The Society for Useful Knowledge (17 page)

But the imperfect exchange of ideas and information provided by the scientific correspondence of mid-eighteenth-century America could not replace the very real need for a critical mass of like-minded colleagues, as well as the invaluable amateurs, supporters, and hangers-on who made possible the success of a learned society. The lack of intellectual stimulation in Charleston, as well as the relentless heat and humidity, gradually wore down Garden's resistance. In 1754, the doctor diagnosed his own malady as “acute inflammatory distemper,” and he prescribed for himself a leisurely trip to recover his health amid the cooler air to the north.

Despite the difficulty of long-distance travel up and down the Eastern Seaboard, Garden could not resist the chance to seek out some like-minded souls. In New York, he visited Colden, living in luxury on his fine estate of Coldengham, while in Pennsylvania he called on both Bartram and the seemingly ubiquitous Franklin, finding the latter “a very ingenious man.”
⁵¹
Restored by his journey and back in Charleston, Garden redoubled his efforts to remain in contact with Bartram, Colden, and John Clayton, of Virginia. After all, he admitted glumly, these were “the only botanists whom I know of on the continent.”
⁵²

Poor communications and a shortage of like-minded souls were not the only problems facing early attempts at the formation of a colonial knowledge society. Also missing were a number of associated institutions—well-stocked libraries, established universities, and regular scientific books and journals—as well as sufficiently large and wealthy population centers to host and finance such efforts, and the habit of cooperation and communication among residents of the various colonies. In short, America so far lacked the social and political bases for such an enterprise.

The founders of the American Philosophical Society and individual natural philosophers of the day, such as Bartram and Garden, all had to contend with the same fundamental obstacles that bedeviled other aspects of American life in the mid-eighteenth century. Even in such a potentially grave matter as a common defense in time of war, there was nothing like a consensus among the colonies and no mechanism that might secure one. With his Philosophical Society largely dormant after several false starts, including a failed publishing venture designed to attract new members, Franklin turned to the world of politics to address some of the broader issues facing the British settlements. He drafted a far-reaching and ambitious “Plan of a Proposed Union of the Several Colonies,” which he put forward in 1754 at a conference in Albany, New York.

That same year, he also published his famous “Join, or Die” cartoon—a snake representing the American colonies, severed into their constituent parts—to accompany an editorial in the
Pennsylvania Gazette
on the importance of unity. Here was an early recognition that the only way forward for the thirteen colonies—some of which were ruled directly by the Crown, others by special charter, and still others, such as Pennsylvania, controlled outright by proprietors—lay in some degree of coordinated legislation and executive administration.

The proximate inspiration for the Albany conference, and for the Franklin plan, was the latest flare-up in imperial rivalry between France and Britain, which spilled over into North America in the form of the French and Indian War, running from 1754 to 1763. Franklin, among others, recognized the military and economic vulnerabilities of the fragmented colonial settlements. Delegates to the conference voted for his plan, only to see it fail to win support from any of the individual colonial assemblies, each eager to defend its own position and privilege. “Its Fate was singular,” Franklin wrote in his
Autobiography
. “The Assemblies did not adopt it as they all thought there was too much
Prerogative
in it; and in England it was judged to have too much of the
Democratic
.”
⁵³

In fact, the matter was a great deal more complicated than Franklin lets on, something he surely realized at the time. The political maneuvering around such a notion, both in London and across the colonies, was murky at best. Franklin himself was deeply involved in a running controversy back home in Philadelphia over the creation of a militia to defend the province and its valuable port, a move that set him at odds with both the pacifist Quaker elite on
religious grounds, and with the proprietary Penn family and its supporters on political and economic ones.

British officials were ambivalent toward the Albany plan and a number of similar schemes put forward by others. They could see the utility of any project that would aid the colonial war effort against the French and their allies among the Indians, but they also recognized the long-term dangers posed by anything that smacked of a union of interests among the disparate American provinces.

Such fears on the part of the British were not ill founded. Franklin's blueprint for closer cooperation among the colonies called for proportional representation to a grand council, with a president, appointed by the British crown, to preside over the “General Government.” This new legislature and executive officer would have responsibility for commerce, treaties, colonial expansion, and relations with the Indians; the raising of land and naval forces and the construction of forts “for the Defense of any of the Colonies”; and the collection, management, and allocation of those funds collected by duties or taxes.
⁵⁴

Mindful of the concerns back in London, Franklin and the assembled delegates in Albany were careful to provide guarantees of British sovereignty, most notably a three-year period during which the Crown could review and nullify any of the colonial legislature's laws. Further, the Albany plan promised that any “Laws made … for the Purposes aforesaid, shall not be repugnant but as near as may be agreeable to the Laws of England.”
⁵⁵
Still, it is not hard to see the early outlines here of what would emerge three decades later with the writing and ratification of the U.S. Constitution.

Tensions between the colonies and the mother country were already coming into focus, as the American settlements steadily matured into fully fledged political and economic entities, each with its own interests and challenges. Problems of trade, currency, executive powers, military protection, and popular representation—that is, the entire range of relations between governor and governed—surfaced with regular frequency, with each new instance underscoring the growing gulf between the two sides.

