BFTF: Benjamin Franklin Transatlantic Fellows: Summer Institutes for Youth
The Summer Institutes for Youth, a program under the Benjamin Franklin
Transatlantic Fellows Initiative, encompasses five three-week U.S.-based
institutes in the summers of 2006, 2007, and 2008. The program focuses primarily
on the exploration of global issues through interactive activities, practical
experiences, and other hands-on opportunities. Through their participation in
the Institutes, the Fellows learn more about democratic practices, volunteer
service, conflict resolution, critical thinking, tolerance and respect for
diversity, and youth leadership.
Each Institute includes 30 to 35 European and Eurasian youth and 10 American
students. Fellows are nominated by U.S. Embassies in Europe and Eurasia. Wake
Forest University implements the U.S. program. The institute itinerary includes
sessions in Winston-Salem, NC, Philadelphia, PA, and Washington, DC.
The inaugural Institute took place in July 2006. Two Institutes, one for
teenagers aged 15-17 and the other for teenagers aged 17-19, are held in the
summer of 2007 and two more in the summer of 2008.
Benjamin Franklin (January 17 [O.S. January 6] 1706 – April 17, 1790) was one
of the most important Founding Fathers of the United States. He was a leading
author, political theorist, politician, printer, scientist, inventor, civic
activist, and diplomat. As a scientist he was a major figure in the history of
physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity. As a political
writer and activist he, more than anyone, invented the idea of an American
nation, and as a diplomat during the American Revolution, he secured the French
alliance that helped to make independence possible.
Franklin was noted for his curiosity, his writings (popular, political and
scientific), and his diversity of interests. As a leader of the Enlightenment,
he gained the recognition of scientists and intellectuals across Europe. An
agent in London before the Revolution, and Minister to France during the war,
he, more than anyone else, defined the new nation in the minds of Europe. His
success in securing French military and financial aid was a great contributor to
the American victory over Britain. He invented the lightning rod, bifocals, the
iron furnace stove (also known as the Franklin stove), a carriage odometer and a
musical instrument known as the armonica. He was an early proponent of colonial
unity. Many historians hail him as the "First American."
Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Franklin learned printing from his older brother
and became a newspaper editor, printer, and merchant in Philadelphia, becoming
very wealthy. He spent many years in England and published the famous Poor
Richard's Almanac and the Pennsylvania Gazette. He formed both the first public
lending library and fire department in America as well as the Junto, a political
discussion club. During this period he wrote in favor of paper money, against
mercantilist policies such as the Iron Act of 1750, and also drafted, in 1754,
the Albany Plan of Union, which would have created a continental legislature;
demonstrating how early he conceived of the colonies as being naturally one
political unit.
Franklin became a national hero in America when he spearheaded the effort to
have Parliament repeal the unpopular Stamp Act. An accomplished diplomat, he was
widely admired among the French as American minister to Paris and was a major
figure in the development of positive Franco-American relations. From 1775 to
1776, Franklin was Postmaster General under the Continental Congress and from
1785 to 1788 was President of the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania.
Toward the end of his life, he became one of the most prominent abolitionists.
Franklin was interested in science and technology, carrying out his famous
electricity experiments and inventing—in addition to the lightning rod—the
Franklin stove, catheter, swimfins, glass harmonica, and bifocals. He also
played a major role in establishing the University of Pennsylvania and Franklin
and Marshall College. He was elected the first president of the American
Philosophical Society, the oldest learned society in the United States, in 1769.
Franklin was fluent in five languages. He is typically recognized as a polymath.
Biography
Ancestry
Franklin's father, Josiah Franklin, was born at Ecton, Northamptonshire, England
on December 23, 1657, the son of Thomas Franklin, a blacksmith and farmer, and
Jane White. His mother, Abiah Folger, was born in Nantucket, Massachusetts, on
August 15, 1667, to Peter Folger, a miller and schoolteacher and his wife Mary
Morrill, a former indentured servant. A descendant of the Folgers, J. A. Folger,
founded Folgers Coffee in the 19th century.
Ben Franklin's great-great-grandmother was Alice Elmy from Diss on the Suffolk /
Norfolk border in England.
Around 1677, Josiah married Anne Child at Ecton, and over the next few years had
three children. These half-siblings of Benjamin Franklin included Elizabeth
(March 2, 1678), Samuel (May 16, 1681), and Hannah (May 25, 1683).
Sometime during the second half of 1683, the Franklins left England for Boston,
Massachusetts. They had several more children in Boston, including Josiah Jr.
(August 23, 1685), Ann (January 5, 1687), Joseph (February 5, 1688), and Joseph
(June 30, 1689) (the first Joseph died soon after birth).
Josiah's first wife, Anne, died in Boston on July 9, 1689. He was married to
Abiah Folger on November 25, 1689 in the Old South Church of Boston by Samuel
Willard.
Josiah and Abiah had the following children: John (December 7, 1690), Peter
(November 22, 1692), Mary (September 26, 1694), James (February 4, 1697), Sarah
(July 9, 1699), Ebenezer (September 20, 1701), Thomas (December 7, 1703),
Benjamin (January 17, 1706), Lydia (August 8, 1708), and Jane (March 27, 1712).
Early life
Autograph of Benjamin FranklinBenjamin Franklin was born on Milk Street in
Boston on January 17, 1706 and baptized at Old South Meeting House. His father,
Josiah Franklin, was a tallow chandler, a maker of candles and soap, whose
second wife, Abiah Folger, was Benjamin's mother. Josiah's marriages produced 17
children; Benjamin was the fifteenth child and youngest son. Josiah wanted Ben
to attend school with the clergy but only had enough money to send him to school
for two years. He attended Boston Latin School but did not graduate; he
continued his education through voracious reading. Although "his parents talked
of the church as a career" for Franklin, his schooling ended when he was ten. He
then worked for his father for a time and at 12 he became an apprentice to his
brother James, a printer. When Ben was 15, James created the New England
Courant, the first truly independent newspaper in the colonies. When denied the
option to write to the paper, Franklin invented the pseudonym of 'Mrs. Silence
Dogood' who was ostensibly a middle-aged widow. The letters were published in
the paper and became a subject of conversation around town. Neither James nor
the Courant's readers were aware of the ruse, and James was unhappy with Ben
when he discovered the popular correspondent was his younger brother. Franklin
left his apprenticeship without permission and in so doing became a fugitive.
