Runaway America: Benjamin Franklin, Slavery, and the American Revolution

By David Waldstreicher

Book Overview

Scientist, abolitionist, revolutionary: that is the Benjamin Franklin we know and celebrate. To this description, the talented young historian David Waldstreicher shows we must add runaway, slave master, and empire builder. But Runaway America does much more than revise our image of a beloved founding father. Finding slavery at the center of Franklin's life, Waldstreicher proves it was likewise central to the Revolution, America's founding, and the very notion of freedom we associate with both. Franklin was the sole Founding Father who was once owned by someone else and was among the few to derive his fortune from slavery. As an indentured servant, Franklin fled his master before his term was complete; as a struggling printer, he built a financial empire selling newspapers that not only advertised the goods of a slave economy (not to mention slaves) but also ran the notices that led to the recapture of runaway servants. Perhaps Waldstreicher's greatest achievement is in showing that this was not an ironic outcome but a calculated one. America's freedom, no less than Franklin's, demanded that others forgo liberty. Through the life of Franklin, Runaway America provides an original explanation to the paradox of American slavery and freedom.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0809083140
• ISBN13: 9780809083145
• Release Date: August 2004
• Publisher: Hill & Wang
• Length: 315 Pages
• Weight: 1.38 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.4" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Finally, Waldstreicher writes a lucid book!!

It should merit 3 stars alone just to have Prof. Waldstreicher actually come out with a book that people can read! His other works have been dreadfully written (esp. his work in Journal of the Early republic), the worst prose in the business. However, not only is this book very nicely written, for which he deserves commendation, but its also interesting. What Waldstreicher does is demostrate how labor inthe 1st half of the 18th century in America was quite often "unfree": either due to slavery, indentured servitude or an apprenticeship. Waldstreicher's contribution here si to show how BF's life was marked by all three. He was an apprentice himself, kept Indentured servants and owned a slave or two. It is a great way to explore this issue of labor and freedom in the colonies, and to do so by using the life of a Founding Father. Given the subject and the prose, I have no reservations at all about rating this book 5 stars.