Account Books Kept by Benjamin Franklin.

FRANKLIN, Benjamin; Notes by George Simpson Eddy.

$300.00

Item Number: 145950

New York: Columbia University Press, 1928.

Benjamin Franklin’s ledger and journal from 1728-1939 from The American Philosophical Society’s ‘Papers of Benjamin Franklin’; from the library of Philemon Tecumseh Sherman. Small quarto, original wrappers. P. T. Sherman’s bookplate to the front free endpaper. In very good condition with light rubbing and closed tears to the extremities. General William Tecumseh Sherman’s son P. T. Sherman was a lawyer in New York, specializing in labor and insurance, and was elected a member of the New York Board of Alderman in the late 1880s. In the early 1900s, he was appointed the New York Commissioner of Labor. He transferred his library to his niece, Eleanor Sherman Fitch, the granddaughter of General Sherman through his eldest daughter, Maria “Minnie” Ewing Sherman Fitch, before he died. Until now, this book was held at the family estate in Washington County, Pennsylvania.

Benjamin Franklin earned the title of "The First American" for his early and indefatigable campaigning for colonial unity, initially as an author and spokesman in London for several colonies. As the first United States Ambassador to France, he exemplified the emerging American nation. Franklin was foundational in defining the American ethos as a marriage of the practical values of thrift, hard work, education, community spirit, self-governing institutions, and opposition to authoritarianism both political and religious, with the scientific and tolerant values of the Enlightenment. In the words of historian Henry Steele Commager, "In a Franklin could be merged the virtues of Puritanism without its defects, the illumination of the Enlightenment without its heat." To Walter Isaacson, this makes Franklin "the most accomplished American of his age and the most influential in inventing the type of society America would become."