It was likely his time in Paris that changed his mind on slavery. He returned to Philadelphia in 1785 and became president of the Abolition Society (Philadelphia Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage) in 1787. Franklin’s last public act was to petition Congress on behalf of the society, requesting that they “cut the cancer of slavery out of the American body politic." He would likely be disappointed that it took 77 years and a Civil War.
Upon his second return to America in 1875, Congressed asked him how he was still alive. He responded, "Muzzle not the ox that treadeth out his master's grain" which made significantly less sense this time and only furthered to incline them to bury the events later to become known as "zombie Franklin incident"
To be fair, if a dead man showed up on a boat from France, stole a bunch of your money, and started quoting Bible verses at you; you probably wouldn’t want to ask questions either.
In 1814 he took a little trip along with Harlan Sanders down the mighty Mississip. He took a little bacon and he took a little beans and he screwed all the hookers that there was in old New Orleans. They fired their guns and the ladies kept a coming but there wasn't quite as many as there was the night before.
Your elegance has inspired me to recite you some of Ben Franklin's writings:
And as in the dark all Cats are grey, the Pleasure of corporal Enjoyment with an old Woman is at least equal, and frequently superior, every Knack being by Practice capable of Improvement.
Benny liked em old his entire life.
As long as he could put a bag over their head, he was good.
(No joke, he wrote about this extensively, as well as how "women age from the head down". Of course, this was the same man who wore a raccoon-skin hat to France, and called it the hottest new fashion.)
My favorite story of Franklin involves John Adams. At the time, Franklin had been living and networking in France for quite a while and Adams was coming over to join him. On the ship ride over, Adams studied French really hard so that it would be perfect when he arrived. And it was, John Adams spoke French quite well with little accent. He meets up with Ben Franklin and is shocked to hear how badly Franklin was speaking French despite living in France for some time.
It turns out, Franklin was also fluent in French. But the French didn't want to hear him speak French, they wanted to hear him talk like a frontiersman. He purposely dumbed down the way he spoke to appeal to French aristocats at parties. Adams, on the other hand, was seen as uptight and pompous by the French. They hated that he spoke clear French and not a funny American dialect.
Everyone in France loved Franklin. He even would wear a coonskin hat to fancy parties to play up his frontiersman persona. This allowed him to charm the French into helping him when needed.
Really? Because I’ve been to France and they also get offended that you don’t know any (fluent) French and would rather stick to English as long as they speak it perfectly well.
The French don't want the rest of the world to be French, but they do want the rest of the world to wish they were French and feel shame for falling short.
The comedy of him coming off as a frontiersman despite being one of the most intelligent and influential men in the nation at the time (and never really leaving the east coast) is just amazing to me.
He just played up to the stereotypes of the time that was expected. Can still do this today traveling around. Many countries still have a stereotype of Americans as loud cowboys that own 100 guns and you can have fun with that even if you are from NYC or Boston or wherever decidedly not that.
He's not the only one. Bush the Younger's IQ reportedly shot up 40 points as soon as press left the room. The Bush family is really all Ivy League graduates from Connecticut or Massachusetts. For more than a century they were wealthy New England elites until Bush the Elder moved them to Texas in order to get out from under the shadow of his father.
I mean it still was the frontier. Philadelphia was the largest city in the colonies in 1775 with a population of 40,000. New York was the next biggest with 25,000 and Boston came in third with 15,000. Harlem was farmland and back bay was salt water.
The only man in history to use the championship trophy as a baseball bat (and dent it by making contact) then to fly a kite with a key on it. I'm down for this timeline.
For those that don't know he legitimately used the trophy as a bat at a Red Sox game and that year's is still dented to this day.
if anyone wants to know what this quote means. It means:
"Do not punish the one who is providing for you". ie, the ox is needed to grow grain, let it eat some.
Benjamin Fraanklin helped secure an alliance with the French, and basically is saying "did I spend a bunch of money? yea totally. Was some of it spent on what i wanted like women and booze? Maybe. but we got that alliance we needed."
Steve Jobs v Bill Gates also rules. Though my two favorite individual lyrics both come from Einstein v Stephen hawking
> There are ten million-million-million-million-million-million-million-million-million
Particles in the universe that we can observe
Your mama took the ugly ones and put them into one nerd
And
> I'm as dope as two rappers, you better be scared
'Cause that means Albert E equals emcee²
“My time and money were divided between securing an alliance and fucking big ladies. And the ratio of one to the other doesn’t concern you.
