MAN AS BENJAMIN FRANKLIN: Histories of Lives are seldom entertaining,
unless they contain something either admirable or exemplar.
Know then, That I am an Enemy to Vice,
and a Friend to Vertue.
A mortal Enemy to arbitrary Government
and unlimited Power.
I am naturally very jealous
for the Rights and Liberties of my Country;
and the least appearance of an Incroachment on those invaluable Priviledges,
is apt to make my Blood boil exceedingly.
[THUNDER] Benjamin Franklin.
♪
MAN: Franklin is, by far,
the most approachable of our Founders.
He's not somebody made of stone,
like a George Washington.
Franklin was pretty simple in his moral code.
He was driven by a desire to pour forth
benefits for the common good.
But there's a lot in Benjamin Franklin
that makes you flinch,
and we see Franklin not as a perfect person,
but somebody evolving to see
if he could become more perfect.
NARRATOR: He was a teenage runaway
who achieved such remarkable success
that his example would be handed down for generations
as the embodiment of the American dream.
He was a printer, a publisher, and a writer,
producing everything from essays on politics and religion
to biting satires and words of wisdom
that would endure forever.
[THUNDER] He was a prolific inventor
and a scientist whose pioneering discoveries
would make him the most famous American in the world.
He was a civic leader,
the founder of a library and a college,
who introduced a host of improvements
that made the lives of everyday people better.
He embraced the Enlightenment belief
in the perfectibility of human beings;
but no one understood their foibles and failings,
including his own, better than he did.
♪
He also owned and enslaved human beings
and benefited from the institution of slavery.
[GUNSHOT] He was a reluctant revolutionary
who became an indispensable founder of a new nation;
helped craft the document
that declared his country's independence;
and then did as much as anyone
to secure the victory that assured it.
And he guided the complicated compromises
that created his nation's Constitution,
then tried to rectify its central failing.
MAN: He constantly remade himself
from apprentice, to printer, to scientist,
to government official, to revolutionary, to abolitionist.
He never was finished with himself.
He always thought that he was a work in progress.
NARRATOR: He could be funny and unforgiving;
folksy and philosophical;
generous and shrewdly calculating;
broadminded, yet deeply prejudiced;
a family man, who spent years away from his wife
and let political differences
destroy his relationship with his son.
He concealed those contradictions behind
a carefully crafted public image.
MAN: He's a Puritan who then becomes
the leading figure in the Enlightenment.
So that he stands astride
so many contradictions in his own life,
that he understands them and they don't become
contradictions for him.
They become some seamless web of insight.
MAN: He wrote so much. He wrote so well.
He's somebody that we need to know about.
He can put us in touch with the sensibilities
of the 18th century in a way that makes it
both accessible and, yet, captures its remoteness.
[THUNDER] WOMAN: Franklin is endlessly,
endlessly interesting.
He is the only Founding Father who
evidently had a sense of humor,
who was evidently human,
who evidently had a sex life.
And there's so much about him that makes him
seem approachable, on the one hand,
and super-human on the other hand.
NARRATOR: "Let all men know thee," Benjamin Franklin said,
"but no man know thee thoroughly."
MAN AS FRANKLIN: I never intend to wrap my Talent in a Napkin.
To be brief; I am courteous and affable, good humor'd
unless I am first provok'd,
and handsome, and sometimes witty.
If you would not be forgotten,
as soon as you are dead and rotten,
either write things worth reading,
or do things worth the writing. Benjamin Franklin.
♪
NARRATOR: Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston
on January 17, 1706,
the youngest son and 15th child of Josiah Franklin,
who had come from England
to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1683.
Josiah made candles and soap
and became a respected member of South Church,
one of the town's 3 congregations of Puritans.
When his first wife died in childbirth,
Josiah married Abiah Folger of Nantucket,
who came from a family of free-thinkers.
Benjamin would be her eighth child.
He grew up in a 4-room house
where the dinner table was always crowded,
and often included friends his pious and serious-minded father
invited over for conversation.
From the start, the boy was precocious.
He was reading the Bible by age 5.
His sister Jane recalled that he "studied incessantly"
and "was addicted to all kinds of reading."
But he was also irreverent.
He found the long prayers before each meal tedious
and suggested his father simply say grace once
over the entire winter's supply of food.
"It would be," young Benjamin said, "a vast saving of time."
♪
NARRATOR: He and his boyhood friends
fished and frolicked in a nearby pond.
An avid swimmer, he designed rudimentary fins
to propel himself faster across the water;
other times, he floated on his back
and let himself be pulled along by a kite.
Josiah initially thought his son
should study for the ministry
and enrolled him at age 8 in the Boston school
that prepared students for Harvard College.
But the academy proved too expensive,
and eager to have another set of hands,
his father put him to work in the family's candle shop.
He was 10 years old; his schooling was over.
BRANDS: I think it was crucial to Franklin's success
that he had very little formal education.
When people go through formal schools,
they learn what you're supposed to know.
They also learn what you don't have to know.
With Franklin, he never knew what he didn't have to know,
so, he assumed he had to know everything.
♪
NARRATOR: In 1718, at age 12,
Franklin began the work that would define
the rest of his life.
He signed a 9-year apprenticeship,
legally indenturing himself to his older brother James,
who had opened a printing shop in Boston.
Printing was an amazing business if you were
both clever with your hands and good at thinking.
Printers are setting type upside-down and backward.
And you have to be really hyper-literate to understand
how language works that way,
and to correct things as you go along,
and get it right.
NARRATOR: Handling the heavy sets of lead type
strengthened and broadened his shoulders.
Having access to books
strengthened and liberated his mind.
MAN AS FRANKLIN: Often I sat up in my room
reading the greatest part of the night,
when the book was borrowed in the evening and had to be
returned early in the morning lest it should be missed.
And all the little money that came into my hands
was ever laid out in books.
WOMAN: Here was a kid who only had
two years of formal education, ever.
So, what did he do? He taught himself how to write.
NARRATOR: He composed poetry-- including a ballad
commemorating the recent killing of Blackbeard the pirate.
He read articles from "The Spectator,"
a London periodical,
and, on paper salvaged from the print shop,
attempted to reproduce them by memory.
He stayed up late at night and rose early each morning
to continue his reading before the shop opened.
"I was," Franklin said, "extremely ambitious."
In 1721, his brother James decided to publish
his own weekly newspaper, "The New-England Courant."
From its inception, the paper courted controversy.
Its first issue attacked Cotton Mather,
Boston's pre-eminent preacher and the colony's
strict and severe moral authority.
Mather called the newspaper wicked,
filled with immorality, and lies.
What James Franklin does is he creates
the first real independent newspaper in America.
His paper, in Boston, is, quote,
"Not published by Authority."
All the others, you were given a stamp of authority.
NARRATOR: On April 2, 1722, an essay appeared
over the name of Silence Dogood,
who claimed to be a widowed woman from the countryside,
and who had lots of homespun wisdom
and sharp social critiques to share.
It was an immediate hit.
No one, including James Franklin, had any idea
that the real author was a teenage boy,
James's 16-year-old brother Benjamin,
who had secretly slipped the essay under the door.
More of Silence Dogood's articles began to appear.
She offered irreverent advice on funeral eulogies,
advocated fiercely for women's education,
and in one dispatch poked fun at Harvard
and the wealthy parents who dreamed of
sending their children to the elite institution.
MAN AS FRANKLIN: Most of them consulted their own Purses
instead of their Childrens Capacities.
At Harvard They learn little more than
how to carry themselves handsomely,
and enter a Room genteely...
and from whence they return,
after Abundance of Trouble and Charge,
as great Blockheads as ever,
only more proud and self-conceited.
[HORSE WHINNIES] [DOOR CLOSES]
NARRATOR: In the summer of 1722,
James was jailed for 3 weeks without trial
for questioning the competence of Cotton Mather
and the colony's other leaders.
Quoting from an article he had read in a London newspaper,
Benjamin, as Silence Dogood, came to his brother's defense.
MAN AS FRANKLIN: Without Freedom of Thought,
there can be no such Thing as Wisdom;
and no such Thing as publick Liberty,
without Freedom of Speech.
Whoever would overthrow the Liberty of a Nation,
must begin by subduing the Freeness of Speech.
NARRATOR: When James was released from jail
and resumed putting out his newspaper,
Benjamin confessed publicly that he, in fact,
was writing Silence Dogood's essays.
Many cheered him for his artfulness,
but James was jealous.
They would argue--and it sometimes came to blows. [SLAP, SHOUTING]
MAN AS FRANKLIN: I fancy his harsh and tyrannical
Treatment of me, might be a means of
impressing me with that Aversion to arbitrary Power
that has stuck to me thro' my whole Life.
NARRATOR: Franklin decided to run away,
even if it meant breaking his legal obligation to his brother.
After selling some of his books to pay for his passage,
he slipped out of town on a ship heading south,
convincing the captain to keep quiet under the false pretense
that he had gotten a girl pregnant and needed to leave.
He was 17 years old.
♪
11 days later, on October 6, 1723,
Franklin arrived at the Market Street wharf
on the Delaware River in Philadelphia,
the City of Brotherly Love founded by William Penn,
a Quaker for whom the colony of Pennsylvania was named.
