684. Franklin: Revenge of the American Genius (Part 2)

20:55Tom Holland:So again, by the time he is 40, if you read something that Franklin has written and you don't know that he'd written it, you would recognize it immediately. And that again is a kind of incredibly useful skill for someone who's going to become a propagandist for a revolution. People are familiar with his tone with his kind of approach and his attitude and basically it consists of sugaring a kind of moralizing tone with wit with satire with parable and that again i think is a kind of very characteristic quality of american public life moralizing but folksy yeah very very very ragin

21:33Dominic Sandbrook:yeah parables little anecdotes and stories and and what franklin combines so so the moralism is is a it's a serious part of it isn't it so if we just talk about the folksiness and the sugar we miss something about franklin which is there is a there is an absolutely serious moral core that i guess derives ultimately from the puritans yeah so this is this is the link back to the the kind

21:56Tom Holland:of the 17th century um that that childhood puritanism the emphasis that he had inherited from his parents on industry and frugality and diligence in one's calling and all of that it is kind of religiously inspired it is puritan and it was famously highlighted um in early 20th century by kind of great the great classic on this topic by a german writer called max weber who wrote a book the protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism and weber was fascinated by the question of how it was that franklin was able to assume that the morality that he was preaching about the need for diligence for frugality and so on how is he able to assume that this was actually moral and Weber's answer is he answers in his autobiography with a quotation from the bible which his strict puritan father drummed into him again and again in his youth seest thou a man diligent in his business he shall stand before kings and that is a quote from the the book of proverbs so it's a very very christian lesson a puritan lesson But at the same time, what makes Franklin's moralizing about this so appealing to non-Puritan Americans in the 18th century, and in the 18th century, lots of Americans are starting to move on from the Puritanism, even in Massachusetts, is that there isn't actually kind of any real overt Christianity in it at all.

23:27Tom Holland:And there is a brilliant book on this, on the kind of occludedly Christian character of Franklin's folksiness and moralism and teachings by a guy called Thomas Kidd, Benjamin Franklin, The Religious Life of a Founding Father. And Keir's argument, essentially, is that Franklin does remain tethered to the teachings that he's adopted as a child in this Puritan household. But he had wearied of the kind of the Puritan emphasis on doctrine and orthodoxy and devotion to the specifics of biblical teaching. He's not really into that. He's a much kind of broad brush guy. He wants emphasis on love, on charity, on service to all of mankind.

24:10Tom Holland:So Thomas Kidd writes, Franklin was an experimenter at heart and he tinkered with a novel form of Christianity, one where virtually all beliefs become non-essential. And this is hugely popular because it enables Americans to retain their kind of gut Christian convictions without having to worry about the details of doctrine or indeed even having to bother with going to church particularly.

24:33Dominic Sandbrook:And doesn't Thomas Kidd have an excellent shine that the heir to Benjamin, the true heir to Benjamin Franklin in this regard is actually Oprah Winfrey? Yes. Because Oprah Winfrey is all about... Kindness. Yeah, kindness. Prince Harry would love all this.

24:49Tom Holland:Yes. Well, I mean, I think that it's a form of Christianity that is, it's the default mode of millions and millions of people in America and the West more generally. And Franklin is, as Kidd says, a kind of tinkerer.

25:00Dominic Sandbrook:slightly Kumbaya but of course at the time perceived uh probably not as a slightly vague woolly and touchy-feely but actually as a sign of skepticism and free thinking and very much of the

25:13Tom Holland:of the mood of the enlightenment I guess yeah so this is the the other kind of aspect of Franklin for which he becomes famous is that even as he is dispensing this kind of um post-Puritan folksy morality, he is also able to present himself, because he's not talking in overtly Christian terms, as a kind of an emblematic figure of the Enlightenment, which over the course of his life in Europe and increasingly in America is kind of sweeping the top intellectuals of the age. So in 1757, Franklin crosses the Atlantic for what is going to turn out to be a five-year stay in Britain. Even before he leaves, he has already been taken very, very seriously by top European thinkers to a degree that no American had been taken seriously before in Europe.

26:02Tom Holland:So in 1759, he goes to Scotland and he stays in Edinburgh, you know, the Athens of the North. This is the golden age of the Scottish Enlightenment. And he meets with David Hume, who is the greatest philosopher of his age, really. And Hume and Franklin get on tremendously well. They have a kind of great dinner party. They both enjoy life. They're both bon vivos. And after it, Hume writes to Franklin and he says, America has sent us many good things, gold, silver, sugar, tobacco, indigo, but you are the first philosopher and indeed the first great man of letters for whom we are beholden to her.

26:37Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah. And I think that's true, isn't it? Franklin is the first genuinely international class intellectual that the North American colonists have produced. And this is not just because he's saying, you know, waste not one nut or whatever he's writing in these entertaining parables. But it's also because he does something else that we're massive admirers of for the rest of his history. He's pushing back the frontiers of science. He is.

27:03Tom Holland:But more specifically, he has conducted the single most resonant scientific experiment of the whole of the 18th century. So Ritchie Robinson, author of a brilliant recent book on the Enlightenment, describes this experiment as the great symbolic moment for the Enlightenment and for its project of freeing humanity from needless terrors. And this experiment had occurred in June 1752 in Philadelphia when Franklin, who is helped by his only surviving son, a young man called William, had gone out into a thunderstorm with a kite. And he had flown this kite in the kind of the gusting of the winds. And this kite, he had attached a kind of sharp wire to its end.

