Episode 861: Founding Fathers – Benjamin Franklin

The lives of these men are essential to understanding the American form of government and our ideals of liberty. The Founding Fathers all played key roles in the securing of American independence from Great Britain and in the creation of the government of the United States of America.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
On this episode of This World. The lives of these
men are essential to understand the American form of government
and our ideals of liberty. The Founding Fathers all played
key roles in securing American independence from Great Britain and
in the creation of the government of the United States
of America. And now the life of Benjamin Frankman. Of

(00:38):
all of the Founding fathers other than George Washington, who
literally was the moral strength in which America was created
and really was the father of our country, but of
all the other Founding fathers except Washington, the one who
most deserves to be considered an immortal was Benjamin Franklin.

(01:02):
You can make a case, and some people will for
Thomas Jefferson, who helped with Franklin to write the Declaration
of Independence, who became president, but for sheer scale of achievement,
for range of ideas, for the number of different kinds
of contributions, Benjamin Franklin literally is an immortal. He also

(01:25):
is a great sign of what was making America really
different because he was someone who rose by his own efforts,
not because he was an aristocrat, not because he'd inherited
a lot of money, not because he had a unique position,
but just because he worked really hard and he was
really smart, and the result was because he had this

(01:46):
endless interest in life that every time he turned around
he was doing something fascinating, and much of the time
he was doing things that were historic and that literally
changed history for all of us. When you wear bifocal glasses,
you are, after all, dealing with an invention of Benjamin Franklin.

(02:07):
When you think about having a lightning rod to divert
the lightning so that your house doesn't burn up, you're
dealing with an invention of Benjamin Franklin. The whole concept
of constantly tinkering, constantly learning. The discovery of electricity, which
is a true story. He goes out he wants to
figure out how electricity occurs, and so he flies a

(02:31):
kite in the middle of a thunderstorm and he attaches
metal so that lightning hits and he suddenly has discovered electricity.
This was at the time comparable to Einstein in the
twentieth century discovering relativity. People across the planet were stunned

(02:52):
that this American had undertaken What if you think about
it is a very common sense, non theoretical experiment. And
that is sort of what marks Franklin. He just applies
common sense with a lot of intelligence, a real willingness
to work, and a kind of funny stubbornness. Now, remember

(03:12):
Franklin is born in Boston in seventeen o six, the
beginning of a new century. He's the tenth son out
of seventeen children. And that was an era where the
number one attitude was you got to earn a living. Frankly,
if you want to leave town, we got other kids
here too, and we'd rather have you produce money than

(03:33):
get a degree. Franklin has stopped schooling when he was
ten years old. He worked in his father's candleshop. He
made money, and he listened and paid attention to everybody.
The fact is that there was nothing that didn't intrigue him. Now,
he also understood that having money was good. So if
you watch Franklin's long career, and he is at the

(03:56):
end the oldest person at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia,
he's constantly aware of the fact that having money beats
not having money. Franklin thought it was good to acquire wealth,
that if you acquired wealth, it liberated you. And in fact,
his goal was to be rich enough by forty to
be able to go into politics. And so he really

(04:16):
was working constantly at this question of can I find
a way? And he tried many different things simultaneously. He's
also focused on invention. He's focused on writing. He's one
of those rare people who had so much energy, had
such a great capacity to work. You know, here he is,
for example, at eleven years of age, inventing swim fins

(04:41):
for his hands. He's eleven years old and he's inventing
fins he can put in his hands so he can
swim better. By the time he's twelve, he's an apprentice,
has left his father's candleshop and now he's apprenticed to
his brother. His brother, James, has a printing shop in Boston,
and at the age of twelve, Franklin is there, busy
working away learning how to print. His brother starts publishing

(05:04):
The New England Current, which is the first American newspaper
to use literary ideas and humorous essays, and this will
become an important part of Franklin's own style. Franklin doesn't
just look at facts. He has a very deep sense
of humor. He has a little bit cynical sense of humor.
I understood the human condition, he was quite willing to

(05:25):
write about it. And he also must have been an
amazingly fast writer. Remember this is an age when people
are setting type one letter at a time, so type
setting is a big deal. And if you write as
much as Franklin did, you spend a lot of time
setting type in order to send this stuff out. So

(05:45):
you have here a person who's constantly writing. Now, by
the time he's sixteen, he's publishing his first letters, and
he always publishes fourteen of them. In the current he
uses the pen name Silent do Good, invents himself he
was a fictional widow of a country minister. You're already
seeing the Franklin who is very imaginative, very cheerful about

(06:09):
pretending to be a widow. At the same time, when
his brother finally realizes that Silent do Good is his
younger brother, Benjamin Franklin, he ain't very happy with him.
Franklin somehow sort of faking people out, which he was,
but he's doing it really cheerfully. So he gets entritated
with his brother and he runs off to Philadelphia because

(06:30):
he and his brother can't get along anymore. Now at
this point he is a ripe old seventeen years of age.
Philadelphia then was the biggest city in America, the most bustling,
had the most commerce, had the most ships coming in
from London. Franklin finds work as a printer with Samuel Kimmer,
and he lodges the home of John Reid, who at

