The History of the American Revolution. Vols. I-II. [William Temple Franklin's copy]

Philadelphia: Printed and sold by R. Aitken and Son, 1789. 2 volumes. 8vo. (9 x 5 1/2 inches). First edition. Vol. I: [X]3 A-Xx4 Yy3. [i]-vi [1]-320 323-359 [1]. pp.366. Title, Preface, Contents, Chapters I-XIII. Paginations errors as issued. Vol. II: [X]2 A-Yy4. [i]-vi [1]-360. pp.366. Title, Contents, Chapters XIV-XXVII, Alphabetical List of the Members of Congress. Publisher's original cream and blue boards. Spine with six raised bands forming seven compartments with paper titling-label in second, book block with deckle edges

Provenance: William Temple Franklin (1760-1823): Ink manuscript signature on title page of Vol. I

Benjamin Franklin's grandson William Temple Franklin's copy of Ramsay's important early historical account of the American Revolution; the first book to receive copyright in the United States.

"As a member of Congress, I had access to all the official papers of the United States. Every letter written to Congress by General Washington, from the day he took the command of the American army till he resigned it, was carefully perused, and its contents noted. The same was done with the letters of other general officers, ministers of Congress, and others in public stations." - David Ramsay, Preface William Temple Franklin (1760-1823) was the grandson of Benjamin Franklin and served as his secretary during his ambassadorial post to France during the American Revolution, where Franklin negotiated the decisive Franco-American Alliance. Later, Temple Franklin was Secretary to the American delegation who negotiated the independence of the States at the Treaty of Paris from 1782-1783. Benjamin Franklin's hopes for his grandson's diplomatic career were thwarted by Temple Franklin's bon vivant lifestyle which raised concerns that Thomas Jefferson shared with James Monroe to kill a government appointment for the younger Franklin. Drawn largely from papers Ramsay studied while representing South Carolina in the Continental Congress, this account of the American Revolution - "the work of an alert and sturdy eye-witness" - extends as far as Washington's inauguration as president. [Larned] "As a historian and public figure, Ramsay made an important contribution to events in Revolutionary America." [Reese] Ramsay was a historian, physician, and statesman who was a "moderate Federalist, representative of the coast country group, a man of ability, integrity, and influence." [DAB] Born in Pennsylvania, Ramsay was a graduate of Princeton, who earned his medical degree at Penn, and settled in Charleston, where he developed a practice. During the Revolution, he was a military surgeon in the Siege of Charleston, captured there by the British, and imprisoned for a year in St. Augustine. After the Revolution, he served three terms in the South Carolina Senate and was elected President of the Senate. Nominated to the US Senate, his nomination was defeated due to his abolitionist leanings. Before his assassination in 1815, he wrote a number of historical works of lasting value. He was the first American politician to be assassinated. Of his assassin, he said, with his last words, "I consider the unfortunate perpetrator of this deed a lunatic, and free from guilt." It has been argued by historian Lester H. Cohen that the few eighteenth-century American histories of the Revolution, most notably those authored by Ramsay, were part of a larger nation-building movement. Thus, this history of the revolution is distinctly American: in its writing, illustrations, printing, binding, and the socio-political impact it had on the young Republic's cultural identity. Alongside Ramsay's The History of the Revolution of South Carolina, this present book was the first to receive copyright in America. First editions are rare of Ramsay's History, and in the original boards, doubly so. With the Franklin association, as Ramsay writes about Temple Franklin's grandfather Benjamin Franklin in the text, it is a fascinating piece of American history.

Evans 22090. Howes R35. Larned 1469. Reese, Revolutionary Hundred 80. Sabin 67687.