27:51Tom Holland:And this in turn, when it went up into the sky, into the winds, had succeeded in drawing electric sparks from a cloud. And Franklin drew the conclusion from this, thereby the sameness of electrical matter with that of lightning was completely demonstrated.

28:09Dominic Sandbrook:So this is simultaneously, well, depending on how you perceive it, it is a very forward-thinking experiment. It is courageous. It's also criminally reckless. if a 17 year old boy on a british council estate did this there'd be a two-page story in the daily express about the debasement of intellect among the nation's youth or something wouldn't it yeah well the top egghead electrocute son or something yeah exactly yeah i mean you say it's dangerous so

28:35Tom Holland:a year after franklin did this experiment a russian tried to replicate it i'm gonna electrocute it and killed i mean i shouldn't laugh but it is exceedingly dangerous but it has massive consequences So first of all, it proves that all this stuff about Zeus sending lightning as the expression of the wrath of the gods or whatever, that this is nonsense. It is a physical phenomenon.

28:54Dominic Sandbrook:Finally, that long-running question has been solved. For people, this is a revelation to me. The people in the 17th century walking around saying, is Zeus really throwing thunderbolts? Surely not.

29:05Tom Holland:Well, let's say that for as long as humans have been on the planet, there have been those who have feared that it is an expression of the anger of the gods or whatever. I mean, not all of them have your sophisticated relationship to knowledge of physical sciences. I mean, that has to be, you have to accept that.

29:18Dominic Sandbrook:No, they're fair. Yeah.

29:19Tom Holland:But it also has very practical consequences. This isn't just about, you know, knowledge for knowledge's sake. So Franklin gets the people of Philadelphia to put lightning rods on the high buildings of the city. Okay, I've got a question. Yeah. To what end? Because the lightning rods will attract the lightning and run it down. And for some reason, the electricity will be dispersed and it won't set the churches on fire or whatever. Is that right? is that really how it works that is basically how it works um if we have top lightning rod analysts um listening to this perhaps they can expand i knew you were going to ask me that question i think i've kind of given the rough gist of it basically lightning rods work this is this

29:55Dominic Sandbrook:is all you need to keep in mind they do something and that's brilliant and everyone loves it yeah

29:59Tom Holland:but also the thing that's very impressive about franklin is that even though he's invented these lightning rods he doesn't put a patent on it because he wants them to he wants everybody to be able to use it to do something no one knows what it is but they'll do something with these lighting rods it will stop um lightning strikes on buildings starting fires which in a period where most buildings are made of wood he is benefiting humanity so tom you rave about the lightning rod

30:21Dominic Sandbrook:but i would say that plays a very much a secondary role given that this is a man who's invented the handheld flipper is that a lot of more well you say man he did it when he was a child when he was a boy i mean i think that's wow incredibly impressive so so talk me through the flippers I would say normally you wear a flipper on your foot I mean I don't wear flippers as a matter of

30:41Tom Holland:course he begins with flippers on his hands it speeds him up and then he tries them on the feet as well so he basically invents a flipper he also invents weather forecasting which I think is genuinely very impressive and he'd done this by analyzing the movement of east coast storms and it was something about fronts or whatever again don't quite know the details but he invents weather forecasting so put that in the ledger and famously he invents bifocal glasses which he does quite late when in 1784 so if you ever see franklin in a kind of play or a film or something he will always be wearing his bifocal spectacles he also just for good measure he um he identifies maps and names the gulf stream brilliant love the gulf stream you know the dream of warm water that keeps britain um free of sub-zero temperatures and when he's in britain he goes for a walk on clapham common which is i should think a mile and a half from where i'm sitting right now And it's very stormy.

31:36Tom Holland:And there's a pond in Clapham Common. And it's very rough. And he plays a tremendous trick to impress the people he's walking with. He takes out a little flask of oil and he pours oil on it. And I'm going to quote from my notes here. He thereby demonstrates the existence of what will subsequently be termed surface tension.

31:54Dominic Sandbrook:And for those of us not as clued up as you are, like, how does that work exactly?

31:58Tom Holland:well oil dominic as you will know spreads on water until it's only one molecule thick and it therefore demonstrates how molecules interact with the surface of a liquid correct i was i

32:12Dominic Sandbrook:hoped you'd say that and you did so because i didn't want to do a podcast for somebody who didn't know so um anyway you think he's brilliant you think he's leonardo da vinci basically no i

32:21Tom Holland:don't i don't think he's leonardo because in a sense this is all actually quite kind of second division stuff but he is seen by his peers in the 18th century as basically being the leonardo

32:32Dominic Sandbrook:of the enlightenment you think the flipper the lightning rod and the oil on troubled waters is

32:37Tom Holland:second division i think the lightning rod is is impressive but i think when it comes to kind of inventing and scientific breakthroughs and stuff he's too folksy it's all about flippers and all this stuff makes him famous and he's you know listen i have never invented a lightning rod or anything so who am i to criticize him it's the kind of stuff that you would get in a science is