(06:52):
the time he had no idea, but ultimately becomes his
father in law. Now, Franklin is a very sociable person
and a parent. He was a very good conversationalist, so
people liked him and you go to taverns, Hey, we
got an extra seat here. Come on over, Ben, sit
down and chat with us. Yeah. One of the people
who did that was the Pennsylvania governor at the time,
William Keith. So he gets to know Franklin. He says,

(07:15):
why don't you set up your own print shop. Well,
Franklin goes back to Boston and asks his father for
a loan. His father says, you know, Ben, I mean
you're not old enough yet to do this. So Franklin
goes back and says to the governor, I'd love to
do this. My dad won't loan me the money. The
governor loans him the money. No, here's a guy who

(07:36):
has only been in town a couple of years and
has made such a strong impression that the governor thinks
he's a good business risk. Not only does the offer
to pay the bill, he offers to send Franklin and
pay for Franklin to go to London. Franklin gets to
London and the lesson that he will learn many times
in his life. The governor forgets to pay for him

(07:56):
to come home, so Franklin stuck in London. You can
find the money to come home. But he does come home.
And when he comes home, remembering that he had been
lodging with John Reid and he'd gotten to know Deborah Read,
he asked her to marry him. However, at this point
in his life, he's only eighteen years old. Deborah's mother
is thinking, you know, this is a guy who's a

(08:19):
little bit strange, so she says, please be patient, be patient.
But when Franklin is abroad in London, Deborah's mother tries
to convince Deborah that she ought to marry John Rodgers.
But Rogers is really a bad guy. He spends her dowry,
he runs up debts, he takes off for the West
Indies and they think he has died. Franklin, who has

(08:42):
not gotten money from the governor come back home, is
working at Samuel Palmer's print shop in London in order
to publish enough stuff to make enough money to be
able to get home, and in seventeen twenty five he
publishes his first pamphlet in London, which is called a
Dissertate on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain, and argues

(09:05):
that humans actually lack free will and are therefore not
morally responsible for their actions. Now, this is a fairly
radical idea, and people sort of thought Franklin had lost
his mind, but it does not, in the long run
a fit who Franklin is, because he certainly did, in
fact believe in free will and thought you could make
your way, and later in life will write a whole

(09:27):
series of articles and books about it. But it doesn't
hurt him many. This is the guy who's learning the
hard way that politicians don't always keep their word. Because
the governor has not brought him back home, so ultimately
he does in fact get back to Philadelphia. Took him
two years instead of one, and he sees Deborah and

(09:49):
poor Deborah is there with the guy who's run off
of their dowry and apparently may have died in the Caribbean,
so he tries to make her feel better. He gets
his job back at Samuel Kimeron's Prince and the very
typical Franklin behavior. Franklin, all his life will see an
opportunity to get something done that requires founding an organization

(10:12):
of some kind, because he understands that organizations create a
life of their own. Well, he founds what's called the
Hunto Club, and the hunter Club is a group of
young men. They meet on Friday evenings and they discuss everything,
the intellectual stuff, personal stuff, business stuff, community stuff. So
it's a free, willing dialogue. But it does encourage them

(10:35):
to read books, It encourages them to think about ideas.
It gives him a space to begin to create a
personal following, because inevitably, in any group, Franklin'll be the
smartest guy, he'll be the best storyteller, and he'll be
the funniest person. So now he's been back home, he's
worked once again for somebody else, but by seventeen twenty

(10:57):
eight he's in a position where he can now at
twenty two years of age open his own print shop
with Hugh Meredith, and Meredith actually gets a loan from
his own father. In seventeen twenty nine, they purchase the
Pennsylvania Gazette from Samuel Kimer, and at that point Franklin
begins to really row because he likes to write. He

(11:20):
can write a lot. He has a style that people
are attracted to, and it both increases his name id
in modern parliance, and it begins to create more money.
He writes a modest inquiry into the nature and necessity
of a paper currency, which called for an increase in
the money supply to stimulate the economy at this stage
of his career, something which will change by late in life.

(11:43):
He's basically what we would call an inflationist. He thinks
if we have more paper money floating around, people will
have more purchasing power, and therefore the economy will work better.
And this is part of what has been a permanent
running debate in American society between sound money people who
believe that money ought to attain its value, and inflationary

(12:05):
people who believe that having money gradually depreciate actually increases
the purchasing power and increases the economy, and that fight
goes on for a long time. Franklin automately decides that
paper money's dangerous, and in fact, one of the reasons
we end up with the Constitution is to block those

(12:25):
who would inflct currency. The reason that mattered is once
you have a lot of property, if you're loaning out
money that's worth a dollar and they're going to pay
you back with money worth ninety cents, you're losing on
the loan. So people who are propertied really dislike having
an inflationary currency. Franklin goes from a young guy with

(12:45):
a theory to an older, wealthy guy with money, and decides,
as an older wealthy guy, he's with people like Washington
who don't want to have an inflationary currency. Now he's
picked to be the official government printer for Pennsylvania, and
there's a reason that this really matters. Government then, like
now is a major purchaser of goods and services. Everything

