Pod Insights The Rest Is History 684. Franklin: Revenge of the American Genius (Part 2) About this episode Was Benjamin Franklin really an American? What was his childhood like? How was he finally converted to the American Revolutionary cause? And, what role did he play in setting the struggle in motion?
Join Tom and Dominic as they discuss the life of the most unique of the American founding fathers: Benjamin Franklin.
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Transcript 12,863 words · 8 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Tom Holland? This episode is brought to you by the Lloyds 5K House Deposit. And this is something that was last seen in 1996.
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0:49 Tom Holland? 1996 average first time buyer deposits are based on ONS data. Subject to status, your home may be repossessed if you don't keep up repayments and conditions apply.
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3:18 Dominic Sandbrook? A lion's whelp was put on board a Guinea ship bound to America as a present to a friend in that country. It was tame and harmless as a kitten and therefore not confined, but suffered to walk about the ship at pleasure. A stately, full-grown English mastiff, belonging to the captain, despoising the weakness of the young lion, frequently took its food by farce and often turned it out of its lodging box when he had a mine to repose there in himself. The young lion nevertheless grew daily in sores and strength. And the voyage being long, he became at last a more equal match for the mastiff, who,
4:00 Dominic Sandbrook? continuing his insults, received a stunning blow from the lion's paw that fetched his skin over his ears and deterred him from any future contest with such growing strength, regretting that he had not rather secured its friendship than provoked its enmity.
4:24 Dominic Sandbrook? So that was a chilling parable and it was first published in the General Advertiser on the 2nd of January 1770, two months before the event that Americans call the Boston Massacre, and that's the moment when British troops who were being attacked by a hostile mob fired on the crowd and killed no fewer than five Americans. And this so-called massacre was a crucial episode in the process that would see the 13 rebel colonies of North America secede from the mother country, Britain. They won a war that lasted eight years and with the aid of the French, they established
5:07 Dominic Sandbrook? themselves as the United States of America as an independent and sovereign republic. And this summer marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and Tom, we're marking it by exploring the lives of four of the founding fathers, as they would have called themselves. So in our first episode, we talked about George Washington, the most celebrated of the founding fathers, unquestionably the one with the worst teeth, but he did not sign the Declaration of Independence. Now today, we are with the first of the two signatories that we're talking about in this series, and this is the man who wrote that parable about the Mastiff and the Lion Cub, and that is a man called Benjamin Franklin.
5:51 Tom Holland? Correct, and I think the meaning of that parable is very clear. The Mastiff, the pedigree dog, is Britain and the Lion Cub is America. And Franklin is basically warning the British, don't push us Americans around, assuming that we are always going to be as puny as we currently are, because we are going to grow up and the time may come when we will end up in a position to push you around. A chilling and, as it has proven, prophetic message for the British. And Franklin was 64 when he wrote that parable.
6:33 Tom Holland? But he would live another two decades after writing it and he would spend those 20 years doing everything that he could to make that prophecy come true. So he would end up a huge influence on the course of the war. It is Franklin who more than anyone else serves to bring the French in on the side of the Americans with kind of massive consequences. But he's also a huge, huge influence on the character of this infant American republic. And he is the only man who signs all four of the kind of the foundational documents of the infant United States. So as we've just heard, he signs the Declaration of Independence.
7:19 Tom Holland? But he also signs the treaty with France that brings the French in on the side of the Americans, the news of which is greeted by George Washington with such excitement, enthusiasm, that he drops his dignity and deigns to play a game of cricket. He also signs the peace treaty with Britain that ends the war and he signs the Constitution. So four kind of massive, massive documents in the history of the United States.
7:46 Dominic Sandbrook? So in a future episode, we'll be talking about Hamilton and whether he'd serve his place on the $10 bill. But Franklin is on the $100 bill and do you think he deserves that place?
7:57 Tom Holland? I think he completely does. I'm going to lay my cards on the table. I think Franklin is an incredibly impressive man. But he's also, I think, a very appealing man. Most revolutionaries I tend not to find very appealing because they're very, they incline towards the dogmatic, I think. But Franklin is a very, very jovial presence. He's a pleasure to have on this series, I think. And he is, he's kind of expressive of, I think, the most kind of appealing aspect of American exceptionalism. So he, you know, everyone can See him, he's balding, he's got his shoulder length hair, slightly kind of jowly
8:38 Tom Holland? face, he has this kind of expression of mingled amiability and resolve. And I think it's no less authentic for being very, very carefully curated. He is the absolute image of this kind of American patriot sage. And people, not just in America, but across Europe, as we will see, absolutely love him for it. So he is, in the 18th century, by miles, the most famous American. And it's a key part of the diplomatic weight that he brings to the war effort.
9:11 Dominic Sandbrook? You say American. Would Franklin have called himself an American? That's the interesting question, for much of his life.
9:16 Tom Holland? Yes. And by the end, he would have called himself exclusively American, I think. But you are right to put your finger on this. Of all the founding fathers, he is the one who is also the most British.
9:29 Dominic Sandbrook? Hence the voice.
9:30 Tom Holland? I mean, everyone in the American colonies, their accents, I think, are more British than American at this point. But Franklin, he spends a third of his life in Britain. He was living in London when he wrote that parable. That parable was published in a London newspaper. And for the previous six decades, he had reckoned himself a completely proud, a completely loyal Englishman. So in the Seven Years' War, the war in which Washington served as a colonial commander and then got very resentful because he didn't get given the promotion that he thought was his due, Franklin had served Washington essentially as his kind of unofficial wagon master. But Franklin wasn't in a strop with the British about it. Franklin thought Britain was great, and goes to Britain as a result. And that
10:14 Tom Holland? parable, when he wrote it in 1770, he wasn't writing it as someone who thought that America should declare independence. He was writing it as a warning, as someone who admired Britain, and indeed was hugely loyal to George III, whose coronation he had attended. And Franklin described George III as the best of kings, the most amiable of kings. So there is a kind of fascinating question there. What is it that turns him? What is it that makes Makes him into a founding father. And I think the story of, let's call it Franklin's journey from loyalist to radical American patriot. It's also the story of how loyal British colonies come first to resent British rule
10:58 Tom Holland? and then to decide that the best course is to throw it off and declare independence. So he's a kind of very, very representative figure, I think.
11:07 Dominic Sandbrook? Well, not least because his lifespan is almost the entire 18th century, doesn't it? So born in 1706, dies in 1788. But I guess the interesting thing about him is that he is looking further back, isn't he? So he's an 18th century figure, but one who is so firmly rooted in the intellectual culture of the 17th century. So he's just, there's a sort of element of a flashback to Puritan New England and to Philadelphia as a Quaker, you know, William Penn and all of that sort of stuff. And Franklin, I guess, is a, to a lot of Americans at the point of his fame, he's a nostalgic relic. Isn't that one of the interesting things about him? As well as being very forward looking and scientific and all of that stuff.
11:45 Tom Holland? So he, he belongs to a much older generation than the other three founding fathers we're talking about in this series. So at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, he's 81 and he is the oldest delegate there by 15 years. So he's twice the age of the, the average member at this convention. So you're absolutely right. He provides his colleagues with a kind of living link to the very earliest days of America. And I think that is also part of the fascination that in Franklin, you see a guy who is a herald of the American Republic, but he is also a reminder of the kind of the, the English origins of this republic.
12:28 Tom Holland? So let's begin with the beginning with Franklin's parents. And his father, Josiah, had emigrated to Boston in 1683.
