Isaacson's larger argument that Franklin was the protagonist of a distinctively middle-class transformation takes its cue from Gordon Wood, in particular his book The Radicalism of the American Revolution (1991). While leftists will have an important demurrer to enter at some of the claims made, many will recognize the old Marxist notion of the "bourgeois democratic revolution," alive and kicking notwithstanding the toil of sundry historical revisionists. In fact, it is difficult to make overall sense of much modern history if one discards this concept. Such major recent books as Robert Brenner's Merchants and Revolution, John Markoff's The Abolition of Feudalism and even, in a different way, Francis Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man all fall into place only if we see in them the moving spirit of bourgeois revolution. Since Marx himself borrowed the concept (from Guizot, the Orleanist statesman and historian, and Abbé Sieyès, the revolutionary of 1789, who insisted that the future belonged to the "Third Estate"), leftists cannot really complain that it has been reappropriated by partisans of neoliberalism.

The problem with the concept is that bourgeois revolutions were more hybrid and flawed than the theory allowed. It wasn't just that many bourgeois lacked the courage of the revolutionaries. It was also that the early, burgeoning capitalist order was deeply indebted to practices, such as slaveholding and Indian removal, that were not at all liberal or democratic.

Franklin in his later life became a critic of slavery, but Morgan, author of the classic American Slavery, American Freedom, registers better than Isaacson both Franklin's racial assumptions and the mildness of his opposition to slavery. Thus Isaacson cites antislavery remarks made by Franklin in letters to Benjamin Rush and Anthony Benezet without noting that he was not exactly breaking new ground by chiming in with the well-known views of these two early abolitionists. Nevertheless, by the late 1780s, Franklin did have a keen sense that a revived slavery would compromise the future of the young Republic.

This also has a bearing on Isaacson's claim that the US Constitution has been "the most successful ever written," a claim that would, if true, belie Franklin's own profound reservations at the time. Franklin favored proportional representation and a single representative chamber, and consequently at first opposed the power conferred on the President and the setting up of the Senate. He was one of the few to challenge the clauses giving special treatment to slaveholders and also to insist that the federal government ought to be able to tax the rich more heavily than the poor. While he had forebodings, his eventual and reluctant support for the compromises of 1787 was motivated by his view that, like other human arrangements, it was provisional and temporary, and could soon be improved on, and when he did at last publicly take up the slavery issue it was to underline this fact. So the ongoing project to sacralize the Constitution is not a Franklinian enterprise. While we cannot possibly know what Franklin would have made of the Civil War, with its 600,000 dead, it scarcely ranks as a triumph for the Constitution. Likewise the sustained exclusion and oppression of African-Americans and Native Americans, and the lack of restraint on imperial adventures.

America's "middle-class revolution" took an inordinately long time to deliver on its promise and imposed heavy costs even when it did so. Often its genuine successes owed much to numbers of obscure individuals who will not have biographies written about them. Franklin's own representations in the courts of Europe required such backing, and sometimes helped to shape his views. Franklin tolerated British tax proposals until the protests of the patriot mob taught him otherwise. For the spirit of popular rebellion we need to consult books like The Many-Headed Hydra (2000), by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, rather than these biographies. But we should not forget that the momentous sweep of Atlantic revolution involved an interaction. Sometimes Franklin's disdain for the mob was commendable--for example, his denunciation of the Indian-killing "Paxton Boys." At other times he strongly endorsed the radical democratic impulse, as when he backed Paine in the writing and publication of Common Sense or when he supported the contention at the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention that "an enormous Proportion of Property vested in a few Individuals is dangerous to the Rights, and destructive of the Common Happiness, of Mankind; and therefore every free State hath a Right by its Laws to discourage the Possession of such Property."

These lives of Franklin are most valuable if read as part of a broader history. Both show that Franklin clung to his own notion of empire as a union of equals until almost the very end. But they also show that as the choice between empire and independence was posed, and despite having reached the age of 69, Franklin threw himself wholeheartedly into the anti-imperial struggle. After all, so much of his life and work had reflected a belief in self-determination and in the notion that people are elevated by their own efforts. As the first country to defy modern empire becomes the last to practice imperial rule, the legacy of Franklin acquires a new message, and becomes subversive all over again.

• « Previous
• 1
• 2
• 3

• Get The Nation at home (and online!) for 75 cents a week!
• If you like this article, consider making a donation to The Nation.