| Book Reviews | The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 130.2

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| Book Reviews | The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 130.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Reviews

Runaway America: Benjamin Franklin, Slavery, and the American Revolution. By David Waldstreicher. (New York: Hill and Wang, 2004. xv, 315p. Illustrations, notes, index. $25.)
Runaways and fugitives populated early America. Native Americans retreated westward; immigrants fled economic, political, and religious tribulations in the Old World; the "strolling poor" roamed from place to place in search of a livelihood. Simultaneously, people of various ethnic and racial origins who were apprentices, indentured servants, and slaves often made desperate attempts to escape bondage in the New World. Benjamin Franklin was one of the very few famous founding fathers who numbered among those escapees. Ironically, tellingly, Franklin's personal experience in taking flight did not subsequently deter him from profiting by publishing hundreds of advertisements in his newspaper for fugitives who, like him, merely attempted to gain liberty.	1
David Waldstreicher's remarkably insightful, beautifully written book focuses primarily on Benjamin Franklin and racial bondage in early America, telling the "story of slavery and freedom's meeting in the life, thought, and politics" of the "first American" (p. ix). Waldstreicher grapples with the crucial paradox of slavery and freedom initially popularized by Edmund Morgan three decades ago. In the process, Waldstreicher admirably illuminates not just Franklin, not just slaves, not just bond and free people, not just runaways, but also the nature of early America itself.	. . .

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