CHAPTER II THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 1765-1815 11. Benjamin Franklin, 1706-1790. was an electric shock to the colonists. The Stamp Act to be ruled for the benefit of the mother country, for that was the custom of the age; but this Act they believed to be illegal, and it aroused all their Anglo-Saxon wrath at injustice. There was small inclination now to write religious poems or histories of early days. Every one was talking about the present crisis. As time passed, orations and political writings flourished; and satires and war songs had their place, followed by lengthy poems on the assured greatness and glory of America. At the first threat of a Stamp Act, Pennsylvania had sent one of her colonists to England to prevent its passage if possible. This emissary was Benjamin Franklin, a Boston boy who had run away to Philadelphia. There he had become printer and publisher, and was widely known as a shrewd, successful business man, full of public spirit. He spent in all nearly eighteen years in England as agent of Pennsylvania and other colonies. On one of his visits home he signed the Declaration of Independence. Almost immediately he was sent to France to secure French aid in our Revolutionary struggles. Then he returned to America, and spent the five years of life that remained to him in serving his country and the people about him in every way in his power. Such a record as this is almost enough for one man's life, but it was only a part of Franklin's work. He specialized in everything. His studies of electricity gained him honors from France and England. Harvard, Yale, Edinburgh, and Oxford gave him His versatility. honorary degrees. He invented, among other things, the lightning-rod and the Franklin stove. He founded the Philadelphia Library, the University of Pennsylvania, and the American Philosophical Society. He it was who first suggested a union of colonies, and he was our first postmaster-general. His motto seems to have been, "I will do everything I can, and as well as I can." When he was a boy in Boston, he wrote a ballad about a recent shipwreck, which sold in large numbers. "Versemakers are usually beggars," declared his father; and the young poet wrote no more ballads, for he intended to "get on in life. A little later, he came across an odd volume of The Spectator, and was delighted with its clear, agreeable style. "I will imitate that," he said to himself; so he took notes of some of the papers, His literary rewrote the essays from these, and then compared his work with his model. After much of this practice, he concluded that he "might in time come to be a tolerable English writer.” aims. The hardworking young printer had but a modest literary ambition, but it met with generous fulfilment; for if he had done nothing else, he would have won fame by his writings. These consist in great part of essays on historical, political, commercial, scientific, religious, and moral subjects. He had studied The Spectator to good purpose, for he rarely wrote a sentence that was not strong and vigorous, and, above all, clear. Whoever reads a paragraph of Franklin's writing knows exactly what the author meant to say. His first liter Poor Richary glory came from neither poem nor essay, nac, 1732but from Poor Richard's Almanac, a pamphlet 1757. which he published every autumn for twenty-five years. It was full of shrewd, practical advice on becoming well-todo and respected and getting as much as possible out of life. The special charm of the book was that this advice was put in the form of proverbs or pithy rhymes, every one with a snap as well as a moral. ing a friend, slower in changing." ard's Alma "Be slow in choos"Honesty is the best Autobio gun 1771. policy." "Great talkers are little doers." "Better slip with foot than tongue." "Doors and walls are fools' paper." Such was the tone of the famous litgraphy, be- tle Almanac. Another of his writings, and one that is of interest to-day, is his Autobiography, which he wrote when he was sixty-five years of age. In it nothing is kept back. He tells us of his first arrival in Philadelphia, when he walked up Market Street, eating a great roll and carrying another under each arm; of his scheme for attaining moral perfection by cultivating one additional virtue each week, and of his surprise at finding himself more faulty than he had supposed! The selfrevelation of the author is so honest and frank that the book could hardly help being charming, even if it had been written about an uninteresting person; but written, as it was, about a man so learned, so practical, so shrewd, so full of kindly humor as Benjamin Franklin, it is one of the most fascinating books of the century. 12. Revolutionary oratory. Franklin's Autobiography was never finished, perhaps because the Revolution was at hand and there was little time for reminiscences. The minds of men were full of the struggles of the present and the hopes of the future. Most of the oratory James Otis, of the time is lost. We can only imagine it 1725-1783. from the chance words of appreciation of those who listened to it. There was Otis, whom John Adams called "a flame of fire." There was Richard Henry Lee, the quiet thinker who blazed into the eloHenry Lee, quence of earnestness and sincerity, the man who dared to move in Congress, "that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states." There was Patrick Henry, that other Virginian, who began to speak so shyly and stumblingly that a listener fancied Richard 1732-1794. Patrick 1736-1799. him to be some country minister a little taken aback at addressing such an assembly. But soon that assembly was thrilled with his ringing "I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" 13. Political writings. Those writers who favored peace and submission to England are no longer remem |