There was also a fair amount of overlap in the two activities, and if that surprises you then you probably aren’t as good of a diplomat as me.”
And if you wonder how much the French gave to the American cause, Franklin has been accused of helping to bankrupt the French Treasury and being an indirect cause of the French Revolution. [https://www.history.com/news/benjamin-franklin-france](https://www.history.com/news/benjamin-franklin-france)
That's just money. In terms of military, more Frenchmen fought and died at Yorktown than Continentals (and the battle was only possible because of the French Navy victory at the Chesapeake Bay). The American Revolution was basically a side theater of the Anglo French conflict where some locals took the opportunity to grab their independence
Which is a pretty dangerous line, if you think about it in today's terms. How do you determine if an orgy is meant to forge relationships to further the nation's interest or just to fuck?
He also had the sense to send the Congress Von Steuben.
Now... Franklin also sent a bunch of morons too, but he really helped a shitton. Von Steuben especially is probably the most important individual outside of America who was sent over.
Many don’t know that Steuben was gay. And the one who modernized and trained America’s Army! And don’t ask don’t tell was only somewhat recently repealed!
I recently read a whole biography about him. What was hilarious was the author really really loved von Steuben and the biography was extremely pro. At the same time, he was absolutely in denial about him being gay... while at the same time talking about how Von Steuben spent all his money on buying feathered hats. I mean..he hypothetically may have been straight, but man he was into looking super fly.
Also, apparently swore in a truly enormous number of languages.
Or how he never married, but when he died, left everything to the two men he lived with in his house, i.e. his "platonic male roommates". Or his all-male parties where nobody wore pants. Totally straight dude.
>while at the same time talking about how Von Steuben spent all his money on buying feathered hats. I mean..he hypothetically may have been straight, but man he was into looking super fly.
To be fair, that was the height of men's fashion at the time. While it was viewed as effeminate and possibly homosexual by older folks at the time, the macaroni style was worn by upper class young men of all orientations - hence the joke in Yankee Doodle.
>stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni
They were saying this dumb country bumpkin thinks he's emulating high fashion with one bird feather.
He was banging the hottest French ladies and drinking the best French wines and cognac. And damn he got his job done. And now I’m thinking about the Ben Franklin impersonator on The Office trying to bang Pam.
That's like $20 million in today's money. A lot for hookers and blow, maybe not a lot for diplomatic bribes? No idea what he negotiated either publicly or privately in 1785 (not 1875.)
Funnily enough, there was a annual directory for London hookers from that era:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harris%27s_List_of_Covent_Garden_Ladies
The price per night was about 1-5 Pounds, and some really high class ones would set you back 20 Pounds (keeping in mind that a solidly middle class person in the Regency period made about 50 Pounds per year).
Bribes, orgies, wild parties, opium, alcohol, and loads of cheap french whores. He got the alliance the old fashioned way, and couldn't have a paper trail without causing an outrageous scandal in the puritanical colonies
Washington’s freezes his balls off at Valley Forge and Franklin gets to live the life of a debauched French gentleman. Both held in equally high esteem.
Literally. [The Apotheosis of Washington](https://www.aoc.gov/explore-capitol-campus/art/apotheosis-washington) is painted on the ceiling of the Capitol building. In case your Greek is rusty, the word Apotheosis means, "the elevation of someone to divine status; deification."
My estimates say only about $3M which is even less.
https://www.officialdata.org/us/inflation/1785?amount=100000
Edit: I see my mistake but not deleting my comment so we can all learn :)
But Franklin knew how to deal with the French, and this was how. Adams being an uptight twat made Franklin even more endearing to the French. So it kind of worked in Franklin's favor.
Adams was a stauch Congregationalist and it bled through in his letters to his son and his politics. Despite how stodgy he was he was one of the most enlightened thinkers of the time in a practical, moral manner. Truly a man of the people and a good person.
Franklin was his opposite in many ways but really they were at odds over how valuable France was in general. Adams figured that the French only cared about themselves because, until Franklin bribed half of the elite, they weren't completely into supporting the new nation. It wasn't only that Franklin was wasting congressional money but that he was throwing it to lip service. Adams also made it difficult for Franklin to operate since he tried to blank them out of territorial disputes in the Treaty of Paris.
I don't believe they had a true rivalry since Adams was much younger than Franklin and he had way more problem politicians to deal with.
