PBS_Benjamin Franklin_3of3_The Making of a Revolutionary
Transcript
00:00Benjamin Franklin is remembered today as the great inventor, the man who protected the world from the terrors of lightning.
00:17He is also remembered as one of America's founding fathers, but this leaves out much of his story.
00:24That this future revolutionary was in fact a very wealthy man with aristocratic aspirations.
00:31That for much of his life he considered himself more an Englishman than an American.
00:38It would take Franklin a long time to give up his attachment to England.
00:42When he finally did side with the cause of independence, it would bring about the greatest personal tragedy of his life.
00:54To Catherine Ray, be gone business for the next hour and let me chat a little with my Katie.
01:22You asked me in your last letter if everyone loves me as you do.
01:26Well I must confess, don't be jealous, that many more people love me than ever before.
01:33Since I last saw you, I've done some things for the province for which people thank me and praise me.
01:40And now they love me, or at least they say they love me, like you used to do.
01:48But I'm sure if I asked them for any real favors, they would, like you, as readily refuse me.
01:56So what's the real advantage of being loved?
02:03In the winter of 1755, while visiting his relations in Boston, Franklin meets a very beautiful young woman, Catherine Ray.
02:12He happily agrees to accompany her on the trip home, she to Rhode Island, he back to Philadelphia and his wife and children.
02:23Franklin will see Catherine Ray in person only three more times, but they will continue to correspond all the rest of his long life.
02:32Your absence from me increases rather than lessens my affections for you.
02:37Tell me you're well and that you love me one thousandth as much as I love you, then I'll be content.
02:45It is a classic situation, a man nearly fifty, at the height of his scientific fame,
02:51basking in his newly discovered powers to impress and charm a girl half his age.
02:57She in turn glories in the impact that she's making on this famous man.
03:03I am sending you some sugared plums made with my own hands, each one sweetened just as you used to like, Katie.
03:14Dear, dear Katie, your plums have arrived safe and were sweet, not only from the sugar, but from the touch of your dear hands.
03:25Mrs. Franklin enjoyed them as well.
03:29Your letters of affection compel me to give you a little fatherly arithmetic lesson.
03:35Find yourself a good husband, then you must practice addition of his money by minding the household finances,
03:43subtract all unnecessary expenses and have no divisions between you.
03:50Multiplication?
03:53Ah, yes, I'd have happily taught you multiplication myself, but you refused to learn.
04:02She and he carried on the most fascinating flirtation for years,
04:08and Franklin claimed that he was trying to seduce her and that she toyed with him and so forth,
04:16but I honestly don't believe anything ever came of it.
04:19It was a game that he loved to play with women.
04:23With Catherine Rae, as with other young women, Franklin will act the role of father figure, teacher and flirt.
04:31His attraction to young women and theirs to him has given Franklin a reputation as a womanizer.
04:37There is no evidence that his playful words ever led to anything more serious,
04:41but he is to enjoy the charm and respect the intelligence of women throughout his long life.
04:49Adieu, dear good girl.
04:52Alas, I may be going to England for some time.
04:55I just couldn't leave without writing you.
05:02A new phase in Franklin's life is about to begin.
05:06The colony of Pennsylvania is sending him to England on official business.
05:14Franklin has been to London as a young man and is eager to return.
05:18He is outgrowing America.
05:22The Franklin who went to England at age 51 is both the same Franklin who went to England at age 18
05:31and an altogether different man.
05:34He's of course older, he's wiser, he's a public figure in many countries.
05:40The kite, that blasted kite with its key, made him a celebrity.
05:51He knew who he was.
05:56Franklin had wanted to bring his whole family with him to London,
05:59but his wife, Deborah, is terrified of ocean travel and refuses to come.
06:04She stays in Philadelphia with their daughter, Sally.
06:08The one family member Franklin insists accompany him to England is his beloved son, William.
06:15The father had always involved William in his many projects.
06:20Whether it was on science experiments or in the post office or in the legislature or on the frontier,
06:28they were inseparable.
06:31Too close, I think.
06:33In the summer of 1757, Franklin and son arrive in London.
06:42Now 27 years old, William Franklin is handsome, bright and eager for new adventures.
06:47As a young colonial from a distant outpost of the British Empire, William is overwhelmed.
06:53From the moment I arrived in this great metropolis,
06:57from the moment I arrived in this great metropolis,
07:00all my attention was consumed with the noise and bustle of the streets and the infinite variety of new sights.
07:09And now there are the appointments with politicians and philosophers.
07:16Father and son rent four rooms on Craven Street.
07:19It is in the center of London, a short walk from the clubs and coffee houses,
07:23the offices of government, the theaters and busy streets of London's dazzling nightlife.
07:30Samuel Johnson celebratedly said he was tired of London, he was tired of life.
07:34London was the center of much that made being human exciting and that was for Franklin a magnet.