12:37 Tom Holland? And he arrives there and he becomes a tallow chandler, which basically means that you render animal fat into candles and soap. And it's very unpleasant, it's very foul smelling, it's very boring work, but it's very, very lucrative. So it's the kind of classic thing that an immigrant would do to kind of set himself up on his own feet. And Josiah had emigrated definitely because he felt that the business opportunities were better in America. But he'd also done it for that classic 17th century reason. He is a Puritan and he wants to practise his religion, as he put it, with freedom. He feels that in the wake of the Restoration of Charles II and the Restoration of Stuart Rule, England doesn't provide him with
13:18 Tom Holland? the opportunities for religious freedom that he knows that Boston and Massachusetts will do. And this is even truer of Franklin's mother, who's called Abaya, so it's a very Puritan name. And she was the child of Puritans who had emigrated in the 1630s. So that's the decade before, you know, before the English Civil War, in the reign of Charles I. So those links, you know, Franklin's grandparents really are taking you back to the kind of the beginnings of Puritan America.
13:49 Dominic Sandbrook? So he's surely growing up with stories, you know, stories about Charles I and the Puritans and shit, I don't know, they're talking about ship money or something all the time in the Franklin household, which again is a reminder of how the the origins of the American War of Independence lie in the politics of 17th century England, don't they?
14:07 Tom Holland? Yeah, he's growing up in a very, very devoutly Puritan household. Everyone is reading the Bible. So he observed later that in New England, everybody reads the Bible and is acquainted with scripture phrases. And the young Benjamin is a very bookish boy, as we'll see, and he comes to know the Bible backwards. So it's completely, it's there in his head. He is one of 11 siblings and he's the youngest boy. And he grows up in a very tiny cramped house in Boston on Milk Street. And today you can go and see the site and there's a kind of very ornate, impressive building with, you know, a classical bast and lettering and all kinds of things. This was not-
14:47 Tom Holland? At all the vibe of the house that he grew up in, because it burnt down, I think in kind of eighteen ten or something like that. But back then, it was dirty, it was dingy, there was tallow everywhere, there was soap everywhere, there were candles everywhere. One of Benjamin's elder brothers had drowned in a tub of suds when he was sixteen months old, before Benjamin had even been born. So it's a kind, you know, it's pretty dangerous, it's a kind of industrial environment. But because it's industrial, there is industry and there is hard work. And there is a commitment to improving yourself and bettering yourself and getting richer. And this also, with the Puritanism, is a massive part of Franklin's inheritance.
15:32 Dominic Sandbrook? Well, he loves this, doesn't he? The self-made man, the the American, the American story. I mean, Ronald Reagan at this point in heaven is wiping away tears of treacle.
15:41 Tom Holland? Yeah, and this is a crucial part of how Franklin comes to influence what will become the United States. Because the values that Franklin has absorbed from his parents, self-discipline, hard work, prudence, self-reliance. As you said, these enable Franklin to become the prototype of that great American archetype, the self-made man. Franklin is the first, the kind of defining example of this. So in seventeen fifty eight, he gave his personal recipe for getting rich, very famous phrase. The way to wealth is as plain as the way to market. It depends chiefly on two words, industry and frugality.
16:23 Tom Holland? So again, that word industry, I mean, the frugality, you know, it's kind of Warren Buffett, he'd be into that. I mean, probably most of the billionaires today in America wouldn't. But it's an important part, I think, of how billionaires and millionaires have liked to think of themselves as being kind of Benjamin Franklin-esque.
16:40 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, and he loves, I mean, one of the things about Benjamin Franklin that I perhaps find a tiny bit annoying is he loves a folksy maxim.
16:49 Tom Holland? Well, you know why you'd find it annoying. Well, because, I mean, I'll give you one of his folksy maxims. Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy. Wealthy and wise and we have a kind of ongoing debate, don't we? Whether we should start at eight thirty or nine thirty. And you're very much a nine thirty man and I'm very much an eight thirty man. So I've learnt the lessons of Franklin's folksy wisdom.
17:10 Dominic Sandbrook? But on the other hand, you go to bed at like eight thirty at night, don't you? Or something ridiculous.
17:14 Tom Holland? There are no gains without pains. Have you some what to do tomorrow? Do it today.
17:18 Dominic Sandbrook? I can absolutely see why you like this bloke. You think this bloke is absolutely brilliant.
17:22 Tom Holland? So again, he wrote these in seventeen fifty eight and by this point, I mean, he had kind of lived the life that he was preaching. Because he'd become the most successful printer in the whole of America, all thirteen colonies. And he's become the dominant figure in its newspaper industry. So again, he is the prototype of the kind of the American media mogul. And a bit like Logan Roy in Succession, he's done all this with very little formal education, no kind of startup funds. You know, his parents are not particularly wealthy. And in fact, Franklin's beginnings had been very kind of brutal. Because he'd been apprenticed as a printer to his older brother, Jack, in Boston.
18:01 Tom Holland? And he'd essentially found this as being akin to indentured servitude. His brother was a kind of very tough employer. And young Benjamin hated it so much that he ran away to Philadelphia. And he arrived in Philadelphia with only a Dutch dollar, which who knows what that is. It doesn't sound good. And he then spent it on three puffy rolls. And this is a very famous scene in his autobiography.
18:29 Dominic Sandbrook? Some sort of Dunkin' Donuts scenario.
18:31 Tom Holland? I guess so. And it's famous, I think, this scene because of the contrast. It's kind of almost a Kenziean. Between the kind of the raggedy starving boy who's fled his master in Boston, come to Philadelphia, he's starving. And the man that he has become by his early forties, one of the wealthiest businessmen in all the thirteen colonies.
18:54 Tom Holland? And Franklin writes up this story in his autobiography, which is, I guess, I mean, probably the first great classic of American literature. It's certainly an absolutely groundbreaking autobiography. There've been very few autobiographies before this. I hadn't properly realised this until I read up about it. So you had the autobiography of St Augustine is a kind of famous one. Rousseau will write his autobiography as well in the 18th century, but Franklin's autobiography precedes Rousseau's and it's much, much less serious than Augustine's or Rousseau's. So John Updike, who was a big fan, described it as an elastically insouciant work, full of cheerful contradictions and humorous twists,
19:35 Tom Holland? a fond look back upon an earlier self, giving an intensely ambitious young man the benefit of the older man's relaxation. And anyone who has read American fiction, let alone American autobiography, will kind of recognise that characteristic. So there's definitely something Mark Twain, I think.
19:53 Dominic Sandbrook? I like your comparison in the notes to Ronald Reagan. I mean, Ronald Reagan didn't write his own autobiography, but if he had done, maybe it would have been like Benjamin, as good as Benjamin Franklin's.
20:05 Tom Holland? But in his speeches, the tone is that of Franklin's autobiography, kind of folksy, self-mocking, but full of a kind of conviction that he takes very seriously. And that is, that is the tone that, of Franklin's autobiography. And you could, you know, it implements is, is pretty much everywhere, I think.
20:25 Dominic Sandbrook? Both had very religious mothers.
20:26 Tom Holland? It's the humour more than anything else.
20:28 Dominic Sandbrook? Temperament.
20:29 Tom Holland? He's sunny and he is funny. And, you know, Reagan was, enjoyed a joke. And I think that what Franklin gave to his heirs in America was the feeling that you could make a joke and it wouldn't make people think the less of you. And in fact, quite the opposite. And I think that's an important lesson for, for an infant country to learn.
20:49 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah. And indeed for history podcasts.
20:51 Tom Holland? Indeed, yes. So.
