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The Pennsylvania Prince: Political Wisdom from Benjamin Franklin to Arlen Specter
I have not found among my belongings anything I prize so much or value so highly as my knowledge of the actions of great men, acquired through long experience of contemporary affairs and extended reading in antiquity.1
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| —Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince (1513) |
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| The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin remains widely read for its wonderful anecdotes, wry tone, and the famous scheme of virtues, but few celebrate the work as a model political memoir. Yet, the final third of the Autobiography, written in Philadelphia during the period of constitutional ratification and covering the twenty-five years from the publication of Franklin's first Almanac (1732) to the crucial years of the French and Indian War (1754–63), offers a vivid dissection of colonial politics and some surprisingly feisty score settling from an eighty-two-year-old man on the eve of his death. The great American figure of the Enlightenment humbly declared that he would not "swell this narrative" with detailed accounts of his famous electricity experiments, but he did find space to devote several thousand words to a vigorous defense of his actions as a quartermaster during the French and Indian War. He provided an itemized list of supplies that he and his son delivered to ungrateful officers in British camps, including six pounds of "good ground coffee" and two "well-cured hams" within each wagon.2 This represents a level of obsessive self-justification that any modern political memoirist might admire, but which few literary critics ever appreciate. Other pages, full of fleeting but still profound insights about power, also appear to have been lost in the translation to contemporary audiences. Franklin's Autobiography was not merely the opening salvo in the genre of self-made American literature, but also a pioneering example of political payback and punditry. More precisely, Franklin's combination of self-serving recollections and Machiavellian analysis has provided a template for more than two century's worth of Pennsylvania politicos who have produced some of the nation's more significant political memoirs. |
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The great tradition of the Pennsylvania dish has never received the acclaim it deserves, but few have cooked up recollected revenge more deftly than Benjamin Franklin. When prodded, the self-made man could demolish the reputation of political foes or rivals with ease. Franklin reduced William Keith, who, according to the American National Biography, was "among the most able of colonial governors," to a pitiful caricature of a blowhard politician.3 Governor Keith was the figure in the Autobiography who showed interest in the young refugee printer from Boston, but then sent him to London without a promised letter of introduction. Still mortified and annoyed, Franklin dismissed the politician sixty-five years later as a man who "wish'd to please everybody; and having little to give, he gave Expectations."4 Elsewhere, in his perpetual zeal to put the Penn family in its place, Franklin went so far as to mock the great colonial founder himself. To illustrate the Penns' arrogance, while also simultaneously poking fun at the hypocrisy of Quaker pacifists (a recurring theme in this combative third section), Franklin described a story he had heard from James Logan, William Penn's secretary. Logan recalled that during one of his early transatlantic journeys with Penn, in a period of intense naval hostilities, their ship had come under enemy pursuit. The captain ordered the pacifistic Quakers below deck, acknowledging that he did not expect their aid in the fight, but Logan remained to help regardless. Afterward, he claimed that Penn "rebuk'd him severely for staying upon Deck and undertaking to assist in defending the Vessel, contrary to the Principles of Friends." But Logan was undaunted, as Franklin related with apparent relish, responding to the proprietor, "I being thy Servant, why did thee not order me to come down, but thee was willing enough that I should stay and help to fight the Ship when thee thought there was Danger."5 |
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