Benjamin Vaughan (1751-1835): The Life of an Anglo-American Intellectual

A biography of an apostle of Enlightenment idealism.

Educated among English Dissenters, then in law and medicine, Benjamin Vaughan joined London radicals in the Bill of Rights Society. Regarding America as a morally equal part of the British Empire, he edited Benjamin Franklin's political writings for English readers in 1780. An advisor to the prime minister in 1782-83, Vaughan visited Franklin and Jay frequently in Paris, helping to convince Shelburne that granting independence would sever the American alliance with France without sacrificing English trading interests. His voluminous dispatches illuminate many aspects of the peace negotiations.

The book describes the Vaughan family's trading network--Samuel and William in London, Charles in Boston, John in Philadelphia, young Samuel in Jamaica--and Benjamin's efforts through a treatise on free trade and lobbying Pitt to preserve American trade in the British West Indies.

The Social basis of scientific and technological progress prior to industrialization is explored through Vaughan's Monthly Repository of British, continental European, and American scientific and political writing and by documenting his vast correspondence from 1780 to 1835 with naturalists and inventors. Assisting innovation, he sent Jefferson seeds for upland rice procured by Capt. Bligh in the East Indies, the latest telescope for Stiles at Yale, his hygrometer to Botany Bay, while receiving seeds for "plants fit for England" from Bartram.

Fleeing English repression, Vaughan met the foremost leaders of the French and Swiss revolutions which he analyzed and defended in books and letters seeking to prevent, then end, the European wars.

After immigrating, Vaughan imported scions to make the Kennebec Valley Main's orchard region. A generous bibliophile whose library nearly equaled Harvard's, he lent books to leading scholars, advised two generations of college presidents about professorships, provided letters of introduction for many American scientists and scholars to Europeans, and penned articles on astronomy, medicine, ancient and modern history, diplomacy, religion, education, agriculture and technology.

Having defended revolutions in Europe in behalf of civil liberty and representative government, he considered these goals broadly achieved in the US. His writings lucidly criticized imperialism and nationalism while championing constitutional government actively assisting human progress.