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Tag: Benjamin Franklin

  • From One Postal Official To Another–March 29, 1776

    Cover Art for March 29, 1776: a letter from Ben Franklin to the Secret Correspondence Committee, 1777.

    While we’re focusing on one letter written by Benjamin Franklin today, written to Anthony Todd, it’s rather impressive the sheer number and breadth of letters written by, or to, Franklin during his lifetime as a statesman.

    There is a collaborative effort going on between Yale University and the American Philospohical Society, among others, to search, collect and publish the various works of Benjamin Franklin. So far over forty volumes have been published since 1959, and the scholars involved are pretty sure that number will surpass 50.

    Important to this effort is the fact that Franklin saved a lot of his correspondence specifically for the sake of posterity. As a result we have perhaps a more complete collection of what historians like to call “primary sources” of materials than for any other Founding Father. What’s more, Franklin didn’t just dash off quick notes; he treated them like miniature works of art and crafted their composition. This came in handy when he edited the first draft of the Declaration of Independence. It was his suggestion that the phrase “We hold these truths to be self-evident” whereas Jefferson had described them as “sacred and undeniable.”

    The full text of Franklin’s letter can be found here.

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  • Taking Canada’s Temperature–March 5, 1776

    Cover art for March 5, 1776: Charles Carroll by Michael Laty. Created 1846, making this a posthumous portrait.

    So here’s a fun story about Charles Carroll. As I’ve mentioned many times before, lots and lots of place names in Baltimore have strong historical connections and Charles Carroll is no exception.

    There is, of course, a Carroll Street, which starts in the southeast neighborhood of Morrell Park. It doesn’t go quite through that neighborhood though; it gets broken up by a couple of blocks’ worth of houses and resumes again. There’s another break as a railroad right-of-way comes through—but there’s no train crossing; the road just terminates. Carroll Street resumes (we’re still in Morrell Park) on the other side, however, before it’s interrupted yet again.

    Now as I understand it, this particular part of the neighborhood was wiped out completely by Hurricane Agnes in the early 1970s, so the rebuild was kind of haphazard. Plus, I-95 was first constructed through this part of Baltimore City around this time, so you have to jump almost 3500 feet before Carroll Street resumes again.

    But now you’re not in a residential neighborhood; it’s series of warehouses and industrial buildings for a stretch until it gets back into a residential neighborhood known as Pigtown, so called because on Market days, pigs would be led through the streets to the market for sale and eventual slaughter. Carroll Street meets with Cross Street in that neighborhood, and that’s the northern terminus.

    However.

    There’s an elementary school in the area that’s also named after Charles Carroll. It’s not on Carroll Street (of course) but is about two blocks away, in Pigtown. Now, remember, Charles Carroll was a lawyer, or a “barrister” as the old-timey types like to say. So Elementary School #34 is officially “Charles Carroll, Barrister Elementary School”. Except everybody forgets the comma is there and says it like one long name. And chances are, they think there was a guy actually named Charles Carroll Barrister somewhere in history.

    And wasn’t that a long walk for a short drink of water.

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  • Arrest of a Franklin–January 28, 1776

    Cover art for January 28, 1776: Portrait of William Franklin, 1790, attributed to Mather Brown. via Wikimedia.
    Portrait of William Franklin, 1790, attributed to Mather Brown. via Wikimedia.

    It used to be rumored that Benjamin Franklin had over 30 children out of wedlock, but that’s since been debunked. (And there goes a perfectly good “lightning rod” joke.)

    But William Franklin was considered illegitimate, though he was raised by his father and his common-law wife Deborah Read. There are some breadcrumbs here and there that lead some historians to believe that Deborah was, in fact, William’s mother, but nothing thick enough exists to confirm that.

    At any rate, William was one of the last great Loyalists, and while his arrest and move to Connecticut was alluded to in the play 1776, it didn’t quite happen the way it was described there. Or at the time the viewer was led to believe. Tune in to get the real story from Mike.

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  • Ben Franklin Analyzes the Snake–December 27, 1775

    Cover art for December 27, 1775: the Gadsden Flag, featuring a rattlesnake warning people away.
    Yeah, I cheated and used the same image from last week.

    While he didn’t use a rattlesnake, Benjamin Franklin was the guy who came up with the original “Join or Die” snake image [right]back in 1754. (At least most people give him credit for it.)

    It was based in a superstition that if you cut up a snake into pieces and then reassembled those pieces before sunset, the snake could be resurrected. In 1754, during the French and Indian War, Delaware was part of Pennsylvania and New England’s four colonies were simply grouped together. Georgia was altogether omitted and nobody knows why.

    At any rate, it’s only fitting that when the Gadsden Flag, which we talked about in the December 20th episode, made its debut, Franklin was the one who took the time to opine on why a snake was so appropriate; what’s more why a rattlesnake was the best choice. He published an essay in a local newspaper under a pen name, but his identity was figured out anyway.

