D. H. Lawrence, “Benjamin Franklin,” 14; BF to William Strahan, June 2, 1750; Poor Richard’s, 1743.

1
. Poor Richard’s, 1744; “Appeal for the Hospital,” Pa. Gazette, Aug. 8, 1751; Alexis de Tocqueville,
Democracy in America
(1835; New York: Doubleday, 1969), 513; “Inside Main Street USA,”
New York Times,
Aug. 27, 1995; John Van Horne, “Collective Benevolence for the Common Good,” in Lemay
Reappraising,
432. The two books that most influenced Franklin to form associations for the public good were Daniel Defoe’s
An Essay upon Projects
(1697) and Cotton Mather’s
Bonifacius: Essays to do Good
(1710).

2
. Autobiography 90–91, 82; Faÿ 149; “The Library Company of Philadelphia,” www.librarycompany.org ; Morgan
Franklin,
56. The list of first books is in
PMHB
300 (1906): 300.

3
. “Brave Men at Fires,” Pa. Gazette, Dec. 1, 1733; Autobiography 115; “On Protection of Towns from Fire,” Pa. Gazette, Feb. 4, 1735; notice in Pa. Gazette, Jan. 27, 1743; Van Doren 130; Brands 135–37; Hawke 53.

4
. Autobiography 115; Brands 214.

5
. Faÿ 137; Pa Gazette, Dec. 30, 1730; Clark 44; Pennsylvania Grand Lodge Web site, www.pagrandlodge.org ; Julius Sachse,
Benjamin Franklin’s Account with the Lodge of Masons
(Kila, Mont.: Kessinger, 1997).

6
. Van Doren 134; Faÿ 180; Brands 152–54; BF to Joseph and Abiah Franklin, Apr. 13, 1738; Pa. Gazette, Feb. 7 (dated Feb. 15), 1738.

7
. Autobiography 111; “Dialogue Between Two Presbyterians,” Pa. Gazette, Apr. 10, 1735; “Observations on the Proceedings against Mr. Hemphill,” July 1735, Papers 2:37; BF, “A Letter to a Friend in the Country,” Sept. 1735, Papers 2:65; Jonathan Dickinson, “A Vindication of the Reverend Commission of the Synod,” Sept. 1735, and “Remarks Upon the Defense of Rev. Hemphill’s Observations,” Nov. 1735; “A Defense of Mr. Hemphill’s Observations,” Oct. 1735. The pieces by Franklin, along with annotations about the affair and Dickinson’s presumed authorship of the essays attributed to him, are in Papers 2:27–91. Franklin’s fascinating battle over Hemphill has been recounted in many good historical studies, from which this section draws: Bryan LeBeau, “Franklin and the Presbyterians,”
Early American Review
(summer 1996), earlyamerica.com/review/summer/franklin/; Merton Christensen, “Franklin on the Hemphill Trial: Deism versus Presbyterian Orthodoxy,”
William and Mary Quarterly
(July 1953): 422–40; William Barker, “The Hemphill Case, Benjamin Franklin and Subscription to the Westminster Confession,”
American Presbyterians
69 (winter 1991); Aldridge
Nature,
86–98; Buxbaum 93–104.

8
. Campbell 97; Barbara Oberg and Harry Stout, eds.,
Benjamin Franklin, Jonathan Edwards
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 119; Carl Van Doren,
Benjamin Franklin and Jonathan Edwards
(New York: Scribner’s, 1920), introduction; Jonathan Edwards, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” delivered at Enfield, Conn., July 8, 1741, douglass.speech.nwu.edu/edwa_a45.htm ; Jack Hitt, “The Great Divide: It’s Not Left and Right. It’s Meritocrats and Valuecrats,”
New York Times Magazine,
Dec. 31, 2000, 14.

9
. Pa. Gazette, Nov. 15, 1739, May 22, 1740, June 12, 1740; Autobiography 116–20; Buxbaum 93–142; Brands 138–48; Hawke 57. Buxbaum presents an exhaustive analysis of all the items Franklin printed on Whitefield.

10
. Frank Lambert, “Subscribing for Profits and Piety,”
William and Mary Quarterly
(July 1993): 529–48; Harry Stout, “George Whitefield and Benjamin Franklin,”
Massachusetts Historical Society
103 (1992):9–23; David Morgan, “A Most Unlikely Friendship,”
The Historian
47 (1985): 208–18; Autobiography 118.

11
. “Obadiah Plainman,” Pa. Gazette, May 15, 29, 1740, Lib. of Am. 275–83, 1528;
American Weekly Mercury,
May 22, 1740. The editors of the Yale Papers do not include the Obadiah Plainman letters as Franklin’s. But Leo Lemay convincingly argues that he wrote them, and he included them in the Library of America collection. Likewise, it seems possible that Franklin, as was his wont, stoked the controversy by writing the opposing letters from “Tom Trueman.”

12
. “Letter to a Friend in the Country” and “Statement of Editorial Policy,” Pa. Gazette, July 24, 1740; Autobiography 118.

13
. “Obituary of Andrew Hamilton,” Pa. Gazette, Aug. 6, 1741; “Half-Hour’s Conversation with a Friend,” Pa. Gazette, Nov. 16, 1733.

14
. Sappenfield 86–93; Autobiography 113–14.

15
. C. William Miller,
Benjamin Franklin’s Philadelphia Printing: A Descriptive Bibliography
(Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1984), 32; James Green,
Benjamin Franklin as Publisher and Bookseller,
in Lemay
Reappraising,
101. Green was a distinguished curator at the Library Company, and his notes on exhibitions of Franklin’s books are useful.

16
. Walter Isaacson, “Info Highwayman,”
Civilization
(Mar. 1995): 48; Autobiography 114.

17
. Sappenfield 93–105; Pa. Gazette, Nov. 13, Dec. 11, 1740;
American Weekly Mercury,
Nov. 20, 27, Dec. 4, 18, 1740; Papers, vol. 2; Frank Mott,
A History of American Magazines
(New York: Appleton, 1930), 1:8–27.

18
. BF to Abiah Franklin, Oct. 16, 1747, Apr. 12, 1750; Lopez
Private,
70–79; Autobiography 109; BF to William Strahan, June 2, 1750, Jan. 31, 1757; Clark 62, 139; Mrs. E. D. Gillespie (daughter of Sally Franklin Bache),
A Book of Remembrance
(Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1901), cited in Clark 17; Silence Dogood #5,
New England Courant,
May 28, 1722; DF to Margaret Strahan, Dec. 24, 1751; “A Petition of the Left Hand,” 1785, in Lib. of Am. 1115 and Papers CD 43:u611.

In addition to half-seriously trying to fix Sally up with Strahan’s son Billy, Franklin hoped his son, William, would marry Polly Stevenson, the daughter of his London landlady; that his grandson William Temple Franklin would marry the son of his Paris lady friend Mme. Brillon; and that Sally’s son Benjamin Bache would marry Polly Stevenson’s daughter. A harsher assessment of Franklin’s treatment of Sally and the education he provided her can be found in an essay by Larry Tise, “Liberty and the Rights of Women,” in the collection he edited,
Benjamin Franklin and Women
(University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), 37–49.

19
. Lopez
Private,
34; Poor Richard’s, 1735. “Reply to a Piece of Advice,” Pa. Gazette, Mar, 4, 1735, praises marriage and children. The Yale editors of Franklin Papers tentatively attribute it to him, partly because it is signed “A.A.,” initials he often used. Papers 2:21.