At age 17, Franklin ran away to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, seeking a new start
in a new city. When he first arrived he worked in several printer shops around
town. However, he was not satisfied by the immediate prospects. After a few
months, while working in a printing house, Franklin was convinced by
Pennsylvania Governor Sir William Keith to go to London, ostensibly to acquire
the equipment necessary for establishing another newspaper in Philadelphia.
Finding Keith's promises of backing a newspaper to be empty, Franklin worked as
a compositor in a printer's shop in what is now the Church of St
Bartholomew-the-Great in the Smithfield area of London. Following this, he
returned to Philadelphia in 1726 with the help of a merchant named Thomas
Denham, who gave Franklin a position as clerk, shopkeeper, and bookkeeper in
Denham's merchant business.
In 1727, Benjamin Franklin, at age 21, created the Junto, a group of “like
minded aspiring artisans and tradesmen who hoped to improve themselves while
they improved their community." The Junto was a discussion group for issues of
the day; it subsequently gave rise to many organizations in Philadelphia.
Reading was a great past time of the Junto, but books were rare and expensive.
The members created a library, and at first they pooled their own books
together. This did not work, however, and Franklin came up with the idea of a
subscription library, where the members pooled their monetary resources to buy
books. This idea was the birth of the Library Company, and the charter of the
Library Company of Philadelphia was created in 1731 by Franklin.
Originally, the books were kept in the homes of the first librarians, but in
1739 the collection was moved to the second floor of the State House of
Pennsylvania, now known as Independence Hall. In 1791, a new building was built
for the library specifically. The Library Company flourished without any
competition and gained many priceless collections from bibliophiles such as
James Logan and his physician brother William. The Library Company is now a
great scholarly and research library because of its 500,000 rare books,
pamphlets, and broadsides, more than 160,000 manuscripts, and 75,000 graphic
items.
Upon Denham's death, Franklin returned to his former trade. By 1730, Franklin
had set up a printing house of his own and had contrived to become the publisher
of a newspaper called "The Pennsylvania Gazette". The Gazette gave Franklin a
forum for agitation about a variety of local reforms and initiatives through
printed essays and observations. Over time, his commentary, together with a
great deal of savvy about cultivating a positive image of an industrious and
intellectual young man, earned him a great deal of social respect; though even
after Franklin had achieved fame as a scientist and statesman, he habitually
signed his letters with the unpretentious 'B. Franklin, Printer'.
Franklin was initiated into the local Freemason lodge in 1731 and became a grand
master in 1734, indicating his rapid rise to prominence in Pennsylvania. That
same year, he edited and published the first Masonic book in the Americas, a
reprint of James Anderson's The Constitutions of the Free-Masons. Franklin
remained a Freemason throughout the rest of his life.
Deborah Read
In 1724, while a boarder in the Read home, Franklin had courted Deborah Read
before going to London at Governor Keith's request. At that time, Miss Read's
mother was wary of allowing her daughter to wed a seventeen-year old who was on
his way to London. Her own husband having recently died, Mrs. Read declined
Franklin's offer of marriage.
While Franklin was in London, Deborah married a man named John Rodgers. This
proved to be a regrettable decision. Rodgers shortly avoided his debts and
prosecution by fleeing to Barbados, leaving Deborah behind. With Rodgers' fate
unknown, and bigamy illegal, Deborah was not free to remarry formally.
Franklin had his own actions to ponder. In 1730, Franklin acknowledged an
illegitimate son named William, who would eventually become the last Loyalist
governor of New Jersey. While the identity of William's mother remains unknown,
perhaps the responsibility of an infant child gave Franklin a reason to take up
residence with Deborah Read. William was raised in the Franklin household but
eventually broke with his father over the treatment of the colonies at the hands
of the crown. However, he was not above using his father's fame to enhance his
own standing.
Franklin established a common-law marriage with Deborah Read on September 1,
1730. Benjamin and Deborah Franklin had two children (in addition to raising
William). The first was Francis Folger Franklin, born October 1732; he died of
smallpox in 1736. Sarah Franklin, nicknamed Sally, was born in 1743. She
eventually married Richard Bache, had seven children, and cared for her father
in his old age.
Deborah's fear of the sea meant that she never accompanied Franklin on any of
his extended trips to Europe, despite his repeated requests.
Success as author
In 1733, Franklin began to publish the famous Poor Richard's Almanac (with
content both original and borrowed) under the name Richard Saunders, on which
much of his popular reputation is based. Everybody who cared to know, knew it
was Benjamin Franklin but it was a different name. So when he published as Poor
Richard he could say things that he didn't want to say as Benjamin Franklin. It
was as if this "other side" of Benjamin Franklin was just dying to speak his
mind. "Poor Richard's Proverbs", adages from this almanac, such as "A penny
saved is twopence dear" (often misquoted as "A penny saved is a penny earned"),
"Fish and visitors stink in three days" remain common quotations in the modern
world. Wisdom in folk society meant the ability to provide an apt adage for any
occasion, and Franklin's readers became well prepared. He sold about ten
thousand copies per year (a circulation equal to nearly three million today).
In 1758, the year in which he ceased writing for the Almanac, he printed Father
Abraham's Sermon. Franklin's autobiography, published after his death, has
become one of the classics of the genre.
Inventions and scientific inquiries
Franklin was a prodigious inventor. Among his many creations were the lightning
rod, the glass armonica, the Franklin stove, bifocal glasses, and the flexible
urinary catheter. Franklin never patented his inventions; in his autobiography
he wrote, " s we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should
be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we
should do freely and generously."