Franklin found himself more and more drawn into politics, and away from those pleasurable hours devoted to experimentation, further undermining prospects for the swift revival of the moribund American Philosophical Society. He had already served in local office, as both a Philadelphia city councilman and as a justice of the peace, and in 1751 he was elected to a seat in the
Pennsylvania Assembly. Six years later, the assembly dispatched him to England as provincial agent, charged with negotiating a series of sweeping political reforms with the proprietors, the heirs to William Penn. Franklin sailed in November for London; he would remain abroad, representing first Pennsylvania and several other colonies and then the newly independent United States, for twenty-three of the next twenty-eight years.

a
The early English lexicon of electricity included both the verb “electrise,” as well as today's accepted usage, “electrify.” For a considerable time, the two were used interchangeably, and I have tried to preserve the preferred usage of individual writers wherever possible.

b
In a side note to the history of the coming French Revolution, the lawyer Maximilien Robespierre first came to public attention with his successful defense of a provincial landowner who had erected a lightning rod on his property, thereby unsettling his neighbors. “The Arts and Sciences are the richest gifts that God can give to mankind,” argued Robespierre, later to be one of the leading figures of the revolution's Reign of Terror. “What perverse fate has then put so many obstacles in the way of their progress on earth?” Quoted in I. Bernard Cohen, “Prejudice Against the Introduction of Lightning Rods,”
Journal of the Franklin Institute
253: 36, n99.

c
Despite the running scientific and political dispute of the day over the relative efficacy of blunt and sharp points in lightning rods, either will work equally well outside the laboratory, given the enormous power of a lightning bolt. However, sharp points remain standard practice to this day.

Do not men use Latin and Greek as the cuttlefish emit their ink, on purpose to conceal themselves from an intercourse with the common people?
—Benjamin Rush

Looking back over the course of his life, the octogenarian Franklin reported that by the 1740s he had “on the whole abundant Reason to be satisfied with my establishment in Pennsylvania.” His printing business was flourishing and he had begun a series of successful commercial partnerships in the other colonies. He was ensconced in the comforting embrace of the interlocking social and intellectual circles provided by the Junto, the Library Company, and the Masonic lodge.

Franklin busied himself with the study of French, Italian, and other languages in order to gain access to the latest scientific developments coming from Europe. His civic ventures—improved police protection, more efficient public lighting, better street cleaning, a fire brigade and an associated fire insurance company—were in the works or already thriving. Still, he remained as restless as ever. “There were however two things that I regretted: There being no Provision for Defense, nor for a complete Education of Youth; No Militia nor any College.”
¹

Franklin's dogged efforts to create a Pennsylvania militia damaged beyond repair his already difficult relationship with the provincial proprietors. They were alarmed by his success in bypassing their appointed governor and raising a large private force, complete with cannon wheedled from the governor of New York after many shared glasses of sweet Madeira wine.
²
Thomas Penn, now the leading voice of the proprietary family, saw in this expression of autonomy, and in Franklin's accompanying argument that a government that failed to protect its people could not depend on their obedience, a direct threat
to his authority. “He is a dangerous man and I should be glad if he inhabited any other country, as I believe him of a very uneasy spirit,” Penn wrote to one provincial aide. “However as he is a Sort of Tribune of the People, he must be treated with regard.”
³

The militia project also placed Franklin at odds with influential elements of the province's old-line Quakers, whose pacifist principles barred them from taking part in, or financing, any armed force. At the same time, it helped cement his ties to the artisans and the independent farmers, who saw membership in the militia as an avenue to greater civic and political participation. Many of these same men would later take up arms together in the rebellion against the Crown, but for now Franklin's militia units were less military formations than social and political clubs.
⁴

By contrast, the campaign for a provincial school and college, with a curriculum composed of useful knowledge, proved a much more drawn out and subtle affair, one that divided Philadelphia more along lines of class and social status than those of religious doctrine and proprietary politics. Unlike most of the other civic projects closely associated with Franklin and his circle, the creation of what would one day become the University of Pennsylvania remained an enduring source of frustration and bitterness and provoked a sense of failure to the end of his days. It was only many years after Franklin's death that the educational philosophy propounded in his early vision for a Philadelphia academy slowly began to take root in the young nation's schools, colleges, and universities.

According to notes for his never-completed autobiography, Franklin dated his first musings on a Philadelphia academy to a paper that he first drew up as early as 1743: “Go again to Boston.… Propose a College, not then prosecuted.”
⁵
However, no such document has yet been found among his voluminous papers.
^a
The first extant public reference to the fully formed idea of a provincial school appeared only six years later.

It is clear that Franklin had already given the matter of education a great deal of thought, perhaps colored by his own experiences back in Boston. His formal schooling, a brief spell at age eight at Boston Grammar School in preparation for planned theological training at Harvard, came to a sudden end with
his father's change of heart. After some rudimentary tutoring in sums and writing, young Benjamin was back at work in the family soap and candle business. Every other subject that Franklin mastered over his lifetime—and there were many—was self-taught, allowing him to escape the rigid curricula of his day and instead pick and choose only those works he found most useful and satisfying.

At age sixteen, as the pseudonymous author of the widow Silence Dogood letters in his brother's newspaper, the
New England Courant
, Franklin had savagely lampooned the scholars at Harvard for their classical pretensions. Dogood describes her dream of young college men scattered among the veiled figures of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, with whom they falsely “pretended to an intimate Acquaintance.” At the center of the scene sits Learning, perched on her high, almost inaccessible throne but otherwise in an “awful State.”
⁶

Now Franklin approached the creation of a Pennsylvania college with considerable planning and deliberation. First, he discussed the idea with his associates in the Junto and the Library Company. Next, he took separate soundings among “some public-spirited Gentlemen” and consulted the works of prominent thinkers, including “the famous Milton” and “the great Mr. Locke.”
⁷
Only then did he begin to prepare the public to support the scheme through notices in the press and the publication of a thirty-two-page pamphlet, replete with footnotes and a list of references, which he distributed free of charge with the
Pennsylvania Gazette
.