September 19, 2024 • 37 mins
After retiring at the age of 42, Ben Franklin immersed himself in politics, taking on enormous diplomatic challenges on behalf of Pennsylvania and the colonies. In this episode, we dive into Franklin the talented statesman-- a man who emerged from his mission in England with a taste for revenge, charmed the French into supporting a burgeoning nation, and somehow found time to get involved in every revolutionary tract-- from Common Sense to the Constitution... in between playing chess in the bathtub!
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Speaker 1 (00:12):
Before he declared he was going to be for independence,
Franklin wanted to have a meeting with his son, William,
who's the royal governor of New Jersey by this point.
And Franklin goes and they meet in a manor house
halfway in between Philadelphia and where William was in New Jersey,
(00:34):
and they have a very long and tough night. And
Benjamin Franklin tells William he's going to be on the
side of the revolution and that William should resign his governorship.
And William doesn't, And I think he was dismayed that
his son had not only become a royal governor and
(00:58):
a loyalist, but was loving the persh of power. And
it's a riff that never gets repaired.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
In many ways, Benjamin Franklin was an unlikely revolutionary. Franklin
was someone who always tried to mend fences rather than
tear them down. Through his work as an experimental scientist,
a writer, and a businessman. He was always problem solving,
looking for the most practical solution. But his pension for
compromise was challenged during the Revolution when his adopted hometown
(01:36):
of Philadelphia became a hotbed of anti colonial fervor still,
Franklin was a man of his times, ready to meet
the moment. But what's surprising is how much of the
work he did on behalf of America was actually done abroad.
In this episode of On Benjamin Franklin, Walter Isaacson paints
the picture of Franklin the diplomat and how his genius
(01:56):
as a statesman may be one of his most underappreciated.
Let's talk about a bit of Franklin and his early
work as a founding father. When does Franklin move from
(02:19):
being this civic minded businessman hanging out with the Leather
Apron Club to really diving into politics.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
When he retires in his early forties and gets interested
in science, he also gets interested in politics in a
larger scale. He believes that we have to all work
together in the various colonies to stave off threats, and
so he takes that notion of civic associations applies it
(02:46):
on a more colonial level, helping fund George Washington and
others fighting the French and Indian War. And so Franklin
is trying to work out a system where instead of
just voluntary associations, we now have to tax ourselves we
now have to govern ourselves. He was a leader in
(03:08):
the Colonial Assembly in Pennsylvania and of the faction that
was trying to oppose the Penn family because the different
colonies had different ways of governance. Some were crown colonies
directly ruled by the king, but some were proprietors like
the Penn family, who had the right to govern Pennsylvania
(03:31):
to some extent. They had a charter, and it was
unclear whether they could tax the people in Pennsylvania and
refuse to pay taxes themselves, which is indeed what was happening,
And so that gets him involved in the things that
lead us to a revolution, whether it's the import duties,
the stamp, taxation without representation. But Franklin's first mission is
(03:56):
simply to loosen the power of the Penn family.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Franklin gets selected by the Assembly to represent Pennsylvania in
London as their agent to the Crown, and he's animated
by the challenge, but he's also excited by the energy
of this bustling city.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Although Philadelphia in the seventeen fifties was the largest city
in America, it had only twenty three thousand inhabitants. It
was just a few dusty streets in a market street,
whereas London was thirty times the size, with a quarter
of a million inhabitants and growing really fast. London was
(04:36):
the largest city in Europe and second only to Beijing
in the world. But it was cramped, It was dirty,
It was filled with disease and prostitutes in clime. More importantly,
it was stratified into an upper class of titled aristocrats
and a lower class of impoverished workers. What Franklin does,
(04:56):
as he did in America, was gravitate to what was
becoming a burgeoning middle class, a middle class of tradesmen
and artisans. When he gets back to London for the
first time, he goes back to the print shop where
he worked as a young printer, and he buys beer
for everybody there, the fashionable aristocrats in London, there were
(05:19):
growing up a lot of clubs such as Whites and
Brooks and Boodles. Franklin didn't feel comfortable there, but there
was for the burgeoning new class of writers and journalists
and professionals and intellectuals. There were coffee shops which provided
newspapers and tables where you could sit all afternoon with
(05:39):
friends and discuss current events, and that's where Franklin gravitated, certainly,
both with his middle class and intellectual friends, but also
people cared about politics. Lark barklay Hume had created an
enlightenment mindset that you saw in London and also in Paris,
(06:00):
and not surprisingly those become the two cities Franklin loves
the most besides Philadelphia. Now there were those who were
more disposed to American rights, and Franklin becomes close to
a lot of them, especially the Whigs. But there are
those in a governing party who consider him dangerous, as
(06:22):
indeed he was to their control.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
And so there's this class of people who are clearly
suspicious of Ben Franklin. Does he have to be careful
about what he says or.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Does Franklin understood the new media age of his time
and how there could be scandals and people could write
scoreless things. And in the seventeen sixties he writes a
letter to his daughter and says, your slightest indiscretions will
be magnified into crimes in order to sensibly wound and
(06:56):
afflict me. In other words, he had become such a celebrity.
He knew that his enemies would be publishing stories about
his family as a way to take him down.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
And that's even something that you might not realize today
if you think of Franklin as how famous he was
for his scientific experiments and famous as a founder, but
that if you're going to be that famous, you will
also generate enemies.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Franklin tried very hard not to generate enemies. This was
a very passionate period that I'm leading up to a revolution,
of course, and whether it was the Penn family or
there was a family of Lee's up in Massachusetts, he
developed enemies of people who either were loyal to the
crown or were loyal to the proprietors. And he tended
(07:41):
his reputation very well. But when he did make enemies,
they were pretty strong enemies.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Now did he have revolutionary notions at that time.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
Franklin was very much a believer in the beauty of
the British Empire. He was very loyal to the concept
of Americans and people in England all being part of
this great empire. He called it a noble vase, and
once it got broken, it wouldn't be put back together.
So as the colonial agent in London, his first mission
(08:13):
is trying to prevent a revolution. Near the end, he
comes up with the plan that the colonial assemblies are
just like Parliament. They're all subject to the king, but
they make their own taxes and do their own governance.
And it's sort of what we now have in the Commonwealth.
Had his plan succeeded, the US would be like Canada.
(08:37):
He got very close and had the Whig state and
power in England. He may have been able to work
out this Commonwealth relationship, but he gets humiliated by the ministers.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
There describe a little bit how that humiliation came about.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
At one point when he keeps presenting petitions to the ministers,
he gets embroiled in controversy over leaking some letters, which
he did. But the most important thing is he gets
called before a hearing of Parliament in what's called the cockpit.
He's wearing this velvet coat and he gets prosecuted and
(09:18):
he doesn't say a word as they keep attacking him
and attacking him. And this is the beginning of his
realization that no, this is not going to work. And
the interesting thing is that years later, when he ends
up at the end of the revolution negotiating both the
(09:38):
alliance with France and then the peace treaty with England.