As deputy postmaster Franklin became interested in the North Atlantic Ocean
circulation patterns that carried mail ships. Franklin worked with Timothy
Folger, his cousin and experienced Nantucket whaler captain, and other
experienced ship captains, learning enough to chart the Gulf Stream, giving it
the name by which it's still known today. It took many years for British sea
captains to follow Franklin's advice on navigating the current, but once they
did, they were able to gain two weeks in sailing time.
In 1743, Franklin founded the American Philosophical Society to help scientific
men discuss their discoveries. He began the electrical research that, along with
other scientific inquiries, would occupy him for the rest of his life, in
between bouts of politics and moneymaking.
An illustration from Franklin's paper on "Water-spouts and Whirlwinds."In 1748,
he retired from printing and went into other businesses. He created a
partnership with his foreman, David Hall, which provided Franklin with half of
the shop's profits for 18 years. This lucrative business arrangement provided
leisure time for study, and in a few years he had made discoveries that gave him
a reputation with the educated throughout Europe and especially in France.
These include his investigations of electricity. Franklin proposed that
"vitreous" and "resinous" electricity were not different types of "electrical
fluid" (as electricity was called then), but the same electrical fluid under
different pressures. He was the first to label them as positive and negative
respectively, and he was the first to discover the principle of conservation of
charge. In 1750, he published a proposal for an experiment to prove that
lightning is electricity by flying a kite in a storm that appeared capable of
becoming a lightning storm. On May 10, 1752, Thomas-Fran?ois Dalibard of France
conducted Franklin's experiment (using a 40-foot-tall iron rod instead of a
kite) and extracted electrical sparks from a cloud. On June 15, Franklin may
have possibly conducted his famous kite experiment in Philadelphia and also
successfully extracted sparks from a cloud, although there are theories that
suggest he never performed the experiment . Franklin's experiment was not
written up until Joseph Priestley's 1767 History and Present Status of
Electricity; the evidence shows that Franklin was insulated (not in a conducting
path, since he would have been in danger of electrocution in the event of a
lightning strike). (Others, such as Prof. Georg Wilhelm Richmann of St.
Petersburg, Russia, were electrocuted during the months following Franklin's
experiment.) In his writings, Franklin indicates that he was aware of the
dangers and offered alternative ways to demonstrate that lightning was
electrical, as shown by his use of the concept of electrical ground. If Franklin
did perform this experiment, he did not do it in the way that is often
described, flying the kite and waiting to be struck by lightning, (as it would
have been dramatic but fatal ). Instead he used the kite to collect some
electric charge from a storm cloud, which implied that lightning was electrical.
On October 19 in a letter to England explaining directions for repeating the
experiment, Franklin wrote:
"When rain has wet the kite twine so that it can conduct the electric fire
freely, you will find it streams out plentifully from the key at the approach of
your knuckle, and with this key a phial, or Leiden jar, maybe charged: and from
electric fire thus obtained spirits may be kindled, and all other electric
experiments [may be] performed which are usually done by the help of a rubber
glass globe or tube; and therefore the sameness of the electrical matter with
that of lightening completely demonstrated."
Franklin's electrical experiments led to his invention of the lightning rod. He
noted that conductors with a sharp rather than a smooth point were capable of
discharging silently, and at a far greater distance. He surmised that this
knowledge could be of use in protecting buildings from lightning, by attaching
"upright Rods of Iron, made sharp as a Needle and gilt to prevent Rusting, and
from the Foot of those Rods a Wire down the outside of the Building into the
Ground;...Would not these pointed Rods probably draw the Electrical Fire
silently out of a Cloud before it came nigh enough to strike, and thereby secure
us from that most sudden and terrible Mischief!" Following a series of
experiments on Franklin's own house, lightning rods were installed on the
Academy of Philadelphia (later the University of Pennsylvania) and the
Pennsylvania State House (later Independence Hall) in 1752.
In recognition of his work with electricity, Franklin received the Royal
Society's Copley Medal in 1753, and in 1756 he became one of the few eighteenth
century Americans to be elected as a Fellow of the Society. The cgs unit of
electric charge has been named after him: one franklin (Fr) is equal to one
statcoulomb.
On October 21, 1743, a storm moving from the southwest denied Franklin the
opportunity of witnessing a lunar eclipse. Franklin noted that the prevailing
winds were actually from the northeast, contrary to what he had expected. In
correspondence with his brother, Franklin learned that the same storm had not
reached Boston until after the eclipse, despite the fact that Boston is to the
northeast of Philadelphia. He deduced that storms do not always travel in the
direction of the prevailing wind, a concept which would have great influence in
meteorology.
Franklin noted a principle of refrigeration by observing that on a very hot day,
he stayed cooler in a wet shirt in a breeze than he did in a dry one. To
understand this phenomenon more clearly Franklin conducted experiments. On one
warm day in Cambridge, England, in 1758, Franklin and fellow scientist John
Hadley experimented by continually wetting the ball of a mercury thermometer
with ether and using bellows to evaporate the ether. With each subsequent
evaporation, the thermometer read a lower temperature, eventually reaching 7 °F
(-14 °C). Another thermometer showed the room temperature to be constant at 65
°F (18 °C). In his letter “Cooling by Evaporation," Franklin noted that “one may
see the possibility of freezing a man to death on a warm summer’s day."
Musical endeavors
Franklin is known to have played the violin, the harp, and the guitar. He also
composed music, notably a string quartet in early classical style, and invented
a much-improved version of the glass harmonica, in which each glass was made to
rotate on its own, with the player's fingers held steady, instead of the other
way around; this version soon found its way to Europe.
Public life
In 1736, Franklin created the Union Fire Company, the first volunteer
firefighting company in America. In the same year he printed a new currency for
New Jersey based on innovative anti-counterfeiting techniques which he had
devised.