(13:08):
that the state needs published is going to be printed
by Benjamin Franklin. So he now has a steady stream
of revenue which enables him. And remember at this stage
he's twenty four. But at twenty four he's able to
buy out Meredith. He becomes the most successful printer in town.
He owns his own company and at twenty four, having

(13:29):
become the official government printer, Deborah Read's parents think, you know,
probably would be a good thing to have. Benjamin Franklin
has a son in law. Now he marries her, even
though they have no proof that her husband was dead
John Rodgers member had married her, spent her dowry, run

(13:50):
up a whole bunch of debt, fled to the Caribbean,
never been heard of again. And the question was what
proof do you have? And Franklin, as he often will,
just ignored it. And so he marries Deborah and she
plays a huge role in his life as somebody that
he leans on. She did agree to raise Franklin's illegitimate son, William.

(14:11):
Truth is, historians are not quite sure who the mother was.
William becomes the deep part of Franklin's household, and later
in life will disappoint him deeply by being a loyalist
in staying with the British and becoming the governor of
New Jersey for the King against the Revolutionaries, which embitters
Franklin substantially. Deborah works with Franklin, and this becomes a

(14:36):
very very important part of his life. She's really his
business partner, and when he goes off to do other things,
when he goes off to politics or he goes off
to a diplomat, she's the one who stays home. She
didn't particularly want to travel, and given the way ocean
travel was in that generation, that's understandable. She ran the businesses,
kept unprofitable, made him money, and it all seemed to work,

(15:00):
and they worked for a very long time until she died.
She is a key hidden part of why Franklin was
able to be as effective as he was. She also
put up with him. She was willing to focus on
the mundane business and household side, which would not have
made him an historic figure, but was the base of
his ability to have the time and energy and resources
to be a historic figure. So Franklin got to play

(15:22):
at being Van Franklin in large part because he had
a wife who was willing to tolerate him, willing to
support him, and was smart enough and hard working enough
that she could make a bunch of money while he
was doing other things. Franklin, now that he's married and
he owns his own business, and he's the largest printer
in Philadelphia. Now he turns and he begins to really

(15:46):
define himself as a citizen. By seventeen thirty one, he's
done all the stuff I've been describing to you, and
he's twenty five. He joins the Freemasons, which were a
very very important social and quasi religious group that era.
He helps establish the Library Company of Philadelphia, which is
the first lending library in America. He aggressively defends the

(16:09):
freedom of the press. I would clearly be on the
side of those who favor the First Amendment rights of
the press, And at twenty five years of age, he
publishes an Apology for Printers which defends freedom of the press.
He also enters into a partnership, gets more printing equipment,
continues to get wealthier. By seventeen thirty two, they have

(16:30):
their first child, Francis Folger Franklin. Sadly, Francis dies from
smallpox at the age of four. Franklin never forgives himself
because he should have been inoculated smallpox. Inoculation was increasingly popular.
People knew about it, and it worked. Franklin would later

(16:52):
write in his autobiography quote in seventeen thirty six, I
lost one of my sons, a fine boy of four
four years old, by the smallpox taken in the common way.
I long regretted bitterly, and still regret that I have
not given it to him by inoculation close quote. Franklin

(17:12):
in seventeen thirty two publishes a German foreign language newspaper.
In the eighteenth century, there were so many Germans migrating
to Pennsylvania that there was serious talk of making German
the second language of the country. There was a very
large German population. Franklin was deeply opposed to making German
the second language, but he wasn't opposed to making money.

(17:35):
So he publishes a German language newspaper whose only difficulty
as it fails financially and again it's an example entrepreneurs
don't always succeed. Entrepreneurs have to be able to get
back up, go back and try it again, and see
what they can get done and what they can learn.
He also in seventeen thirty two something historic happens in

(17:57):
the history of American literature and in the history Benjamin
Franklin as an American citizen. He publishes the first edition
of Poor Richard's Almanac using a pseudonym of Richard Saunders.
Why does poor Richard's Almanac matter? It is extraordinarily successful.
It's a best seller, and it's going to be a

(18:19):
best seller for a generation because he writes it. There's
a new almanac every year. It is filled with common
sense things like waste not, want not, a stitch in
time saves nine, penny wise and pound foolish, things which
in our era may not make a great deal of sense.
For example, we don't use the British pounds, so the

(18:39):
idea of being penny wise and pound foolish meaning you're
really smart about a small thing, but you're dumb about
a big thing. When it does finally get to be
obvious who's writing it, it just spreads his fame across
the whole all of the colonies. He becomes the Grand
Master of the Grand Lodge of Mason of Pennsylvania. Again,
he's rising in status and influence. He has a bigger

(19:02):
and bigger network of friends. By seventeen thirty six, at
the age of thirty, he's appointed Clerk of the Pennsylvania Assembly.
So now he's helping organize and taking care of the
politicians at the same time that the colonial government is
hiring his firm to print all of the printing, which
is helping make him increasingly wealthy. In many ways. Franklin's

