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Benjamin Franklin's Influence On American Culture

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Benjamin Franklin lived an eventful life. He used literature to broadcast the vast amount of wisdom he had accrued throughout his life. His life began in Boston, Massachusetts as one of seventeen children by Josiah Franklin. Josiah wanted his son to enter into the clergy, but could not afford this route. Benjamin, after a year of school, began to apprentice his brother James, a printer (“Quick”). He loved to read and write so his education would be furthered through his ambition. His brother had started the first American based newspaper The New England Courant. Ben began to write under the alias Silence Dogood, a fictional widow, because his brother would never let him write for the paper (“Quick”). He would begin to write advice columns, …show more content…

Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America was a comedic work that flipped the outlook on how colonists should view Native Americans. He wanted his readers to reevaluate their relationship with Native Americans. He would refer to the colonists as the savages and the Native Americans as being sophisticated. He began the piece stating, “Savage we call them, because their manners differ from ours, which we think the perfection of civility; they think the same of theirs” (Baym). He wanted to get through to the colonists that perception is all in the eye of the beholder and that virtue is not bestowed onto any certain race. Historically, Franklin had helped negotiate with the Indians during the French and Indian War. His protests against the Paxton massacre, where the victims were innocent Indian women and children, went unheard. The Paxton massacre had many Indian victims who had even converted to Christianity. He would display an uncharacteristic anger in another essay titled Narrative of the Late Massacres in Lancaster County of a Number of Indians, Friends of his Province, by Persons Unknown with quotes like, “But the Wickedness cannot be Covered, the Guilt will lie on the Whole Land, till Justice is done on the Murders. THE BLOOD OF THE INNOCENT WILL CRY TO HEAVEN FOR VENGEANCE!” (Johansen). Franklin, thus, argues that the white Christians were the savages in this context. He would also go on to praise the Indian way of life compared to their own in the Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America, “The Indian men, when young, are hunters and warriors; when old, counselors; for all their government is by counsel for the sages; there is no force, there are no prisons, no officers to compel obedience, or inflict punishment” (Baym). Even going on to point out that white civilians had gone on to live amongst the Indians, yet the opposite of the paradigm was less common. Franklin

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