ABSTRACT
Benjamin Franklin died in 1790, between George Washington's first two addresses to Congress. Franklin was a great believer not in the traditional religious sense, but in himself and in his new nation as a land of opportunity. His autobiography would be passed down and read for generations as a peculiarly American story, a tale of luck and pluck success coming from a combination of hard work and a fortunate break. Perhaps that helps to explain why Franklin's break with his son William seems less tragic than it might otherwise. Franklin chose the American future, his son the British past. His son is more or less forgotten, the onetime royal governor of New Jersey ending his days exiled in London, a man without a country. Despite all of the changes that he had witnessed all of the changes that he had helped make possible, John Quincy Adams was less sanguine than Franklin that Americans could escape the cycles of history.
