We think Franklin would appreciate the gift. After all, he was one of the most far-sighted publishers in the colonies. He purchased the Pennsylvania Gazette in 1729 and turned it into the colony’s leading paper. He branched out into almanacs in 1732 and became the most widely read American in the New World and the Old.

Franklin would have been excited our new technology—both as a scientist and a publisher. The possibility of expanding from old media into new media would have filled him with ideas for promoting science, politics, morals, and—definitely—entertainment. He was the one of those editors, according to biographer Walter Isaacson, “who are charmed and amused by the world and delight in charming and amusing others.

Turning around the Pennsylvania Gazette from a sleepy, dying periodical to the leading newspaper of the colony, Franklin knew that publishers can’t rely on old formulas. He broadened the scope of the newspaper’s contents and thought up new ways to generate public interest. For example, he would write letters to the editor under pseudonyms, attacking or praising the newspaper’s content. He would readily use humor, sometimes inventing humorous anecdotes that could have arisen from the mistakes printed by competing papers.

His almanacs were filled with information that would be practical to farmers and fishermen: sunrises, tides, and moon phases. But Franklin also included any information he thought would be interesting, including the musings of his alter-ego, Poor Richard. In a way, these almanacs were the forerunner to the blogs of today.

The Saturday Evening Post is among several organizations keeping alive the memory of this great American. The contribution of Benjamin Franklin to our country’s independence and prosperity are incalculable. As a diplomat, he secured financial and military support for the colonist from the court of France’s Louis XIV. But as a scientist, he shattered Europe’s dismissive attitude toward Americans as backwoodsmen and dirt farmers.

“84 Days of Ben Franklin” will feature quotes from Dr. Franklin, drawing on his earnest advice and his sharp-eyed view of society.

Sign up for Ben’s Twitter feed, click here.

84 Days of Ben Franklin The Saturday Evening Post

Here’s what Ben Franklin would say: “Been thither, done that.”

During the winter of 1755-56, Ben Franklin, a civilian like Obama, raised and commanded the largest militia in British North America.

Raids by Native Americans on towns in western Pennsylvania stimulated the action. The Shawnee, distressed by incursion into their territory by Europeans, responded as one would expect. Tales of massacres soon reached Philadelphia where pacifist Quakers, reluctant to engage in combat themselves, gave financial support to Franklin’s call to establish a militia, which would march westward to aid settlers with fort construction (and warfare with the natives if necessary).

Franklin suggested that the militia’s soldiers elect their own officers. As he put it: “It seems likely that the people will engage more readily in the service, and face danger with more intrepidity, when they are commanded by a man they know and esteem, and on whose prudence and courage, as well as goodwill and integrity, they can have reliance, than they would under a man they either did not know, or did not like.”

Needless to say, the men elected Franklin to lead them. He was, after all, Pennsylvania’s most prominent citizen. Ben Franklin declined the term “general” for his position, accepting “colonel” instead. Nevertheless, when Franklin and his brigade visited the Moravians en route west, the locals addressed him as “General Franklin.”

After successfully constructing forts in three Pennsylvania locations, Franklin and his army returned to Philadelphia. Soon thereafter, on March 16, 1756, Colonel Franklin marched part of his militia past Pennsylvania’s Royal Governor—a man who viewed Franklin with suspicion. (Franklin wanted the Pennsylvania family—owners of much Pennsylvania land—to pay their fair share of the militia’s cost, something they refused to do.) This show of strength did not go unnoticed by the governor.

The next day, when Franklin left Philadelphia to attend a meeting in Virginia, his troops gave him a military send-off, accompanying him to the ferry terminal with swords drawn — an inappropriate gesture, according to proper military etiquette. When Franklin found this out, he decided that he had had enough of martial displays. As he wrote about the incident: “For tho’ a great number met me at my return, they did not ride with drawn swords, having been told the ceremony was improper. … I who am totally ignorant of military ceremonies, and above all things averse to making show and parade, or doing any useless thing that can serve only to excite envy or provoke malice, suffered at the time much more pain than I enjoy’d pleasure, and have never since given an opportunity for anything of the sort.”

I wonder if President Obama was thinking the same as he reviewed the troops, knowing that in less than 72 hours he’d be asking generals to prepare a plan to withdraw soldiers from Iraq and redeploy them into Afghanistan.

President Obama’s Inaugural Parade The Saturday Evening Post

Here’s what he’d say: “I told you so!” Franklin, after all, both created the job of president and promoted the abolition of slavery, so Barack Obama’s inauguration represents the final conjunction of two of Franklin’s most significant contributions to life in America.

Franklin first proposed a central government for British North America during the Albany Congress in 1754, fully 27 years before the U.S. Constitution incorporated his ideas in our founding document. The head of this central government would be a president-general, appointed by the British monarch. In this way, Franklin hoped the constant feuding between the 13 colonies would end, easing trade.

Regarding slavery, as a young Philadelphia businessman, Franklin owned a slave couple, which he later sold because they were too costly to maintain. Moreover, his Pennsylvania Gazette frequently advertised slaves for sale. The justification for slavery in North America revolved around the status of Africans as either “beasts” or infidels — heathens who didn’t know Christian teachings and hadn’t been baptized. This stance led to heated debates about what happened when Africans became Christianized.