When he signs it, he puts that same coat back
on and he gusks why, and he says to give
it a little revenge because he remembers that day in
the cockpit.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
So it feels like he's still learning as a diplomat
right now, still figuring out how to maneuver in this
new position.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Right One of Franklin's problems as an agent in England
is he was too accommodat and he tried too hard
to get a solution. He hasn't fervently fought the Stamp Act,
and when it gets back to America, there's a backlash,
so he has to scramble, and in a way that
(10:19):
pushes him towards the side of becoming more revolutionary because
he realizes that he's lost touch with the anti taxation,
anti British sentiments that had welled up in America.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
But in a way he quickly finds his footing because
he actually prints one of the more incendiary pamphlets.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
Yeah. One of the great spurs to revolution in early
seventeen seventy six was an anonymous pamphlet called Common Sense.
It turned out it was written by Thomas Paine, but
people didn't know that it was anonymous, and some people
thought that Franklin had written it. It's a huge success.
(11:00):
I think it'd sold more than one hundred thousand copies.
Even though Franklin wasn't the author, he had an indirect
hand in it because he was the one who had
helped bring Thomas Payne over from England as a cheeky
young hope to be printer and helped get Common Sense published.
(11:22):
So Franklin is bequeathing to a new generation that notion
of being a pamphleteer being published, and that helps bring
us closer to revolution.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
More on that right, after a quick break, let's talk
about the revolution. When the first shots were fired in
(11:53):
April seventeen seventy five, Benjamin Franklin wasn't back from London yet.
He arrives just a few weeks later. What's this scene like.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
In seventeen seventy five, about half the people in the
colonies built loyal to the crown, in about half were
starting to well up with a sense that we were
going to have a revolution. When he finally returns to Philadelphia,
he's greeted by cheering throngs, but there's a question will
(12:22):
he really cast his lot on the side of revolution.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Did the fact that Franklin's son was a real governor
and that he broke with him over independence, did that
lend Franklin more credibility among the revolutionaries or did it
end up casting suspicion on him that he might still
have royal inclinations.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Yeah, well, Franklin's rivals and enemies treated him with some suspicion.
But one thing that happens is George Washington ends up
finally winning in New Jersey and William is arrested, and
it becomes a question whether Benjamin Franklin will earne urge
that his son be parolled or whatever. And no, he doesn't.
(13:04):
He lets his son be arrested and imprisoned in Connecticut.
And I think it's because Benjamin Franklin wanted to make
it clear he didn't have divided loyalties. His new loyalties
were with the new country and not with his son,
the royal governor.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
And so in seventeen seventy six, as a full fledged revolutionary,
Benjamin Franklin joins the Continental Congress.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
One of the things that happens is the Continental Congress
decides if we're going to have a revolution for independence,
we have to write a declaration explaining why we're doing this.
And so the Continental Congress appoints a committee may have
been the last time Congress appointed a great committee. But
on it are Benjamin Franklin, of course, Thomas Jefferson, and
(13:55):
John Adams. And Jefferson gets to write the first draft,
even though he's like really young, I think thirty one
or so, because he's the best writer, he's more passionate,
and he sends it to Franklin for editing, and it's
a wonderful letter, he writes. They're all living in Philadelphia
with the Congress's meeting. He said, with the good doctor
(14:15):
Franklin and all of his wisdom, look over this document
and see what improvements it can make. And it's like
people are really nice to editors back then. And you
see one of the most amazing documents in American history.
It's not just the declaration, but the first draft of
the declaration that's in the Library of Congress. And you
(14:35):
look at the most famous, most brilliant sentence ever written
by human hand, the one that begins, we hold these truths,
And there's Jefferson's first draft, we hold these truths to
be sacred. And Franklin, with the dark black backslashes a
printer he uses to cross something out, takes it out
(14:57):
and writes self evident, and he explains we're trying to
create a new type of nation in which our rights
come not from the dictates of religion, but from rationality
and reason. And the sentence goes on, and there's John
Adams's handwriting when they say endowed by their creator with
certain inalienable rights. So just in the writing of one
(15:19):
half of one sentence, you can see our founders doing
this balance between the role of divine providence and the
role of rationality and reason in securing our rights as
individuals and our governance as a nation.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
I feel you can also see there all of what
you've already discussed about Franklin's inclination towards collaboration and compromise
happening around that document.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Right. What Franklin realizes is that they're balances you have
to put in, And even in that part of a sentence,
you have a balance. It's not all divine right gives
us this, and it's not all just pure rationality. There's
a certain balance that we strike. When we're figuring out
(16:06):
our role as a nation.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
Let's talk about self evident because I want to make
sure we don't gloss over that. The importance of self evident, right,
What was the significance of the phrase.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
When Jefferson writes we hold these truths to be sacred,
and then Franklin edits it to be self evident. He's
partly talking about the role of rationality, but he also
got that phrase from his close friend David Hume, the
world's greatest philosopher at the time. Franklin actually stayed at
(16:38):
the home of David Hume. You know, he met Adam Smith.
He read The Wealth of Nations before it was published.
So Franklin has soaked all this up. And David Hume
had come up with this idea that there were certain
truths that were just self evident.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
And the issue with sacred was I mean, I don't
know how much she explicated this then or leader, but
would the issue with sacred be that anyone could make
a claim on sacred if it had a religious tinge
to it.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Most governments up until that point derive their authority from
an appeal to divinity, the divine right of kings, being
the most famous example, and the grace of God explained
where the power came from. There was something totally new
that was beginning with the Declaration and culminates with the Constitution,
(17:32):
which is, no, the power is not divinely given. It's
something that comes from we the people. And I think
Franklin was saying, we don't want to premise our basic
beliefs that all men have created equal, they're endowed with
(17:52):
certain inalienable rights. We don't want to premise this on
coming from theology. No, it comes from certain evident truth.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
And then we get this moment, this most famous moment
of John Hancock saying there must be no pulling in
different ways.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
When they're signing the declaration. John Hancock of course does
it with the famous flourish and he says, we must
not all go our separate ways. We have to hang together.
And Franklin, that's the theme of his life, that we
have to all intertwine, we have to all hold hands,
and he says a famous funny line, which is, yes,
we all must hang together, or surely we'll all hang separately.