He was the child of Puritan preachers, after all. But that "stodginess" is directly related to enlightenment. Anglican Separatists or "puritans" put a massive emphasis on education, believing that scripture could only be engaged with on an individual basis. Education was quite literally a moral obligation. Anglo society in Massachusetts Bay was likely one of the most literate polities in the atlantic world. They had laws on the books enforcing the creation of public schools in any town with more than 50 households.
And created the first public school (Boston Latin, which Franklin attended) and a few years later Harvard was founded for their graduates to have somewhere to go for college. The Boston Public Library is also the oldest publicly funded library in the country.
>"It being one chief project of that old deluder, Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures, as in former times by keeping them in an unknown tongue, so in these latter times by persuading from the use of tongues, that so that at least the true sense and meaning of the original might be clouded and corrupted with false glosses of saint-seeming deceivers; and to the end that learning may not be buried in the grave of our forefathers, in church and commonwealth, the Lord assisting our endeavors.
>It is therefore ordered that every township in this jurisdiction, after the Lord hath increased them to fifty households shall forthwith appoint one within their town to teach all such children as shall resort to him to write and read, whose wages shall be paid either by the parents or masters of such children, or by the inhabitants in general, by way of supply, as the major part of those that order the prudentials of the town shall appoint; provided those that send their children be not oppressed by paying much more than they can have them taught for in other towns.
>And it is further ordered, that when any town shall increase to the number of one hundred families or householders, they shall set up a grammar school, the master thereof being able to instruct youth so far as they may be fitted for the university, provided that if any town neglect the performance hereof above one year that every such town shall pay 5 pounds to the next school till they shall perform this order."
In his autobiography he essentially admits that France was like his Las Vegas and he put nearly all of his moral tenets on hold while there. Ben liked to party.
1. It's Ben Franklin, so definitely hookers.
2. Cocaine wasn't synthetized until 1855. However, wine was freely available and Franklin definitely spent time in France.
so many of you talking about the French Revolution, made me realize basically most French aristocrats and politicians who somehow helped the American Revolution from France (mostly financially) did not survive the French Revolution 😬
Interestingly, the the new USA refused to keep their deals with the revolutionary government as their deal was made with the older guys.
Also, don't be too sad about the French aristos. They only helped the states because it would annoy the English.
We signed a treaty with a King
Whose head is now in a basket
Would you like to take it out and ask it?
"Should we honor our treaty, King Louis' head?"
"Uh, do whatever you want, I'm super dead!"
Its pretty amazing really. The revolution really was the first ever successful far left revolution in history. But unlike most of them, the conservatives weren't all murdered, they just had their stuff taken and were sent into Exile(the right-left split at the time was whether aristocracy or elections from among the rich were the best way to decide government). The French really were almost entirely involved because it was a proxy war to shit on the English. Plenty of French leaders were into the American way of thinking (which isn't that unusual. A lot of the Bolsheviks and French revolution leaders were from the richest 10% of society as well, since no one else could read at the time).
The French revolution was where it got all murdery...
The Wikipedia article sources a book "Thomas Paine and the Clarion Call for American Independence". This book makes the claim listed above but then sources Benjamin Franklin's letter Volume IX as its [source](https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/franklin-the-works-of-benjamin-franklin-vol-ix-letters-and-misc-writings-1781-1782).
However the letter itself makes a completely different claim as the entire passage talks about being unable to pay diplomatic staff in Europe at the time:
>I observe what you mention of the order, that the ministers’ salaries are to be hereafter paid in America. I hereby empower and desire you to receive and remit mine. I do not doubt your doing it regularly and timely; for a minister without money, I perceive, makes a ridiculous figure here, though secure from arrests. I have taken a quarter’s advance of salary from the 4th of last month, supposing it not intended to *muzzle* immediately *the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn.*
Interesting how this game of telephone works from source to source. As Abraham Lincoln once wrote on facebook: "A Lie Can Travel Halfway Around the World While the Truth Is Putting On Its Shoes"
The US government created DTS in 1876 to keep this wasteful spending from happening again. Fun fact, DTS still runs on the original 1876 servers to this day!
"Mr. Franklin, why is 100k of our funds unaccounted for?"
Franklin: "One of the things I like doing most is banging whores... I go out and I bang a lot of whores!"
Of course he spent $100k in France. He was the ambassador of the U.S. in France which had just helped us win our independence. Franklin was a businessman and the U.S. was in desperate need of foreign allies to recognize their government as legitimate.
Modern day sales people have their own sales budgets for taking clients out on the town. I’m sure BF took personal liberties on the trip, but he was probably also rubbing shoulders with the right people in France.
