"
[Footnote 1: Mr. Matthew Arnold, and more recently Professor Goldwin
Smith, have both spoken of Washington as an Englishman. I do not
mention this to discredit the statements of Mr. Lowell or Mr. King,
but merely to indicate how far this mistaken idea has traveled.]
In order to point his sentence and prove his first postulate, Mr.
King is obliged not only to dispose of Washington, but to introduce
Columbus, who never was imagined in the wildest fantasy to be an
American, and to omit Franklin. The omission of itself is fatal to Mr.
King's case. Franklin has certainly a "preeminent name." He has, too,
"immortal fame," although of course of a widely different character
from that of either Washington or Lincoln, but he was a great man
in the broad sense of a world-wide reputation. Yet no one has ever
ventured to call Benjamin Franklin an Englishman. He was a colonial
American, of course, but he was as intensely an American as any man
who has lived on this continent before or since. A man of the people,
he was American by the character of his genius, by his versatility,
the vivacity of his intellect, and his mental dexterity. In his
abilities, his virtues, and his defects he was an American, and so
plainly one as to be beyond the reach of doubt or question. There were
others of that period, too, who were as genuine Americans as Franklin
or Lincoln. Such were Jonathan Edwards, the peculiar product of New
England Calvinism; Patrick Henry, who first broke down colonial lines
to declare himself an American; Samuel Adams, the great forerunner
of the race of American politicians; Thomas Jefferson, the idol of
American democracy.
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