Benjamin Franklin: “The Sale of the Hessians”

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

This short work, a letter fabricated by Franklin as being from a German count, was one of the most widely read and influential of Franklin's Revolutionary writings. Its compactness and the stark inhumanity assigned to the leaders of the Hessians make “The Sale of the Hessians” a literary hammer blow. It piles on statistics of deaths and of payments for the dead in a ghastly businesslike manner, with sheer greed as its unifying theme. Franklin makes any gallantry among the Hessians seem like utter folly, because their bravery in battle only results in their dying for a cause not their own, with each death resulting in the enrichment of their overlords. For Franklin's readers, “The Sale of the Hessians” was a sharp, direct depiction of the evil that opposed the American Revolution.