With 6,000 residents, Philadelphia was now
America's third-largest city after Boston and New York.
It was a thriving outpost of the British Empire--
its streets filled with both newcomers and Native peoples,
including the Lenape, on whose land the city now stood.
ISAACSON: People are coming from all sorts of backgrounds.
There's Anglicans, there's Jews,
there's slaves, freed slaves.
There's the Germans coming in and the Presbyterians
and the Native Americans who were there.
And, unlike Puritan Boston, where you have to follow
the theocratic maxims of the Mather family,
people in Philadelphia have a certain tolerance.
WOMAN: Colonial Philadelphia had a different vibe,
a different flavor.
Growing commerce, saloons and taverns,
a sort of hospitable place, but also a place in which
people could find themselves and create themselves.
Franklin landing in Philadelphia at this moment
was perfect for him, in terms of timing.
He didn't have to be someone who came from great wealth
in order to find opportunity.
MAN: He's just a kid.
He's run away from his apprenticeship,
so, he's scared, probably, that they're going to
track him down.
He's not sure what comes next.
NARRATOR: "I was dirty from my journey," Franklin wrote,
"and I knew no soul nor where to look for lodging.
I was fatigued and very hungry."
It was a Sunday, and he saw a crowd of well-dressed people
heading into a church.
They were Quakers about to attend their weekly service,
marked by sitting in silence together.
MAN AS FRANKLIN: I sat down among them,
and after looking round awhile
and hearing nothing said,
I fell fast asleep, and continued so
till the meeting broke up, when one was kind enough to rouse me.
[DOG BARKING]
NARRATOR: Walking up Market Street, he passed a house
and exchanged glances with a 15-year-old girl
standing in the doorway, who, he was sure,
"thought I made, as I certainly did,
a most awkward, ridiculous appearance."
He went to work at one of the city's print shops
and eventually began renting a room at the house
he had passed that first morning.
The girl he had seen was his landlord's daughter--
Deborah Read.
They struck up a romance,
and by the fall of 1724 were talking of marriage.
Meanwhile, patrons of the print shop had noticed
Franklin's skill and diligence.
One of them, Pennsylvania's governor William Keith,
offered what seemed to be the opportunity of a lifetime.
He would send Franklin to London
with letters of introduction and credit
to purchase the equipment needed
to start his own print shop in Philadelphia.
Marriage to Deborah would have to wait.
Benjamin was bound for England.
♪
MAN AS DANIEL DEFOE: The great center of England
is the city of London and parts adjacent.
All that vast mass of buildings,
and how much farther it may spread, who knows?
New squares and new streets rising up every day
to such a prodigy of buildings that nothing in the world
does, or ever did, equal it, except old Rome.
Daniel Defoe.
NARRATOR: With more than 600,000 residents,
100 times the size of Philadelphia,
London was the teeming hub of an empire
that considered its far-flung colonists with mild disdain.
They viewed Americans as backwards suppliers of raw materials
and as purchasers of manufactured goods
only England could provide.
MAN: Coming out of the Provinces,
he found a greater world.
In England, he was young and impressionable
and able to make his way into that huge metropolis of London
from nothing but his ability.
NARRATOR: Upon his arrival, Franklin learned too late that
Governor Keith had a reputation for unreliability.
There were no letters of credit or introduction.
Once more, he would have to fend for himself.
For a year and a half, he made the most of it.
London had more print shops than all of
the American colonies combined,
and he quickly found work,
impressing his employers with his strength and his sobriety.
Unlike all the other workers, he did not drink
a pint of beer 6 different times during the workday.
MAN AS FRANKLIN: I drank only Water; the other Workmen
wonder'd to see from this
that the Water-American, as they call'd me,
was stronger than themselves.
NARRATOR: He spent his free time poring through books,
especially Enlightenment treatises by Isaac Newton,
René Descartes, John Locke, and other philosophers
who argued that truths were to be found
through the study of how things work in the natural world.
♪
JENKINSON: The Enlightenment.
It's a commitment to reason and science.
It's a belief that every problem can be solved
and that every institution can be reformed,
that life on Earth is perfectible,
at least up to a point,
and maybe altogether.
NARRATOR: In London, Franklin also seemed
to have forgotten Deborah
and indulged in what he called
"foolish intrigues with low women."
He wrote her only one letter.
In his absence, Deborah married someone else.
[DOG BARKING] But when a Quaker merchant
offered Franklin a job as a clerk
selling merchandise in a general store
back in Philadelphia
and then dangled a potential partnership,
he headed home.
During the 12-week voyage, Franklin wrote out a plan
for future conduct, with 4 basic rules:
be "extremely frugal,"
"endeavor to speak the truth in every instance,"
"apply myself industriously to whatever business I take,"
and "speak ill of no man whatever."
In Philadelphia, he threw himself into his new job,
becoming, he said, an "expert at selling."
But that winter, his employer took ill and died.
Franklin decided to return to his old trade as a printer.
[BELL RINGS] In 1728, he opened
his own shop on Market Street
with a partner whose father underwrote
the initial expenses.
He had devised a foundry for casting type,
saving the cost of sending to England for replacements,
and won a contract to print
the authorized history of the Quakers.
When his new partner took to drinking,
Franklin found other backers to buy him out
and continued as sole proprietor.
In his drive to succeed, he often worked
until 11 at night
and was back at his shop before dawn.
MAN AS FRANKLIN: I took care not only to be in Reality
Industrious and frugal, but to avoid
all Appearances of the Contrary.
NARRATOR: He made sure people noticed,
and his business increased.
CHAPLIN: He was a writer. You know, writers invent.
He might be his own best invention.
Franklin is so relentless in learning how to do things,
learning how to do things correctly in a certain way,
how to write, how to dress, how to
speak to different kinds of people.
It's sort of impossible to know what was there
before he did all that and invented himself.
NARRATOR: With 11 other up-and-coming tradesmen,
Franklin formed a club that met each Friday evening
to socialize and forge business connections.
But they also discussed current events
and politely debated a variety of topics--
What is wisdom? What defines good writing?
Did importing indentured and enslaved servants
help or hurt the colonial economy?
The official name of the group was the Leather Apron Club.
Informally, they called themselves the Junto,
from the Latin for "joined together."
At 21, Franklin was its youngest member,
but unquestionably its driving force.
ISAACSON: Franklin believed that the virtues and values
of a working middle class
were going to be the backbone of American society.
The artisans, the shopkeepers,
the people who put on leather aprons early in the morning
to help serve the public.
NARRATOR: The Junto moved its meeting place
from a local tavern to a rented house,
and at Franklin's suggestion,
each member brought some books
that the other members could read.
Eventually, they broadened the idea
into the Library Company of Philadelphia,
America's first subscription library
open to the public,
who paid small dues for the chance to borrow
books imported from Europe.
DUNBAR: And, every year, more and more books would be
collected and extend knowledge.
What was so important about the Library Company
was that it wasn't just for wealthy, elite men.
MAN AS FRANKLIN: This Library afforded me
the Means of Improvement by constant Study,
for which I set apart an Hour or two each Day;
and thus repair'd in some Degree
the Loss of the Learned Education
my Father once intended for me.
JENKINSON: He always looked around wherever he was
and said, "What needs to be done?
"What's missing? What are the things
that a community ought to have?"
He had read enough to know that there was more elsewhere
and he wanted to make those good things happen
to the community of Philadelphia.
ISAACSON: Self-reliance, which Franklin loved,
and community engagement may seem like
they oppose each other.
But as Franklin repeatedly said,
the good that we can do together
surpasses the good we can do alone.
NARRATOR: Over the coming years, Franklin and his Junto
would turn to other civic projects
to improve life in Philadelphia.
Under their guidance, the city formed
volunteer fire companies.
They advocated for a police force
paid by a property tax.
And at one Junto meeting,
Franklin raised the idea of starting a college.
When the Public Academy of Philadelphia
finally opened in 1751,
Franklin would be elected president of the board.
It was the first non-sectarian college in America
and would later become the University of Pennsylvania.
Expanding on the Junto model,
he proposed and organized
the American Philosophical Society,
whose members would be scientists and intellectuals
from throughout the colonies,
who could share ideas and scholarly papers by mail
if they could not come to meetings in person.
It would become the colonies' first learned society.
And to build a new hospital, he devised a plan
that matched private donations with public funds,
giving people, he said, "an additional motive to give,
since every man's donation would be doubled."
He always believed that if you just get a few
good and interested men, always men,
on any civic problem, you can solve it.
DUNBAR: Ben Franklin is, I think, emblematic of what
America wanted to be, should be, could be.
The things that he spoke of, the things that he wrote about,
often missing are other people.
Women, people of color, in particular,
enslaved men and women, never had
the opportunities that a Ben Franklin had.
♪
NARRATOR: Franklin's print shop was thriving.
Pennsylvania's colonial legislature awarded him
the contract to print its paper currency.
When he learned that South Carolina
was looking for a printer,
he dispatched one of his employees
to open a shop in Charleston.
