CliffsNotes on Franklin's The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

Cliff Notes

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• eBook ISBN: 9780544179769
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Study Aids
• Subtopic: Study Guides

Part 1: Section 1: Franklin’s Family Background

Summary

Franklin begins by stating five reasons for writing his Autobiography. First, since he has always enjoyed anecdotes about his ancestors, he hopes his own life story will interest his son. Second, since he was a poor boy who found fame and fortune, he hopes his story will provide others with a good model to imitate. Third, since he can’t relive his life as he would like to do, he will relive it through memories, and by recording the memories, make his life durable. Fourth, his writing will allow him to reminisce without boring any listeners. And fifth, his account will gratify his vanity.

He first sketches a brief family history. The English Franklins lived for as far back as records went in the same Northamptonshire village, on their 30-acre property. Benjamin’s grandfather Thomas had four sons, the eldest of whom, also named Thomas, followed the family trade as a blacksmith, and was also a scrivener (a scribe and notary), and a public leader. John and Benjamin, the two middle sons, were trained as dyers, though Benjamin, his namesake records, was also a poet, politician, and inventor of a shorthand system. Josiah, the youngest of these four brothers, immigrated to Boston with a group seeking greater religious freedom. Josiah had 17 children by two wives, and named his youngest son Benjamin after his brother.

Young Benjamin’s parents were both religious. His mother, Abiah Folger, came from a devout family of early New England settlers, while the Franklins had been known in England for their Protestant steadfastness. Josiah Franklin planned that Benjamin should be a clergyman, the “tithe” of his sons. To prepare him for this vocation, Josiah sent Benjamin to grammar school for a year, but withdrew him after deciding that a clergyman’s training was too expensive, especially since ministers were often so poorly paid. Instead, Benjamin was sent to a writing and arithmetic school where he failed arithmetic twice (though he later learned it on his own). But after two years of formal schooling, 10-year-old Benjamin was brought home to help in the family business of making candles and soap.

Young Franklin disliked the chandler’s trade and longed to go to sea. He excelled in water sports, but once led several playmates into trouble because of such pastimes. He persuaded the boys to steal some large stones amassed to build a new house, and use them instead for a fishing wharf. When reprimanded by his father, young Ben defended himself by pleading that he had made something practical. But his father convinced him that nothing was useful which was not honest.

Ben’s father, Josiah Franklin, who lived to the age of 89, was talented at drawing, music, and mechanical tasks, and was publicly recognized for his excellent judgment. At mealtime, for example, he provided conversation to instruct his children. The family paid little attention to food, a habit Franklin found advantageous when he later traveled extensively without ever feeling inconvenienced by poor fare.

Since Josiah feared young Benjamin would run away to sea if made to continue in the family trade, the father and son walked together around Boston to see “Joiners, Bricklayers, Turners, Braziers” at work and to observe what kind of task most appealed to the boy. Franklin felt this experience was most useful to him later, since it taught him how to do little jobs for himself, how to construct the machines he would later use for his experiments, and how to admire a workman doing his job well. Finally, because of Benjamin’s love of reading, Josiah apprenticed him to his brother James, a printer.

Analysis

From the first line, Franklin’s Autobiography illustrates the complex character of the man who wrote it, not only through the facts it states but also through the attitudes it reveals. The productive tension in Franklin’s nature between the lighthearted and the earnest is evident by the end of the first paragraph. While Franklin starts his account as a paternal (and presumably chatty) letter to his son, he soon begins the formal statement about his worthy purposes—the rationalizations for the work to follow—which one expects of highly serious eighteenth-century treatises. But after presenting three respectable reasons for writing, Franklin appends two frivolous ones, and by doing so gently mocks the literary conventions he follows. Thus from the beginning we glimpse a man who accepts reasonable and recognized rules, but keeps a playful spirit alive while doing so.

Part 1: Section 2: The Apprentice

Summary

At the age of 12, Benjamin reluctantly signed an indenture contract, to work without pay (except for his last year of service) until he was 21. But he learned his printing house duties quickly, and much more besides. From friends apprenticed to booksellers, he was able to borrow books that he read throughout many nights. And under the encouragement of his brother, he learned to compose ballads about local topics and peddle them successfully around the streets. His father made fun of the verses, and discouraged Benjamin from writing poetry, since poets usually made so poor a living.

Most important, however, Benjamin learned at this time to write effective prose. His lessons began when he engaged in a running, written argument with his friend John Collins about the plausibility of educating women, a scheme Franklin favored. When Benjamin’s father read the letters and pointed out that his son’s writing lacked elegance and clarity, Benjamin resolved to improve it. First he tried imitating the Spectator papers. He would jot down the ideas of articles, then after a few days write the ideas out in his own sentences, which he would compare with the originals. He wrote verse in order to increase his awareness of words, and turned stories into verse and back again in order to gain writing practice. He would also jumble an essay’s statements, then after several weeks try unscrambling them to increase his sense of structure.