(19:39):
greatest business accomplishment came from the publication of Poor Richard's Almanac.
You know. He published it once a year for twenty
five years, beginning on December nineteenth, seventeen thirty two, originally
under the pseudonym of Richard Saunders, but then ultimately everybody
knew it was Benjamin Franklin. It captured all sorts of

(20:01):
information about the calendar, weather predictions, sayings, poems, recipes, trivia, advice.
He thought it was a vehicle of instruction for common people,
folks who couldn't afford books normally, it was a literature
for the masses, and he was onto something because almanacs
were the most read secular books in the colonies. He

(20:23):
had little phrases from different years, but to give you
a feel for Franklin's sense of what people are to hear,
he wrote, three may keep a secret. If two of
them are dead, lost time is never found again, and this,
by the way, captures his entire life. He did not
like to waste time because he felt it could never

(20:45):
be found again. He said, love your enemies, for they
tell you your faults and the affairs of this world. Men
are saved not by faith, but by the lack of it.
If you would not be forgotten as soon as you
are dead and rotten. Right things were reading or do
things worth writing? And the way his life was both. The

(21:05):
way to see by faith is to shut the eye
of reason. Women are books, and men the readers be.
There cannot be good living where there is not good drinking,
speak little do much. A friend in need is a friend,
indeed to all apparent beauties blind. Each blemish strikes an
envious mind. Fish and visitors stink in three days. That

(21:29):
may be one that's remembered as well as anything he
ever wrote. Search others for their virtues, thyself for thy vices.
Now there's some advice very seldom followed. Search others for
their virtues, thyself for thy vices. He that drinks his
ciight or alone, let him catch his horse alone. Fools

(21:50):
need advice most, but wise men only are the better
for it. So that was classically Franklin. Somebody who listens
the people picked up common sense language, and in fact
wrote out a set of advice to everyday Americans, some
of which he followed in his own life, and some
of which he cheerfully ignored. He helps organize the Union

(22:13):
Fire Company of Philadelphia, and the duty of the Union
Fire Company Philadelphia was to train and organize fireman because
the city is getting big enough. It's the largest city
in the New World, and it's getting big enough that
you need to have an organized fire department because you
have a real challenge of taking care of houses that
start to burn down. He also becomes the postmaster of Philadelphia.

(22:37):
Now this is again an interesting example of Franklin. He
is now thirty one years old. The British government appoints
him postmaster of Philadelphia, which is, frankly an office that
makes money. Postmasters back then were commercial assignments, so they
make money out of many different things. And then he

(22:58):
does something which truly changes history, but in a way
that's very practical rather than political. In seventeen forty two,
he invents a freestanding cast iron fireplace, which is known
as the Franklin Stove. Franklin Stove, by the way, is
still available today. You can go online. You can buy
a Franklin stove. It was a very intelligent contribution to

(23:21):
a better life because it used wood to generate heat
with greater efficiency than the stoves which preceded. And interestingly,
in terms of Franklin, he didn't patent it. In fact,
he didn't patent any of his inventions. His idea was, look,
if it works for me and my life is better,
why shouldn't you be able to build it and your
life can be better. He thought of this as part

(23:43):
of his civic life, and he's inventing as a citizen,
not as a businessman. Now on the business side, he's
very tough minded and he's independently wealthy. But as an inventor,
he just liked inventing things, and of course probably his
most famous as the vocal glasses by but he just
had a constant looking at things, thinking as a way

(24:03):
to do it better is their way to do it differently.
In the same time period, by the way, in seventeen
forty three, when he does have a daughter, Sarah, they
have her inoculated. They'd learned the lesson tragically from their
son dying from smallpox. They're not going to take the risk.
And the same year that his daughters born seventeen forty three,
he writes a pamphlet called A Proposal for Promoting Useful Knowledge,

(24:27):
and that leads to the American Philosophical Society. And one
of the offshoots of the American Philosophical Society is the
Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, which I first visited
when I was about ten, and went to a couple
months ago. It is a great institution. It has all
of Lewis and Clark's material because at the time of
the Lewis and Clark expedition, he was the only major

(24:50):
science museum in the country. It's a remarkable place. If
you go to Philadelphia to go by and see it.
He wakes up the way he thinks, oh, why don't
we have a philosophical society? Well, because he writes so fast,
I think I'll write a proposal for it. And by
the way, since I'm a publisher, I think i'll publish it.
So he's publishing his own pamphlet. At the same time

(25:10):
he's offering to sell Franklin stoves, and Franklin stoves sell
very well. Now he wasn't patenting it. Anybody else who
wanted to could make a Franklin stew but he didn't
mind making money off it himself. By seventeen forty seven,
he publishes a pamphlet called Plain Truth and proposes the
formation of a Philadelphia militia. Let's just think about it.