07:42He rebelled in London society and he had a running account with a wine merchant up the street.
07:47He joined 60 different eating clubs so that he never had to cook a meal or stay home for one.
07:54He rented a coach, he thought about having his coat of arms put on the door of it.
07:59He went around with William tracing their ancestral roots, their genealogy.
08:04He was an entirely different Franklin in England from the poor, simple Benjamin of Philadelphia.
08:12He bought the right wigs, he bought the right clothes.
08:15He knew when you go to England that you must play the part of a gentleman or you will get absolutely nowhere.
08:22And so he fit right into London society just as much as his son did.
08:32Franklin has been sent to England by the Pennsylvania Assembly on a mission of crucial importance to the colony.
08:38In the previous century, the entire province had been granted by the king to William Penn
08:44and the Penn family still controls three quarters of the immense colony.
08:49Unlike everyone else who owns land in Pennsylvania, they pay not a penny in taxes.
08:55They thought the colony's government pretty much existed to secure the revenues of the Penn family.
09:01For Franklin that was essentially feudalism and he despised that.
09:05The idea that a moneyed family in Great Britain would use a colony strictly as a source of revenue for its lifestyle.
09:15Franklin's mission is to try and force Thomas Penn, son of the founder, to begin paying taxes.
09:21It is one thing to have an important reputation as a scientist.
09:25It is quite another to have any real influence in the genteel world of imperial politics.
09:30Mr. Franklin's fame means nothing here.
09:33His playing with electricity is only of interest to a particular set of people.
09:40Few men of any consequence have even heard of him.
09:44The important people, the ones who are to decide the dispute between us, are all friends of mine.
10:01The meeting between Thomas Penn and Franklin takes place in January of 1758.
10:06Penn begins on the offensive, denying the fact that the assembly has any right to tax him.
10:12In fact, that it has any rights at all.
10:15I answered that according to his father's charter, which founded Pennsylvania, and then I quoted it to him,
10:22the assembly of Pennsylvania shall have all the power and privileges of any assembly formed by free-born subjects of England.
10:29Aha! he says.
10:31But my father didn't have any authority from the crown to grant this right.
10:37And then he laughs, snorting, like a donkey.
10:42I was astounded.
10:45He's a vile liar. That's not what I said or did.
10:48The rights of free-born Englishmen.
10:52The Germans settled Pennsylvania because there was good farmland there.
10:56They'd never even heard of my father's charter.
10:59In any case, it's over. I'll have no further conversations for any reason whatsoever with this tribune of the people.
11:08Thomas is enraged.
11:10When I meet him anywhere, he looks at me with a strange mixture of hatred, anger, fear, and vexation.
11:18I've absolutely no regrets for calling him a swindler.
11:21That description is completely justified. I hope it sticks in his liver.
11:26Franklin was a self-made man.
11:29He had gradually clawed his way up in the world, and he had become a world-famous figure.
11:38I suppose Franklin thought he was due a certain amount of respect for what he had accomplished.
11:45And Penn probably thought that if you weren't born rich, you didn't deserve respect.
11:52Franklin will never win his battle with Thomas Penn.
11:55This is not the new world, but the old.
11:58And Franklin is up against something much bigger than one arrogant aristocrat.
12:04In the summer, the lords and gentlemen of government leave the smoke and heat of London for their country estates.
12:10And Franklin, too, goes traveling.
12:13While visiting Lord Shelburne, he amazes everyone with a demonstration of his recent scientific discoveries.
12:20Wherever I go traveling, I always put a little oil in the hollow joint of my foot.
12:27So I can perform this small experiment.
12:30When I come upon a pond whose surface is made rough by the wind,
12:35I pour the small amount of oil onto it.
12:38The oil spreads with amazing speed, making part of the pond as smooth as a looking glass.
12:47The waves were all still, and he speculated for pages how to explain this phenomenon.
12:54Understanding how it stills a wave is not actually that elementary, even today,
13:00as with most things involving hydrodynamics and all the rest.
13:04But he was able to do it.
13:08Surface tension is like a film, and the oil disrupts it, lowers it dramatically,
13:13so that when the wind comes over the water, it doesn't form waves nearly as well.
13:21Franklin travels around England and Scotland, meeting some of the greatest scientists of all time.
13:26He is a professor of physics at the University of Oxford.
13:31He visits James Watt, and sees a demonstration of his steam engine,
13:35which is soon to transform the world.
13:39Franklin becomes friends with men like David Hume, the philosopher,
13:43Joseph Priestley, the discoverer of oxygen,
13:46and William Straughan, the most important publisher in England.
13:50Franklin has talents and abilities, but he is also a man of few words.
13:56I have never met anyone who sees things more thoroughly as I do.
14:00If we ever disagree on anything, he quickly and with good humour
14:05pours in such light on the subject as to immediately convince me that I am wrong.
