Books October 2002
Big Ben
A review of Benjamin Franklin by Edmund Sears Morgan.
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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