Benjamin Franklin, Politician: The Mask and the Man

by Francis Jennings

Book Overview

A distinguished historian of early America sees Franklin's influence on the course of the revolutionary movement in a new light. Benjamin Franklin was a man of genius and enormous ego, smart enough not to flaunt his superiority but to let others proclaim it. To understand him and his role in great events, one must realize the omnipresence of this ego, and the extent to which he mirrored the feelings of other colonial Pennsylvanians. With this in mind,...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393039838
• ISBN13: 9780393039832
• Release Date: November 1996
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 244 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.4" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Don't Miss Jennings' Acerbic But Well Documented Insights

My comments are in response to the "A Book for the Scholars" review. The other reviewer seems to not have understood the late Fritz Jennings' clearly stated purpose for re-examining Franklin's political life. Recall that Franklin retired from his lucrative printing business as a wealthy man. He then entered public life. This latter part of Franklin's amazing life (1744-1775) is the focus of Jennings' admittedly "strongly revisionist" (i.e., a long overdue re-look) investigation. (204) Although the other reviewer did not like the interpretation of Franklin's public life, Jennings "provide[d] evidence to justify revision." (204) Jennings expressed his admiration for Franklin's "genius," (15) noble attributes and noteworthy accomplishments. Few lives have been lived so fully. Jennings' research did not "lessen" his admiration for Franklin. A critical analysis of Franklin's political careers in Pennsylvania and England, based upon extensive use of Franklin's recently published papers, shows him to be a "believably human" "political animal" (71) with a huge ego, instead of a "manufactured icon of virtue" (i.e., a Founding Father). (200) While Jennings' style is acerbic, he is no mere "table pounder" as the other reviewer alleges. As a politician, Franklin at times acted from moral outrage (against the Paxton Boys) or principle (refusing bribes from the Penn proprietors), while in other instances he engaged in self-serving patronage and "realpolitik." Throughout Jennings' scholarship he has decried the fraudulent Walking Purchase and defended the Quaker party's pacifism and policies against historians like Daniel Boorstin, and the political machinations of the Penn proprietors, the radical Whigs during the American Revolution, and now Franklin's anti-Quaker vindictiveness. Jennings also exposes Franklin's contempt for American Indians, which coincided with his militarism and imperial bent. This is a concise and accessible critique of Ben Franklin the politician that shows how British North American colonial politics really operated. Franklin's almost fatal misstep in gauging American colonial outrage against the Stamp Act, and almost career-ending brief infatuation with royalism, came close to putting him on the loyalist side of the American Revolution with his son. Ultimately Franklin's political genius overcame his ego and occasional indiscretion. The most illustrious part of his public service to America started where this book ends. For that story, readers should turn to Edmund Morgan's biography of Franklin - better than Issacson's or Brands' commendable works. For another great book on perhaps Franklin's most serious flaw as a human being - his inability to sustain a loving relationship with his wife (whom he certainly did not love) or son (whom he adored) - read Willard Randall's "Little Revenge: Benjamin Franklin and His Son." As with Jennings and many other Americans, I remain fascinated by Franklin as a great, gifted, complex man with tr