14:10I don't know how to talk to people.
14:13I don't know how to talk to people.
14:16I don't know how to talk to people.
14:19I don't know how to talk to people.
14:22...as to immediately convince me that I am wrong.
14:26These were not the great officials, the great office holders of the British Empire.
14:31They were people who were significant in another kind of non-governmental world,
14:36the world of science and philosophy and letters.
14:41Among them, he was at home, and they honoured him for his genuine qualities.
14:48It is the densest happiness I've ever had in my life.
14:53The learning and wisdom and dazzling people I found there in such plenty
14:58will live on forever in my memory.
15:06Franklin receives an honorary doctorate from St. Andrew's University in Scotland
15:11and another from no less than Oxford University.
15:18Mr. Franklin, with two years of formal education,
15:22is now the famous Dr. Franklin, honoured citizen of the Western world.
15:32Debbie, I wish I could tell you when I'm coming back.
15:35I hope if I have to stay here another winter,
15:38it will be more agreeable than the time I've spent up to now in England.
15:42I must bring this business with Penn to some conclusion.
15:46Your loving husband.
15:48My dear, I had a letter from Sister Mecham.
15:53Her youngest child is dead.
15:56Oh, maybe I told you that before.
16:00The marble fireplace you sent arrived safe.
16:04Mr. Hall desires to be remembered, and...
16:08Well, I can't mention all the names,
16:11because everybody wants to be remembered, too, you.
16:15Your affectionate wife.
16:18Deborah the devoted.
16:20He left home on and off for 15 years.
16:24Now, this is just unbelievable to us as 21st century people.
16:28You could leave your home, you could leave your wife,
16:31you could leave businesses scattered all over the East Coast for 15 years.
16:35How's it going to continue?
16:37Deborah is how it continued.
16:39A perfect example is in 1757.
16:42He says, well, Deborah, I'm going to go to Great Britain. I'll be right back.
16:45I know we're getting ready to build a house, but don't worry.
16:48I'll be right back, and don't build the house till I get back.
16:52He got on the boat, and Deborah immediately began to build the house.
16:58During their long marriage, Franklin and his wife
17:01choose to gloss over their partner's inadequacies with words of affection.
17:05He calls her his dear child, and she,
17:08in warm, compassionate, intensely human letters,
17:11also calls him...
17:13My dearest child, I had a visit from a man
17:17who had just seen you in London,
17:19and he tells me you now look well,
17:21which, for me, is the next best thing to seeing you.
17:25Mr. Mickle lies dead,
17:27and he was walking about fine the day before he dropped.
17:31Brother Potter is very poorly,
17:34three weeks under a violent fit of the gout
17:37in the limbs and stomach, and he says his heart.
17:41I went up to see him and told him to live healthy like me and my pappy,
17:45but he thinks he's so much smarter than me,
17:48he'd never follow my advice.
17:51Adieu, my dear.
17:53Take care of yourself, for everyone's sake,
17:56but particularly for your affectionate wife.
18:03Deborah does not often complain of Franklin's absence.
18:06Too busy living, too awed by the miracle of remaining alive
18:10while death stalks all around her.
18:13If she ever takes time to meditate upon her fate,
18:16Deborah probably considers herself a lucky woman.
18:23It is 1762.
18:25Franklin and his son William have been in London for five years.
18:29Franklin is becoming worried
18:31that his son is losing himself in London high society.
18:35All my time has been taken up with the multiple diversions
18:39and entertainments of this bewitching city.
18:42Even now I should be asleep.
18:45The watchman's voice is calling past five in the morning
18:48and my candle is almost burned down.
18:50Such is my hurried life.
18:53William had mixed with Philadelphia's upper class,
18:56but in London he is experiencing
18:58a whole new order of wealth and opulence.
19:02Money, leisure, and property,
19:05I think it totally ruined the son.
19:08The father could put the brakes on and go back to business.
19:12For the son it was a new way of life.
19:16He's tall and proper, very much the beau,
19:20but he's acquiring habits of laziness.
19:23Not in the least interested in business,
19:26he seems to think he's going to live off my money.
19:29I've assured him that I fully intend
19:32to spend what little I have on myself.
19:35To be the son of Benjamin Franklin
19:38must have been terrifically exciting
19:41and terrifying at the same time.
19:44But the father, I think, really loved William
19:48because I think he saw him as his perfect experiment
19:53where he could invent someone
19:56he would have liked to have been himself
19:59if he hadn't been the son of a tradesman
20:03who made soap and candles.
20:06Now Franklin seizes an opportunity,
20:09an opportunity to advance his son,
20:12which is beyond anyone's imagining.
20:14The whole business was transacted so rapidly
20:17that not a tittle of it escaped
20:19until it was seen in the public papers.
20:22Then it was too late.