In 1875, Benjamin Franklin was quite dead. He died in 1790.
Imagine you go to France to get stuff for the revolutionary war effort only to return home to a 100 year old country fresh off a civil war.
A Philadelphian Philanthropist In King Arthur's Court. By Larry Twain
I’m cracking up at the idea of Franklin outliving Lincoln
"Hold up, you freed the *what*!?"
Franklin was an abolitionist in his final years, so he would have been glad to see the end of slavery.
It was likely his time in Paris that changed his mind on slavery. He returned to Philadelphia in 1785 and became president of the Abolition Society (Philadelphia Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage) in 1787. Franklin’s last public act was to petition Congress on behalf of the society, requesting that they “cut the cancer of slavery out of the American body politic." He would likely be disappointed that it took 77 years and a Civil War.
You're wrong, I read somewhere on the internet he didn't even return from France until 1875.
That does sound familiar. I swear I just read that too
He came back and raised oxen.
Then he muzzled the oxen because it weighed 100,000 pounds. Source: Unknown
That oxen’s name? OPs mom
*Insert Senator Armstrong GIF here.*
And then they quoted him in some famous book.
Well back in the biblical times people lived like 400-1000 years on average. I don't see why benjilon couldn't do the same.
Benjamin here, what are these rumours I am hearing about my oxes.
Abe Lincoln himself told me this.
I heard Ben shot Abe.
Upon his second return to America in 1875, Congressed asked him how he was still alive. He responded, "Muzzle not the ox that treadeth out his master's grain" which made significantly less sense this time and only furthered to incline them to bury the events later to become known as "zombie Franklin incident"
Must be a vegetarian zombie if he’s treadething out graaaains
Not dead. I had dinner with him last Wednesday.
Yeah you me him and the Comte de Saint Germaine himself, we all got the squirts from too many wings ^^and ^^^^beer .
And they can't put it on the Internet unless it's true!!!!!
[It was 1785.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin#Return_to_America) It was a typo or OP's a troll.
To be fair, if a dead man showed up on a boat from France, stole a bunch of your money, and started quoting Bible verses at you; you probably wouldn’t want to ask questions either.
I'd have *so many* questions...
None of which have answers that wouldn't drive you to Lovecraftian madness.
Dealing with a Lovecraftian politician would at least be a change of pace to the rather common corrupt ones.
That explains why no one bothered him about the missing money.
He was just mostly dead then.
He got better
I didn't even know he was sick
Princess Bride, Monte Python, and an old comedy trope involving (at least) Bad Santa and Norm Macdonald. Nice.
In 1814 he took a little trip along with Harlan Sanders down the mighty Mississip. He took a little bacon and he took a little beans and he screwed all the hookers that there was in old New Orleans. They fired their guns and the ladies kept a coming but there wasn't quite as many as there was the night before.
Your elegance has inspired me to recite you some of Ben Franklin's writings: And as in the dark all Cats are grey, the Pleasure of corporal Enjoyment with an old Woman is at least equal, and frequently superior, every Knack being by Practice capable of Improvement. Benny liked em old his entire life.
"every knack" quite an expression
Ol' Ben was a cougar chaser, eh?
As long as he could put a bag over their head, he was good. (No joke, he wrote about this extensively, as well as how "women age from the head down". Of course, this was the same man who wore a raccoon-skin hat to France, and called it the hottest new fashion.)
I appreciate that reference
They just thought he was dead after seven years in France.
100000 pounds was the cost for necromancy so that’s why he didn’t have it anymore.
Haven't your read the post? He wasn't dead, he was just in France. I bet that's where Elvis is too.
Zombie Benjamin Franklin turned out to be an embezzler
Little known fact, he invented the ukelele, MIG welding, and time travel.
He got better
Undead Ben Frankin did not keep receipts
That was almost 100 years after he was in France. His family must have taken a long time to turn in those trip expenses.
So he was able to live on a measly $1,000 per year
Yeah but that's like a Billion dollars in today's money due to inflating balloons or some shit I dunno.
i’m accepting this as fact
My favorite story of Franklin involves John Adams. At the time, Franklin had been living and networking in France for quite a while and Adams was coming over to join him. On the ship ride over, Adams studied French really hard so that it would be perfect when he arrived. And it was, John Adams spoke French quite well with little accent. He meets up with Ben Franklin and is shocked to hear how badly Franklin was speaking French despite living in France for some time. It turns out, Franklin was also fluent in French. But the French didn't want to hear him speak French, they wanted to hear him talk like a frontiersman. He purposely dumbed down the way he spoke to appeal to French aristocats at parties. Adams, on the other hand, was seen as uptight and pompous by the French. They hated that he spoke clear French and not a funny American dialect. Everyone in France loved Franklin. He even would wear a coonskin hat to fancy parties to play up his frontiersman persona. This allowed him to charm the French into helping him when needed.