20:54 Tom Holland? Franklin was able to write his autobiography and to kind of write it in these very, very influential style because he had honed that style over several decades because as well as being America's leading publisher, he is also America's leading journalist in this period. So throughout his twenties and thirties, he was writing non-stop and he could turn his hand to absolutely any topic, you know, brilliant kind of quality for a journalist to have and write about, you know, these various topics in such an engaging and distinctive manner that his style became completely recognizable again across the 13 colonies. So again, by the time he is 40, if you read something that Franklin has written and you don't know
21:36 Tom Holland? that he'd written it, you would recognize it immediately. And that again is a kind of incredibly useful skill for someone who's going to become a propagandist for a revolution. People are familiar with his tone, with his kind of approach and his attitude. And basically, it consists of sugaring a kind of moralizing tone with wit, with satire, with parable. And that again, I think is a kind of very characteristic quality of American public life, moralizing but folksy. Yeah, very, very, very Reagan.
22:08 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, parables, little anecdotes and stories. And what Franklin combines, so the moralism is a serious part of it, isn't it? So if we just talk about the folksiness and the sugar, we miss something about Franklin, which is there is a, there is an absolutely serious moral core that I guess derives ultimately from the Puritans.
22:28 Tom Holland? Yeah. So this is, this is the link back to the kind of the 17th century. That childhood Puritanism, the emphasis that he had inherited from his parents on industry and frugality and diligence and one's calling and all of that, it is kind of religiously inspired. It is Puritan and it was famously highlighted in
22:50 Tom Holland? Early 20th century by kind of great, the great classic on this topic by a German writer called Max Weber, who wrote a book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. And Weber was fascinated by the question of how it was that Franklin was able to assume that the morality that he was preaching about the need for diligence, for frugality and so on, how is he able to assume that this was actually moral? And Weber's answer is, he answers in his autobiography with a quotation from the Bible, which his strict Puritan father drummed into him again and again in his youth. "See'st thou a man diligent in his business, he shall stand before kings." And that is a quote from the book of Proverbs.
23:34 Tom Holland? So it's a very, very Christian lesson, a Puritan lesson. But at the same time, what makes Franklin's moralizing about this so appealing to non-Puritan Americans in the 18th century, and in the 18th century, lots of Americans are starting to move on from the Puritanism, even in Massachusetts, is that there isn't actually any real overt Christianity in it at all. And there is a brilliant book on this, on the kind of occludedly Christian character of Franklin's folksiness and moralism and teachings by a guy called Thomas Kidd, Benjamin Franklin, The Religious Life of a Founding Father.
24:15 Tom Holland? And Kidd's argument essentially is that Franklin does remain tethered to the teachings that he's adopted as a child in this Puritan household. But he had wearied of the kind of the Puritan emphasis on doctrine and orthodoxy and devotion to the specifics of biblical teaching. He's not really into that. What he is, he's a much kind of broad brush guy. He wants emphasis on love, on charity, on service to all of mankind. So Thomas Kidd writes, Franklin was an experimenter at heart and he tinkered with a novel form of Christianity, one where virtually all beliefs become non-essential.
24:54 Tom Holland? And this is hugely popular because it enables Americans to retain their kind of gut Christian convictions without having to worry about the details of doctrine, or indeed even having to bother with going to church particularly.
25:08 Dominic Sandbrook? And doesn't Thomas Kidd have an excellent sign? That the heir to Benjamin, a true heir to Benjamin Franklin in this regard is actually Oprah Winfrey.
25:17 Tom Holland? Yes.
25:18 Dominic Sandbrook? Because Oprah Winfrey is all about some.
25:20 Tom Holland? Kindness.
25:20 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, kindness. Prince Harry would level this.
25:23 Tom Holland? Yes. Well, I, I mean, I think that it's a form of Christianity that is, it's the default mode of millions and millions of people in America and the West more generally. And Franklin is, as Kit says, a kind of tinkerer.
25:35 Dominic Sandbrook? Slightly come by our, but of course, at the time, perceived probably not as a slightly vague, woolly and touchy feely, but actually as a sign of skepticism and free thinking and very much of the, of the mood of the Enlightenment, I guess.
25:50 Tom Holland? Yeah. So this is the, the other kind of aspect of Franklin for which he becomes famous is that even as he is dispensing this kind of post-Puritan folksy morality, he is also able to present himself because he's not talking in overtly Christian terms as a kind of an emblematic figure of the Enlightenment, which in, over the course of his life in Europe and increasingly in America is kind of sweeping the top intellectuals of the age. So in 1757 Franklin crosses the Atlantic for what is going to turn out to be a five-year stay in Britain. Even before he leaves, he has already been taken very, very seriously by top European thinkers
26:32 Tom Holland? to a degree that no American had been taken seriously before in Europe. So in 1759, he goes to Scotland and he stays in Edinburgh, you know, the Athens of the North. This is the golden age of the Scottish Enlightenment. And he meets with David Hume, who is the greatest philosopher of his age, really. And Hume and Franklin get on tremendously well. They have a kind of great dinner party. They both enjoy life. They're both bon vivants. And after it, Hume writes to Franklin and he says, "America has sent us many good things, gold, silver, sugar, tobacco, indigo. But you are the first philosopher and indeed the first great man of letters for whom we are beholden to her."
27:12 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah. And I think that's true, isn't it? Franklin is the first. Genuinely international class intellectual that the North American colonists have produced. And this is not just because he's saying, you know, waste not, want not, or whatever he's writing in these entertaining parables, but it's also because he does something else that we're massive admirers of for the rest of his history. He's pushing back the frontiers of science.
27:37 Tom Holland? He is, but more specifically, he has conducted the single most resonant scientific experiment of the whole of the 18th century. So Richie Robinson, author of a brilliant recent book on the Enlightenment, describes this experiment as the great symbolic moment for the Enlightenment and for its project of freeing humanity from needless terrors. And this experiment had occurred in June 1752 in Philadelphia, when Franklin, who is helped by his only surviving son, a young man called William, had gone out into a thunderstorm with a kite. And he had flown this kite in the kind of the gusting of the winds.
28:22 Tom Holland? And this kite, he had attached a kind of sharp wire to its end. And this in turn, as it, when it went up into the sky, into the winds, had succeeded in drawing electric sparks from a cloud. And Franklin drew the conclusion from this, thereby the sameness of electrical matter with that of lightning was completely demonstrated.
28:44 Dominic Sandbrook? So this is simultaneously, well, depending on how you perceive it, it is a very forward thinking experiment. It is courageous. It's also criminally reckless. If a 17 year old boy on a British councillor's state did this, there'd be a two page story in the Daily Express about the debasement of intellect among the nation's youth or something, wouldn't there?
29:03 Tom Holland? Yeah, or the top egghead electrocute son or something.
29:07 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, exactly.
29:08 Tom Holland? Yeah, I mean, you say it's dangerous. So a year after Franklin did this experiment, a Russian tried to replicate it and electrocuted and killed. I mean, I shouldn't laugh, but it is exceedingly dangerous, but it has massive consequences. So first of all, it proves that all this stuff about Zeus sending lightning is that. Expression of the wrath of the gods or whatever, though this is nonsense. It is a, it is a physical phenomenon.
29:29 Dominic Sandbrook? Finally, that long running question has been solved. For people, this is a revelation to me. The people in the 17th century walking around saying, is Zeus really throwing thunderbolts? Surely not.
29:40 Tom Holland? Well, let's say that, that for as long as humans have been on the planet, there have been those who have feared that it is an, you know, an expression of the anger of the gods or whatever. I mean, not all of them have your sophisticated relationship to knowledge of physical sciences. I mean, that has to be, you have to accept that.