32:54Dominic Sandbrook:fun book aimed at eight-year-olds totally it's so bbc2 it's bbc2 eight o 'clock it's 1986 it's some wacky science program presented by a comedian blue peter exactly for children so that's the kind of level he's operating but that's the kind of level you know that kind of appeals you can turn your cardboard box into a hovercraft that's benjamin franklin's vibe and i think also

33:19Tom Holland:that it is that it is a kind of very british vibe this is the kind of stuff that everyone in britain is doing at this time as well you know it's tinkering kind of inventing steam engines and things like that and so they when when frankly comes to britain they welcome him as one of his own and he's in britain a lot so between 1757 and 1775 he spends 16 years in all in the very center of things uh in a house just off what is now trafalgar square um so so by white hall um and this is a house on craven street and it's the only surviving house where where franklin stayed you can go and see it it's it's um well worth a visit and i think he's such a celebrity particularly in britain but also in france as we will see and and further afield that he comes to have a huge impact on how america is seen and because he has this status as an inventor of flippers and lightning rods or whatever it it helps him to brand the new world not as a kind of dumping ground for mad religious zealots almost as the opposite as a kind of laboratory of the future you know a testing ground for the enlightenment and even before he's arrived people have been putting lightning rods up on some of the most famous buildings in london so saint paul's has got one um saint james's palace so he's you know he's he's much much admired he's also brilliant at portraying himself and by extension america as a kind of antidote to flummery and hierarchy hierarchy and pretension and snobbery.

34:49Tom Holland:And this, again, is going to be a theme of America's relationship to the old world, that America is a frontier society. People are somehow nobler, better, simpler there. And again, Franklin is the guy who really kind of brands this. He's the guy who initiates this whole kind of comparison. So even though he's not a Quaker, he dresses like one. People in Britain are very respectful of Quakers. They like that. So Franklin is very self-consciously kind of plugging into that image. He gets elected a member of the Royal Society, the great scientific community that Newton and everybody had belonged to.

35:21Tom Holland:And he casts himself as a member of the Royal Society's belonging to the true aristocracy of the Enlightenment. This is much better than being a duke or something. And again, he kind of weaponizes, I think in an overtly performative way, a kind of eccentricity. He becomes well known in London for his air baths, he calls them which involves he gets up in the morning he opens all his windows um he sits um on the the side of his bed without any clothes at all so the great rolls of his belly kind of flummering over his knees and he'll sit there for half an hour whatever the season whether it's summer or whether the snow is gusting in um and he sees this as being good for his health do you

36:02Dominic Sandbrook:know who would really approve of this a new producer callum hill because he was telling me last week that he go he's gone all these foreign trips where he strips off naked and jumps into like pools and baths and stuff well turkey finland i think he's not wrong because if you think how how long franklin lived japan he did it in japan he's written in the chat callum's like stripped off in countries all over the world i mean if callum lives as long as benjamin franklin

36:25Tom Holland:he'll have done well also similar callum always wears flippers on his hands all the time it's an eccentricity isn't it now dominic it has to be said that there although there are lots of people in Britain who love all this. There are also lots of people who hate it and they mistrust Franklin and his kind of enlightenment posing as atheistical, as seditious, as threatening to the established order. Now we're talking. They too, a bit like you, despise his folksiness as kind of provincial and rustic and a bit cringe, I think.

37:02Dominic Sandbrook:And Tom, among their number of critics and skeptics is they're the greatest man in history yes um samuel johnson dr johnson he views everything

37:12Tom Holland:about franklin as just the rankest hypocrisy now it's interesting they are kind of the lions of london at the same time as far as we know they never met although james boswell who is samuel johnson's biographer did meet franklin and got on well with him but i think the fact that johnson and franklin never met it's a kind of known unknown the reason that they don't meet i suspect is precisely because they're so keen not to meet they are very hostile to each other's principles

37:40Dominic Sandbrook:but also is it not that basically they are that the room isn't big enough for both of them that they you know they've both got their eccentricities they're both incredibly clever they're both the center of the star of the show the center of attention they're like they're like two successful podcasters on rival goal hanger podcasts you can't be brought into the same room

38:00Tom Holland:except for the fact that there is a very specific point ideological point of difference between them and this is the topic of slavery so dr johnson was he was very hostile to americans as a matter of principle and he was particularly hostile to the claim that americans had to be fonder of liberty than people in Britain. And he famously wrote of the War of Independence, how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes? And Franklin had brought with him to London two slaves. One of these slaves had then absconded and Franklin had composed an advert that he wanted to put in the papers requesting the slaves return.

38:46Tom Holland:He then thought better of it, I think because he was nervous for being accused of hypocrisy, but it didn't stop him in 1770 from writing an anonymous defense of slavery that I think is probably the lowest point in his career. And 1770 is the year in which he also wrote that parable about the English Mastiff and the Lion Club. And it was prompted by growing tensions between the British government and the American colonies and Franklin's own despair at the thought of where these tensions might lead. So he wrote, being born and bred in one of the countries and having lived long and made many agreeable connections in the other, I wish all prosperity to both.

