Runaway America

“[An] intricately detailed analysis of [Benjamin] Franklin’s thoughts and actions.” —Roger K. Miller, Chicago Sun-Times

“A powerful portrait of 18th-century life and one of the key players in the drama of revolution that freed a nation from the shackles of its mother country while keeping others in bondage.” —Barret R. Richardson, The Virginian-Pilot

Scientist, abolitionist, revolutionary: that is the Benjamin Franklin we know and celebrate. To this description, the talented young historian David Waldstreicher shows we must add runaway, slave master, and empire builder. But Runaway America does much more than revise our image of a beloved founding father. Finding slavery at the center of Franklin's life, David Waldstreicher proves it was likewise central to the Revolution, America’s founding, and the very notion of freedom we associate with both.

Franklin was the sole Founding Father who was once owned by someone else and was among the few to derive his fortune from slavery. As an indentured servant, Franklin fled his master before his term was complete; as a struggling printer, he built a financial empire selling newspapers that not only advertised the goods of a slave economy (not to mention slaves) but also ran the notices that led to the recapture of runaway servants. Perhaps Waldstreicher’s greatest achievement is in showing that this was not an ironic outcome but a calculated one. America’s freedom, no less than Franklin’s, demanded that others forgo liberty.

Through the life of Franklin, Runaway America provides an original explanation to the paradox of American slavery and freedom.

“Bold and immensely readable . . . Mr. Waldstreicher’s book is not mere exposé but a stunning inquiry into the complicated, if not outright deceptive, anti-slavery legacy of America’s favorite self-made man. Rigorous and firmly unsentimental, Runaway America deserves a wide readership. Its clever broad-mindedness makes it one of the freshest, most original books ever written about America’s ‘best-known colonist and revolutionary.’” —Kirk Davis Swineheart, The New York Sun