8/7/02
An obscure gem details the life of an American original
By Jeff Minick
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.
Yale University Press, 1964. $24 — 312 pp.
Ignorance, like poverty, is often dislodged by a combination of hard
work and good fortune. Recently I had the good fortune to read The Autobiography Of Benjamin Franklin — I should state that I was forced into reading it, as I will be soon teaching it to a group of students —and was left to wonder how I had missed this marvelous book in all my high school and college history courses. Franklin’s Autobiography struck me as so quintessentially American, so filled with an accounting of American traits like pragmatism, the practical application of ideas, and generosity, that I thought his account of his life would have been widely read, but found very few among my acquaintances who had ever heard of it, much less read it.
Franklin divides his narrative into four parts: a letter to his son written in 1771 about his early years; a continuation of that narrative in 1784; a third part written in 1788 about the events of the French and Indian War; and a very short fourth part written just before his death.
One of the many remarkable things about Franklin’s Autobiography is its lack of recognition of his accomplishments during the Revolution and the consequent framing of a Constitution. His failure to record those events here reveals to us that he was not only extraordinarily busy so late in life, but also that he had lived a life filled with accomplishments even before the Revolution.
A second remarkable aspect of the book is that we see how truly American Franklin was even before the United States existed. His easy acceptance of pragmatism as a guide to life, his willingness to put the practical ahead of the principle, is surely as American as the hot dog. One of many examples from the book documenting this idea is Franklin’s description of Governor Morris, who was raised by his father to argue and who loved regarded argument as one of his greatest pleasures. Franklin wrote that “disputing, contradicting, and confuting people are generally unfortunate in their affairs. They get victory sometimes, but they never get good will, which would be of more use to them.”
Franklin’s Autobiography also serves as an early example of a practical self-help book. He includes a list of virtues that he tried to practice himself and then explains in some detail how he worked to make the virtues a part of his daily life. He tells the reader of the death of a 4-year-old son from smallpox, explaining that his son might have survived had he been innoculated and encourages parents to see that this precaution is taken. He demonstrates, once again in some detail, how he sharpened his intellectual tools throughout his life, reading ceaselessly, founding what today would be called book clubs, testing his ideas in debate, and learning foreign languages at a rather late age.
Franklin may also seem particularly American because of his infatuation with technology and his interest in solving problems. Most of us are familiar with his inventions and scientific discoveries: the Franklin stove; the electrical experiments; the founding of a library system and a fire department. Less well-known is his plan for keeping the main streets of Philadelphia freed of dust and mud by hiring street sweepers and by paving the streets with stones. When General Braddock needed horses and wagons to undertake his ill-fated assault on the French at Fort Duquesne, it was Franklin who devised a plan for finding these necessities.
Besides giving us details of his own life, Franklin also allows us to see first-hand life in the colonies in the 50 years before the Revolution. We become acquainted not with generals and governors, but with the men and women of the workaday world: the printers, the farmers, the sea captains, the landlords. Franklin tells us of his family problems, particularly with an older brother; of his friends and their habits (though Franklin often abstained from liquors and wines, he gives us a portrait of eighteenth century society in which we have the accurate impression that large numbers of the population wandered the streets half-crocked most of the time); of men and women who, for various reasons, impress him.
For a first-hand look at life in Colonial America and at a man who is central to both our history and our character, you will want to read The Autobiography Of Benjamin Franklin.
(Jeff Minick lives in Waynesville and can be reached at saintsbookco@aol.com)