Becoming Ben Franklin

Russell Freedman's biography traces the life of Benjamin Franklin from his origins as a candle maker's son in colonial Boston to his role as one of the most influential figures in the founding of the United States. The book follows Franklin's transformation from a restless teenage runaway into a printer, scientist, diplomat, and statesman whose contributions shaped American history.

Freedman opens in 1723, when 17-year-old Franklin stepped ashore in Philadelphia after fleeing his apprenticeship at his older brother James's printing shop in Boston. Dirty, hungry, and nearly penniless, he bought three large rolls, ate one, and gave the other two away. Fifteen-year-old Deborah Read, his future wife, spotted him from her father's doorway and found his appearance ridiculous.

Freedman then traces Franklin's early years. Born on January 17, 1706, in Boston, Franklin was the youngest son of Josiah Franklin, a soap and candle maker with 17 children. After two years of schooling, he was apprenticed at age 10 to his father's shop. His father, fearing Ben would go to sea like an older brother who was lost at sea, apprenticed him to James, a printer, at age 12. Franklin taught himself to write by imitating essays in The Spectator, a London journal, and at 16 published humorous essays under the pen name "Silence Dogood" in James's newspaper, The New-England Courant. When James learned his brother was the author, their relationship deteriorated into quarreling and beatings, instilling in Franklin a lifelong aversion to arbitrary power. Franklin secretly left Boston for Philadelphia, where he found work as a printer. A promise of backing from Pennsylvania's governor proved empty, and Franklin spent 18 months working in London before returning. By age 24, he had opened his own shop and married Deborah Read. Together they raised his son William, born to an unidentified mother; a son, Francis, who died of smallpox at age four; and a daughter, Sarah, called Sally. He founded the Junto, a discussion club of young artisans and tradesmen.

Franklin's ambitions extended well beyond printing. He purchased The Pennsylvania Gazette and launched Poor Richard's Almanack in 1733, a bestseller packed with witty sayings. Through the Junto, he spearheaded civic firsts including America's first lending library, Philadelphia's first firefighting company and hospital, and the Philadelphia Academy, later the University of Pennsylvania. He pursued a Moral Perfection Project tracking 13 virtues. His printing business expanded to dozens of shops across the colonies, and by age 42 he was wealthy enough to retire, though he identified himself as a printer for the rest of his life.

Freedman devotes particular attention to Franklin's scientific work. After attending a traveling "electrician's" performance in 1743, Franklin began systematic experiments with static electricity, distinguishing between positive and negative charges, conductors and nonconductors, and creating history's first electrical battery, coining all these terms. Convinced that lightning was electrical, he proposed drawing sparks from storm clouds with a pointed metal rod. French scientists performed the test in May 1752, but Franklin, unaware of their success, flew a silk kite with a metal key during a June thunderstorm and felt unmistakable electric shocks. The discovery led to the invention of the lightning rod and brought Franklin international acclaim, including the Royal Society's gold Copley Medal.

Franklin's fame drew him into public life. He won election to the Pennsylvania Assembly in 1751 and was appointed deputy postmaster general for all the colonies. When the French and Indian War broke out in 1754, he attended the Albany Conference, a colonial meeting on defense and relations with the Iroquois confederacy, a union of six Native American nations. He argued that if the Iroquois could sustain a union, so could the English colonies, and published America's first political cartoon with the motto "Join, or Die." The delegates adopted his unification plan, but every colonial assembly and the British government rejected it. A tax dispute with the colony's proprietors sent Franklin to London in 1757, and his assembly supporters sent him back again in 1764 to represent colonial interests.

Escalating tensions transformed Franklin from a loyal British subject into a revolutionary. Parliament's Stamp Act of 1765, taxing all colonial printed matter, provoked riots against taxation without representation. Franklin testified before the House of Commons for nearly four hours, helping bring about the act's repeal. But new import duties and the Boston Tea Party of December 1773 deepened the crisis. In January 1774, Franklin was summoned before the Privy Council, the king's advisory body, where a prosecutor denounced him as "the true incendiary" behind colonial unrest. He stood motionless and silent. The next day he was fired as deputy postmaster general. During this period, Franklin learned that his wife Deborah had died after a lingering illness. Convinced the empire was beyond repair, he sailed for home in early 1775.

Franklin arrived to find that fighting had broken out at Lexington and Concord, the opening battles of the American Revolution. He was elected to the Second Continental Congress, the colonies' wartime governing assembly, where at 69 he was the oldest member and one of the first to advocate independence. His relationship with his son William was shattered when William, royal governor of New Jersey, refused to support the revolution and was arrested and imprisoned. Franklin joined the committee to draft the Declaration of Independence, suggesting that Thomas Jefferson, who had written the first draft, revise "sacred and undeniable" to "self-evident" in the document's most famous passage. The Declaration was approved on July 4, 1776.

At nearly 71, Franklin sailed to France with his grandsons Temple and seven-year-old Benny Bache to secure a French military alliance. He was greeted as a celebrity, his fur cap and simple clothing captivating the French public. The mission was undermined by its trusted secretary, Edward Bancroft, who was secretly a British spy. When news of the American victory at Saratoga arrived in late 1777, Franklin leveraged French fears of Anglo-American reconciliation to secure treaties of alliance, signed February 6, 1778. At the signing, he wore the coat from his Cockpit humiliation. French support proved decisive: In October 1781, French warships and troops joined Washington's army at Yorktown, Virginia, forcing British General Lord Charles Cornwallis to surrender. With fellow delegates John Adams and John Jay, Franklin negotiated the Treaty of Paris, signed September 3, 1783, recognizing the United States as "free, sovereign and independent." Before sailing home, Franklin met his estranged son William in England for the last time; the encounter was civil but cool.

Franklin arrived at Philadelphia's Market Street wharf on September 14, 1785, 62 years after he had first stepped ashore as a penniless runaway. At 79, he was elected president of the Pennsylvania Executive Council, effectively governor. At 81, he attended the 1787 Constitutional Convention, convened to draft the United States Constitution, as its oldest delegate. The thorniest issue was slavery: Southern delegates threatened to walk out if the constitution outlawed it. Franklin, who had once held enslaved people in his household, now detested the practice. He urged delegates to sign despite the document's imperfections, becoming the only Founding Father to sign all four foundational documents: the Declaration of Independence, the French alliance, the Treaty of Paris, and the Constitution. He then led the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and in 1790 petitioned Congress to extend liberty to enslaved people. The petition was rejected. Two months later, on April 17, 1790, Franklin died at age 84. Freedman concludes by quoting the French statesman Jacques Turgot: "He snatched lightning from the sky, and the scepter from tyrants."