{"id":3523,"date":"2021-09-27T17:50:28","date_gmt":"2021-09-27T17:50:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-117pinsker\/?page_id=3523"},"modified":"2021-09-27T19:42:19","modified_gmt":"2021-09-27T19:42:19","slug":"franklin-adams-and-world-affairs","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-117pinsker\/franklin-adams-and-world-affairs\/","title":{"rendered":"Franklin, Adams and World Affairs"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Franklin\"<\/a>“[John Adams] told his friend Benjamin Rush in 1790, that his role in the Revolution would never be properly recognized.\u00a0 The essence of the Revolution, he moaned, ‘will be that Dr. Franklin’s electrical rod smote the earth and out sprung General Washington.\u00a0 That Franklin electrified him with his rod –and thence forward these two conducted all the policy, negotiation, legislatures and war.'” (Wood, p. 175)<\/h3>\n

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\"Adams\"<\/a>“But no one summed up Adams’s character better than Franklin, who famously described him as a man who ‘means well for his Country, is always an honest Man, often a Wise One, but sometimes and in some things, absolutely out of his senses.'” (Wood, p. 177)<\/h3>\n

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FRANKLIN & THE STAMP ACT CRISIS (1765)<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Tarring\"<\/a>

British print from 1774 depicting tarring and feathering<\/p><\/div>\n

YAWP:\u00a0<\/strong><\/em> “<\/strong>Resistance to the Stamp Act took three forms, distinguished largely by class: legislative resistance by elites, economic resistance by merchants, and popular protest by common colonists.” (Chap. 5, Sec. III<\/a>)<\/p>\n

WOOD: <\/strong>“<\/em>[Franklin] told [Philadelphia stamp collector John] Hughes to remain cool in the face of the mobbings.\u00a0 ‘A firm Loyalty to the Crown and faithful Adherence to the Government of the Nation …’ he said, ‘will always be the wisest Course for you and I to take, whatever may be the Madness of the Populace or their blind Leaders.'” (p. 80)<\/p>\n

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US-FRENCH ALLIANCE (1778-1783)<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Franklin<\/a>YAWP:\u00a0 <\/strong><\/em>“The Continental Army defeated Burgoyne\u2019s men at Saratoga, New York.41 This victory proved a major turning point in the war. Benjamin Franklin had been in Paris trying to secure a treaty of alliance with the French. However, the French were reluctant to back what seemed like an unlikely cause. News of the victory at Saratoga convinced the French that the cause might not have been as unlikely as they had thought. A Treaty of Amity and Commerce was signed on February 6, 1778. The treaty effectively turned a colonial rebellion into a global war….” (Chap. 5, Sec. V<\/a>)<\/p>\n

WOOD:\u00a0<\/strong><\/em> “<\/strong>Despite these difficulties, [Franklin] succeeded admirably.\u00a0 He was the greatest diplomat America has ever had.\u00a0 Not only did he bring the monarchy of Louis XVI into the war on behalf of the new Republic, but during the course of that long war he extracted loan after loan from an increasingly impoverished French government. No other American could have done what he did … It was Franklin’s genius to know what the French wanted from him and to play his part to perfection.\u00a0 He dressed in a simple brown and white linen suit and wore a fur cap, no wig, and no sword at Versaille, the most elaborate and protocol-ridden court in all of Europe.\u00a0 And the court and the French nobility loved it.” (p. 87)<\/p>\n