20:23There wasn't a single thing I could do
20:25to put a stop to this shameful affair.
20:30Franklin's scientific fame
20:31has given him access to friends in high places,
20:34including a close advisor to King George III.
20:38Working feverishly behind Penn's back,
20:40he pulls off one of the most amazing coups
20:43in American colonial history.
20:46We are pleased to appoint William Franklin Esquire
20:50to be governor of the province of New Jersey.
20:55It is our pleasure that you should prepare for him
20:59drafts of a commission and instructions.
21:04Royal governor,
21:06the king's representative in the colonies.
21:09Up to now, this top job
21:10had been given mainly to influential Britons.
21:13Franklin has achieved for his son
21:15the highest honor any colonist could hope for.
21:19In the hierarchical world of commoners and gentry,
21:22he has made his son an officer of the British Empire.
21:27It's a great success story.
21:29Runaway boy with three biscuits under his arm,
21:33penniless and wet in Philadelphia,
21:35has a son who becomes a royal governor.
21:37It doesn't get much better than that.
21:40I have ordered from Chamberlain
21:41two prints for the governor's mansion.
21:44The picture by Wilson of my father
21:47and the portrait of our king.
21:50In 1763, Benjamin Franklin and his son
21:53can see nothing but a bright future for the British Empire.
21:58England's glory will be America's glory.
22:03For many years now, I've believed
22:05that the foundations, grandeur,
22:07and future stability of Britain lie in America.
22:11Like other foundations, they are low and unseen,
22:15I believe they are strong enough to support
22:18the greatest political structure
22:20human wisdom has ever built,
22:23the British Empire.
22:26He's in his element.
22:28He couldn't be happier.
22:30He's living the good life as he understood it.
22:34And as I like to say, there was no reason it should ever end.
22:39At this point in history, all Americans, not just Franklin,
22:43are proud to be part of the most powerful empire on Earth.
22:48All that is soon to change.
22:52It is called the stamp tax.
22:55In 1765, Parliament passes a law
22:58decreeing that everything on paper,
23:00from playing cards to legal documents,
23:02is to be imprinted with a revenue stamp,
23:05a tax payable directly to the British government.
23:10The colonists are outraged.
23:14Franklin, separated from America by 3,000 miles
23:18and the months it takes for letters to cross the ocean,
23:21misjudges the mood of the colonies.
23:24Let's be frugal.
23:26Our own laziness taxes us more than kings and parliaments.
23:34Franklin was totally stunned
23:37when the news came pouring back across the Atlantic
23:41that all up and down the American coast
23:44there was this furious outrage over paying this tax
23:48and riots and stamp commissions were being hanged in effigy.
23:53Franklin makes a huge political mistake
23:56by recommending a friend, John Hughes,
23:58for the post of Pennsylvania's stamp tax collector.
24:02They're now saying that you had planned the Stamp Act
24:05and that you're the one getting it sent over here.
24:09In other colonies, mobs are ransacking
24:11and tearing down the houses of stamp tax officials.
24:15Franklin's friend, John Hughes, is hung in effigy
24:18and prepares for the worst.
24:22Next, the mob threatens Franklin's house.
24:25There they meet Deborah.
24:28When the mobs were assembling,
24:30Deborah was told that she should leave the house.
24:34Instead, she sent her daughter, Sally, their daughter,
24:38to New Jersey, where Franklin's son was the governor,
24:42and she remained alone in the house
24:44and said she was going to defend her house.
24:47But I said I was sure you'd done nothing to hurt nobody,
24:50nor had I given offense to any person.
24:53So I wouldn't show the least uneasiness or move.
24:56And if anyone came to disturb me,
24:58I'd show them my resentment and be properly affronted.
25:02A-F-R-U-N-T-E-D, as she spells it,
25:06if anybody thought otherwise.
25:09So cousin Davenport and brother came and we fetched a few guns
25:13and I set up the best sort of defense on the stairs
25:17as I could manage by myself.
25:20And I made one room into a magazine.
25:24I honor the courage you showed in that time of danger.
25:28The woman deserves a good house who is so determined to defend it.
25:33Is it the clergy spreading rumors that I had planned the Stamp Act?
25:38I should thank them that they don't also blame me for Adam's fall
25:42and the damnation of all mankind.
25:47Franklin had learned from science
25:49that if the facts no longer support your theory,
25:52you must be flexible enough to change your theory.
25:55The facts, he realizes, are these.
25:58Protests over the Stamp Tax are colony-wide and deeply felt.
26:02If he does not do something quickly, he will be destroyed politically.
26:06From a passive supporter of the tax,
26:08Franklin becomes its most outspoken critic.
26:14He begins a propaganda campaign in the British press,
26:17publishing this cartoon showing a helpless, chopped-up British empire
26:21deprived of her American colonies.
