REPRESENTATIVE AMERICANS.

[The design of this course is not to give a connected view of American history during the century covered by the active life of the six men selected; but to portray vividly six distinct types of character corresponding to as many important elements in American national life. Benjamin Franklin thus stands for the marvelous colonial development of the last century; Patrick Henry for the idea of state sovereignty; Alexander Hamilton for the vigorous national sentiment which characterized Washington's administration; Andrew Jackson for intense democracy; John Brown for New England Puritanism and Abolitionism; and Abraham Lincoln for the newer national feeling which, in contrast to that of Hamilton, rests wholly upon republican institutions, and the social, industrial, and political conditions of our own country.]

LECTURE I.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN: THE COLONIAL PHILOSOPHER.

BIOGRAPHY.

English ancestry. Born, Boston, 1706. Two years at school. Omnivorous reader at ten. Apprenticed at twelve. Benjamin Franklin, Printer (cf. Epitaph). Silence Do Good's ridicule of Harvard. Journey to Philadelphia. Proposal that he should set up for himself. Year and a half in England. The Junto, 1727. Conditions of admission. Topics discussed. Failure of the monthly magazine. Franklin as publisher; as a leader in new enterprises. The Busy Body. Poor Richard's Almanac. Its popularity. Franklin's regeneration. His scheme of virtue. “Inquiry into the Nature and Necessity of a Paper Currency" (1729). The Philadelphia Library (1731). Clerk to the General Assembly. Leader of popular party in the Assembly. The University of Pennsylvania (1751). Assistant Postmaster-General (1753). The Albany Congress (1754). French and Indian War. Mission to England (1756–62). Return to England to protest against Stamp Act (1764). "Rules for Reducing a great Empire to a small one." "Edict of the King of Prussia" (one of your American jokes). Hutchinson letters. Franklin before Privy Council. Dismissal from office. Member of Royal Society. Friends in England-in France. Return to America (1775). In the Continental Congress. Mission to France. Diplomacy and Finance. The treatment of prisoners. Privateers. The Alliance. French volunteers for the American service. Treaty of Peace. President of Pennsylvania. Convention of 1787. Death (1790). Will. (3)

(RECAP)

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SPECIAL TOPICS DISCUSSED IN THE LECTURE.

Franklin the last man to be forgiven by England for his part in the revolt of the colonies. Franklin's character: Runaway apprentice. Profligate habits. Advocate of paper currency. "Bread and butter Philosopher." Free thinker. But, signer of Declaration of Independence; of the treaty of Alliance with France, and of Peace with England; and of the Constitution. Statesman and Citizen. Franklin's philosophy of life. His religion. Parton's list of his good deeds. His popularity in Europe. Mirabeau's eulogy.

MATERIAL FOR HOME STUDY.

[The following extracts from a letter by Franklin, in answer to one complaining of American luxury, contain both sound and fallacious reasoning. Read carefully and write out your criticisms indicating which arguments are good. If you approve the sentiments expressed in the letter show their application to our present conditions.]

I have not yet, indeed, thought of a remedy for luxury. I am not sure, that in a great state it is capable of a remedy, nor that the evil is in itself always so great as it is represented. Suppose we include in the definition of luxury all unnecessary expense, and then let us consider whether laws to prevent such expense are possible to be executed in a great country, and whether, if they could be executed, our people generally would be happier, or even richer. Is not the hope of being one day able to purchase and enjoy luxuries a great spur to labor and industry? May not luxury, therefore, produce more than it consumes, if without such a spur people would be, as they are naturally enough inclined to be lazy and indolent? To this purpose I remember a circumstance. The skipper of a shallop, employed between Cape May and Philadelphia, had done us some small service, for which he refused to be paid. My wife, understanding that he had a daughter, sent her a present of a new-fashioned cap. Three years after, this skipper being at my house with an old farmer of Cape May, his passenger, he mentioned the cap, and how much his daughter had been pleased with it. "But," said he, "it proved a dear cap to our congregation." "How so?" "When my daughter appeared with it at meeting, it was so much admired, that all the girls resolved to get such caps from Philadelphia; and my wife and I computed that the whole could not have cost less than a hundred pounds." True," said the farmer, "but you do not tell all the story. I think the cap was nevertheless an advantage to us, for it was the first thing that put our girls upon knitting worsted mittens for sale at Philadelphia, that they might have wherewithal to buy caps and ribbons there; and you know that that industry has continued, and is likely to continue and increase to a much greater value, and answer better purposes." Upon the whole I was more reconciled to this little piece of luxury, since not only the girls were made happier by having fine caps, but the Philadelphians by the supply of warm mittens.

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Some of those who grow rich will be prudent, live within bounds and preserve what they have gained for their posterity; others, fond of showing their wealth, will be extravagant and ruin themselves. Laws cannot prevent, this; and perhaps it is not always an evil to the public. A shilling spent idly by a fool, may be picked up by a wiser person who knows better what to do with it. It is therefore not lost. A vain, silly fellow builds a fine house, furnishes it richly, lives in it expensively, and in a few years ruins himself; but the masons, carpenters, smiths and other honest tradesmen have been by his employ assisted in maintaining and raising their families; the farmer has been paid for his labor, and encouraged, and the estate is now in better hands. . . . It has been computed by some political arithmetician, that, if every man and woman would work for four hours each day on something useful, that labor would produce sufficient to procure all the necessaries and comforts of life, want and misery would be banished out of the world, and the rest of the twenty-four hours might be leisure and pleasure.

