Benjamin Franklin's life of eighty-four years (1706-1790) spanned most of the eighteenth century-a period in which the American colonies grew from small, isolated communities to a united nation of thirteen states. Franklin contributed greatly to the political founding of the nation and did much to help shape the American character. He thus became known by many as "the first American." In his autobiography, which stops almost twenty years before he helped to draft the Declaration of Independence and over thirty years before his death, he describes the formation of his own character as an example to others in the newly emerging nation.
Proprietary politics. Decades before hostilities broke out between the English government and the American colonies, a small-scale conflict was already raging in the colony of Pennsylvania, where Franklin resided. Founded as a proprietary colony by the Penn family of England in the seventeenth century, Pennsylvania had served as a haven for religious tolerance and a home to hard-working Quakers for half a century when Franklin arrived there. The Penns had advertised the colony as a land of wealth and opportunity, attracting a large number of English and German tradesmen and farmers.
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