39:30Tom Holland:And his instinct throughout this period of growing tension between Britain and the American colonies is always to call for civility and good manners and essentially to behave as he had behaved on Clapham Common, to pour oil on troubled waters. but the problem for franklin he's by this point been in london for so long that he is essentially he's kind of lost touch with the the growing mood of radicalism on the other side of the atlantic and he's failed to realize how far he's lagging behind this mood of radicalism and that means that you know he is going to have to wise up and the point is approaching essentially where he is going going to have to decide where his loyalties lie.

40:16Tom Holland:Do they lie with Britain or do they lie with the colonies back in America?

40:21Dominic Sandbrook:So Franklin has an excruciating choice to make and he'll be making that choice after the break. Hi, this is Gary Lineker from Goalhangers. The rest is football. This episode is brought to you by Wise. It's only when you start moving money between currencies that you really think about the exchange rate, the fee, and what might be hidden away in the small print. Whether you're living abroad, paying someone overseas, or just trying to manage your money across borders, you want a fair exchange rate, an easy transfer, and no surprises along the way. WISE keeps things simple. WISE is a smart way to move the currencies you need around the globe.

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42:32Dominic Sandbrook:The bloody struggle will end in absolute slavery to America. or ruined to Britain by the loss of her colonies. So welcome back to The Rest is History. Top flipper enthusiast and defender of slavery, Benjamin Franklin, is still hoping that he can somehow bridge the gap between Parliament in London and the militant separatists in New England. So it's December 1772, and he has been leaked. He's been given some letters. They've been written by the governor of Massachusetts, Thomas Hutchinson. So, Tom, tell me about these letters.

43:11Tom Holland:So in these letters, Hutchinson has been advising the British government on how best to cool the colonial unrest in America. And he writes and says there must be an abridgment of what are called English liberties. and these are the liberties that the colonists in Massachusetts are asserting against the demands of the British government for you know taxes and other such similar goods and Franklin's wheeze when he's got these letters he is going to now leak them in turn to the radicals in Boston and his reason for doing this isn't to cause trouble for the British government but the absolute opposite he wants to demonstrate to the radicals that the British government is pursuing a hard line, not because the British despise the Americans as colonials, but because they are receiving terrible advice from people like Hutchinson.

44:05Tom Holland:In other words, if they can just be educated, then the British will start behaving well and stop demanding taxes. But the whole thing, you know, this whole wheeze goes terribly wrong because this is an example of how Franklin doesn't recognize what's going on now in Boston. The radicals there completely ignore Franklin's direct request to them not to publicize Hutchinson's letters. They immediately publish them and make a massive, massive song and dance about them. And there's huge blowback in London about this. And Franklin ends up being summoned to appear before the Privy Council in the tremendously named Cockpit.

44:41Tom Holland:And it's called that because it's a room in Whitehall where Henry VIII supposedly had staged cockfights. But Franklin goes there and he finds it's more like bull baiting or something. Everyone has gathered there to take down the representative of the uppity colonials. And Franklin himself put it, all the courtiers were invited as to an entertainment. Everyone there is keen to see him savaged. And he is savaged. Poor Franklin, he's there dressed in a blue Manchester velvet coat. And he's described as standing conspicuously erect without the smallest movement of any part of his body. But for all that, he is absolutely torn to pieces.

45:23Tom Holland:And he is produced not just for his role in having made Hutchinson's letters public, even though he hadn't wanted this to happen, but as a kind of uppity, treasonous colonial. And there is such fury. And he is the object of this kind of venomous fury, I think, because the Boston Tea Party has just happened. So just the month before. And the mood in London against the Americans as a result is very angry, very, very embittered. And Franklin, because he's actually in the Capitol, because he is the most famous American, almost the kind of the representative American, and because after all, he had actually leaked the Hutchinson letters.

46:04Tom Holland:I mean, it doesn't matter what his motives are if you're in the British government. I mean, he is the the guy who's who's let slip these secrets you know he provides the perfect scapegoat

46:13Dominic Sandbrook:right and just to remind especially british listeners the boston tea parties when basically a load of americans who are angry about the monopoly it's a monopoly on tea isn't there and they're they're very cross about it and they throw a load of tea into the harbor ecological vandalism yes and they dress up as native americans terrible cultural appropriation

46:32Tom Holland:shocking but it's a bad business however you look at it and franklin agrees this is the irony of the whole situation so he had described the boston tea party as an act of violent injustice on our part but franklin's experience in the cockpit will help him to make up his mind this invidious choice he has he you know he's sympathetic both to britain and to the colonists but he sees his own experience at the cockpit as an indication of the fact that Britain is lurching into tyranny and repression, just as the kind of the radicals back in Boston are saying. In other words, Franklin's take is that he hasn't changed, it's Britain that has changed.

47:16Tom Holland:He still lingers in London, even after coming to this decision, kind of desperately trying to work with those in the British elite who are sympathetic to American aspirations. But by 1775, he's had enough. He throws his hands up and he leaves Britain forever. On the 20th of March, he set sail from Portsmouth on a packet ship bound for Pennsylvania. And typically being Franklin while he's at sea, he busies himself by measuring the temperatures of the Gulf Stream three or four times a day, providing the scientific backing for his theory. And while he is doing that in America, open hostilities are breaking out.

