1. The Great Awakening and the Growing Rebellion

Founding Fathers: An American Dream

The episode explores the volatile period leading up to the American Revolution, tracing the transition from colonial loyalty to open rebelli

Key takeaways

• Benjamin Franklin leveraged his publishing success with the Pennsylvania Gazette to build a massive influence.
• The Great Awakening, led by George Whitefield, introduced individual religious agency that paralleled political resistance.

Main topics

• Rise of Benjamin Franklin
• The Great Awakening

Notable quotes

George III is in the scrapyard. A crook, a traitor, a tyrant.

Conclusion

The episode illustrates how religious fervor and economic resentment c

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:01) It's April 26th, 1770. We're in New York City, on Bowling Green at the southern end of Broadway. The great and the good are out on show. Pillars of the community make small talk. Clergymen, politicians, entrepreneurs. They're all here, bustling around the park. With an estimated population of 25,000, the city is not yet the Big Apple. No yellow taxis roar up and down Broadway, just carriages, horses, and carts. Even so, in the late 18th century, New York is one of the biggest settlements on the continent, a gateway connecting the British colonies of North America with the wide world beyond. Today is a celebration of those global links and a chance to express what is supposedly in the hearts of all true patriots. Speaker 1 (1:03) With the dignitaries in place, the ceremony begins. In Speaker 3 (1:10) the distance, a military band plays, the prelude to a succession of speeches. Next, a bone-jangling 32-gun salute blasts out. It's all because of a glimmering new addition to the New York landscape, a giant statue of the most beloved man in the city, His Majesty Speaker 1 (1:32) King George III of Great Britain. Speaker 1 (1:39) For more than 150 years, Britain's colonists in America have prided themselves on their devotion to the crown. Some say Americans love the monarch more than those in Great Britain itself. As New Yorkers toast the king's health, the colony's lieutenant governor looks with wonder at the statue. Two tons of gilded lead, sparkling in the spring sunshine. It depicts the king as a Roman emperor sat on horseback. At 15 feet high, it towers over everyone in its presence. For the lieutenant governor, it's artistic perfection. Nothing could better express America's undying love for King George and the British homeland. Fast forward six years, and New York pulses with a very different energy. Speaker 1 (2:36) On the night of July the 9th, 1776, dozens of men enter Bowling Green under cover of darkness. These are soldiers, part of a new Continental Army, a ragtag fighting force taking on the might of the British Empire. Earlier that day, they heard the Declaration of Independence read aloud. Forget Long Live the King. George III is now public enemy number one. Speaker 1 (3:09) The soldiers clamber on top of the monarch's statue. They tie long, thick ropes around him and pull. Soon, the king is unbalanced. The statue comes crashing down. Now the butchery begins. His majesty is cut up limb by limb, his head hacked from his neck. Next, the lead is melted down. There's enough for 42,000 musket balls. All will be used to shoot the king's soldiers. The mightiest of them all has fallen. George III is in the scrapyard. A crook, a traitor, a tyrant. And the new nation is already building its own pantheon of great patriots. Speaker 1 (4:05) In time, they'll be known around the world as the Founding Fathers, the instigators of the American Revolution and the creators of the American Republic. The names of the most famous Founding Fathers echo through history. Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton. These are men of virtue. Their cause is freedom and justice for all. That, at least, is how the story goes. The truth is more complex. In this series, we'll bring you the epic tale of the birth of the United States of America. Using the Founding Fathers as our guides, we'll Speaker 3 (4:52) travel from the stirrings of revolution to the long and bloody fight for independence. Speaker 2 (4:58) This is the heart and soul and guts of the American Revolution. Speaker 3 (5:04) We'll witness the early years of the American Republic, an experiment that changed the world. The Speaker 5 (5:11) concept that a government is by the people for the people was a radical and revolutionary idea in 1776. And I think it remains a radical and revolutionary idea. Speaker 3 (5:25) Through the eyes of the Founding Fathers, we'll witness heroism and treachery, virtue and villainy. We'll bring the earliest years of the USA to life and explode historical myths. Speaker 6 (5:38) A lot Speaker 3 (5:39) of the beliefs Speaker 6 (5:40) about the British government and British policies were simply conspiracy theory. Speaker 1 (5:47) Experts will lift the lid on the brutal reality of the revolution, from which an independent America emerged. It wasn't a civil war. It was an uncivil Speaker 7 (5:57) war because it was so hard fought. A vicious local fight that played out for all kinds of reasons. When people hear about the American Revolution, they often think, wait a minute, I didn't know religion mattered in this. I didn't know ethnicity mattered in this, but it did. Speaker 1 (6:14) We'll discover the real people behind the legends. Speaker 5 (6:17) The founders were an intensely ambitious bunch. John Adams wanted to be remembered by history. Alexander Hamilton wanted power. Speaker 1 (6:26) But this isn't simply their story. The founding of the United States features a cast of millions, men and women. This series will bring you descendants of those involved on various sides. There will be tales of high-minded idealism that continue to inspire, as well as the ugly legacies of America's origin story. Our ancestors were enslaved by Jefferson. