Benjamin Franklin's Beliefs

Benjamin Franklin lived an eventful life. He used literature to broadcast the vast amount of wisdom he had accrued throughout his life. His life began in Boston, Massachusetts as one of seventeen children by Josiah Franklin. Josiah wanted his son to enter into the clergy, but could not afford this route. Benjamin, after a year of school, began to apprentice his brother James, a printer. He loved to read and write so his education would be furthered through his ambition. His brother had started the first American based newspaper The New England Courant. Ben began to write under the alias Silence Dogood, a fictional widow, because his brother would never let him write for the paper. He would begin to write advice columns, which would later

Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America was a comedic work that flipped the outlook on how colonists should view Native Americans. He wanted his readers to reevaluate their relationship with Native Americans. He would refer to the colonists as the savages and the Native Americans as being sophisticated. Historically, Franklin had helped negotiate with the Indians during the French and Indian War. His protests against the Paxton massacre, where the victims were innocent Indian women and children, went unheard. He began the piece stating, “Savage we call them, because their manners differ from ours, which we think the perfection of civility; they think the same of theirs” (“Baym”). He wanted to get through to the colonists that perception is all in the eye of the beholder and that virtue is not bestowed onto any certain race. The Paxton massacre had many Indian victims who had even converted to Christianity. Franklin, thus, argues that the white Christians were the savages in this context. He would also go on to praise the Indian way of life compared to their own, “The Indian men, when young, are hunters and warriors; when old, counselors; for all their government is by counsel for the sages; there is no force, there are no prisons, no officers to compel obedience, or inflict punishment” (“Baym”). Even going on to point out that white civilians had gone on to live amongst the Indians, yet

The wise man had his entire life to contemplate from. The first part of Franklin’s Autobiography was intended to be a self-help book for his son, William. He begins part one of his Autobiography telling his son, “Now imagining it may be equally agreeable to you to know the Circumstances of my Life, many of which you are yet unacquainted with” (“Baym”). He would go on to recount the early accounts of his life to his son. It was beneficial to show his son the struggles he had to endure to achieve the great success that he would go on to have. Ben Franklin can be seen as a man who never failed to help others. Other than through his literature, Franklin would go on to aid other through inventions, politics, science,