Most of the post-roads then were mere bridle-paths through forests. “Even,” says a writer, “between Amboy and Trenton, the very road along which Franklin the runaway apprentice had wearily trudged in the rain in 1723, had as late as 1775 a stake set up every two miles to keep the traveller from going astray.”
In 1765 Mrs. Franklin, writing to her husband, then in England, says, “The Southern mail has not come in, nor has the Virginia mail, for more than two months.” Little intercourse at that period. The name of Franklin in connection with science, and his being deputy postmaster-general, was not only a household word from Boston to Charleston, but was also extensively known in Europe. Only two American names were then familiar to the Old World,—Jonathan Edwards in the religious world, and Benjamin Franklin in the circle of science. Jonathan Edwards was born at Windsor, in the province of Connecticut, in 1703. He graduated at Yale College, and afterwards was a tutor in the establishment. He was ordained in the ministry in 1727. His chief works are a “Treatise on the Religious Affections,” “An Enquiry into the Notion of Freedom of Will,” “A Treatise on Original Sin,” “Religious Narratives,” &c.
In 1756 an attempt was made, instigated by some political enemies, to induce the postmaster-general to remove Franklin from office, as being a “factious and troublesome man.” As the cause assigned was so trifling, the postmaster-general sent his “deputy” a letter of reprimand, or rather one of gentle reproof. So the matter ended.
A copy of the “Gazette” bearing date 1747 is in the possession of a gentleman of this city. Published by B. Franklin, Postmaster, and D. Hall. All post-office notices and letters remaining in the post-office were published in the “Gazette.”
In 1774 Benjamin Franklin was very summarily dismissed from the office of postmaster. The letter from the postmaster-general stated simply “that the king had found it necessary to dismiss him from the office of deputy postmaster-general of America.”
It is not necessary for us to give the readers the reasons for this act, as the history of Franklin in connection with the events preceding the Revolution will fully explain them. The colonies were in a state of incipient revolution.
The course pursued by the British Government was such that, under the excitement arising from its acts, the colonies declared themselves constitutionally exempt from all obedience to the measures of the British Parliament, and that the government of the provinces was in fact dissolved.
Thus, the Congress held in Philadelphia on the 5th of September, 1774, will ever be remembered and celebrated in the annals of history as the first page dedicated to liberty. It was a congress of men who met to decide the question whether one man had the power and the right to rule the million, or the million the right to govern themselves. The success of our Revolution decided the question; and counter-rebellions and revolutions can never change that base, upon which is erected Liberty’s throne.
Franklin arrived in Philadelphia, from England, on the evening of May 5, 1775, and the very next day the Assembly of Pennsylvania, then in session, appointed him a delegate to the Second Continental Congress, which was to convene in Philadelphia four days after. The people of America had everywhere become exasperated beyond all further forbearance. The blood of their countrymen had been wantonly shed by British troops, at Lexington and Concord, in April; and the call to arms was now ringing through the land.