29:52 Dominic Sandbrook? No, they're fair. Yeah.
29:53 Tom Holland? But it also has very practical consequences. This isn't just about, you know, knowledge for knowledge's sake. So Franklin gets the people of Philadelphia to put lightning rods on the high buildings of the city.
30:03 Dominic Sandbrook? Okay, I've got a question.
30:04 Tom Holland? Yeah.
30:04 Dominic Sandbrook? To what end?
30:06 Tom Holland? Because the lightning rods will attract the lightning and run it down. And for some reason, the electricity will be dispersed and it won't set the churches on fire or whatever.
30:15 Dominic Sandbrook? Is that right? Is that really how it works?
30:17 Tom Holland? That is basically how it works. Um, if we have top lightning rod analysts, um, listening to this, perhaps they can expand. I knew you were going to ask me that question. I think I've kind of given the rough gist of it. Basically, lightning rods work. This is, this is all you need to keep in mind.
30:31 Dominic Sandbrook? They do something and that's brilliant and everyone loves it.
30:33 Tom Holland? Yeah. But also the thing that's very impressive about Franklin is that even though he's invented these lightning rods, he doesn't put a patent on it because he wants them to, he wants everybody to be able to use it.
30:42 Dominic Sandbrook? To do something. No one knows what it is, but they'll do something with these lightning rods.
30:46 Tom Holland? It will stop, um, lightning strikes on buildings, starting fires, which in a period where most buildings are made of wood, he is benefiting humanity.
30:54 Dominic Sandbrook? So Tom, you rave about the lightning rod, but I would say that plays a very much a secondary role, given that this is a man who's invented the handheld flipper. Is that not a more?
31:05 Tom Holland? Well, you say, man, he did it when he was a child, when he was a boy. I mean, I think that's incredibly impressive.
31:10 Dominic Sandbrook? So, so talk me through the flippers. I would say normally you wear a flipper on your foot. I mean, I don't wear flippers as a matter of course.
31:16 Tom Holland? He begins with flippers on his hands. It speeds him up and then he tries them on the feet as well. So he basically invents a flipper. He also invents weather forecasting, which I think is genuinely very impressive. And he'd done this by analyzing the movement of East Coast storms. And it was something about fronts or whatever. Again, don't quite know the details, but he invents weather forecasting. So. Put that in the ledger and famously he invents bifocal glasses, which he does quite late when in seventeen eighty four. So if you ever see Franklin in a kind of play or a film or something, he will always be wearing his bifocal spectacles. He also, just for good measure, he identifies maps and names the Gulf Stream.
31:54 Dominic Sandbrook? Brilliant. Love the Gulf Stream.
31:55 Tom Holland? You know, the dream of warm water that keeps Britain free of sub zero temperatures. And when he's in Britain, he goes for a walk on Clapham Common, which is, I should think, a mile and a half from where I'm sitting right now. And it's very stormy and there's a pond in Clapham Common and it's very rough. And he plays a tremendous trick to impress the people he's walking with. He takes out a little flask of oil and he pours oil on it. And I'm going to quote from my notes here, he thereby demonstrates the existence of what will subsequently be termed surface tension.
32:29 Dominic Sandbrook? And for those of us not as clued up as you are, like, how's that work exactly?
32:34 Tom Holland? Well, oil, Dominic, as you will know, spreads on water until it's only one molecule thick. And it therefore demonstrates how molecules interact with the surface of a liquid.
32:46 Dominic Sandbrook? Correct. I hope you'd say that and you did. So, because I didn't want to do a podcast for somebody who didn't know. So, um, anyway, you think he's brilliant. You think he's Leonardo da Vinci, basically.
32:56 Tom Holland? No, I don't. I don't think he's Leonardo because in a sense, this is all actually quite kind of second division stuff. But he is seen by his peers in the eighteenth century as basically being the Leonardo of the Enlightenment.
33:08 Dominic Sandbrook? You think the flipper of the lightning rod and the oil on troubled waters is second division.
33:12 Tom Holland? I think the lightning rod is impressive, but I think when it comes to kind of inventing and scientific breakthroughs and stuff, he's too folksy. It's all about flippers and all this stuff makes him famous and he's, you know, listen, I have never invented a lightning rod or anything. So who am I to criticize him? It's the kind of stuff that you would get in a sciences fun book aimed at eight year olds.
33:31 Dominic Sandbrook? Totally. It's so BBC Two. It's BBC Two, eight o'clock. It's nineteen eighty six. It's some wacky science programme presented by a comedian.
33:40 Tom Holland? Blue Peter.
33:41 Dominic Sandbrook? Exactly. For children.
33:42 Tom Holland? So that's the kind of level he's operating, but that's the kind of level, you know, that kind of appeals.
33:47 Dominic Sandbrook? You can turn your cardboard box into a hovercraft. That's Benjamin Franklin's vibe.
33:53 Tom Holland? And I think also that it is, it is a kind of very British vibe. This is the kind of stuff that everyone in Britain is doing at this time as well. You know, it's tinkering, kind of inventing steam engines and things like that. And so they, when Franklin comes to Britain, they welcome him as one of his own. And he's in Britain a lot. So between 1757 and 1775, he spends 16 years in all in the very centre of things, in a house just off what is now Trafalgar Square. So by Whitehall. And this is a house on Craven Street, and it's the only surviving house where Franklin stayed. You can go and see it. It's well worth a visit. And I think he's such a celebrity, particularly in Britain, but also in France, as we will
34:35 Tom Holland? see and further afield, that he comes to have a huge impact on how America is seen. And because he has this status as an inventor of flippers and lightning rods or whatever, it helps him to brand the new world, not as a kind of dumping ground for mad religious zealots, almost as the opposite, as a kind of laboratory of the future, you know, a testing ground for the Enlightenment. And even before he's arrived, people have been putting lightning rods up on some of the most famous buildings in London. So St Paul's has got one, St James's Palace. So he's, you know, he's much, much admired. He's also brilliant at portraying himself,
35:14 Tom Holland? and by extension, America, as a kind of antidote to flummery and hierarchy and pretension and snobbery. And this, again, is going to be a theme of America's relationship to the Old World, that America is a frontier society. People are somehow nobler, better, simpler there. And again, Franklin is the guy who really kind of brands this. He's the guy who initiates this whole kind of comparison. So even though he's not a Quaker, he dresses like one. People in Britain are very respectful of Quakers. They like that. So Franklin is very self-consciously kind of plugging into that image. He gets elected a member of the Royal Society, the great scientific community that Newton and everybody had belonged to. And he casts himself
35:58 Tom Holland? as a member of the Royal Society, belonging to the true aristocracy of the Enlightenment. Enlightenment, this is much better than being a duke or something. And again, he kind of weaponises, I think, in an overtly performative way, a kind of eccentricity. He becomes well known in London for his air baths, he calls them, which involves, he gets up in the morning, he opens all his windows, he sits on the side of his bed without any clothes at all. So the great rolls of his belly kind of flummouring over his knees. And he'll sit there for half an hour, whatever the season, whether it's summer or whether the snow is gusting in. And he sees this as being good for his health.
36:37 Dominic Sandbrook? Do you know who would really approve of this? Our new producer, Callum Hill. Because he was telling me last week that he go, he's gone all these foreign trips where he strips off naked and jumps into like pools and baths and stuff.
36:47 Tom Holland? Well.
36:47 Dominic Sandbrook? Turkey, Finland.
