Compare And Contrast Benjamin Franklin And The American Dream
Benjamin Franklin and the American Dream
Allan Kulikoff, University of Georgia
Americans refer to their Founding Fathers (Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas
Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams) with extraordinary frequency: a July
2006 Google search turned up 61.4 million references to Washington, 24.8 million to Franklin, 20.4 million to Jefferson, 19.2 million to Madison, 10.8 million to John Adams, and 4.6 million to
Hamilton. They call upon them in to settle political debates: the Iraq war, free trade, taxes, religious liberty, immigration reform. They rip them, historian Gordon Wood comments, “out of their historical context, tear them out of their time and place, in order to make them part of our …show more content…
In London, he aped the richest aristocrats: he rented a four-story house; hired a carriage; bought wigs, expensive linen, swords, and silver buckles; and sent home silk cloth, English china, and a harpsichord. Like other would-be aristocrats, he had his portrait painted (Figures 2-4), sitting repeatedly for painters and sculptors, so much so that he became “perfectly sick of it,” tired of the tedium of “sitting hours in one fix’d Posture.”28
In London, the paintings show, he puts on aristocratic airs, wearing the right wigs and expensive clothing. No tools of the printer’s trade (a printer’s measure or apron) appear in them. In
1762, Mason Chamberlin portrayed a be-wigged Franklin, sitting at his desk during a thunderstorm, quill pen in hand, a manuscript nearby, working on a scientific experiment (Figure 2). Outside his his window, a storm destroys a house and a steeple. Franklin’s chimney sports a lightening rod; he listens to hear the two bells (near his chair in the top left corner) attached to the rod ring when lightening strikes. A year later, he made a replica of the painting for William Franklin, Benjamin’s son; the painting later served as the
Kulikoff, Franklin and the American
Allan Kulikoff, University of Georgia
Americans refer to their Founding Fathers (Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas
Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams) with extraordinary frequency: a July
2006 Google search turned up 61.4 million references to Washington, 24.8 million to Franklin, 20.4 million to Jefferson, 19.2 million to Madison, 10.8 million to John Adams, and 4.6 million to
Hamilton. They call upon them in to settle political debates: the Iraq war, free trade, taxes, religious liberty, immigration reform. They rip them, historian Gordon Wood comments, “out of their historical context, tear them out of their time and place, in order to make them part of our …show more content…
In London, he aped the richest aristocrats: he rented a four-story house; hired a carriage; bought wigs, expensive linen, swords, and silver buckles; and sent home silk cloth, English china, and a harpsichord. Like other would-be aristocrats, he had his portrait painted (Figures 2-4), sitting repeatedly for painters and sculptors, so much so that he became “perfectly sick of it,” tired of the tedium of “sitting hours in one fix’d Posture.”28
In London, the paintings show, he puts on aristocratic airs, wearing the right wigs and expensive clothing. No tools of the printer’s trade (a printer’s measure or apron) appear in them. In
1762, Mason Chamberlin portrayed a be-wigged Franklin, sitting at his desk during a thunderstorm, quill pen in hand, a manuscript nearby, working on a scientific experiment (Figure 2). Outside his his window, a storm destroys a house and a steeple. Franklin’s chimney sports a lightening rod; he listens to hear the two bells (near his chair in the top left corner) attached to the rod ring when lightening strikes. A year later, he made a replica of the painting for William Franklin, Benjamin’s son; the painting later served as the
Kulikoff, Franklin and the American