47:53Tom Holland:So by the time Franklin lands in Philadelphia on the 5th of May, the shot heard around the world has been fired at Lexington Green. British Redcoats and colonial militia are at war outside Boston. And so when Franklin lands in Philadelphia to patriotic Americans, this is, you know, this is a tremendous moment. the world's most famous American has landed, it seems, in the nick of time to provide their cause with the kind of prestige and authority that it so desperately needs.

48:32Dominic Sandbrook:Well, they're just about to open the Continental Congress, aren't they? So they've summoned all these delegates from the 13 rebel colonies. And the Continental Congress is going to end up being, what did I describe it as in the last episode, the political wing of the insurgency. and for Franklin to have turned up a bloke who you know he's very famous across the world he knows about Europe doesn't he and European affairs and I guess also precisely because he hasn't been a militant until now that makes him a great asset to their cause yes absolutely and so

49:10Tom Holland:a reporter is sent down to the docks to interview Franklin and he writes that Franklin thinks nothing else can save us from the most abject slavery and destruction so Franklin has essentially kind of made his decision and so it's not surprising that the moment he's back he's chosen by the Pennsylvania Assembly to be one of their delegates to the Continental Congress and because he is Benjamin Franklin because everybody knows he's brilliant at organizing things um he's you know a great guy for showing initiative he gets appointed to a kind of insane number of committees so he's he's set to organizing the the infant american postal system you you did a documentary didn't you once for radio four about the postal system so he's very like you he loves the postal system we're very similar and it's not surprising because it's been estimated that over the course of his life franklin sent or received some 15 000 letters so if you're doing that you need a good functioning post office and he will actually end up the first postmaster general of the united states um he's also set to organizing the military supplies to washington and remember he'd done this already before in the seven years war and most importantly of all he is co-opted to help draft one last appeal to george iii and this will become known as the olive branch petition so basically saying yeah come on george give us what we want and then we won't rebel but actually even while he's working on this franklin has already made up his mind he thinks we you know there's no option the breach with britain is irreparable it's got to be war and he knows that this is going to cost him because his son william the the boy who had helped him with his flying kite experiment he has become the governor of new jersey on behalf of the british crown and he is a very committed loyalist he's one of those you know many many people in America who who back what parliament is doing and William rides from New York to try and persuade his father to remain you know neutral if you know if you if you can't side with Britain at least stay neutral but Franklin is having none of it and he tells William very flatly I am now in favor of independence and father and son have to accept that they are now the other's enemy and there's the breach between them you know as between Britain and America the breach between Franklin and his son is going to prove irreparable it's never never healed and Franklin wants to illustrate this for his friends in Britain he wants them to know that he has made his mind up and this is partly I think to counter the sense that the radicals in the Congress have that he is you know he's famously an Anglophile so they're suspicious of him they think that perhaps he's You know, he's secretly a British agent.

51:50Tom Holland:But it is also an attempt to sway those in the Congress who are nervous of declaring independence. He wants to kind of, you know, apply all his prestige and status to the cause of declaring independence. so on the 5th of july which is two and a half weeks after uh bunkers hill in boston a very kind of bloody battle the olive branch petition is formally adopted by congress so they still haven't given up they still want to give you know the british one last chance and franklin had voted for it but he wanted to indicate to everybody in america that he didn't really back it so this is kind of very recognizable political technique, isn't it?

52:30Tom Holland:Politicians who are bound, say, by cabinet, collective responsibility will leak something. Tony Benn enters the chat. Yeah. So Franklin, he pulls this trick by writing a public letter to an old friend in London who was a printer called William Strahan. So Franklin himself had been a printer. And Franklin addresses this friend of his with very icy formality. So he calls him Mr. Strahan. And Franklin wrote, You are a member of parliament and one of that majority which has doomed my country to destruction. You have begun to burn our towns and murder our people. Look upon your hands. They are stained with the blood of your relations.

53:08Tom Holland:You and I were long friends. You are now my enemy and I am yours be Franklin. And it's a very famous letter. And it's famous because rather than actually sending it to Strahan, Franklin instead circulated it among his fellow members of Congress as a way of stiffening their resolve.

53:27Dominic Sandbrook:So it's just a PR exercise. He never actually sends it.

53:30Tom Holland:Yeah, it's completely a PR exercise. And actually, he and Strahan remain great friends. And when in due course Franklin goes to France, Strahan sent him a lovely cheese.

53:37Dominic Sandbrook:All right. The Declaration of Independence, that doesn't take place until the following year, 1776, hence the 250th anniversary this year. And Franklin is part of the committee charged with drafting it, but he actually leaves most of the writing to Thomas Jefferson, doesn't he? Yeah, that's partly because he's got a very bad attack of boils at this point.

53:55Tom Holland:And bad attacks of boils. A feature. Well, it's not an aspect of the Founding Fathers that gets a lot of attention, I think, in America, but it will on our podcast. Right. And gets bad boils a lot. But I think it's also because he can recognize that Jefferson's prose is perhaps better suited to the kind of elevated tone that the Declaration of Independence needs than his own kind of folksy, folksy Christmas cracker maxims. But he does make one very famous edit to Jefferson's first draft. So Jefferson has written the phrase, we hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable. And Franklin crosses out the last three words and changes it to we hold these truths to be self-evident.