36:48 Tom Holland? I think he's not wrong, because if you think how long Franklin lived.
36:52 Dominic Sandbrook? Japan, he did it in Japan, he's written in the chat. Callum's like stripped off in countries all over the world.
36:57 Tom Holland? I mean, if Callum lives as long as Benjamin Franklin, he'll have done well.
37:00 Dominic Sandbrook? Also, similar, Callum always wears flippers on his hands.
37:04 Tom Holland? All the time. It's an eccentricity, isn't it? Now, Dominic, it has to be said that although there are lots of people in Britain who love all this, there are also lots of people who hate it. And they mistrust Franklin and his kind of Enlightenment posing as atheistical, as seditious, as threatening to the established order.
37:28 Dominic Sandbrook? Now we're talking.
37:28 Tom Holland? They too, a bit like you, despise his folksiness as kind of provincial and rustic and a bit cringe, I think.
37:37 Dominic Sandbrook? And Tom, among their number of critics and sceptics, is there the greatest man in history?
37:41 Tom Holland? Yes, Samuel Johnson, Dr Johnson, he views everything about Franklin as just the rankest hypocrisy. Now, it's interesting, they are kind of the lions of London at the same time. As far as we know, they never met, although James Boswell, who is Samuel Johnson's biographer, did meet Franklin and got on well with him. But I think the fact that Johnson and Franklin never met, it's a kind of known unknown. The reason that they don't meet, I suspect, is precisely because there's okay not to meet. They are very hostile to each other's principles.
38:16 Dominic Sandbrook? But also, is it not that basically they are, that the room isn't big enough for both of them? That they, you know, they're both got their ex-interestors, they're both incredibly clever, they're both the centre, the star of the show, the centre of attention. They're like, they're like two successful podcasters on rival goal hanger podcasts, you can't be brought into the same room.
38:35 Tom Holland? Except for the fact that there is a very specific point, ideological point of difference between them, and this is the topic of slavery. So Dr Johnson was, he was very hostile to Americans as a matter of principle. And he was particularly hostile to the claim that Americans had to be fonder of liberty than, than people in Britain. And he famously wrote of the, of the War of Independence, how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes? And Franklin had brought with him to London two slaves. One of these slaves had then absconded and Franklin had composed an advert that he wanted to put in the papers requesting the slaves return.
39:20 Tom Holland? He then thought better of it, I think, because he could, you know, he was nervous of being accused of hypocrisy. But it didn't stop him in 1770 from writing an anonymous defence of slavery that I think is probably the lowest point in his career. And 1770 is the year in which he also wrote that parable about the English Mastiff and the Lion Club. And it was prompted by growing tensions between the British government and the American colonies. And Franklin's own despair, the thought of where these tensions might lead. So he, he wrote, being born and bred in one of the countries and having lived long and made many agreeable connections in the other. I wish all prosperity to both.
40:06 Tom Holland? And his instinct throughout this period of growing tension between Britain and the, the American colonies is always to call for civility and good manners and essentially to behave as he had behaved on Clapham Common, to pour oil on troubled waters. But the problem for Franklin, he's by this point been in London for so long that he is essentially, he's kind of lost touch with the, the growing mood of radicalism on the other side of the Atlantic. And he's failed to realise how far he's lagging behind this mood of radicalism. And that means that. You know, he is going to have to wise up and the point is approaching essentially
40:48 Tom Holland? where he is going to have to decide where his loyalties lie. Do they lie with Britain? Or do they lie with the colonies back in America?
40:56 Dominic Sandbrook? So Franklin has an excruciating choice to make and he'll be making that choice after the break.
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42:34 Dominic Sandbrook? The bloody struggle will end in absolute slavery to America or ruined to Britain by the loss of her colonies. So welcome back to The Rest Is History. Top flipper enthusiast and defender of slavery, Benjamin Franklin, is still hoping that he can somehow break.
42:53 Dominic Sandbrook? The gap between Parliament in London and the militant separatists in New England. So it's December seventeen seventy two and he has been leaked, he's been given some letters. They've been written by the governor of Massachusetts, Thomas Hutchinson. So Tom, tell me about these letters.
43:13 Tom Holland? So in these letters, Hutchinson has been advising the British government on how best to cool the colonial unrest in America. And he writes and says, there must be an abridgement of what are called English liberties. And these are the liberties that the colonists in Massachusetts are asserting against the demands of the British government for, you know, taxes and other such similar goods. And Franklin's wheeze, when he's got these letters, he is going to now leak them in turn to the radicals in Boston. And his reason for doing this isn't to cause trouble for the British government, but the absolute opposite. He wants to demonstrate to the radicals that the British government is pursuing a
43:56 Tom Holland? hard line, not because the British despise the Americans as, you know, colonials, but because they are receiving terrible advice from people like Hutchinson. In other words, if they can just be educated, then the British will start behaving well and stop demanding taxes. But the whole thing, you know, this whole wheeze goes terribly wrong because, you know, this is an example of how Franklin doesn't recognise what's going on now in Boston. The radicals there completely ignore Franklin's direct request to them not to publicise Hutchinson's letters. They immediately publish them and make a massive, massive song and dance about them. And there's huge blowback in London about this.
44:37 Tom Holland? And Franklin ends up being summoned to appear before the Privy Council in this, in the tremendously named cockpit. And it's called that because it's a room in Whitehall where Henry VIII supposedly had staged cockfights. But Franklin goes there and he finds, you know, it's, it's more like bull baiting or something. Everyone has gathered there to take down the, the representative of the uppity colonials.
45:02 Tom Holland? And Franklin himself put. All the courtiers were invited as to an entertainment. Everyone there is keen to see him savaged. And he is savaged. Paul Franklin, he's there dressed in a blue Manchester velvet coat and he's described as standing conspicuously erect without the smallest movement of any part of his body. But for all that, he is absolutely torn to pieces. And he is produced not just for his role in having made Hutchinson's letters public, even though he hadn't wanted this to happen, but as a kind of uppity, treasonous colonial. And there is such fury. And he is the object of this kind of venomous fury, I think because the Boston Tea Party has just happened. So just the month before. And the mood in London
45:47 Tom Holland? against the Americans as a result is very angry, very, very embittered. And Franklin, because he's actually in the capital, because he is the most famous American, almost the kind of the representative American. And because after all, he had actually leaked the Hutchinson letters. I mean, it doesn't matter what his motives are, if you're in the British government. I mean, he is the guy who's let slip these secrets. You know, he provides the perfect scapegoat.
46:15 Dominic Sandbrook? Right. And just to remind, especially British listeners, the Boston Tea Party is when basically a load of Americans who are angry about the monopoly. It's a monopoly on tea, isn't there? And they're very cross about it. And they throw a load of tea into the harbour. Ecological vandalism.
46:30 Tom Holland? Yes. And they dress up as Native Americans.
46:32 Dominic Sandbrook? Terrible cultural appropriation. Shocking. It's a bad business, however you look at it.