26:26What was the feeling of America towards Great Britain before 1763?
26:32The best in the world.
26:34They not only respected you, but had a true affection for Great Britain,
26:38for its laws, customs...
26:40Franklin is the star witness when the issue of the Stamp Tax
26:43is brought before Parliament.
26:45He expresses American opposition to the tax in language
26:48that the leaders of this trading and manufacturing nation
26:51will really understand.
26:53And if we do not repeal this act?
26:57You will find they will stop buying your manufactured goods.
27:01The goods they take from Britain are either necessities or luxuries.
27:05The first, cloth and clothing, they can make at home.
27:09The second, they can do without.
27:17Parliament repeals the Stamp Tax.
27:23In America, Franklin's reputation soars.
27:26He will soon be appointed official agent for four colonies
27:30and is now unofficial spokesman for all of America.
27:43For most normal mortals, all this would be considered a full-time job.
27:48But Franklin somehow finds time for his true passion, inventing.
27:53I was charmed by the sweet sound coming from a drinking glass
27:57when you pass a wet finger around its rim.
28:01What if I could make an instrument with tuned glasses
28:05so these sounds could be made by a person sitting in front of it?
28:09I experimented with various forms the instrument would take
28:12and had glass blown to different sizes accordingly.
28:15I call it the glass harmonica.
28:21He probably saw somebody playing a system of glasses
28:25that were mounted in a frame, frantically rubbing their fingers around the rims,
28:29trying to play melodies, harmonies, and chords.
28:32Franklin took that idea, and rather than rubbing your fingers around the rims,
28:36let's get the rims to go around your fingers.
28:39Mozart and Beethoven compose for Franklin's new instrument,
28:43and it is famous all through his lifetime.
28:48Franklin has always been fascinated with music.
28:51Like the modern advertising man, he knows that if you can put your message into a song,
28:56people will remember it.
29:00In the decade to come, the tune will remain God Save the King,
29:04but soon the two sides will be singing different words.
29:09Order! Order! Order! Order!
29:15Parliament has repealed the Stamp Act, but it does not admit defeat
29:19and continues to assert its right to tax the colonies.
29:22We have the full power and authority to bind the colonies and people of America.
29:27Over the next decade, Parliament attempts to levy tariffs on glass,
29:31lead, paint, paper, and tea,
29:34and with each new tax, the colonists fight back with protests, boycotts, and organized violence.
29:41Franklin is an agent representing several colonies,
29:44and at the same time, an ardent supporter of the empire.
29:48He is finding that his role as mediator is becoming increasingly difficult.
29:54I was born in America and have lived a long time in England.
29:59There's nothing I want more than prosperity to both.
30:04I've written and talked so much on the subject that people are getting tired of hearing me.
30:09He's trying to straddle the two sides that are emerging,
30:14and there really are two sides now.
30:16And the empire is a different thing for him,
30:19and he's scrappling with this problem of how to hold it together.
30:24In my most despairing moments, I think of that story of the sleeping man,
30:29dreaming about how to save his house.
30:32In his dreams, he mumbles, time is, and then time was,
30:37and wakes up to find his house tumbling down around him and is hurt to cry out,
30:43the time has passed.
30:50I'm sorry to hear that your gout has returned,
30:54and that it's not in my power to be near enough to you to rub you with my light hand.
31:00When will it be in your power to come home?
31:04How I long to see you.
31:07I hope you won't stay longer than this fall.
31:11I find myself growing very feeble, very fast.
31:22It is 1771.
31:24It is 1771.
31:26Franklin leaves London to spend two weeks at a friend's country estate.
31:31A portly 65-year-old subject to episodes of painful gout,
31:36he too is beginning to feel his age.
31:39Looking out over this peaceful country scene,
31:42Franklin decides to write, for the first time, the story of his life.
31:47He's depressed, he's dispirited.
31:50I think this is a really crucial moment in his life,
31:53and it's in those six months that he writes the first part of the autobiography.
31:58He started it as a letter to his son.
32:01His son was putting on airs, was trying to become upper class.
32:05So Franklin starts off by saying, remember where we come from.
32:08I was a poor kid. I was a runaway.
32:11I had a few coins in my pocket when I came into Philadelphia for the first time.
32:15Franklin presents himself as a role model.
32:18No soul-searching here, no searing personal confession,
32:22but a do-it-yourself manual on how to succeed in the world in an acceptable way.
32:28This is a book of instruction for all those who have the patience and wit
32:34to take good advice that's generously offered.
32:38I was seven years old. It was a holiday, and my pockets were filled with coppers.
32:43I went directly to a shop, and being charmed with the sound of a whistle,
32:47I spent all my money on it.
32:49Delighted with my purchase, I whistled all over the house.
32:54Then my brothers and cousins began laughing at me for my folly,
32:59told me that I'd paid four times too much for it,
33:03and described all the other things I could have bought with the rest of my money.
