“Where liberty dwells, there is my country”
“Where liberty dwells, there is my country” has been credited to Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790). “Where there is liberty, there is my country” was published in A Complete Body of Heraldry (1780), with no association to Franklin. The saying was credited to “Daniel Huger, Esq.” Wikipedia has an entry for “Daniel Huger”—Daniel Huger Sr. (1651-1711) was a French Huguenot in Charleston, South Carolina, and Daniel Huger (1742-1799) was an American planter and statesman.
“Where Liberty dwells, there is my Country” was cited in 1788 and “Where liberty is—there is my country” was cited in 1791, with both associated to Benjamin Franklin.
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A Complete Body of Heraldry
Volume 1
By Joseph Edmondson
London: Printed, for the Author, by T. Spilsbury, Snowhill
1780
Pg. 375:
Ubi libertas, ibi patria.
Where there is liberty, there is my country.
Daniel Huger, Esq.
10 September 1788, The Norfolk and Portsmouth Journal (Norfolk, VA), pg. 1, col. 1:
And surrounding the medallion of his Excellency Dr. Franklin, the following words: “Where Liberty dwells, there is my Country.”
22 September 1791, Poughkeepsie (NY) Journal, pg. 2, col. 4:
A large portrait of the venerable Dr. Franklin, (elevated on a pole.) On a ferell, under the figure, the following motto, containing the Doctor’s own words presented itself.
“Where liberty is—there is my country.”
14 July 1792, Baltimore (MD) Evening Post, pg. 2, col. 1:
PORTRAIT OF DR. FRANKLIN;
MOTTO,
“Where Liberty is, there is my Country.”
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July 1792, Walker’s Hibernian Magazine, Or, Compendium of Entertaining Knowledge, Part 2, pg. 74, col. 1:
PORTRAIT OF DR. FRANKLIN;
MOTTO,
“Where Liberty is, there is my Country.”
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Respectfully Quoted:
A Dictionary of Quotations Requested from the Congressional Research Service
By Suzy Platt (Library of Congress. Congressional Research Service)
Washington, DC: Library of Congress: For sale by the Supt. of Docs., U.S. Government Printing Office
1989
Pg. 201:
Where liberty is, there is my country.
Attributed to BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.
H. L. Mencken, A New Dictionary of Quotations, p. 682 (1942) gives “Where liberty dwells, there is my country,” with a note that this was in a Franklin letter to Benjamin Vaughan, March 14, 1783, but the on-going project, Papers of Benjamin Franklin, has been unable to identify this letter.
Alfred Owen Aldridge, Man of Reason, p. 169 (1959) says, “According to a tradition repeated by many biographers of Paine, Franklin at one time remarked in his hearing: ‘Where liberty is, there is my country….’” Aldridge adds, “the story must be written off as apocryphal.”
Bartlett’s Familiar Quotation, 15th ed., p. 367 (1982), attributes this to James Otis, as his motto (Ubi libertas, ibi patria), but this has not been verified in either his speeches or biographical sources. it has also been attributed to Algernon Sidney, but has not been identified in any source.