Gordon Wood's the Americanization of Term Paper

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Franklin's constantly being out of sync with his colleagues is seen once again in Franklin's inability to understand that the next logical progress of his republicanism was liberal democracy. Thus, as the oldest member of the Constitutional Convention, Franklin was unable to anticipate and comprehend the factionalism that was beginning to dominate the American political climate. On the contrary, Franklin even made the wrong political call by viewing liberalism as dangerous and unruly, a political system that would never work in the newly-formed republic.

Other biographers minimized the said failing by emphasizing how Franklin made decisions based on principles. Woods, however, presents evidence that Franklin could also be motivated by emotional motives, such as revenge. For example, according to Woods, Franklin's opposition to the two-house legislature in Massachusetts was motivated in part to his personal distaste for John Adams, who was a key supporter of the measure. Also, while Franklin later made a genuine commitment to abolishing slavery, his early support for an antislavery memorial in the federal Congress was also calculated to embarrass southern slaveholders Richard Henry Lee and Ralph Izard, both of whom Franklin considered his personal enemies.

These anecdotes aid in Woods' objective to present Franklin not as a founding father visionary, but as a product of his time. The stories also serve to remind the reader that Franklin -- painted a patriot, a founding father and the consummate America (among other labels) -- was also first and foremost, a human being.

In a book of many strengths, there are still some minor points of contention. Woods' characterization of Franklin's wife Deborah is jarring, especially when considered in relation to his objective of locating the subject within the proper historican framework.

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Woods characterizes Debora Read quite harshly, implying several times that Franklin married "down." He finds the Read family "anything but rich and distinguished," and denigrates Deborah as "loud and lowly and scarcely literate" (27-33).

Woods even adds that Read stayed home instead of accompanying her husband to Europe, to avoid embarrassing him in front of refined society.

However, the historian is guilty of judging Deborah by today's standards, rather than locating her within the context of the 18th century. In fact, given the strictures placed on women during that time, Deborah would be "typical" in terms of reading and other valued intellectual skills. The dissonance between Benjamin's urbane prose and his wife's syntactical struggles clearly shows the inadequacy of education given to women at the time. In fact, many other accounts have argued that Deborah had at least as much book-knowledge and writing skills as the women of her time, and perhaps better than most. After all, the fact that the printing press business stayed profitable despite Franklin's long sojourns in Europe is testament to his wife's skills and intelligence.

Overall, however, Woods has written a tour de force of a book. Franklin lived in a time of profound political and social changes. Woods takes pains to take the reader through this journey, to show how these political developments affected Franklin's own thinking, how Franklin turned from a monarchist infatuated with Europe to an ardent supporter of a fledgling independent republic.

In the end, the author clearly shows that the "Americanization" of Benjamin Franklin is the "Americanization" of the new independent America as well.

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