(18:30):
And so this notion of working collegially and in tandem
to assert our rights that begins with the Declaration then
culminates with the Constitution.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
There was one smaller moment that just really struck me
in the way that Franklin shows up and influences so
many different aspects of American life. And it's that don't
tread on Me flag that he also happens to be
the person who saw that flag and brought it in
to be more official flag of the revolution.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
Yeah, it was part of Franklin's genius of sort of
knowing how to visually convey information, How a Join or
Die cartoon of a snake being cut up, how these
visual things can have an impact.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
He loved a snake. He's got the snake in Join
or Die. There's the don't tread on Me snake, and
he has all philosophy about why the snake is the
right symbol. It doesn't strike first.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
But when it strikes, it strikes, yes, right exactly. Another
snake that's interesting that we have to deal with today
is one of Franklin's sort of friends but occasional opponents,
the guy named Albert Gary, who didn't really believe in
a pure democracy. He felt that the rabble shouldn't be
(19:50):
allowed to rule too much. And among other things, that
he creates as his congressional district that looks like a snake,
and it gets called a gary Man. Nowadays we pronounced
it Jerry Mander based on Albert Gary doing that snake
like district, and Franklin thought that was a bit appalling.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
One snake that he didn't care for. Ye, So after
the Declaration of Independence, I feel like he could have
hung up his spurs. He's in his seventies by this point.
He keeps taking on assignments to go places and do things,
no matter the danger.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
I mean, he's hitting seventy, which is back then considered
retirement age. Yeah. But they give him another mission, which
is we just declared a revolution and we needed the munitions,
we needed the navy, and so they send Franklin off
to France to try to form an alliance in which
the French would come in on outside on the revolution. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
You describe it as the most dangerous, complex and fascinating
of all of his public missions.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
It's a very treacherous voyage, especially during wartime. But Franklin
both out of a sense of duty, but also I
think as a personal sense of venture, wanting to be relevant.
He's there sailing across the ocean, pushing himself in a
somewhat courageous way, when he could have been sitting back
(21:10):
at home in his new house that he had built
in Philadelphia.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
After the break, we dive into Franklin's adventures in France
and how the savvy diplomat charmed the nation in between
playing chess with his mistresses. On December third, seventeen seventy six,
(21:35):
Ben Franklin arrives in France with an enormous diplomatic challenge
ahead of him. He's come to woo the French to
get them to support the American side, because, like the
other founding fathers, he knows that without France's help, the
revolutionaries have no chance of winning the war.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
It is very difficult to get France in on our
side in the revolution. I mean to put it mildly.
The King of France wasn't so much in favor of
revolutions against royal rule. But France has its own interests,
and Franklin is brilliant at both playing to the national
(22:13):
interests of France and the national ideals. So he gets
to France and he plays this balance of power game,
saying France and Spain. The Bourbon pac Nations, along with
the Netherlands, have for more than four hundred years been
fighting off and on with England, and if they come
in with us on our side in the revolution is
going to help the balance of power. It will help
(22:35):
them keep the colonies like in the Caribbean, etc. But
he also plays an idealistic game when he gets there.
He has a printing press and he prints the documents
coming out of America, like the Declaration of Independence or
the rights of Virginia. And he realizes that in France
(22:55):
is welling up this notion of liberty, equality for and
he wants to play to that as well.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
But as we mentioned in an earlier episode, when Benjamin
Franklin gets to France, he's a bit of a rock star.
He's older and widowed by now, but he's a celebrity.
Crowds are waiting at the docks to catch a glimpse
of the guy who invented the lightning rod. He's carried
to the steps of the Academy of Sciences in Paris
to hug Voltaire, and he's dressed in a ridiculous fashion
(23:26):
with a specific purpose in mind.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
When Franklin gets to France. He continues to portray himself
in ways that'll be useful, and he knows that the
French of red Rousseau perhaps wants to do often, and
they worship the backwoods philosopher as a natural man. And
so Franklin gets to France and he wears instead of
(23:50):
a wig, he wears this backwoods fur cap. And so
soon in Paris the women are wearing cafus a la Franklin.
I mean, their hair do is done as if it's
a wool cap. And he just totally wins over the
French people, which he realizes, besides playing to his vanity,
(24:11):
helps him win over the French government, the French foreign
minister and others. They know how popular America and Franklin is.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
Well, that's I mean, it's such a masterful pr move
for him to portray himself as this sort of davy
Crockett who's actually never been out on the frontier fighting
the fight.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Yeah, Franklin was not a backwoods natural wilderness philosopher. He
had lived in the heart of Boston. He had lived
on Market Street, and he had lived on Craven Street
in London. He had barely been to the backwoods on
one trip to Canada, where he's representing the Pennsylvania Assembly
trying to figure out its defenses, he buys a fur
(24:54):
cap and it certainly wins the French over.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
I want to talk about his life outside out of Paris,
or in the suburbs of Paris. It's very striking.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
Yeah, it's Posse, which is a suburb of Paris. It's
a nice manor house. It's used as the American colonial
or then the United States out posts there. So John
Adams is there for a while when he's an agent.
Jefferson of course comes over at some point, but it's
(25:25):
weirdly a nest of spies. There's a guy Edward Bancroft
who's working there who's a total spy on Franklin and
reading his letters. But Franklin says, I've learned that even
if my valet is a spy, to act the same way,
because I'll just do things that I don't care if
they get exposed, which wasn't totally good because Bancroft was
(25:46):
effective at knowing what ships were going over. But Franklin
just leads this fun life in Posse.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
He's a man who rejects pretension in all ways. When
he's younger and throughout his life he represents the rejection
of pretension, but also it seems like he likes a
little bit of the high life.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
Well, I mean, it is true that all people who
reject pretension so don't really mind having a good bottle
of wine now and then, and certainly he was in
that category. He loved Madeira, and yes he never puts
on royal airs, but he does live pretty well, and
of course he loves the adulation. He has two what
(26:28):
he calls mistresses there and at this point, as I say,
he's in his seventies, so they're not purely romantic, but
Madame Brionn, Madame Haviltius, he's flirting with, he's having salons,
he has them over so he loves leading the good
life in Paris and even playing chess while he's in
(26:49):
the bathtub with one of his mistresses. But he also
makes fun about how his relationship won't get too far
even though he dreams of it. That type of thing, and.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Describe this environment as a state that he's living on.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
John Adams is also there, and they're a bit like
oil and water. Franklin said he learned French by writing
Bagatelles to his French girlfriends. Was John Adams learned French
by memorizing funeral orations? And Adams think that Franklin's having
too much fun with Madam Hillvisius and Madame Briawe and others.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
Yeah, there's a little bit of pearl clutching by John
Adams when he arrives onto the scene.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
Oh. John Adams's rivalry was Franklin is the stuff of law.
He's always very jealous. John Adams thought that he had
written the Founding Document of America, which was a resolution
earlier in seventeen seventy six to break away the assemblies
from parliamentary power, and he's upset that Jefferson and then
(27:54):
Franklin are given KREDI says, everybody's going to think it's
just Franklin who's always doing the things. But he also
comes to be a grudging admirer of Franklin.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
And how does Franklin mix this sort of social and
political Like it seems like he's having fun, but there's
a method to it.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
Yeah. I think that, especially his appearance with Voltaire when
they hug on the steps of the Academy, or his
way of being part of the salons, both of Paris
and in Posse. He realizes, as others after him did,
that having this Rakish cachet and a bit of celebrity
(28:35):
gives him a certain power. He can't be ignored or
declared persona non grado the way they did with John Adams.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
And is the rivalry between Adams and Franklin in this time?
