Arthur St. Clair

Portrait by Charles Willson Peale, 1782—84

QUICK FACTS
BORN:
23 March 1737 in Thurso, Caithness, Scotland
  DIED:
31 August 1818 in Greensburg, Pennsylvania

  • Along with the 23-year-old George Washington, participated in General Braddock’s march against Fort Duquesne, during the French and Indian War, in 1755.
CONTENTS

     

Portrait to come. See entry in Wikipedia.

 

At the end of March [1783] Franklin applied to [French Foreign Secretary] Vergennes for permission to publish a complete translation of the United States constitutions in French, the only language in which they could be widely read. He was eager to correct Europe’s misapprehensions about the new nation; he knew as well that he was offering up an advertisement for American trade and immigration.... Copies went out over the summer to the entire diplomatic corps and, in extravagantly bound editions, to Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. The most influential of Franklin’s European publications the constitutions were universally well received.

Stacy Schiff
A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America (2005)