Introducing: Founding Fathers: An American Dream - Episode 1

This is a preview of a brand-new show from the Noiser Podcast Network. Hosted by Clarke Peters (The Wire, The Boroughs), 'Founding Fathers: An American Dream' tells the epic story of the birth of the United States of America, 250 years ago. Follow George Washington into bloody battles, sit alongside Thomas Jefferson as he crafts the Declaration of Independence, hear Alexander Hamilton debate the future of the new nation. And discover things you may never have known about this world-changing fight for liberty. But it all begins in Boston...a young, unruly city where the first stirrings of rebellion emerge...and where, in 1706, a baby boy named Benjamin Franklin is about to be born... For more episodes, search 'Founding Fathers: An American Dream' in your podcast app and hit follow. You can listen to Episode 2 straight after this. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00John Hopkins?

  Hi listeners. Today we're bringing you a preview of a brand new show from the Noiser Podcast Network. It's called "Founding Fathers: An American Dream." Hosted by Clark Peters, it tells the epic tale of the birth of the United States of America 250 years ago. Across eight episodes, hear how American patriots overthrew imperial rule and established a radical new nation. Follow George Washington into bloody battles, travel with Benjamin Franklin on crucial missions, hear Alexander Hamilton debate the country's future. How was American independence won? Who lost out along the way? And why does it still matter today? Featuring contributions from leading historians and descendants of those involved, as well

• 0:45John Hopkins?

  as original music and immersive sound design. If you enjoy this taster episode, search "Founding Fathers: An American Dream" in your podcast app and hit follow. You'll find more episodes waiting for you now. We hope you enjoy.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  It's April 26, 1770.

• 1:06Speaker 01

  We're in New York City.

• 1:09Speaker 01

  On bowling green at the southern end of Broadway, the great and the good are out on show.

• 1:17Speaker 01

  Pillars of the community make small talk: clergymen, politicians, entrepreneurs. They're all here, bustling around the park.

• 1:27Speaker 01

  With an estimated population of 25,000, the city is not yet the Big Apple. No yellow taxis roar up and down Broadway, just carriages, horses, and carts.

• 1:41Speaker 01

  Even so, in the late 18th century, New York is one of the biggest settlements on the continent, a gateway connecting the British colonies of North America with the wide world beyond.

• 1:53Speaker 01

  Today is a celebration of those global links, and a chance to express what is supposedly in the hearts of all true patriots. With the dignitaries in place, the ceremony begins.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  In the distance, a military band plays, the prelude to a succession of speeches. Next, a bone-jangling thirty-two-gun salute blasts out.

• 2:23Speaker 01

  It's all because of a glimmering new addition to the New York landscape: A giant statue of the most beloved man in the city. His Majesty, King George III of Great Britain.

• 2:39Speaker 01

  For more than 150 years, Britain's colonists in America have prided themselves on their devotion to the Crown. Some say Americans love the monarch more than those in Great Britain itself.

• 2:53Speaker 01

  As New Yorkers toast the king's health, the colony's lieutenant governor looks with wonder at the statue: Two tons of gilded lead, sparkling in the spring sunshine. It depicts the king as a Roman emperor sat on horseback. At fifteen feet high, it towers over everyone in its presence. For the lieutenant governor, it's artistic perfection. Nothing could better express America's undying love for King George and the British homeland.

• 3:29Speaker 01

  Fast forward six years, and New York pulses with a very different energy.

• 3:36Speaker 01

  On the night of July the 9th, 1776, dozens of men enter Bowling Green under cover of darkness. These are soldiers, part of a new Continental Army, a ragtag fighting force taking on the might of the British Empire.

• 3:54Speaker 01

  Earlier that day, they heard the Declaration of Independence read aloud. Forget "long live the king." George III is now public enemy number one.

• 4:09Speaker 01

  The soldiers clamber on top of the monarch's statue. They tie long, thick ropes around him and pull. Soon, the king is unbalanced. The statue comes crashing down.

• 4:26Speaker 01

  Now, the butchery begins.

• 4:30Speaker 01

  His majesty is cut up limb by limb, his head hacked from his neck. Next, the lead is melted down. There's enough for 42,000 musket balls. All will be used to shoot the king's soldiers.

• 4:50Speaker 01

  The mightiest of them all has fallen. George III is in the scrapyard. A crook, a traitor, a tyrant. And the new nation is already building its own pantheon of great patriots.

• 5:06Speaker 01

  In time, they'll be known around the world as the Founding Fathers, the instigators of the American Revolution and the creators of the American Republic. The names of the most famous Founding Fathers echo through history. Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton.

• 5:28Speaker 01

  These are men of virtue. Their cause is freedom and justice for all. That, at least, is how the story goes. The truth is more complex.

• 5:44Speaker 01

  In this series, we'll bring you the epic tale of the birth of the United States of America. Using the Founding Fathers as our guides, we'll travel from the stirrings of revolution to the long and bloody fight for independence.

• 5:59Speaker 02

  This is the heart and soul and guts of the American Revolution.

• 6:05Speaker 01

  We'll witness the early years of the American Republic, an experiment that changed the world.