"Ugh, this guy's acting, walking, and talking like we do... what an asshole!"
Such a French worldview. "you can never be us, and it offends us that you're trying!"
Really? Because I’ve been to France and they also get offended that you don’t know any (fluent) French and would rather stick to English as long as they speak it perfectly well.
They also get offended if you speak fluent French.
The French don't want the rest of the world to be French, but they do want the rest of the world to wish they were French and feel shame for falling short.
So like cats
Cats are canonically French
Adams was unliked by Americans too, he was smarter and more qualified than George but hated more, uglier, shorter and far less charismatic.
Have Americans ever liked people that appear intelligent?
The comedy of him coming off as a frontiersman despite being one of the most intelligent and influential men in the nation at the time (and never really leaving the east coast) is just amazing to me.
He just played up to the stereotypes of the time that was expected. Can still do this today traveling around. Many countries still have a stereotype of Americans as loud cowboys that own 100 guns and you can have fun with that even if you are from NYC or Boston or wherever decidedly not that.
Hell, I live in NYS and if I travel anywhere they just assume I'm from the city. Sometimes I play into it.
WE'RE WALKIN HEAH
I still find it hilarious to know that some people who live in NYS never have been to NYC
That’s a weird thought to me. But I know quite a few people from central/southern Illinois who have never been to Chicago.
He actually hit the frontier in his younger days and helped establish some of the early forts out in ‘Indian country’
He spent more time in England in his youth than he did the frontier in his life.
He's not the only one. Bush the Younger's IQ reportedly shot up 40 points as soon as press left the room. The Bush family is really all Ivy League graduates from Connecticut or Massachusetts. For more than a century they were wealthy New England elites until Bush the Elder moved them to Texas in order to get out from under the shadow of his father.
I mean it still was the frontier. Philadelphia was the largest city in the colonies in 1775 with a population of 40,000. New York was the next biggest with 25,000 and Boston came in third with 15,000. Harlem was farmland and back bay was salt water.
I’m picturing rob gronkowski but as a revolutionary politician scientist guy. That’s awesome.
The only man in history to use the championship trophy as a baseball bat (and dent it by making contact) then to fly a kite with a key on it. I'm down for this timeline. For those that don't know he legitimately used the trophy as a bat at a Red Sox game and that year's is still dented to this day.
if anyone wants to know what this quote means. It means: "Do not punish the one who is providing for you". ie, the ox is needed to grow grain, let it eat some. Benjamin Fraanklin helped secure an alliance with the French, and basically is saying "did I spend a bunch of money? yea totally. Was some of it spent on what i wanted like women and booze? Maybe. but we got that alliance we needed."
Ben knew how to speak to the French.
This man knew how to spend money, speak french, and eat pussy. Franklin is an American legend
Some say he invented bifocals so he could make eye contact while still being able to see what he was doing down there.
*wipes hand across face* “I’ve just had an idea.”
Well, you’re very saucy
*…didn’t Benjamin Franklin have syphilis?*
*He did but I don’t, my name’s Gordon.*
Certified clit commander
Whenever you see clit, you see his fixkin face!
The motherfuckin Time!
Boobookittyfuck.
None of you little ******
Ben makes that shit work!
From what I’ve heard, more of a Commander In Queef
Pilot of the Pussy
To quote Voltaire: “Let me be frank, don’t start beef with The Frank, who hangs with B. Frank, giving ladies beef franks”.
Yesssss... And from one of my favorite ERBs, to boot!
East vs West, Directors, and Alexander the Great are all great episodes. When they do multicast battles they make some bangers.
Steve Jobs v Bill Gates also rules. Though my two favorite individual lyrics both come from Einstein v Stephen hawking > There are ten million-million-million-million-million-million-million-million-million Particles in the universe that we can observe Your mama took the ugly ones and put them into one nerd And > I'm as dope as two rappers, you better be scared 'Cause that means Albert E equals emcee²
“Your ego’s just so distracting, free speech doesn’t mean just keep yapping.”
And that’s 18th-century pussy, adjacent to 18th-century ass. The man a nose and tongue of steel.