(25:31):
This is the guy who wakes up in the morning,
has a big idea and writes it down and sends
it out, and people beg are in the habit now
thinking I wonder what Franklin's up to next. What makes
Franklin amazing is at forty two years of age in
seventeen forty eight, he retires. He's now made enough money.
He takes on a partner who gives him additional income

(25:52):
the rest of his life, and the partner runs the
daily operations of the printing business. And because he now
has free time, he becomes a member of Philadelphia City Council.
So now you have businessman, inventor, writer, now politician. And
by the following year, in seventeen forty nine, he writes

(26:13):
proposals relating to the education of youth in Philadelphia. There's
a great story by one of my favorites about Franklin is.
At one point during his political career, he took a
very unpopular position, and a number of people wanted to
sort of Browbeaty into giving it up. And so one
evening he invited them to dinner, and they all came

(26:37):
over to his house, and they had a very nice house,
and they all sit around the dining room table and
he serves them this very strange porridge which they all
can barely taste so bad. And he finishes, he cleans
his ball, and he says, gentlemen, this is actually sawdust. Now,

(26:57):
if I'm prepared to eat a bowl of sawdust, what
do you think you're going to do to intimidate me.
It was so clear that Franklin wasn't somebody that you
can intimidate. By seventeen fifty, what I think, after his
bifocal glasses is his most interesting invention. He proposes using

(27:17):
lightning rods to keep houses safe. Franklin figured out that
if I could put up a pole that was above
the house so it would attract the lightning, and if
I could ground the pole in the ground so that
the electricity would come straight down the pole go into
the ground and never touch the house, that your house
wouldn't burn down. Well, it may have been after his

(27:39):
bifocal invention the most practical and most widespread improvement in
life that anybody made. It's incalculable today how many houses
did not burn down because of Benjamin Franklin. But the
numbers would be in the hundreds of thousands by now.
He continues to be involved as an active person. In
seventeen fifteen, he is developing lightning rods. The following year,

(28:05):
he decides, in passing he'll help found what was then
called the Academy for Education of Youth, and we call
it the University of Pennsylvania. And so he's going from
place to place, almost like a Johnny Appleseed of a
better life. He's also mentally exploring the world. So the
same year that he's helping found what becomes the University

(28:26):
of Pennsylvania, he also is writing an article on the
experiments and observations on electricity. He's also that year, by
the way, elected to the Pennsylvania Assembly and as a
city alderman. All this is happening simultaneously. The following year,
in seventeen fifty two, he builds on his article on
the Experiments and observations and electricity, and in a classically

(28:49):
American model, he leaves the laboratory. He steps outside and
he flies a kite, and the kite attracts lightning, and
the lightning is elected. And he then publishes how you
can conduct the experiment because he thought through the key part,
which is, all right, if you attract the lightning, where's
electricity going? And he made sure it wasn't going through him.

(29:12):
He also in Passing the same year, I remember he's
making money. He's serving as a city alderman, he's serving
in the Pennsylvania Assembly. He's still writing a lot. And
in seventeen fifty two he founds the Philadelphia Contributionship. Now
what is a contribution ship? Well, you and I think
of it as a fire insurance company. And so literally

(29:35):
in Passing, he says, now, if we all contributed a
little bit, then if one of us had our house
burned down, we could collect on the value of the
house based on our contributions. And so the Philadelphia Contributionship
sets the base for a mutual fire insurance company, which
becomes a model that's very, very widespread. The next year,

(29:56):
in seventeen fifty three, he's appointed Deputy Postmaster General of
the Colonies. Now think about this. The British government now
is saying to Franklin, we trust you enough, we think
you're smart enough, we think you're a good enough businessman.
We want you to help run all of the post
offices in the entire thirteen colonies, which of course also

(30:17):
gives him an excuse to learn more and more and
to think beyond Philadelphia and to think beyond Pennsylvania. Now
he'd already been born and grown up in Boston, so
now he has an increasing sense of the East coast
of the United States, the Atlantic Coast, and all the
different colonies from Georgia up through Massachusetts. He also that year,

(30:38):
in seventeen fifty three, he gets the Copley Medal, which
is the highest award the Royal Society of London can give.
So he's being recognized worldwide as a scientist. He is
the postmaster for all of the colonies. He is serving
in the city government, the state government, and he's active

(31:00):
in founding various organizations, and he's continuing to be a scientist.
All of this is simultaneous and as a scientist in
passing because remember never went to graduate school, never took
a science course. He is recognized as a worldwide contributor
because of the work he's done on electricity. He's also
concerned about what we would call national security, and he's

(31:23):
concerned about the French and Indians in the West. And
remember that the French Indian War will start in what
we call Pittsburgh, then called Fort Duquine, which was a
French outpost coming to the French are coming down from Canada.
We're coming from the Atlantic coast, and we're about to
collide in western Pennsylvania. And seventeen fifty four Franklin, Prince

(31:45):
of Cartoon, Join or Die, which argues that the colonies
have to work together in confederation, they have to protect themselves,
that no single colony is going to be capable of
developing defenses. Now, this is a pretty radical view at
the time, and one of the signals it's a radical

(32:05):
view that year seventeen fifty four is the British government Fireshi.
They say you're now not the Deputy Postmaster General. Your
political views are too radical. And for the first time
Franklin is faced with the consequences that if he really
believes what he says he believes, he's going to pay
some real cost for that. In the midst of all this,
in seventeen fifty five, Franklin, with doctor Thomas Bond, founded