• 6:11Speaker 03

  The concept that a government is by the people for the people was a radical and revolutionary idea in 1776. And I think it remains a radical and revolutionary idea.

• 6:25Speaker 01

  Through the eyes of the founding fathers, we'll witness heroism and treachery, virtue and villainy. We'll bring the earliest years of the USA to life and explode historical myths.

• 6:39Speaker 04

  A lot of the beliefs about the British government and British policies were simply conspiracy theory.

• 6:47Speaker 01

  Experts will lift the lid on the brutal reality of the revolution from which an independent America emerged.

• 6:55Speaker 05

  It wasn't a civil war. It was an uncivil war because it was so hard fought. A vicious, local fight that played out for all kinds of reasons. When people hear about the American Revolution, they all think, wait a minute, I didn't know religion mattered in this. I didn't know ethnicity mattered in this, but it did.

• 7:14Speaker 01

  We'll discover the real people behind the legends.

• 7:18Speaker 03

  The founders were an intensely ambitious bunch. John Adams wanted to be remembered by history. Eisenhower Hamilton wanted power.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  But this isn't simply their story. The founding of the United States features a cast of millions, men and women. This series will bring you descendants of those involved on various sides. There will be tales of high-minded idealism that continue to inspire, as well as the ugly legacies of America's origin story. Our ancestors were enslaved by Jefferson. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness didn't exist. We'll hear from those who think the fame of the founding fathers obscures the true genius of the United States: we, the people.

• 8:07Speaker 02

  When I hear the term founding fathers, I wince. This idea that there's a few very special and very wise men who basically determined who we should be as a country, it so simplifies and it so negates who the American people are.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  I'm Clark Peters and from the Noiser Podcast Network, this is Founding Fathers: An American Dream.

• 9:01Speaker 01

  Our story begins on a street in Boston, in the colony of Massachusetts. The year is 1706. A biting cold New England winter presses up against the windows of a modest townhouse. In an upstairs room, a baby boy fills his lungs for the first time. The newborn is wrapped in blankets and passed to his mother, a 39-year-old woman called Abaya Franklin. Abaya has a name for the baby: Benjamin.

• 9:36Speaker 01

  No one can know it yet, but this child, the son of a humble soap and candle maker, will grow up to be one of the most consequential figures of his age. Both Abaya and her husband Josiah are old hands at this. Benjamin is her eighth child, his fifteenth. They'll welcome a further two babies in the coming years. A home overflowing with children is pretty common in early 18th-century Boston, a young bustling city where productivity is always encouraged.

• 10:12Speaker 01

  Like the Massachusetts colony as a whole, Boston is only a few decades old.

• 10:18Speaker 01

  Its founding was dominated by Puritans, austere Protestants who preach moral strictness and embrace a direct relationship with God, devoid of elaborate ceremony. They are, in many ways, spiritual kin with other English settlers of the time, the famous Mayflower pilgrims of Plymouth Rock, for instance, religious radicals searching for land in which to build their vision of a perfect society.

• 10:46Speaker 01

  Abaya is Massachusetts-born and raised. Her father came here from England when King Charles I began a campaign of anti-Puritan persecution in the 1630s.

• 10:59Speaker 01

  Josiah, Benjamin's father, is also an English immigrant, though, like countless others, he came to America more in search of prosperity rather than religious freedom. Faith and finances: the twin engines of the American colonies.

• 11:22Speaker 01

  The origins of British America date back to English-led expeditions in the late 15th century, when Europeans first encountered what they called "the New World." But it's not until 1607 that English settlers established their first permanent colony. They named it Virginia, in honor of Elizabeth I, the so-called "Virgin Queen." Over the next century, numerous other colonies, including Massachusetts, are founded along the same Atlantic coastline. They are a magnet for those who dream of a new way of life, whether it's spiritual fulfillment, material riches, or freedom from the social strictures of Europe.

• 12:08Speaker 01

  White settlers frequently wage war on indigenous peoples. As the colonies thrive, settlers and governments alike take more and more from native populations. Slave labor also plays a key part in these early colonial years.

• 12:26Speaker 01

  The enslavement of Africans is legal in every colony. In some, especially in the South, it's integral to the economy. The cultivation of crops such as rice, cotton, and tobacco proves immensely lucrative. And all are reliant on enslaved people brought over from Africa.

• 12:48Speaker 01

  In the early years of the 18th century, there are roughly 30,000 slaves in British North America, one in 10 of the total colonial population. Very often, the freedom the white colonists gain depends upon other people losing theirs.

• 13:11Speaker 01

  Settlers dream of pursuing their own visions of life. As a result, each colony has a distinct identity.

• 13:20Speaker 01

  Historian Jane Komenski is president and CEO of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation.

• 13:26Speaker 06

  Britain's American colonies had developed as many different systems of governance as there were colonies. So we need to think about these almost as different countries. The thing that they shared is they had an extraordinary degree of local control and institutions that were accountable to their local populations. So there was a sense that when they reached into your pocket for taxation, they also looked you in the eye.

• 13:56Speaker 01

  Perhaps the only other thing found in every colony is a love for the British Empire. Professor Alan Taylor is the author of "American Revolutions: A Continental History."