As he matured, Franklin began to concern himself more with public affairs. In
1743, he set forth a scheme for The Academy and College of Philadelphia. He was
appointed president of the academy in November 13, 1749, and it opened on August
13, 1751. At its first commencement, on May 17, 1757, seven men graduated; six
with a Bachelor of Arts and one as Master of Arts. It was later merged with the
University of the State of Pennsylvania to become the University of
Pennsylvania.
In 1753, both Harvard and Yale awarded him honorary degrees .
In 1751, Franklin and Dr. Thomas Bond obtained a charter from the Pennsylvania
legislature to establish a hospital. Pennsylvania Hospital was the first
hospital in what was to become the United States of America.
Join, or Die: This political cartoon by Franklin urged the colonies to join
together during the French and Indian War (Seven Years' War).Franklin became
involved in Philadelphia politics and progressed rapidly. In October 1748 he was
selected as a councilman, in June 1749 he became a Justice of the Peace for
Philadelphia, and in 1751 he was elected to the Pennsylvania Assembly. On August
10, 1753, Franklin was appointed joint deputy postmaster-general of North
America. His most notable service in domestic politics was his reform of the
postal system, but his fame as a statesman rests chiefly on his subsequent
diplomatic services in connection with the relations of the colonies with Great
Britain, and later with France.
In 1754, he headed the Pennsylvania delegation to the Albany Congress. This
meeting of several colonies had been requested by the Board of Trade in England
to improve relations with the Indians and defense against the French. Franklin
proposed a broad Plan of Union for the colonies. While the plan was not adopted,
elements of it found their way into the Articles of Confederation and the
Constitution.
In 1757, he was sent to England by the Pennsylvania Assembly as a colonial agent
to protest against the political influence of the Penn family, the proprietors
of the colony. For five years he remained there, striving to end the
proprietors' prerogative to overturn legislation from the elected Assembly, and
their exemption from paying taxes on their land. His lack of influential allies
in Whitehall led to the failure of this mission. In 1759, the University of St
Andrews awarded him an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree. In 1762, Oxford
University awarded Franklin an honorary doctorate for his scientific
accomplishments and from then on he went by "Doctor Franklin." He also managed
to secure a post for his illegitimate son, William Franklin, as Colonial
Governor of New Jersey.
During his stay in London, Franklin became involved in radical politics. He was
a member of the Club of Honest Whigs, alongside thinkers such as Richard Price.
In 1756, Franklin became a member of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts,
Manufactures & Commerce (now Royal Society of Arts or RSA, which had been
founded in 1754), whose early meetings took place in coffee shops in London's
Covent Garden district, close to Franklin's main residence in Craven Street (the
only one of his residences to survive and which opened to the public as the
Benjamin Franklin House museum on January 17, 2006). After his return to
America, Franklin became the Society's Corresponding Member and remained closely
connected with the Society. The RSA instituted a Benjamin Franklin Medal in 1956
to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Franklin's birth and the 200th
anniversary of his membership of the RSA.
During his stays at Craven Street in London between 1757 and 1775, Franklin
developed a close friendship with his landlady Margaret Stevenson and her circle
of friends and relations, in particular her daughter Mary, who was more often
known as Polly.
In 1759, he was to visit Edinburgh with his son, and he recalled his
conversations there as "the densest happiness of my life."
He also joined the influential Birmingham based Lunar Society who he regularly
corresponded with and visited in Birmingham in the West Midlands, on occasion.
Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Wilson, 1759.
Coming of Revolution
In 1763, soon after Franklin returned to Pennsylvania, the western frontier was
engulfed in a bitter war known as Pontiac's Rebellion. The Paxton Boys, a group
of settlers convinced that the Pennsylvania government was not doing enough to
protect them from American Indian raids, murdered a group of peaceful
Susquehannock Indians and then marched on Philadephia. Franklin helped to
organize the local miltia in order to defend the capital against the mob, and
then met with the Paxton leaders and persuaded them to disperse. Franklin wrote
a scathing attack against the racial prejudice of the Paxton Boys. "If an Indian
injures me," he asked, "does it follow that I may revenge that Injury on all
Indians?"
Many of the Paxton Boys' supporters were Scotch-Irish Presbyterians and German
Reformed or Lutherans from rural western Pennsylvania, leading to claims that
Franklin was biased in favor of the urban Quaker elite of the East. Because of
these accusations, and other attacks on his character, Franklin lost his seat in
the 1764 Assembly elections. This defeat, however, allowed him the opportunity
to return to London, where he sealed his reputation as a pro-American radical.
In 1764, Franklin was dispatched to England as an agent for the colony, this
time to petition King George III to establish central British control of
Pennsylvania, away from its hereditary "proprietors". During this visit he also
became colonial agent for Georgia, New Jersey and Massachusetts. In London, he
actively opposed the proposed Stamp Act, despite accusations by opponents in
America that he had been complicit in its creation. His principled opposition to
the Stamp Act, and later to the Townshend Acts of 1767, led to the end of his
dream of a career in the British Government and his alliance with proponents of
colonial independence. It also led to an irreconcilable break with his son
William, who remained loyal to the British.
Franklin in 1783, an engraving from a painting by Joseph Duplessis.In September
1767, Franklin visited Paris with his usual traveling partner, Sir John Pringle.
News of his electrical discoveries was widespread in France. His reputation
meant that he was introduced to many influential scientists and politicians, and
also to King Louis XV.
While living in London in 1768, he developed a phonetic alphabet in A Scheme for
a new Alphabet and a Reformed Mode of Spelling. This reformed alphabet discarded
six letters Franklin regarded as redundant (c, j, q, w, x and y), and
substituted six new letters for sounds he felt lacked letters of their own;
however, his new alphabet never caught on and he eventually lost interest.