(32:29):
the Pennsylvania Hospital, the nation's first hospital focused on the sick,
the poor, and the insane. And again, when you go
to Philadelphia, you just see case after case of Franklin's impact.
Two hundred years later, the French and Indian War starting
in seventeen fifty six, and you remember that it's Washington

(32:49):
who plays a leading role in starting the French and
Indian War. Franklin was asked to lead Pennsylvania militia against
the French who were defeating the English troops. Accompanied by
his son, Franklin fought mercilessly to take back land, establish
new forts, and push back against the French forces. He
served as an officer in the militia without even receiving pay,

(33:11):
because his devotion to duty was so deep. He was
a wealthy businessman, so he could afford to be a
volunteer for free. In seventeen fifty seven, while the French
and New Wars underway, Franklin is elected to go to
England to talk about colonial disputes with Parliament. He stays
for five years, and this is I think one of

(33:33):
the most important examples of change in leading up to
American independence. Franklin leaves the colonies as a loyal British servant.
He finds out over time that in fact, he'll never
be accepted. He can be wealthy, doesn't matter. He can

(33:54):
be a world class scientist, doesn't matter. He can win
elections back home, an't matter. He can be the funniest,
best storyteller in the room, doesn't matter. He's not an aristocrat.
He's never going to be accepted as an aristocrat. And
I think it's the bitterness of beginning to realize that
which begins to turn him against the English government and

(34:17):
making him begin to think of himself as an American.
He stays from seventeen fifty seven for five years, goes
back to Boston for two years, and in the process
he invents the glass harmonica. This was a very sophisticated
device which made a series of sounds. It was widely received,
probably ranked along with the lightning rod and the bifocals

(34:41):
and the Franklin stove among the most widely received of
Franklin's inventions. Both Beethoven and Mozart used Franklin's harmonica. By
seventeen sixty four, he loses his seat in the Pennsylvania Assembly,
but goes back to London as a colonial agent, and
the next year the Stamp Act is passed by the

(35:02):
House of Commons. Remember, the Stamp Act is designed to
raise money from the Americans to help pay the cost
to the French and Indian War, which the British reasoned
had protected America from attack, and therefore the Americans ought
to bear some burden. The Americans, of course, resented the idea,
did not want to pay the Stamp Act, and that

(35:23):
was the beginning of the deep disaffection that would autoly
lead to the Revolution, because Franklin knew that Americans were
against it. In seventeen sixty six, just one year after
the Actress passed, he testifies in the House of Commons
in favor of repeal of the Stamp Act, proving that
his loyalties are to the colonies. Yet the very same year,

(35:44):
while he's testifying in the House of Comments, he's elected
as a member of the Royal Society of Sciences. He
may not be an aristocrat to the aristocrats, but he's
clearly an aristocrat to the scientists, and they have the
greatest admiration for him. Well, that's going on. The British
troops are being sent to Boston. The British government's getting

(36:04):
tougher and tougher. The fact is that Franklin was committed
to representing the American side. It's also in this period
that his daughter Sally marries Richard Bach. Franklin really wanted
her not to do that because Bach's situation financially was
bad and he was afraid that Bach was just marrying
her for her money. Nonetheless, his wife, Deborah allowed them

(36:27):
to be married, against Franklin's wishes. He accepted the marriage
after Sally had their first child. Ben helped Richard obtain
several loans help them set up a few stores. But
the truth is Franklin supported Sally in her eight children
for the rest of his life. He was, in fact
a very generous family man and was deeply concerned about

(36:48):
his family, even if he didn't spend very much time
with him. By seventeen sixty nine, the American Philosophical Society,
which he had helped found, has elected Franklin as its president,
and then they reelected him every single year after that
until he died. So he's the head of the Philosophical
Society he's inventing musical instruments. He's inventing practical things like

(37:09):
the Franklin stove, the bifocals and lightning rods. And then
the Boston Massacre occurs. British troops shoot at colonists. The
whole colonies are upset and are afraid, and Franklin tries
to find a way to bring Britain and the colonies
back together. In seventeen seventy one, he begins writing his autobiography,

(37:30):
which I can tell you if you have never read,
it is absolutely worth your getting and reading. It's a
remarkable book. It's very candid, it's very wise. I don't
care who you are. You will learn things you'll apply
to your own life if you read Franklin's autobiography. In London,
he gets a series of letters, Some thirteen letters come

(37:53):
to him from an anonymous sinder. The letters have been stolen.
There were a correspondence between the mass Governor, the Royal
Governor Thomas Hutcheson and the Royal Lieutenant Governor Andrew Oliver,
who are writing English authorities. Somehow these letters had gotten
stolen and they were given to Franklin, who then sends

(38:15):
them to Samuel Adams and authorizes them to be shown
to the members of the Massachusetts Committee of Correspondence, but
not copied or published. Now, this clearly is a totally
inappropriate act and will begin the process of really alienating
the English and Franklin. By seventeen seventy three, the Stampack,
not having worked, Parliament passes the Tea Act, which then

