He rose to prominence throughout the colonies when he became deputy postmaster general of British North America During this period Franklin found time to publish the Pennsylvania Gazette and to write and publish Poor Richard's Almanac, which enhanced his reputation as a philosopher, scientist, and inventor. His publishing ventures brought financial independence, allowing him to become a philanthropist and to indulge his love for scientific investigation.
As a philanthropist, he supported and encouraged such varied programs as the establishment of public schools and libraries and the installation of street lighting. He was elected a member of the Royal Society in recognition of his scientific achievements, especially for his study of electricity.
His scientific renown earned him honorary degrees from Yale and Harvard in and from William and Mary in In Franklin was selected to represent Pennsylvania at the Albany Congress, called to unite the colonies during the French and Indian War. At the congress, Franklin advanced his Albany Plan of Union, one of the first proposals to bring the colonies together under some form of central authority.
The plan was adopted by the congress, but rejected by the colonial legislatures because they believed it encroached upon their powers. Franklin then entered what was to be a pivotal period in his life. He went to London as an agent representing the interests of Pennsylvania, and then later as an agent for Georgia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts and Beginning as a contented Englishman who favored Royal rule and distrusted popular movements, he emerged as a leading spokesman for American rights.
When the Stamp Act crisis arose, he demonstrated his new political sentiments by speaking out against the Act. He gradually adopted the theory that Parliament did not have the power to tax or to legislate in the colonies, and that the colonies and Great Britain were united "as England and Scotland were before the Union, by having one common Sovereign, the King. Returning to America, he advanced to the forefront of the Patriot cause as a member of the Continental Congress Franklin also was a key figure in the colonial postal system.
In , the British appointed him postmaster of Philadelphia, and he went on to become, in , joint postmaster general for all the American colonies. In this role he instituted various measures to improve mail service; however, the British dismissed him from the job in because he was deemed too sympathetic to colonial interests. In July , the Continental Congress appointed Franklin the first postmaster general of the United States, giving him authority over all post offices from Massachusetts to Georgia.
He held this position until November , when he was succeeded by his son-in-law. The first U. In , Franklin, then 42 years old, had expanded his printing business throughout the colonies and become successful enough to stop working. Retirement allowed him to concentrate on public service and also pursue more fully his longtime interest in science.
In the s, he conducted experiments that contributed to the understanding of electricity, and invented the lightning rod, which protected buildings from fires caused by lightning. In , he conducted his famous kite experiment and demonstrated that lightning is electricity. Franklin also coined a number of electricity-related terms, including battery, charge and conductor.
In addition to electricity, Franklin studied a number of other topics, including ocean currents, meteorology, causes of the common cold and refrigeration.
He developed the Franklin stove, which provided more heat while using less fuel than other stoves, and bifocal eyeglasses, which allow for distance and reading use. In the early s, Franklin invented a musical instrument called the glass armonica. In , at a meeting of colonial representatives in Albany, New York , Franklin proposed a plan for uniting the colonies under a national congress.
Although his Albany Plan was rejected, it helped lay the groundwork for the Articles of Confederation , which became the first constitution of the United States when ratified in In , Franklin traveled to London as a representative of the Pennsylvania Assembly, to which he was elected in Over several years, he worked to settle a tax dispute and other issues involving descendants of William Penn , the owners of the colony of Pennsylvania.
After a brief period back in the U. While he was abroad, the British government began, in the mids, to impose a series of regulatory measures to assert greater control over its American colonies. In , Franklin testified in the British Parliament against the Stamp Act of , which required that all legal documents, newspapers, books, playing cards and other printed materials in the American colonies carry a tax stamp.
Although the Stamp Act was repealed in , additional regulatory measures followed, leading to ever-increasing anti-British sentiment and eventual armed uprising in the American colonies. In , he was part of the five-member committee that helped draft the Declaration of Independence , in which the 13 American colonies declared their freedom from British rule.
As minister to France starting in , Franklin helped negotiate and draft the Treaty of Paris that ended the Revolutionary War. In , Franklin left France and returned once again to Philadelphia.
In , he was a Pennsylvania delegate to the Constitutional Convention. At the end of the convention, in September , he urged his fellow delegates to support the heavily debated new document. The U. While today we marvel at the extraordinary accomplishment of our Founding Fathers, their own reaction to the US Constitution when it was presented to them for their signatures was considerably less enthusiastic. Benjamin Franklin, ever the optimist even at the age of 81, gave what was for him a remarkably restrained assessment in his final speech before the Constitutional Convention: "…when you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men, all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views.
Nearly all of the delegates harbored objections, but persuaded by Franklin's logic, they put aside their misgivings and affixed their signatures to it. Their over-riding concern was the tendency in nearly all parts of the young country toward disorder and disintegration.
Americans had used the doctrine of popular sovereignty--"democracy"--as the rationale for their successful rebellion against English authority in But they had not yet worked out fully the question that has plagued all nations aspiring to democratic government ever since: how to implement principles of popular majority rule while at the same time preserving stable governments that protect the rights and liberties of all citizens.
Few believed that a new federal constitution alone would be sufficient to create a unified nation out of a collection of independent republics spread out over a vast physical space, extraordinarily diverse in their economic interests, regional loyalties, and ethnic and religious attachments. And there would be new signs of disorder after that would remind Americans what an incomplete and unstable national structure they had created: settlers in western Pennsylvania rebelled in because of taxes on their locally distilled whiskey; in western North Carolina there were abortive attempts to create an independent republic of "Franklin" which would ally itself with Spain to insure its independence from the United States; there was continued conflict with Indians across the whole western frontier and increased fear of slave unrest, particularly when news of the slave-led revolution in Haiti reached American shores.
But as fragile as America's federal edifice was at the time of the founding, there was much in the culture and environment that contributed to a national consensus and cohesion: a common language; a solid belief in the principles of English common law and constitutionalism; a widespread commitment albeit in diverse forms to the Protestant religion; a shared revolutionary experience; and, perhaps most important, an economic environment which promised most free, white Americans if not great wealth, at least an independent sufficiency.
The American statesmen who succeeded those of the founding generation served their country with a self-conscious sense that the challenges of maintaining a democratic union were every bit as great after as they were before. Some aspects of their nation-building program--their continuing toleration of slavery and genocidal policies toward American Indians--are fit objects of national shame, not honor. But statesmen of succeeding generations--Lincoln foremost among them--would continue the quest for a "more perfect union.
Such has been our success in building a powerful and cohesive democratic nation-state in post-Civil War America that most Americans today assume that principles of democracy and national harmony somehow naturally go hand-in-hand.
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