• 14:10Speaker 07

  The colonists were very proud members of the British Empire. They exalted in the victories of the empire over the French and the Spanish. They celebrated the king's birthday with a fervor that matched anything in Britain. So they thought of themselves very much as British people who happened to live in the Americas. And they were proud of belonging to an empire that was so militarily powerful, that generated so much prosperity and that offered more civil liberties than did any other empire in the world.

• 14:48Speaker 01

  This is the world in which Benjamin Franklin makes his name. The Boston of Franklin's youth is a place that lives to work. Ships crowd the harbor and places of worship crowd everywhere else.

• 15:06Speaker 06

  The churches are huge institutions in Boston and throughout New England. And if you look at any engraving of the 18th century Boston waterfront, you see steeples rising almost like a forest. It's a fractious and disputatious place in ways that descend from Puritanism. This culture where people expect a direct relationship, not only with their preacher, but with God. And I think even for nonreligious people, that makes it a highly participatory place.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  The Franklins are not cash-rich. Benjamin's schooling ends at the age of 10. An apprenticeship in publishing follows.

• 15:52Speaker 01

  At 17, Benjamin leaves Boston in search of new opportunities. He arrives in Philadelphia, in the Pennsylvania colony. The boy is about to come of age in more ways than one. Peter Castor is professor of history at Washington University in St. Louis.

• 16:14Speaker 05

  He moved to Philadelphia because not only was Philadelphia a bigger city, it was more vibrant. Boston was still very much a city under the control of, by then, the kind of fourth-generation descendants of the Puritan aristocracy. And he wanted room to move and grow and succeed. And to him, Philadelphia, even though it had had its own aristocracy, was this city of opportunity.

• 16:41Speaker 01

  In lightning-quick time, Franklin earns a fortune from publishing. At the center of his empire is the Pennsylvania Gazette, which becomes one of the most prominent newspapers in colonial America.

• 16:55Speaker 05

  He's kind of one of the early self-made-man stories from that period because he was an incredibly smart printer. He knew how to print the English language in ways that were captivating and compelling to his fellow countrymen.

• 17:11Speaker 01

  So, when a charismatic visitor from England swoops into town, Franklin immediately spots an opportunity.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  It's November 1739, late in the afternoon.

• 17:33Speaker 01

  In the center of Philadelphia, Market Street is heaving. Horse-drawn carts and wagons line the road. Pedestrians amble alongside, mothers carrying children on their hips, groups of sauntering teenage boys, the elderly moving slowly but purposefully.

• 17:54Speaker 01

  Among them is thirty-three-year-old Benjamin Franklin. Franklin moves in and out of the jumble of bodies. He cranes his neck this way and that. A quick top-of-head calculation tells him there must be six thousand people here. This is a city of roughly fifteen thousand inhabitants. It's astounding. Franklin claims a spot outside the wooden courthouse. If there's one thing he loves, it's an occasion. This afternoon promises to be just that.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  Inside the courthouse, a man dressed head to foot in black robes gazes out on the crowd.

• 18:38Speaker 01

  He's twenty-five, but his flowing white wig makes him look strangely old. No doubt, when he speaks, he seems as ancient as Methuselah. His powerful voice carries wisdom and authority well beyond his years.

• 18:56Speaker 01

  Around 6:00 PM, he walks out onto the balcony.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  There are gasps, then a reverential silence.

• 19:07Speaker 01

  The young man is George Whitfield.

• 19:11Speaker 01

  In his native England, Whitfield has a reputation as a dazzling preacher of God's Word. Now, he's the talk of the colonies. This past week, he's been preaching in Philadelphia. Every day, the crowds have gotten bigger and more enthusiastic.

• 19:31Speaker 01

  Whitfield gesticulates and darts his arms into the air. In his booming voice, he urges the people of Philadelphia to return to their Maker. The vast audience listens in rapt silence. Whitfield's is a strict Calvinist message: embrace the righteousness of Christ.

• 19:58Speaker 01

  Franklin is smitten. Not so much with the theology. As a man of the Enlightenment, Franklin is all about rationality and skepticism. It's Whitfield's showmanship that blows him away. That and his command of other people's attention. The two men form an unlikely friendship. In the coming years, Franklin will publish Whitfield's sermons, making them both a tidy profit. Whitfield is at the heart of a spiritual movement that sweeps the American colonies. The Great Awakening, as it's known, urges a revival of evangelical passions in ordinary men and women,

• 20:41Speaker 01

  from Georgia to Massachusetts and beyond. Many Americans feel it as a kind of homecoming, a rediscovery of the religious zeal upon which many of their communities had been founded. But the Great Awakening is not only about the refreshment of individual souls. It's also a challenge to established elites.

• 21:06Speaker 07

  The norm was that every community would have one church, one faith, usually the one favored by the colonial government. In the southern colonies, that meant the Anglican church. In the New England colonies, it meant the congregational church. Now, what the evangelicals, starting with Whitfield, do is they say, no, every individual gets to choose his church and the government should not interfere with that. So it encourages people with the notion of they don't have to follow community norms. They don't have to follow government's norms if it violates their individual conscience. And you can see how that might be a parallel then, when people, a generation later,

• 21:51Speaker 07

  are thinking about rejecting the authority of Britain.