54:43Tom Holland:And I guess it's a kind of classic example of what had been Franklin's lifelong project as a moralist, which is to veil the assumptions that had derived from his Christian upbringing behind the pretense that they were somehow objective and derived from reason. And, of course, the notion that these rights are self-evident has been hugely influential and people still believe it to this day. so the declaration of independence is presented to congress and it's adopted the die is cast the rubicon is crossed and on the 2nd of august the declaration is formally signed by the members of the congress including benjamin franklin and it's president john hancock he adds his signature to it then declares solemnly there must be no pulling different ways we must all hang together and Franklin makes a famous reply yes we must indeed all hang together or most assuredly we shall all hang separately because of course they are now traitors in the eyes of the British crown

55:51Dominic Sandbrook:and that will be their fate if they are captured and we talked in the previous episode didn't we about the American strategy about the fact that basically it's a little bit like Vietnam they basically have to stay in the game avoid a pitch battle hope that the British you know struggling to subdue or to impose themselves on the vast canvas of the North American continent will eventually lose heart and be sick of throwing money into this down the drain and will give up. But obviously what the Americans want above all is they want some form of European intervention.

56:22Tom Holland:I mean, I think you were implying in the previous episode, they didn't really have a prospect of winning unless they could get that backing. The might of the British empire is so huge

56:31Dominic Sandbrook:that they will lose without it and so the obvious person to try to get this i suppose is the most famous living american and that's benjamin franklin correct and this is why on the

56:43Tom Holland:26th of october 1776 so three months after you know he and the other delegates have signed the declaration of independence he um he boards this american sleep of war called the reprisal and he sail back across the Atlantic but this time he is heading not for Britain but for France and Franklin will end up spending nine years there as America's first ambassador to a foreign power and in that time back in his homeland as we heard in our previous episode you know battles or as you put it skirmishes will rage cities will burn franklin's own house in philadelphia will be occupied and converted into a british billet and at the time and ever since franklin's sojourn in france amid the flesh pots of ancien regime paris has been cast as a kind of episode of of high comedy and as a dereliction of duty.

57:49Tom Holland:So Woody Holton in Liberty is Sweet, who doesn't agree with that characterization. He caricatures it as one long flirtation with female aristocrats. And Franklin's friend in London, Edmund Burke, great philosopher and politician, and the man who had been perhaps his most formidable ally in the British establishment, he went so far as to condemn Franklin for a foul and dishonorable flight. But I think that is a mad judgment on Franklin, because to make a winter crossing, which is what Franklin was doing to get to France at the age of 70, you know, the conditions were so rough that Franklin said they almost demolished him across an ocean controlled by the Royal Navy.

58:31Tom Holland:I mean, the fact that Britain rules the waves is part of what Franklin is going to France to try and upend. I mean, this is not the action of a coward. Franklin is an incredibly brave and resolute man.

58:44Dominic Sandbrook:But when he gets to France, he does rather enjoy the flirtation of female aristocrats, no? Yeah, of course he does.

58:50Tom Holland:Of course he does. I mean, Franklin is a man who does not see enjoying yourself as a sin. I mean, you know, to that extent, he has set his childhood puritanism behind him. And, you know, as we've said, he's gone there because he's a celebrity. And so he can say, well, it's my patriotic duty to behave like a celebrity. He plays it up massively and he has a complete genius for it because he understands the roles that the French public want him to play. He is familiar with the casts of thought in the Enlightenment. So this is the age of Rousseau and Rousseau identifies virtue and liberty with the primitive beginnings of humanity.

59:30Tom Holland:And so Franklin, whenever he goes to court makes sure to wear a kind of frontiersman's fur cap like kind of davy crockett or something oh god almighty imagine that at the court of louis the 16th or whatever you know they're all wearing their wigs you know they're kind of powdered wigs and franklin is turning up with this this fur cap it's a massive fashion statement and i'll never forget his flippers plunging into the fountains of versailles so that that's kind of playing to fans of rousseau this is also the age of voltaire the kind of feline, witty, enlightened champion of reason. And Franklin, this is the man who has tamed lightning, who has redeemed humanity from the superstition of fear.

1:00:17Tom Holland:And again, Franklin is the guy to cast himself and America as a kind of embodiment of a new enlightened future. So in 1778, he has two massively histrionic meetings. with Voltaire. And the first occasion, Voltaire lays his hands on the head of Franklin's grandson, who has come with, with Franklin to France and declares in English, good and liberty and everybody has ours and burst tears. And it's absolute scenes. And then the second, they have a meeting at the Academy of Royal and the two men embrace, and they are described by one observer as being like Solon embracing Sophocles, so the two great sages of ancient Greece.