I mean, is there a way in which they're driving
each other like they have different outlooks to a certain
extent on how this diplomacy should be taking place. Adams
doesn't always like how Franklin's doing it. But is it
the combination of them that makes it happen or is
Adam's kind of impediment to Franklin's plans?
Speaker 1 (29:04):
Early on, before the revolution was in full force, Adams
and Franklin traveled together to go meet the commander of
the British forces on Staten Island. And it's that scene
where they have to share a bedroom and they argue
about the common cold and the freshness of air. But
they send Adams along because they think Franklin, just by
(29:26):
his nature, is to accommodating. You send him there, you'll
find some deal to be made. Whereas Adams is not
a deal maker, and that continues all the way through
the Great because Adams feels Franklin's too accommodating to the French.
He gives away too much, he wants to be liked
too much, and this is why the French like Franklin.
(29:47):
They don't like Adams, but it's useful for them to
be there. And then the next round is when they
have to negotiate the treaty that ends the war, the
treaty with England, and once again Adams it's a hard
liner and Franklin's more willing to make a deal. So
I guess that combination works well. And how is the
communication happening?
Speaker 2 (30:08):
I mean, these days, no diplomat is operating anywhere in
the world without constant communication with the people who have
dispatched that diplomat there. But it takes a month to
even get there. The letters are going to be slow.
How much is Franklin freelancing and he can do whatever
he wants versus he's tethered to the desires of the
Continental Congress.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
That's why diplomacy was so much more important back then,
because you couldn't have detailed instructions being cabled to you
every hour, Yeah, to wait a month or so. And
so when it comes to doing both the treaty of
Alliance with France and then the treaty that ends in
war with Britain, Franklin has quite a bit of leeway.
(30:49):
And there are some disputes later where he may have
conceded too much on fishing rights or something. But it
was a time when diplomats had to figure out for themselves,
being genius about how to get things done.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
So how does Franklin ultimately sway the French to join
the war and pull off this.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
Feet At first Verjeon, who is a French foreign minister,
and certainly the king resists it. They want to help
America but not have to take blame for it. But
then Franklin was more successful than he could have imagined,
getting a full fledged treaty of alliance, and then even
people like Lafayette being sent over, who becomes an indispensable commander.
(31:36):
In addition to getting Lafayette to come over, of course,
there's the famous John Paul Jones who becomes supplied by
France and his ship is called the bon Homme Richard,
and that's because it's named after poor Richard of Poor
Richard's Almanac. I think that you rarely have seen in
(31:59):
history a blending of idealism and realism that are twined
together the way Franklin did, in other words, with his
public diplomacy and public persona winning over the hearts and
minds of a French people who believed in liberty and
equality and fraternity. There have been other great diplomatic triumphs,
(32:23):
but not ones that depended equally on both realism and idealism.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
So why was obtaining this French alliance so crucial? Without
France we could not have won the revolution. They supply
most of the munitions, the arms, the gunpowder, and then
more importantly it's their navy which has blockaded the coast,
so that you know, when Washington finally wins a few victories,
(32:51):
they can't be reinforced. So by getting France in on
our side, it basically made it possible for the United States.
Says it was then calling itself to triumph militarily rather
than come to a stalemate. But it does feel like
there are many accounts of the Revolution and many accounts
(33:11):
of the founding fathers, and Franklin can end up being
a little bit pushed aside as this sort of compromiser maybe,
or as the person on the sidelines who wasn't quite
the action man that some of these other founders were.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
Franklin played the role of bringing people together, not being
the point person, not being Samuel Adams or being the
most aggressive person, but that role of pulling people together
was essential. Is it going to create a democracy. It's
not going to be driven by passionate leaders. It's going
(33:45):
to be with the people trying to pull things together.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
When it comes to trying to create the treaty that
they'll end the war, there's this question about whether it's
going to be between the three nations or one emerging
nation United States, France, and England, or it's going to
be direct between the US and England. And that feels
like another place where Franklin and Adams come into conflicts.
And there's a question about Franklin being too accommodating.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
One of the agreements the United States had made with
France and part of the Treaty of Alliance, was that
it would not negotiate a totally separate peace with England
without keeping France both informed and consulted. And Franklin is
very good at keeping the French foreign minister in the
loop on all the negotiations. Initially this is Verjon, the
(34:33):
French foreign Minister, but at a certain point Franklin floats
some ideas with his English friends. They come to an
agreement of what the framework of a deal for peace
would look like, and he hasn't fully consulted Verjon. So
when the deal happens, the French are upset, the foreign
(34:56):
minister's upset, and Franklin writes the most soothing diplomatic letter
blaming it on himself, saying, yes, I'm so sorry, but
our love for France and our gratitude whatever. And by
the end of that discussion he has a temerity to
ask for another loan from France, but he's been able
(35:16):
to smooth it over with the French Foreign minister and
the King.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
It almost feels like by that point he's again just
deploying this public persona, both his ability to write, obviously,
but also it's just you can't be mad at Franklin
very long. He always seems to have a plan that
he thinks can solve the dispute.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Benjamin Franklin was the only one of the founders who
is involved in all four of the great founding documents
of America, the Declaration, the Treaty of Alliance with France,
the Treaty that ends the War with Great Britain, and
then the Constitution. Even though he's not seen as a
(35:54):
George Washington, as indispensable or passionate the way Jefferson was,
he was both the glue that held people together and
the thread that tied our progress.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
In the final episode, we discussed ben Franklin's legacy, the
scientific trick he used to keep the Constitutional Convention on track,
and we hear about his personal ledger and the ways
he tried to write his wrongs.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
Franklin always was in favor of compromise, but the big
moral challenge in life is knowing when to compromise and
when to stand true to principle. And he realizes that
they shouldn't have compromised on the issue of slave.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
That's next week on Benjamin Franklin. This show is based
on the writing and research of Walter Isaacson. So stood
by me Evan Ratliffe, produced, mixed and sound designed by
Anna Rubinova. Adam Bozarth is our consulting producer. Lizzie Jacobs
is our editor Social media by Dara Potts. The show
was engineered at CDM Sound Studios from iHeart Podcast. The
(36:54):
executive producers are Katrina Norvell and Ali Perry. For Kalledyscope,
it was executive produced by Mangeshtigaure with an assist from
Oz Walishan Kostaslinos and Kate Osbourne. Special thanks to Amanda Urban,
Bob Pittman, Connell Burn, Will Pearson, Nikki Etor, Kerry Lieberman,
Nathan Otowski.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
And Ali Gavitt.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
And if you like podcasts about inventions what they mean
for humanity, check out my other show, shell Game, about
how it created an AI clone and said it loose
on the world. It's a shell Game dot co. And
for more shows from Kaleidoscope, be sure to visit Kaleidoscope
dot NYC. Thanks so much for listening.
