Quote of the Day

"Both house and ground were vested and in trustees, expressly for the use of any preacher of any religious persuasion who might desire to say something to the people at Philadelphia; the design in building not being to accommodate any particular sect, but the inhabitants in general; so that even if the Mufti of Constantinople were to send a missionary to preach Mohammedanism to us, he would find a pulpit at his service."
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
http://www.ushistory.org/franklin/autobiography/page49.htm

Ben Franklin's Advice for Battle

via The Futility Closet

In a letter to general Charles Lee in February 1776, Benjamin Franklin suggested that the colonists arm themselves with bows and arrows, calling them “good weapons, not wisely laid aside.” He gave six reasons:

1. “Because a man may shoot as truly with a bow as with a common musket.”
2. “He can discharge four arrows in the time of charging and discharging one bullet.”
3. “His object is not taken from his view by the smoke of his own side.”
4. “A flight of arrows, seen coming upon them, terrifies and disturbs the enemy’s attention to his business.”
5. “An arrow striking in any part of a man puts him hors de combat till it is extracted.”
6. “Bows and arrows are more easily provided everywhere than muskets and ammunition.”

Franklin also recommended resurrecting the pike. His ideas weren’t used, but they were debated seriously even decades later. One theorist calculated that in a battle at Tournay on May 22, 1794, 1,280,000 balls had been discharged, an average of 236 musket shots to disable each casualty. “Here then, evidently appears in favour of the bow, in point of certainty of its shot, of no less than upwards of twenty to one.”