Franklin: The enlightened American

DALLAS HANSEN

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Shortly before the new year, I attended my first public auction, where my winning bid of $15 made me the owner of a collection of old books, the contents of which were unknown to me at bidding. Among the gems in my new collection was a 50-volume set of Harvard Classics, the first book of which was the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, whose 300th birthday on Jan. 6 was in tandem with my first efforts toward a hopeless resolution to read the entire 50 volumes before year’s end.

Even had Franklin not invented bifocals, swim fins, the Franklin stove and the lightning rod; even had he not paved and lit Philadelphia’s streets and founded that city’s public library, university and fire department; even if he hadn’t signed the Declaration of Independence, he would have been remembered as a master of English prose, as an anecdote from 1755, in which he warns an overconfident British general of the dangers on the road through Iroquois country, demonstrates. The heedless general, however, dismissed Franklin’s advice:

“These savages may, indeed, be a formidable enemy to your raw American militia, but upon the king’s regular and disciplined troops, sir, it is impossible that they should make any impression,” Franklin quotes the general as saying.

“I was conscious of an impropriety in my disputing with a military man in matters of his profession, and said no more.”

Franklin’s assessment proving correct — over 700 of the general’s 1,100 men were killed in a forest ambush — he later opined: “This whole transaction gave us Americans the first suspicion that our exalted ideas of the prowess of British regulars had not been well founded.”

For those who, like myself, lack a keen interest in early American history, Franklin’s memoirs can be construed as the ultimate self-help reader. Apprenticed to his brother, a Boston printer, at age 12, Franklin at 17 ran away broke to Philadelphia to become a man of his own making. There he found work with one of the city’s two printers, both of whom were, in Franklin’s estimation, “poorly qualified for their business.” In the American spirit, Franklin resolved to go into business on his own.

“Reading was the only amusement I allow’d myself. I spent no time in taverns, games, or frolicks of any kind; and my industry in my business continu’d as indefatigable as it was necessary.”

His 13-step program for self-improvement came out of his identifying 13 cardinal virtues: temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity and humility. Attached to each was a short precept expressly defining the meaning. Silence, for example, was appended with the precept, “Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.” Or tranquility: “Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.” (These examples have been particularly beneficial to me.) Franklin then drew a table with the 13 virtues running down and the seven days of the week running across. Focusing upon one virtue at a time — Week 1 would be temperance — he would review his conduct at the end of each day and mark with a black dot “every fault I found upon examination to have been committed respecting that virtue upon that day.”

Week 2 would focus upon silence, and so forth, so that he would cover all the 13 virtues thrice a year, eventually clearing his daily record of any black spots.

Initiated into the Freemasons at 25, he became Grand Master of Pennsylvania before 30, and later enjoyed the bacchanalian goings-on at Sir Francis Dashwood’s Hellfire Club headquarters. Franklin is also known to have sired a number of illegitimate children. An anecdote from his autobiography gives a glimpse of his caddish side. Visiting with the wife of a friend who was indebted to him, he reminisces, “I grew fond of her company, and, being at the time under no religious restraint, and presuming upon my importance to her, I attempted familiarities (another erratum) which she repuls’d with a proper resentment, and acquainted him with my behaviour. This made a breach between us; and… he let me know he thought I had cancell’d all obligations he had been under to me.” Then there is the question of the human skeletons found beneath his London home in 1998, dated to the years he was living there. (The prevailing theory now is that they were the byproducts of experiments by his flatmate, surgeon William Hewson.)

It should not surprise us that one so individually accomplished would have subscribed to a spirituality of the self.

By continually improving his own public standing, Franklin was able to affect positively the lives of many — even three centuries beyond his birth.