So lately I've been plowing through a great, fat biography of Benjamin Franklin called The First American. Not that I'm a great reader of such things (well, I did read a lot about the Civil War) but I simply needed something to keep the brain occupied. I went to the library and browsed in the biography section and voila! The book looked well written and interesting.
These days I pull the huge, doorstop-sized volume out when trying to fall asleep, or after I awake in the middle of the night and can't fall back to sleep. Not good to have something too exciting for that purpose. Or I read it on my lunch hour, or whatever.
The book, written by some Texas professor dude named Brands, is for me a review and/ or explication of material from high school and college. (As an English major I was required to take two semesters of American History but the only things I remember about it are the following: (1) I liked the teacher and thought he was funny but also had an awareness he wasn't a very good teacher and (2) one comment the professor made. It concerned the idea, propounded by some, that slaves in the South actually were happy. "A lot of those slaves hated their masters so much" he said, "they were prepared to murder them in their beds." Quite funny, the way he said it. Well, you had to have been there...)
In fact, this book about Franklin actually helps me understand, as if for the first time, much of the reason for the American Revolution. Franklin was quite the genius, a "polymath" as they say, full of wisdom, practical action, good humor, and good character. He also loved the Brits and in the years preceding the war wanted to go back and live among the many brilliant scientists, philosophers, and what have you who absolutely adored him. But then, to make a long story short, he learned late in the game that some Brits could be absolute jerks when in charge, and his revolutionary dander became roused.
The book shows, I should add, how Franklin had had to deal with some other haughty British jerks before the revolution--the descendants of the William Penn family who still had proprietary rights in Pennsylvania. That, thinks the author, was a warm up to the time the penny dropped and Franklin realized his great heroes--the king and those in charge of Parliament--in fact were in the same category as the Penns. People that were, we would say in the vernacular, complete and total, well, jerks. (A stronger word would apply here, but this being a family blog...)
Ah but the book is balanced and Brands emphasizes that not all Brits were cut from the same cloth, that many supported the colonials, and that it was the British concepts of law and liberty that were the foundation and impetus for the Revolution. Americans didn't feel they were receiving their full rights as Englishmen, got right ticked off, and then violent. (I realize that some revisionist historians are now saying that there really wasn't sufficient ground for the Americans to rebel, that it was wrong, even unChristian, if you will. But that's another kettle of fish.)
So I see this blog has headed in a completely unforeseen direction, but there you go. Who knows where things might lead once I sit before the glowing screen on a cold Saturday afternoon in Calgary?
These days I pull the huge, doorstop-sized volume out when trying to fall asleep, or after I awake in the middle of the night and can't fall back to sleep. Not good to have something too exciting for that purpose. Or I read it on my lunch hour, or whatever.
The book, written by some Texas professor dude named Brands, is for me a review and/ or explication of material from high school and college. (As an English major I was required to take two semesters of American History but the only things I remember about it are the following: (1) I liked the teacher and thought he was funny but also had an awareness he wasn't a very good teacher and (2) one comment the professor made. It concerned the idea, propounded by some, that slaves in the South actually were happy. "A lot of those slaves hated their masters so much" he said, "they were prepared to murder them in their beds." Quite funny, the way he said it. Well, you had to have been there...)
In fact, this book about Franklin actually helps me understand, as if for the first time, much of the reason for the American Revolution. Franklin was quite the genius, a "polymath" as they say, full of wisdom, practical action, good humor, and good character. He also loved the Brits and in the years preceding the war wanted to go back and live among the many brilliant scientists, philosophers, and what have you who absolutely adored him. But then, to make a long story short, he learned late in the game that some Brits could be absolute jerks when in charge, and his revolutionary dander became roused.
The book shows, I should add, how Franklin had had to deal with some other haughty British jerks before the revolution--the descendants of the William Penn family who still had proprietary rights in Pennsylvania. That, thinks the author, was a warm up to the time the penny dropped and Franklin realized his great heroes--the king and those in charge of Parliament--in fact were in the same category as the Penns. People that were, we would say in the vernacular, complete and total, well, jerks. (A stronger word would apply here, but this being a family blog...)
Ah but the book is balanced and Brands emphasizes that not all Brits were cut from the same cloth, that many supported the colonials, and that it was the British concepts of law and liberty that were the foundation and impetus for the Revolution. Americans didn't feel they were receiving their full rights as Englishmen, got right ticked off, and then violent. (I realize that some revisionist historians are now saying that there really wasn't sufficient ground for the Americans to rebel, that it was wrong, even unChristian, if you will. But that's another kettle of fish.)
So I see this blog has headed in a completely unforeseen direction, but there you go. Who knows where things might lead once I sit before the glowing screen on a cold Saturday afternoon in Calgary?
posted by Ted | 1:30 PM
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