And on October 2, 1729, he began publishing
his own newspaper, "The Pennsylvania Gazette."
He filled its pages with reports from other newspapers
in America and England,
along with crime stories,
notices of fires and deaths,
a moral advice column,
funny tales he concocted that flirted with sexual innuendo,
and letters from readers, including some he wrote himself,
under tongue-in-cheek pseudonyms like
Anthony Afterwit and Alice Addertongue.
"If you would make your paper a vehicle of scandal,"
Addertongue advised in one letter,
"you would double the number of your subscribers."
The "Gazette" caught on.
DUNBAR: Ben Franklin understood the power
of the printing press.
He understood that those who controlled words,
those who are able to disseminate information, um,
had a certain amount of power.
He could be the arbiter of what was seen as important.
BRANDS: The idea, first, was to engage people,
to entertain people.
Franklin understood that if you could get people
to laugh with you, you're halfway to
getting them to agree with you.
NARRATOR: He also welcomed essays
espousing opinions of all kinds.
MAN AS FRANKLIN: If all printers were determined
not to print anything till they were
sure it would offend nobody,
there would be very little printed.
ISAACSON: He said in the end you have to bear
some responsibility for the type of ideas that you put forward.
And if they're really odious, if they're really harmful,
you have to curate them out.
WOMAN: If you made a mistake, you could,
as they always did in those days, add an errata page.
And you could fix anything with that errata page.
NARRATOR: Local merchants advertised their goods
in the "Gazette;"
tradesmen advertised their services.
Franklin also published notices offering rewards
for runaway indentured servants,
like he had once been,
and slaves for sale.
MAN: To be sold in Lots or singly,
a choice parcel of Negroes lately Imported,
consisting chiefly of young Men and Girls,
bred to Plantation Business;
also Jamaica Rum, Sugar of sundry Sorts,
Molasses, Cotton, and Pimento.
Run away from the subscriber, a Negroe lad called Ned,
about 18 years of age, 5 feet 7 inches high,
speaks pretty good English, but thick,
has very thick lips, and is much pitted with the small-pox;
TO BE SOLD, A LIKELY young breeding Negroe Woman,
speaks good English, understands her Needle
and any sort of Household Work,
and has had the Small-Pox.
Enquire of the Printer.
♪
NARRATOR: When Benjamin Franklin
had returned from England,
he had fallen back into some of the habits
he had acquired in London.
MAN AS FRANKLIN: That hard-to- be-govern'd Passion of Youth
hurried me frequently into Intrigues with low Women
that fell in my Way,
which were attended with some Expence.
Besides a continual Risque to my Health by a Distemper
which of all Things I dreaded,
tho' by great good Luck I escaped it.
NARRATOR: Now, as he became a successful businessman,
he decided he needed to settle down and get married.
Meanwhile, his former fiancée Deborah Read
had seen her marriage fall apart.
Her husband had abandoned her and fled to the West Indies.
Reports came back that he had died there in a brawl,
but they were unconfirmed.
In Quaker Pennsylvania, Deborah was in a legal limbo.
If she remarried and it turned out he wasn't dead,
she would be guilty of bigamy, punishable at the time
by 39 lashes and life imprisonment.
She now lived with her widowed mother,
who sold homemade remedies to support them both
in their house on Market Street.
Franklin felt some responsibility
for Deborah's unhappiness, and he said,
"our mutual affection was revived."
On September 1, 1730, forgoing a legal wedding,
they simply moved in together
and entered into a common-law marriage,
a practice not all that uncommon.
MAN AS FRANKLIN: She prov'd a good and faithful Helpmate.
Assisted me much by attending the Shop.
We throve together, and have ever mutually endeavour'd
to make each other happy.
COHN: I think he loved her.
I think they rubbed on together beautifully,
as he would have said.
I think during the time that Franklin was
an up-and-coming tradesman,
it was a perfect union.
SKEMP: She was an excellent choice for a wife.
She was well connected; she belonged to Christ Church,
which was the church in town.
It was less of a romantic relationship than it was
a good, strong, business-like partnership.
NARRATOR: But there was a complication.
Franklin had recently fathered a son with another woman.
He never revealed the mother's identity,
but Franklin wanted to take custody of the child.
Deborah agreed the boy could live with them.
He was named William.
She takes in his son, who is not her son,
and raises him, not always happily.
[DOOR OPENS] [BELL RINGS]
NARRATOR: Benjamin and Deborah
expanded the print shop to include
sales of her mother's ointments,
fine soap from Franklin's family back in Boston,
coffee, tea, chocolate, and other items.
Deborah purchased rags, which mills throughout
the colonies turned into paper,
creating another profit center.
She also managed the household,
and at night bound books by candlelight.
NARRATOR: Two years into their union, in 1732,
they had a child of their own, Francis.
His proud and doting father called him Franky.
But just after his fourth birthday,
Franky came down with smallpox and died.
The huge tragedy of their lives
was the death of Franky.
Franklin was one of the few people in the Colonies
who was 100% behind inoculation.
But it was thought that because Franky
had a very bad cold at the time,
they should hold off until he recovered enough
to be able to withstand the assault on his system
that inoculation would provide.
He never was inoculated.
Franklin never forgave himself.
♪
NARRATOR: Franklin's exposure to the writings of
Europe's Enlightenment thinkers
had led him to reject most of the Puritan teachings
of his family's church in Boston.
He no longer worshipped a God intimately connected
with a person's daily life
who answered private prayers or sent down punishments.
But he still believed in a Supreme Being
who had created the world.
MAN AS FRANKLIN: I believe He is pleased
and delights in the happiness
of those He has created;
and since without virtue man can have no happiness in this world,
I firmly believe He delights to see me virtuous.
Avirtuous heretick shall be saved
before a wicked Christian.
NARRATOR: No one feared for Benjamin's soul
more than his pious parents back in Boston,
whose Calvinist Puritanism espoused that salvation
came solely through God's grace
rather than good works
and anyone who strayed from that doctrine
would be eternally damned.
Benjamin, for whom tolerance was becoming
central to his evolving beliefs,
tried to explain himself.
MAN AS FRANKLIN: Honored Father and Mother, I imagine
a Man must have a good deal of Vanity who believes
that all the Doctrines he holds, are true;
and all he rejects, are false.
I think vital Religion has always suffer'd,
when Orthodoxy is more regarded than Virtue.
And the Scripture assures me, that at the last Day,
we shall not be examin'd by what we thought,
but what we did.
SCHIFF: He's a man of omnivorous curiosity, um,
of endless invention, of endless self-invention.
He's so bent on self-improvement,
on teaching himself how to write properly,
or cleansing himself of his moral sins.
He gives us this idea that human nature
may be flawed in some ways,
but anything can be improved.
NARRATOR: In his constant effort for self-improvement,
Franklin made a list of 12 virtues
that could lead him to what he called "moral perfection":
temperance, silence, order,
resolution, frugality, industry,
sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness,
tranquility, and chastity.
Then he made a chart with 7 columns
for each day of the week
and rows labeled with each virtue
and went to work on his progress,
marking any infraction with a black spot.
"I was surprised," he said, "to find myself much fuller
of faults than I had imagined."
ISAACSON: Every week, Franklin would make a chart and check,
did he master the virtue?
At one point, he said, "I've mastered all the 12
"virtues I had.
"And I showed it around with great pride.
"And one of my friends said, 'Franklin, you're missing
a virtue you might want to try.'"
And Franklin says, "What's that?"
And the friend says, "Humility.
You might want to add that one to your list."
MAN AS FRANKLIN: In reality, there is perhaps no one of our
natural Passions so hard to subdue as Pride.
Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it,
mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive,
and will every now and then peep out and show itself.
Even if I could conceive that I had completely overcome it,
I should probably be proud of my Humility.
[BABY CRYING]
NARRATOR: 7 years after the death of their son Franky,
Deborah gave birth to another child, a daughter named Sarah.
They called her Sally.
Franklin's son William was now a teenager,
as restless as his father had been at that age.
Deborah treated him with occasional coldness,
but Franklin was indulgent as a father,
making sure the boy got the formal education
Franklin himself had been denied.
At age 16, William enlisted to fight against
the French and their Indian allies
in what was called King George's War,
and quickly rose to the rank of captain,
tracking down deserters in Pennsylvania.
[GUNSHOT] When he returned to Philadelphia,
his father began to envision William
rising in the ranks of the British Empire
and made plans for him to study the law in England.
DUNBAR: Franklin had started to acquire some wealth.
Like many other Colonial Pennsylvanians,
he held a number of enslaved people,
up to 5 or 6, in his home,
including a married couple, Peter and Jemima.
He was committed to slave labor.
He used it alongside of his business ventures
in order to gain more wealth.
[HORSE NICKERS] NARRATOR: At the time,
nearly a tenth of Philadelphia's residents
were enslaved,
toiling in homes and businesses.
BROWN: We tend to associate slavery with
plantation labor in the South.
But there were slaves all up and down the Eastern Seaboard,
every one of the 13 Colonies.
And they did everything. They served as domestic servants;
they served as cooks; um, they served as nursemaids;
they served as dock workers; they served as hired hands.