• 21:54Speaker 01

  Not that Benjamin Franklin is thinking very much about rejecting the authority of Britain, at least not yet.

• 22:04Speaker 01

  Let's jump forward, sixteen years. In January seventeen fifty-six, Franklin spends his fiftieth birthday wet and cold, trudging along a narrow slippery path in the Blue Mountains of Pennsylvania.

• 22:22Speaker 01

  In a life of constant reinventions, Franklin's latest incarnation is an unlikely one: A wartime commander leading a hundred and seventeen men on a special mission.

• 22:36Speaker 01

  Eventually, they reach their destination.

• 22:41Speaker 01

  What they discover is a scene of utter devastation.

• 22:46Speaker 01

  Corpses strewn throughout a deserted village. They bury the dead, then build a fortification.

• 22:56Speaker 01

  They hope this will protect their fellow colonists from the enemy.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  The conflict Franklin is caught up in is the French and Indian War, part of a broader struggle between Britain and France, also known as the Seven Years' War.

• 23:15Speaker 01

  The two European powers are battling for control of North America. Franklin is firmly on the side of his king, on protecting the stability and growth of the British colonial project. Hence, his brief stint as a colonel on active duty, in which he spends time trying to repel attacks from native warriors who have sided with the French.

• 23:40Speaker 01

  In an attempt to shore up support in the colonies, he publishes a cartoon. A snake, cut into several portions. Each represents a different colony. Beneath, a simple message: "Join or die."

• 23:58Speaker 05

  At that time, Franklin was a die-hard British subject, and he's claimed that the British colonies needed to unite if they were going to successfully respond to the challenges of this war. They needed to unite, or they would die. But he wasn't claiming they needed to unite against the British government. He said they needed to unite against their French opponents in this war.

• 24:21Speaker 01

  Professor Andrew O'Shaughnessy of the University of Virginia is the author of "The Men Who Lost America."

• 24:30Speaker 04

  Today, we see him as the quintessential American. But actually, like a lot of the later patriots, he was very pro-the Empire, arguably more than the British. People like Franklin wanted to expand the British Empire. They wanted settlers to move west into Native American territory, which the British were against because they realized it would lead to war and expenditure.

• 25:01Speaker 01

  With the conflict still raging, the ever-adaptable Franklin is on the move again, and this time, much further from home.

• 25:11Speaker 01

  In 1757, he's walking the streets of London, filthy, raucous, crowds upon crowds.

• 25:21Speaker 01

  After several eventful weeks at sea, during which his ship narrowly avoided colliding with another vessel in thick fog, he arrived here on a diplomatic mission to represent Pennsylvania's interests with the rich and powerful in the heart of the Empire.

• 25:39Speaker 01

  London quickly becomes Franklin's home from home. In the city's numerous coffeehouses, he finds his people: scientists and merchants, poets and politicians. He even has a brush with royalty.

• 25:56Speaker 01

  When King George II dies in 1760, he's succeeded by his grandson, George III. The public has high hopes.

• 26:08Speaker 01

  Though British monarchs only reign with the consent of Parliament, they have the power to appoint governments. Young, energetic George is seen as a vehicle for change, a man who could re-energize the nation's leadership.

• 26:24Speaker 01

  On the morning of the new king's coronation, Franklin stands amidst the London masses. It's a novel experience for someone from the colonies. Not even George Whitfield in Philadelphia can pull an audience like this. At length, King George and his wife, Queen Charlotte, make their way from St. James's Palace to Westminster Abbey. They are carried the whole way on sedan chairs. A vast train of invited people walks behind them. Franklin scans the procession. He's looking for a special person. His adult son, William, who is now a law student in London. Benjamin Franklin, child of a Boston craftsman,

• 27:09Speaker 01

  has landed his family at the epicenter of imperial power. It's a truly astonishing rise.

• 27:19Speaker 06

  Franklin embodies the kind of social mobility and geographic mobility that is quite common for free people in Britain's Western colonies and entirely uncommon in home islands Britain. By the 1760s, he's become the most famous colonial on the face of the globe. He's feted as an American original all over London and France. He is the person whom Parliament calls in to be their America Whisperer. What the hell is going on over there? The person you ask is Franklin. And whether someone who was born as he was could have had that steep an ascent anywhere else in the world?

• 28:04Speaker 06

  I think the answer is no.

• 28:07Speaker 01

  Franklin is delighted with his new king. Most Americans are.

• 28:12Speaker 04

  George III, when he came to power, he was seen as a great breath of fresh air. He wanted to introduce a new type of politics. He felt that governments had become incredibly corrupted, the same people had been in power for ages. And what is interesting is that the caricatures and the press were much less deferential to the monarchy in Britain than the Americans. And they reprinted some of this stuff, but you really don't get criticism of the king in America until 1774.

• 28:50Speaker 01

  Franklin shares King George's misgivings about the men in government. He's troubled by conversations with certain elder statesmen. One informs Franklin that London calls the shots in the colonies. Their little legislatures, their ideas about self-government, that's all irrelevant. Franklin is stunned, as he often is when talking to Londoners about America.

