The Beer Marketing Myth You Believed About Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin was arguably the most famous American man of the 18th century. The Philadelphia scientist, inventor, author, diplomat, printer, and publisher was the official agent in London for four American colonies between 1757 and 1775. Next, Franklin represented Pennsylvania in the Second Continental Congress, helping to draft the Declaration of Independence. Franklin was also the first ever U.S. ambassador, arriving in France in 1778 to persuade its leaders to support America during the Revolutionary War. Franklin loved going about in Parisian society and used his fame and signature American simplicity to leverage French military assistance for the new nation. His reputation for witty conversation and scientific brilliance served him well in these endeavors.
It's no wonder, then, that Franklin's witticisms are still shared today, particularly the sayings he created for "Poor Richard's Almanack", his annual publication (still available in modern versions today), featuring useful information such as weather forecasts, calendars, recipes, and science news. Poor Richard Saunders, Franklin's fictitious pseudonym, also shared advisory sayings, such as "Haste makes waste," and "He that lies down with dogs, shall rise up with fleas."
Like many famous people, Ben Franklin is often misquoted, and his supposed declaration about God and beer is one of the best-known misquotes. Benjamin Franklin never said, "Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy," despite this saying's appearance on all sorts of beer-related items, from T-shirts to the store 2be's beer wall in Bruges, Belgium (pictured above).
How a letter about wine became the beer quote that never was
What is true is that sometime around the late 1770s Franklin sent a letter to Abbé André Morellet, a French priest and political economist, in which he discussed the biblical miracle at the wedding in Cana, where Jesus turned water into wine. Franklin compared that event to the scientific miracle of grapevine roots absorbing rainwater and producing grapes that become wine, writing, "Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards; there it enters the roots of the vines, to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy."
It's easy to see how Franklin's wine description could be misquoted. His reputation for snappy sayings is routinely mentioned in U.S. history textbooks, and the beer version of the quotation doesn't totally alter the meaning he was going for. It's strange, though, that no one authenticated the beer quotation before using it on T-shirts or referring to it in beer marketing campaigns, as Anheuser-Busch did in 2006 to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Franklin's birth. Freakonomics' quotation expert Fred Shapiro could only trace the beer version of the saying to 1996, over 205 years after Franklin's death.
Franklin's autobiography proves that, at least in his younger days, he was probably not a beer drinker. As a young man working in a London print shop, he scorned fellow workmen who bought beer instead of living frugally. Franklin did enjoy drinking wine, hot chocolate, milk punch, and hard cider, however — he was, after all, a sociable fellow.