In 1771, Franklin traveled extensively around the British Isles staying with,
among others, Joseph Priestley and David Hume. In Dublin, Franklin was invited
to sit with the members of the Irish Parliament rather than in the gallery. He
was the first American to be given this honor. While touring Ireland he was
astounded and moved by the level of poverty he saw there. Ireland was subject to
the trade regulations and laws of England, which affected the Irish economy, and
Franklin feared that America could suffer the same plight if Britain’s
exploitation of the colonies continued.
In 1773, Franklin published two of his most celebrated pro-American satirical
essays: Rules by Which a Great Empire May Be Reduced to a Small One, and An
Edict by the King of Prussia. He also published an Abridgment of the Book of
Common Prayer, anonymously with Francis Dashwood. Among the unusual features of
this work is a funeral service reduced to six minutes in length, "to preserve
the health and lives of the living".
Hutchinson Letters
Franklin obtained some private letters from Massachusetts governor Thomas
Hutchinson and lieutenant governor Andrew Oliver which proved they were
encouraging London to crack down on the rights of the Bostonians. Franklin sent
them to America where they escalated the tensions. Franklin now appeared to the
British as the fomenter of serious trouble. Hopes for a peaceful solution ended
as he was systematically ridiculed and humiliated by the Privy Council. He left
London in March 1775.
Declaration of Independence
John Trumbull depicts the Committee of Five presenting their work to the
Congress. By the time Franklin arrived in Philadelphia on May 5, the American
Revolution had begun with fighting at Lexington and Concord. The New England
militia had trapped the main British army in Boston. The Revolutionary War had
begun. The Pennsylvania Assembly unanimously chose Franklin as their delegate to
the Second Continental Congress. In 1776, he was a member of the Committee of
Five that drafted the Declaration of Independence and made several small changes
to Thomas Jefferson's draft.
At the signing, he is quoted as having stated: "We must all hang together, or
assuredly we shall all hang separately."
Ambassador to France: 1776-1785
In December 1776, he was dispatched to France as commissioner for the United
States. He lived in a home in the Parisian suburb of Passy, donated by
Jacques-Donatien Le Ray de Chaumont who helped the United States. Franklin
remained in France until 1785, and was such a favorite of French society that it
became fashionable for wealthy French families to decorate their parlors with a
painting of him. He was highly flirtatious in the French manner (but did not
have any actual affairs). He conducted the affairs of his country towards the
French nation with great success, which included securing a critical military
alliance in 1778 and negotiating the Treaty of Paris (1783). During his stay in
France, Benjamin Franklin as a freemason was Grand Master of the Lodge Les Neuf
S?urs from 1779 until 1781.
Constitutional Convention
When he finally returned home in 1785, he received a place only second to that
of George Washington as the champion of American independence. Le Ray honored
him with a commissioned portrait painted by Joseph Duplessis that now hangs in
the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.
After his return from France, Franklin became an abolitionist, freeing both of
his slaves. He eventually became president of The Society for the Relief of Free
Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage.
In 1787, he served as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention in
Philadelphia. He played an honorific role but seldom engaged in debate. He is
the only Founding Father who is a signatory of all four of the major documents
of the founding of the United States: the Declaration of Independence, the
Treaty of Paris, the Treaty of Alliance with France, and the United States
Constitution.
In 1787, a group of prominent ministers in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, proposed the
foundation of a new college to be named in Franklin's honor. Franklin donated
￡200 towards the development of Franklin College; which is now called Franklin
and Marshall College.
Between 1771 and 1788, he finished his autobiography. While it was at first
addressed to his son, it was later completed for the benefit of mankind at the
request of a friend.
In his later years, as Congress was forced to deal with the issue of slavery,
Franklin wrote several essays that attempted to convince his readers of the
importance of the abolition of slavery and of the integration of Africans into
American society. These writings included:
An Address to the Public from the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the
Abolition of Slavery, (1789)
Plan for Improving the Condition of the Free Blacks (1789), and
Sidi Mehemet Ibrahim on the Slave Trade (1790).
In 1790, Quakers from New York and Pennsylvania presented their petition for
abolition. Their argument against slavery was backed by the Pennsylvania
Abolitionist Society and its president, Benjamin Franklin.
President of Pennsylvania
In special balloting conducted 18 November 1785 Franklin was unanimously elected
the sixth President of the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania, replacing
John Dickinson. The office of President of Pennsylvania was analogous to the
modern position of Governor. It is not clear why Dickinson needed to be replaced
with less than two weeks remaining before the regular election. Franklin held
that office for slightly over three years, longer than any other President of
the Council, and served the Constitutional limit of three full terms. Shortly
after his initial election he was reelected to a full term on 29 October 1785,
and again in the fall of 1786 and on 31 October 1787. Officially, his term
concluded on 5 November 1788, but there is some question regarding the de facto
end of his term, suggesting that the aging Franklin may not have been actively
involved in the day-to-day operation of the Council toward the end of his time
in office.
Virtue, religion and personal beliefs
A bust of Franklin by Jean-Antoine Houdon.Like the other advocates of
republicanism, Franklin emphasized that the new republic could survive only if
the people were virtuous in the sense of attention to civic duty and rejection
of corruption. Indeed all his life he had been exploring the role of civic and
personal virtue, as expressed in Poor Richard's aphorisms.
Although Franklin's parents had intended for him to have a career in the church,
Franklin became disillusioned with organized religion after discovering Deism.
"I soon became a thorough Deist." He went on to attack Christian principles of
free will and morality in a 1725 pamphlet, A Dissertation on Liberty and
Necessity, Pleasure and Pain. He consistently attacked religious dogma, arguing
that morality was more dependent upon virtue and benevolent actions than on
strict obedience to religious orthodoxy: "I think opinions should be judged by
their influences and effects; and if a man holds none that tend to make him less
virtuous or more vicious, it may be concluded that he holds none that are
dangerous, which I hope is the case with me." A few years later, Franklin
repudiated his 1725 pamphlet as an embarrassing "erratum". In 1790, just about a
month before he died, Franklin wrote the following in a letter to Ezra Stiles,
president of Yale, who had asked him his views on religion...:
“ As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think
the System of Morals and his Religion, as he left them to us, the best the world
ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupt
changes, and I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some Doubts
as to his divinity; tho' it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never
studied it, and I think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect
soon an Opportunity of knowing the Truth with less Trouble...." (Carl Van Doren.
