Men of Franklin

In his sesquicentennial history of Franklin, Massachusetts Arthur Winslow Pierce wrote, "Were this an exhaustive history, there would be much to set down between 1800 and the Civil War, but these were quiet years of hum-drum but substantial growth. A town largely made up of farmers makes little important history though the backbone of a nation's life." Unfortunately Arthur Pierce failed to appreciate that between 1800 and the Civil War Franklin and other rural settlements in New England underwent a dynamic transformation. The steam engine and such social causes as temperance and abolition carried them into another age, changing them forever from the simple agricultural villages of their Puritan forebears. And against this backdrop occurred the exploits of a few Franklin men and women who in the 1850's made very important history by uprooting their lives and joining the Kansas free-state movement. Men of Franklin now tells their story. It also tells some of the story of their town and times.