Benjamin Franklin 1779 framed sleigh a commemorative document compiled in

a commemorative document compiled in the long shadow of the war — the republic taking stock of itself at the Exposition

longhorns drifting across rangeland that runs flat to the horizon

and anyone who appreciates the craft of the close shave

or the kind of library that still smells faintly of pipe smoke

and the natural patina of a document that has lived for nearly two hundred and fifty years

Benjamin Franklin 1779 framed sleigh a commemorative document compiled inBenjamin Franklin 1779 the printer philosopher rendered mid mission in Paris, charming a court whose alliance would decide the war. An engraving from the years when Franklin was less a man than a diplomatic instrument, his fur cap and spectacles doing the quiet work of a republic still arguing for its own existence. About the Source Bella Frye sources artifacts from the great American historical archive the Library of Congress, the National Archives,