Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

“This appreciation of books was one of the traits shared by the Puritanism of Mather and the Enlightenment of Locke, worlds that would combine in the character of Benjamin Franklin.”

Isaacson explains that Franklin married the industriousness of the Puritans with a religion that was not dogmatic and focused on doing good works. Although he combined these traditions, Isaacson later concludes that Franklin represented one side of the American character and Cotton Mather another. Franklin stood for pragmatism and tolerance, while Mather for evangelical faith and moral crusading.

“Franklin, more typically, nurtured his reputation, as a matter of both pride and utility, and he became the country’s first unabashed public relations expert.”

Franklin understood the power of appearances and ensured that he came across as hard-working and virtuous. He behaved outwardly with self-deprecation and without aggression. He therefore exhibited a shrewd understanding of human relations and ensured that his appearance set him up for success.

“Franklin easily made casual friends, intellectual companions, useful patrons, flirty admirers, and circles of genial acquaintances, but he was less good at nurturing lasting bonds that involved deep personal commitments or emotional relationships, even within his own family."

Indicative of the complexity of his character and personal relations, Franklin was a magnet for personal friendships and relations. However, he struggled to retain male friends especially and had distant relations with his family. He did not hesitate to run away from his family in Boston and later run to London to spend years away from his wife.

“The velvet-tongued and sweetly passive style of circumspect argument would make him seem sage to some, insinuating and manipulative to others, but inflammatory to almost nobody.”

Franklin avoided confrontation and direct argument, as he did not believe they were effective at persuasion. As Isaacson notes, he nonetheless persuaded people through his Socratic method to his way of thinking. This method was perceived quite differently by Franklin’s admirers and enemies.

“A dominant theme in Franklin’s autobiography is that of making mistakes and then making amends, as if he were a moral bookkeeper balancing his accounts.”

Franklin had a penchant for making lists and rules. Isaacson later notes how critics of Franklin highlighted the moral simplicity of such lists and rules. Here is an example of that simplicity, as Franklin weighs running away from his brother James against later helping James’s son.

“The essence of Franklin is that he was a civic-minded man. He cared more about public behavior than inner piety, and he was more interested in building the City of Man than the City of God.”

Franklin believed in God but not in religious dogma. He maintained that God was best served through good works. He therefore broke from Puritanism. Franklin embraced humanity with all its flaws and sought to make life more comfortable and convenient for ordinary people.

“Social mobility was not very common in the eighteenth century. But Franklin proudly made it his mission—indeed, helped it become part of America’s mission—that a tradesman could rise in the world and stand before kings.”

Franklin detested privileges of birth and celebrated the virtues of the middle class. With himself as an example, he believed that hard work and virtue could enable artisans to attain wealth, and he wanted a system that allowed for that. He stood beside a king later in life to sign the alliance with the French.

“It also reinforced his core belief that people, and perhaps someday colonies, could accomplish more when they joined together rather than remained separate filaments of flax, when they formed unions rather than stood alone.”

Franklin organized several associations and organizations, which served both individual and public purposes, and were emblematic of an American habit. When the colonial government of Pennsylvania proved inadequate to defend the colony, Franklin organized a militia. It was a harbinger of what would happen in revolutionary times when colonists would form organizations to perform governmental functions. As Isaacson explains, Franklin understood the power of unity well before most colonial leaders.

“But during his life he was celebrated as the most famous scientist alive, and recent academic studies have restored his place in the scientific pantheon.”

Isaacson emphasizes the significance of Franklin’s discoveries in electricity, citing scholars that compare his work to Newton’s. Noting that Franklin was not a theorist, Isaacson argues that his discoveries nonetheless had a profound influence and benefitted humanity greatly. Two examples are lightning rods and bifocal lenses, but Isaacson highlights several others.

“Throughout his life, Franklin would find himself torn (and amused) by the conflict between his professed desire to acquire the virtue of humility and his natural thirst for acclaim.”

Isaacson provides examples of Franklin’s enjoyment of acclaim and popularity. While humility was a struggle for him, he did his best to appear humble so as not to goad his enemies. In noting Franklin’s amusement at this inner conflict, Isaacson highlights Franklin’s ability to laugh at himself, which contributed to his likeability.

“Franklin, by nature, liked to find ingenious ways to calm turbulent waters. But during his time as a diplomat in England, this instinct would fail him.”

While Franklin typically valued compromise and avoided confrontation, his anger at the Penns and the privileged class they represented got the better of him in England. His approach toward the proprietors and later the British ministers was uncharacteristically offensive and unyielding. This lapse speaks to Franklin’s principled opposition to aristocratic privilege.

“As he felt about Peter, so too he felt about slavery for the time being: he saw the faults with only one eye, heard them with only one ear, and rubbed along pretty comfortably, though increasingly less so.”

