This Week's Story
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Benjamin Franklin's lifelong specialty was possibilities and solutions.
This Week’s Story relives American history and the Bible through brief inspiring stories presented on mp3 audio recordings and text for reading.
Thank you, Ben Franklin,
part nine!
He was the boy, teenager, and man with the words like “maybe,” “huh,’ “I wonder,” “no,” a laugh, and then there might be a “yes!” His thoughts might concern how to design a fort, or how to negotiate a loan from the French government, or purchasing a printing press. Benjamin Franklin’s lifelong specialty was possibilities and solutions.
He was 76 years old when he completed two years of bargaining on the Treaty of Paris terms with English and American peace commissioners that officially ended the American Revolutionary War. His final words about the war were written in a letter. “We are now friends with England and with all mankind. May we never see another war! For in my opinion there never was a good war or a bad peace.”
Ben hoped to return to scientific experiments. That became impossible, but he was in contact with European scientists and interested in ballooning. Some Frenchmen went into the air in baskets that hung beneath giant cloth bags filled with hot air or hydrogen. He wondered about a kind of airborne warfare, but had little idea of how air travel might develop.
He returned in 1785 from France to what had become the United States of America. He was greeted as a popular hero. Within a month he was elected as president of the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania State. Then he was named chief executive of the state.
Those responsibilities did not consume him. He began making small inventions and enlarging his home. Though his energy was decreasing, he was soon aware that he was wanted as a Pennsylvania delegate to a convention, which became the Constitutional Convention.
The Articles of Confederation were the country’s first constitution. In 1789 the current constitution became the official constitution. It was drafted in 1787 and operational in 1789. The U. S. Constitution has lasted longer than the constitution of any other country in the current world!
George Washington was president of the constitutional Convention, while Franklin limited himself to advising younger members and leading members from disagreement to compromise. One powerful contribution he made was how states would be represented in the legislative branch. Three states had forty percent of the country’s voters. The ten states with the smallest number of voters wanted an equal number of representatives from each state.
Franklin proposed the plan that stopped argument, and was accepted! Without his plan the delegates probably would have gone home. Franklin’s plan was that: (1) A House of Representatives would have one member from each state for every 40,000 inhabitants. This number was later amended. (2) In a Senate each state would have an equal number of votes. (3) All money bills would originate in the House and not be subject to change in the Senate.
Three years after the Constitutional Convention Benjamin Franklin passed away. He left a legacy of freedom which can continue as Americans understand that freedom requires upkeep from the majority, not a titled minority.
Today’s account is presented by Todd Warren, Carlos Gamez, and myself, Barbara Steiner, who had the privilege of writing it.
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