Benjamin Franklin, Politician

Voorkant
W. W. Norton & Company, 1996 - 240 pagina's
A distinguished historian of early America sees Franklin's influence on the course of the revolutionary movement in a new light. Benjamin Franklin was a man of genius and enormous ego, smart enough not to flaunt his superiority but to let others proclaim it. To understand him and his role in great events, one must realize the omnipresence of this ego, and the extent to which he mirrored the feelings of other colonial Pennsylvanians. With this in mind, Francis Jennings sets forth some new ideas about Franklin as the "first American." In so doing, he provides a new view of the beginnings of the American Revolution in Franklin's struggle against William Penn. By striving against Penn's feudal lordship (and therefore against King George) Franklin became master of the Pennsylvania assembly. It was in this role that he suggested a meeting of the Continental Congress which, as Jennings notes, flies in the face of historical opinion which suggests that Boston patriots had to drag Pennsylvanians into the revolution. Franklin's autobiography omits discussion of his heroic struggle against Penn and, in so doing, robs history of his true role in the making of the new country. It is through an accurate accounting of what Franklin did, not what he said he did in his autobiography (which Jennings likens to a campaign speech), that we understand the author's use of the term "first American."

Vanuit het boek

Inhoudsopgave

A Personal Preface
9
Introduction
15
Boston
24
Philadelphia
28
Domestic
32
Protégé
38
The Walking Purchase
49
Climbing
59
Fronts and Friends
138
A Wobbly Offensive
146
Royalist
156
Rebound
168
Spokesman
175
Phoenix
186
Coda
196
A Note on Sources
203

Germans
72
Indians
81
Assemblyman
94
Changing Sides
106
Soldier
122
Notes
205
Bibliography
225
Index
233
Copyright

Veelvoorkomende woorden en zinsdelen

Over de auteur (1996)

Francis Jennings is former director of the Newberry Library Center for the History of the American Indian.

Bibliografische gegevens