Benjamin Franklin. New York: The Viking Press, 1938, p. 777.) ”
Like most Enlightenment intellectuals, Franklin separated virtue, morality, and
faith from organized religion, although he felt that if religion in general grew
weaker, morality, virtue, and society in general would also decline. Thus he
wrote Thomas Paine, "If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be if
without it." According to David Morgan, Franklin was a proponent of all
religions. He prayed to "Powerful Goodness" and referred to God as the
"INFINITE." John Adams noted that Franklin was a mirror in which people saw
their own religion: "The Catholics thought him almost a Catholic. The Church of
England claimed him as one of them. The Presbyterians thought him half a
Presbyterian, and the Friends believed him a wet Quaker." Whatever else Benjamin
Franklin was, concludes Morgan, "he was a true champion of generic religion."
Ben Frankin was noted to be "the spirit of the Enlightenment".
Walter Isaacson argues that Franklin became uncomfortable with an unenhanced
version of deism and comes up with his own conception of the Creator. Franklin
outlined his concept of deity in 1728, in his "Articles of Belief and Acts of
Religion" . From this, Isaacson compares Franklin's conception of deity to that
of strict deists and orthodox Christians. Isaacson concludes that unlike most
pure deists, Franklin believed that a faith in God should inform our daily
actions, but that, like other deists, his faith was devoid of sectarian dogma.
Isaacson also discusses Franklin's conception that God had created beings who do
interfere in wordly matters—a point that has led some commentators, most notably
A. Owen Aldridge, to read Franklin as embracing some sort of polytheism, with a
bevy of lesser gods overseeing various realms and planets.
On July 4, 1776, Congress appointed a committee that included Benjamin Franklin,
Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams to design the Great Seal of the United States.
Skousen summarizes how this committee created and approved the first proposed
design for the seal (which ultimately was not adopted). Each member of the
committee proposed a unique design: Franklin's proposal featured a design with
the motto: "Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God." This design was to
portray a scene from the Book of Exodus, complete with Moses, the Israelites,
the pillar of fire, and George III depicted as Pharaoh .
At the Constitutional Convention in 1787, when the convention seemed to head for
disaster due to heated debate, the elderly Franklin displayed his conviction of
a deity that was intimately involved in human affairs by requesting that each
day's session begin with prayers. Franklin recalled the days of the
Revolutionary War, when the American leaders assembled in prayer daily, seeking
"divine guidance" from the "Father of lights." He then rhetorically asked, "And
have we now forgotten that powerful friend? Or do we imagine that we no longer
need his assistance?" .
Although Franklin may have financially supported one particular Presbyterian
group in Philadelphia , it nevertheless appears that he never formally joined
any particular Christian denomination or any other religion.
According to the epitaph Franklin wrote for himself at the age of 20, it is
clear that he believed in a physical resurrection of the body some time after
death. Whether this belief was held throughout his life is unclear.
Virtue
Franklin sought to cultivate his character by a plan of thirteen virtues, which
he developed at age 20 (in 1726) and continued to practice in some form for the
rest of his life. His autobiography (see references below) lists his thirteen
virtues as:
"TEMPERANCE. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation."
"SILENCE. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling
conversation."
"ORDER. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business
have its time."
"RESOLUTION. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you
resolve."
"FRUGALITY. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste
nothing."
"INDUSTRY. Lose no time; be always employ'd in something useful; cut off all
unnecessary actions."
"SINCERITY. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you
speak, speak accordingly."
"JUSTICE. Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your
duty."
"MODERATION. Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think
they deserve."
"CLEANLINESS. Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloaths, or habitation."
"TRANQUILLITY. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or
unavoidable."
"CHASTITY. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness,
weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation."
"HUMILITY. Imitate Jesus and Socrates."
Death and legacy
The grave of Benjamin Franklin in Christ Church Burial Ground, Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania.Benjamin Franklin died on April 17, 1790, at age 84. His funeral
was attended by about 20,000 people. He was interred in Christ Church Burial
Ground in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Christ Church Burial Ground is also the
home of Benjamin Rush. One of the houses he lived in on Craven Street was
previously marked with a blue plaque and has since been opened to the public as
the Benjamin Franklin House . In 1728, as a young man, Franklin wrote what he
hoped would be his own epitaph: "The Body of B. Franklin Printer; Like the Cover
of an old Book, Its Contents torn out, And stript of its Lettering and Gilding,
Lies here, Food for Worms. But the Work shall not be wholly lost: For it will,
as he believ'd, appear once more, In a new & more perfect Edition, Corrected and
Amended By the Author. He was born on January 17, 1706. Died 17." Franklin's
actual grave, however, as he specified in his final will , simply reads
"Benjamin and Deborah Franklin."
