Summary
Franklin's adventure with the militia was only the beginning
of his long and powerful political career. On October 4, 1748,
he was elected to the town council of Philadelphia. The next year
he was appointed a justice of the peace (responsible for enforcing
the laws). In May 1751, he was elected to the Pennsylvania assembly. He
had been a clerk in the assembly since 1736, and was familiar with
how it worked. As a result, he quickly rose to power and influence.
On August 10, 1753, he was appointed as a deputy postmaster general
of North America.
By the early 1750s, Pennsylvania's frontier was in trouble
again. The colonists had pushed the Indians from their land, sometimes killing
them in the process. As white settlers pushed further west, the
Indians started to fight back more forcefully. They did so with the
help of French soldiers, who supplied guns. Franklin believed that
in order for the colonies to effectively protect their frontiers, they
needed to unite. On May 4, 1754, Franklin published an essay arguing
for unification. With the essay he published a drawing showing a
snake cut into pieces. The caption under the picture read "JOIN
OR DIE." This, probably America's first political cartoon in a
newspaper, later became an important symbol of the United States.
In the summer, Franklin attended a meeting of the colonies called
by the British government to work out a common defense for the
frontier. At the meeting, Franklin proposed a plan for the colonies
to unite; on July 10, after a week of debate, the meeting voted to
approve his plan. Unfortunately, the governments of the colonies rejected
the plan their own representatives had created. Though the Albany
Plan of Union, as it was called, never came into being, it introduced
the idea of a continental union to many people and would later
be a model for the Articles of Confederation.
By 1755, Britain was at war with France over America.
The frontier was again in danger. Franklin organized another militia
and this time took charge. In January of 1756 he led 500 soldiers
to the frontier and built a fort before being called back to Philadelphia
for an important meeting. While he was away, his troops elected
him colonel, but before he could return, the Board of Trade (the
branch of the British government responsible for the colonies)
disbanded the militia, fearing that it was too democratic. Long
before Franklin became a revolutionary, he was already scaring
the British.
In 1757, representing the Pennsylvania assembly, Franklin
sailed to England. His assignment was to convince the British government to
allow the Pennsylvania assembly to tax the colony's "proprietors."
These people, many of whom lived in Britain, owned large amounts
of land in Pennsylvania. They had inherited the land from William
Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, and had little interest in helping
the people actually living in the colony. When Franklin met the
king's minister to present Pennsylvania's case, he realized that almost
no one, from the king to the average Londoner, understood very
much about life in America. Frustrated, Franklin began writing
essays and pamphlets describing Americans and defending their complaints
against the British government. In 1760, after a series of meetings
and arguments, Franklin finally won. The British allowed Pennsylvania
to tax the proprietors.
Commentary
One of the most remarkable things about Franklin was his
sense of being an American. Born and raised as a Boston Puritan,
he probably grew up feeling that the New World was somehow different–and
morally superior–to the Old. Yet most of his contemporaries, especially
Bostonians, identified themselves with their colony first and Britain
second. They rarely, if at all, thought of themselves as American.
By the time of the Revolutionary War, however, many colonists believed
in the idea of a united, indivisible America.
In the time between Franklin's birth and his death, Americans experienced
a dramatic change in their sense of who they were. Franklin was
ahead of the curve: he came to see himself as an American earlier
than almost anyone else. Through his writings and his actions–especially
the pioneering Albany Plan of Union–he introduced the idea of a
uniquely American identity to many of his contemporaries. Historians
today often credit Franklin with being the first to express this
unique identity. Today we take it for granted that people from
Louisiana, Idaho, and Vermont are all Americans. During the 1750s,
though, the idea of a single American identity–let alone a politically unified
country–was radically new. In this sense, Franklin was a patriot
long before there was even a country for which to feel patriotism.
