The Backstory: Do it my way: Politics bust up a Founding Father’s family

You think politics bust up our families? It’s hard to believe that, like us, politics could fracture a Founding Father’s family. Ben Franklin was incredibly close to his son William, then NJ’s royal governor, until he declared his allegiance to the king.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Are you with me here? YOU'LLI get politics these days,
and you can't imagine more dysfunction even among family members. Ah,
the good old days. When you think of the founding fathers,
you think full on dedication to the revolutionary spirit. Right.
But did you know one of the most iconic names
in US history had a son who was a loyalist

(00:21):
to the British crown for the entire war and they
never spoke again. I'm Patty Steele. Ben Franklin's politics were
thicker than blood. That's next on the backstory. We're back
with the backstory. Benjamin Franklin was a little bit of
a puzzle now. On the one hand, he loved England

(00:42):
and his British heritage. He's a huge fan of the king,
and he really loved the fancy life in the European courts,
the high end manners, the intellectual stimulation, and especially hanging
out with the gorgeous party girls of the British and
French aristocracy. The ultimate ladies man. Believe it or not,
that was Ben. But after years living over there as

(01:05):
a diplomat from the colonies, he began to realize the
Brits in particular looked down their noses at Americans thought
of us as uncultured. On top of that, he began
to fully understand what British rule was costing folks in America.
So let's go back in time. When Ben was twenty
four years old, a woman he was sleeping with gave

(01:26):
birth to a baby boy, William. Ben wanted to raise
William himself and make sure that being illegitimate didn't define him,
so he entered into a common law marriage with Deborah,
a former sweetheart, letting her know that he and baby
William were kind of a package deal. She accepted that,
and while Ben was in Europe, she ran his publishing

(01:47):
business and was a terrific mother to William and the
one surviving child they had together, a daughter named Sarah,
but she was a girl and not nearly as interesting
to Ben. He was incredibly close to a son and
made sure William had the best tutors and later schooling,
But Ben wasn't much of a husband. He spent most
of the years between seventeen fifty seven and seventeen seventy

(02:11):
five in England and was the first ambassador to France
from seventeen seventy six to seventeen eighty five. That's almost
thirty years overseas with very little time at home, all
without his wife, who hated the idea of ocean travel.
During his years in England, Ben pretty much never saw Deborah.
In fact, she died in seventeen seventy four while he

(02:34):
was in England, having not seen Ben for the last
ten years of her life. She had had several strokes
in her last years, and Ben never returned home to
see her despite her requests. So eventually, in the year
before her death, she simply stopped writing to him, which
he weirdly didn't understand now. As for William, Ben encouraged

(02:55):
him to become active in public service as a royalist
like himself in the seventheen forties. The two were exceptionally tight.
In fact, a family friend described William as Ben's friend,
his brother, his intimate, his companion. When Ben went to
London in seventeen fifty seven, William went with him and
studied law. There. They toured the country, made important friends,

(03:18):
and attended the coronation of King George the Third in
seventeen sixty one. But you see, that's where the trouble started.
All that exposure to the British high life made William
a believer. When he returned to America, he brought a
British wife from an influential aristocratic British family, and he

(03:39):
was appointed Royal Governor of New Jersey. Ben and William
had shared so many interests, and both were brilliant and
charismatic guys. But while William was becoming more devoted to
the royal cause, his dad was becoming more of a revolutionary.

(04:00):
Left England just as the first shots of the Revolutionary
War were fired at Lexington and Concord in seventeen seventy five,
and that conflict pulled the two apart, with Ben now
an ardent patriot and William a committed loyalist. Ben tried
to win William over early, even had some shouting matches
when Ben tried to get William to step down as

(04:21):
Royal governor and become a patriot. Of course, that didn't happen,
and worst of all, Ben did manage to convert William's son,
Temple to the patriot's cause. It was over between father
and son. William was as devoted to the royal cause
as his father was to the cause of independence, and
Ben was prepared to totally banish his son from his life.

(04:44):
As the revolution got under way, William was arrested by
continental authorities and put in prison. In fact, the Continental Congress,
which ran the colonies during the war, wouldn't even allow
William to visit his wife as she was dying in
seventeen seventy eight. Even though George Washington himself made a
personal appeal and Ben did nothing to help his son,

(05:06):
he remained in prison for a little over two years.
Even the end of the war in seventeen eighty three
didn't fix things between the two. William was exiled from
the brand new USA and he moved to England to
rebuild his life there. But here's the thing. He really
wanted to reconnect with his father. So William wrote to Ben, saying,

(05:28):
I hope it's possible for us to revive that affectionate
intercourse and connection which till the war had been the
pride and happiness of my life. Ben replied, nothing has
ever hurt me so much and affected me with such
keen sensations as to find myself deserted in my old
age by my only son, and to find him taking

(05:49):
up arms against me in a cause wherein my good, fame,
fortune in life were all at stake. He didn't really
care that William was following his heart and his own
path like his dad would. Ben wanted him to follow
his Ben did agree to meet William in England later
in seventeen eighty five, but when they first arrived at

(06:11):
the meeting place, the first thing Ben did was ask
his son to apologize for his loyalty to the king
during the war, and William would not, and that finished that. Ben,
in his will, disinherited William, saying I leave him no
part of an estate he endeavored to deprive me of.
Much like we see in our own disturbing political climate,

(06:34):
it came down to ideology over blood. Benjamin and William
Franklin never saw each other again. Hope you're enjoying the
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(06:56):
me if you have a story you'd like me to cover.
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I'm Patty Steele. The Backstories a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks,
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(07:17):
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