The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin

ACCLAIM FOR H. W. BRANDS’
The First American

“A vivid portrait of the 18th-century milieu and of the 18th-century man…. [Brands is] a master storyteller.”

—The Christian Science Monitor

“A thorough biography of Benjamin Franklin, America’s first Renaissance man…. In graceful, even witty prose … Brands relates the entire, dense-packed life.”

—
The Washington Post

“A comprehensive, lively biography…. The largest, most detailed Franklin biography in more than sixty years…. [Brands] is a skilled narrator who believes in making good history accessible to the non-specializing book lover, and the general reader can read this book with sustained enjoyment.”

—
The Boston Globe

“Supremely readable…. Deserves unstinting praise…. A fine example of a particular type of historical writing, the presentation of history as narrative…. Brands shows [Franklin] in lively detail at each stage of his life…. An excellent history.”

—
The London Free Press

“A rousing, first-rate life of a Founding Father…. Brands is the best sort of popularizer…. [He] adds flesh to a hallowed ghost, and the result is that the reader admires Benjamin Franklin all the more. Superb.”

—
Kirkus Reviews
(starred review)

“Engaging…. Brands is a skilled biographer…. [He] deftly fills in the contours of Franklin’s extraordinary life.”

—
The Star-Ledger
(Newark, New Jersey)

“A fluid, clear, and nicely paced book…. Enjoyable to read.”

—
The Weekly Standard

“Stunning…. Brands, with admirable insight and arresting narrative, constructs a portrait of a complex and influential man … in a highly charged world…. [He] does an excellent job of capturing Franklin’s exuberant versatility as a writer who adopted countless personae … that not only predestined his prominence as a man of letters but also as an agile man of politics.”

—
Publishers Weekly
(starred review)

“Stirring and eloquent.”

—
The News & Observer
(Raleigh, North Carolina)

“Worthwhile reading on an American worth remembering.”

—
BookPage

“A humanizing biography that enhances … the founding fathers’ greatness.”

—
Sun-Sentinel
(Fort Lauderdale)

“Eminently readable…. [Brands] create[s] an absorbing portrait of the 18
^th
-century world that was the backdrop—and the stage—for America’s multidimensional journalist, inventor, diplomat, propagandist, moralist, humorist, and revolutionary.”

—
Library Journal
(starred review)

“A logical choice for anyone who wants to learn about Franklin’s life.”

—
The Oregonian

“Informative…. Brands writes in a clear, lively, novelistic style and is especially good at revealing Franklin, the living, breathing, flawed human being.”

—
Book

“Highly praised…. A frank account of the remarkable Renaissance man.”

—Gene Shalit, NBC
Today

“A delightful mosaic…. Brands gives new life to the mythic hero we thought we already knew.”

—
American History

H. W. BRANDS
The First American

H. W. Brands is Distinguished Professor and Melbern G. Glasscock Chair of History at Texas A&M University. He is the author of many books, among them
T.R.: The Last Romantic,
the critically acclaimed biography of Theodore Roosevelt;
The Reckless Decade: America in the 1890s;
and
The Strange Death of American Liberalism.
He lives in Austin, Texas.

ALSO BY H. W. BRANDS

The Strange Death of American Liberalism

The Selected Letters of Theodore Roosevelt
(editor)

Critical Reflections on the Cold War: Linking Rhetoric and History
(editor, with Martin J. Medhurst)

The Use of Force after the Cold War
(editor)

Beyond Vietnam: The Foreign Policies of Lyndon Johnson
(editor)

Masters of Enterprise: Giants of American Business from John Jacob Astor and J. P. Morgan to Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey

What America Owes the World: The Struggle for the Soul of Foreign Policy

T.R.: The Last Romantic

Since Vietnam: The United States in World Affairs, 1973–1995

The Wages of Globalism: Lyndon Johnson and the Limits of American Power

The Reckless Decade: America in the 1890s

The United States in the World: A History of American Foreign Policy

Into the Labyrinth: The United States and the Middle East, 1945–1993

The Devil We Knew: Americans and the Cold War

Bound to Empire: The United States and the Philippines

Inside the Cold War: Loy Henderson and the Rise of the American Empire, 1918–1961

India and the United States: The Cold Peace

The Specter of Neutralism: The United States and the Emergence of the Third World, 1947–1960

Cold Warriors: Eisenhower’s Generation and American Foreign Policy

Contents

PROLOGUE: JANUARY 29, 1774

1.
BOSTON BEGINNINGS: 1706–23

2.
FRIENDS AND OTHER STRANGERS: 1723–24

3.
LONDON ONCE: 1724–26

4.
AN IMPRINT OF HIS OWN: 1726–30

5.
POOR RICHARD: 1730–35

6.
CITIZEN: 1735–40

7.
ARC OF EMPIRE: 1741–48

8.
ELECTRICITY AND FAME: 1748–51

9.
A TASTE OF POLITICS: 1751—54

10.
JOIN OR DIE: 1754–55

11.
THE PEOPLE’S COLONEL: 1755—57

12.
A LARGER STAGE: 1757–58

13.
IMPERIALIST: 1759–60

14.
BRITON: 1760–62

15.
RISING IN THE WEST: 1762–64

16.
STAMPS AND STATESMANSHIP: 1764–66

17.
DUTIES AND PLEASURES: 1766–67

18.
REASON AND RIOT: 1768–69

19.
THE RIFT WIDENS: 1770–71

20.
TO KICK A LITTLE: 1772–73

21.
THE COCKPIT: 1774–75

22.
REBEL: 1775–76

23.
SALVATION IN PARIS: 1776–78

24.
BONHOMME RICHARD: 1778–79

25.
MINISTER PLENIPOTENTIARY: 1779–81

26.
BLESSED WORK: 1781–82

27.
SAVANT: 1783–85

28.
HOME: 1785–86

29.
SUNRISE AT DUSK: 1786–87

30.
TO SLEEP: 1787-90

EPILOGUE: APRIL 17, 1990

SOURCE NOTES

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Prologue
January 29, 1774

Humiliation was the purpose of the proceeding. It was the outcome eagerly anticipated by the lords of the Privy Council who constituted the official audience, by the members of the House of Commons and other fashionable Londoners who packed the room and hung on the rails of the balcony, by the London press that lived on scandal and milled outside to see how this scandal would unfold, by the throngs that bought the papers, savored the scandals, rioted in favor of their heroes and against their villains, and made politics in the British imperial capital often unpredictable, frequently disreputable, always entertaining. The proceeding today would probably be disreputable. It would certainly be entertaining.

The venue was fitting: the Cockpit. In the reign of Henry VIII, that most sporting of monarchs in a land that loved its bloody games, the building on this site had housed an actual cockpit, where Henry and his friends brought their prize birds and wagered which would tear the others to shreds. The present building had replaced the real cockpit, but this room retained the old name and atmosphere. The victim today was expected to depart with his reputation in tatters, his fortune possibly forfeit, his life conceivably at peril.

Nor was that the extent of the stakes. Two days earlier the December packet ship from Boston had arrived with an alarming report from the royal governor of Massachusetts, Thomas Hutchinson. The governor described an organized assault on three British vessels carrying tea of the East India Company. The assailants, townsmen loosely disguised as Indians, had boarded the ships, hauled hundreds of tea casks to deck, smashed them open, and dumped their contents into the harbor—forty-five tons of tea, enough to litter the beaches for miles and depress the company’s profits for years. This rampage was the latest in a series of violent outbursts against the authority of Crown and Parliament; the audience in the Cockpit, and in London beyond, demanded to know what Crown and Parliament intended to do about it.