When 16, Benjamin became a vegetarian and volunteered to board himself for half what his brother was currently paying. He soon found that by eating frugally, he could save half the amount his brother gave him, and could use the money to buy books. Then while his brother and the other apprentices were eating, he could use the extra time for study.

One book that influenced the boy at this time was an English rhetoric that included an illustration of “the Socratic Method.” Charmed by Socrates’ approach to conversation, Benjamin began to practice drawing people out as Socrates had done, avoiding any direct contradictions of their opinions. He soon grew adept at trapping his opponent through ostensibly irrelevant questions. He pretended to be “the humble Enquirer and Doubter,” and found the method particularly good in religious arguments. Though he stopped using this method after awhile, he always tried to express himself with Socrates’ “modest Diffidence,” for he found the manner convinced others to follow his wishes far better than dogmatic assertiveness.

Around 1720, Benjamin’s brother began to print a newspaper called the New England Courant. Young Benjamin secretly contributed articles that were praised by James’s friends, and thought to be the work of some prominent citizen. When Benjamin announced himself the author, however, James decided that the praise would make his apprentice conceited.

The two brothers did not get along. Benjamin particularly resented James’s beatings. After James was imprisoned for a month because of a newspaper article offensive to the Assembly, however, Benjamin printed in the Courant several remarks that were critical of the government. So when James was released, he was ordered to stop printing his newspaper. James decided to circumvent this injunction by making Benjamin the official printer. But because Benjamin could not serve legally while he was his brother’s apprentice, the two agreed that Benjamin’s contract would be returned publicly, a private agreement on the old terms to be substituted in secret. Soon an argument allowed Benjamin to take advantage of his brother’s public act by refusing to work for him. In effect, he cheated James of four years of free labor, an act Benjamin later declared “one of the first Errata of my Life.” James’s revenge was to prevent Benjamin from getting a job at any other printing-house in Boston.

At this point, Benjamin decided to try his luck in New York, the nearest town boasting printers. Since he could get no work, had made political enemies in the Assembly, and had been labeled an atheist in the town, he felt it judicious to leave Boston. But he feared that his father might prevent his leaving, because he was only 17; so he slipped away secretly, telling a ship’s captain that he was fleeing friends of a girl he had got pregnant but did not wish to marry.

Analysis

In this section and throughout the Autobiography, Franklin takes an understandable pride in his own accomplishments, and an unapologetic stance about his faults. He gives God conventional perfunctory thanks for leading him to his successes, but never professes that he was unworthy of the blessings Providence gave him. If God led him to the means he used for achieving success, Franklin makes clear, those means were still fashioned by his own ingenuity. The point suggests a fact about Franklin which one must remember in order to understand the man’s astonishing range of achievements: above all, Franklin accepted himself gladly, believing himself capable of grasping any good thing, if he worked hard enough for it. And this acceptance of himself included not only his talents but also his flaws. His mistakes he calls, significantly, his “errata,” a printer’s term for typographical errors. The choice of words indicates that Franklin did not think in terms of sins, or moral lapses, or personal inadequacies. Rather, he found some past actions, when considered objectively and impersonally, to be unfortunate deviations from the popular standard. As the Autobiography goes on to point out, Franklin felt that many of his errata were later cancelled by other actions that fairly compensated for them. Though he seemed to regret not being perfect from the beginning (and later formulated a scheme for arriving at perfection in 13 weeks), he apparently wasted little energy agonizing over irremediable mistakes.

Part 1: Section 3: The Arrival in Philadelphia

Summary

In New York, Benjamin applied for work to a printer, William Bradford, who advised him to go to Philadelphia, where Bradford’s son Andrew, also a printer, had recently lost his helper; so Benjamin started by boat to travel the 100 miles to Philadelphia. On the way, a squall tore up sails and drove Benjamin’s boat off course. A drunk Dutchman fell overboard, and Franklin had to fish him out of the water. Unable to land on Long Island, the passengers had to sleep in the boat all night, drenching wet, without food to eat or water to drink. Finally safe in Amboy the next day, Franklin grew feverish, but drank plenty of water and sweated his fever away through the night, then proceeded toward Burlington, 50 miles away, by foot. By noon he was rain-soaked, exhausted, and uncomfortably aware that people suspected him of being a runaway. At Burlington, Franklin sighted a boat going to Philadelphia and caught a ride, but then had to row all the way, besides spending a cold night on the riverbank.