In the book The Life of Benjamin Franklin as written by himself, a passage
(obviously not written by himself) reads thus about Franklin's death: "...when
his pain and difficulty of breathing entirely left him, and his family were
flattering themselves wit the hopes of his recovery, when an imposthumations,
which had formed itself in his lungs, suddenly burst, and discharged a great
quantity of matter, which he continued to throw up while he had strength to do
it; but, as that failed, the organ of inspiration became gradually oppressed; a
calm lethargic state succeeded, and on the 17th of April, 1790, at eleven
o'clock at night, he quietly expired, closing a long and useful life of
eighty-four years and three months"
At his death, Franklin bequeathed ￡1,000 (about $4,400 at the time) each to the
cities of Boston and Philadelphia, in trust for 200 years. The origin of the
trust began in 1785 when a French mathematician named Charles-Joseph Mathon de
la Cour wrote a parody of Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanack called Fortunate
Richard. In it he mocked the unbearable spirit of American optimism represented
by Franklin. The Frenchman wrote a piece about Fortunate Richard leaving a small
sum of money in his will to be used only after it had collected interest for 500
years. Franklin, who was 79 years old at the time, wrote back to the Frenchman,
thanking him for a great idea and telling him that he had decided to leave a
bequest of 1,000 pounds each to his native Boston and his adopted Philadelphia,
on the condition that it be placed in a fund that would gather interest over a
period of 200 years. As of 1990, over $2,000,000 had accumulated in Franklin's
Philadelphia trust since his death. During the lifetime of the trust,
Philadelphia used it for a variety of loan programs to local residents. From
1940 to 1990, the money was used mostly for mortgage loans. When the trust came
due, Philadelphia decided to spend it on scholarships for local high school
students. Franklin's Boston trust fund accumulated almost $5,000,000 during that
same time, and eventually was used to establish a trade school that, over time,
became the Franklin Institute of Boston. (Excerpt from Philadelphia Inquirer
article by Clark De Leon)
The lasting legacy of Benjamin Franklin has resulted in the appearance of his
image in various places. Franklin's likeness adorns the American $100 bill (as a
result, $100 bills are sometimes referred to in slang as "Benjamins" or
"Franklins.") From 1948 to 1964, Franklin's portrait was also on the half
dollar. He has also appeared on a $50 bill in the past, as well as several
varieties of the $100 bill from 1914 and 1918, and every $100 bill from 1928 to
the present. Franklin also appears on the $1,000 Series EE Savings bond. As a
tribute to Franklin's legacy, the city of Philadelphia contains around 5,000
likenesses of Benjamin Franklin, about half of which are located on the
University of Pennsylvania campus[citation needed]. Additionally, Philadelphia's
Ben Franklin Parkway (a major thoroughfare) and Ben Franklin Bridge (the first
major bridge to connect Philadelphia with New Jersey) are named in his honor.
Memorial marble statue of Ben FranklinIn 1976, as part of a bicentennial
celebration, Congress dedicated a 20-foot (6 m) high marble statue in
Philadelphia's Franklin Institute as the Benjamin Franklin National Memorial.
Many of Franklin's personal possessions are also on display at the Institute. It
is one of the few national memorials located on private property.
In 1998, workmen restoring Franklin's London home (Benjamin Franklin House) dug
up the remains of six children and four adults hidden below the home. The Times
reported on February 11, 1998:
Initial estimates are that the bones are about 200 years old and were buried at
the time Franklin was living in the house, which was his home from 1757 to 1762
and from 1764 to 1775. Most of the bones show signs of having been dissected,
sawn or cut. One skull has been drilled with several holes. Paul Knapman, the
Westminster Coroner, said yesterday: "I cannot totally discount the possibility
of a crime. There is still a possibility that I may have to hold an inquest."
The Friends of Benjamin Franklin House (the organization responsible for the
restoration of Franklin's house at 36 Craven Street in London) note that the
bones were likely placed there by William Hewson, who lived in the house for 2
years and who had built a small anatomy school at the back of the house. They
note that while Franklin likely knew what Hewson was doing, he probably did not
participate in any dissections because he was much more of a physicist than a
medical man.
Exhibitions
"The Princess and the Patriot: Ekaterina Dashkova, Benjamin Franklin and the Age
of Enlightenment" exhibition opened in Philadelphia in February 2006 and ran
through December 2006. Benjamin Franklin and Dashkova met only once, in Paris in
1781. Franklin was 75 and Dashkova was 37. Franklin invited Dashkova to become
the first woman to join the American Philosophical Society and the only woman to
be so honored for another 80 years. Later, Dashkova reciprocated by making him
the first American member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Popular culture
? The template below (Trivia) is being considered for deletion. See templates
for deletion to help reach a consensus. ?
Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines.
The article could be improved by integrating relevant items into the main text
and removing inappropriate items. (June 2007)
This article does not cite any references or sources.
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. (help,
get involved!)
Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.
This article has been tagged since April 2007.
Franklin on the U.S. one hundred dollar bill.Franklin, in his "Poor Richard"
persona, helped create popular culture in America. In turn he has been included
in many different popular culture media, of which this list is a small, recent
sample.
The invention of Daylight saving time is often erroneously attributed to
Franklin's essay "An Economical Project." The modern usage of DST is more
correctly attributed to William Willett. However, the ancient Romans were known
to use DST .
When Franklin was minister to France in the 1770s, Paris was awash in
miniatures, painting, statues and representations of him, usually dressed as a
frontiersman.
Franklin appears as a main character in the Broadway musicals Ben Franklin in
Paris (portrayed by Robert Preston) and 1776 (portrayed by Howard da Silva).
The television show MythBusters (Discovery channel) tested Franklin's famous
kite experiment with electricity.
A young Franklin appears in Neal Stephenson's novel of 17th century science and
alchemy, Quicksilver.
Walt Disney's cartoon Ben and Me (1953), based on the book by Robert Lawson,
counterfactually explains to children that Franklin's achievements were actually
the ideas of a mouse named Amos.
Franklin surprisingly appears as a character in Tony Hawk's Underground 2, a
skateboarding video game. Players encounter Franklin in his hometown of Boston
and are able to play as him there after.
Proud Destiny by Lion Feuchtwanger, a novel mainly about Pierre Beaumarchais and
Franklin beginning in 1776's Paris.
Franklin appears in the LucasArts Entertainment Company Game Day of the
Tentacle.
Franklin is portrayed in a central role in the PBS cartoon Liberty's Kids voiced
by Walter Cronkite.
The 2004 movie National Treasure has the main characters trying to collect clues
left by Franklin to discover a treasure that he supposedly hid. The character
played by Nicolas Cage was named "Benjamin Franklin Gates", in following with
the Gates family tradition to name sons after Franklin and his contemporaries.