The advantage was that Africans couldn't leave.
Indentured servants filled out their time.
Africans, you had for life.
NARRATOR: Many of Franklin's Quaker friends
considered slavery a sin that threatened to corrode
the moral fiber of the community at large.
Franklin published some of their anti-slavery tracts--
though he intentionally kept his own name as printer
off the title page.
DUNBAR: Franklin lived in a moment in which slavery was
being challenged, pretty constantly, in Philadelphia.
He was very aware that this was happening, yet he still
made the decision to hold onto his men and woman
who were enslaved.
He made a choice.
NARRATOR: Franklin's publishing empire was
expanding and making more money.
He was named clerk of Pennsylvania's
colonial assembly, which didn't pay well,
but had won the contract to print their proceedings,
which did.
He made even more profits printing the paper currency
for Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey.
With former employees, he would establish
printing partnerships in Newport, Rhode Island;
New York City; and Antigua in the West Indies;
as well as the one in Charleston, South Carolina.
He published Bibles, and Samuel Richardson's
"Pamela," the first novel printed in America,
along with treaties with Native peoples that were used
to systematically dispossess them of their lands.
In 1737, he was appointed Philadelphia's postmaster,
giving him access to news from Europe
and the rest of the Colonies before his competitors.
One of the advantages of being a printer is that
he is totally tuned into the news.
He's totally tuned into everything that's
going on in North America.
His vision is broader than most of his neighbors.
He had a kind of public opinion embedded in his brain.
And he knew that opinion in the end was what would
decide where power resided.
♪
MAN AS FRANKLIN: Early to Bed, and early to rise,
makes a Man healthy, wealthy and wise.
NARRATOR: By now, thousands of readers
from South Carolina to New York
were buying Franklin's "Poor Richard's Almanack,"
which he had launched in 1733.
Many printers published almanacs.
They outsold everything in the colonies except Bibles
and had the advantage of requiring people
to buy a new one each year.
But Franklin's stood out.
In addition to weather predictions,
astronomical, astrological, and other observations,
he included aphorisms that combined wisdom with humor,
philosophy with word play.
All of it was ostensibly written
by the hapless Richard Saunders,
who claimed he was writing his almanac
simply because his wife threatened to burn his books
if he didn't earn something from them.
JENKINSON: Franklin got this from his reading
of Jonathan Swift.
Swift had produced the "Bickerstaff Papers,"
which was a parody of the almanac.
And Franklin decides to incorporate this style
into Richard Saunders.
And it was genius.
People go to almanacs for all sorts of important things--
when to plant potatoes or peas;
when...what's the best time to harvest--
but they stayed because these fillers were
funny, witty, and useful.
NARRATOR: "Fish and visitors," Poor Richard wrote,
"stink in 3 days."
"He that lies down with dogs, shall rise up with fleas."
"God helps them that help themselves."
"Haste," he said, "makes waste."
And "lost time is never found again."
MAN AS FRANKLIN: God heals, and the doctor takes the fees.
A countryman between two lawyers
is like a fish between two cats.
The greatest monarch on the proudest throne,
is obliged to sit upon his own arse.
SCHIFF: Franklin is endlessly quotable.
You could live your life, I think, in Franklin aphorisms,
most of which, we should say, are stolen from other people
but slightly reworked, so in Franklin's version,
they're in a better form.
"Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead."
ISAACSON: I think one of Franklin's great inventions is
that American style of homespun humor,
somebody who's pricking at the pretensions of the elite,
somebody who has sort of a cracker barrel sensibility.
This new style of humor where people are poking fun
at themselves indirectly.
You see it in Mark Twain and Will Rogers and others.
I think it started with Franklin.
♪
NARRATOR: The man who had arrived in Philadelphia
virtually penniless at age 17
was now the city's largest bookseller,
its most successful printer and publisher,
and the biggest paper merchant in all the colonies.
He considered himself prosperous enough to retire
from the day-to-day running of his businesses in 1748,
at age 42.
"I would rather have it said, 'He lived usefully,'"
Franklin wrote his mother, "than 'He died rich.'"
MAN AS FRANKLIN: I am in a fair Way of having
no other Tasks than such as I shall like to give my Self,
and of enjoying what I look upon as a great Happiness,
Leisure to read, make Experiments,
and converse at large with such ingenious and worthy Men
as are pleas'd to honor me
with their friendship and Acquaintance,
on such points as may produce
something for the common benefit of mankind,
uninterrupted by the little cares and fatigues
of business.
BRANDS: There was something in Franklin that always
wanted a little bit more.
He wanted to learn more. He wanted to go
to more interesting places.
He wanted to have a broader influence.
NARRATOR: Despite his lack of a formal education,
Franklin had turned himself
into an influential writer and thinker.
Now, with more time to pursue
whatever intrigued his restless imagination,
he would become better known as a scientist and inventor.
He studied the earth's rotation;
conducted experiments showing that dark cloths
absorb more heat than bright fabrics;
and became fascinated by the human body's
circulatory system.
ISAACSON: He loved anatomy, he loved botany,
he loved the way leaves had veins.
He was most curious to know everything you can know about
everything that was possibly knowable.
Wanting to know everything is a key to his creativity.
NARRATOR: He observed weather patterns
and correctly deduced that the coastal storms
now called Nor'easters
actually moved in from the south.
For an ailing brother, he fashioned
a more comfortable catheter.
And he designed a metal stove to fit into a hearth,
improving on the ones many German immigrants were using.
Franklin's radiated more heat out into the room
and had an opening for those who still wished
to bask in the fire's glow.
An ironworker who was a fellow Junto member
began manufacturing them, and they sold for 5 pounds each
throughout the northeast.
When Franklin was urged to take out
a potentially lucrative patent on his invention, he declined.
MAN AS FRANKLIN: As we enjoy great advantages
from the invention of others,
we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others
by an invention of ours,
and this we should do freely and generously.
NARRATOR: But nothing he did as a scientist
would do more to serve others,
and bring him more fame,
than his work in the fledgling field of electricity.
"I never was before engaged in any study," Franklin wrote,
"that so totally engrossed my attention and my time."
JENKINSON: Franklin had become interested in electricity,
which, at the time, was certainly not understood,
but it was also sort of a parlor trick.
People would come in with a--with a glass rod
and some silk and shock each other and lift
pieces of paper.
NARRATOR: He and his Junto friends
staged electricity parties
in which they used a charge to ring bells
and make a toy he called an electrical spider jump around.
Men and women exchanged electrical kisses.
Franklin also electrified
a gilt-edged portrait of King George II that created
what he called a high-treason shock
if someone touched his crown. [ZAP]
He used a more powerful shock to kill a turkey and reported
that it seemed uncommonly tender
compared to one slaughtered the conventional way.
ISAACSON: He kept saying, "We have to find useful things
to do with this electricity."
He said one of the only useful things in his first year
of experiments was that he would get shocked
and knock him down; and he said, "Electricity was useful
for making a vain person humble."
NARRATOR: As his studies turned more serious,
and he began documenting his observations, [ZAP]
he came up with new terms to describe
electricity's mysterious properties.
[ZAP]
It had two charges, he wrote,
positive and negative,
and it could travel by what he called a conductor.
He grouped a collection of glass containers together,
each possessing an electrical charge,
and named it a battery, using the military term
for an array of cannons.
ISAACSON: Benjamin Franklin comes up with the most
important theory of the era, which is
the Single Fluid Theory of Electricity,
which is that it's not some substance,
but it's a positive and a negative.
And it flows from positive to negative.
NARRATOR: But pure science had less appeal to Franklin
than putting it to practical use.
[THUNDER]
MAN: Lightning was seen as being Divine Retribution.
Of course, the irony was that most of the buildings
that were destroyed by lightning were churches
'cause in a lot of communities in the 18th century,
they were the highest structure.
[THUNDER]
ISAACSON: Franklin is convinced that lightning
bears a similarity to an electrical spark.
He's looking at electric sparks,
he's looking at lightning, and he puts in his notebook
all the similarities and at the end of the page,
he says, "Let the experiment be made."
[THUNDER]
NARRATOR: Franklin detailed his theory
that lightning was electricity
and that metal objects could draw off a charge.
He proposed an experiment that involved placing a person
in what he called a sentry box
on a high tower or hilltop
and raising a sharply pointed iron rod
when storm clouds approached.
He shared his observations with a London scientist,
Peter Collinson, who had supplied him with equipment
for his electrical studies.
Franklin was planning to conduct the experiment
on the new steeple of Christ Church off Market Street
as soon as its construction was completed.
But the work went slowly and Franklin grew impatient.
He then came up with an alternative way
to test his theory.
He was less confident in this method
and decided to do it in secret,
trusting only his son William to take part.
In June of 1752, with storm clouds threatening,
he and William went to a field with a silk kite,
to which Franklin had attached a sharp-pointed wire.
Dangling at the end of the kite's long twine string
was a metal key.
They got the kite aloft and Franklin maneuvered it
toward the approaching clouds.
DRAY: What he was showing was that the atmosphere
became electrified, [THUNDER]
not that the kite had to be struck by a lightning bolt,
which is often the way it's depicted in illustrations.