46:37 Tom Holland? And Franklin agrees. This is the irony of the whole situation. So he had described the Boston Tea Party as an act of violent injustice on our part. But Franklin's experience in the cockpit will help him to make up his mind. This invidious choice he has, he's sympathetic both to Britain and to the colonists. But he sees his own experience at the cockpit as an indication of the fact that Britain is lurching into tyranny and repression, just as the radicals back in Boston are saying. In other words, Franklin's take is that he hasn't changed, it's Britain that has changed. He still lingers in London even after coming to this decision, desperately
47:22 Tom Holland? trying to work with those in the British elite who are sympathetic to American aspirations. But by 1775, he's had enough. He throws his hands up and he leaves Britain forever. On the 20th of March, he sets sail from Portsmouth on a packet ship bound for Pennsylvania. And typically, being Franklin while he's at sea, he busies himself by measuring the temperatures of the Gulf Stream three or four times a day, providing the scientific backing for his theory. And while he is doing that, in America, open hostilities are breaking out. So by the time Franklin lands in Philadelphia on the 5th of May, the shot heard round the
48:02 Tom Holland? world has been fired at Lexington Green. British redcoats and colonial militia are at war outside Boston. And so when Franklin lands in Philadelphia, to patriotic Americans, this is a tremendous moment. The world's most famous American has landed, it seems, in the nick of time to provide their cause with the kind of prestige and authority that it so desperately needs.
48:33 Dominic Sandbrook? Well, they're just about to open the Continental Congress, aren't they? So they've summoned all these delegates from the 13 rebel colonies. And the Continental Congress is going to end up being, what did I describe it as in the last episode, the political wing of the insurgency. And for Franklin to have turned up, a bloke who, you know, he's very famous across the world, he knows about Europe, doesn't he, and European affairs? And I guess also precisely because he hasn't been a militant until now, that makes him a great asset to their cause.
49:09 Tom Holland? Yes, absolutely. And so a reporter is sent down to the docks to interview Franklin. And he writes that Franklin thinks nothing else can save us from the most abject slavery and destruction. So Franklin has essentially kind of made his decision. And so it's not surprising that the moment he's back, he's chosen by the Pennsylvania Assembly to be one of their delegates to the Continental Congress. And because he is Benjamin Franklin, because everybody knows he's brilliant at organising things, he's, you know, a great guy for showing initiative, he gets appointed to a kind of insane number of committees. So he's, he's set to organising the, the infant American postal system. You, you did a documentary,
49:51 Tom Holland? didn't you, once for Radio Four about the postal system. So he's very like you. He loves the postal system.
49:56 Dominic Sandbrook? We're very similar.
49:58 Tom Holland? And it's not surprising because it's been estimated that over the course of his life, Franklin sent or received some 15,000 letters. So if you're doing that, you need a good functioning post office. And he will actually end up the first Postmaster General of the United States. He's also set to organising the military supplies to Washington. And remember, he'd done this already before in the Seven Years' War. And most importantly of all, he is co-opted to help draft one last appeal to George III. And this will become known as the Olive Branch Petition. So basically saying, yeah, come on, George, give us what we want and then we won't rebel. But actually, even while he's working on this, Franklin has already made up his mind. He thinks, you know, there's no option. The breach with
50:40 Tom Holland? Britain is irreparable. It's got to be war. And he knows that this is going to cost him because his son, William, the, the boy who had helped him with his flying kite experiment, he has become the governor of New Jersey on behalf of the British Crown. And he is a very committed loyalist. He's one of those, you know, many, many people in America who, who back what Parliament is doing. And William rides from New York to try and persuade his father to remain, you know, neutral. If you can't side with Britain, at least stay neutral. But Franklin is having none of it. And he tells William very flatly, I am now in favour of independence. And father and son have to accept that they are now the other's enemy. And the breach between them,
51:25 Tom Holland? as between Britain and America, the breach between Franklin and his son is going to prove irreparable. It's never healed. And Franklin wants to illustrate this for his friends in Britain. He wants them to know that he has made his mind up. And this is partly, I think, to counter the sense that the radicals in the Congress have that he is, you know, he's famously an Anglophile. So they're suspicious of him. They think that perhaps he's, you know, he's secretly a British agent. But it is also an attempt to sway those in the Congress who are nervous of declaring independence. He wants to kind of, you know, apply all his prestige and status to the cause of declaring independence. So on the 5th of July, which is two and a half weeks
52:08 Tom Holland? after Bunkers Hill in Boston, a very kind of bloody battle, the olive branch petition is formally adopted by Congress. So they still haven't given up. They still want to give, you know, the British one last chance. And Franklin had voted for it, but he wanted to indicate to everybody in America that he didn't really back it. So this is kind of a very recognisable political technique, isn't it? Politicians who are bound, say, by cabinet, collective responsibility will leak something-
52:37 Dominic Sandbrook? Tony Benn enters the chat.
52:39 Tom Holland? Yeah. So Franklin, he pulls this trick by writing a public letter to an old friend in London, who was a printer called William Strahan. So Franklin himself had been a printer. And Franklin addresses this friend of his with very icy formality. So he calls him Mr. Strahan. And Franklin wrote, "You are a member of Parliament, and one of that majority which has doomed my country to destruction. You have begun to burn our towns and murder our people. Look upon your hands. They are stained with the blood of your relations. You and I were long- Friends, you are now my enemy and I am yours, B Franklin. And it's a very famous letter and it's famous because rather than actually sending it to Strahan,
53:23 Tom Holland? Franklin instead circulated it among his fellow members of Congress as a way of stiffening their resolve.
53:29 Dominic Sandbrook? So it's just a PR exercise, he never actually sends it?
53:31 Tom Holland? Yeah, it's completely a PR exercise. And actually, he and Strahan remained great friends. And when in due course Franklin goes to France, Strahan sent him a lovely cheese.
53:39 Dominic Sandbrook? All right, the Declaration of Independence, that doesn't take place until the following year, 1776, hence the 250th anniversary this year. And Franklin is part of the committee charged with drafting it, but he actually leaves most of the writing to Thomas Jefferson, doesn't he?
53:53 Tom Holland? Yeah, that's partly because he's got a very bad attack of boils at this point. And bad attacks of boils.
53:59 Dominic Sandbrook? A feature.
54:00 Tom Holland? It's, well, it's not an aspect of the founding fathers that gets a lot of attention, I think, in America, but it will on our podcast. Franklin gets bad boils a lot. But I think it's also because he can recognise that Jefferson's prose is perhaps better suited to the kind of elevated tone that the Declaration of Independence needs than his own kind of folksy, folksy Christmas cracker maxims. But he does make one very famous edit to Jefferson's first draft. So Jefferson has written the phrase, "We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable", and Franklin crosses out the last three words and changes it to "We hold these truths to be self-evident".
54:45 Tom Holland? And I guess it's a kind of classic example of what had been Franklin's lifelong project as a moralist, which is to veil the assumptions that had derived from his Christian upbringing behind the pretence that they were somehow objective and derived from reason. And of course, you know, the notion that these rights are self-evident has been hugely influential and people still believe it to this day. So the Declaration of Independence is presented to Congress and it's adopted, the die is cast, the Rubicon is crossed and on the 2nd of August, the Declaration is formally
55:26 Tom Holland? signed by the members of the Congress, including Benjamin Franklin and its President John Hancock. He adds his signature to it, then declares solemnly, "There must be no pulling different ways. We must all hang together." And Franklin makes a famous reply, "Yes, we must indeed all hang together, or most assuredly, we shall all hang separately, because of course, they are now traitors in the eyes of the British Crown, and that will be their fate if they are captured."
55:56 Dominic Sandbrook? And we talked in the previous episode, didn't we, about the American strategy, about the fact that basically it's a little bit like Vietnam. They basically have to stay in the game, avoid a pitched battle, hope that the British, you know, struggling to subdue or to impose themselves on the vast canvas of the North American continent, will eventually lose heart and be sick of throwing money into this down the drain and will give up. But obviously, what the Americans want above all is they want some form of European intervention.
56:24 Tom Holland? I mean, you think you were implying in the previous episode, they didn't really have a prospect of winning unless they could get that backing. The might of the of the British Empire is so huge that they will lose without it.