33:07I began to cry.
33:09The thought of having wasted my money gave me more pain than the whistle gave me pleasure.
33:15True to his good Puritan upbringing, Franklin draws the moral lesson from the story.
33:21I grew up in the world and observed the actions of men.
33:25One, a miser, gave up a comfortable living
33:29and all the joys of benevolent friendship for the sake of accumulating wealth.
33:33Poor man, I said, you pay too much for your whistle.
33:38I see a sweet girl who married an ill-natured brute of a man because he was rich.
33:44What a pity, say I, that she should pay so much for a whistle.
33:50I think that humanity brings much misery on itself by the false value they put on things,
33:58by their giving away too much for the whistle.
34:07The Autobiography is the first great book of American literature,
34:11and in some ways the most important book,
34:14because of the way Franklin's own life incorporates the American dream,
34:18the rise from impotence to importance, from dependence to independence.
34:25He's writing for America.
34:27He really means this to be something which will teach Americans how to live.
34:35I think that he sees Americans struggling for the soul of the continent,
34:41endlessly tempted by the possibilities of wealth,
34:44endlessly tempted by the open land, by the fortunes that you could make.
34:50And I think what he wants to tell Americans is,
34:54sure, you feel those surging desires,
34:58sure, you want the wealth which is there apparently for the taking.
35:02I think he's saying that that's not all there is in life,
35:06and that you're going to perish if you make that all that there is in your life.
35:11You're going to tear each other apart.
35:13You're going to lose sight of the common life.
35:29Boston, Massachusetts.
35:31The city had been under British occupation.
35:33Royal troops had fired on a crowd,
35:35and the people responded with cries of vengeance.
35:39Distrust of the crown is escalating,
35:42and Franklin fears that it will tear the empire apart.
35:48He's trying to tell his American friends,
35:50just cool it, just remain dutiful,
35:52and we'll get through this tough time.
35:55But I don't think he fully appreciates
35:58just how enraged American opinion is becoming.
36:03Franklin thinks that he can save the situation with a political dirty trick.
36:08He has been shown some letters written by Thomas Hutchinson,
36:11the royal governor of Massachusetts.
36:14The letters suggest that Hutchinson
36:16had called for the sending of British troops to Boston.
36:20Franklin decides to send copies of these incriminating letters
36:23to the Boston radicals.
36:26He hopes that Hutchinson will be blamed
36:28for all the troubles in New England.
36:32What Franklin tries to do by communicating those letters
36:35is say, don't rebel against the king,
36:38act against the governor, it's his fault.
36:42Remain loyal to the empire,
36:44and throw out a badly functioning portion of it,
36:48that person.
36:51It is Franklin's desperate attempt to save the empire.
36:56He was profoundly attached to England.
37:00He loved the British empire,
37:02which he called a precious China vase.
37:05He didn't want it broken.
37:07He didn't want the separation.
37:09And he, to the last minute,
37:11he was still trying to save it in some way.
37:15As Franklin intended,
37:17sending the letters has shifted the anger of the colonists
37:20from the crown to Hutchinson.
37:22The people of Massachusetts are now demanding his removal.
37:26William Franklin, the royal governor of New Jersey,
37:29is horrified.
37:31Father, Governor Hutchinson is furious
37:34about the publications of his letters
37:36and his subsequent treatment by the people.
37:38He is gloomy and in low spirits.
37:40There's even talk of his leaving for England.
37:43Some here are saying it was you who sent the Hutchinson letters.
37:47Others say that it was Mr. Temple.
37:49I can only assume that it was Temple.
37:52Rumors had been going around for a long time
37:55that Benjamin Franklin was the one who sent these letters.
37:58William had denied that it was true,
38:01believing that it was not true.
38:03He could not believe that his father
38:05would do such a dishonorable thing.
38:08His father finally wrote to him,
38:10and he said that he was the one
38:12who had sent the letters to Massachusetts.
38:15William was crushed.
38:17He confesses that it was him,
38:19at which point the British government goes ballistic.
38:23There is reason to apprehend that this rebellion in America
38:27has been much promoted, nay, encouraged
38:31by the treacherous correspondence, advice and comfort
38:35given by wicked and desperate persons within this realm.
38:41In England, it is not to be Thomas Hutchinson
38:44who will be blamed for the troubles in America,
38:47but Franklin himself.
38:49His role as a conciliator,
38:51his dreams of a great Anglo-American empire,
38:54everything he has worked for
38:56since he came to England 16 years earlier,
38:59is about to come crashing down around his head.
39:02Time is, time was, time becomes the past
39:07on Saturday afternoon, January 29th, 1774,
39:12when Franklin is called before His Majesty's Privy Council.