NARRATOR: Franklin suddenly noticed
the individual strands of hemp
along the kite's string
stiffening and standing on end.
He moved his free hand toward the key
and felt a mild shock on his knuckle.
When the rain began, and water
started streaming down the twine,
sparks flew off the key. [ZAPPING]
Franklin was exultant.
"Thereby," he wrote of his experiment,
"the sameness of electrical matter with that of lightning
has been completely demonstrated."
[THUNDER] Meanwhile, the theories
he had shared with Collinson
had been published,
and unbeknownst to him, other scientists
were already testing and verifying them.
Experiments using his original sentry box proposal
had been taking place all over England and Europe.
"Monsieur Franklin's idea," a French physicist wrote,
"has ceased to be a conjecture;
here it has become a reality."
DRAY: The kite experiment, that really was
the symbol of his breakthrough.
[THUNDER] It showed that the atmosphere was electrified,
that thus thunder and lightning were electrical forces.
And it overthrew centuries of superstition
and scientific confusion about what this might be.
MAN: He made a really fundamental contribution
to basic science.
And the fact that he did it as an American,
coming out of the wilds of, uh, of America,
in the European eyes, made him, uh, instantly world famous.
CHAPLIN: There's a hilarious little piece
in the "Gentleman's Magazine" in London
where this commentator says that "Now we know
"that Mr. Franklin's theories about
"emptying the clouds of electricity are actually true;
"whereas, once upon a time, we didn't even think there was
such a person as Mr. Franklin."
'Cause it does seem incredibly improbable
that the reigning expert on
an enormous attribute of Nature
would come from Philadelphia, wherever the hell that was.
NARRATOR: Benjamin Franklin had unlocked
the mystery of electricity,
but he still wanted to put his discovery to work.
In Germany during the mid-century,
386 churches had been struck by lightning
and more than 100 bell ringers killed. [THUNDER]
In Italy, hundreds more people perished
when a bolt hit a building that had gunpowder stored in it.
[THUNDER] Franklin concluded that lightning
seeks the path of least resistance
to connect with the ground.
Providing a better conductor
might safely divert the charge.
He then arranged for what he called lightning rods
to be placed atop Pennsylvania's State House
and his college building--
the first such devices ever erected in the world.
[THUNDER] ISAACSON: Lightning bolts aren't there
sent by an angry god.
It's not something you can just
try to pray and it goes away.
You have to find practical, scientific solutions
that help us understand our cosmos.
[THUNDER] JENKINSON: The lightning rod changes the world.
It's one of the most important inventions
of the Enlightenment and, of course,
he won't patent it.
He believes a good idea
belongs to humankind.
NARRATOR: Some religious leaders objected
that Franklin was attempting to interfere
with one of God's most effective methods of punishing sinners.
MAN AS FRANKLIN: Surely the Thunder of Heaven is no more
supernatural than the Rain, Hail or Sunshine of Heaven,
against the Inconvenience of which we guard
by Roofs & Shades without Scruple.
[THUNDER]
NARRATOR: Scientists in America and Europe
were hailing him for his achievements in electricity.
Harvard, Yale, and the College of William and Mary in Virginia
gave him honorary degrees.
London's Royal Society made him the first person
living outside of Britain to receive
its prestigious Copley Medal.
And one English scientist called his work
"the greatest discovery that has been made
since the time of Sir Isaac Newton."
In Germany, the Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant said
Franklin had stolen the fire of heaven and called him
the "modern Prometheus."
[THUNDER]
♪
MAN AS FRANKLIN: By the collision of different sentiments,
sparks of truth are struck,
and political light is obtained.
BRANDS: He had a kind of social intelligence
that matched his book learning intelligence.
He really was an American genius, but part of his genius
lay in his ability to get people to work with him
and to move things in a direction
he wanted them to go.
NARRATOR: Franklin's involvement in civic affairs
took a new political turn when he was elected to
Pennsylvania's colonial Assembly in 1751.
MAN AS FRANKLIN: I conceived my becoming a member
would enlarge my power of doing good.
I would not however insinuate that my ambition was not
flattered by all these promotions.
It certainly was.
For considering my low beginning
they were great things to me.
NARRATOR: He worked on everything from regulations
on the size of bread loaves
to a tax on dogs;
pushed through a plan to pave Market Street
and keep it swept of dust;
then gained approval to install newly designed
street lamps in the city
with 4 replaceable glass panes
that made them easier to repair.
In 1752, the British government appointed
the 46-year-old Franklin
to the top postal job in America,
sharing the title of deputy postmaster
with a man from the South.
Franklin immediately started making the colonies'
mail service more efficient.
He established the first home-delivery system
and cut the time it took for a letter to get from
Philadelphia to New York City to one day.
On an inspection tour that took him through
Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia,
he learned more about the colonies south of Pennsylvania.
ISAACSON: The American identity begins to form
when Franklin creates a Postal System that allows people
to communicate up and down the coast.
Most of the Colonies thought of themselves
closer to London.
Even letters would go, from Charleston,
if it had to go to Boston, it would go to London,
and then back to Boston.
So, by doing a Postal Road up and down the coast,
he helps knit the American Colonies together.
NARRATOR: The future prosperity of the British Empire,
Franklin wrote in one essay,
lay in the American colonies.
Because of the abundance of land,
he predicted the white population would double
every 20 years, and within a century
would even surpass England's.
All of this disregarded the sovereignty of Native peoples,
whose land it had been for millennia.
In the same essay, he argued,
strictly on economic grounds,
that the importation of black slaves diminished a nation
because "The Whites who have Slaves"
are "enfeebled" by not working themselves.
BROWN: He is combining racism
and opposition to the slave trade, simultaneously.
Some of the initial efforts
to stop the slave trade to North America
originated in concern that there were
too many black people there.
It was an immigration problem, rather than a moral problem.
NARRATOR: He also worried about the influx of immigrants
he described as having "a swarthy complexion,"
including Spaniards, Italians,
French, Russians, and Swedes--
even the Germans, who now represented
a third of his own colony.
"Why," he wrote, "should Pennsylvania,
"founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens,
"who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us
instead of our Anglifying them."
[DOG BARKING]
MAN AS FRANKLIN: We have so fair an Opportunity,
by excluding all Blacks and Tawneys,
of increasing the lovely White and Red.
But perhaps I am partial to the Complexion of my Country,
for such Kind of Partiality is natural to Mankind.
BROWN: In the middle decades of the 18th century,
notions of racial inferiority were so deeply embedded
that the unusual fact of this document, actually,
is how he says, at the end, "Or maybe I'm just biased
in favor of people like myself."
Franklin doesn't deserve particular praise for that.
But it is unusual in the sense of
he's being self-reflective about his own prejudices.
It's the self-reflective part which is slightly unusual.
The prejudices are not.
[BIRDS SINGING]
NARRATOR: In 1754, increased white settlement
in the Ohio River Valley
ignited another struggle with France
for control of Native lands--
what would come to be called the French and Indian War.
Franklin was chosen as one of 4 Pennsylvania delegates
to meet with representatives from 6 other colonies
in Albany, New York, to negotiate with Native Americans
they hoped would side with England in the conflict.
He was familiar with the way the Iroquois nations
had formed a confederation, the Haudenosaunee,
more than a century earlier
that promoted unity through consensus
on matters that affected them all.
It gave him an idea.
MAN AS FRANKLIN: It would be a very strange thing,
if 6 nations of ignorant savages should be
capable of forming a scheme for such a union,
and be able to execute it in such a manner
as that it has subsisted for ages,
and appears indissoluble;
and yet that a like union should be impracticable
for 10 or a dozen English colonies,
to whom it is more necessary,
and must be more advantageous.
NARRATOR: Franklin urged his fellow delegates
to consider creating their own charter
to encourage the colonies to work together.
He and Thomas Hutchinson, an ally from Massachusetts,
spearheaded a committee that drew up what was called
the Albany Plan of Union.
It proposed a Grand Council for the Colonies,
empowered to make treaties with Indians,
regulate trade, oversee land sales on the frontier,
build forts and raise troops for common defense,
and enact whatever taxes and duties
were needed for it all.
Individual colonies would keep their own authority
over everything else under their own constitutions.
In an article in the "Gazette," he attached
a drawing showing a dismembered snake
representing the colonies.
At the bottom was a dire warning.
ISAACSON: It says, "Join or die."
And it's his way of saying that we have to come together
to have one national sensibility.
So, he's the great visionary
that sees that we have to
knit the Colonies together,
rather than have each of the Colonies think of themselves
as sort of a separate entity reporting back to London.
NARRATOR: On both sides of the Atlantic,
the Albany Plan was considered too radical.
MAN AS FRANKLIN: Its Fate was singular.
The Assemblies did not adopt it,
as they all thought there was too much Prerogative in it;
and in England it was judg'd to have too much of the democratic.
Despite all the failure, and it was
a total failure, [LAUGHS]
it did possibly plant some kind of seed
for future organization among the Colonies.
♪
NARRATOR: In 1755, Franklin met with
Major General Edward Braddock,
who had arrived in America boasting
that he and his British redcoats would have little trouble
defeating the French and their Native American allies.
