Benjamin Franklin's Last Bet

The Favorite Founder's Divisive Death, Enduring Afterlife, and Blueprint for American Prosperity

Michael Meyer

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9780063268562
• eBook ISBN:
  9781328569110
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Biografie in ambito storico

The incredible story of Benjamin Franklin’s parting gift to the working-class people of Boston and Philadelphia—a deathbed wager that captures the Founder’s American Dream and his lessons for our current, conflicted age.

Benjamin Franklin was not a gambling man. But at the end of his illustrious life, the Founder allowed himself a final wager on the survival of the United States: a gift of two thousand pounds to Boston and Philadelphia, to be lent out to tradesmen over the next two centuries to jump-start their careers. Each loan would be repaid with interest over ten years. If all went according to Franklin’s inventive scheme, the accrued final payout in 1991 would be a windfall. 

In Benjamin Franklin’s Last Bet, Michael Meyer traces the evolution of these twin funds as they age alongside America itself, bankrolling woodworkers and silversmiths, trade schools and space races. Over time, Franklin’s wager was misused, neglected, and contested—but never wholly extinguished. With charm and inquisitive flair, Meyer shows how Franklin’s stake in the “leather-apron” class remains in play to this day, and offers an inspiring blueprint for prosperity in our modern era of growing wealth disparity and social divisions.

This surprising story of a Founding Father’s enduring vision explores:

• A Founding Father’s Last Gamble: How Benjamin Franklin’s deathbed wager of two thousand pounds was designed to benefit the working class of Boston and Philadelphia for two full centuries.
• An Epic of Economic History: The fascinating, often-contested journey of Franklin’s twin funds as they are misused, neglected, and adapted through two hundred years of American progress, from the age of silversmiths to the space race.
• The Birth of Philanthropy: A deep dive into the founder’s blueprint for American prosperity, revealing a unique vision for tackling wealth disparity long before it became a national conversation.
• Legacy and the American Dream: An inspiring look at how one man’s stake in the “leather-apron” class remains in play today, offering a powerful lesson on what it means to build a lasting legacy.

Notes

ABBREVIATIONS

APS: American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia.

BCA: Boston City Archives.

BFP: Benjamin Franklin Papers.

LOC: Library of Congress.

MHS: Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.

NA: National Archives.

PCA: Philadelphia City Archives.

PSA: Pennsylvania State Archives.

Most of the Franklin citations can be found in The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, a series of forty-three volumes published since 1959 by Yale University Press. Its invaluable website, FranklinPapers.org, allows users to search the massive haystacks of Franklin’s correspondence by date, name, or phrase. I found many sought-for needles there and discovered more that I did not know existed. Documents found in this archive that were written by Franklin, including his wills, are cited in the notes without his name. References to letters to and from Franklin include only the correspondent’s name, not Franklin’s. Other letters include both correspondents’ names.

Another trove of correspondence can be found at Founders Online — Founders.Archives.gov. In addition to listing all the published and unpublished materials that I mined, the bibliography includes a list of newspapers, along with the full names of court cases involving Franklin’s will, as well as collections of papers.

Introduction: All About the Benjamins

“account of the universal”: Letter to John Bartram, Jan. 11, 1770, BFP.

Packets of Chinese rice: Letter to John Bartram, Oct. 17, 1772, BFP.

scored the margins: “Notes on Reading an Account of Travel in China,” 1762, BFP.

“the Wise and Brave”: Poor Richard Improved, 1751, BFP.

“Benjamins”: The term appears on the 1994 Notorious B.I.G. album Ready to Die; Puff Daddy and the Family popularized it further in their 1997 song “It’s All About the Benjamins.”

From London in 1774: Letter to Richard Bache, Sept. 30, 1774, BFP.

“Intrigues with low Women”: Franklin, Autobiography, p. 52.

selling enslaved men and women: One such notice read: “A likely young Negro Fellow, about 19 or 20 Years of Age, to be disposed of: He is very fit for Labour, being us’d to Plantation Work, and has had the Small-Pox. Enquire of the Printer hereof.” May 11, 1732, BFP.

“the Mother”: The author was the cave-dwelling dwarf Benjamin Lay. Lay, p. 106.

at the time: Rather than obfuscating his grandfather’s slave owning, Temple Franklin placed on the first page of a volume of Benjamin’s collected papers a letter from Franklin to his mother about an incident involving two slaves at his home. “We conclude to sell them both,” the letter ended, “for we do not like Negro Servants. We got again about half what we lost.” Letter to Abiah Franklin, Apr. 12, 1750, BFP.

“a King of England”: Letter to James Lovell, Oct. 17, 1779, BFP.

submitted the first petition: For the original document, see “Benjamin Franklin’s Anti-Slavery Petitions to Congress,” Center for Legislative Archives, NA, https://www.archives.gov/legislative/features/franklin. Franklin did not write the text, but he signed it. See Letter from James Pemberton, Feb. 5, 1790, BFP.

“In order to secure”: Franklin, Autobiography, p. 50.

“I have frequently”: Poor Richard Improved, 1758, BFP.

“Do not make it”: Letter to [John Franklin], Dec. 25, 1750, BFP.

“Silk,” he wrote: Pennsylvania Gazette, Oct. 19, 1752. The experiment took place in June. Joseph Priestley’s book The History and Present State of Electricity was published in 1767.

“I Sopose you See”: Letter from Jane Mecom, Nov. 11, 1788, BFP.

“sacred and undeniable”: For the draft, see “Thomas Jefferson: Declaration of Independence,” LOC, https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/jeffdec.html. For a pithy account of the Declaration’s editing process, see Isaacson, pp. 309–313.

“A republic”: The exchange may be apocryphal. See “Creating the United States: ‘Monarchy or a Republic?,’” LOC, http://www.loc....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Introduction: All About the Benjamins
• Act I: Death, 1789–1791
• Act II: Afterlife, 1791–1904
• Act III: Rebirth, 1904 and Beyond
• Acknowledgments
• Time Line of Benjamin Franklin’s Life and Afterlife
• Bibliography
• Notes
• Index
• About the Author
• Also by Michael Meyer
• Copyright
• About the Publisher