- He was never thinking we need to be independent.
He was always thinking if we can just work out
out a few fundamental problems between us
and the British ministry,
that things are going to be fine.
He probably could have been won over
to the British side as a Loyalist like his son,
if things had gone slightly differently.
- [Narrator] Tensions between England
and the colonies worsened,
especially after British soldiers fired
on a Massachusetts mob in 1770 killing five Americans,
The Boston Massacre.
Franklin's position was becoming increasingly untenable.
He was trying to represent the interests
of Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Georgia,
in addition to Pennsylvania.
In 1772, Franklin was shown confidential letters
written by his old ally Thomas Hutchinson,
now the governor of Massachusetts.
"The only way to quell colonial unrest,"
Hutchinson had advised London,
"was through harsher measures including,"
he suggested, "an abridgment of liberties."
Franklin surreptitiously sent copies of the letters
to the leaders of the Massachusetts Assembly.
He hoped that the fire brands
in Boston would turn their anger
from Parliament to Hutchinson,
blaming his bad advice for the crisis with Britain,
making room for cooler heads to broker a reconciliation.
Instead it only inflamed passions.
The letters were leaked to newspapers
sparking an uproar throughout the colonies.
The Massachusetts Assembly drafted
an angry petition to the King
demanding that Hutchinson be removed.
As the assembly's agent,
Franklin would have to be the one to present
that petition before the King's Privy Council.
To make matters worse, Franklin had felt obligated
to admit that he was the one who
had originally shared Hutchinson's letters.
- And so Franklin was seen as this person
who stole other people's mail,
which was quite an egregious offense
for someone who was a postmaster.
- [Narrator] Just a few days before Franklin
was scheduled to appear before the Privy Council,
in January of 1774,
news arrived from America that changed everything.
The Sons of Liberty, dressed as Indians,
had boarded three ships in Boston Harbor,
and dumped 46 tons, 342 crates,
of English tea into the sea.
Officials in London were still seething
at that act of defiance,
when on January 29th, Franklin entered a meeting room
at White Hall called The Cock Pit
where Henry VIII had once staged cockfights.
To the Privy Council and the crowd
of spectators gathered there,
Franklin was now the face of an insolent American uprising.
Although Franklin considered the Boston Tea Party
an act of violent injustice on our part,
the very kind of provocation
he had always counseled against.
Alexander Wedderburn, the sharp-tongued
and politically ambitious Solicitor General,
who considered the recent events in Boston treasonous,
made clear from the start that the hearing
would be an attack on Franklin's character.
- [Alexander] Your Lordships will not wonder that
I consider Dr. Franklin not so much in the light
of an agent for the assembly's purpose.
As in that of a first mover
and prime conductor of it for his own.
As the actor-
- [Narrator] Wedderburn spoke for a solid hour,
sometimes pounding on the table as he berated Franklin
with one denunciation after another.
Sometimes using sarcasm that prompted the nobles
and high officials in the audience to snicker
and jeer as they urged him on.
Throughout it all, Franklin stood stock still
refusing to show any emotion.
- [Alexander] The good men of Boston have lately-
- They're accusing Benjamin Franklin
of fomenting this revolution,
and he just stays there silent
and treats them with silent contempt.
- [Narrator] When Wedderburn finally finished his diatribe,
he asked if Franklin had a statement to make
or would take questions.
Franklin refused.
The hearing was over.
London newspapers now referred to Franklin
as old double-face,
a grand incendiary,
and a gray-headed traitor.
"Americans," the essayist Samuel Johnson wrote,
"have been taught by some master of mischief
how to put in motion the engine of political electricity."
Two days after his humiliation in The Cock Pit,
Franklin was informed that he had been dismissed
as deputy postmaster for North America.
Any hopes he had for a higher post also evaporated,
as did his dreams for the vast land scheme along the Ohio.
- Franklin walked into The Cock Pit an Englishman
and walked out of The Cock Pit an American.
Because it became very clear to Franklin
that he, as an American, would never receive
the respect that he believed he was due.
At that point, Franklin realized there is no future
for me or for people like me within the British empire.
- Hi, this is Ken Burns.
I hope you enjoyed that excerpt from the film David Schmidt
and I made exploring the extraordinary life
of Benjamin Franklin.
Here are some more clips you might like
and you can watch the entire "Benjamin Franklin" series
on the PBS Video App or at pbs.org.