Franklin warned the general against overconfidence.
[GUNFIRE] On July 9, 1755,
8 miles from Fort Duquesne,
where the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers
join to form the Ohio,
Braddock's forces stumbled into an ambush
and were routed by French and Indian soldiers.
Nearly 1,000 of the British were killed or wounded;
most of the officers died, including Braddock.
In the battle, two horses were shot out from underneath
a young lieutenant colonel
and land speculator from Virginia,
and 4 bullets pierced his coat.
But somehow, 23-year-old George Washington survived.
The French and Indians soon pushed
farther into Pennsylvania,
burning houses, killing and capturing settlers,
spreading panic across the colony.
In Philadelphia, the Assembly seemed paralyzed.
Dominated by Quaker pacifists, it resisted raising an army.
Meanwhile, the governor, appointed by
William Penn's sons in England,
steadfastly rejected any tax
on the family's lands in Pennsylvania
to help defend the colony.
MAN AS FRANKLIN: Vassals fight at their lord's expense;
but our lord would have us defend his estate
at our own expense!
It is even more slavish than slavery itself.
NARRATOR: When a raiding party struck a settlement
only 75 miles north of Philadelphia,
Franklin led a force of militiamen,
including his son William, over rough terrain to the scene,
where they buried the dead
and began to build
a series of forts.
The winter weather was cold and wet.
Franklin spent his 50th birthday
encamped at Lehigh Gap.
But the immediate crisis had been met.
In Philadelphia, Franklin was hailed as a hero.
"The people," he wrote a friend, "happen to love me."
NARRATOR: In June of 1757, Franklin once more
found himself on a ship bound for England.
The Assembly had sent him on a mission to try to negotiate
with the Penn family in person
about their refusal to be taxed.
He brought his son William along as his assistant,
but Deborah and Sally stayed behind.
Deborah worried that her husband's ship
might be attacked by the French
or go down in the dangerous waters of the North Atlantic.
WOMAN AS DEBORAH FRANKLIN: I have been in much pain
for some days on account of my Husband,
for by this time he is, as I suppose,
near the Land's End of England,
and of course in danger of being taken,
which I pray God prevent.
I am not able to bear the least thing in the world
and I find myself very weak indeed.
NARRATOR: Approaching the coast of England,
Franklin's ship was nearly
wrecked on the rocks,
just as his wife had feared,
but finally landed safely.
"Were I a Roman Catholic," he wrote Deborah,
"perhaps I should on this occasion
"vow to build a chapel to some saint;
"but as I am not, if I were to vow at all,
it should be to build a lighthouse."
In London, he found lodging at a home on Craven Street,
a short walk from the British government offices
at Whitehall.
ISAACSON: When he gets to London, Franklin tries to
recreate his family life.
And, so, he finds a landlady who's quite like
Deborah Franklin, named Margaret Stevenson,
who has a daughter named Polly.
And they set up on Craven Street a replica
of what he had back in Philadelphia.
NARRATOR: Franklin and William had brought along
two enslaved men, known only as Peter and King, as servants.
"Peter behaves very well to me in general,"
Franklin wrote home to Deborah,
"and begins to know the town so as to go anywhere on errands."
But King, sensing an opportunity for freedom
in his new surroundings, ran away.
DUNBAR: What we know about these men
is relatively little.
What we do know is that, while Ben Franklin's
feelings or opinions about slavery
may have changed over time,
he doesn't set his slaves free, ever.
They run off and he doesn't necessarily pursue them,
perhaps, with as much vigor as he might have.
And they die off.
But at no moment do we really see Franklin step out front
and say, "I am setting an example
by setting my slaves free."
NARRATOR: When Franklin met with the Penn family,
they categorically dismissed the notion that they should
pay any taxes at all.
They saw the colony solely as
a source of wealth and power for them,
and declared Franklin a malicious villain.
Franklin decided to change tactics.
He thought he might be able to persuade
King George II and his ministers
to declare Pennsylvania a Crown colony,
like most of the others in America,
where governors were appointed by the King.
He let Deborah know he would not be returning as quickly
as the two of them had planned.
Franklin was enjoying London.
♪
ISAACSON: London was the greatest city in the world
at the time.
It was filled with coffee shops
and had a thriving intellectual middle class.
And Franklin goes around with his friends,
mainly scientists and writers,
and they spend their afternoons in the coffee shops
discussing new ideas.
That glittering, sophisticated world
was made for Ben Franklin.
He was made for a dinner party and conversation.
Philadelphia might have been extraordinary
for the New World, but it couldn't compare
to the absolute sophistication of the Old World.
BRANDS: There were people who shared his views on science;
there were people who shared his broadminded view
of all sorts of human institutions.
He made friends very easily.
In fact, if Debbie
had been willing to relocate from Philadelphia to London,
Franklin might very well
have become a permanent resident of London.
NARRATOR: In England, as he had in America,
Franklin forged intellectual and affectionate relationships
with a number of young women
whose intelligence he appreciated--
exchanging letters, providing advice,
and encouraging their ambitions;
the kind of attention he neglected to give
his own daughter Sally.
SKEMP: Sally was born at a bad time, I think,
just as Benjamin Franklin became involved in politics
and was away most of the time.
And, so, I don't think she ever really
got to know her father.
And her father didn't seem particularly interested
in knowing her in those days.
She wanted the education that her brother had
and never got it.
She wanted to go to England with him;
that never happened.
NARRATOR: With William by his side,
Franklin traveled beyond London whenever possible.
A friend reported to Deborah that
"William is daily in the company of his father,
"who is at the same time his friend, his brother,
his intimate, and easy companion."
[CHURCH BELL RINGS]
In Edinburgh, they socialized with
two of the Enlightenment's leading thinkers,
the economist Adam Smith and the philosopher David Hume.
At St. Andrews, the university placed
a crimson and white robe over Franklin's shoulder
and presented him, a man with
only two years of formal education,
with an honorary doctorate.
From that moment on, most people referred to him
as Doctor Franklin.
One evening in Cambridge, he attended
a concert of sorts,
where the rims of wine glasses
were rubbed to produce musical notes.
COHN: Franklin looked at that and he thought,
"Now, that's just inefficient."
Why move your arms to that degree?
Why not take the glasses and have them move
and your hand stay still?
NARRATOR: He hired a London glassblower to create
a series of 36 glass bowls, to specific thicknesses and sizes.
COHN: And rather than having your fingers
move around the glass,
the glasses rotated,
and he wet his fingers
and played it like a keyboard.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
NARRATOR: He named his new invention the armonica,
after the Italian word for harmony,
and charmed visitors with performances on it.
Soon, more of the instruments were being
manufactured and sold, though Franklin again refused
to patent or profit from his invention.
What pleased him most was that,
in musical circles throughout
England and Europe,
the armonica
created a sensation.
In Austria, Franklin's invention
provided the music for a royal wedding.
Even Mozart and Beethoven
would compose chamber pieces for it.
COHN: The sound it made was described as
celestial ravishment.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[THUNDER] [BIRDS SINGING]
MAN AS FRANKLIN: I have long been of the opinion
that the foundations of
the future grandeur and stability
of the British Empire lie in America,
broad and strong enough to support the greatest
political structure human wisdom ever yet erected.
[THUNDER] [EXPLOSIONS]
NARRATOR: By 1761, the French and Indian War had exploded
into a global conflict called the Seven Years' War,
involving all the European powers.
In North America, England had won a decisive victory
against the French by capturing Quebec.
MAN AS FRANKLIN: No one can rejoice more sincerely
than I do on the possible addition of Canada;
and this not merely as I am a colonist,
but as I am a Briton.
BROWN: Franklin is one of the earliest to say,
"Look, the weight of the British world
is going to be in North America."
And he put himself at the center of it.
He imagined himself as being the kind of linchpin between
these--this emerging empire in North America
and the seat of power in London.
NARRATOR: By this time, William Franklin had completed
his legal studies
and enjoyed socializing with
wealthy friends in the upper class.
William also took up with
women from London's high society,
and others with less sterling reputations.
Just like his own father, he sired a son out of wedlock.
Unlike his father, William arranged for the baby boy
to be secretly placed in a foster home.
♪
On September 22, 1761,
hundreds of England's well-born and well-connected
gathered in Westminster Hall
for the coronation of a new monarch:
King George III. [CHURCH BELL RINGS]
Among those present for the occasion
were two staunch defenders of the Empire--
Benjamin and William Franklin.
From the balcony, Benjamin watched the lavish ritual.
On the hall's floor, his son William
stood with a more privileged crowd
of nobles and high officials.
Then William marched in a small procession
into Westminster Abbey, where the crown
was to be placed on George's head.
♪
Benjamin, not part of that select group,
walked back to Craven Street alone.
Franklin's efforts to elevate his son's station
were paying off.
William had caught the attention of ministers
in the new king's government
who decided that he, though barely into his early thirties,
was a natural leader.
With their support, William Franklin
was chosen to be the next royal governor of New Jersey.
And there was other good news.
William had fallen in love with Elizabeth Downes,
the daughter of a wealthy owner of
sugar plantations in Barbados,
and they were now engaged.
