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Benjamin Franklin
by Edmund S. Morgan
Yale Univ. Press, 2002
368 pp.; $24.95
Edmund Morgan is arguably the finest living American historian, an adornment to the tradition that includes Francis Parkman, George Bancroft, Charles Beard, and Perry Miller. Published when Morgan was 86, Benjamin Franklin is his latest attempt to interpret the early history of the country, and it has received the accolades that one would expect—but that do not, it seems to me, critically attend to what Morgan has done.
Morgan has always liked the moderates in the North American colonies. The Puritan Dilemma (1958), his account of John Winthrop, defends an ethic of responsibility over one of ultimate ends. The Gentle Puritan, a Life of Ezra Stiles (1962) raised an authoritative voice in favor of Stiles over one of his adversaries, Jonathan Edwards, in an era dominated by those who favored high Calvinism. Among his many scholarly talents, Morgan is a compelling biographer. He has mastered clear expository prose that conveys complex matters in an intelligible form. In this book the greatest moderate, Franklin, gets his greatest advocate.
The biography passes over Franklin's early life, about which we know almost nothing except what he tells us in his Autobiography, moving quickly to that later period for which we have an extensive record: Franklin's own writings and the civic experience of Philadelphia, the colonies, and the Empire. Morgan focuses on the range of Franklin's interests and his curiosity about the world. He has substantial accounts of Franklin's satirical writings, which evidence his interest—always perceptive, often Swiftian, occasionally moralizing—in the cultures around him. While Morgan also lucidly describes the scientific ideas that brought Franklin renown in the Western world, he observes that in Franklin's own hierarchy of interests, usefulness was the chief criterion of merit. And because the greatest usefulness came about through involvement in a polity, politics—and, indeed, international politics—took precedence over one's personal life, over one's duties as a private citizen or a writerly public intellectual, or over the work of the scientist. Thus, Morgan concentrates on Franklin's career in making the Revolution and the peace that followed. Here, the importance of these events for Franklin, and Morgan's gifts as an elucidator of political ideas and practical policies, contribute most to the substantial value of the book.
Perhaps because of his age, Morgan has limited himself to using an advance copy of the CD-ROM on which all of Franklin's writings appear. This electronic production will soon be available under the auspices of Yale University Press, its Papers of Benjamin Franklin, and the Packard Humanities Institute. Morgan says that in writing this biography he has not read "much else, and therefore [the book is] pretty one-sided."
There is some unnecessary modesty here. No one knows the 18th-century sources better than Morgan, and the fact that he does not cite them does not mean that he is unaware of the interpretative disputes in the secondary literature on which he touches, or the documents on which they are based. What is important is that Morgan does intend mainly to tell us what Franklin seems like to him, and to have this appraisal pass as critical history. It does not fully pass.
Let me begin with a small example and generalize from it. Morgan tells us that Franklin's marriage was "loving and happy" and that his "affection for his family" was much like that "of any good father or husband"; he was "an averagely good family man." Morgan also relates the facts of Franklin's family life. His son William was born in 1729 or 1730, but we do not know who William's mother was, and Franklin tells us nothing about her. (His "lechery" was later used against him in a political campaign.) In 1730, he married Deborah Rogers, and made a family with the boy and two children born to the second union. In 1757 he left for London on his first diplomatic mission as a colonial agent; Deborah was unwilling to make the trip, and Benjamin could never persuade her to join him. She was a "plain Joan" and might have felt ill at ease in the circles in which Franklin was traveling— and, Morgan adds, would perhaps have made him feel ill at ease as well. Franklin was away for four years, sailing back to Philadelphia in 1762. Then he left again in 1764, and lingered in London even after the settlement of his work in 1767-1768. Benjamin and Deborah continued to exchange affectionate letters; there is no evidence of infidelity but, Morgan adds, Franklin's taste for female companionship must make us wonder. (Morgan's concern for infidelity is exclusively with the husband and not the wife.) Benjamin did not return for his daughter's wedding in 1767. In 1774, Deborah died, and having not seen her in ten years, he did not go back at her death. Franklin "endure[d]" it, but what was more painful to him, allows Morgan, was the destruction of the imperial community. A few months after learning of her death he journeyed from London to Philadelphia, but the conflicting loyalties of the Revolution were such that "his beloved son" suffered "ultimate rejection" because he remained a Tory. In his old age in the United States Franklin enjoyed the remains of his family and grandchildren.
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