56:35 Dominic Sandbrook? And so the obvious person to try to get this, I suppose, is the most famous living American, and that's Benjamin Franklin.
56:42 Tom Holland? Correct. And this is why, on the 26th of October, 1776, so three months after, you know, he and the other delegates have signed the Declaration of Independence, he boards this American sleep of war called the Reprisal, and he sets sail back across the Atlantic. But this time, he is heading not for Britain, but for France. And Franklin will end up spending nine years there as America's first ambassador to a foreign power. And in that time, back in his homeland, as we heard in our previous episode, you know, battles, or as you put it, skirmishes will rage, cities will burn, Franklin's own house in Philadelphia
57:26 Tom Holland? will be occupied and converted into a British billet.
57:32 Tom Holland? At the time and ever since Franklin's sojourn in France amid the flesh pots of Ancien Régime Paris has been cast as a kind of episode of of high comedy and as a dereliction of duty. So Woody Holton in Liberty is Sweet, he doesn't agree with that characterization. He caricatures it as one long flirtation with female aristocrats. And Franklin's friend in London, Edmund Burke, great philosopher and politician, and the man who had been perhaps his most formidable ally in the British establishment, he went so far as to condemn Franklin for a foul
58:14 Tom Holland? and dishonorable flight. But I think that is a mad judgment on Franklin, because to make a winter crossing, which is what Franklin was doing to get to France at the age of 70,
58:26 Tom Holland? you know, the conditions were so rough that Franklin said they almost demolished him across an ocean controlled by the Royal Navy. I mean, the fact that Britain rules the waves is part of what Franklin is going to France to try and an upend. I mean, this is not the action of a coward. Franklin is an incredibly brave and resolute man.
58:45 Dominic Sandbrook? But when he gets to France, he does rather enjoy the flirtation with female aristocrats, no?
58:51 Tom Holland? Yeah, of course he does. Of course he does. I mean, Franklin is a man who does not see enjoying yourself as as a sin. I mean, you know, to that extent, he has set his childhood periodism behind him. And, you know, as we've said, he's gone there because he's a celebrity. And so he can say, well, it's my patriotic duty to behave like a celebrity. He plays it up massively, and he has a complete genius for it, because he is, he understands the roles that the French public want him to play. He is familiar with the castes of thought in the Enlightenment. So this is the age of Rousseau, and Rousseau identifies virtue and liberty with the primitive
59:29 Tom Holland? beginnings of humanity. And so Franklin, whenever he goes to court, makes sure to wear a kind of frontiersman's fur cap, like kind of Davy Crockett or something.
59:42 Dominic Sandbrook? Oh, God almighty. Imagine that at the court of Louis the 16th or whatever.
59:47 Tom Holland? You know, they're all wearing their wigs, you know, their kind of powdered wigs. And Franklin is turning up with this, this fur cap. It's a massive fashion statement.
59:56 Dominic Sandbrook? And don't forget his flippers.
59:58 Tom Holland? Plunging into the fountains of Versailles. So that's that's kind of playing to fans of Rousseau. This is also the age of Voltaire, the kind of feline, witty, enlightened champion of reason. And Franklin, this is the man who has tamed lightning, who has redeemed humanity from the superstition of fear. And again, Franklin is the guy to cast himself and America as a kind of embodiment of a new enlightened future. So in 1778, he has two massively histrionic meetings with Voltaire. And the first occasion, Voltaire lays his hands on the head of Franklin's grandson, who has come with Franklin to France,
1:00:42 Tom Holland? and declares in English, "Good and liberté", and everybody huzzards and burst tears and it's absolute scenes. And then the second, they have a meeting at the Académie Royale and the two men embrace. And they are described by one observer as being like Solon embracing Sophocles, so the two great sages of ancient Greece. And again, everyone, not a dry eye in the house. So this plays tremendously well to the kind of the intellectual gallery, the gallery of the kind of ministers who will be deciding whether America is worth investing in. Now, at the same time, he is definitely flirting with female aristocrats and he is definitely enjoying it.
1:01:25 Tom Holland? I think in his sexual ethics, he remains a Puritan. As a young man, we haven't talked about his marriage up to now. You said that Martha Washington was the most boring woman in history. I think that Franklin's wife.
1:01:39 Dominic Sandbrook? What is it about American women?
1:01:42 Tom Holland? She was a very frugal.
1:01:43 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
1:01:44 Tom Holland? And incredibly boring widow called Deborah Reed.
1:01:48 Tom Holland? And Franklin had essentially only married her as a way of taming his sexual appetites. She's not a laugh and she's not a great romance. And the evidence for this is that he had not taken her with him to London. He'd refused to return to Philadelphia in 1774, even though by this point he'd decided that he was on the American side and she was dying. William, his son, kept saying, you've got to come back. He doesn't, he can't be bothered with her. And she actually died three months before he left England. So he's, he's really not interested in her. What Franklin is interested in, what he likes doing is to hang out with very posh, very pretty girls in salons. And it's kind of, it's half flirtation, it's half kind of playing the jovial father figure.
1:02:33 Tom Holland? And he'd done this in London and now he's in Paris, he does it again. And they all absolutely adore him. But this isn't just self indulgent, because it is also prompted by calculation. Because again, salons, like hanging out with Voltaire, is a way to raise his credit among the circles of those who matter. Franklin's mission in Paris is very, very simple. He has to skew military, financial backing from the French government for the cause of American independence. And this is actually a huge challenge, because France at the beginning of the war is not at war with Britain. They've cut two countries at peace. France had had a terrible bruising in the Seven Years' War, hugely in debt. And everyone in Paris assumes, well, the British are bound to win. You know, the Americans are rubbish.
1:03:17 Tom Holland? But gradually, the tide of war starts to turn.
1:03:21 Tom Holland? And Franklin, because he has made himself the toast of Versailles and of French public opinion, of Voltaire, of all these aristocrats, they all love him, as well as admire him. He is perfectly placed to press the advantage. And in due course, the French do enter the war. And when Franklin goes to sign the Treaty of Alliance, he does so wearing the blue velvet coat that he had worn at the cockpit when the British establishment had torn him to pieces. And he was asked why he had worn this coat. And he answered, to give it a little revenge. And revenge is what he gets. Because as we described in the previous episode, France's entry into the war does tip the balance.
1:04:04 Tom Holland? And when in 1783, the British finally agreed terms with their rebellious colonies, they agreed to recognise American independence, it is Franklin who has led the negotiations, and it is Franklin who signs what comes to be known as the Treaty of Paris. And this has been described by the great American historian Edmund Morgan as the greatest diplomatic victory the United States has ever achieved. I don't know whether you'd agree with that, but I mean, it was, you know, it an incredible achievement.
1:04:37 Dominic Sandbrook? Well, because it's essential to their independence. Of course, the great irony of this is that Franklin has been hanging out at Versailles and going to all these salons and enjoying the charms of the posh, pretty French ladies. By securing French agreement to that alliance, he has also signed the death warrant of the Ancien Régime and the French monarchy and Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. The irony.
1:04:58 Tom Holland? Yes, there is that consolation for British listeners to bear in mind.
1:05:02 Dominic Sandbrook? This will have disastrous consequences for the French, and that's the important thing.
1:05:06 Tom Holland? So that is Franklin's term in France. It's highly successful. And when he returns from France in 1785, it is to a hero's welcome. So he lands in Philadelphia and there are hussars and cannon fire and church bells and all of that. But he still has one last charge to meet, one last celebrated document to sign. And this, of course, is going to be the Constitution. So Franklin, by this point, he is 79 years old. He is a very tired man. He is ill. He can barely walk. But of course, by this point, it's his very age which makes him so valuable to the infant state.
