Among America’s founding generations, perhaps no one was as highly regarded as Benjamin Franklin—albeit George Washington was a close second. Both men came from humble beginnings, pulled themselves upward by their own initiative, and captured international esteem during their lifetimes by their service to country.
By the time they were in their advancing years, both men knew that their public image dwarfed their real personas by far.
It is easy to understand Washington’s fame. It rests on his having led the Continental Army to victory over Britain in the Revolutionary War (1775–83), then retiring his commission as commander-in-chief. The multitude of difficulties he endured in that 8-year span, providing leadership not just to the army but to fledgling America itself, would have capitulated a host of others, men or women.
Later, he became the nation’s first president, elected unanimously in 1789 by the 69 delegates of the Electoral College and four years later reelected by a larger Electoral College—132 delegates.
Franklin’s Contributions
In comparison, Franklin’s fame does not, at first glance, seem to ride on such gargantuan accomplishments. After all, he was neither a general nor president, nor prince nor king, but by vocation a printer—a printer who came to be highly revered on both sides of the Atlantic.
What made him so great? Was it the newspaper he founded, The Pennsylvania Gazette? He kept it nonpartisan for many years and started two traditions that survive in newspapers today: He began publishing letters to the editor and guest essays, and he began selling advertising space to help meet production costs. The Gazette became the most popular newspaper in the colony.
Was it his Poor Richard’s Almanack, the immensely popular annual which he published for 25 years, from 1732 to 1758. The almanac’s readership was far and wide because of the sage but simple advices he compiled (“Well done is better than well said” and “There are no gains without pains” and “There will be sleeping enough in the grave”).
Both these products certainly helped make Franklin’s name into a household name, but were his newspaper and almanac enough to create and support such an enduring legacy and appeal? The short answer, no.
Was it, then, his flying a kite into a thunderstorm with a key attached to the string? In scientific circles, at least, that may have done it. His experiment proved that lightning is a form of electricity, and it led him into inventing the lightning rod. For all his work in electricity, the Royal Society of Britain bestowed him its Copley Award in 1753 and he gained a level of respect in London. But even that, in hindsight, seems not to account for such mythic-size fame by the time of his death.
Could it have been his inventions of the Franklin stove, bifocals or the glass harmonica? Whatever he invented, whether it be the flexible urinary catheter for his brother, swim fins, or his own simple odometer, he did so without claiming any patents. He did it for the public good.
That mindset on placing the common good above his own and serving it throughout his life may be at the heart of his worldwide renown. Whether it be toiling for his adopted home of Philadelphia or his young country as a legislator and diplomat, the welfare of society was at the heart of all his endeavors.
And many endeavors those were. A consummate doer, he proposed public payment for organized policing authorities rather than continuing to rely on volunteer peacekeepers. He proposed that volunteer firefighters should be trained at public expense and that streetlamps would help improve public security. He was appointed postmaster general and helped develop early infrastructure of the postal system. He founded a circulating library, the public Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) Hospital, the American Philosophical Society, and with others what became the College and Academy of Philadelphia, later the University of Pennsylvania.
Franklin as Statesman
The older he became, the greater his imprint was. By 1776, a year after returning from England where he had lived for nearly 20 years, Franklin devoted himself wholeheartedly to the pathway of independence for the United States. He served as a delegate in the Second Continental Congress and was on the committee to draft the Declaration of Independence.In 1776, his country sent him abroad again, this time to France. He gained widespread esteem in France and was able to convince the king to sign two treaties with the United States: the Treaty of Amity and Commerce, and the Treaty of Alliance, penning his name to both. Five years later, in 1873, he returned to France with a delegation to sign the peace treaty ending the Revolutionary War (Treaty of Paris) and recognizing the United States.
As can be seen by all this, although Franklin was no king or President, he mingled with kings and knew all the presidents. He was the only American to have signed the five most important documents during the founding era of the United States. He penned his name to the Declaration of Independence (1776), the Treaty of Amity and Commerce and Treaty of Alliance with France (1778), the Treaty of Paris (1783) and the U.S. Constitution (1787).
By the virtue of timing, some say divine timing, his birth in January of 1706 meant that he was an elder statesman by the time of the signing of the Constitution. When the Constitutional Convention was held, Franklin was 81 years old and had to be carried into the chambers upon a sedan chair. He sat across from the youngest signer of that document, 26-year-old Jonathan Dayton of New Jersey.
After the convention closed and the famous document was signed, a woman stopped Franklin as he was being carried out and asked of him, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” To Elizabeth Willing Powel, he replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
By this time in his life, Franklin had renounced slavery and was leading Pennsylvania’s largest abolition society.
He was one of the last Anglophile colonials (Loyalist) to turn away from the British crown. Because he had lived in England for sixteen years (1757–62; 1764–75), he had initially worked hard to maintain the ties. But when he was disgraced, yea, resoundingly disrespected before the king’s Privy Council in 1774, something snapped in him.
The verbal abuse he received from the British Solicitor-General Alexander Wedderburn may have subconsciously reminded him of the regular abuse he received as a lad while apprenticing to his older brother James. He came back to America a changed man, a patriot.
Wedderburn, that crusty, obstinate Tory, opened Franklin’s eyes in between the lines of his vitriol to see that an imperceptibly wide gulf (not just of seawater, but of universal perspective) stood firmly between the mother country and her 13 rebellious colonies.
His change of heart emboldened his American compatriots to further embrace independence. While doing so, it further garnered for him an enduring place in their hearts.
