James Logan and the Culture of Provincial America

"'The first Americans were Europeans. Once they survived the struggle to maintain themselves in the wilderness they gave over their energies to preservation of their ties with the Old World,' writes Oscar Handlin in his editor's preface ... . 'Yet exposure to the conditions of the New World gradually, often imperceptibly, altered them and the society in which they lived. They became new men--Americans.' Nowhere was this process of development any better exemplified than in the events which marked the early history of Pennsylvania and its principal city of Philadelphia, the intellectual capital of America in colonial times. And no single man was more closely involved in the intellectual, political and economic currents of that day than was James Logan. Logan had come to Philadelphia in 1699, a mere secretary in the service of William Penn, the colony's founder and Proprietor. After Penn's departure, the young Scotch Quaker remained behind to serve as chief American business representative for the Proprietor's business affairs, to learn the ropes and to put himself in position to advance his own fortunes. During a great part of the next half century, until he died in 1751, full of years and honors, his career brought him into direct contact with every aspect of the slow transformation of English and European political, social and intellectual forms into those of provincial American culture. As a government official and Indian diplomat, he confronted the necessity of dealing with novel political problems; as a trader in furs and maker of iron, he pioneered in colonial commercial development; as a scholar, scientist and bibliophile, he made significant contributions to the growth of science and learning in early America, as his young friends, Benjamin Franklin and the naturalist John Bartram, could well attest. Looking both westward to the developing frontier and eastward to the seat of the British mercantile empire and the traditional springs of European humanistic culture, Logan took a dominant part in the life of his time and place and, to a degree not given to many men, shaped its course. By and large, he was one of the three or four most considerable men in colonial America. In [this book], Frederick B. Tolles has written an illuminating study of the little-known early beginnings of American history and the first biography of a great figure of the time. Dr. Tolles is Howard M. Jenkins Professor of Quaker History and Research and director of the Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College."--Dust jacket.