Gradually the notion took hold among certain sects that blacks who converted to Christianity should be freed from bondage. Quakers were among the first to insist on this principle, excommunicating meeting house members who held Christianized slaves. This, in turn, fueled missionary zeal among those who saw slavery as ungodly. They set up schools to teach blacks the reading skills needed to study and absorb the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

In 1758, a school for Negroes was opened in Philadelphia. Many slave owners disparaged such schools, claiming that Africans were incapable of learning to read or write. Franklin, however, came to the opposite conclusion. In 1763 he visited one such school and wrote about the experience to a British friend, saying that he had “visited the Negro School … and had the Children thoroughly examin’d.” Franklin reported, “They appear’d all to have made considerable Progress in Reading for the Time they had respectively been in the School, and most of them answer’d readily and well the Questions of the Catechism; they behav’d very orderly, show’d a proper Respect and ready Obedience to the Mistress, and seem’d very attentive.” Franklin concluded, “From what I then saw, [I] have conceiv’d a higher Opinion of the natural Capacities of the black Race, than I had ever before entertained. Their Apprehension seems as quick, their Memory as strong, and their Docility in every Respect equal to that of white Children.”

Franklin, during the 1787 U.S. Constitutional Convention, was effectively governor of Pennsylvania and head of his state’s delegation to that assemblage. Shortly after the convention ended, however, Franklin returned to private life, at least for a while, retiring from Pennsylvania’s presidency on November 5, 1788. By then, Franklin was already president of an organization started 10 years earlier by righteous-minded Quakers called The Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage and for Improving the Condition of the African Race. The group’s stated objective was “to use such means as are in their power, to extend the blessings of freedom to every part of the human race.”

As soon as his government duties ended, Franklin got down to the business of abolishing slavery. He used his considerable energy, skill, and prestige to make things happen. He thus became the leader of the abolitionist movement.

Franklin approached the antislavery project with a level of commitment equaling his dedication to civic achievement during his earlier tradesman days. In November 1789, Franklin issued “An Address to the Public” in which he called slavery “such an atrocious debasement of human nature” that eliminating it without proper preparation could “open a source of serious evil.”

Franklin’s antislavery campaign ultimately led to America’s Civil War. Our nation’s new constitution put off for 20 years any laws limiting slavery. This would allow congressmen to set the matter aside and deal with more pressing questions, such as how to pay off national debts and whether to maintain a standing army during peacetime.

However, Benjamin Franklin, the nation’s patriarch, sent a petition to the First Continental Congress soon after it convened. This document, from Franklin’s pen, raised religious and moral issues to condemn slavery.

Franklin’s petition reminded Congress that they had been given power for “promoting the Welfare and securing the blessings of liberty to the People of the United States” and declared “that these blessings ought rightfully to be administered, without distinction of Color, to all descriptions of People.” The document asked Congress for “the Restoration of liberty to those unhappy Men, who alone in this land of Freedom are degraded into perpetual Bondage … groaning in servile Subjection.” Franklin’s signature at the bottom of the petition, seemingly larger than usual, insured open debate on the subject. And debate they did: The discourse laid out the issues that continued to come up with increasing animosity for the next 70 years.

Indeed, Franklin opened a can of worms that Congress could not close. At the time, however, the balance between free and slave states shackled progress towards emancipation. The debate in our nation’s capital over the contentious issue of slavery, however, eventually split the country in two.

Abraham Lincoln was, in effect, carrying out Benjamin Franklin’s objective when he emancipated slaves in the conquered regions of the South.

If Ben Franklin came back to life today, he’d burst with pride over the outcomes of two of his favorite projects: the abolition of slavery and the formation of a national American government. However, he’d wonder why it took more than 230 years for these two objectives to coalesce in the election of a black president of the United States of America.

America’s First Black President Barack Obama The Saturday Evening Post

Why, you might wonder, did Ben Franklin select me, a California orthopedic surgeon, as his spokesperson? Why didn’t he choose one of his 32,000 living descendants? Why hasn’t he picked as his mouthpiece a University of Pennsylvania professor, or an official of the Library Company of Philadelphia, or a member of The American Philosophical Society (all affiliated with institutions Franklin founded)? Why, for that matter, doesn’t he speak for himself?

Well, if these are your questions, you really should be asking how a dead guy could pick anyone to do anything! After all, Ben Franklin reportedly expired on April 17, 1790, after a long illness characterized by painful bladder stones, gout, and pneumonia.

So here’s the answer.

Not long ago, I wrote a book about Ben Franklin as a scientist and medical researcher. The book differs from other Franklin biographies because I directed it to the great man himself. Before Franklin died, you see, he wrote that flies drowned in wine could be revived by putting them out in the sun. Franklin proclaimed: “I should prefer to any ordinary death, being immersed with a few friends in a cask of Madeira wine … then to be recalled to life by the solar warmth of my dear country!”

In my book, I assumed that Franklin, near the end of his life and heavily medicated with opium, was immersed by his doctor in a barrel of Madeira and buried somewhere in Philadelphia to await future unearthing. Presuming that Franklin would spend his first few weeks after disencaskment at Pennsylvania Hospital, I prepared for him numerous emails updating his conjectures, inventions, and ideas. Thus evolved Dear Doctor Franklin: Emails to a Founding Father About Science, Medicine, and Technology.

At my book’s end, the barrel containing Franklin’s wine-soaked body isn’t found, so the claim that he’s entombed in Christ Church’s cemetery at the corner of Philadelphia’s Fifth and Arch Streets remains unchallenged. Nevertheless, since I cling to the possibility that Franklin actually carried out his Madeira scheme and will soon return, who’s better qualified to speak for him than his own pen pal? Indeed, I’m the only living person to have actually communicated with Dr. Benjamin Franklin: our discourse comprises 85 emails (admittedly all one-sided) tracing Franklin’s ideas and inventions from his time to our own.

Introducing the Benjamin Franklin Blog The Saturday Evening Post