Revolutionary Friendships: Richard Price, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and the Cause of Independence

Abstract: Richard Price was a man of influence. His words, ideas, and discoveries shaped the contours of a revolutionary age. That influence, however, has been lost, obscured by time, relegated, at best, to footnotes in studies of the era. Price, however, was a leading voice of dissent in religion and politics and a prime mover among the forces whittling away the entrenched structures of aristocracy, monarchy, and religion throughout the Atlantic Basin. He advocated tirelessly for the disestablishment of the church, arguing that it infringed on the principles of liberty that animated the age, and he proudly and strenuously championed the democratic impulses that fueled the American and French Revolutions, even if these very ideas seemed to threaten the foundations of his own country.