1:01:05Tom Holland:And again, everyone, not a dry eye in the house. So this plays tremendously well to the intellectual gallery, the gallery of the kind of ministers who will be deciding whether America is worth investing in. Now, at the same time, he is definitely flirting with female aristocrats, and he is definitely enjoying it. I think in his sexual ethics, he remains a Puritan. As a young man, we haven't talked about his marriage up to now you said that martha washington was the most boring um woman in history i think that franklin's wife um what is it about american women she was she was a very frugal yeah and incredibly boring widow i called deborah reed and franklin had essentially only married her as a way of taming his sexual appetites she's not a laugh and she's not a great romance and the evidence for this is that he had not taken her with him to london he'd refused to uh return to philadelphia in 1774 even though by this point he decided that um he was on the american side and she was dying william his son kept saying you've got to come back he doesn't he can't be bothered with her and she actually died three months before he left england so he's he's really not interested in that what franklin is interested in what he likes doing is to hang out with very posh very pretty girls in salons and it's kind of it's half flirtation it's half kind of playing the jovial father figure and he'd done this in london and now he's in paris he does it again and they all absolutely adore him but this isn't just self-indulgent because it is also prompted by calculation because again salons like hanging out with voltaire is a way to raise his credit among the circles of those who matter.

1:02:49Tom Holland:Franklin's mission in Paris is very, very simple. He has to secure military financial backing from the French government for the cause of American independence. And this is actually a huge challenge because France at the beginning of the war is not at war with Britain. They've got two countries at peace. France had had a terrible bruising in the Seven Years' War, hugely in debt. And everyone in Paris assumes, well, the British are bound to win. You know, the Americans are rubbish. But gradually the tide of war starts to turn. And Franklin, because he has made himself the toast of Versailles and a French public opinion of Voltaire, of all these aristocrats, they all love him as well as admire him.

1:03:31Tom Holland:He is perfectly placed to press the advantage. and in due course the French do enter the war and when Franklin goes to sign the Treaty of Alliance he does so wearing the blue velvet coat that he had worn at the cockpit when the British establishment had torn him to pieces and he was asked why he had worn this coat and he answered to give it a little revenge and revenge is what he gets because as we described in the previous episode, France's entry into the war does tip the balance. And when in 1783, the British finally agree terms with their rebellious colonies, they agree to recognize American independence.

1:04:10Tom Holland:It is Franklin who has led the negotiations, and it is Franklin who signs what comes to be known as the Treaty of Paris. And this has been described by the great American historian, Edmund Morgan as the greatest diplomatic victory the United States has ever achieved I don't know whether you'd agree with that but I mean I it was you know an incredible achievement well because

1:04:35Dominic Sandbrook:it's essential to their independence of course the great irony of this is that Franklin who's been hanging out at Versailles and going to all these salons and enjoying the charms of the posh pretty French ladies by securing French agreement to that alliance he has also signed the death warrant of the ancien regime and the french monarchy and louis the 16th and marie

1:04:56Tom Holland:entoinette the irony yes there is that consolation for british listeners to bear in mind this will

1:05:01Dominic Sandbrook:have disastrous consequences for the french and that's the important thing so that is franklin's

1:05:06Tom Holland:term in in france it's highly successful um and when he returns from france in 1785 it is to a hero's welcome so he lands in philadelphia and there are hussars and cannon fire and church bells and all of that. But he still has one last charge to meet, one last celebrated document to sign. And this, of course, is going to be the Constitution. So Franklin, by this point, he is 79 years old. He is a very tired man. He is ill. He can barely walk. But of course, by this point, it's his very age which makes him so valuable to the infant state. He serves them as a kind of living symbol of what America had been, has become, and might yet be.

1:05:53Tom Holland:And two years later, when a constitutional convention meets in Philadelphia to determine what form of government the newly independent American state should have, Franklin is, you know, he's in his 80s by now. He's not in any condition to do any of the heavy lifting, but his kind of very presence is a kind of a blessing, a kind of benediction. And I think above all, he embodies the spirit of kind of reaching after truth, which all his life he had believed was the surest way for people and indeed states to secure life and liberty and happiness. So his house is a short walk away from the state house where the delegates are deciding the constitution.

1:06:44Tom Holland:And he has a lovely garden. and this provides a refuge from all the heat and anger and turmoil of the convention and it's a place where delegates can go to cool down to sit beneath the mulberry tree in his garden and to hammer out compromises and franklin himself you know he makes occasional addresses to the convention not many but when he makes these addresses what he has to say is the perfect embodiment of the kind of the fusion between Christian and Enlightenment thinking that I think so characterizes the American Revolution. So he appeals to reason, you know, that's the Enlightenment aspect, but also to the father of lights, as he called it, to illuminate our understanding.

1:07:26Tom Holland:He's a big enthusiast for starting sessions with prayers, for instance. And when finally on the 17th of September, 1787, the Constitution of the United States is finally endorsed, it is Franklin who gives the most resonant and memorable speech. He acknowledges that this constitution has imperfections, but he urges his fellow delegates to sign it anyway. I can censor to this constitution because I expect no better and because I am not sure that it is not the best. And in my opinion, if there has to be a revolution, this is the spirit in which revolutions should be attempted. And I think it makes Franklin, frankly, my favorite revolutionary.

1:08:12Tom Holland:Who wouldn't prefer that kind of spirit of pragmatic compromise to the white-hot certainty of a Cromwell or a Robespierre or a Lenin?

1:08:24Dominic Sandbrook:I think that's a bit harsh on a Cromwell, frankly. I think Cromwell is more full of self-doubt than Robespierre and Lenin.