• 29:15Speaker 04

  Britain in the 1750s and 60s was becoming much more nationalistic and jingoistic. Franklin complained that the ordinary people in Britain knew nothing about America. And he also said that every Englishman feels themselves to be governor of America.

• 29:34Speaker 01

  Britain's ideas about itself and its empire are crucial to our story.

• 29:40Speaker 04

  We shouldn't just be looking at changes in America, but also in Britain. That helped make a clash almost inevitable. One is the rise of Britain as what some people have called a fiscal-military state. British finances were transformed in the 18th century by the creation of the Bank of England. And what that allowed Britain to do was to fight wars and to keep a very expensive navy. And it was the navy that really enabled the British to have a far-flung empire.

• 30:17Speaker 01

  But superpower status doesn't come cheap. Many Britons are alarmed by the spiraling costs, particularly when the empire is seeing little return on its investments.

• 30:29Speaker 04

  Britain was maintaining this empire at great expense, but it wasn't paying for the cost of its administration. The customs officers in America didn't actually obtain enough revenue even to cover their salaries.

• 30:47Speaker 01

  In seventeen sixty-three, the French and Indian War officially comes to an end. Britain is victorious. But defeating France has only piled on the debt. The people living in Great Britain are already among the most taxed in the world. Attempts to tax them further lead to rioting. In eighteenth-century Britain, the monarch plays an important role in politics, but it's up to Parliament to pass laws. Colonists aren't represented in Parliament. That's for the people of Great Britain only. Yet Parliament now decides it's time for the colonies to cough up. A tax on sugar is introduced.

• 31:31Speaker 01

  Then, the Stamp Act, a duty on various paper goods. When news of the Stamp Act reaches America in the spring of seventeen sixty-five, it triggers outrage. The colonies can't stomach being taxed by a body that they have no stake in. They feel their rights as subjects of the British Crown are being violated. In Massachusetts, the anger is red hot.

• 32:04John Hopkins?

  Hi, listeners. If you're enjoying this taster episode, then search Founding Fathers: An American Dream in your podcast app and hit follow. You can listen to more episodes of Founding Fathers straight after this one.

• 32:19Speaker 01

  We're back in Franklin's hometown of Boston. A forty-three-year-old man stomps his way, heavy-footed, down the street. He's headed for an elm tree that everybody in town is talking about. Rooted at the corner of Essex Street and Orange Street, the tree was planted by settlers more than a century earlier, a living symbol of the colonies' past and present.

• 32:45Speaker 01

  The man is short, stocky. You might say he has a look of an English bulldog about him. He's scruffy, too. His jacket ill-fitting, as though he's wearing someone else's by mistake. This is Samuel Adams, a prominent player in Boston politics. Like Benjamin Franklin, he's also a newspaper man. In the pages of the Boston Gazette, he insists that American colonists have the same rights as all British subjects. Sixteen years younger than Franklin, Adams is one of many of his generation marked by the Great Awakening.

• 33:28Speaker 01

  He's powered by an evangelical passion. To him, Parliament's taxes are not only unjust, they are ungodly.

• 33:39Speaker 06

  I think Samuel Adams had a kind of almost oracular voice, and he was hot-headed. He's impious, he's impolitic, he calls them as he sees them with a plain, clear voice like a bell.

• 33:57Speaker 01

  Today, on an August afternoon 1765, he gazes up into the branches of the elm tree. Directly above him, a figure dangles, limply in the sunlight. It's not a dead body, but a dummy, an effigy of the government official responsible for overseeing the Stamp Act in Massachusetts. It's been placed there by activists connected to Adams. One of them is Ebenezer MacIntosh. Locally, MacIntosh is known as a bullish tough guy, often seen leading his South End gang in fights versus the rival North End gang.

• 34:39Speaker 01

  Dust-ups in Boston are no rare thing. As the sun fades, the effigy is cut down from the tree, but not laid to rest. Ebenezer MacIntosh arrives. A huge crowd gathers around him. The effigy is held aloft and paraded through the streets. They behead it, then burn it.

• 35:08Speaker 01

  When they reach the official's house, windows are smashed. Some of the crowd break in and raid the wine cellar.

• 35:21Speaker 01

  The message is pure Boston, a bold, direct statement of resentment and rage.

• 35:28Speaker 07

  It's not the wealthiest people who are showing up in this mob. There are a lot of sailors, artisans, shipbuilders. It is the working people of Boston who have been worked up by Sam Adams's publications against the stamp tax and against any colonist who has spoken out in favor of the stamp tax.

• 35:50Speaker 01

  It's unclear whether or not Samuel Adams has direct involvement in planning this protest. But in the Boston Gazette, he later refers to those involved as "the Sons of Liberty."

• 36:07Speaker 01

  It's August 26, 1765, evening in Boston. Daylight slinks away.

• 36:17Speaker 01

  In his elegant three-story mansion, the lieutenant governor of Massachusetts is settling down to dinner. At 53, Thomas Hutchison occupies a rarefied position in his hometown. Descended from early settlers, he's part of the Massachusetts elite. Harvard-educated, well-connected, and very wealthy. In Boston, he's a go-to man of influence.

• 36:47Speaker 01

  As it happens, his brother-in-law is the government official who was recently targeted by Ebenezer McIntosh. Rumor is the man only had his job because of Hutchison. To many in Boston, it seems that far too much power is held by far too few people.