Before he declared he was going to be for independence,
Franklin wanted to have a meeting with his son, William,
who's the royal governor of New Jersey by this point.
And Franklin goes and they meet in a manor house
halfway in between Philadelphia and where William was in New Jersey,
(00:34):
and they have a very long and tough night. And
Benjamin Franklin tells William he's going to be on the
side of the revolution and that William should resign his governorship.
And William doesn't, And I think he was dismayed that
his son had not only become a royal governor and
(00:58):
a loyalist, but was loving the persh of power. And
it's a riff that never gets repaired.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
In many ways, Benjamin Franklin was an unlikely revolutionary. Franklin
was someone who always tried to mend fences rather than
tear them down. Through his work as an experimental scientist,
a writer, and a businessman. He was always problem solving,
looking for the most practical solution. But his pension for
compromise was challenged during the Revolution when his adopted hometown
(01:36):
of Philadelphia became a hotbed of anti colonial fervor still,
Franklin was a man of his times, ready to meet
the moment. But what's surprising is how much of the
work he did on behalf of America was actually done abroad.
In this episode of On Benjamin Franklin, Walter Isaacson paints
the picture of Franklin the diplomat and how his genius
(01:56):
as a statesman may be one of his most underappreciated.
Let's talk about a bit of Franklin and his early
work as a founding father. When does Franklin move from
(02:19):
being this civic minded businessman hanging out with the Leather
Apron Club to really diving into politics.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
When he retires in his early forties and gets interested
in science, he also gets interested in politics in a
larger scale. He believes that we have to all work
together in the various colonies to stave off threats, and
so he takes that notion of civic associations applies it
(02:46):
on a more colonial level, helping fund George Washington and
others fighting the French and Indian War. And so Franklin
is trying to work out a system where instead of
just voluntary associations, we now have to tax ourselves we
now have to govern ourselves. He was a leader in
(03:08):
the Colonial Assembly in Pennsylvania and of the faction that
was trying to oppose the Penn family because the different
colonies had different ways of governance. Some were crown colonies
directly ruled by the king, but some were proprietors like
the Penn family, who had the right to govern Pennsylvania
(03:31):
to some extent. They had a charter, and it was
unclear whether they could tax the people in Pennsylvania and
refuse to pay taxes themselves, which is indeed what was happening,
And so that gets him involved in the things that
lead us to a revolution, whether it's the import duties,
the stamp, taxation without representation. But Franklin's first mission is
(03:56):
simply to loosen the power of the Penn family.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Franklin gets selected by the Assembly to represent Pennsylvania in
London as their agent to the Crown, and he's animated
by the challenge, but he's also excited by the energy
of this bustling city.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Although Philadelphia in the seventeen fifties was the largest city
in America, it had only twenty three thousand inhabitants. It
was just a few dusty streets in a market street,
whereas London was thirty times the size, with a quarter
of a million inhabitants and growing really fast. London was
(04:36):
the largest city in Europe and second only to Beijing
in the world. But it was cramped, It was dirty,
It was filled with disease and prostitutes in clime. More importantly,
it was stratified into an upper class of titled aristocrats
and a lower class of impoverished workers. What Franklin does,
(04:56):
as he did in America, was gravitate to what was
becoming a burgeoning middle class, a middle class of tradesmen
and artisans. When he gets back to London for the
first time, he goes back to the print shop where
he worked as a young printer, and he buys beer
for everybody there, the fashionable aristocrats in London, there were
(05:19):
growing up a lot of clubs such as Whites and
Brooks and Boodles. Franklin didn't feel comfortable there, but there
was for the burgeoning new class of writers and journalists
and professionals and intellectuals. There were coffee shops which provided
newspapers and tables where you could sit all afternoon with
(05:39):
friends and discuss current events, and that's where Franklin gravitated, certainly,
both with his middle class and intellectual friends, but also
people cared about politics. Lark barklay Hume had created an
enlightenment mindset that you saw in London and also in Paris,
(06:00):
and not surprisingly those become the two cities Franklin loves
the most besides Philadelphia. Now there were those who were
more disposed to American rights, and Franklin becomes close to
a lot of them, especially the Whigs. But there are
those in a governing party who consider him dangerous, as
(06:22):
indeed he was to their control.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
And so there's this class of people who are clearly
suspicious of Ben Franklin. Does he have to be careful
about what he says or.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Does Franklin understood the new media age of his time
and how there could be scandals and people could write
scoreless things. And in the seventeen sixties he writes a
letter to his daughter and says, your slightest indiscretions will
be magnified into crimes in order to sensibly wound and
(06:56):
afflict me. In other words, he had become such a celebrity.
He knew that his enemies would be publishing stories about
his family as a way to take him down.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
And that's even something that you might not realize today
if you think of Franklin as how famous he was
for his scientific experiments and famous as a founder, but
that if you're going to be that famous, you will
also generate enemies.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Franklin tried very hard not to generate enemies. This was
a very passionate period that I'm leading up to a revolution,
of course, and whether it was the Penn family or
there was a family of Lee's up in Massachusetts, he
developed enemies of people who either were loyal to the
crown or were loyal to the proprietors. And he tended
(07:41):
his reputation very well. But when he did make enemies,
they were pretty strong enemies.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Now did he have revolutionary notions at that time.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
Franklin was very much a believer in the beauty of
the British Empire. He was very loyal to the concept
of Americans and people in England all being part of
this great empire. He called it a noble vase, and
once it got broken, it wouldn't be put back together.
So as the colonial agent in London, his first mission
(08:13):
is trying to prevent a revolution. Near the end, he
comes up with the plan that the colonial assemblies are
just like Parliament. They're all subject to the king, but
they make their own taxes and do their own governance.
And it's sort of what we now have in the Commonwealth.
Had his plan succeeded, the US would be like Canada.
(08:37):
He got very close and had the Whig state and
power in England. He may have been able to work
out this Commonwealth relationship, but he gets humiliated by the ministers.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
There describe a little bit how that humiliation came about.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
At one point when he keeps presenting petitions to the ministers,
he gets embroiled in controversy over leaking some letters, which
he did. But the most important thing is he gets
called before a hearing of Parliament in what's called the cockpit.
He's wearing this velvet coat and he gets prosecuted and
(09:18):
he doesn't say a word as they keep attacking him
and attacking him. And this is the beginning of his
realization that no, this is not going to work. And
the interesting thing is that years later, when he ends
up at the end of the revolution negotiating both the
(09:38):
alliance with France and then the peace treaty with England.
