This is the first modern biography of Benjamin Franklin Bache, the grandson of Benjamin Franklin. Between the turbulent years of 1793 and 1798, Bache was the young nation's leading political journalist and a sharp critic of the Federalists and their policies. As editor of the most important radical newspaper of the 1790s, he lived at the center of most of the political storms of that decade. He defended the Democratic Societies as the earliest vehicles of public opinion; he strenuously opposed the ratification of the Jay Treaty, the central political event of the decade; he led and orchestrated the attack on George Washington in an attempt to curb growing executive authority; and his defense of French policies contributed to the sedition crisis of 1798. A primary target of the Federalist-sponsored Sedition Act, he was indicted for federal common law seditious libel before that act took effect. In 1798, at the height of the political hysteria, Bache died of yellow fever at the age of twenty-nine. Like Thomas Paine, to whom Bache was personally and ideologically connected, Bache was not a product of Whig Oppositionist or classical republican ideology. Yet neither was he an inheritor of a more thoroughly modem liberal ideal. Committed to rational self -interest, he promoted a civic vision and only partially embraced the newer world of nascent capitalism. James Tagg establishes the ideological and psychological framework of Bache's later radicalism by carefully examining Bache's childhood at Passy with his grandfather, his education in Geneva, and his adolescence in Philadelphia. Benjamin Franklin Bache and the Philadelphia Aurora will interest scholars and students of American history.

200 Years ago a Philadelphia newspaper claimed George Washington wasn't the "father of his country." It claimed John Adams really wanted to be king. Its editors were arrested by the federal government. One editor died awaiting trial. The story of this newspaper is the story of America. THE AMERICAN HISTORY WE WEREN'T SUPPOSED TO KNOW In this monumental story of two newspaper editors whom Presidents Washington and Adams sought to jail for sedition, American Aurora offers a new and heretical vision of this nation's beginnings, from the vantage point of those who fought in the American Revolution to create a democracy--and lost.

The inventor, the ladies’ man, the affable diplomat, and the purveyor of pithy homespun wisdom: we all know the charming, resourceful Benjamin Franklin. What is less appreciated is the importance of Franklin’s part in the American Revolution: except for Washington he was its most irreplaceable leader. Although aged and in ill health, Franklin served the cause with unsurpassed zeal and dedication. Jonathan R. Dull, whose decades of work on The Papers of Benjamin Franklin have given him rare insight into his subject, explains Franklin’s role in the Revolution, what prepared him for that role, and what motivated him. The Franklin presented here, a man immersed in the violence, danger, and suffering of the Revolution, is a tougher person than the Franklin of legend. Dull’s portrait captures Franklin’s confidence and self-righteousness about himself and the American cause. It shows his fanatical zeal, his hatred of King George III and George’s American supporters (particularly Franklin’s own son), and his disdain for hardship and danger. It also shows a side of Franklin that he tried to hide: his vanity, pride, and ambition. Though not as lovable and avuncular as the person of legend, this Franklin is more interesting, more complex, and in many ways more impressive.

The prosecution of dissent under the Alien and Sedition Acts affected far more people than previously realized. It also provoked the first battle over the Bill of Rights. Wendell Bird provides the definitive account of a dark moment in U.S. history, reminding us that expressive freedom and opposition politics are essential to a stable democracy.

Fostering the "pursuit of happiness" was an avowed purpose of the American Revolution, but what was the phrase to mean in practice? How would the new society being created achieve what Enlightenment egalitarians called the "common good"? In this dual biography of Benjamin Franklin and his grandson Benjamin Franklin Bache, Jeffery A. Smith examines the careers of two of the most prominent journalists to advocate what became known as Jeffersonian republicanism. Franklin used his writings to encourage the kind of conscientious and public-spirited behavior he thought necessary if the majority of people were to secure free and prosperous lives. He impressed these ideals on Bache as he supervised his education in three countries and established him as a printer-publisher in Philadelphia. In the 1790s, as Federalists and Republicans battled over the course the United States would take in national and international affairs, Franklin's carefully indoctrinated protege became Jefferson's confidant and most fierce journalistic supporter. Franklin and Bache were among those envisioning a nation where liberty, learning, and a more even distribution of wealth would inaugurate a new epoch in human history. Published on the 200th anniversary of Franklin's death, this careful study offers a much-needed illumination of early American aspirations for a democratic future.