1:05:47 Tom Holland? He serves them as a kind of living symbol of what America had been, has become and might yet be. And two years later, when a constitutional convention meets in Philadelphia to determine what form of government the newly independent American state should have, Franklin is, you know, he's in his 80s by now. He's not in any condition to do any of the heavy lifting, but his, his kind of very presence is a kind of a blessing, a kind of benediction. And I think above all, he embodies the spirit of kind of reaching after truth,
1:06:25 Tom Holland? which all his life he had believed was the surest way to, for, for, for people and indeed states to secure life and liberty and happiness. So his, his house is a short walk away from the State House where the delegates are deciding the, um, uh, the Constitution. And he has a lovely garden and this provides a refuge from all the heat and anger and turmoil of the convention. And it's a place where delegates can go to cool down, to sit beneath the mulberry tree in his garden and to hammer out compromises. And Franklin himself, you know, he makes occasional addresses to the convention, not many.
1:07:06 Tom Holland? But when he makes these addresses, what he has to say is the perfect embodiment of the kind of the fusion between Christian and Enlightenment thinking that I think so characterizes the American Revolution. So he appeals to reason, you know, that's the Enlightenment aspect, but also to the father of lights, as he called it, to illuminate our understanding. He's a big enthusiast for starting sessions with prayers, for instance. And when finally, on the 17th of September, 1787, the Constitution of the United States is finally endorsed, it is Franklin who gives the most resonant and memorable speech. He acknowledges that this constitution has imperfections, but he urges his fellow delegates
1:07:49 Tom Holland? to sign it anyway. I consent, sir, to this constitution because I expect no better and because I am not sure that it is not the best. And in my opinion, if there has to be a revolution, this is the spirit in which revolutions should be attempted. And I think it makes Franklin my, frankly, my.
1:08:13 Tom Holland? My favourite revolutionary. Who wouldn't prefer that kind of spirit of pragmatic compromise to the the white hot certainty of a Cromwell or a Robespierre or a Lenin?
1:08:26 Dominic Sandbrook? I think that's a bit harsh on Oliver Cromwell, frankly. I think Cromwell is more full of self doubt than Robespierre and Lenin.
1:08:32 Tom Holland? Yes, but I think Cromwell did things that Franklin would not have countenanced.
1:08:37 Dominic Sandbrook? He was more robust, there's no question.
1:08:39 Tom Holland? I like the lack of robustness in that phrase. I am not sure that it is not the best.
1:08:46 Dominic Sandbrook? Right, fine.
1:08:47 Tom Holland? I think more politicians should say that.
1:08:50 Tom Holland? I think we'd all be happier.
1:08:51 Dominic Sandbrook? I'll be very clear about this, Tom. I think that this is not the.
1:08:56 Tom Holland? I mean, you know, if you want to have, if you want to be pragmatic, if you want to have be a person of compromise, and I think compromise is always a good thing.
1:09:02 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
1:09:02 Tom Holland? You know, say it. But I think also the other great thing about Franklin and why I find him a kind of really admirable person is that he is always alert to the possibility that he might be wrong.
1:09:13 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes, very attractive quality.
1:09:15 Tom Holland? That you might need to change your mind. I mean, that is what had brought him from being a great enthusiast for the relationship with Britain to deciding that, no, you know, it's got to go. We need independence. And it's also what what brings him in February seventeen ninety, so by which point he is eighty four years old, to present a very startling petition to Congress. And remember, Franklin had been a slave owner. And this one time slave owner, he no longer has slaves by this point. He urges Congress to bestow the enjoyment of happiness on all the peoples of the United States and to grant, and I quote, liberty to those unhappy men who alone in this land of freedom are degraded into perpetual bondage. And the petition is rejected, but Franklin does not give up. And one month later,
1:09:59 Tom Holland? he publishes, I think, a brilliant satire, a satire that is clearly derived from Jonathan Swift, the greatest of all satirists. And he writes under the pseudonym of Sidde Mehmet Ibrahim. And he deploys the same arguments that are being used by anti abolitionists in America. To justify the enslavement of Africans, to defend the enslavement of Europeans by the Barbary States of North Africa. So in this pamphlet Franklin writes, pretending to be a Muslim propagandist for slavery. Let us then hear no more of this detestable proposition, the manumission of Christian slaves, the adoption of which would by depreciating our lands and houses, and thereby depriving so many good citizens of their properties,
1:10:42 Tom Holland? create universal discontent and provoke insurrections. And that, of course, is exactly the language that will be used by Americans in favour of keeping slavery right the way up to the civil war.
1:10:57 Dominic Sandbrook? I hadn't, I actually didn't know about that until I saw it in your notes. I think it's fascinating. I think it is a brilliant piece of work. And I think the debt to Jonathan Swift is absolutely there, like a modest proposal or something.
1:11:06 Tom Holland? And it is an act of repentance. Franklin had owned slaves. He came to repent of it. And he sought to right the wrong that he had done, the slaves of America. And that, that piece of writing was his last to be published, because on the 17th of April 1790, Benjamin Franklin breathed his last, and he died as he had lived as a man, prepared to follow his conscience, no matter where it might lead. And I salute him. I think he is a tremendous, a tremendous man. I think one of the more attractive people who have had a measurable impact on the course of world history, I think.
1:11:47 Dominic Sandbrook? Okay. I mean, he's no Dr. Johnson, but he's not too far, he's not too far short.
1:11:51 Tom Holland? But Dr. Johnson didn't sign for crucial historical documents and sway the fate of nations.
1:11:58 Dominic Sandbrook? No, that's all true.
1:11:59 Tom Holland? I mean, I think you could say of Franklin that had he not got, you know, French backing, history might have been very different. And he played it brilliantly. I mean, again, we've talked about the, the series about John Adams, who actually goes to France to kind of provide backup for, for Franklin. And Adams, who is very puritanical, really objects to this whole hanging out with aristocrats, kind of malarkey. And totally balls this up. Franklin's methods are definitely better. So I think he does change history and I think he's one, as I say, one of the more amiable figures to have changed history.
1:12:34 Dominic Sandbrook? Okay, brilliant, brilliant episode, Tom. Thank you very much. Now, in our next episode, we should be looking at a founding father who went one stage further than Benjamin Franklin, and then he became the hero of his own musical. And this is, of course, Alexander Hamilton. We'll be talking about the Hamilton duel with Aaron Burr. And in the final episode, Tom will be investigating the moral contradictions of Thomas Jefferson. Now, if you'd like to hear those episodes right away, you can, of course, you merely need to join our own band of repressive redcoats, The Rest Is History Club. And you can do that by going to therestishistory.com. You sign up, you get a whole host of benefits. You only get these by signing up through our own website, all the benefits. So you get the bonus episodes and early access and all of this
1:13:19 Dominic Sandbrook? kind of thing. Unbelievable enjoyment for all the family. Talking of all the family, we actually have our Rest Is History Festival this weekend at Hampton Court. Saturday sadly sold out. One or two tickets still available for Sunday. So great friends of the show, Ian Hislop, Helen Castor, William Dalrymple, Adam Smith, and Katia Hoyer will be there. Tom and I are incredibly excited about this. So we're hoping to see as many people as possible. You can get the tickets again by going to therestishistory.com. And we will return next time with Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. So on that bombshell, thank you and goodbye. Bye bye.
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