When he signs it, he puts that same coat back
on and he gusks why, and he says to give
it a little revenge because he remembers that day in
the cockpit.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
So it feels like he's still learning as a diplomat
right now, still figuring out how to maneuver in this
new position.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Right One of Franklin's problems as an agent in England
is he was too accommodat and he tried too hard
to get a solution. He hasn't fervently fought the Stamp Act,
and when it gets back to America, there's a backlash,
so he has to scramble, and in a way that
(10:19):
pushes him towards the side of becoming more revolutionary because
he realizes that he's lost touch with the anti taxation,
anti British sentiments that had welled up in America.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
But in a way he quickly finds his footing because
he actually prints one of the more incendiary pamphlets.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
Yeah. One of the great spurs to revolution in early
seventeen seventy six was an anonymous pamphlet called Common Sense.
It turned out it was written by Thomas Paine, but
people didn't know that it was anonymous, and some people
thought that Franklin had written it. It's a huge success.
(11:00):
I think it'd sold more than one hundred thousand copies.
Even though Franklin wasn't the author, he had an indirect
hand in it because he was the one who had
helped bring Thomas Payne over from England as a cheeky
young hope to be printer and helped get Common Sense published.
(11:22):
So Franklin is bequeathing to a new generation that notion
of being a pamphleteer being published, and that helps bring
us closer to revolution.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
More on that right, after a quick break, let's talk
about the revolution. When the first shots were fired in
(11:53):
April seventeen seventy five, Benjamin Franklin wasn't back from London yet.
He arrives just a few weeks later. What's this scene like.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
In seventeen seventy five, about half the people in the
colonies built loyal to the crown, in about half were
starting to well up with a sense that we were
going to have a revolution. When he finally returns to Philadelphia,
he's greeted by cheering throngs, but there's a question will
(12:22):
he really cast his lot on the side of revolution.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Did the fact that Franklin's son was a real governor
and that he broke with him over independence, did that
lend Franklin more credibility among the revolutionaries or did it
end up casting suspicion on him that he might still
have royal inclinations.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Yeah, well, Franklin's rivals and enemies treated him with some suspicion.
But one thing that happens is George Washington ends up
finally winning in New Jersey and William is arrested, and
it becomes a question whether Benjamin Franklin will earne urge
that his son be parolled or whatever. And no, he doesn't.
(13:04):
He lets his son be arrested and imprisoned in Connecticut.
And I think it's because Benjamin Franklin wanted to make
it clear he didn't have divided loyalties. His new loyalties
were with the new country and not with his son,
the royal governor.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
And so in seventeen seventy six, as a full fledged revolutionary,
Benjamin Franklin joins the Continental Congress.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
One of the things that happens is the Continental Congress
decides if we're going to have a revolution for independence,
we have to write a declaration explaining why we're doing this.
And so the Continental Congress appoints a committee may have
been the last time Congress appointed a great committee. But
on it are Benjamin Franklin, of course, Thomas Jefferson, and
(13:55):
John Adams. And Jefferson gets to write the first draft,
even though he's like really young, I think thirty one
or so, because he's the best writer, he's more passionate,
and he sends it to Franklin for editing, and it's
a wonderful letter, he writes. They're all living in Philadelphia
with the Congress's meeting. He said, with the good doctor
(14:15):
Franklin and all of his wisdom, look over this document
and see what improvements it can make. And it's like
people are really nice to editors back then. And you
see one of the most amazing documents in American history.
It's not just the declaration, but the first draft of
the declaration that's in the Library of Congress. And you
(14:35):
look at the most famous, most brilliant sentence ever written
by human hand, the one that begins, we hold these truths,
And there's Jefferson's first draft, we hold these truths to
be sacred. And Franklin, with the dark black backslashes a
printer he uses to cross something out, takes it out
(14:57):
and writes self evident, and he explains we're trying to
create a new type of nation in which our rights
come not from the dictates of religion, but from rationality
and reason. And the sentence goes on, and there's John
Adams's handwriting when they say endowed by their creator with
certain inalienable rights. So just in the writing of one
(15:19):
half of one sentence, you can see our founders doing
this balance between the role of divine providence and the
role of rationality and reason in securing our rights as
individuals and our governance as a nation.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
I feel you can also see there all of what
you've already discussed about Franklin's inclination towards collaboration and compromise
happening around that document.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Right. What Franklin realizes is that they're balances you have
to put in, And even in that part of a sentence,
you have a balance. It's not all divine right gives
us this, and it's not all just pure rationality. There's
a certain balance that we strike. When we're figuring out
(16:06):
our role as a nation.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
Let's talk about self evident because I want to make
sure we don't gloss over that. The importance of self evident, right,
What was the significance of the phrase.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
When Jefferson writes we hold these truths to be sacred,
and then Franklin edits it to be self evident. He's
partly talking about the role of rationality, but he also
got that phrase from his close friend David Hume, the
world's greatest philosopher at the time. Franklin actually stayed at
(16:38):
the home of David Hume. You know, he met Adam Smith.
He read The Wealth of Nations before it was published.
So Franklin has soaked all this up. And David Hume
had come up with this idea that there were certain
truths that were just self evident.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
And the issue with sacred was I mean, I don't
know how much she explicated this then or leader, but
would the issue with sacred be that anyone could make
a claim on sacred if it had a religious tinge
to it.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Most governments up until that point derive their authority from
an appeal to divinity, the divine right of kings, being
the most famous example, and the grace of God explained
where the power came from. There was something totally new
that was beginning with the Declaration and culminates with the Constitution,
(17:32):
which is, no, the power is not divinely given. It's
something that comes from we the people. And I think
Franklin was saying, we don't want to premise our basic
beliefs that all men have created equal, they're endowed with
(17:52):
certain inalienable rights. We don't want to premise this on
coming from theology. No, it comes from certain evident truth.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
And then we get this moment, this most famous moment
of John Hancock saying there must be no pulling in
different ways.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
When they're signing the declaration. John Hancock of course does
it with the famous flourish and he says, we must
not all go our separate ways. We have to hang together.
And Franklin, that's the theme of his life, that we
have to all intertwine, we have to all hold hands,
and he says a famous funny line, which is, yes,
we all must hang together, or surely we'll all hang separately.
(18:30):
And so this notion of working collegially and in tandem
to assert our rights that begins with the Declaration then
culminates with the Constitution.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
There was one smaller moment that just really struck me
in the way that Franklin shows up and influences so
many different aspects of American life. And it's that don't
tread on Me flag that he also happens to be
the person who saw that flag and brought it in
to be more official flag of the revolution.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
Yeah, it was part of Franklin's genius of sort of
knowing how to visually convey information, How a Join or
Die cartoon of a snake being cut up, how these
visual things can have an impact.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
He loved a snake. He's got the snake in Join
or Die. There's the don't tread on Me snake, and
he has all philosophy about why the snake is the
right symbol. It doesn't strike first.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
But when it strikes, it strikes, yes, right exactly. Another
snake that's interesting that we have to deal with today
is one of Franklin's sort of friends but occasional opponents,
the guy named Albert Gary, who didn't really believe in
a pure democracy. He felt that the rabble shouldn't be
(19:50):
allowed to rule too much. And among other things, that
he creates as his congressional district that looks like a snake,
and it gets called a gary Man. Nowadays we pronounced
it Jerry Mander based on Albert Gary doing that snake
like district, and Franklin thought that was a bit appalling.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
One snake that he didn't care for. Ye, So after
the Declaration of Independence, I feel like he could have
hung up his spurs. He's in his seventies by this point.
