Benjamin Franklin

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.

Get an inside look from Ken Burns and those featured in the film on why they chose to explore the life of Benjamin Franklin.

Franklin, who had only two years of formal education, largely taught himself through reading and on the job. At age 12, he joined his older brother James’s print shop as an apprentice printer. Later, when an essay appeared in James’s newspaper over the name Silence Dogood, no one, including James, knew the real author was 16-year-old Benjamin.

In November 1781, Franklin heard news of the victory at Yorktown, the decisive battle of the American Revolution that was won by the combined forces of the French military and George Washington’s Continental Army. Back in 1778, Franklin had secured the alliance that brought France into the war, and without the French Army and Navy, the outcome at Yorktown would not have been possible.

As Britain and the colonies grew apart, Benjamin Franklin, the most famous American in London and an agent for several colonies, found himself caught in the middle. After the Boston Tea Party, he was publicly humiliated in a government meeting room called the Cockpit and blamed for the crisis across the ocean. It was clearer than ever that Franklin would have to choose a side.

On September 3, 1783, Franklin and the other peace commissioners signed the Treaty of Paris. The American Revolutionary War was over, and Britain officially recognized the independent United States of America and its claims to a third of the North American continent. For others who were not party to the peace talks, especially Native Americans, the treaty was devastating.

Deborah Franklin encouraged her husband to visit a new school for enslaved and free Black children in Philadelphia. After his visit, Benjamin Franklin admitted that he had previously held a low opinion of the “natural Capacities of the black Race,” but observing the children at school had proven his prejudices wrong. He now knew they were “in every Respect equal to that of white Children.”

Benjamin Franklin and John Adams served the United States together as diplomats to France during the American Revolution, but they frustrated each other with their conflicting approaches to the job. Adams was impatient and did not recognize that Franklin’s popularity was an important asset in securing vital French support for the war effort.

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.