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After the American Revolution intellectuals, working from drawing rooms on both sides of the Atlantic, thought the colonies would eventually replicate Britain’s power structure based on large land ownership and an entrenched leadership class. There was more land than anyone in Europe had ever seen and, amongst the leadership, Washington, Jefferson, Mason, Madison and a host of other founders lived the country life. Even city rich such as Robert Morris owned and speculated in land. Benjamin Franklin, however, although often involved in land schemes, did not think the British agrarian model—even in its more noble Jeffersonian variant—would prevail. The reason he did not was because his life had been very different from the other founders. They all were country gentry or urban upper middle class professionals. He was a working class “leather apron man” in the slang of his day, was proud of it, and never concealed his roots, no matter the circumstances.
Publication History: Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing
November 2009 (Vol. 5, Issue 6, Pages 327-329)