1:08:30Tom Holland:Yes, but I think Cromwell did things that Franklin would not have countenanced. It was more robust, there's no question. I like the lack of robustness in that phrase I am not sure that it is not the best right fine I think more politicians should say that I think we'd all be happier I'll be very clear about this Tom I think that uh this is I mean you know if you want to have if you want to be pragmatic if you want to have be a person of compromise and I think compromise is always a good thing yeah you know say it but I think also the other great thing about Franklin and and why I find him a kind of really admirable person is that he is always alert to the possibility that he might be wrong yes very attractive quality that you might need to change your mind i mean that is what had brought him from being a great enthusiast for the relationship with britain to deciding that no you know it's got to go we need independence um and it's also what what brings him in february 1790 so by which point he is 84 years old to present a very startling petition to congress and remember Franklin had been a slave owner and this one-time slave owner he no longer has slaves by this point he urges Congress to bestow the enjoyment of happiness on all the peoples of the United States and to grant and I quote liberty to those unhappy men who alone in this land of freedom are degraded into perpetual bondage and the petition is rejected but Franklin does not give up and one month later he publishes I think a brilliant satire a satire that is clearly derived from Jonathan Swift, the greatest of all satirists.

1:10:04Tom Holland:And he writes under the pseudonym of Sidi Mehmet Ibrahim. And he deploys the same arguments that are being used by anti-abolitionists in America to justify the enslavement of Africans, to defend the enslavement of Europeans by the Barbary states of North Africa. So in this pamphlet, Franklin writes, pretending to be a Muslim propagandist for slavery. let us then hear no more of this detestable proposition the manumission of christian slaves the adoption of which would by depreciating our lands and houses and thereby depriving so many good citizens of their properties create universal discontent and provoke insurrections and that of course is exactly the language that will be used by americans in favor of keeping slavery right the

1:10:53Dominic Sandbrook:way up to the civil war i hadn't i actually didn't know about that until i saw it in your notes i think it's fascinating i think it is a brilliant piece of work and i think the debt to jonathan swift is absolutely there like a modest proposal or something and it is an act of repentance

1:11:07Tom Holland:um franklin had owned slaves he came to repent of it and he sought to write the wrong that he had done the slaves of america and that that piece of writing was his last to be published because on the 17th of April 1790 uh Benjamin Franklin breathed his last and he died as he had lived as a man prepared to follow his conscience no matter where it might lead um and I salute him I think he is a tremendous a tremendous man I think one of the more attractive people who have had a measurable impact on the course of world history I think okay I mean he's no Dr.

1:11:47Dominic Sandbrook:Johnson but he's not too far He's not too far short.

1:11:49Tom Holland:But Dr. Johnson didn't sign four crucial historical documents and sway the fate of nations.

1:11:56Dominic Sandbrook:No, that's all true.

1:11:57Tom Holland:I mean, I think you could say of Franklin that had he not got French backing, history might have been very different. And he played it brilliantly. I mean, again, we've talked about the series about John Adams, who actually goes to France to kind of provide backup for Franklin. and Adams, who is very puritanical, really objects to this whole hanging out with aristocrats kind of malarkey and totally balls this up. Franklin's methods are definitely better. So I think he does change history. And I think he's one, as I say, one of the more amiable figures to have changed history.

1:12:32Dominic Sandbrook:Okay. Brilliant. Brilliant episode, Tom. Thank you very much. Now, in our next episode, we should be looking at a founding father who went one stage further than Benjamin Franklin and he became the hero of his own musical and this is of course Alexander Hamilton we'll be talking about the Hamilton duel with Aaron Burr and in the final episode Tom will be investigating the moral contradictions of Thomas Jefferson now if you'd like to hear those episodes right away you can of course you really need to join our own band of repressive redcoats the Restless History Club and you can do that by going to therestlesshistory.com you sign up you get a whole host of benefits you only get these by signing up through our own website uh all the benefits so you get the bonus episodes and early access and all of this kind of thing unbelievable um enjoyment for all the family talking of all the family we actually have our rest is history festival this weekend at hampton court saturday sadly sold out one or two tickets still available for sunday so great friends of the show ian hislop helen castor william dalrymple adam smith and katya hoyer will be there tom and are incredibly excited about this so we're hoping to see as many people as possible you can get the tickets again by going to the rest is history.com and we will return next time with alexander hamilton and aaron burr so on that bombshell thank you and goodbye bye Bye.

1:14:05Dominic Sandbrook:Hear that? That's the sound of busy.

1:14:09Tom Holland:To a restaurant, all that shouting and banging might as well be a symphony. It means the long days and longer nights are paying off.

1:14:17Dominic Sandbrook:Sure, it's noisy, but there's a worse sound. This, not busy.

1:14:23Tom Holland:Busy means business, which is why Toast gives restaurants the tools and tech they need to help them perform under pressure. Sounds pretty good, right? Toast. Built for busy. This is an urgent appeal from the Disasters Emergency Committee. Two devastating earthquakes have hit Venezuela, resulting in widespread destruction. Thousands have been killed and injured, and survivors desperately need food, water, shelter, and medical care. Go to dec.org.uk to donate or text DEC to 70150 to give£10. Texts cost your donation plus standard network rate. See website for Ts and Cs. Thank you.