39:17It must have been the darkest day in Franklin's life,
39:21the day he was called to what is known as the cockpit in Whitehall,
39:26the cockpit where they used to go for cockfights
39:29and where that day a Christian was going to be fed to the lion,
39:33the lion being the Solicitor General, Alexander Wedderburn.
39:39The doctor tells us that Mr Hutchinson's letters
39:43had the effect of turning the mother country against her colonies.
39:48In truth, we have standing before us the real incendiary,
39:54the man behind those committees
39:56who are inflaming the whole province against His Majesty's government.
40:01They have well learned the lessons
40:03taught in Dr Franklin's school of politics.
40:08People were laughing all the time, those lords,
40:12and he remained there like a statue,
40:15not a muscle in his face moving.
40:18It lasted a good hour, and for that good hour
40:21he just stood there motionless.
40:25Dr Franklin stands as the planner, the inventor,
40:30the prime conductor
40:33of this whole contrivance against His Majesty's governor,
40:38this thief, this wily American.
40:44A lot of politics is personal.
40:46He took it personally, and it was meant to be taken as such.
40:52This was the turning point in Franklin's life,
40:55the man who had been so loyal to the Empire,
40:58who came to England and stayed there
41:00and talked about ending his life in England,
41:02to be humiliated like this in front of this array of aristocrats,
41:07that made Benjamin Franklin a revolutionary.
41:14Dear Debbie, you'll have heard by now
41:18that they have taken away my position as postmaster.
41:22The accusation is that I am too much attached
41:25to the interests of America.
41:28They intended to disgrace me.
41:31In fact, they have done me an honour.
41:36I expect to be at sea by the time you get this letter.
41:40You will find your pappy has become an old man,
41:44and it seems only yesterday that you and I were considered
41:49to be one of the boys and girls.
41:52So swiftly does time fly.
41:57Christmas, 1774.
42:00Honoured Father.
42:02Noon Monday, Mr. Bache sent his clerk with the news.
42:07My poor mother had died.
42:11She had had a stroke some time ago,
42:15and when I last saw her,
42:16she knew she didn't have much longer to live.
42:21I truly wish you had come back this fall.
42:25I think her sadness in not seeing you for so long
42:29preyed on her spirits.
42:41In March of 1775, Franklin sails home to America.
42:46The death of his wife is only one of the many catastrophes
42:50engulfing him.
42:52What he once saw as that precious China vase,
42:55the Anglo-American empire,
42:57is in the process of breaking apart.
43:01Almost as a relief, he revisits a scientific problem
43:05that has puzzled him for years.
43:07The fact that it takes several weeks longer
43:09to sail west to America than east to England.
43:14Taking a series of careful water temperature measurements
43:17as the ship crosses the Atlantic,
43:19he confirms the existence of a warm river of water
43:22within the ocean itself,
43:24the Gulf Stream.
43:29His accurate charting of the Gulf Stream
43:31becomes crucial to navigation
43:32and is basic to our understanding
43:34of weather patterns to this very day.
43:42April 19, 1775.
43:45The battles at Lexington and Concord.
43:53Franklin arrives in Philadelphia two weeks later
43:56to find the colonies in turmoil.
43:59He sees that most Americans are not eager for revolution.
44:02They are desperate to resolve their differences
44:05with the mother country.
44:15It is a beautiful spring day
44:17as William Franklin, the royal governor of New Jersey,
44:20rides through Philadelphia to meet his father.
44:23Father and son have not seen each other for 12 years.
44:27As the elder Franklin has become more radical,
44:30so the son has become more conservative.
44:34He identified more and more with law and order
44:37as royal governor
44:39and saw the revolutionaries as crazies and dangerous.
44:43They would pull the whole structure down.
44:47Benjamin, on the other hand,
44:50thought the treatment that he personally had received in England
44:54was emblematic of the way America had been treated.
45:01I think the father feels he can straighten his son out
45:04and the son will be on the same side.
45:06He'll be with him.
45:10Their meeting takes place at the country estate
45:13of an old friend and former political ally, Joseph Galloway.
45:20Up to this moment, the elder Franklin had been very circumspect
45:24about expressing his real views to anyone.
45:27We passed the bottle around freely
45:29and the doctor finally opened himself up to us.
45:33He declared himself in favor of any measure
45:36which would attain complete independence.
45:40He saw the government in power in England as thoroughly corrupt
45:45and he felt that the resources of the colonies were immense.
45:51He was convinced America would prevail.
45:56So we see them sitting around and passing the cup back and forth
46:02and drinking by the fire as the father recites his version of history
46:08and we see William's anger developing his resentment.
46:12There are in truth only two possible paths,
46:15one which will lead to peace,
46:18the other to anarchy, misery, the horrors of a civil war.
46:23England has become a place of injustice, bribes and foolish quarrels.
46:29Our connection to that rotten old state corrupts and poisons us.
46:34Nothing will ever influence me to neglect the duty which I owe to my country.