The Franklin Templeton Investments firm (originally Franklin Distributors, Inc.)
was named in honor of Franklin and uses his portrait in their logo.
The children's novel Qwerty Stevens: Stuck in Time with Benjamin Franklin has
the main characters using their time machine to bring Franklin into modern times
and then to travel back with him to 1776.
Franklin is one of the main characters in Gregory Keyes' The Age of Unreason
tetralogy.
A 1992 Saturday Night Live spoof of Quantum Leap, "Founding Fathers", had
Franklin traveling through time with George Washington and Thomas Jefferson to
help modern day Americans with deficit reduction, only to find twentieth century
reporters are only interested in scandal and sensationalism.
Franklin appears in several episodes of Histeria, voiced by actor Billy West
similarly to Jay Leno. He is frequently shown flying his kite in a lightning
storm and being electrocuted as a running gag.
The science-fiction TV show Voyagers! had the main characters helping Franklin
fly his kite in one episode and save his mother from a fictionalized Salem Witch
Trial in the next episode.
"Julian McGrath," played by Cole Sprouse and Dylan Sprouse, appears as Franklin
in a school play in the Adam Sandler comedy Big Daddy.
The time-travel card game Early American Chrononauts includes a card called
Franklin's Kite which players can symbolically acquire from the year 1752.
Stan Freberg's comedic audio recording, Stan Freberg Presents the United States
of America: The Early Years, depicts all of Franklin's accomplishments as having
been made by his young apprentice, Myron.
Beavis and Butthead once got into trouble after attempting to fly a kite in a
thunderstorm, copying what they saw on an educational show about Franklin.
Franklin appears in Fred Saberhagen's "The Frankenstein Papers", and part of the
novel is written as letters to Franklin.
In The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, McNinja's mentor in medical school was the
clone of Franklin. In the story, the clone asks McNinja if he will assist him in
a project to grant eternal life.
In season 3 of Bewitched, Aunt Clara accidentally brings him forward in time to
repair a broken electrical lamp.
Franklin has been portrayed in several works of fiction, such as The Fairly
Oddparents and Ask a Ninja, as having lightning-and-kite-based superpowers akin
to those of Storm from X-Men.
M*A*S*H protagonist Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce is named after both
Benjamin Franklin and President Franklin Pierce.
Prison Break character Benjamin Miles Franklin is named after Benjamin Franklin.
In Giacomo Puccini's Italian opera of 1904, Madam Butterfly, the archetypical
American who betrays Madam Butterfly is Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton, Lieutenant
in the United States Navy. The libretto was based on a short story by an
American author John Luther Long, whose sister was a missionary in Japan.
In the 1993 movie The Sandlot, actor Mike Vitar's character is named Benjamin
Franklin Rodriguez.
An independently produced public radio series, Craven Street, (2003) dramatizes
Franklin's last five years in London before the American Revolution.
In a 2004 sketch on the FOX show Mad TV, Franklin, played by Paul Vogt, sends
Samuel Adams, played by Josh Meyers, to the future in a time machine he made
from a roll-top desk. Franklin wanted to know if the American Revolution was a
success, but gets frustrated when Adams only comes back to tell him that Samuel
Adams Beer is a success. The time machine also brings back a man named Jerry,
played by Ike Barinholtz, who is little help to Franklin.
Robert Lee Hall has authored a number of mystery novels in which Franklin solves
murder cases. The books interweave actual events and persons from Franklin's
life into the stories.
There is an episode of the US version of The Office entitled Ben Franklin, in
which an actor portraying Franklin is hired for an office party.
A Saul of the Mole Men episode entitled "Poor Clancy's Almanack" uses Benjamin
Franklin and Thomas Jefferson to explain the true mainstream conflict while
revealing Clancy Burrows' past.
Benjamin Franklin Village, a military housing area in Mannheim, Germany is named
after him.
RuneScape is a Java-based
MMORPG operated by Jagex Ltd. With over nine million active free accounts and
more than one million paid member accounts, RuneScape is rated among the most
popular online games in the world. More than five million unique players access
their accounts to play RuneScape at least once per month. RuneScape offers both
free and subscription content and is designed to be accessible from any location
with an Internet connection and to run in an ordinary web browser without
straining system resources. One of the best website that discussed various
gamers' issues is IJFG.com IJFG.COM
Internet Junction For Gamers Internet Junction
For Gamers, Runescape Market and More IJFG.COM This site has Jokes, Pranks, Runescape and other cool games at IJFG.COM. RuneScape is set in a medieval
fantasy world, similar to "Guild Wars" or "EverQuest", where players control
character representations of themselves. As with most massive multiplayer online roleplaying games (MMORPG), there is no overall objective or end to the game.
Players explore, form alliances, perform optional tasks, and complete quests for
rewards and to build character's skills.
Internet Junction For Gamers, Runescape Market and More. IJFG.com IJFG.com
RuneScape takes place in the fantasy-themed realm of Gielinor, which is divided
into several different kingdoms, regions, and areas. Players can travel
throughout the gaming world on foot, by using magical teleportation spells or
devices, or mechanical means of transportation. Each region offers different
types of monsters, materials, and quests to challenge players. Players are shown
on the screen as customisable avatars. They set their own goals and objectives,
deciding which of the available activities to pursue. There is no linear path
that must be followed. Players can engage in combat with other players or with
monsters, complete quests, or increase their experience in any of the available
skills. Players interact with each other through trading, chatting, or playing
combative or cooperative mini-games.
Internet Junction For Gamers, Runescape Market and More IJFG.COM
IJFG.com
Contact Information
Call our office today to set up an appointment. Learn more about how we can
help you, and learn more about the other services that we can offer you. All
messages we receive will be answered as soon as possible. We look forward to
hearing from you.
- Electronic mail
- General Information:
