The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin (42 page)

40.   BF,
Autobiography,
112—13.

41.   BF,
Autobiography,
119.

42.   BF,
Autobiography,
128.

43.   Claude-Anne Lopez and Eugenia W. Herbert,
The Private Franklin: The Man and His Family
(New York: Norton, 1975), 23.

44.   BF,
Autobiography,
129.

45.   Carl Van Doren,
Benjamin Franklin
(New York: Viking, 1938), 125. For Franklin’s view that if a tradesman’s wife “does not
bring
a fortune” to the marriage, at least she “will help to
make
one,” see BF to Jane Mecom, 21 May 1757, in
Papers of Franklin,
7:216.

46.   [BF], “Anthony Afterwit,” “Celia Single,”
Pennsylvania Gazette,
10 and 24 July 1732, in
Franklin: Writings,
185-87, 188-90.

47.   [BF], “Rules and Maxims for Promoting Matrimonial Happiness,” 8 Oct. 1730, and “Old Mistresses Apologue,” 25June 1745, in
Franklin: Writings,
154, 302.

48.   George Roberts to Robert Crafton, 8 Oct. 1763, in
Papers of Franklin,
11:370—7m.

49.   “Extracts from the Diary of Daniel Fisher, 1755,”
PMHB
17 (1893): 276; Lopez and Herbert,
Private Franklin,
60; Sheila Skemp, “Family Partnerships: The Working Wife, Honoring Deborah Franklin,” in Larry Tise, ed.,
Benjamin Franklin and Women
(University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998), 23.

50.   William Speck,
Stability and Strife: England, 1714—1760
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970), 37; Steele, quoted in John Barrell,
English Literature in History, 1730-1780: An Equal, Wide Survey
(London: St. Martin’s Press, 1983), 37; Paul Langford,
A Polite and Commercial People: England, 1727—1783
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 65—66.

51.   Adams,
Diary and Autobiography,
1:198; Douglass Adair, ed., “The Autobiography of the Reverend Devereux Jarratt, 1732—1763,” WMQ9 (1952): 361. In the eighteenth century, writes historian Stuart Blumin, “the important hierarchical distinction was the one that set off the several elites from everyone else.” In comparison with the great difference between the gentry and ordinary people, says Blumin, “differences between artisans and laborers were of no real consequence. The effect, needless to say, was to identify middling people much more closely with the bottom of society than with the top.” Stuart M. Blumin,
The Emergence of the Middle Class: Social Experience in the American City 1760—1900
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 33. John Adams grounded the political theory of his
Defence of the Constitutions of the United States,
written in 1787—1788, on this traditional distinction: “The people, in all nations,” he wrote, “are naturally divided into two sorts, the gentlemen and the simplemen, a word which is here chosen to signify the common people.”
Defence,
in Charles F Adams, ed.,
Works of John Adams
(Boston, 1854), 6:185. For a fuller discussion of this distinction between the gentry and commoners, from which this account is drawn, see Gordon S. Wood,
The Radicalism of the American Revolution
(New York: Knopf, 1992), 24—42.

52.   Adair, ed., “Autobiography of Jarratt,” 361.

53.   Adams,
Diary and Autobiography,
1:198.

54.   James Reid, “The Religion of the Bible and Religion of K[ing] W[illiam] County Compared,” in Richard Beale Davis, ed.,
The Colonial Virginia Satirist: Mid—Eighteenth Century Commentaries on Politics, Religion, and Society,
American Philosophical Society,
Transactions,
New Ser., 57, Pt. 1 (1967), 56.

55.   Adams,
Diary and Autobiography,
1:198.

56.   Samuel Mather,
The Fall of the Mighty Lamented
(Boston, 1738), 10; Courtland Canby, “Robert Munford’s
The Patriots” WMQ6
(1949): 499—500.

57.   Jonathan Boucher,
A View of the Causes and Consequences of the American Revolution
(London, 1797), 233; T. H. Breen,
Tobacco Culture: The Mentality of the Great Tidewater Planters on the Eve of the Revolution
(Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, 1985), 160.

58.   Carl Bridenbaugh, ed.,
Gentleman’s Progress: The Itinerarium of Dr. Alexander Hamilton, 1744
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1948), 163, 8; Pauline Maier,
The Old Revolutionaries: Political Lives in the Age of Samuel Adams
(New York: Knopf, 1980), 240; Richard L. Bushman,
King and People in Provincial Massachusetts
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), 69-70; Jack P. Greene, “Society, Ideology, and Politics: An Analysis of the Political Culture of Mid-Eighteenth-Century Virginia,” in Richard M. Jellison, ed.,
Society, Freedom, and Conscience: The Coming of the Revolution in Virginia, Massachusetts, and New York
(New York: Norton, 1976), 18-19; Hunter Dickinson Farish, ed.,
Journal and Letters of Philip Vickers Fithian
(Williamsburg, Va.: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1945), 29; Carl Bridenbaugh,
The Colonial Craftsman
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1950), 164; John K. Alexander,
Render Them Submissive: Responses to Poverty in Philadelphia, 1760-1800
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1980), 18.

59.   Richard L. Bushman,
The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities
(New York: Knopf, 1992), 3-203; Smith, quoted in Bullock,
Revolutionary Brotherhood,
66; Bushman,
King and People,
70.

60.   Wood,
Radicalism of the American Revolution,
41—42.

61.   BF to Peter Collinson, 9 May 1753, in
Papers of Franklin,
4:481. “The great aim [of the society],” writes historian Paul Langford, “was to become rich enough to be idle.” Paul Langford,
Englishness Identified: Manners and Character, 1650-1850
 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 38.

62.   Langford,
Englishness Identified,
31.

63.   Derek Jarrett,
England in the Age of Hogarth
(London: Hart-Davis, MacGibbon, 1974), 79-80; Boston
Evening Post,
14 Dec. 1761; BF, “On the Labouring Poor” (1768), in
Franklin: Writings,
622-23.

64.   Aristotle,
Politics,
VII, ix, i328b33, trans. T. A. Sinclair, rev. by Trevor J. Saunders (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), 415.

65.   Harrington, quoted in Lance Banning,
The Jeffersonian Persuasion: Evolution of a Party Ideology
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1978), 28; Defoe, quoted in Speck,
Stability and Strife,
32; Jackson to BF, 17 June 1755, in
Papers of Franklin,
6:77.

66.   Venetia Murray,
High Society in the Regency Period, 1788-1830
(London: Penguin, 1998), 22; H. D. Farish, ed.,
Journal and Letters of Fithian,
161. For an illuminating discussion of the ancient Roman aristocracy’s attitudes toward work and leisure, see Paul Veyne, “The Roman Empire,” in Paul Veyne, ed.,
A History of Private Life,
vol. i,
From Pagan Rome to Byzantium
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, i987), ii7-59. The idea that the aristocracy had leisure while the common people worked, writes Veyne, “persisted from archaic Greece and India down to Benjamin Constant and Charles Maurras” (p. 123). Northern Americans swept away this ancient idea in the aftermath of their revolution.

67.   Buffon, quoted in Antonello Gerbi,
The Dispute of the New World: The History of a Polemic, iyyo-ifioo,
trans. Jeremy Moyle (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1973), 19—20; Murray,
High Society in the Regency Period,
22.

68.   Locke, quoted in Harold Nicolson,
Good Behaviour: Being a Study of Certain Types of Civility
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1956), 194; Samuel Johnson,
Dictionary of the English Language
(London, 1730); Gaines, quoted in Botein, “Printers and the American Revolution,” i8n.

69.
   “Letters and Papers of John Singleton Copley and Henry Pelham, 1739-1776,” Massachusetts Historical Society,
Collections
71 (1914): 661-66. “By the common people,” wrote John Adams in his
Defence of the Constitutions,
“we mean laborers, husbandmen, mechanics, and merchants in general, who pursue their occupations and industry without any knowledge in liberal arts or sciences, or in any thing but their own trades or pursuits.” C. Adams, ed.,
Works of John Adams,
6:185.

70.   Rude,
Hanoverian London,
37, 56—57.

71.   Howard B. Rock,
Artisans of the New Republic: Tradesmen of New York City in the Age ofJefferson
(New York: New York University Press, i979), 295-322.

