Momentous public affairs mingle with family concerns to give a varied interest to Franklin's papers for 1765. During the first part of the year he was busy trying to get modifications of existing British revenue laws affecting colonial trade and to persuade George Grenville to adopt a substitute for the projected Stamp Act. Failing with Grenville, he accepted the inevitable and then committed what may have been the most serious political blunder of his career; he proposed a friend for stamp distributor of Pennsylvania. The organized resistance to the act and the violence that occurred in American during the summer and fall, as reported by friends and relatives, caught Franklin completely by surprise. He rallied quickly, however, and began an active campaign, partly by letters to the English press, to bring about repeal of the obnoxious act. Meanwhile, his new house in Philadelphia was completed and his wife and daughter moved in. In answer to Franklin's eager questions, his wife Deborah wrote to him to detail about the furnishings and the allocation of rooms to members of the household. Contemporary floor plans illuminate her explanations.Mr. Labaree is Farnam Professor Emeritus of History at Yale University.
Benjamin Franklin was an important conservative figure in the American Restoration Movement, especially as the leading antebellum conservative in the northern United States branch of the movement. He is notable as the early and lifelong mentor of Daniel Sommer, whose support of the 1889 Sand Creek Declaration set in motion events which led to the formal division of the Churches of Christ from the Disciples of Christ in 1906.
According to contemporary biographies "His early religious training was according to the Methodist faith, though he never belonged to any church until he united with the Disciples."
In 1856, Franklin began to publish the ultra-conservative American Christian Review, which he published until his death in 1878. Its influence, initially considerable, was said to have waned following the American Civil War. Franklin undertook a rigorous program of publication correspondence, and traveling lectures which took him to "many" U. S. states and Canada.
Franklin's last move was to Anderson, Indiana, where he lived from 1864 until his death.
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