Our Greatest Diplomat
WEBER, EUGEN
Our Greatest Diplomat The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin By Gordon S. Wood Penguin. 299 pp. $25.95. Reviewed by Eugen Weber Professor of history emeritus, UCLA; author, "The Western...
...In his Autobiography, Franklin insists that God helps those who help themselves...
...Wood reminds us that in the eyes of sophisticated Englishmen Americans were a coarse, rowdy, lawless lot—"a race of convicts," as Dr...
...Franklin's almanac, with its many proverbs and jokes, was much sought after, thanks in no small part to his gift for pithy sayings like "Snug as a bug in a rug...
...As soon as he achieved that end, he moved on to something more important...
...Aristocrats and intellectuals jostled to acclaim a backwoods sage representative of a truly new world of democracy, simplicity and equality, ignorant of corruption, materialism and priestly tyranny...
...No such barbarian, Franklin arrived—as he would later in France—preceded by his scientific and "philosophical" reputation...
...author, "The Western Tradition" Benjamin Franklin was bom in Boston, the 10th and youngest son of an immigrant tallow chandler who had 17 children in all...
...Yet he had not lost his mind altogether...
...He replied, "1 hope not...
...Yet it was not grind, but the Catherine wheel of his ingenuity and initiative that made him comfortable...
...How can you depend on others, when you can't depend on yourself...
...Poor Richard serves as a guide through the hazardous territory of life...
...Crippled by gout, stones, swollen joints and skin disease, our minister in Paris survived the carping and backbiting of jealous American kibitzers, and kept on the good side of France's Foreign Minister, the Comte de Vergennes, whom he ceaselessly importuned for military and financial aid without which the brittle new republic might have shattered...
...As a delegate to the Second Continental Congress, he helped draft the Declaration of Independence...
...He did it because he thought we might be coaxed into behavior that could make us and our societies a little less stupid, a little less vicious, a little more accessible to reason, a little more (what should we call it...
...In 1757, the capital of the British Empire was the largest city in Europe...
...He started work at 12, was trained as a printer, took off for Philadelphia in his teens, and began to make money by printing paper currency for Pennsylvania and other colonies...
...Louis XVI's kingdom was as eager to avenge its humiliating defeat of 1763 as Franklin was to repay the rejection of 1775...
...With masterful economy, he situates the familiar iconic figure in a rigorously detailed context of time, place and social attitudes, not only in America, but also in England and France, where his hero spent many years advancing the interests of his republic, and his own as well...
...Not the way of Pennsylvania, however, where he became head of the Commonwealth in 1785, 1786 and 1787...
...His vanity had made him feel English, now it made him feel American...
...The young King was so irritated by the drizzle of images that he presented to one courtier a chamber pot "with the American hero's face adorning the bottom...
...If you want to forge ahead, learn the rules of nature, especially human nature...
...He also developed a passion for science...
...Most important, though, Franklin persuaded the French, "a generous Nation, fond of Glory and particularly that of protecting the Oppressed," to go to war with England...
...His wood-burning stoves went on warming farmhouses and frontier cabins for over two centuries...
...Urbane, tactful, dedicated, Franklin ran the gamut of local offices—City Councilor, Alderman, Justice of the Peace, member of Pennsylvania's Assembly—before sailing to London to represent his colony there and, incidentally, to pick up a couple of honorary degrees that made him Dr...
...The motto was not adopted until 1782 and first appeared on coins in 1796...
...Franklin emerged as a public figure while still in his 20s...
...Calculating, affable, smarter than most, he understood, as John Locke put it, that "trade was wholly inconsistent with a gentleman's calling...
...When he went into public service, it was first as Postmaster General of the northem colonies, a position that enabled him to combine public utility and private profit handsomely...
...He invented the Franklin stove, which he dubbed the Pennsylvania fireplace, and, as a philanthropic gesture, refused to patent it...
...That's the way of the world...
...Time is money...
...He bought and furnished a posher house, acquired several slaves, had his portrait painted (the first of a long spate), and entered public service...
...Returning home in 1776, he joined Thomas Jefferson (who liked him) and John Adams (who didn't) on a committee to choose the motto for the Seal of the United States, and they recommended E pluribas Unum (From many, one), but getting the many to act as one was about as easy as herding cats...
...He worked hard to make money and rise in the world...
...Franklin no more denigrated his fellows than he exalted them...
...The English love affair ended badly...