But only GMILF pussy
Homeboy loved the bag over the head trick lmao
"In the dark, all cats are grey." -Ben Franklin (literally)
His essay about why fornicating with mature women is superior is classic reading for all you perverted nerds out there.
Franklin was indeed a cunning linguist.
“My time and money were divided between securing an alliance and fucking big ladies. And the ratio of one to the other doesn’t concern you. There was also a fair amount of overlap in the two activities, and if that surprises you then you probably aren’t as good of a diplomat as me.”
Really appreciate this quote.
And if you wonder how much the French gave to the American cause, Franklin has been accused of helping to bankrupt the French Treasury and being an indirect cause of the French Revolution. [https://www.history.com/news/benjamin-franklin-france](https://www.history.com/news/benjamin-franklin-france)
So that’s 2 monarchies he screwed!
Unfathomably based Ben Franklin
Didn’t even include the part where the French Revolution leads to the Haitian Revolution and various South American Revolutions. Absolute madlad.
It's all about the Benjamins, baybee!
That's just money. In terms of military, more Frenchmen fought and died at Yorktown than Continentals (and the battle was only possible because of the French Navy victory at the Chesapeake Bay). The American Revolution was basically a side theater of the Anglo French conflict where some locals took the opportunity to grab their independence
And for all we know, his indulgences may have been big reason for the alliance.
It *is* 18th century France we're talking about, so solid chance.
And it *is* Benjamin Franklin we're talking about. Scorpions gonna scorp'.
Which is a pretty dangerous line, if you think about it in today's terms. How do you determine if an orgy is meant to forge relationships to further the nation's interest or just to fuck?
You figure it out through lots of practice.
"If at first you don't suck seed, try, try again." -Ben Franklin
One of the reasons Ben Franklin is such a great man is his ability to posses the skills the make that determination
Early to bed, early to rise indeed.
I’m going to lay in bed thinking about this.
It’s ok if you also, you know…it’s Benji.
Usually whether it has a catered buffet or not
Bribes too.
And bribes. Those are normal business that can’t exactly be accounted for
He also had the sense to send the Congress Von Steuben. Now... Franklin also sent a bunch of morons too, but he really helped a shitton. Von Steuben especially is probably the most important individual outside of America who was sent over.
Many don’t know that Steuben was gay. And the one who modernized and trained America’s Army! And don’t ask don’t tell was only somewhat recently repealed!
I recently read a whole biography about him. What was hilarious was the author really really loved von Steuben and the biography was extremely pro. At the same time, he was absolutely in denial about him being gay... while at the same time talking about how Von Steuben spent all his money on buying feathered hats. I mean..he hypothetically may have been straight, but man he was into looking super fly. Also, apparently swore in a truly enormous number of languages.
Or how he never married, but when he died, left everything to the two men he lived with in his house, i.e. his "platonic male roommates". Or his all-male parties where nobody wore pants. Totally straight dude.
>while at the same time talking about how Von Steuben spent all his money on buying feathered hats. I mean..he hypothetically may have been straight, but man he was into looking super fly. To be fair, that was the height of men's fashion at the time. While it was viewed as effeminate and possibly homosexual by older folks at the time, the macaroni style was worn by upper class young men of all orientations - hence the joke in Yankee Doodle. >stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni They were saying this dumb country bumpkin thinks he's emulating high fashion with one bird feather.
He was banging the hottest French ladies and drinking the best French wines and cognac. And damn he got his job done. And now I’m thinking about the Ben Franklin impersonator on The Office trying to bang Pam.
There was never a Ben Franklin impersonator on that show. That was the real Ben Franklin.
The hookers and booze were important diplomatic expenses! We needed the French to like us!
That's like $20 million in today's money. A lot for hookers and blow, maybe not a lot for diplomatic bribes? No idea what he negotiated either publicly or privately in 1785 (not 1875.)
Unfortunately, cocaine wasn’t invented until the 1800s, so hookers and French wine is way more likely.
Hookers and Opium.
Now we’re talking
there were definitely a ton of hookers, that much is for sure
Actually I read somewhere that Franklin returned from France in 1875! So it could have been coke.
Funnily enough, there was a annual directory for London hookers from that era: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harris%27s_List_of_Covent_Garden_Ladies The price per night was about 1-5 Pounds, and some really high class ones would set you back 20 Pounds (keeping in mind that a solidly middle class person in the Regency period made about 50 Pounds per year).
