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Runaway America: Benjamin Franklin, Slavery, and the American Revolution
Scientist, abolitionist, that is the Benjamin Franklin we know and celebrate. To this description, the talented young historian David Waldstreicher shows we must add runaway, slave master, and empire builder. But Runaway America does much more than revise our image of a beloved founding father. Finding slavery at the center of Franklin's life, Waldstreicher proves it was likewise central to the Revolution, America's founding, and the very notion of freedom we associate with both. Franklin was the sole Founding Father who was once owned by someone else and was among the few to derive his fortune from slavery. As an indentured servant, Franklin fled his master before his term was complete; as a struggling printer, he built a financial empire selling newspapers that not only advertised the goods of a slave economy (not to mention slaves) but also ran the notices that led to the recapture of runaway servants. Perhaps Waldstreicher's greatest achievement is in showing that this was not an ironic outcome but a calculated one. America's freedom, no less than Franklin's, demanded that others forgo liberty. Through the life of Franklin, Runaway America provides an original explanation to the paradox of American slavery and freedom.
336 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 2004
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About the author
David Waldstreicher
22 books26 followersDavid Waldstreicher, editor, is Distinguished Professor of History at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, and the author of Slavery’s Constitution: From Revolution to Ratification (2009); Runaway America: Benjamin Franklin, Slavery, and the American Revolution (2004); and In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making of American Nationalism, 1776–1820 (1997). As editor, his books include A Companion to John Adams and John Quincy Adams (2013).
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 5, 2015
Review title: Franklin revised--again
Recently I read and reviewed the pre-publication Poor Richard's Lament, a fantasy-fiction account of Founding Father Ben's eternal accounting for his misdeeds in heavenly court; I rated the book +1 on lunch.com's -5 to +5 scale, for its interesting but uneven revisionist take on Franklin's redemption, and need for it. As fictionalized biography, I was disappointed that Poor Richard's author Fitzgerald didn't include any notes or bibliography.
If he had, I suspect that David Waldstreicher's Runaway America would have made the list, as this book deals with Franklin's tortured nuancing of the language and events of his life justified his actions while doding the difficult contradictions it represented, none more so than Big Ben's position on slavery. While not condemnatory, Walstreicher is certainly frank about Franklin's chicanory, while providing the economic, racial, and political background of why such nuancing of meaning (if not outright duplicity) was necessary for Franklin to thrive in his self-appointed pre-Revolutionary roles of loyal colonial servant, independence-minded unionizer, Enlightenment scientist, and ambitious entrepreneur. In dealing with Franklin's position on slavery, unlike many historians who focus primarily on Franklin's later anti-slavery positions in his writings and political roles, Walstreicher spends the greater part of the book looking through Franklin's entire adult life and placing his position on slavery in the context of his role as a runaway apprentice and struggling young businessman gathering his capital in the form of his own apprentices, indentured servants, and yes, slaves. Here, Waldstreicher conflates the later roles as "unfree" labor, and argues that both were equivalent for Franklin's purposes as a capitalist (as both Franklin and Waldstreicher set aside the moral aspects of race-based slavery as long as they could).
But as the American colonies grew stronger economically and started to unite politically against the common enemies of the inland French first and then the imperial English, Franklin had to deal with the obvious contradictions between liberty for white colonists and slavery for their black property (as British press, politicians, and population made great rhetorical hay on the issue). In Waldstreicher's view, Franklin had to choose between three ways of thinking about "American" colonists:
1. Fellow citizens in common identity with British citizens
2. Foreigners who were still part of the British empire
3. Outlanders like the Irish and Scots who were neither citizens nor enemies, but semi-conquered people with carefully-balanced political rights.
And there were three ways of dealing with race slavery:
1. Embracing racial justifications for slavery (Waldstreicher makes the claim without argument or attribution that "race was not the absolute or biological category it became later in the nineteenth century." )
2. Retaining British national identity for white colonists, but excluding blacks--a position of such obvious contradictory nature that it provided an easy place for the British to drive a wedge of separation.