• 37:08Speaker 01

  Life for Hutchison is as indulgent as it gets in dour New England. There are no theaters there. The Puritanical establishment banned those years ago. But an Anglo-American's home is his castle, and Hutchison's overflows with oil paintings, exquisite furniture, and fine fabrics.

• 37:31Speaker 01

  Tonight, he takes a seat at his highly polished dining table. Surrounding him are several of his children.

• 37:40Speaker 01

  From his kitchens, servants deliver trays of rich delicacies. Bottles of delicious French wine are brought from the cellar. But before Hutchinson can fill his belly, a servant hurries in. There's an urgent message. A mob is on its way. Led by the pugnacious Ebenezer MacIntosh.

• 38:04Speaker 01

  Hutchinson needs no further explanation. These last few weeks have unleashed a popular fury.

• 38:12Speaker 01

  From his perspective, it's an outbreak of mass insanity. A hive-minded carnival of violence fueled by overheated rhetoric and deranged conspiracy theories.

• 38:25Speaker 01

  Hutchinson orders his children to get out of the house. Anywhere will do, just as long as it's away from the advancing mob. The house must be secured. Hutchinson tears around the place. Doors are locked, windows shut fast.

• 38:42Speaker 01

  He flees for the safety of a neighbor's house.

• 38:47Speaker 01

  Soon, thousands of Bostonians descend, all intent on popular justice. In a chorus of smashing glass and splintering wood, MacIntosh's followers break in.

• 39:01Speaker 01

  Looting and destruction ensues. The antique furniture is tossed into the street and set alight. Wooden paneling is stripped out. Walls are knocked through. Everything that's not nailed down is either ruined or stolen. Even the servants' clothes are pilfered.

• 39:24Speaker 01

  By sunrise, the rioters have made their exit. Hutchinson stands in front of the rubble. It is, he says, "the rage of devils that has come to Boston."

• 39:40Speaker 01

  The trashing of Hutchinson's house is mimicked throughout the colonies. Tax collectors everywhere are in a state of panic. Many quit their posts in the hope that it'll save them from the mob.

• 39:54Speaker 01

  To harness and control this energy, the colony's political elites attempt to make common cause. Leaders from nine colonies decide to gather in New York City. At the meeting, delegates draw up a Declaration of Rights and grievances. It adds an official air to the events. There's no doubt, this is not just the belly aching of a few amped-up Bostonians.

• 40:23Speaker 01

  Across the ocean, Benjamin Franklin grows agitated.

• 40:28Speaker 04

  Initially, he's somewhat detached from the real view of Americans. He opposed the Stamp Act. But once he thought it was going to go into effect anyway, he arranged for one of his friends to become the stamp collector in Pennsylvania. He was very calculating, but I think it is also a testimony to his fondness for Britain.

• 40:52Speaker 01

  In Parliament, a place almost as rowdy as Boston, there's more than a little sympathy for the colonies. In January 1766, Franklin buys a pamphlet. He turns his pages eagerly. Inside is the text of a speech just delivered by William Pitt, a leading figure in the Whig Party that pushes the interests of Parliament over those of the monarch. Through his round, framed glasses, Franklin reads Pitt's latest speech, "A Rebuke of the Stamp Act." After a few weeks, Franklin echoes the sentiment when he's called to Parliament himself.

• 41:33Speaker 01

  It's the closest Americans will ever get to their demand of representation in this body that seeks to tax them.

• 41:43Speaker 01

  Before a committee of MPs, Franklin puts on a show. Over four hours, he fields 174 questions. Each answer presses the colony's case with wit, knowledge, and sound logic. He's asked whether soldiers should be sent to quell the growing rebellion. The military, patrolling American streets? Franklin rolls his eyes at that one. "They will not find a rebellion," he says, "but they may indeed make one."

• 42:16Speaker 01

  A few weeks after Franklin's testimony, the Stamp Act is repealed. The colonies rejoice. In New York, the local government commissions the grand equestrian statue of George III, an expression of loyalty to His Majesty. But a second statue is also commissioned. This one is of William Pitt, the parliamentarian who led British criticism of the new taxes. It will stand on Wall Street, less than half a mile from the statue of George.

• 42:51Speaker 01

  It's a telling expression of American sentiments.

• 42:56Speaker 01

  "God save the King and 'Don't tread on me'" in two chunks of gilded lead.

• 43:07Speaker 01

  But the British haven't learned their lesson. Just a year later, a wave of new taxes are introduced by Charles Townsend, Chancellor of the Exchequer in a new government. What began as an effort to balance the books is now a point of principle.

• 43:25Speaker 04

  Only Pitt really denied the right of Britain to tax America. The others argued you have the right to tax America, but it's not expedient to do so. The government was determined to assert a token authority. The so-called Townsend duties were import duties to America. They could easily have just been levied in Britain. There's almost no need to do it, so it's very symbolic.

• 43:54Speaker 01

  Boston rises again. In the Boston Gazette, Samuel Adams hits out against the British government. To protest the import duties, boycotts of British goods begin. Many in Boston refuse to buy or sell any materials shipped in from the mother country. This includes British cloth. The only alternative is to buy American. Difficult when the colonies are virtually untouched by the Industrial Revolution. But America's women have the solution.

