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Let the Experiment Be Made – Part One Tuesday, November 19, 9-10 P.M./ET (check local listings) Benjamin Franklin is born the fifteenth son of a modest candlemaker in puritanical Boston, a world circumscribed by superstition and religious intolerance. For anyone else, it would be an inauspicious beginning. But the precocious young Ben is single-minded in his desire to reinvent himself. Taken out of school at the age of ten and apprenticed to his brother as a printer, he embarks on a remarkable course of self-education, reading voraciously and teaching himself to write. Franklin eventually breaks his apprenticeship and travels to London where he is exposed to the new ideas of the Enlightenment which challenged the belief that one’s station in life is fixed and unchanging. Returning to America, he settles in Philadelphia where he gathers together other enterprising young men into a self-help club called the Junto. Before long, Franklin has succeeded—first, as a printer and businessman and, eventually, as the most prominent newspaper publisher, Almanac-maker and civic booster in the colonies, creating Philadelphia’s first fire department and the colonies’ first lending library. Franklin turns next to science, trying to unravel the mysteries of electricity which have eluded some of the greatest minds of the day. Franklin’s discoveries, including the relationship between electricity and lightning, are seen as a triumph of reason over superstition. The once penniless apprentice is now the most celebrated scientist in the world.
Benjamin Franklin is outgrowing the colonies and when Pennsylvania asks him to go to England on official business, he jumps at the chance. Accompanied by his beloved son William, Franklin takes up residence in the center of London and a new persona emerges. With aristocratic aspirations, Franklin indulges himself with the finest clothes, lavish food, abundant wine and all the other trappings of a gentleman. He also meets intellectual peers among Europe’s leading figures in science, philosophy and letters. Franklin’s devoted wife Deborah, who has become accustomed to his long absences, maintains his business and his position in Philadelphia. But all of that is threatened as Franklin finds himself in the middle of a growing series of disputes between England and her American colonies. Franklin, who is a fervent champion of the British Empire, struggles as a conciliator. But it is not to be. The English blame Franklin for inciting rebellion in America and he is called to account before His Majesty’s Privy Council. It is a turning point in Franklin’s life. Smarting with humiliation and rage, Franklin turns his back on Britain and sets sail for America, arriving just after the Battles of Lexington and Concord. Working with John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, he helps to draft the Declaration of Independence embodying the revolutionary new idea that ordinary people can govern themselves, without the need for a king. Franklin’s son William, who serves as governor of New Jersey, remains loyal to the Crown. It is a betrayal that Franklin never forgives.
By far the oldest of the principal leaders of the American Revolution, Franklin, now in his 70s, embarks upon the most important role of his life. The American Revolution does not stand a chance without outside support, and Congress sends Benjamin Franklin to France in a desperate effort to secure an alliance with England’s greatest rival. All of Franklin’s considerable political skills—his talent for propaganda, public relations, back-room strategizing, his gift for subterfuge and manipulation—are called into play as he tries to convince the aristocratic French to lend much-needed support to the Revolutionary cause. Despite the French king’s reluctance, and backbiting from the puritanical John Adams, Franklin finally succeeds in obtaining the much-needed French support that leads to an American victory at Yorktown. With peace secured, Franklin returns to America, weary and ailing. But his country still needs him. Two years later, the elderly Franklin is carried into the Constitutional Convention to guide the rancorous delegates debating the balance of states rights and federal power that will be embodied in the Constitution. Over the course of most of a century, Franklin has been a prime mover in shaping a new understanding of the relationships between man and God, man and nature, and man and government. But what of man and man? At the end of his life, Franklin devotes himself to abolishing slavery, recognizing that the bondage of one man by another is an abomination of the ideals of freedom for which America stands. |
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