Reading the Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin for the first time I was struck by the huge generational difference between Franklin and that other polymath of the American Revolution, Thomas Jefferson.

Franklin’s formative years are the twenties — the 1720s. This is the decade he arrives in Philadelphia, makes a misguided excursion to London, sets up his own printing shop, creates with his friends a weekly discussion group (the Junto), founds the first lending library in the colonies, and marries. During the time of the French and Indian War (the 1750s) he is already retired, and becoming world famous for his experiments in electricity.

In an environment where practicality is rewarded, Franklin’s strivings are all practical. He wants to improve himself, improve his town, and contribute to England by helping to grow a colony. He also wants to become known for doing so.

Jefferson, on the other hand, is shaped by the sixties — the 1760s. The war with France is over. Britain has ejected the French from North America. Yet with one uncertainty resolved, what should have been a decade of stability is instead anything but. The colonial economy is in a shambles. The mother country is mired in debt and needs to find ways to raise money. Indeed, by fits and starts it is trying to figure out how to manage an empire. A series of revenue-raising laws begin, as does reaction by the colonists.

Where Franklin had but two years of formal schooling and started doing, Jefferson continued as a student until he was 24, receiving his law degree in 1767.

Jefferson, like Franklin, is eminently curious — and will make his mark in political philosophy, natural history, colonial history, architecture, politics, and more — but less practical. In 1768 he starts his lifelong building enterprise atop Monticello, where there is no natural water, but what comes from rain or is hauled up by his slaves. (He will live with his family for much of his life in what is essentially a housing construction zone.) Jefferson also wanted to contribute, and to be known for it, but his decade of striving was largely educational, an apprenticeship for greatness, to quote the biographer Fawn Brodie.

Then in 1774, out of the gate, he becomes famous and treasonous at once for A Summary View of the Rights of British America. Jefferson is 31, an idealist, and a radical. Franklin, now one of the most famous men in the world, and, at 68, old enough to be Jefferson’s grandfather, doffed practicality — and his own security — took up idealism, and soon embarked on the political career for which he is readily remembered and revered today.

Two hundred and thirty three years after France was the first to recognize the American colonies as a country separate from Britain, it became the first (and so far only) country to recognize the Libyan Rebels fighting to overthrow Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, who has led an oppressive regime in Libya for more than 40 years.

But there are differences.

First, America’s struggle for independence was a revolution in slow motion. In 1775 and into 1776 the Continental Congress was looking for a way to assert its rights and to reconcile with the Britain. Many months in 1776 were a political dance to ensure that all thirteen colonies would finally agree to independence. Then Congress formally adopted it (2-Jul-1776) and then announced it (4-Jul-1776). We remember the Declaration of Independence for the soaring language in the first part of the document. But at the time the most important section was at the end, where these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, with the full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances … That allowed Congress, on behalf of the colonies, to begin the long diplomatic courtship with France which, due to the canny diplomacy of Dr. Franklin — plus the British defeat at the Battles of Saratoga (Oct-177) — finally became an engagement with the Treaty of Alliance (Feb-1778).

What is happening in Libya is much more like the storming of the Bastille. The single goal for the rebels is to topple Gaddafi’s government — without thought about what will come next.

One can admire France. By recognizing the rebel leadership it is trying to get out ahead of the situation, ahead of its allies, and perhaps trying to apply lessons from its mistakes in Algeria. But it is not supporting a state; it is supporting a goal: the removal of Gaddafi, and the people that have that goal.

The United States has been lucky in so many ways, most especially in the way the American Revolution unfolded over extended time. Unfortunately, the rebels in Libya don't have that option. They've grabbed the tail of a tiger and cannot let go.

• Scene 1: Mount Vernon, Virgina. George Washington on a bucking horse. Just like we’ve seen many times before in Westerns, he’s trying to break it, tame it for riding. Washington always broke his own horses, and he’s breaking another one now. He’s in his shirt, without vest, waistcoat, or powdered wig.
• Scene 2: Washington at a big breakfast of ham and other meats, freshly baked goods, butter, jellies, etc. He’s sitting and fully dressed. At 6'2" he dwarfs his wife Martha, who is also fully dressed, and is sitting at the table with him. A black domestic servant (actually a slave) adds more food to an already full table.
• Scene 3: Washington is on his white horse (Nelson, not the freshly broken one). The best horseman in America, perhaps of his age, he is with William Lee, his trusted black slave-valet, who is on a second horse. Billy is nearly is as good a horseman as Washington. They have an easy manner between them, but the relationship is really that of master / slave. Martha bids goodbye to her husband without a word.
• Scene 4: A tracking shot of Washington riding away from his Mount Vernon mansion. As the camera follows him onto the open road, the whole of his slave enterprise is on view with some one hundred slave quarters stacked aside the fields. Music rises but does not resolve.
• Scene 5: Washington enters Philadelphia. The Pennsylvania State House (now known as Independence Hall) is in the background. He's not tired, but refreshed from the five days’ journey. Along with other prominent colonists, he is there for the Second Continental Congress. His age is 43.

George Washington was the fixed point in the American Revolution. Or perhaps he was the stone that skipped across the age without sinking. He led the battle that initiated the French and Indian War, he commanded the Continental Army during the American Revolution, he was the President of the 1787 Constitutional Convention, and he was the first President of the United States (1789 - 97). King George III said of him — if he retires from the military and returns to his private life after the war, he will be the greatest man in the world.

Washington did exactly that.

Washington was fully involved with what made America America. He was one of the richest men in the thirteen colonies (though not as rich as Boston merchant John Hancock), he grew tobacco, he speculated in land, he held more than 300 slaves at his death (whom he freed), he fought Indians, and finally, he wanted political freedom for himself and for his countrymen.

No one who met Washington ever walked away unimpressed. He was a physical being who was an aggressive risk-taker as well as a man of rectitude — but also, for the ladies, he was wonderful dancer, a popular partner.