Skip to main content

He Hated Ben Franklin

March 2023
1min read

PETER PORCUPINE IN AMERICA
Pamphlets on Republicanism and Revolution

by William Cobbett, edited and with an introduction by David A. Wilson , Cornell University Press, 288 pages .

The political writer William Cobbett arrived in America from England in 1792, a republican in a new republic. In less than two years the country changed him into an embittered monarchist. “Instead of that perfect freedom” promised by Thomas Paine, Cobbett said he had found “a set of petty, mean, despots, ruling by a perversion of the law of England.” Writing under the pseudonym Peter Porcupine, he lit into almost every democratic figure and fad in Federal America. He cautioned women: “ Politics is a mixture of anger and deceit, and these are the mortal enemies of Beauty . The instant a lady turns politician, farewell the smiles, the dimples, the roses; the graces abandon her.…” He attacked the French Revolution, which offered “a striking and experimental proof of the horrible effects of anarchy and infidelity.” And he turned to his favorite subject—his cranky, hyperbolic self—in “The Life and Adventures of Peter Porcupine,” skewering Benjamin Franklin and his other enemies along the way. The editors have mostly chosen longer pieces but also include a taste of Cobbett’s short, poisonous portraits of Thomas Paine, Noah Webster, and Thomas McKean, as well as his “Last Will and Testament of Peter Porcupine” (“I leave my body to Doctor Michael Leib, a member of the Legislature of Pennsylvania, to be by him dissected [if he knows how to do it] in presence of the Rump of the Democratic Society”). Having made himself the most widely read pamphleteer in a country that largely repelled him, Cobbett traveled back to England in 1800. At his death thirty-five years later, Karl Marx called him “the greatest pamphleteer England has ever produced.”

We hope you enjoy our work.

Please support this 72-year tradition of trusted historical writing and the volunteers that sustain it with a donation to American Heritage.

Donate

Stories published from "April 1996"

Authored by: The Editors

A rare personal account of the classic immigrant experience

Authored by: Ezra Goldstein

AN OHIO UNDERTAKER’S LIFELONG obsession has left a mysterious outdoor gallery of American folk art

Authored by: John H. White, Jr.

They are thirty years gone from our main lines, but all across the country steam locomotives are pulling trainloads of passengers into the past. A lifelong studenj of the great age of American railroadj reveals some of the most impressive.

Authored by: Michael S. Durham

People visit the Grand Canyon for scenery, not architecture. But an assortment of buildings there, infused with history and the sensibility of one strong woman, are worth a long look.

Authored by: The Editors

CROSSROADS OF COMMERCE
The Pennsylvania Railroad Calendar
Art of Grif Teller

Authored by: The Editors

THE DIARIES OF DAWN POWELL 1931-1965

Authored by: The Editors

THE GOLDEN AGE OF JAZZ

Authored by: The Editors

JAMES THURBER
His Life and Times

Authored by: The Editors

HOME AWAY FROM HOME
Motels in America

Authored by: The Editors

OUR TIMES
Multimedia Encyclopedia of the 20th Century

Featured Articles

The world’s most prominent actress risked her career by standing up to one of Hollywood’s mega-studios, proving that behind the beauty was also a very savvy businesswoman. 

Rarely has the full story been told about how a famed botanist, a pioneering female journalist, and First Lady Helen Taft battled reluctant bureaucrats to bring Japanese cherry trees to Washington. 

Often thought to have been a weak president, Carter was strong-willed in doing what he thought was right, regardless of expediency or the political fallout.

Why have thousands of U.S. banks failed over the years? The answers are in our history and politics.

In his Second Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln embodied leading in a time of polarization, political disagreement, and differing understandings of reality.