Benjamin Franklin had been gone from Philadelphia
for 5 years.
He was now 56, and still captivated by life in England.
MAN AS FRANKLIN: Why should this island,
which compared to America is but like
a stepping stone in a brook,
enjoy in almost every neighborhood
more sensible, virtuous, and elegant minds
than we can collect in ranging 100 leagues of our vast forests?
NARRATOR: In the summer of 1762,
he booked passage for Philadelphia,
determined to convince Deborah to come back with him,
and promising his English friends
he intended to return to London permanently.
MAN AS FRANKLIN: In two Years at farthest
I hope to settle all my Affairs in such a Manner,
as that I may then conveniently remove to England,
provided we can persuade the good Woman to cross the Seas.
That will be the great Difficulty.
NARRATOR: Franklin would be at sea
when William was married
in St. George's Church in London,
and when he bowed to George III
in St. James's Palace,
kissed the new king's ring,
and swore his eternal allegiance to the crown.
♪
NARRATOR: On November 1, 1762,
Benjamin Franklin arrived back in Philadelphia.
It wasn't a teeming metropolis like London,
but with a population of nearly 25,000,
it had surpassed Boston and New York
as the largest city in the American colonies.
Deborah and 19-year-old Sally welcomed him home.
A few months later, William arrived from England
with his new wife Elizabeth,
and Franklin accompanied them across the Delaware River
to New Jersey, where Benjamin watched proudly
as his son became that colony's ninth governor.
As deputy postmaster of His Majesty's
colonies in North America,
Franklin embarked on another inspection tour
that took him through 6 colonies,
all the way to New Hampshire.
The trip lasted 5 months. [HORSE WHINNIES]
JENKINSON: Franklin sees the many different
American styles.
There's a Northern community;
there's a New England community;
there are the Middle Colonies;
the Upper South; the Lower South.
He begins to understand the vast complexity
of the Colonial situation.
And nobody else did.
He was the best-informed person in the New World
about the diversity of geography, of economy,
of social structure, and he also saw discontentments.
There was concern about representation;
[ROOSTER CLUCKS] there was concern about arbitrary economic tariffs
that were being imposed by Britain,
and the increasing sense that the British
don't really understand us
and they're also using us as an extraction machine
for British wealth.
And, even though they will
say we're British citizens,
they're not treating us with full respect
that an Englishman deserves.
♪
WOMAN AS DEBORAH FRANKLIN: I went to hear the Negro children at Church.
There were 17 that answered very prettily indeed,
and 5 or 6 that were too little, but all behaved very decently.
It gave me a great deal of Pleasure, and I shall send
Othello to the School.
NARRATOR: Deborah Franklin had enrolled Othello,
an enslaved child in the Franklin household,
in a new school in Philadelphia,
part of an effort to educate Black children in North America
that Benjamin Franklin had endorsed.
At Deborah's urging, her husband
made a personal visit to the school.
MAN AS FRANKLIN: I was on the whole much pleas'd,
and from what I then saw, have conceiv'd a higher Opinion
of the natural Capacities of the black Race,
than I had ever before entertained.
Their Apprehension seems as quick, their Memory as strong,
and their Docility in every Respect
equal to that of white Children.
You will wonder perhaps that I should ever doubt it,
and I will not undertake to justify all my Prejudices,
nor to account for them.
COHN: I think a major turning point in Franklin's life
was when he visited that classroom.
He did not like Black people when he was a young man.
There's no way of getting around that.
It's very distasteful to say, but it's true.
He had once written that the hardest thing for a man to do
is to change long-standing prejudices of belief.
But to succeed in doing it is a test of one's humanity.
♪
MAN AS FRANKLIN: If an Indian injures me, does it follow
that I may revenge that injury on all Indians?
These poor People have been always our Friends.
Their Fathers received ours, when Strangers here,
with Kindness and Hospitality.
Behold the Return we have made them!
[BIRD CRIES] NARRATOR: Native Americans
had been completely left out
of the treaty negotiations between France and Britain
that ended the Seven Years' War.
As white settlements continued to push onto their homelands,
Indians from the Great Lakes to Western Pennsylvania
fought back.
On December 14, 1763, 50 frontiersmen
from the town of Paxton, Pennsylvania
swarmed into the small village of Conestoga
and slaughtered the 6 unarmed
Susquehannock Indians they found there.
The mob moved on to Lancaster, where they murdered 14 more
defenseless men, women, and children.
Though the Susquehannocks were known to be friendly,
the so-called Paxton Boys had killed them anyway.
Public opinion about the massacre was split--
between the Quakers, guided by William Penn's advice
to be friends of the Indians,
and the newer immigrants, mostly
Scots-Irish and Germans from the backcountry,
who accused the Quaker-led assembly
of coddling native peoples.
Benjamin Franklin called the perpetrators
"barbarous Men"
who had brought "eternal disgrace"
to their race and religion.
The Paxton Boys then marched on Philadelphia,
where more than 100 Indians had been brought for their safety.
Franklin helped raise a militia to stop them
and negotiated an end to the crisis.
But his outspokenness created a backlash,
especially among the settlers of the backcountry,
which the Penn family exploited.
They slandered Franklin's son William as illegitimate,
falsely claiming that his birth mother
had starved to death, and that Benjamin
had hidden her body in an unmarked grave.
In all the controversy,
Franklin lost his Assembly seat.
But the legislature now adopted his position
that Pennsylvania should be a Crown colony
and reappointed him as their agent in London.
After only two years in Philadelphia,
Franklin was going back to England.
Deborah had made it clear she intended to stay;
they were building a new home just off Market Street.
He promised he wouldn't be gone long.
♪
WOOD: Coming out of the Seven Years' War,
Britain is on top of the world.
They had acquired a huge amount of territory,
all the territory up to the Mississippi River.
It was expensive to maintain
and, so, you needed to tax it.
Franklin certainly went along with it.
And he said, "Well, empires cost money."
And, much to his chagrin,
he found himself going the wrong way,
out of touch with American public opinion.
[MEN SHOUT INDISTINCTLY] NARRATOR: The recent war with France
had expanded England's empire, but left its treasury depleted.
In the spring of 1765,
the king's ministers and Parliament
came up with a new way to raise more money
from the American colonies.
Now all legal documents, newspapers, books, almanacs,
even decks of playing cards, would need official stamps,
purchased from the government.
In Virginia, Patrick Henry denounced the act
as taxation without representation.
Riots broke out in New York; New London, Connecticut;
Annapolis, Maryland.
In Boston, a group calling themselves the Sons of Liberty
hanged and burned the stamp commissioner in effigy.
Then the mob destroyed the mansion
of Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson,
who had worked with Franklin back in 1754
to propose the Albany Plan of Union.
The leaders of the protests had appropriated the motto
Franklin had used at the time
to encourage the colonies to act TOGETHER: "join or die."
Franklin didn't like the Stamp Act either,
but from London advised Pennsylvanians
against over-reacting.
His political enemies back home now spread false rumors
that he helped write the Stamp Act
and had been bribed by promises of a higher royal appointment.
When a mob threatened to attack
the Franklin home in Philadelphia,
Deborah wouldn't budge.
WOMAN AS DEBORAH FRANKLIN: I said when I was advised
to remove that I was very sure
you had done nothing to hurt anybody,
and I had not given any offense to any person at all.
I sent to ask my brother to come and bring his gun.
If any one came to disturb me,
I would show a proper resentment.
NARRATOR: Shocked at the reports of mob violence in the colonies,
Franklin wrote William that unless
some compromise could be found
to ease the tensions,
events were "laying the Foundation
of a future total Separation."
He flooded London newspapers with letters
arguing that the Stamp Act was unfair,
that the recent riots did not represent
the attitude of a majority of the colonists.
He circulated a political cartoon illustrating that,
if the crisis escalated,
the Empire would be dismembered.
On February 13, 1766, Franklin appeared before Parliament,
patiently answering questions posed by its members.
Could an army make the colonists comply,
he was asked. [MAN SHOUTS INDISTINCTLY]
MAN AS FRANKLIN: Suppose a military force
is sent into America.
What are they then to do?
They cannot force a man to take stamps
who chooses to do without them.
They will not find a rebellion;
they may indeed make one.
NARRATOR: The Stamp Act was repealed.
But the Privy Council, the King's top advisors,
had refused to act on Franklin's petition
to make Pennsylvania a Crown colony.
Franklin decided to remain in England anyway.
There were hints that he might be in line for a high post
in the ministry responsible for the American provinces.
And he used his connections to begin lobbying
on behalf of William and a group of speculators
to acquire millions of acres of Indian land
along the Ohio River,
then sell it in small parcels to settlers for an immense profit--
and create a new colony.
[HORSE WHINNIES]
Meanwhile, Franklin put his scientific skills
to work for the empire.
He helped install lightning rods
on St. Paul's Cathedral;
came up with a hot-water piping system
to keep the House of Commons warm;
and, working with a cousin,
a whaling captain from Nantucket,
he created the first chart
of what was called the Gulph Stream,
which helped explain why ships going from London to America
took longer than those going the other way.