...The world, a rough place, could be made more bearable by small remedial acts, self-discipline, self-confidence, industry and frugality...
...The American envoy was lionized...
...Unfortunately, as Wood makes clear, the brilliant man had a tin ear for public opinions, especially those from America, that did not fit his rational preconceptions...
...So in 1748, at 42 and no longer needing to work for a living, he retired from active business...
...The better you understand the world, Poor Richard intimates, the less you trust it...
...a little more human...
...In Paris in 1776, he coined "Ça ira" (It'll work), about our War of Independence, and 14 years later it was used as the refrain of a French Revolutionary song...
...French aid to Britain's colonies bankrupted the kingdom and probably caused the Revolution, but the French remembered Franklin as "the Nestor of America...
...As he lay dying in 1790, 84 years old, his daughter insisted that he would recover and live many more years...
...Criticized for attending to such trifling matters, he responded: "Human felicity is produced not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen, as by little advantages that occur every day...
...Congress, on the other hand, showed no gratitude...
...Proper Vehicles for conveying Instruction among the Common People," almanacs were popular because, in a semiliterate age, you did not really have to know how to read in order to consult them...
...A person's fate is largely determined by a person's acts...
...As for God, he was best served by doing good to men: If you survive a shipwreck, you're better advised to build a lighthouse than a church...
...Nothing is certain except death and taxes...
...This is the Franklin we have heard and read about, the self-tutored genius and hard-working entrepreneur who, having "made it his way," inspired so many Americans to make it too...
...He invented bifocal spectacles and the lightning rod...
...Welcomed in the best society, he fell in love with England and the English...
...He remained involved in land speculations that implied no vulgar derogation...
...Why blame wolves for eating sheep, when men eat far more than wolves...
...He knew, as his contemporaries knew, that most people would not toil if they didn't have to, and that self-improvement is a matter of bettering one's material and social status...
...His politics had always been personal...
...They were fallible, self-deluded, cruel, thoughtless, yet capable of enlightenment and improvement...
...Johnson had it...
...so he served his fellow republicans as "the symbolic American...
...So what do we learn that we did not know already...
...His goal as a tradesman was to cease being one, in order to become a gentleman...
...In the first place, that Franklin was not the workaholic sometimes portrayed...
...The affair continued happily for years, leading him to downplay the ever more strident conflict between the imperial power and its increasingly fractious subjects...
...He had made too many enemies, fluttered too many dovecotes...
...Everybody who was anybody in those days was interested in science, but Franklin was drawn to useful science...
...George Washington thought he was out of his mind to accept public office at his age...
...Certain uncharacteristically clumsy efforts to defuse the crisis backfired and Franklin, his public persona bespattered by rancorous criticism, found himself blamed for the sedition and rebellion he had sought to still...
...As he might have observed, not grand principles but small ignominies turned the Philadelphia Anglophile into a "passionate patriot...
...In his wonderful new book Gordon S. Wood sets out to weave a tapestry that is broader, richer, more complex, more impressive (though sometimes more depressive), and vastly readable...
...Following the bitter English letdown, they became even more personal...
...He started a lending library, he promoted a fire department and a school that would become the University of Pennsylvania, he helped found the American Philosophical Society, he introduced daylight savings time, and he proposed teaching modern foreign languages in lieu of the classics...
...He championed freedom of speech, freedom of the press, free hospital admission for the poor, popular education, equality of opportunity, fair treatment of Indians, abolition of slavery...
...Meanwhile, less than a year after his homecoming, the 70-yearold philosophe and jilted England-lover set sail for France, there to take his revenge...
...if you did read, you could pick up bits and pieces of information and potted wisdom...
...Never pompous, never solemn, never systematic or dogmatic, the man was skeptical and pragmatic...
...And it was he, at the signing of the Declaration, who said to John Hancock: "We must all indeed hang together, or we shall assuredly hang separately...
...As Wood concludes, "he was the greatest diplomat America has ever had...
...Men wore their hair à la Franklin, poets dedicated verse to him, his face appeared "on statues, prints, medallions, snuffboxes, candy boxes, rings, clocks, vases, dishes, kerchiefs and pocket knives...
...Like many in his trade, he diversified his business by setting up a stationery and bookstore, bringing out a gazette, and publishing Poor Richard's A Imanac...
...Even though engaged in important national and international affairs, he kept working on basic civic projects like draining swamps, improving watering troughs for horses, curing smoky chimneys, and making streets cleaner...
Vol. 87 • May 2004 • No. 3