Peter was one of two slaves whom Franklin took with him to England. The other ran away and Franklin did not pursue him. Although Franklin became an abolitionist later, he did not question slavery critically earlier in his life. He had some misgivings but ran advertisements for slaves in his newspaper and did not pay much attention to this gross injustice in his early years.

“As a publishing magnate and then as a postmaster, he was one of the few to view America as a whole. To him, the colonies were not merely disparate entities. They were a new world with common interests and ideals.”

Isaacson observes that Franklin was instrumental to the creation of America through his work for independence, the French alliance, the peace with England, and the creation of the Constitution. Franklin understood the power of unity from his formation of organizations for public purposes and applied that knowledge to the colonies. Additionally, he articulated a common creed of equal opportunity and religious tolerance that would distinguish a united America.

“Surely, this should have precipitated Franklin’s return. He remained, however, distant from his family. The only time he had hastened home to Philadelphia was when his son was planning to marry—in London.”

Franklin remained in London despite his wife’s difficulties with their daughter’s love for Richard Bache, who was not succeeding in business. He instructed his wife to be frugal, while he traveled and enjoyed himself. He declined to attend his son’s wedding, yet he had returned to London to witness the coronation of the king. He exhibited more feeling toward his surrogate family than his biological one.

“That was the crux of Franklin’s dilemma. He had rendered himself suspect, he noted in a letter to a friend, ‘in England of being too much of an American, and in America of being too much of an Englishman.’”

In the late 1760s, Franklin believed that America could remain a part of the British Empire. He hoped for a governmental appointment and to play a role in resolving the tax concerns. His perspective was unique, as he was removed from the fury in the colonies but in sympathy with the colonists about their second-class treatment. He would soon resolve this dilemma and become a strong advocate of American interests.

“The impending clash between Britain and America inevitably foreshadowed a personal one between Franklin and his loyalist son. Tormented about the former prospect, Franklin remained callous about the latter.” 

Franklin, who had loved William, displayed no sympathy for his son. Blaming William for his Tory sympathies and his acceptance of a royal governorship, Franklin quite coldly cut him out and took William’s illegitimate son, Temple. Isaacson highlights the distance at which Franklin put his blood relations. 

“Liberated by his private break with his son and his public break with Strahan, Franklin became one of the most ardent opponents of Britain in the Continental Congress.” 

Although he never sent it, Franklin wrote a letter to his friend Strahan in London declaring that they were now enemies. He published the letter the same day that he signed the Olive Branch Petition in July 1775. Franklin was well ahead of most delegates in his advocacy of independence.

“Franklin replied: ‘Yes, we must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.’ Their lives, as well as their sacred honor, had been put on the line.”

In relaying Franklin’s witty comment after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Isaacson draws attention to the stakes. Had Britain won, the signers would have been guilty of treason. Franklin’s refrain about the need for unity is reinforced as well.

“In a clever and deliberate manner, leavened by the wit […] the French so adored, he would cast the American cause, through his own personification of it, as that of the natural state fighting the corrupted one, the enlightened state fighting the irrational old order.”

While Franklin appealed to the French interest in weakening Great Britain to win the king’s support, he also played to the idealism of the French people. Even given his fame and popularity, he dressed simply and wore a rustic cap akin to the one worn by the French philosopher Rousseau. Rousseau’s work celebrated the state of nature and condemned corruption. Franklin additionally published inspiring American documents, such as the Declaration of Independence.

“Franklin was always industrious, and in America he famously believed in also giving the appearance of being industrious. But in France, where the appearance of pleasure was more valued, Franklin knew how to adopt the style.”

Isaacson highlights Franklin’s skill in public relations. Franklin understood that appearances could be more important than reality in winning over public opinion. Thus, to John Adams’s chagrin, he appeared to be simply enjoying himself in Paris.

“From his opening gambit that led to America’s treaty of alliance with France to the endgame that produced a peace with England while preserving French friendship, Franklin mastered a three-dimensional game against two aggressive players by exhibiting great patience when the pieces were not properly aligned and carefully exploiting strategic advantages when they were.”

Isaacson depicts Franklin as a shrewd and skilled diplomat who advanced the interests of the US through a manipulative strategy. A lover of chess, Franklin applied that skill to foreign policy for the benefit of the US.

“Franklin’s blend of beliefs would become part of the outlook of much of America’s middle class: its faith in the virtues of hard work and frugality, its benevolent belief in voluntary associations to help others, its conservative opposition to handouts that led to laziness and dependency, and its slightly ambivalent resentment of unnecessary luxury, hereditary privileges, and an idle landowning leisure class.”

Isaacson repeatedly claims that Franklin both embodied and shaped the outlook of the American middle class. He summarizes that outlook here and highlights its unique mix of populism, liberalism, and conservatism.

“Throughout his life, he loved immersing himself in minutiae and trivia in a manner so obsessive that it might today be described as geeky.”

Franklin is known for making lists of virtues. Isaacson explains how Franklin’s curiosity extended to science and other matters. He loved to get into the details of how things worked but was not interested in abstract theory.