Benjamin Franklin | Page 3

be sure, yet by virtue of substantial lines of division, into a few
sub-series or groups. The first of these belongs to the Revolutionary
period, what may be called the destructive period, since it witnessed the
destruction of the long-established political conditions. In this group we
find the leaders of the disaffection and revolt: Benjamin Franklin,
Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, and George Washington. Washington,
of course, might properly find a place also in the second group; but for
the purposes of separation he is by preference placed in the first one,
because the Revolution was to so great an extent his own personal
achievement, his transcendent and crowning glory.
The second group, constituting the constructive period, comprises the
men who were foremost in framing the Constitution, and in organizing
and giving coherence and life to the new government and to the
nationality thereby created. This is introduced by John Adams. He, like
Washington, might properly find a place in both the first and the
second groups, but the distinction of the presidential office brings him
with sufficient propriety into the second. The others in this group are
Alexander Hamilton, Gouverneur Morris, John Jay, and John Marshall.
The third group follows the overthrow of Federalism with its theory of
a strongly centralized government. This, of course, begins with Thomas
Jefferson, who led and organized the new party of the democracy. He is
followed by his political disciple, James Madison; by their secretary of
the treasury, Albert Gallatin; and by James Monroe, John Quincy
Adams, and John Randolph. The two last named are hardly to be called

Jeffersonians, but they mark the passage of the nation from the
statesmanship of Jefferson to the widely different democracy of
Jackson.
The fourth group witnesses the absorption of the nation in questions of
domestic policy. The crude and rough domination of Andrew Jackson
opened a new order of things. Men's minds were busied with affairs at
home, at first more especially with the tariff, then more and more
exclusively with slavery. This group, besides Jackson, includes Martin
Van Buren, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, Thomas H.
Benton, and Lewis Cass.
The fifth and closing group is that of the civil war. This of course opens
with Abraham Lincoln. The others are William H. Seward, as being a
sort of prime minister throughout the period; Salmon P. Chase, in
whose life can properly be discussed the financial policy and the
principal legal matters; Charles Francis Adams, embodying the
important topic of diplomatic relations; Charles Sumner, representing
the advanced abolitionist element; and Thaddeus Stevens, who appears
as a tribune, perhaps we may say the leader, in the popular branch of
Congress.
Almost inevitably the series begins with Benjamin Franklin, the first
great American, the first man born on this side of the water who was
"meant for the universe." His mere existence was a sort of omen. It was
absurd to suppose that a people which could produce a man of that
scope, in character and intellect, could long remain in a condition of
political dependence. It would have been preposterous to have had
Franklin die a colonist, and go down to posterity, not as an American,
but as a colonial Englishman. He was a microcosm of the coming
nation of the United States; all the better moral and intellectual
qualities of our people existed in him, save only the dreamy philosophy
of the famous New England school of thinkers. It is very interesting to
see how slowly and reluctantly, yet how surely and decisively, he came
to the point of resistance and independence. He was not like so many,
who were unstable and shifting. There was no backward step, though
there were many painful and unwilling forward ones in his progress.

One feels almost as if an apology were needed for writing another life
of a man so be-written. Yet there is some reason for doing so; the
chapter concerning his services in France during the Revolution
presents the true facts and the magnitude of his usefulness more
carefully than, so far as I am aware, it has previously been done.
As a promoter of the Revolution, Samuel Adams has easily the most
conspicuous place. He was an agitator to the very centre of his marrow.
He was the incarnation of New England; to know thoroughly his career
is to know the Massachusetts of that day as an anatomist knows the
human frame. The man of the town meeting did more to kindle the
Revolution than any other one person. Many stood with him, but his
life tells the story and presents the picture. The like service is done for
Virginia by Patrick Henry; and the contrast between the two men is
most striking and picturesque, yet not more so than the difference
between the two