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  • Congress Has A Busy Day–November 6, 1775

    Cover art for November 6, 1775: portrait of John Langdon by Hattie Elizabeth Burdette, 1916.

    There are going to be days when no truly big events happen, but that wasn’t going to stop the Second Continental Congress from getting stuff done.

    Today we have a bit of an image of that group as a bunch of men who are hard-drinking philosophers, ready—and maybe eager—to burst into fisticuffs, or perhaps the occasional song, depending on where you got your impressions.

    So for that reason, we do like to remind you that the Continental Congress, for all their weird little squabbles, was a serious group of men. They took their jobs seriously, and put a lot of thought into everything they did. They often put in long hours, working until after darkness fell many days, and they typically worked six days a week.

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  • September 18, 1775: A Secret Committee

    Cover art for September 18, 1775: Theplaque in Carpenter's Hall (Philadelphia) designating the location where the Committee of Secret Correspondence met with Julien Alexandre Achard de Bonvouloir.

    The Committee of Secret Correspondence is one of those names that sounds like they should be on Double Secret Probation or something. However, when you look at their purpose, the name makes sense.

    The Committee of Secret Correspondence was formed to seek out support from other nations. They reached out to France, Spain, and a few others to get supplies, food, munitions…pretty much anything they could get. Oftentimes they had to use a third party to give everyone plausible deniability.

    And fortunately, their tactics were mostly successful.

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  • July 26, 1775: Mailing It In

    Cover art for July 26, 1775: a 2006 stamp commemorating Benjamin Franklin as postmaster, one of over 130 stamps with his image on them.

    When the US Postal Service first began, it couldn’t even be called that, since there wasn’t a US yet. There was, of course, a postal service, but it was the Crown Post and it was subject to interception and investigation, and we really couldn’t have that and a revolution, now could we?

    In fact, there were competing services to the Crown Post, but there were also gaps in that service and general inefficiencies. For instance, most services transported parcels at a lower rate than letters. So, people worked around the rule by attaching letters to small, mostly empty parcels just to save money. One service, run by a man named Benjamin Mumford, carried both Royal Mail and that of his own service, which was cheaper than the King’s rates.

    About the artwork: that’s a picture of a 2006 stamp issued commemorating Ben Franklin’s tenure as the first Postmaster General. It’s marked “B. FREE FRANKLIN” because that’s how he often signed his name while in that position. Why? Because as the Postmaster General, he had franking privileges and didn’t have to pay his own postage. It was a privilege he took great advantage of.

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  • July 15, 1775: Breakin’ the Law With Impunity

    Cover art for July 15, 1775: Portrait of Silas Deane by William Johnston, 1766.

    If you’re going to be in rebellion, you may as well do something rebellious.

    Thus was (presumably) the reasoning behind Ben Franklin putting forth a resolution that the Colonies would effectively ignore a ban on the importation of weapons and gunpowder to the Colonies.

    And while we’ve mentioned numerous times that the Congress doesn’t seem to do a lot more than form various Committees, again we need to stress that these were serious men, who gave serious thought to whatever they presented to the larger group, because they knew that any votes had to be unanimous. They took the job with great gravity, and in fact worked long hours. And in Philadelphia in the summer time…that is no joke, my friend. I mentioned it in a Baltimore context during the show, but remember that these cities aren’t very far apart, and thus have similar climates.

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  • April 14, 1775: America’s First Abolitionists

    Cover art for April 14, 1775: the official medallion of the British Anti-Slavery Society. Artist unknown, but this was produced as a Jasper-ware cameo by artisans at Wedgewood Pottery.

    (Note: it’s in the alt text for the image, but in the interest of broader accuracy and general transparency, we know that this artwork isn’t the symbol for an American abolitionist society but rather a British one. But this is one of those cases where the story works better than the truth, and we found it to be a powerful image that underlines the intent of the tale. In short, let it go this once, OK?
    –CC)

    It might come as a surprise to you that societies dedicated to the elimination of slavery in America came about as early as this, especially inasmuch as we had other things on our mind, such as the largest army in the world putting us in their sights. It might also come as a surprise that the one that came first in America, exists still, but with a different focus. Tune in and learn their story.

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  • March 22, 1775: Edmund Burke Gives Parliament His Thoughts

    Cover art for March 22, 1775: Edmund Burke addresses the House of Commons, by CJ Staniland, date unknown

    A quick note on the cover art: this may be the first time I (Claude) happened to match the side banner with the background of the webpage exactly.

    As we’ve noted in the past, Benjamin Franklin and Edmund Burke were good friends who worked together to come up with a solution that would get the Colonies and the Crown back into each others’ good graces.

    Now that we think about it, Franklin was good friends with many people on both sides of the Atlantic, and now we’re wondering if he was just one of those guys to whom you take an instant liking without knowing quite why.

    At any rate, by this point the two men had to concede that it was far too late to prevent further escalation, and they were right. Burke took the time to address Parliament on this day, and let them all know just what a mistake they’d made.

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