WOMAN AS DEBORAH FRANKLIN: Yesterday I had the pleasure
to receive your letter.
I had not heard one word about you
since the latter end of August,
which was near 5 months,
but I shall not dwell on that at this time.
NARRATOR: Back in Philadelphia, as she had
always done during Benjamin's long absences,
Deborah Franklin took care of everything.
She managed her husband's many business enterprises
and supervised the myriad details
of the new home they were building.
All the while, she waited for his promised return.
In the fall of 1767, their daughter Sally married
a Philadelphia merchant, Richard Bache,
and in 1769 she gave birth to a baby boy,
whom she named after his grandfather.
They called him Benny.
That same year, Deborah suffered a stroke
that left her incapacitated for months.
As she recovered, she wrote her husband
that her worries about him
had been at least partly responsible.
WOMAN AS DEBORAH FRANKLIN: I often tell my friends I was not sick,
it was only more than I could bear.
And so I fell down and could not get up again.
But I had taken up a resolution
never to make any complaint to you
or give you any disquiet.
♪
NARRATOR: Even though the Stamp Act had been repealed,
the colonies were still expected
to help pay off war debts;
Parliament now imposed import duties
on glass and china, paint and tea.
When the Massachusetts Assembly passed a resolution
objecting to the new measures--
and called on other colonial legislatures to do the same--
Britain sent 15 warships and 1,000 troops to Boston.
Their presence, Franklin wrote from London,
"seems like setting up a blacksmith's forge
in a magazine of gunpowder."
He redoubled his efforts to find a compromise between
the hard-liners on both sides of the Atlantic.
BROWN: He sees the issue as one of respect.
What holds an empire together is a sense of common feeling.
Right? Of common economic interest,
of interdependence, of identification.
The power doesn't reside in the capacity
to make people do what you want them to do.
ISAACSON: Benjamin Franklin keeps trying to hold
the British Empire together.
Trying to figure out some middle ground
in which the Colonies get to control themselves
through their own assemblies and legislatures,
but still loyal to the Crown of England.
And that was Franklin's hope, that somehow
he could keep together what he called
this "fragile, noble vase."
'Cause he said, "Once it gets broken,
you're not going to put it back together."
MAN AS FRANKLIN: Being born and bred
in one of the countries,
and having lived long in the other,
I wish all prosperity to both.
But I do not find that I have gained
any point in either country,
except that of rendering myself suspected by my impartiality:
in England of being too much an American,
and in America of being too much an Englishman.
NARRATOR: As the political crisis continued to build,
Franklin spent part of the summer of 1771
at a friend's estate southwest of London.
He was 65 years old and decided to make
an accounting of his life,
something, he wrote, "my posterity may like to know."
It was filled with stories of how, in his words,
"I emerged from the poverty and obscurity
"in which I was born and bred,
"to a state of affluence and some degree
of reputation in the world."
It was the beginning of what would become
one of the most-read and influential
autobiographies ever written.
ISAACSON: He begins with two very interesting words:
"Dear Son."
And he's addressing it to William, or at least
pretending he's addressing it to William.
'Cause he's trying to say, "Remember where we come from.
"We're working class and middle class.
We're not trying to be aristocratic."
NARRATOR: But he soon put his memoir aside;
world affairs were overtaking both Benjamin Franklin--
now the agent representing several colonies in England--
and William Franklin--the royal governor of New Jersey.
MAN AS FRANKLIN: It is very uncertain what Turn
American Affairs will take here.
The Friends of both Countries wish a reconciliation;
the Enemies of either, endeavor to widen the Breach;
God knows how it will end.
♪
He was never thinking,
we need to be independent.
He was always thinking, if we can just
work out a few fundamental problems
between us and the British Ministry,
that things are going to be fine.
He probably could have been won over to the British side
as a Loyalist, like his son,
if things had gone slightly differently.
NARRATOR: Tensions between England and the colonies worsened,
especially after British soldiers fired on
a Massachusetts mob in 1770,
killing 5 Americans-- the Boston Massacre.
Franklin's position was becoming increasingly untenable.
He was trying to represent the interests of Massachusetts,
New Jersey, and Georgia, in addition to Pennsylvania.
In 1772, Franklin was shown confidential letters
written by his old ally Thomas Hutchinson,
now the governor of Massachusetts.
The only way to quell colonial unrest,
Hutchinson had advised London,
was through harsher measures, including, he suggested,
"an abridgment of liberties."
Franklin surreptitiously sent copies of the letters
to the leaders of the Massachusetts Assembly.
He hoped that the firebrands in Boston
would turn their anger from Parliament to Hutchinson,
blaming his bad advice for the crisis with Britain,
making room for cooler heads to broker a reconciliation.
Instead, it only inflamed passions.
The letters were leaked to newspapers,
sparking an uproar throughout the colonies.
The Massachusetts Assembly drafted
an angry petition to the king,
demanding that Hutchinson be removed.
As the Assembly's agent, Franklin would have to be
the one to present that petition
before the King's Privy Council.
To make matters worse, Franklin had felt
obligated to admit that he was the one
who had originally shared Hutchinson's letters.
And, so, Franklin was seen as this person who
stole other people's mail,
which was quite an egregious offense
for someone who was a postmaster.
NARRATOR: Just a few days before Franklin was scheduled
to appear before the Privy Council in January of 1774,
news arrived from America that changed everything.
The Sons of Liberty, dressed as Indians,
had boarded 3 ships in Boston Harbor
and dumped 46 tons-- 342 crates--
of English tea into the sea.
Officials in London were still seething
at that act of defiance
when, on January 29, Franklin entered
a meeting room at Whitehall called the Cockpit,
where Henry VIII had once staged cockfights.
To the Privy Council, and the crowd of spectators
gathered there, Franklin was now the face
of an insolent American uprising,
although Franklin considered the Boston Tea Party
an "act of violent injustice on our part"--
the very kind of provocation he had always counseled against.
Alexander Wedderburn, the sharp-tongued
and politically ambitious solicitor general,
who considered the recent events in Boston treasonous,
made clear from the start that the hearing
would be an attack on Franklin's character.
MAN AS WEDDERBURN: Your Lordships will not wonder
that I consider Dr. Franklin not so much in the light of an agent
for the Assembly's purpose, as in that of a first mover
and prime conductor of it for his own as the actor...
NARRATOR: Wedderburn spoke for a solid hour,
sometimes pounding on the table as he berated Franklin
with one denunciation after another,
sometimes using sarcasm that prompted
the nobles and high officials in the audience
to snicker and jeer as they urged him on.
Throughout it all, Franklin stood stock still,
refusing to show any emotion.
MAN AS WEDDERBURN: ...answerable to the law.
The good men of Boston have lately held their meetings...
ISAACSON: They're accusing Benjamin Franklin of
fomenting this Revolution
and he just stays there, silent,
and treats them with silent contempt.
NARRATOR: When Wedderburn finally finished his diatribe,
he asked if Franklin had a statement to make
or would take questions.
Franklin refused.
The hearing was over.
♪
London newspapers now referred to Franklin as
"old Doubleface," a "grand incendiary,"
and a "gray-headed traitor."
Americans, the essayist Samuel Johnson wrote,
"have been taught by some master of mischief
how to put in motion the engine of political electricity."
Two days after his humiliation in the Cockpit,
Franklin was informed that he had been dismissed
as deputy postmaster for North America.
Any hopes he had for a higher post also evaporated,
as did his dreams for the vast land scheme along the Ohio.
Franklin walked into the Cockpit an Englishman
and walked out of the Cockpit an American
because it became very clear to Franklin
that he, as an American, would never receive
the respect that he believed he was due.
At that point, Franklin realized there is no future
for me or for people like me within the British Empire.
NARRATOR: On December 14, 1774,
Deborah Franklin had another stroke,
more massive than the one 5 years earlier.
She lingered on for a few days,
then died on the 19th,
still waiting for her husband,
who had been away for 15 of the last 17 years,
to return to her and the new house on Market Street
he had never seen.
SCHIFF: He's away from Deborah for the last 10 years of her life.
He knows she's ill.
And he doesn't come back.
If Franklin gets failing grades in any subject,
it's the family relations, both in terms of the marriage
and in terms of his son.
MAN AS WILLIAM FRANKLIN: Philadelphia, December 24, 1774.
Honored Father, I came here on Thursday last
to attend the Funeral of my poor old Mother.
I heartily wish you had happened to have
come over in the Fall,
as I think her Disappointment in that respect
preyed a good deal on her Spirits.
I cannot help being concerned to find that
you postpone your Return to your Family.
You have had by this Time pretty strong Proofs
that you are look'd upon with an evil Eye in that Country.
You had certainly better return
to a Country where the People revere you,
and are inclined to pay a Deference to your Opinions.
I am ever, Honored Sir, Your dutiful Son William.
NARRATOR: For Franklin, his breach with England
was complete.
Now a political rift seemed to be growing
between him and his son.
In the coming year, a revolution would begin,
unlikely alliances would be forged,
loyalties would be tested,
families would be torn apart,
and Benjamin Franklin would be in the middle of it all.
♪