72.   BF,
Autobiography,
117—18.

73.   Standing Queries for the Junto, 1732, in
Papers of Franklin,
1:255—59.

74.   BF,
Autobiography,
161—62.

75.   Bullock,
Revolutionary Brotherhood,
55—63, 76—77.

76.   BF, Observations on Reading History, 9 May 1731, in
Papers of Franklin,
1:192—93; BF,
Autobiography,
161—63.

77.   BF,
Autobiography,
163.

78.   BF,
Autobiography,
143, 130—31.

79.   BF,
A Modest Enquiry into the Nature and Necessity of a Paper Currency
(1729), in
Papers ofFranklin,
i:i56, i44.

80.   On the Death of his Son, 30 Dec. 1736, in
Papers of Franklin,
2:154.

81.   BF,
Autobiography,
207.

82.   BF,
Autobiography,
131, 93.

83.   BF, Poor Richard, 1741, in
Papers of Franklin,
2:296; Botein, “Printers and the American Revolution,” i8.

84.   BF, “Obadiah Plainman,”
Franklin: Writings,
275—83.

85.   Lemay,
Canon of Franklin,
97—103.

86.   BF, “Tract Relative to the English School in Philadelphia” [1789].

87.   BF, “Idea of an English School,” 1751, in
Papers of Franklin,
4:108.

88.   Robert Hare to BF, 14July 1789.

89.   BF, “A Proposal for Promoting Useful Knowledge,” 1743, in
Franklin: Writings,
295—96; BF to Cadwallader Colden, 15 Aug. 1745, in
Papers of Franklin,
3:36. See also H. W. Brands,
The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin
(New York: Doubleday, 2000), 168; and Van Doren,
Franklin,
139.

90.   BF,
Plain Truth: Or, Serious Considerations on the Present State of the City of Philadelphia and Province of Pennsylvania
(1747), in
Papers of Franklin,
3:201, and BF, “Anthony Afterwit,”
Pennsylvania Gazette,
10 July 1732, ibid., 1:237.

91.   BF, “Blackamore, on Molatto Gentlemen,”
Pennsylvania Gazette,
30 Aug. 1733, in
Franklin: Writings,
219—20.

92.   Daniel Defoe,
The Compleat English Gentleman,
ed. Karl D. Bulbring (London, 1890), 13. For a study of Defoe’s struggle with the question of gentility, see Michael Shinagel,
Daniel Defoe and Middle-Class Gentility
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968).

93.   BF,
Autobiography,
126.

94.   Charles Coleman Sellers,
Franklin in Portraiture
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962), 2-3; Van Doren,
Franklin,
125-29. Franklin was devastated by the death of little Franky and had the boy’s portrait painted following his death, with Franky’s face probably modeled after Franklin’s own, since the son was thought to resemble his father. Sellers,
Franklin in Portraiture,
11.

95.   BF,
Autobiography,
171.

96.   Botein, “Printers and the American Revolution,” 16-17.

97.   BF, “Apology for Printers” (1731), in
Franklin: Writings,
172.

98.   Botein, “‘Meer Mechanics’ and an Open Press,” 177, 181-87, 190; Botein, “Printers and the American Revolution,” 29-32.

99.   BF,
Autobiography,
164.

100. BF, Poor Richard, 1739, and Poor Richard Improved, 1750, in
Papers of Franklin,
2:218, 7:326-50.

101. BF,
Autobiography,
172.

102. BF to Strahan, 10 July 1743, 4 July 1744, in
Papers of Franklin,
2:338-39, 409.

103. BF,
Autobiography,
166, 181; Ralph Frasca, “From Apprentice to Journeyman to Partner: Benjamin Franklin’s Workers and the Growth of the Early American Printing Trade,”
PMHB
114 (1990): 229-38.

104. Van Doren,
Franklin,
123; Brands,
First American,
189; Articles of Agreement with David Hall, 1 Jan. 1748, Account of Money Received from David Hall, 1748-1757, in
Papers of Franklin,
3:263; Wood,
Radicalism of the American Revolution,
112.

105. Botein, “‘Meer Mechanics’ and an Open Press,” 167.

106. Lopez and Herbert,
Private Franklin,
42; Van Doren,
Franklin,
188-89, 193.

107. J.-P Brissot de Warville,
New Travels in the United States of America, iySS,
trans. Mara Soceanu Vamos and Durand Echeverria (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964), i88n; Carl Bridenbaugh,
The Colonial Craftsman
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1950), 61-62.

108. In 1775 Franklin told his friends that “Most of the little Property I have, consists of Houses in the Seaport Towns,” which he assumed the British were going to burn. BF to John Sargent, 27 June 1775, and BF to Jonathan Shipley, 7 July 1775, in
Papers of Franklin,
22:72, 95.

109. Ronald W. Clark,
Benjamin Franklin: A Biography
(New York: Random House, (1983), 45.

110. BF,
Autobiography,
192.

111. BF,
Plain Truth
(Phila., 1747), in
Papers of Franklin,
3:188-204, quotation at 201.

112. Richard Peters to the Proprietors, 29 Nov. 1747, in
Papers of Franklin,
3:214-16.

113. David S. Shields,
Civil Tongues and Polite Letters in British America
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 130.