THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE I WISH TO THANK FOR HELPING ME is indeed large. First among them is the late Catherine Drinker Bowen, that great biographer, who encouraged me to look at the Franklin family when I was beginning to research the Loyalists. Whitfield J. Bell, Jr., librarian of the American Philosophical Society, which provided the first small research grant for this work, also gave me generously of his time and ideas. Dr. Robert A. East, director of the Loyalist Project for Studies and Publications at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, invited me to present my first paper on William Franklin at the First International Conference on the Loyalists, and then he and his son-in-law James E. Mooney, former director of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, frequently offered me advice and guidance. The Honorable Esmond Wright, director of the Center for United States Studies at the University of London, also was helpful. My friend and advisor at Princeton University, John Murrin, has provided many useful insights, as have Lawrence Stone, Arthur S. Link and Stanley N. Katz.

Special thanks go to my editors and publishers at Little, Brown. For his numerous suggestions and his patience as I struggled with myself as well as this book, I must thank Roger Donald, my editor. For willingness to fund unorthodox views of life in America, past and present, I am once again indebted to George Atwater Hall. To Jean L. Whitnack, much more than a copy editor to me, I owe special thanks. Also providing special assistance were Ellen Panarese, Elaine Richard and Sabina Mayo-Smith. Ray Lincoln, friend, literary agent and sensitive editor, already knows, I hope, how much I owe her in how many ways.

There is a special thank you I wish to extend here — to my son, who has put in hundreds of hours assisting me with all the chores that surround the writing process.

No such project as this is possible without the aid of librarians. In the early stages, the staff of the Cape May County Library in Cape May Court House, New Jersey, exceeded the ordinary demands of a rural library as they tracked down hundreds of books through the excellent New Jersey interlibrary loan system. The staff" of the Firestone Library at Princeton University proved solicitous: I wish to thank Stephen Ferguson, curator of rare books; Ann Van Arsdale, Charles E. Greene and Jane Snedeker, in particular. Thanks, too, to Robert Crout of the Madison Papers for his many insightful suggestions. Also helpful were the staffs of the American Philosophical Society Library, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Presbyterian Historical Society and the Lilly Library at the University of Indiana in Bloomington. Personal notes of thanks go to William C. Wright, director of the New Jersey State Archives, and to Albert W. Seaman and Joseph J. Truncer of the Proprietary House Association in Perth Amboy.

A number of timely grants from the following organizations enabled me to carry out this project: the American Philosophical Society, the New York Bicentennial Commission, the New Jersey Historical Society, the Society of Colonial Dames, the New York Authors League and American P.E.N. Among personal friends who have aided this work in a variety of ways are David N. Redman, Mae R. Wilson-Ludlam, Ruth L. King, Donald McKenzie, Bernard Bowman and Nancy A. Nahra.

For permission to quote from papers in their collections, I am grateful to the Lilly Library of Indiana University, the Clements Library of the University of Michigan, the New-York Historical Society, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the New York Public Library, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the American Philosophical Society, Princeton University Library, the John Rylands Library of Manchester, England, the Morristown National Historic Park, and Yale University Press for permission to quote from The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, edited by Leonard W. Labaree, William B. Willcox and others, 23 volumes. Copyright © 1959, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983 by the American Philosophical Society and Yale University. The spelling, capitalization and punctuation of quotations from eighteenth-century sources have been modernized for twentieth-century readers.