When finally a dirty, tired, and hungry Benjamin arrived at Philadelphia on Sunday morning, he had only a Dutch dollar and a copper shilling left. He gave the shilling to the boat owners with whom he had rowed up the river, and later observed that a man is “sometimes more generous when he has but a little Money than when he has plenty, perhaps thro’ Fear of being thought to have but little.” He found his way to a bakery and, the bread being different from that sold in Boston, asked for three pennies-worth of any kind of bread. Given three great puffy rolls, he had no choice but to carry one under each arm and the third in his hands to eat. So he strolled through the streets, passing his future wife who thought he made “a most awkward ridiculous Appearance.” He followed some cleanly dressed people into the Quaker meetinghouse but slept through the service until someone woke him at the end. So the first house in Philadelphia he either entered or slept in was the church. After the service, he found respectable accommodations and slept all day and night, waking only to eat at mealtime.

On Monday morning Benjamin visited the printer Bradford and found that Bradford’s father had arrived by horseback. So William Bradford of New York was able to introduce Franklin properly to his son. The son had already hired a helper, but suggested that Franklin contact a rival printer, and offered to board him until he should find work. Then, escorted by old Bradford, Franklin went to meet his future employer. The new printer, Keimer, promised Franklin work, but made a bad impression by indiscreetly discussing his business with Mr. Bradford, not realizing that the old man was his rival’s father. Franklin discovered that Keimer owned only the most outworn equipment. Furthermore, he was composing an elegy directly into type as he devised verses in his head. Both Philadelphia printers appeared to Benjamin to be unequipped for their profession, since Bradford was “very illiterate,” and Keimer knew nothing of how to run a press. Keimer disliked his employee’s living at his rival’s house, so he arranged for Franklin to move into the Read home, where Benjamin met his future wife.

Franklin’s brother-in-law, Captain Robert Holmes (Homes), master of a sloop trading between Boston and Delaware, landed forty miles from Philadelphia, heard of Benjamin’s whereabouts, and wrote urging him to return home. Answering, Franklin defended his leaving Boston, and Holmes showed the letter to Sir William Keith, Governor of the Province. Keith was impressed and stated that so promising a young man should be encouraged to begin a printing business in Philadelphia, where he would soon receive all the public business of the Assembly. One day Keith and a friend knocked on Keimer’s door and asked for Franklin, whom they invited to accompany them to a nearby tavern. Over Madeira, the two encouraged Benjamin to set up his own business, and promised him their aid. Keith also offered to write a letter asking Benjamin’s father to back the proposed printing shop financially. So Franklin decided to return to Boston on the first boat, in the meantime keeping his plans secret but dining occasionally with the governor.

Analysis

Franklin states why he gives the details about his difficult journey to Philadelphia and his disreputable-looking appearance when entering the city: “I have been the more particular in this Description of my journey, and shall be so of my first Entry into that City, that you may in your mind compare such unlikely Beginnings with the Figure I have since made there.” One factor in the earlier figure as well as that later figure Franklin cut, to which he fails to give just due, is his unusual personal presence which apparently could favorably impress others almost immediately. Though Sir William Keith, the most dramatic example in this section, began to champion Franklin after encountering him only through a letter, the passage abounds with references to people, both humble and proud, who seemed to love Franklin on first sight. William Bradford of New York, a complete stranger, was enough impressed with young Benjamin to undertake the arduous trip to Philadelphia at least partially on Franklin’s behalf. Bradford’s son Andrew immediately...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contents
• Copyright
• Book Summary
• About The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
• Character List
• Summary and Analysis
• Part 1: Section 1: Franklin’s Family Background
• Part 1: Section 2: The Apprentice
• Part 1: Section 3: The Arrival in Philadelphia
• Part 1: Section 4: A Young Man about Town
• Part 1: Section 5: The First Trip to England
• Part 1: Section 6: Preparations to Enter Business
• Part 1: Section 7: First Prosperity
• Part 2: Section 8: Continuation of the Account. . . . Begun at Passy 1784
• Part 2: Section 9: Planned Perfection
• Part 3: Section 10: Accounts Written at Philadelphia, 1788
• Part 3: Section 11: First Involvements with Public Affairs
• Part 3: Section 12: A Militia and a College
• Part 3: Section 13: Philadelphia Politics
• Part 3: Section 14: Colonial Diplomacy
• Part 3: Section 15: General Braddock and Preparations for War
• Part 3: Section 16: The Military Leader and Scientist
• Part 3: Section 17: Trouble with Loudoun
• Part 4: Section 18: Assembly Agent in England
• Critical Essays
• Franklin’s Writing Style
• Franklin’s Humor
• Franklin and the American Dream
• Franklin and the Spirit of Capitalism
• Critical Opinions of The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
• Study Help
• Quiz
• Essay Questions