• 44:29Speaker 01

  Professor Carol Birkin is the author of Revolutionary Mothers.

• 44:34Speaker 06

  Gender rules were that women were in charge of the dairy, the garden, the household, and turning raw materials into usable manufactured goods. So now they set up spinning wheels and they spin cloth. And they call themselves the Daughters of Liberty. That's a political identity. People often ask me what were the most radical things in the American Revolution? And I say, well, one of them was the politicization of women. It happened virtually overnight.

• 45:15Speaker 01

  Of course, for the hundreds of thousands of enslaved women in the colonies, their lives remain unaffected. But free women now find themselves at the center of public life.

• 45:28Speaker 07

  Suddenly, the newspapers have to address women and say, no, no, no, we were wrong about saying you don't have political opinions. And we value your political opinions, and we need you to produce more cloth. And women start to then express themselves more openly. And some of them start to write in the newspapers to rally other women to this cause of supporting the boycott.

• 45:51Speaker 01

  It's not only city folk who are politically active. Most Americans live in rural communities, and opposition to Parliament's taxes is widespread there, too.

• 46:04Speaker 01

  Jim Philbrick is a direct descendant of David Howe, whose story we'll follow in later episodes. In 1766, David is only 10 years old and living in rural Massachusetts. But eventually, he'll take up arms against the British Empire.

• 46:20Speaker 02

  David was born and raised on a farm in Methuen, Massachusetts. His father was born there, from what I could tell, and they had lived there for several generations. That whole part of the family is from New England, going back into the 1600s with some of the first groups that came over.

• 46:42Speaker 02

  David and I both descend from Elizabeth Jackson Howe, who is hanged as one of the witches in Salem in June of 1692. It was rural, it was hilly, hardwood forests with open meadows and lots of running streams and water. Very ideal place to set up a homestead. It would take a day to get to Boston from where they were living. Parliament was across the ocean, and they started to get a little unhappy with some of the things that were being asked of them to send this money. For what reason, I don't understand. You're telling us to do these things. And I could definitely see where the king started to seem much further away.

• 47:28Speaker 01

  In the fields and farmlands, to the streets and the shipyards, anger is rising. Protests continue, and colonists dig in, as does the British government. A thousand soldiers are sent to Boston.

• 47:46Speaker 07

  Before the Seven Years' War, there were almost no British troops in North America. So for British troops to be sent into an American seaport city, Boston, in large numbers to occupy the city and essentially to enforce the laws of Parliament in the most militant, radical, resisting city in the colonies, it's a major escalation.

• 48:18Speaker 01

  On October the first, seventeen sixty-eight, the first of the soldiers' stream off British ships. From his family home near the docks, Samuel Adams is able to see the new arrivals at close quarters. They are far from inconspicuous. Every one of them is decked out in a bright red coat. If there's any intention of blending into the background, it's not going to happen.

• 48:48Speaker 01

  Inexplicably, no proper arrangements have been made for housing the redcoats in Boston. Soldiers are forced to cram themselves into government buildings, attempting to sleep in gaps between the furniture. They even spill onto Boston Common. When Adams takes a walk in the center of town, there they are, an entire regiment camping out in the autumn chill. Eventually, someone has the bright idea of commandeering Manufactory House. It's a large vacant building, adequate for billeting soldiers. But Adams and his gang are one step ahead.

• 49:32Speaker 01

  When the local sheriff arrives, he discovers a place full of people. The doors are triple-bolted, the windows barred and boarded.

• 49:43Speaker 01

  Boston's message is clear: the soldiers are not getting in.

• 49:51Speaker 01

  In the early afternoon of October the twentieth, the sheriff returns with his deputy, and a plan.

• 50:00Speaker 01

  He's been tipped off that some residents are sneaking in and out of Manufactory House via a small basement window. It's shut tight right now, so he waits.

• 50:13Speaker 01

  Eventually, the window opens. A young man climbs through it. The sheriff hurries over. As the young man goes to close the window behind him, the sheriff jams his fingers beneath the sash. The two wrestle over the frame. At sixty-five, the sheriff would be forgiven for thinking he's too old for this nonsense. Instead, he draws a sword. Sensibly enough, the young man flees.

• 50:44Speaker 01

  The sheriff pries the window open. He and his deputy clamber inside Manufactory House. In the basement, they encounter another resident. A fight breaks out.

• 50:58Speaker 01

  What happens next is contested. By one account, the sheriff thrusts and parries like Errol Flynn. According to another, the sheriff and his deputy are overpowered and briefly taken hostage. Either way, the sheriff soon emerges in one piece, but the building is still full. Time for a different tactic. Soldiers now gather and surround the building. Nobody and nothing is to enter. The occupants will be starved out. But this new plan proves no more effective than the last one.

• 51:35Speaker 01

  Standing outside the building, townspeople literally chance their arm and fling loaves of bread at those leaning out of windows on the upper floors. Chairs go up every time a loaf is cooked.

• 51:50Speaker 01

  The redcoats stand still as mannequins, powerless to intervene.