He keeps taking on assignments to go places and do things,
no matter the danger.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
I mean, he's hitting seventy, which is back then considered
retirement age. Yeah. But they give him another mission, which
is we just declared a revolution and we needed the munitions,
we needed the navy, and so they send Franklin off
to France to try to form an alliance in which
the French would come in on outside on the revolution. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
You describe it as the most dangerous, complex and fascinating
of all of his public missions.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
It's a very treacherous voyage, especially during wartime. But Franklin
both out of a sense of duty, but also I
think as a personal sense of venture, wanting to be relevant.
He's there sailing across the ocean, pushing himself in a
somewhat courageous way, when he could have been sitting back
(21:10):
at home in his new house that he had built
in Philadelphia.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
After the break, we dive into Franklin's adventures in France
and how the savvy diplomat charmed the nation in between
playing chess with his mistresses. On December third, seventeen seventy six,
(21:35):
Ben Franklin arrives in France with an enormous diplomatic challenge
ahead of him. He's come to woo the French to
get them to support the American side, because, like the
other founding fathers, he knows that without France's help, the
revolutionaries have no chance of winning the war.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
It is very difficult to get France in on our
side in the revolution. I mean to put it mildly.
The King of France wasn't so much in favor of
revolutions against royal rule. But France has its own interests,
and Franklin is brilliant at both playing to the national
(22:13):
interests of France and the national ideals. So he gets
to France and he plays this balance of power game,
saying France and Spain. The Bourbon pac Nations, along with
the Netherlands, have for more than four hundred years been
fighting off and on with England, and if they come
in with us on our side in the revolution is
going to help the balance of power. It will help
(22:35):
them keep the colonies like in the Caribbean, etc. But
he also plays an idealistic game when he gets there.
He has a printing press and he prints the documents
coming out of America, like the Declaration of Independence or
the rights of Virginia. And he realizes that in France
(22:55):
is welling up this notion of liberty, equality for and
he wants to play to that as well.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
But as we mentioned in an earlier episode, when Benjamin
Franklin gets to France, he's a bit of a rock star.
He's older and widowed by now, but he's a celebrity.
Crowds are waiting at the docks to catch a glimpse
of the guy who invented the lightning rod. He's carried
to the steps of the Academy of Sciences in Paris
to hug Voltaire, and he's dressed in a ridiculous fashion
(23:26):
with a specific purpose in mind.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
When Franklin gets to France. He continues to portray himself
in ways that'll be useful, and he knows that the
French of red Rousseau perhaps wants to do often, and
they worship the backwoods philosopher as a natural man. And
so Franklin gets to France and he wears instead of
(23:50):
a wig, he wears this backwoods fur cap. And so
soon in Paris the women are wearing cafus a la Franklin.
I mean, their hair do is done as if it's
a wool cap. And he just totally wins over the
French people, which he realizes, besides playing to his vanity,
(24:11):
helps him win over the French government, the French foreign
minister and others. They know how popular America and Franklin is.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
Well, that's I mean, it's such a masterful pr move
for him to portray himself as this sort of davy
Crockett who's actually never been out on the frontier fighting
the fight.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Yeah, Franklin was not a backwoods natural wilderness philosopher. He
had lived in the heart of Boston. He had lived
on Market Street, and he had lived on Craven Street
in London. He had barely been to the backwoods on
one trip to Canada, where he's representing the Pennsylvania Assembly
trying to figure out its defenses, he buys a fur
(24:54):
cap and it certainly wins the French over.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
I want to talk about his life outside out of Paris,
or in the suburbs of Paris. It's very striking.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
Yeah, it's Posse, which is a suburb of Paris. It's
a nice manor house. It's used as the American colonial
or then the United States out posts there. So John
Adams is there for a while when he's an agent.
Jefferson of course comes over at some point, but it's
(25:25):
weirdly a nest of spies. There's a guy Edward Bancroft
who's working there who's a total spy on Franklin and
reading his letters. But Franklin says, I've learned that even
if my valet is a spy, to act the same way,
because I'll just do things that I don't care if
they get exposed, which wasn't totally good because Bancroft was
(25:46):
effective at knowing what ships were going over. But Franklin
just leads this fun life in Posse.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
He's a man who rejects pretension in all ways. When
he's younger and throughout his life he represents the rejection
of pretension, but also it seems like he likes a
little bit of the high life.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
Well, I mean, it is true that all people who
reject pretension so don't really mind having a good bottle
of wine now and then, and certainly he was in
that category. He loved Madeira, and yes he never puts
on royal airs, but he does live pretty well, and
of course he loves the adulation. He has two what
(26:28):
he calls mistresses there and at this point, as I say,
he's in his seventies, so they're not purely romantic, but
Madame Brionn, Madame Haviltius, he's flirting with, he's having salons,
he has them over so he loves leading the good
life in Paris and even playing chess while he's in
(26:49):
the bathtub with one of his mistresses. But he also
makes fun about how his relationship won't get too far
even though he dreams of it. That type of thing, and.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Describe this environment as a state that he's living on.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
John Adams is also there, and they're a bit like
oil and water. Franklin said he learned French by writing
Bagatelles to his French girlfriends. Was John Adams learned French
by memorizing funeral orations? And Adams think that Franklin's having
too much fun with Madam Hillvisius and Madame Briawe and others.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
Yeah, there's a little bit of pearl clutching by John
Adams when he arrives onto the scene.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
Oh. John Adams's rivalry was Franklin is the stuff of law.
He's always very jealous. John Adams thought that he had
written the Founding Document of America, which was a resolution
earlier in seventeen seventy six to break away the assemblies
from parliamentary power, and he's upset that Jefferson and then
(27:54):
Franklin are given KREDI says, everybody's going to think it's
just Franklin who's always doing the things. But he also
comes to be a grudging admirer of Franklin.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
And how does Franklin mix this sort of social and
political Like it seems like he's having fun, but there's
a method to it.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
Yeah. I think that, especially his appearance with Voltaire when
they hug on the steps of the Academy, or his
way of being part of the salons, both of Paris
and in Posse. He realizes, as others after him did,
that having this Rakish cachet and a bit of celebrity
(28:35):
gives him a certain power. He can't be ignored or
declared persona non grado the way they did with John Adams.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
And is the rivalry between Adams and Franklin in this time?