(38:38):
leads in Boston to people dressing up as Indians and
dumping the tea in the harbor in what we call
the Boston Tea Party. And interestingly, Franklin, who of course
was from Boston, originally has real ties emotionally back to
Boston as well as to Philadelphia. That same year, the
Massachusetts Speaker, Thomas Cushing, gives the letters that Franklin had

(39:01):
sent to the Massachusetts House, and the House concluded that
Governor Hutcheson intended to overthrow the Constitution. They decide to
petition for Hutcheson and Oliver's removal, and despite Franklin's wishes,
the letters are published in the Boston Gazette. Franklin tries

(39:39):
to communicate to the British through satire. In September seventy
seventy three, he publishes two articles in the Public Advertiser
in London, one quote Rules by which a Great Empire
may be reduced to a small one, and the second
Edict by the King of Prussia. Both of them are satirical,

(39:59):
and both of them attacked the British attitude toward the colonies.
Now remember, at this point, the aristocrats are amused. They
don't want to be lectured by some colonial, even if
he's a famous scientist and a wealthy man. And they're
increasingly angry because they see the Americans as totally ungrateful
and treasonous. When Britain had fought the French, Britain had
defeated the Indians, Britain had protected the colonies and all

(40:22):
they get back in return his constant complaint refusal to
pay taxes, and people who clearly are not appropriate for
English society. Two things happen in the early seventeen seventies
that really affect Franklin. First was that his wife, Deborah
dies he was still in England. They had been separated physically,

(40:43):
but they wrote to each other constantly. She had run
the business in his absence. When he did return home
to America, he wrote a friend quote I have lately
lost my old and faithful companion, and I every day
become more sensible of the greatness of that loss, which
cannot now be I suspect you both realized how many

(41:05):
days they'd been apart, how much of their lives had
been separate, and with gratitude, how much she had done,
how she had enabled him to be Benjamin Franklin, because
she had run the business, she'd earned the money, she'd
paid attention to, all the details that he cheerfully ignored.
But the other thing which happened in the seventeen seventies
while he was still in London, when word reached Great

(41:28):
Britain that the official letters of the Governor and the
Lieutenant Governor had been somehow submitted to the House of
Commons of the colony. There was an enormous uprising in
Britain of interest, where did these come from? Who was responsible?
And finally Franklin cleared the air. In December of seventeen

(41:49):
seventy three, he wrote a brief note to the newspaper
saying I'm the person who released him. While that guaranteed
that the Privy Council, which was in effect the highest
political judicial body in Britain would see him and would
demand to know what he was doing and why he
was doing it, and he went twice. The first time

(42:10):
he went, he frankly thought they were going to enquire
about what had happened with Hutchinson and Oliver the governor
Lieutenant Governor and why were they in such trouble. Instead
he found that the Solicitor General of Britain attacked him
for a full solid hour, and when they said, okay,
it's your turn, he just stood there quietly and said,
I didn't realize this was the point of this, and

(42:32):
I want a lawyer, and they agreed he ought to
have a lawyer. So two weeks later they came back together.
But in the interim the Boston Tea Party news had
reached Great Britain that the Americans had dressed like Indians,
gone into the harbor, thrown the tea from the East
India Company into the harbor, destroying it. And there was
a high sense of rage in the governing class in Britain.

(42:54):
And so when Franklin shows back up, he is attacked
for for several hours in a very direct and aggressive
and nasty way, and it's quite clear that he is
the target, and that there's nothing he can do to
defend himself. He is wearing a blue coat, which, to
show how Franklin's mind worked, he will wear again when

(43:18):
he signs the Peace Treaty declaring the United States to
be free and independent. And somebody said, why do you
have this old coat? Remember the peace Treaty now that
he's signing is more than a decade later. And he said,
for a little sense of revenge. Franklin was not a
man who one could attack easily or lightly, or expect

(43:40):
to ever turn the other cheek. So he goes home
having been attacked by the British elites, and now he
is clearly committed to independence. He's elected as a Pennsylvania
delegate to the second Continental Congress, and he also, ironically,
having been fired by the British as the postmas to General,

(44:00):
which happened the day after the Privy Council meeting to
punish him, he is now elected as the Postmaster General
of the colonies by the Continental Congress. So at the
very moment that the British are losing control of the
post offices, they are being turned back over to the
guy who had been in charge of the post offices
on behalf of the king, so Franklin knew what he

(44:23):
was doing and how to do it. In seventeen seventy six,
he's asked to be one of five people who draft
the Declation Independence, and he is clearly a key figure
who people trust and plays a significant role in working
with Jefferson and Adams to get the final draft of
the Declation Independence approved by the Congress. Then he's asked

(44:46):
to go to France to be a commissioner from the
Continental Congress in order to get the French to help us. Remember,
at this point, without the help of France, the United
States will lose use the war to Britain because we'll
have no money, we'll have no ammunition, we'll have no uniforms,
we will have no effective navy. And so this was

