Not Your Usual Founding Father: Selected Readings from Benjamin FranklinThis engaging book reveals Benjamin Franklin’s human side—his tastes and habits, his enthusiasms, and his devotion to democracy and the people of the United States. Three hundred years after his birth, we may remember Franklin’s famous Autobiography, or his status as framer of the Declaration of Independence and the peace with Great Britain, or his experiments in electricity, or perhaps his sage advice on diligence and thrift. But historian Edmund S. Morgan invites us to meet the man himself, a sociable, good-natured, and extraordinary human being with boundless curiosity about the natural world and a vision of what America could be. Drawing on lifelong research in the vast Franklin archives, Morgan assembles both famous and lesser-known writings that offer insights into this founding father’s thinking. The book is organized around four major themes, each with an introduction. The first section includes journal excerpts and letters revealing Franklin’s personal tastes and habits. The second is devoted to Franklin’s inexhaustible intellectual energy and his scientific discoveries. The third and fourth chronicle his devotion to serving the people who became the United States both before and after the Revolution and to advancing his democratic vision of their future. Franklin’s humanity and genius have never seemed more real than in the pages of this appealing anthology. |
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Page xi
... common sense and uncommon ideas, of the prosaic and the poetic, plebeian and patrician, expected and unexpected. I shall not attempt to exhibit everything that Franklin did or thought. Instead, I will try first to meet him as an ...
... common sense and uncommon ideas, of the prosaic and the poetic, plebeian and patrician, expected and unexpected. I shall not attempt to exhibit everything that Franklin did or thought. Instead, I will try first to meet him as an ...
Page 5
... common experience for voyagers in the age of sail, especially on vessels that had to clear the English Channel before reaching the open sea. No one wanted to spend needless days aboard a wind-bound ship. So the captain of Franklin's ...
... common experience for voyagers in the age of sail, especially on vessels that had to clear the English Channel before reaching the open sea. No one wanted to spend needless days aboard a wind-bound ship. So the captain of Franklin's ...
Page 8
... common maxim, that without severe discipline it is impossible to govern the licentious rabble of soldiery. I own indeed that if a commander finds he has not those qualities in him that will make him beloved by his people, he ought by ...
... common maxim, that without severe discipline it is impossible to govern the licentious rabble of soldiery. I own indeed that if a commander finds he has not those qualities in him that will make him beloved by his people, he ought by ...
Page 13
... , and it is for aught I know one of the worst of punishments to be excluded from society. I have read abundance of fine things on the subject of solitude, and I know 'tis a common boast the young man and the old man [13]
... , and it is for aught I know one of the worst of punishments to be excluded from society. I have read abundance of fine things on the subject of solitude, and I know 'tis a common boast the young man and the old man [13]
Page 14
... common boast in the mouths of those that a√ect to be thought wise, that they are never less alone than when alone. I acknowledge solitude an agreeable refreshment to a busy mind; but were these thinking people obliged to be always ...
... common boast in the mouths of those that a√ect to be thought wise, that they are never less alone than when alone. I acknowledge solitude an agreeable refreshment to a busy mind; but were these thinking people obliged to be always ...
Contents
1 | |
Part II Nature observed | 67 |
Part III A continental vision | 141 |
Part IV War peace and humanity | 219 |
Chronology | 289 |
Credits | 291 |
Index | 297 |
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