Benjamin Franklin

An African slave in Boston, Onesimus, introduced Cotton Mather to the concept of inoculation, which meant fewer deaths in a smallpox epidemic. Franklin was an early proponent of inoculation but when smallpox struck Philadelphia he and Deborah delayed inoculating their son. Franky contracted smallpox and died. This extended scene from BENJAMIN FRANKLIN includes bonus material not in the final film.

In the decades before the American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin and his son William collaborated intimately to promote the British Empire in America. But when war broke out, their family, like countless others, was torn apart. Benjamin Franklin supported George Washington’s army and sided with the rebels—the Patriots. William Franklin, the Royal Governor of New Jersey, remained loyal to the King.

From 1733 to 1757, Franklin published Poor Richard’s Almanack, an annual bestseller in the colonies. In addition to weather predictions and astronomical observations, his almanac was notable for including aphorisms that combined wisdom with humor, philosophy with word play—an early example of a homespun American writing style that has continued through the generations.

Franklin made groundbreaking discoveries in his study of electricity. He wrote up his observations and experiments, which were published abroad and made him world-famous. He coined new terms—like “positive,” “negative,” “charge,” “conductor” and “battery.” And he proved that lightning was electrical in nature with his famous experiment in 1752 with a kite and a key.

As impasse threatened to derail the Constitutional Convention, Franklin worked to find common ground. In order to pass the proposed Constitution of the United States, the delegates agreed to several compromises—some tragic. On September 17, 1787, Franklin, who saw the new federal government as an experiment to be improved by successive generations, delivered a speech endorsing the Constitution.

Ken Burns’s four-hour documentary, Benjamin Franklin, explores the revolutionary life of one of the 18th century’s most consequential figures, whose work and words unlocked the mystery of electricity and helped create the United States.

Franklin developed a musical instrument that he called the armonica (after the Italian word for harmony). To play the armonica, a musician powered a foot pedal to rotate 36 concentric glass bowls and produced notes by putting wet fingers to the spinning glass. In Austria, the glass armonica provided the music for a royal wedding. Mozart and Beethoven would compose chamber pieces for it.

In 1776, people in France had never heard of any American, except for Benjamin Franklin. Congress sent Franklin to Paris to win foreign support for the American Revolution, and the French people treated him like a celebrity when he arrived. But Franklin had serious business to attend to. Without aid from the French monarchy, America’s fight for independence might be lost quickly.

The recent war with France had expanded England’s empire, but left its treasury depleted. In the spring of 1765, the king’s ministers and Parliament came up with a new way to raise more money from the American colonies: The Stamp Act. Now, all legal documents, newspapers, books, almanacs—even decks of playing cards—would need official stamps, purchased from the government.

After reading Thomas Jefferson’s draft of the Declaration of Independence, Franklin offered only a few edits, but one of them was pivotal. In his draft, Jefferson’s most important sentence began, “We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable, that all men are created equal…” Franklin crossed out “sacred and undeniable” and wrote in “self-evident.”

Slavery was legal in all thirteen colonies that eventually formed the United States. In the middle of the 18th Century, nearly a tenth of Philadelphia’s residents were enslaved—working in businesses and homes, including Franklin’s. Many Philadelphians, including Franklin’s friends and colleagues, were vocally antislavery. But Franklin, committed to slave labor, did not join them.

Franklin, though a former slave owner, had joined the growing antislavery movement in Philadelphia. With the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, he petitioned the new federal government to end slavery in the United States. Because of Franklin’s reputation, the petition was heard. But the House of Representatives voted it down, and the Senate tabled it without discussion.