As I did at this time last year, I will take the occasion of the Fourth of July to reflect on an episode from the American Revolution.
On a related note, the next Fourth of July, in 2026, will be the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. For the occasion, historian Chris Young and I are thinking of leading a tour of Revolution-related sites in Paris next summer. If you think you might be interested in such a tour, please complete this form. If we see sufficient interest, we will move toward making arrangements, and we will be in touch with details.
If you have ever been really angry with someone – and we all have – perhaps you heard yourself say, "I’m going to teach that jerk a lesson."
Let’s be honest. You were not referring to a lesson about the quadratic formula (or, even better, one of Ben Franklin’s Lessons in Life). You were angry, really steamed, and you wanted to hurt this person, emotionally or even physically. The lesson you had in mind was supposed to teach this lout not to treat you this way again.
Did you follow through with this lesson? If you did, did it have the intended effect?
Benjamin Franklin, British Citizen
Back in the days before the American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin inadvertently drew fire after sharing some letters in confidence. The letters, written by Royal Governor of Massachusetts Thomas Hutchinson, called on the British government to do more to crack down on the colonists. Franklin insisted that the letters not be made public, but we all know how these things go. They did become public, and things went south for Franklin.
Today, we think of Franklin as an American, a patriot, a nation's founder, but at that time, he was, like his fellow colonists, a subject of King George. He had twice lived in England for years, and he, well, he really liked the Mother Country. He belonged to several clubs in London, where he lived, and he had a number of British friends, including fellow scientist Joseph Priestley. He even liked the government leaders. At one point, as historian Gordon Wood observes in his excellent book The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin, Franklin's "confidence in the virtue and good sense of politicians at the highest levels of the British government was so great that it bewildered and amazed even some of his British friends."
For years Franklin worked assiduously to preserve the union of Britain and its American colonies. After the American Revolution, Franklin, looking back on these years before the break, wrote to Lord Howe, with whom he had worked at one point to try to salvage the union, saying:
Long did I endeavor with unfeigned and unwearied Zeal, to preserve from breaking, that fine and noble China Vase the British Empire: for I knew that being once broken, the separate Parts could not retain even their Share of the Strength or Value that existed in the Whole, and that a perfect Re-Union of those Parts could scarce even be hoped for.
Biographer H. W. Brands has written that Franklin "knew himself to be the most reluctant of revolutionaries.”
Indeed, Franklin had hoped that the Hutchinson letters would have a positive impact on British-American relations. "With the Hutchinson letters as evidence," Wood explains, "Franklin believed that the present government in London would be cleared of responsibility for the crisis in the empire and the way would be opened for rational settlement of the differences between the mother country and her colonies."
It didn't quite work out that way.
Take That, Ben!
In 1774, Franklin appeared before the Privy Council in London's White Hall Chapel, where Solicitor General Alexander Wedderburn spent an hour dressing him down in front of a crowd of spectators. Throughout this bitter all-out assault by Wedderburn, Franklin remained composed. One account says, "The muscles of his face had been previously composed as to afford a placid tranquil expression of countenance, and he did not suffer the slightest alteration of it to appear.”
Wedderburn taught Franklin a lesson all right, but it was probably not the lesson that the British should have wanted him to take away from this experience – quite the opposite.
After this episode, Franklin became a patriot, and he went all in. Brands explains, “Once the most loyal of Britons, now he became the most radical of Americans, demanding independence and driving the rebellion to a genuine revolution.”
Another Way to Teach a Lesson
Now, I’m not opposed to teaching lessons. I’m an educator, after all, and, as you may have noticed, I have a habit of working lessons into many of these essays. When you set out to teach someone a lesson, however, I encourage you to craft the message so that it conveys the lesson you mean to teach.
When we're angry and we decide that we're going to teach someone a lesson, the chances are that it’s our emotions, not our reason, talking. What we really want to do is to give voice or action to our rage, not to resolve the problem in a practical way. When we go into attack mode, as Wedderburn did, is the person we're addressing really going to decide not to harm us again? I'm not sure I've ever seen this reaction in my entire life. I think it's more likely that your “lesson“ will just incur wrath and more harm to you. In fact, a response filled with bile is probably going to make this lout want to teach YOU a lesson. You wind up trading "lessons" until both of you have lost far more than you've gained and no one wants to back down, especially now. Pride is a powerful thing, after all.
To be clear, I’m not encouraging you to give into abuse, and I’m not promising that turning the other cheek will magically transform your foe into a friend. I do believe, however, that a constructive response – in some cases, a conversation and in others a report to someone who can help resolve the matter – is likely to be more effective than a spiteful "lesson." Anything would be.
Indulge me for a moment and imagine what might happen if all people responded to an offense constructively, showing that they could control their emotions, deploy their reason, and take a practical approach to resolution.
Now that kind of response would teach a powerful – and positive – lesson.
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