What occasions then so much want and misery? It is the employment of men and women in works that produce neither the necessaries nor conveniences of life, who, with those who do nothing, consume necessaries raised by the laborious.

Look round the world and see the millions employed in doing nothing, or in something that amounts to nothing, when the necessaries and conveniences of life are in question. What is the bulk of commerce, for which we fight and destroy each other, but the toil of millions for superfluities, to the great hazard and loss of many lives by the constant dangers of the sea? How much labor is spent in building and fitting great ships to go to China and Arabia for tea and coffee, to the West Indies for sugar, to America for tobacco ? These things cannot be called the necessaries of life, for our ancestors lived very comfortably without them.

The eyes of other people are the eyes that ruin us. If all but myself were blind, I should want neither fine clothes, fine houses, nor fine furniture.

There is no little enemy.
Deny self for self's sake.

Necessity never made a good bargain.

Keep thy shop and thy shop will keep thee.

To bear other peoples' afflictions every one has courage enough and to spare.

Sal laughs at everything you say.

Why? Because Sal has fine teeth.

-From Poor Richard's Almanac.

LECTURE II.

PATRICK HENRY: THE PATRIOT.

BIOGRAPHY.

Born at Studley, Hanover County, Va., 1736. Died at Red Hill, Charlotte County, '99. Given a classical education by his father and uncle. Married at eighteen; tried farming and then store-keeping. Admitted to the bar, '60. Large practice from beginning. Brought into prominence by his great eloquence in Parson's cause, '63. Moved resolutions against Stamp Act, May 29, '65. Beginning of the Revolution. "From that time he led Virginia."

Member of the Continental Congress, '74-5. Moved that Virginia should be put into state of defence, March 23, '75. Led volunteers of Hanover against Dunmore, May, '75. Advocated independence in Virginia Convention, May, '76. Governor of Virginia, '76, '77, '78-'84, '85. Led the opposition to Federal Constitution, '88. Declined the following offices: Governor of Virginia, '86 and '96; U. S. Senator, '94; Secretary of State under Washington, '95; Chief Justice, '95; Minister to France, '99. Opposed Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions. Elected to Legislature, '99, but died before taking his seat.

SPECIAL TOPICS DISCUSSED IN THE LECTURE. Comparison of Franklin and Henry. Significance of the Parson's cause. Stamp Act Resolutions as the beginning of the Revolution. Speech of March, '75, as an informal declaration of war. Henry's political influence in Virginia, Henry as an extreme representative of the Revolutionary spirit.

MATERIAL FOR HOME STUDY.

[The following extracts from Sumner's Hamilton describe the more unfortunate results of the American Revolution. Make a study of this side of the Revolutionary movement and decide how far it was represented in the acts and speeches of Patrick Henry, and in the measures which he championed.]

Every great social movement inevitably presents a mixture of noble and sordid elements. Its methods are very often impure, and its watchwords are very sure to be half-truths. When the crisis is over, however, and the days of orderly growth come again, the sordid element must be eliminated, the methods of agitation must be laid aside, the rhetoric and declamation must be toned down, and the half-truths must be dissolved.

In the States, the elements of Revolutionary dissolution and decay began to work; and when the rectifying operation of peace and order came to be applied, it was the Union, the imperial unity, the great political body, which

could figure in history and in the family of nations, through which the disciplining and organizing work went on. Therefore the Union was from the start at war with the turbulent, anarchistic elements which the Revolution had set loose.

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It was no accident that the integrity of public credit was involved in that struggle too. Financial integrity is a test of political institutions. . The financial vice of our Revolutionary period was repudiation, both public and private. It was the States which were the stronghold of it: it was the Union which had to combat it. Therefore the contest with anarchy and repudiation was the great work which went to the making of this nation at the end of the last century.

The methods taken by the colonists to resist [the stamp] tax consisted in suspension of the operations which were to be taxed, refusal to pay debts to Englishmen, and a boycott on English goods; also a boycott of all persons who should accept the office of stamp distributer. They were all, except the boycott of English goods, anti-social, and calculated to encourage disorder and a dissolution of civil institutions. It was a welcome experience to a great many people, that one could refuse to pay debts, and thereby win popularity and a reputation for patriotism.

The destruction of the tea was another act which had no rational connection with the purpose in view. It was an act of mob violence, and It would be interesting to know how many

destruction of property.

times within a hundred years that act has been quoted as a precedent by people who were engaging in some act of lawlessness.

The Boston Massacre, likewise, turns out upon cool examination to be anything but an incident to be proud of. . . . All the circumstances of the period 1765 to 1776, were highly favorable to the development of a lawlessness and recklessness which in a loose colonial society needed no encouragement at all..

The darkest blot on the history of the Revolution is the treatment of the loyalists..

We have ample evidence that [the committees of correspondence] exercised a great tyranny, and that they helped to educate people to unconstitutional methods. . . It is easy to see, even in the superficial facts of the case, that what the United States needed was an adequate organization. This is the fact which is developed by the whole history of the Revolution. There was an exceedingly low social vitality. The Union had no proper organs; Before the articles

it started on a burst of spontaneous enthusiasm. of confederation were formed, which gave Congress constitutional authority, the burst of enthusiasm had long worn itself out.

The great faults in the public affairs of the United States at this time were indolence, negligence, lack of administrative energy and capacity, dislike of any methodical, business-like system, and carelessless as to money responsibility and credit.