46:40Nor will the most furious rage of the most intemperate zealots
46:45lead me to swerve from the duty which I owe to His Majesty.
46:50You say that your duty is to your king
46:52and I shouldn't blame you for differing with me in public affairs.
46:57But there are natural duties of a son to a father which come before politics.
47:04William will not be moved.
47:06He is an officer of the British Empire and to the Empire he will remain loyal.
47:11If it's your intention to set the colonies on fire,
47:15I hope you'll take care to run away and not get burned when the blaze is out of control.
47:20You are a thorough courtier
47:22You are a thorough courtier
47:24and see everything through the eyes of the British government.
47:28He's loved William
47:30and William is as close to him as anybody on the planet is.
47:33And there's William betraying him
47:36at the moment of his most desperate need,
47:39at the moment that he's shakiest probably in his entire life,
47:43not at all certain of what he's about to undertake,
47:46not certain whether the Americans will even go for the revolution that he's now keen on.
47:52When his own son refused to join him in this revolution
47:56in which Franklin was risking his life and his reputation and his property,
48:00this seemed to Franklin an absolutely unbelievable, unspeakable betrayal.
48:09The elder Franklin will later describe his son's refusal to support him
48:13as giving him more grief than anything in the world.
48:22He thought his son had betrayed him by taking the wrong side.
48:28For Franklin, there were no two ways about America's leaving England.
48:33There was not going to be any British empire
48:39in which Americans were subject to Englishmen.
48:42That was not going to happen.
48:46Franklin, 70 years old,
48:49joins with the most radical leaders in America.
48:52He is promoting not just separation from England,
48:55but a revolutionary new idea
48:58that ordinary people can have control over their government,
49:02that America does not need a king.
49:13On June 25th, 1776,
49:16Benjamin Franklin is in Philadelphia
49:18working with John Adams and Thomas Jefferson
49:21on a draft of the Declaration of Independence.
49:24I think that it is the natural right of men
49:27to quit when they please the society or state
49:30or the country in which they were born
49:33and either join with another or form a new one,
49:36as they may think proper.
49:38On that same June day, in New Jersey,
49:41William Franklin is arrested by a government
49:44he adamantly refuses to recognize.
49:47He writes to his own son.
49:51Dear son, I must go.
49:55I am sick, but it was with great difficulty
49:59that I persuaded their low mightinesses
50:02to postpone my departure.
50:04Congress sent two doctors
50:06to make sure my illness was not feigned.
50:09Hypocrites always suspect hypocrisy in others.
50:13I must leave tomorrow.
50:16Either dead or alive.
50:20God bless you.
50:23Be dutiful to your grandfather,
50:26to whom you owe many obligations.
50:31William Franklin is thrown into prison
50:34and will end up in exile in England.
50:37The father had once made William
50:40an officer of the British Empire,
50:42and now it is the father who refuses
50:45to help his son in any way.
50:48Benjamin Franklin takes his anger with him to the grave,
50:52beyond the grave, for in his will
50:55his once favorite son will get nothing.
50:58You fought against me in the last war.
51:01I leave you nothing more of my estate
51:04than what you tried to deprive me of.
51:10I don't think there's any question
51:12that Benjamin Franklin was a great statesman,
51:16and I have no question
51:19that he was a brilliant inventor.
51:23I think he was a wonderful journalist and writer,
51:28but I think he was very hard on family and friends,
51:33and no different than an awful lot of leaders
51:38who are put in the public eye,
51:41and I expect them to be saints in private
51:45as well as giants in public.
51:50Franklin destroys everything around him
51:55to create something new.
51:58He destroys the old British order.
52:01He destroys aristocracy.
52:03In the process of creating something new,
52:06he destroyed what was closest to him,
52:08his relationship with the person
52:10closer than anyone to him, his son.
52:17The publisher, William Straughan,
52:19is a good friend of both men.
52:21He writes to Benjamin Franklin on the eve of the Revolution.
52:26Six years ago, you predicted to me much of what has happened,
52:31but much of what you yourself did helped fulfill this prophecy,
52:36and now you've carried things too far.
52:39There will be no end to the public calamities.
52:42I see many worthy, loyal men driven from their homes in America.
52:47I see pictures of misery and anarchy when the business is done.
52:53You could have continued in the exercise of study
52:57and in the company of fellow philosophers.
53:02Instead, in the evening of your life,
53:07you choose to embark upon this,
53:11the most arduous, dangerous and uncertain cause
53:17that ever man has engaged in.
53:31Explore the amazing life of Benjamin Franklin at PBS Online.
53:36Recreate famous experiments.
53:38Sample Ben's wit and wisdom,
53:41and discover how his ideas shape our world.
53:44Log on to pbs.org.
54:01© transcript Emily Beynon
54:31© transcript Emily Beynon