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Benjamin Franklin and the American Enlightenment America's revolutionary leaders, though wary o f excessive personal ambition, were nevertheless acutely conscious o f their claim to fame with posterity. Tll'hat they sought had little in cornlnon ~vith celebrit!., the fame we associate with Britney Spears, Posh Spice, or Donald Trump; indeed, it was nearly its antithesis. T h e pursuit o f fame, in the eighteenthcentur !- meaning o f that ~vord, had a d!-narnic qualit!-, encouraging one to make history, to leave the mark o f one's deeds and ideals on the TI-orld. h d unlike the momentan glories o f celebrity, fame, as historian Douglass Adair has noted, Tcas thought to be "rnore public, rnore inclusive , looking to the largest human audience, horizontally in space and vertically in time." As things turned out, many o f America's revolutionary leaders achieved their goal: they have been elerated to a stature, at least within Anlerica, that transcends the individual details o f their day-to-day lives as mere mortals and have been made to serve as models o f virtue and correct behavior for subsequent generations o f Americans. T h e primary exemplar has o f course been George Tllhshington;raised to the stature o f a deity in the American corlscio~~sness even before his death, as the nineteenth centur!- progressed, he Tcas elevated even higher. Tll'hether in the schoolbook homilies o f Parson Tll'eems or the hagiographic biography penned by Chief Justice John Marshall in 1832, Tll'ashington emerged in the American cor~scio~~sness as larger than life, a figure, in English historian Marcus Cunliffe'sTI-ords, "entombed in his own myth, a metaphorical Washington monument." ThomasJefferson,though his claim to enduring fame took longer to establish, is now presented to us in almost equally imposing fashion. I f TVashington is the American "Cincinnatus"-the heroic citizen TI-110 trades the p1o~1-share for the STI-ord TI-hen liberty is threatened-then Jefferson has become the philosopher statesman, the intellectual leader o f 146 Richard R. Beeman the revolutionary experiment. Though in recent !-ears there has been Inore emphasis on sorne of Jefferson's more obviousl!- human qualities -the speculations, now perhaps confirmed by DNA evidence, about his relationship ~vithhis mulatto slave Sally Henlings being the most obvious example-it is the force of his intellect that causes him to endure in the public mind. Benjarnin Franklin, no less than Washington andJefferson, was consistently preoccupied ~vithposterity's views of his life and accornplishments . As early as 1728, when he was just beginning his career as a printer, he took advantage of his skill in his trade to compose one of Anlerica's most famous epitaphs: The bod!- of B. Franklin, Printer: Like the cover of an old Book, Its Contents torn out, And stript of its Lettering and Gilding, Lies here, Food for Tllbrrns, But the Mhrk shall not be wholly lost: For it will, as he believ'd, appear once more, Corrected and amended By the Author. Thejob of revising and amending the plan of his life could be a constant one for Franklin. In his multiple roles as printer, politician, scientific investigator, humorist, and, nlost self-consciously, autobiographer, Franklin would work all his life to ensure that his fame would be lasting. Unlike those of his contemporaries Tllhshington andJefferson, ho~vever, Franklin's public image-in the eighteenth centur!- as ~vell as the tlventyfirst -is neither austere nor forbidding. Indeed, the historical Franklin seems not only more accessible to posterity but also more affable. This accessibility and affability-in part the consequence of a sense of humor thatJefferson, in particular, lacked-have ensured Franklin's popularity wit11 subsequent generations of Americans, ~vhile,in a peculiar ~vay, detracting from his fame. There are, after all, ilnposirlg rnonurnents in the nation's capital to Tllhshington and Jefferson-a to~vering353-foot obelisk someho~~representative of Washington's forcef~~l but impersonal presence in our historical consciousness and a miniature replica of the Pantheon in Rome s!-mbolizing Jefferson's dual role as republican citizen and philosopher-but none to Franklin. Rather than appearing heroic, Franklin has tended to be presented as onp of us-the embodiment of many of our aspirations and our failings as Anlericans. Benjamin Franklin and the Anlerican Enlightennlent 147 0111. best-known images of Franklin reinforce our sense of both his character and that of the !-oung American societ!- in ~vhich he lvas...

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