by Linda Sunkle-Pierucki

Created on: July 07, 2008   Last Updated: May 04, 2012

Many names echo through the recesses of American history: those of Presidents, and generals and battles and events. Within many of these events, one name continually appears and reappears at the periphery of our recorded history. That name is Benjamin Franklin. Known mostly to school children as a portly figure in a tri-corner hat, holding a kite string in a thunderstorm with a key attached, Franklin has been done a dis-service in our failure to recognize his contributions both to improving the lot of the common citizen and the creation of this great nation and it attendant freedoms.

Ben Franklin was the epitome of the self-made man. Born far less than wealthy into a family of seventeen children, his father a candle-maker, young Ben was raised a Puritan in Boston where he grew up near the Old South Church. History has been less than kind to the Puritan religion; however Franklin worked to weave the most basic principles of Puritanism into the very fabric of the Colonies, such as government by consent of the governed, Constitutionalism, The Rule of Law, Separation of Powers and Checks and Balances, Fundamental Human Rights and Due Process and Separation of Church and State.

Franken's father desired that Ben become a clergyman but could not afford the conventional schooling required. Ben, for his part, found mathematics a less than favored subject. With only two years of formal schooling, Ben was never an uneducated man. He states in his autobiography that he can not remember when he didn't know how to read. As was common in those times, there was no doubt much effort at home-schooling occurring in most households and the Franklins appear to have been, like most Puritans, very concerned with the ability to read and write so as to better interpret the Scriptures. Ben was therefore apprenticed to his brother James, a printer. To the end of his life, Franklin signed his documents, B Franklin, printer.

Franklin prospered as a printer and writer, having conceived and printed a series of anonymous compositions under the pseudonym, Silence Dogood addressed as letters to his brothers' newspaper without his brother's knowledge. These letters poked fun at the pompous and monied wealthy citizens and those attending nearby Harvard in particular. Once his authorship was known, townspeople began to look to young Franklin as an intellectual and budding leader. Later, after moving to Philadelphia-a move necessitated by a falling-out with his brother- and writing under another

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