(45:09):
life and death. And Franklin, who had the great advantage
of being a world famous scientist, is a very major player.
And because he's also so personable, so amused by life,
and so engaging with people, he became a very very
widely admired and liked diplomat. Franklin plays a key role

(45:34):
is in Europe, not in America, works very hard to
keep the French on our side. And then after Cornwallis
surrenders at Yorktown in seventeen eighty one, effectively ending the
military part of the war, Congress appoints Franklin, along with
John Jay, John Adams, and Henry Lawrence, to be a
commissioner to negotiate peace, and in seventeen eighty three they

(45:58):
complete the negotiations and they signed the peace Treaty. Franklin,
by the way, is the toughest, most hard nosed person
on the question of whether or not there should be
any compensation for Tories who had stayed on the side
of the British and said absolutely no. These people were traders.
They should not get a penny, and he was just

(46:18):
firm that that was not going to be part of
the agreement. They signed the peace treaty, as I said earlier,
with Franklin wearing the same coat that he had worn
back when the Privy Council tried to humiliate it. And
Franklin then returns because now he's no longer totally drowning
and being a diplomat, so he returns to being an

(46:39):
inventor and a commentator. In seventeen eighty three we complete negotiations,
we signed the peace treaty. Now the colonies are independent states.
And one year later Franklin writes quote an Economical Project
for diminishing the cost of light, which is in fact
the first document proposing daylight saving time. He does this

(47:01):
in passing. He just thinks to himself, gosh, wouldn't it
make sense if we change so that we had more time,
more daylight? And he writes this out, and of course,
well over one hundred years later it begins to be implemented,
So the daylight saving time that we currently celebrate can
be traced back to an idea from Benjamin Franklin. Then
the same year he invents the bifocal glasses. As he's

(47:22):
getting older, he notices that he has one pair of
glasses for seeing up close, one pair of glasses for
seeing in the distance. He's constantly taking off one putting
on the other. You always have to carry extra glasses,
And he thinks to himself, well, what if I arrange
it so when you look down, which is what you
do when you're reading, you have close vision, and when
you look out, which you're looking up, you have distance vision.

(47:46):
He goes to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in seventeen
eighty seven. He's the oldest person at the convention. He
occasionally falls asleep during the sessions, but he also when
the convention is about to melt down in bitterness and
hostility between the large states and the small states, and
his most important intervention, he says, why don't we suspend

(48:09):
for a day, have a day of prayer and fasting,
and have various ministers come in and pray to us
to get ourselves back on the right mindset, which is
in fact precisely what they do. And the very famous
moment when he is leaving the Constitutional Convention, having completed
the work, and the lady says to him on Independence

(48:29):
Hall steps, what have you done? And he said, we
have created a republic if you can keep it, and
understood thoroughly that in the long run it would be
up to the American people whether or not it would
work and whether or not it would survive. I wanted
his comment to go and stand there at Independence Hall
and think about the people who signed the decreation Independence,

(48:54):
To go across to the great New Constitution Center, which
is just remarkable, to go to the Franklin Institute, and
to realize again and again the impact that this guy
had to take a map and go around and see
all the different places where there are universities or insurance companies,
or libraries or fire departments, things that Benjamin Franklin created

(49:17):
in his lifetime. By seventeen eighty eight, he's being to
realize that eighty two years of age, he likely doesn't
have many more years left, so he writes a will
leaving most of his state to his daughter Sarah. Seventeen
eighty nine, he's elected president of the Pennsylvania Society for
Promoting the Abolition of Slavery. Here's a guy who constantly,

(49:38):
endlessly fought for human freedom, who steadily spread the opportunity
for freedom, and who at the end of his life
is working on the abolition of slavery. In fact, submits
the first anti slavery pradition before the US Congress. He
had had slaves very early, two slaves who worked in
his household, but when he was young, but as he

(50:00):
got older, he began to think, this is an evil institution.
And if you believe in the principles of the American Revolution,
if you believe in a declaration that says we're all
created equal, it's simply wrong, and at a time when
it was still a very, very radical position, he was
actively in favor of the abolition of slavery. Ultimately, in
seventeen ninety he dies, Washington is now president, the country

(50:24):
is established. He leaves behind a fair amount of wealth
for Sally and her husband, but he leaves behind for
the world a whole series of inventions and breakthroughs and
understandings that are just astonishing and that ultimately improve the
lives of millions and millions of people. Gives you a
sense of why he is an immortal and somebody who

(50:47):
really I think represents the best of the American tradition
of constant effort, constant dreaming, constant hard work to term
the dreams into reality. You can learn more about Benjamin
Franklin on our show page at Newtsworld dot com. Newsworld
is produced by Gainwrish three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive

(51:10):
producer is Guarnsey Sloan and our researcher is Rachel Peterson.
The artwork for the show was created by Steve Penley.
Special thanks the team at Ginrich three sixty. If you've
been enjoying Newtsworld, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcast
and both rate us with five stars and give us
a review so others can learn what it's all about.

(51:32):
Right now, listeners of Newsworld consign up for my three
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I'm new Gingrich. This is Newsworld