3. Holding that slaves and slave labor was unimportant in mainland America and in any case declining.
Runaway America is interesting history, and certainly after reading Fitzgerald's fiction I can see how both authors rightly balance the simplified and sanitized view of Franklin as Poor Richard and unblemished Founding Father. WaldStreicher's writing is often dense and difficult to follow along the logical trail. While the book is mercifully short, it might have been better served if the author had taken a step back and added more pages and chapters at a higher level of abstraction explaining the arguments that are to follow and setting them into contexts that are easier for the nonprofessional historian to follow. But either way, if you have an interest in understanding the full Franklin, this would make a good pairing with Poor Richard's Lament
Recently I read and reviewed the pre-publication Poor Richard's Lament, a fantasy-fiction account of Founding Father Ben's eternal accounting for his misdeeds in heavenly court; I rated the book +1 on lunch.com's -5 to +5 scale, for its interesting but uneven revisionist take on Franklin's redemption, and need for it. As fictionalized biography, I was disappointed that Poor Richard's author Fitzgerald didn't include any notes or bibliography.
If he had, I suspect that David Waldstreicher's Runaway America would have made the list, as this book deals with Franklin's tortured nuancing of the language and events of his life justified his actions while doding the difficult contradictions it represented, none more so than Big Ben's position on slavery. While not condemnatory, Walstreicher is certainly frank about Franklin's chicanory, while providing the economic, racial, and political background of why such nuancing of meaning (if not outright duplicity) was necessary for Franklin to thrive in his self-appointed pre-Revolutionary roles of loyal colonial servant, independence-minded unionizer, Enlightenment scientist, and ambitious entrepreneur. In dealing with Franklin's position on slavery, unlike many historians who focus primarily on Franklin's later anti-slavery positions in his writings and political roles, Walstreicher spends the greater part of the book looking through Franklin's entire adult life and placing his position on slavery in the context of his role as a runaway apprentice and struggling young businessman gathering his capital in the form of his own apprentices, indentured servants, and yes, slaves. Here, Waldstreicher conflates the later roles as "unfree" labor, and argues that both were equivalent for Franklin's purposes as a capitalist (as both Franklin and Waldstreicher set aside the moral aspects of race-based slavery as long as they could).
But as the American colonies grew stronger economically and started to unite politically against the common enemies of the inland French first and then the imperial English, Franklin had to deal with the obvious contradictions between liberty for white colonists and slavery for their black property (as British press, politicians, and population made great rhetorical hay on the issue). In Waldstreicher's view, Franklin had to choose between three ways of thinking about "American" colonists:
1. Fellow citizens in common identity with British citizens
2. Foreigners who were still part of the British empire
3. Outlanders like the Irish and Scots who were neither citizens nor enemies, but semi-conquered people with carefully-balanced political rights.
And there were three ways of dealing with race slavery:
1. Embracing racial justifications for slavery (Waldstreicher makes the claim without argument or attribution that "race was not the absolute or biological category it became later in the nineteenth century." )
2. Retaining British national identity for white colonists, but excluding blacks--a position of such obvious contradictory nature that it provided an easy place for the British to drive a wedge of separation.
3. Holding that slaves and slave labor was unimportant in mainland America and in any case declining.
Runaway America is interesting history, and certainly after reading Fitzgerald's fiction I can see how both authors rightly balance the simplified and sanitized view of Franklin as Poor Richard and unblemished Founding Father. WaldStreicher's writing is often dense and difficult to follow along the logical trail. While the book is mercifully short, it might have been better served if the author had taken a step back and added more pages and chapters at a higher level of abstraction explaining the arguments that are to follow and setting them into contexts that are easier for the nonprofessional historian to follow. But either way, if you have an interest in understanding the full Franklin, this would make a good pairing with Poor Richard's Lament
May 17, 2012
Waldstreicher attempts to link two gigantic subjects: Benjamin Franklin and slavery. While this pays off in the discussion of the final third of Franklin's life, the first two sections of the book feel a little forced. He does challenge the historiography with his argument that anti slavery existed prior to the Revolution, and that along with the final section make it a book worth reading, although the argument is dense.
May 4, 2011
This was an interesting account of Benjamin Franklin and slavery. I found it a little too detailed for me and tended to drift away during the reading.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews