There is only one member of the Founding Generation who, even if he had never turned his hand to statecraft, would be known to posterity as more than a footnote to the kind of obscure work of local history that gathers dust on the shelves of county historical societies throughout the east. George Washington would be remembered as a promising Virginia aristocrat who surrendered his militia company to the French at Fort Dusquesne; Jefferson as a debt-ridden gentleman farmer with a taste for exotic vegetables, heterodox religious opinions, and conventional racial views; Adams a splenetic lawyer overshadowed by his more charismatic cousin Sam; Madison a shadowy dreamer. Only Benjamin Franklin was already famous by the time of the American Revolution, a man known for his accomplishments not only throughout the colonies, but in Europe as well. Franklin was a world celebrity at a time before such a thing was even dreamed of.

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