• 51:56Speaker 01

  When the Massachusetts governor hears of this, he decides to end the circus. The soldiers give up on Manufactory House. Alternative accommodation is eventually found.

• 52:09Speaker 01

  With no blood spilled, ordinary Bostonians have defeated the world's most powerful military.

• 52:20Speaker 01

  Samuel Adams writes a report of the drama. These days, not much of importance happens in Boston without it being captured by his pen. At Purchase Street, he works late into the night, cocooned in the soft glow of candlelight, he writes and writes. The Protestant work ethic never dims.

• 52:44Speaker 01

  With the arrival of the redcoats, Adams publishes a torrent of critical pieces. Each is written under an assumed name. Tonight, as his wife hears the scratching of his pen on the page, he's at work on a new venture. This one is called "The Journal of Occurrences."

• 53:03Speaker 01

  It details the most sickening, hateful abuses committed by the British against the innocence of Boston. Much of the content is exaggerated or simply made up. The redcoats are accused of every sin imaginable. According to Adams's account, sadism comes as naturally to them as breathing. But accuracy isn't the point. This is pure propaganda.

• 53:30Speaker 01

  Adams intends only to underscore the outrage of placing British soldiers on American streets. His words spread like lightning through the colonies.

• 53:41Speaker 05

  The revolutionaries were able to mobilize support because they produced all this printed material. And it was totally over the top. It would levy the most extreme accusations against the British government, but it moved very quickly. It also helps to explain how a small series of protests became a national revolution. And one of the things we see is that the northern colonies joined the movement more quickly.

• 54:12Speaker 05

  The southern colonies joined more slowly. One of the reasons is there are fewer printing presses. So the news didn't circulate as quickly. But these pamphlets were also read aloud. So people didn't just read them, they heard them.

• 54:29Speaker 01

  Some of Boston's tales travel all the way to London. Benjamin Franklin can barely believe how things have developed in just the last five years. To many Americans, Franklin seems like the colony's best hope of making the British see sense. Already an agent for Pennsylvania, in 1768, Georgia recruits him to represent them in London too. New Jersey and Massachusetts follow soon after.

• 55:00Speaker 01

  Franklin himself, however, is unsure of where things are heading.

• 55:06Speaker 01

  In early 1769, he confides to a friend that "Things daily wear a worse aspect, and tend more to a breach and final separation."

• 55:21Speaker 01

  Meanwhile, with his pen, Samuel Adams keeps alive the spirit and the language of protest. The word "patriot" becomes loaded. Many use it now to describe those who pick a fight with Parliament, not those who celebrate the empire. But Boston is a city where individual thought is prized. When it comes to relations with Britain, there's plenty of disagreement. Not everyone, for instance, aligns with the boycott of British goods.

• 55:55Speaker 05

  Ironically, because they were patriotic. They were British subjects. They felt an attachment to the king. Some of them had been born in the British Isles, or their parents had been. They felt a strong connection there. They were worried. They knew that the British Empire had done a lot for them. The British Empire was the root of the economy. So that is the political argument. That is the economic argument. All these benefits they'd gotten from the British Empire, why would you give any of that up?

• 56:25Speaker 01

  Yet, the longer the British redcoats roam the streets of Boston, the less patience there is with the boycott holdouts.

• 56:34Speaker 01

  In early 1770, the threat of violence feels ever-present. Protests form outside the homes of local merchants who continue to import British goods. Windows are smashed, walls caked in manure.

• 56:55Speaker 01

  On February the 22nd, a group of boys and young men arrive outside a merchant's shop. There's a hundred of them, maybe more. They erect a sign. It simply says, "Importment." An indignant neighbor named Ebenezer Richardson attempts to knock the pole to the ground. He drives a horse and cart straight at it.

• 57:20Speaker 01

  But it won't budge. The crowd turns. They harass Richardson, who runs to the safety of his house. Insults are hurled, then sticks and stones. The windows of Richardson's house are smashed. Through a shattered pane of glass, Richardson pokes the barrel of a gun. He fires off a shot.

• 57:49Speaker 01

  And in doing so, it's Christopher Sider, an 11-year-old boy.

• 58:01Speaker 01

  A protest over unfair taxation has spiraled to this: the death of a child on the streets he called home.

• 58:11Speaker 01

  But there are no British soldiers involved in this tragedy. This is American versus American, the first shot of a civil war that will become a global conflict. And the first casualty of a revolution that, even now, almost nobody can see coming.

• 58:45Speaker 01

  Next time on Founding Fathers: An American Dream, Boston is rocked, unrest grows. An exchange of insults snowballs into a bloody clash between locals and redcoats. A young lawyer named John Adams steps up to do the least popular job in the city: defending British soldiers accused of perpetrating a massacre.

• 59:10Speaker 01

  As Parliament attempts to reassert its authority, a dispute over tea imports results in one of history's most memorable acts of defiance. And as colonists gather in their first-ever congress, we meet a tall, composed war veteran from Virginia, who will go on to become, quite possibly, the most famous founding father of them all. That's next time.

• 59:43John Hopkins?

  Thanks for listening. To hear more episodes of Founding Fathers: An American Dream right now, find the show in your podcast app and hit follow, or listen at noiser.com.