The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin

The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin (2004), a biography by Gordon S. Wood, the Alva O. Way University Professor and Professor Emeritus of History at Brown University, won the Julia Ward Howe Prize from the Boston Author’s Club in 2005. This biography looks beyond the mythology of Benjamin Franklin, seeking a more complex understanding of the man who was mostly treated with indifference during his lifetime but gained glory and popularity as the image of the quintessential American after his death.

In his Introduction, Wood locates Franklin’s rise in popularity in the nineteenth century, when Franklin came to embody the American values of industry, hard work, innovation, and enterprise. Even then, he was a polarizing figure. On the one hand, he was a folksy, moralistic success story for working hard and achieving upward mobility. On the other hand, he was accused of being a stooge of capitalism and came to represent “all of America’s bourgeois complacency, its get-ahead materialism, its utilitarian obsession with success—the unimaginative superficiality and vulgarity of American culture that kills the soul.” For the nineteenth-century artistic intelligentsia, Franklin’s moneygrubbing was “superficial and soulless” and by extension, so was the rest of the country. Once Wood establishes the stereotypes and mythology that sprang up around Franklin in the nineteenth century, he returns to the eighteenth century and the tumult that created him.

In chapter 1, “Becoming a Gentleman,” Wood recounts Franklin’s rise to gentility from his humble beginnings as the youngest son of a soap and candle maker, the lowest of artisan trades. The fifteenth of seventeen children, he received only two years of formal education. At the age of twelve, he apprenticed to his older brother in the printing business, and by sixteen, he was writing satirical essays about the Boston establishment under the pseudonym Silence Dogood. After he moved to Philadelphia, the enterprising young Franklin found patrons in a couple of colonial governors and other prominent Pennsylvanians—patronage that was essential for upward mobility in the eighteenth century. He worked as a printer until he retired at the age of forty-two. By then, he had made a name for himself in Philadelphia and had made enough money that he could become a gentleman of leisure, no longer having to work. Franklin successfully fought his way up from poverty, to middle class, and finally to wealth, and then turned his attention to experiments and European travel.



In chapter 2, “Becoming a British Imperialist,” Wood discusses one of Franklin’s motivations to retire: intellectual pursuits. Already an accomplished polyglot, Franklin was endlessly curious about the world and science. Indeed, he was delighted to have the time and attention to devote to exploring the nature of electricity. The French were particularly fascinated with his research on electricity and were the first to test his theories. For example, he discovered that killing poultry with electricity made the flesh tender, so the French spent a great deal of time trying to find other ways electricity might be beneficial in the culinary arts. In addition to his scientific experiments, Franklin turned his attention to public service. He was responsible for the overhaul and increased efficiency of the postal service and argued for better relations with the Native Americans for fear that they would ally with the French and block the westward colonial expansion. He agreed to travel to London as an agent representing the interests of the Pennsylvania Assembly, but by the 1760s, Franklin had fallen deeply in love with Britain in general and London in particular. He became a stout royalist, remaining in London for fifteen of the next seventeen years.

Chapter 3, “Becoming a Patriot” tracks Franklin’s slow disillusionment with the British Empire. After winning the Seven Years War against the French and Spanish, and establishing a foothold across the world, England became increasingly nationalist and began distancing themselves from their holdings, including America, which they considered a “race of convicts.” Franklin lobbied for American representation in the House of Commons, but to his confusion, he found that relations between England and America had soured too much to make American representation an enticing compromise for either side. In America, colonists were rioting and restive under new taxation attempts, and in England, disgust for the antics of the colonists ran deep. Franklin’s attempts to defuse the political tension failed, even though he offered to personally pay restitution for the Boston Tea Party.

In chapter four, “Becoming a Diplomat,” Wood examines Franklin’s foreign influence and the ways it helped win the Revolutionary War. In 1775, the seventy-year-old Franklin returned to Philadelphia. Fighting had already broken out between the colonists and the English, and Franklin was greeted with suspicions of espionage. Once his loyalties were confirmed, he sailed to France to seek foreign aid in the Revolution and stayed there for eight years. Having always gotten along, Franklin and the French were mutually charmed by each other, and he was able to secure their support for the American cause. The task was difficult, as he was surrounded by British spies and faced opposition from Queen Marie-Antoinette, but in 1778, France signed two treaties with the Americans: one for trade, one guaranteeing military support.



In the final chapter, “Becoming an American,” Wood charts Franklin’s final years. He returned to Philadelphia in 1785, and in 1787, the eighty-one-year-old took part in the Constitutional Convention. Aware of the fragility of the American Experiment, he started the Society for Political Enquiries in order to study political science and prepare for the Convention. Yet, Franklin was relegated to the sidelines; unlike the rest of the Founding Fathers who had fought in the war and been on hand to construct a new country, Franklin had spent most of his time abroad in the glittering royal courts of Europe. He was virtually a stranger to his own countrymen. When he died in 1790, France mourned him far more than did the Americans, who were more likely to vituperate than praise Franklin in eulogy. At the same time, his Autobiography began circulating, which rehabilitated at least part of his reputation. Woods ends his book claiming that Franklin’s crucial role as a diplomat during the Revolution “makes him second only to Washington in importance” but that we remember him more for being a forerunner of the American Dream: the economical, self-made businessman who rose from poverty to gain extreme wealth and influence.