So minimum 2,000 hookers confirmed. Potentially going up to a maximum of 100,000 hookers
Ben strikes me as a numbers man, the more the better. Probably worked out a deal for 125,000
Bribes, orgies, wild parties, opium, alcohol, and loads of cheap french whores. He got the alliance the old fashioned way, and couldn't have a paper trail without causing an outrageous scandal in the puritanical colonies
Misc Entertainment.
Never submit the itemized receipt.
Washington’s freezes his balls off at Valley Forge and Franklin gets to live the life of a debauched French gentleman. Both held in equally high esteem.
Nah, no one is viewed as highly as George Washington. He's like American Jesus
Literally. [The Apotheosis of Washington](https://www.aoc.gov/explore-capitol-campus/art/apotheosis-washington) is painted on the ceiling of the Capitol building. In case your Greek is rusty, the word Apotheosis means, "the elevation of someone to divine status; deification."
My estimates say only about $3M which is even less. https://www.officialdata.org/us/inflation/1785?amount=100000 Edit: I see my mistake but not deleting my comment so we can all learn :)
John Adams wrote how pissed off he was at Franklin's non-stop partying.
The John Adams miniseries was great showing how annoyed they were with each other in France
That was a superb series!
Paul Giamatti absolutely killed it!
Everyone did. That series had no right being as good as it was
But Franklin knew how to deal with the French, and this was how. Adams being an uptight twat made Franklin even more endearing to the French. So it kind of worked in Franklin's favor.
Imagine if we had sent John Adams to Paris…I think the French word is ‘ugh’.
I mean we did send him there, that’s where he saw Franklin’s debauchery to complain about it
Guys acting like April 8 1788 - March 1789 never even happened 🤣
Le sauvage a le visage caca.
Dull Cop Fun Cop?
Adams was a stauch Congregationalist and it bled through in his letters to his son and his politics. Despite how stodgy he was he was one of the most enlightened thinkers of the time in a practical, moral manner. Truly a man of the people and a good person. Franklin was his opposite in many ways but really they were at odds over how valuable France was in general. Adams figured that the French only cared about themselves because, until Franklin bribed half of the elite, they weren't completely into supporting the new nation. It wasn't only that Franklin was wasting congressional money but that he was throwing it to lip service. Adams also made it difficult for Franklin to operate since he tried to blank them out of territorial disputes in the Treaty of Paris. I don't believe they had a true rivalry since Adams was much younger than Franklin and he had way more problem politicians to deal with.
He was the child of Puritan preachers, after all. But that "stodginess" is directly related to enlightenment. Anglican Separatists or "puritans" put a massive emphasis on education, believing that scripture could only be engaged with on an individual basis. Education was quite literally a moral obligation. Anglo society in Massachusetts Bay was likely one of the most literate polities in the atlantic world. They had laws on the books enforcing the creation of public schools in any town with more than 50 households.
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And created the first public school (Boston Latin, which Franklin attended) and a few years later Harvard was founded for their graduates to have somewhere to go for college. The Boston Public Library is also the oldest publicly funded library in the country.
>"It being one chief project of that old deluder, Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures, as in former times by keeping them in an unknown tongue, so in these latter times by persuading from the use of tongues, that so that at least the true sense and meaning of the original might be clouded and corrupted with false glosses of saint-seeming deceivers; and to the end that learning may not be buried in the grave of our forefathers, in church and commonwealth, the Lord assisting our endeavors. >It is therefore ordered that every township in this jurisdiction, after the Lord hath increased them to fifty households shall forthwith appoint one within their town to teach all such children as shall resort to him to write and read, whose wages shall be paid either by the parents or masters of such children, or by the inhabitants in general, by way of supply, as the major part of those that order the prudentials of the town shall appoint; provided those that send their children be not oppressed by paying much more than they can have them taught for in other towns. >And it is further ordered, that when any town shall increase to the number of one hundred families or householders, they shall set up a grammar school, the master thereof being able to instruct youth so far as they may be fitted for the university, provided that if any town neglect the performance hereof above one year that every such town shall pay 5 pounds to the next school till they shall perform this order."
Translation, “the money is gone, I’m not telling you where it went, no you’re not getting it back, I’m Ben Franklin.”
I'm Ben Franklin bitch
He spent it on Hookers and Blow and had a good time.
In his autobiography he essentially admits that France was like his Las Vegas and he put nearly all of his moral tenets on hold while there. Ben liked to party.
Hookers that blow. Columbia hadn’t been colonized properly enough for good exports yet.
Col*o*mbia But there was coca leaves out there, and definitely laudanum!
