BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.   Term Paper ID:29097 Click to get this paper

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Paper Abstract: His life and career. Discusses his mainstream American values. His keen understanding of the society in which he lived. His business successes. His political ideas and attitudes. His role in founding new institutions for America. His concept of American education, and how it differed from the British. His practical approach. Paper Introduction: Although Benjamin Franklin spent much of his life trying to earn the favor and patronage of the British rulers of his colonial homeland he may be considered "the first American" for many reasons--one of the most important being that, like his young country, he only began to think of himself as an American when he was already well launched in life. Franklin's career was quite various and he was successful in many different arenas of life--and in all of them his ideas, attitudes, and actions had features that were similar to the combination of virtues and pursuits that Americans would come to recognize as a unique blend that typified citizens of their nation. Franklin's primary claim to the honor of being called "the first American" is based on the fact that he so often, as Erwin notes, "anticipated mainstream values and specific practices of Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. But even though he was a part of this earlier system Franklin's ownefforts and abilities had truly been the making of him. Franklin also,of course combined his great business successes with his brilliance as ascientist and his abilities as an organizer and public figure. Franklin's attitude toward religion was one that became far more common--and received more official sanction--than many might have believed at thetime. The American Revolution. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1991.Erwin, Robert. . With the story ofhis running away from the elder brother whose mistreatment was holding himback Franklin established the need for a certain freedom of action in thepursuit of one's own happiness and advancement. . Franklin, for example, was the first topropose the notion of "equal time" for political candidates, arguing thatboth sides had a right to be heard by everyone--an idea that was, Erwinnotes, "lucrative for printers such as himself" (4). New York: Vintage, 1993. For,then and now, Americans like to think of themselves as people who getthings done and, quite truly few people in history have got more done thanBenjamin Franklin. He said, as Erwin reports, that he had assisted "all Sects" and "asI have never opposed any of their Doctrines, I hope to go out of the worldin Peace with them all" (5). Franklin's primary claim to the honor of being called "the firstAmerican" is based on the fact that he so often, as Erwin notes,"anticipated mainstream values and specific practices of the Americansociety" that had barely begun to exist in his lifetime (4). Franklin even argued that it would be easier to get ahead in Englandand this was true, but only up to a point. Although Benjamin Franklin spent much of his life trying to earn thefavor and patronage of the British rulers of his colonial homeland he maybe considered "the first American" for many reasons--one of the mostimportant being that, like his young country, he only began to think ofhimself as an American when he was already well launched in life.Franklin's career was quite various and he was successful in many differentarenas of life--and in all of them his ideas, attitudes, and actions hadfeatures that were similar to the combination of virtues and pursuits thatAmericans would come to recognize as a unique blend that typified citizensof their nation. The Radicalism of the American Revolution. He wrote the first partof his Autobiography in 1771 and the book became a sort of justificationfor his failure as he explained the nature of the system and the manner inwhich it remained closed. It was not, however, until the nineteenthcentury that readers of his life's story came to understand Franklin as theideal of the American self-made man; an ideal that was, as Wood notes,viewed as "a vindication" of the Revolution and of its reformation of thevery system of patronage that had been the earliest means by which Franklinhad established himself (77). The stream of ideas and innovations that flowed throughout Franklin'slong life is, perhaps, the greatest source of his claim to the title of"the first American." He foresaw so many characteristics of the Americannation and its people and he started so many of the practices andinstitutions that would become essential to daily life that there is nobetter candidate for the honor. He used his freedom welland his business was so successful that by the time her retired at the ageof forty-two Franklin had become the largest paper supplier in the BritishEmpire and one of the principal printers in the colonies. Heconceived of American education in practical terms and rejected theEuropean tradition of "compulsory study of the classics," Erwin says, infavor of subjects that would enhance citizenship and personal industry (5). He succeeded in becoming deputypostmaster general of the colonies and was, as Wood puts it, "angling forsomething bigger in the imperial hierarchy" when he was finally convinced--as he had been warned--that the uppermost circles of power and influence inEngland were impenetrable (77). Thus, as Wood notes, it was only in the 176 s--when his hopes ofadvancement in England seemed to be permanently crushed--that Franklin"began to think of himself as an American" (77). Wood notes that there, asFranklin told the philosopher David Hume, he felt that his talent would"from its Scarcity . Franklin also predicted the importance of industry in the UnitedStates and the need for the assimilation of future immigrants. One of themost important of these mainstream values exemplified by Franklin's lifewas the notion of "social mobility" which, according to Wood, was embodiedin eighteenth-century America "in terms of the career of Benjamin Franklin,printer" (76). Works CitedBonwick, Colin. "Benjamin Franklin: A Face as Familiar as that of the Moon." North American Review 28 .4 (1995): 4-9.Wood, Gordon S. As a mere teenager his abilities and interests captured theattention of the colonial governors of Pennsylvania and New York. probably come to a better Market" (77). And thiswas only the start of many years of sponsorship that Franklin was toreceive from the leading men of the time. Franklin also notedthat Americans preferred to enter wars under the rhetoric of "defense" and,whenever possible, as Erwin says, they preferred this to be "defense of ahigh-sounding abstraction such as 'liberty'" (4). Franklin also foresaw, more than most, what kinds of institutions thenew nation needed and undertook the founding of many of them. The sheer practicality of Benjamin Franklin's approach to thehundreds of tasks that he undertook--to his business, his public projects,his service of the new nation--may, however, have been the quality thatserves him best when the question of "the first American" is raised. But his career was primarily devoted, prior to the 176 s,to securing advancement in British society--in the colonies and in GreatBritain itself. In founding suchinstitutions, Erwin notes, Franklin also took an eminently practical rolein many of them--from overseeing construction to printing librarycatalogues to securing the first "matching grant" in America when heobtained a pledge of £2, from the colonial assembly for the constructionof the Pennsylvania Hospital on the condition that the same amount beraised privately (6). His scientific achievements and hisimmense abilities may have made him an intellectual star and a promisingcivil servant but he found that these things were not as important to thepeople near the heart of British power and came to see that he might bebetter off trying to find his way in America. Among themany services and institutions that he got started were, Erwin says,"streetlighting, hospitals, schools, libraries, professional and tradeassociations, [and] a universal postal service" (5). For his rise would have been considerably slower, despitehis industry and brilliance, if he had not also been able to gain theattention of the influential patrons that were necessary to advancement atthe time. Benjamin Franklin "understoodbetter than most the kind of dependent society in which he lived," saysWood, and this understanding served him well (76). If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.

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