Profiles in Character: Benjamin Franklin Defines Civic Virtue for an Emerging America
On April 21, 1790, eighty-four-year-old Benjamin Franklin was laid to rest at Philadelphia’s Christ Church. As the Federal Gazette reported: “The concourse of spectators was greater than ever was known on a like occasion . . . not less than 20,000 persons attended” in a city of 28,000. Born in Boston in 1706, indentured to his brother as a printer’s apprentice at age 12, Franklin legally fled his indenture in 1723 to the city that became his and emerging America’s home town. From there he launched a civic, scientific and political career that shaped the destiny of a nation.
At a time when religious doctrine dominated private and public life, Franklin eschewed his father’s hope he would be a minister. Divine revelation “had no weight with me,” he said. What counted was serving God by helping others.
At 21, he founded the “Leather Apron Club,” a group of local tradesmen dedicated to mutual respect, free thought, learning and serving. The group, also called the Junto, launched a wide range of public services, many designed by Franklin. An early achievement was the creation of America’s first subscription library in 1731 at a time before there were taxpayer-funded libraries. The Library Company of Philadelphia still exists.
Through the Junto, Franklin advanced proposals for a tax to pay for local watchmen, a volunteer fire department (1736) and the first nonsectarian college in America (1751) which today is the University of Pennsylvania. In 1769, he created the still-existing American Philosophical Society (1734) designed to foster "philosophical Experiments that . . . tend to increase the Power of Man over Matter, and multiply the Conveniences or Pleasures of Life." He served as its president – and its American membership would later include such figures as George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison.
Most people recall Franklin for his experiments with electricity and creating the rod that harnessed lighting to avoid fires. His other scientific pursuits were also focused on practical applications, such as a wood-burning stove that minimized smoke, the first urinary catheter, a treatise on the Cause of Colds (arguing they were due to contagion not cold air) and bifocals. Franklin refused to patent his inventions, explaining that: “As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and thus we should do so freely and generously.”
Franklin also became America’s first postmaster general, uniting its colonies and then its new states through improvements that dramatically cut the time for delivering mail.
Franklin dispensed wisdom for living a good life as well as inventing ways to do so. He believed in frugality, tolerance, hard work and the use of reason. He championed the “common man” and his ability to advance society through working hard and good works. “America was creating a society,” he said, where someone whose only distinction was to be considered “a mere man of Quality” should be “despised and disregarded” when compared to those who used work and skill to help others.
His moral values appeared not just as homespun wisdom in Poor Richard’s Almanac but in his behavior in public service. The list of qualifications for officeholders in Pennsylvania’s first Constitution, which Franklin shaped as president of its convention, included “a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, industry and frugality.” Franklin served his state and country and was the only founder present at the signing of all four of the nation’s creating documents: the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty with France to secure its help in the Revolutionary War, the Peace Treaty with Great Britain and the U.S. Constitution.
Franklin’s civic virtue was not without blemish. He avoided the issue of slavery until 1787. Yet in that year he accepted the presidency of the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery. While he refused to present a petition against slavery at the Constitutional Convention, he did do so to the very First Congress in 1790, shortly before his death.
At a time when religious toleration was not yet enshrined in American culture, Franklin practiced it. He contributed to the building of houses of worship in Philadelphia for every sect, including for the Jewish Congregation, Mikveh Israel. During a July 4th celebration in 1788, which he was too sick to attend, the leaders of Christian and Jewish congregations honored his ecumenism by passing arm-in-arm under his window. They would walk together again during his funeral procession.
Not content to end his civic patriotism with his death, Franklin bequeathed 1,000 pounds each (over $100,000 in today’s dollars) to the cities of Boston and Philadelphia in trust to earn interest for 200 years. Those funds have supported local residents in need, scholarships for high school students and a trade school, the Franklin Institute in Boston.
Franklin made many of his civic contributions before Washington, Jefferson and other founders appeared on the scene. His life represented for a new nation his belief that “A good example is the best sermon.”
Photo Credit: - Ben Franklin by Joseph-Siffred Duplessis-commons.wikimedia.org
