When Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston in 1706, the British North American colonies contained 350,000 persons, clustering along the Atlantic seacoast and the broad tidewater rivers.  The great interior valleys were far beyond the limits of colonial settlement.  Franklin’s life covered the years when the colonies matured and the American political union was formed. 

When Franklin died in Philadelphia in 1790, many things had changed.  The population was over 4 million people.   There were farms in Ohio, flatboats were floating down to New Orleans, Kentucky was ready for statehood, over a dozen collages were educating Americans, medical schools were training doctors, cities had weekly newspapers, America was forming a nation, of which Europe was standing in awe.

Benjamin Franklin provided new answers to America’s changing needs.  He seemed to be the most American of all American’s in the 18^th Century, “The Father of all Yankees”, Thomas Carlyle called him, quite the gentleman, negotiator, and educator was he, suited to any occasion  of this new nation.  Benjamin Franklin was a great American hero, of whose life we are still reaping rewards today.

Benjamin Franklin Businessman

The American colonies where Franklin passed the first half of his life were a place where the relentless struggle to keep alive and make a living was uppermost.  Franklin felt these pressures too.  He first appears as a tradesman and capitalist.  He learned the trade of a printer in his brother, James’s, print shop, and in time moved to Philadelphia to open his own printing business. 

As a successful printer and author, where in 1729, he published the Pennsylvania Gazette.  Keeping his hands to the task, and as profits increased, he set up promising journeymen in the printing business, of which he took part of the profits.  Franklin also published books, school text books, and almanacs. The best known of his many publications was, Poor Richards Almanac, with sales of over ten thousand copies annually.   

Benjamin Franklin Leader

By the age of forty-two, Benjamin Franklin had established himself financially, where he could move on to other interests in life. In 1749, he drafted a college curriculum.  For those who had no means to buy books, he suggested they club together, thus the Library Company was founded.  In Philadelphia, he took the leadership to start a fire company, a hospital, a city police department. Benjamin Franklin was instrumental in settling colonies to where they could sustain themselves, so they could move into a new phase of culturing themselves with the finer arts and knowledge in life. 

Benjamin Franklin Scientiest

Soon Franklin began to look towards science, especially electricity, since the struggles of colonial survival was over. This was the time of new discoveries in science by brilliant amateurs, such as, clergyman, Joseph Priestley, discovering a new chemical element, oxygen; a German bandmaster, William Herschel, found a new planet, Uranus; and a Philadelphia printer, out of curiosity, established the science of electricity.  Franklin did not study electricity in order to find a way to better light homes and streets, but he wanted to know what and why of lightning.  It was soon noised abroad that he had snatched lightning from the skies, which won him and America recognition with the Europeans. 

Now that the streets and homes of the colonies were lighted, America’s problems turned political, and Benjamin Franklin was the man for the job.  He emerged as an inter-colonial statesman in 1754, with the idea of proposing a plan to unite the colonies under an American legislature.

Benjamin Franklin Statesman

Three years later, Pennsylvania sent Franklin to England, as its agent, at the seat of government in London.  There He remained for eighteen years, only returning to America once.  Franklin was also the unofficial spokesman to unify Britain and American colonies, which eventually failed, and Franklin returned to the colonies in 1775.  War had already broken out. Franklin was put in the Continental Congress to help draft the Declaration of Independence, and tried to win Canada over as the fourteenth colony.  In late 1776, Franklin set out to Europe again, this time to negotiate a treaty of commerce and friendship with France.  The treaty of alliance was drafted, and French troops and supplies were sent to America to aid the rebels.  With John Adams and John Jay, he negotiated the treaty, by which, Britain recognized American independence, and ceded British territory east of the Mississippi River to the republic.

The Boston born printer, Poor Richard of the Almanac, the colonial of 1756, had come a long way.  He could now call a nation his own. He was a citizen of a nation that had risen among nations. 

The last five years of Franklin’s life were spent in Philadelphia, doing things that America needed him to do. He was president of the Executive Council of Pennsylvania and sat on the Federal Convention, he was president of a society to study the new political questions of republican government, and another to promote the abolition of slavery. He presided over meetings of his fellow scientists.  Benjamin Franklin once said to his wife, “I wish the good Lord had seen fit to make each day just twice as long as it is. Perhaps then I really could accomplish something.”  Today, America says to Benjamin Franklin, “Well done thou good and faithful servant.” 

References taken from the writings of Whitfield J. Bell Jr., Visiting Professor of History, College of William and Mary.