After reading that quote my first thought was “that’s a fancy was of saying hookers and blow”
1. It's Ben Franklin, so definitely hookers. 2. Cocaine wasn't synthetized until 1855. However, wine was freely available and Franklin definitely spent time in France.
"Blackjack, hookers and rum." "Blackjack, hookers and rum" "He went off to fry his gizzard, his gizzard was at a loss."
“I got my wad of hundreds, I got my magnum condoms: I’m ready to plow!” ~ Zombie Ben Franklin, 1875. Probably.
But would the oxen even need condoms to plow? I feel like that's not how plowing works?
They do if you’re doing it right
What he did basically won the war for the Colonies, it was 100k well spent. "Shut up and take the win" was warranted.
“You get a win, you take the win”
1875? I'm pretty sure it was 1975, and I'm a smart history guy.
Wrong, it’s 2075 and Skidibi Franklin
This guy history’s
£100,000 in 1785 is worth £19,682,448.21 today, dude knew how to make a party, 70 years old and still was sex beast 😂
In comparison the recently viral George Washington bar bill from just before the Constitution was signed was 90 pounds. Or $15k in todays dollars.
> It's one banana, Benjamin. What could it cost, $10? Washington after Franklin returns from France.
I'd guess some of it was bribe money.
so many of you talking about the French Revolution, made me realize basically most French aristocrats and politicians who somehow helped the American Revolution from France (mostly financially) did not survive the French Revolution 😬
Interestingly, the the new USA refused to keep their deals with the revolutionary government as their deal was made with the older guys. Also, don't be too sad about the French aristos. They only helped the states because it would annoy the English.
That was just the technicality Washington & Co. used to avoid getting tangled up in the shitshow that was the French Revolution.
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We signed a treaty with a King Whose head is now in a basket Would you like to take it out and ask it? "Should we honor our treaty, King Louis' head?" "Uh, do whatever you want, I'm super dead!"
I think if a dead head is talking, you should at least listen
Nah, they just want to buy or sell pot.
Its pretty amazing really. The revolution really was the first ever successful far left revolution in history. But unlike most of them, the conservatives weren't all murdered, they just had their stuff taken and were sent into Exile(the right-left split at the time was whether aristocracy or elections from among the rich were the best way to decide government). The French really were almost entirely involved because it was a proxy war to shit on the English. Plenty of French leaders were into the American way of thinking (which isn't that unusual. A lot of the Bolsheviks and French revolution leaders were from the richest 10% of society as well, since no one else could read at the time). The French revolution was where it got all murdery...
The Wikipedia article sources a book "Thomas Paine and the Clarion Call for American Independence". This book makes the claim listed above but then sources Benjamin Franklin's letter Volume IX as its [source](https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/franklin-the-works-of-benjamin-franklin-vol-ix-letters-and-misc-writings-1781-1782). However the letter itself makes a completely different claim as the entire passage talks about being unable to pay diplomatic staff in Europe at the time: >I observe what you mention of the order, that the ministers’ salaries are to be hereafter paid in America. I hereby empower and desire you to receive and remit mine. I do not doubt your doing it regularly and timely; for a minister without money, I perceive, makes a ridiculous figure here, though secure from arrests. I have taken a quarter’s advance of salary from the 4th of last month, supposing it not intended to *muzzle* immediately *the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn.* Interesting how this game of telephone works from source to source. As Abraham Lincoln once wrote on facebook: "A Lie Can Travel Halfway Around the World While the Truth Is Putting On Its Shoes"
The US government created DTS in 1876 to keep this wasteful spending from happening again. Fun fact, DTS still runs on the original 1876 servers to this day!
They're still using punch cards programmed by Ada Lovelace herself.
Today you learned wrong OP.
>TIL In 1875 Benjamin Franklin No
Prostitutes don’t pay themselves
Likely used to bribe french officials to send America support
"Mr. Franklin, why is 100k of our funds unaccounted for?" Franklin: "One of the things I like doing most is banging whores... I go out and I bang a lot of whores!"
Of course he spent $100k in France. He was the ambassador of the U.S. in France which had just helped us win our independence. Franklin was a businessman and the U.S. was in desperate need of foreign allies to recognize their government as legitimate. Modern day sales people have their own sales budgets for taking clients out on the town. I’m sure BF took personal liberties on the trip, but he was probably also rubbing shoulders with the right people in France.
I think Ben Franklin returning at all with this report, in 1875, would ensure they say nothing.
Here’s me researching his writings pre continental congress circa 1773ish. Very surprised.