I mean, is there a way in which they're driving
each other like they have different outlooks to a certain
extent on how this diplomacy should be taking place. Adams
doesn't always like how Franklin's doing it. But is it
the combination of them that makes it happen or is
Adam's kind of impediment to Franklin's plans?
Speaker 1 (29:04):
Early on, before the revolution was in full force, Adams
and Franklin traveled together to go meet the commander of
the British forces on Staten Island. And it's that scene
where they have to share a bedroom and they argue
about the common cold and the freshness of air. But
they send Adams along because they think Franklin, just by
(29:26):
his nature, is to accommodating. You send him there, you'll
find some deal to be made. Whereas Adams is not
a deal maker, and that continues all the way through
the Great because Adams feels Franklin's too accommodating to the French.
He gives away too much, he wants to be liked
too much, and this is why the French like Franklin.
(29:47):
They don't like Adams, but it's useful for them to
be there. And then the next round is when they
have to negotiate the treaty that ends the war, the
treaty with England, and once again Adams it's a hard
liner and Franklin's more willing to make a deal. So
I guess that combination works well. And how is the
communication happening?
Speaker 2 (30:08):
I mean, these days, no diplomat is operating anywhere in
the world without constant communication with the people who have
dispatched that diplomat there. But it takes a month to
even get there. The letters are going to be slow.
How much is Franklin freelancing and he can do whatever
he wants versus he's tethered to the desires of the
Continental Congress.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
That's why diplomacy was so much more important back then,
because you couldn't have detailed instructions being cabled to you
every hour, Yeah, to wait a month or so. And
so when it comes to doing both the treaty of
Alliance with France and then the treaty that ends in
war with Britain, Franklin has quite a bit of leeway.
(30:49):
And there are some disputes later where he may have
conceded too much on fishing rights or something. But it
was a time when diplomats had to figure out for themselves,
being genius about how to get things done.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
So how does Franklin ultimately sway the French to join
the war and pull off this.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
Feet At first Verjeon, who is a French foreign minister,
and certainly the king resists it. They want to help
America but not have to take blame for it. But
then Franklin was more successful than he could have imagined,
getting a full fledged treaty of alliance, and then even
people like Lafayette being sent over, who becomes an indispensable commander.
(31:36):
In addition to getting Lafayette to come over, of course,
there's the famous John Paul Jones who becomes supplied by
France and his ship is called the bon Homme Richard,
and that's because it's named after poor Richard of Poor
Richard's Almanac. I think that you rarely have seen in
(31:59):
history a blending of idealism and realism that are twined
together the way Franklin did, in other words, with his
public diplomacy and public persona winning over the hearts and
minds of a French people who believed in liberty and
equality and fraternity. There have been other great diplomatic triumphs,
(32:23):
but not ones that depended equally on both realism and idealism.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
So why was obtaining this French alliance so crucial? Without
France we could not have won the revolution. They supply
most of the munitions, the arms, the gunpowder, and then
more importantly it's their navy which has blockaded the coast,
so that you know, when Washington finally wins a few victories,
(32:51):
they can't be reinforced. So by getting France in on
our side, it basically made it possible for the United States.
Says it was then calling itself to triumph militarily rather
than come to a stalemate. But it does feel like
there are many accounts of the Revolution and many accounts
(33:11):
of the founding fathers, and Franklin can end up being
a little bit pushed aside as this sort of compromiser maybe,
or as the person on the sidelines who wasn't quite
the action man that some of these other founders were.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
Franklin played the role of bringing people together, not being
the point person, not being Samuel Adams or being the
most aggressive person, but that role of pulling people together
was essential. Is it going to create a democracy. It's
not going to be driven by passionate leaders. It's going
(33:45):
to be with the people trying to pull things together.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
When it comes to trying to create the treaty that
they'll end the war, there's this question about whether it's
going to be between the three nations or one emerging
nation United States, France, and England, or it's going to
be direct between the US and England. And that feels
like another place where Franklin and Adams come into conflicts.
And there's a question about Franklin being too accommodating.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
One of the agreements the United States had made with
France and part of the Treaty of Alliance, was that
it would not negotiate a totally separate peace with England
without keeping France both informed and consulted. And Franklin is
very good at keeping the French foreign minister in the
loop on all the negotiations. Initially this is Verjon, the
(34:33):
French foreign Minister, but at a certain point Franklin floats
some ideas with his English friends. They come to an
agreement of what the framework of a deal for peace
would look like, and he hasn't fully consulted Verjon. So
when the deal happens, the French are upset, the foreign
(34:56):
minister's upset, and Franklin writes the most soothing diplomatic letter
blaming it on himself, saying, yes, I'm so sorry, but
our love for France and our gratitude whatever. And by
the end of that discussion he has a temerity to
ask for another loan from France, but he's been able
(35:16):
to smooth it over with the French Foreign minister and
the King.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
It almost feels like by that point he's again just
deploying this public persona, both his ability to write, obviously,
but also it's just you can't be mad at Franklin
very long. He always seems to have a plan that
he thinks can solve the dispute.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Benjamin Franklin was the only one of the founders who
is involved in all four of the great founding documents
of America, the Declaration, the Treaty of Alliance with France,
the Treaty that ends the War with Great Britain, and
then the Constitution. Even though he's not seen as a
(35:54):
George Washington, as indispensable or passionate the way Jefferson was,
he was both the glue that held people together and
the thread that tied our progress.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
In the final episode, we discussed ben Franklin's legacy, the
scientific trick he used to keep the Constitutional Convention on track,
and we hear about his personal ledger and the ways
he tried to write his wrongs.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
Franklin always was in favor of compromise, but the big
moral challenge in life is knowing when to compromise and
when to stand true to principle. And he realizes that
they shouldn't have compromised on the issue of slave.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
That's next week on Benjamin Franklin. This show is based
on the writing and research of Walter Isaacson. So stood
by me Evan Ratliffe, produced, mixed and sound designed by
Anna Rubinova. Adam Bozarth is our consulting producer. Lizzie Jacobs
is our editor Social media by Dara Potts. The show
was engineered at CDM Sound Studios from iHeart Podcast. The
(36:54):
executive producers are Katrina Norvell and Ali Perry. For Kalledyscope,
it was executive produced by Mangeshtigaure with an assist from
Oz Walishan Kostaslinos and Kate Osbourne. Special thanks to Amanda Urban,
Bob Pittman, Connell Burn, Will Pearson, Nikki Etor, Kerry Lieberman,
Nathan Otowski.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
And Ali Gavitt.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
And if you like podcasts about inventions what they mean
for humanity, check out my other show, shell Game, about
how it created an AI clone and said it loose
on the world. It's a shell Game dot co. And
for more shows from Kaleidoscope, be sure to visit Kaleidoscope
dot NYC. Thanks so much for listening.
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