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness didn't exist. Speaker 3 (6:56) We'll hear from those who think the fame of the Founding Fathers obscures the true genius of the United States. We, Speaker 2 (7:04) the people. When I hear the term founding fathers, I wince. This idea that there's a few very special and very wise men who basically determined who we should be as a country, it so simplifies and it so negates who the American people are. Speaker 1 (7:30) I'm Clark Peters, and from the Noiser Podcast Network, this is Founding Fathers, an American Dream. Speaker 1 (8:01) Our story begins on a street in Boston, in the colony of Massachusetts. The year is 1706. A biting cold New England winter presses up against the windows of a modest townhouse. Speaker 3 (8:15) In an upstairs room, a baby boy fills his lungs for the first time. The newborn is wrapped in blankets and passed to his mother, a 39-year-old woman called Abiah Franklin. Abaya has a name for the baby, Benjamin. No one can know it Speaker 1 (8:37) yet, but this child, the son of a humble soap and candle maker, will grow up to be one of the most consequential figures of his age. Both Speaker 3 (8:47) Abaya and her husband, Josiah, are old hands at this. Benjamin is her eighth child, his 15th. They'll welcome a further two babies in the coming years. Speaker 3 (9:00) A home overflowing with children is pretty common in early 18th century Boston, a young bustling city where productivity is always encouraged. Like the Massachusetts Speaker 1 (9:12) colony as a whole, Boston is only a few decades old. Its founding was dominated by Puritans, austere Protestants who preach moral strictness and embrace a direct relationship with God, devoid of elaborate ceremony. They are, in many ways, spiritual kin with other English settlers of the time. The famous Mayflower Pilgrims of Plymouth Rock, for instance. Religious radicals searching for land in which to build their vision of a perfect society. Abaya is Massachusetts born and raised. Her father came here from England when King Charles I began a campaign of anti-Puritan persecution in the 1630s. Josiah, Benjamin's father, is also an English immigrant. Though, like countless others, he came to America more in search of prosperity rather than religious freedom. Faith and finances. The twin engines of the American colonies. The origins of British America date back to English-led expeditions in the late 15th century, when Europeans first encountered what they called the New World. Speaker 1 (10:34) But it's not until 1607 that English settlers established their first permanent colony. They named it Virginia, in honor of Elizabeth I, the so-called Virgin Queen. Speaker 3 (10:47) Over the next century, numerous other colonies, including Massachusetts, are founded along the same Atlantic coastline. They are a magnet for those who dream of a new way of life, whether it's spiritual fulfillment, material riches, or freedom from the social strictures of Europe. Speaker 1 (11:08) White settlers frequently wage war on indigenous peoples. As the colonies thrive, settlers and governments alike take more and more from native populations. Slave labor also plays a key part in these early colonial years. The enslavement of Africans is legal in every colony. In some, especially in the South, it's integral to the economy. The cultivation of crops such as rice, cotton, and tobacco proves immensely lucrative. And all are reliant on enslaved people brought over from Africa. Speaker 1 (11:48) In the early years of the 18th century, there are roughly 30,000 slaves in British North America, one in ten of the total colonial population. Very often, the freedom the white colonists gain depends upon other people losing theirs. Settlers dream of pursuing their own visions of life. As a result, each colony has a distinct identity. Speaker 1 (12:20) Historian Jane Kamensky is president and CEO of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation. Speaker 5 (12:26) Britain's American colonies had developed as many different systems of governance as there were colonies. So we need to think about these almost as different countries. The thing that they shared is they had an extraordinary degree of local control and institutions that were accountable to their local populations. So there was a sense that when they reached into your pocket for taxation, they also looked you in the eye. Speaker 1 (12:56) Perhaps the only other thing found in every colony is a love for the British Empire. Professor Alan Taylor is the author of American Revolutions, A Continental History. The colonists were very proud members of the British Speaker 2 (13:12) Empire. They exulted in the victories of the empire over the French and the Spanish. They celebrated the king's birthday with a fervor that matched anything in Britain. So they thought of themselves very much as British people who happened to live in the Americas. And they were proud of belonging to an empire that was so militarily powerful. that generated so much prosperity and that offered more civil liberties than did any other empire in the world. Speaker 1 (13:48) This is the world in which Benjamin Franklin makes his name. The Boston of Franklin's youth is a place that lives to work. Ships crowd the harbor, and places of worship crowd everywhere else. Speaker 5 (14:05) The churches are huge institutions in Boston and throughout New England. And if you look at any engraving of the 18th century Boston waterfront, you see steeples rising almost like a forest. It's a fractious and disputatious place in ways that descend from Puritanism. This culture where people expect a direct relationship not only with their preacher but with God, and I think even for non-religious people, that makes it a highly participatory place. Speaker 1 (14:41) The Franklins are not cash-rich. Benjamin's schooling ends at the age of 10. An apprenticeship in publishing follows. Speaker 1 (14:52) At 17, Benjamin leaves Boston in search of new opportunities. He arrives in Philadelphia, in the Pennsylvania colony. The boy is about to come of age in more ways than one. Peter Castor is professor of history at Washington University in St. Louis. Speaker 7 (15:13) He moved to Philadelphia because not only was Philadelphia a bigger city and was more vibrant, Boston was still very much a city under the control of, by then, the kind of fourth generation descendants of the Puritan aristocracy. And he wanted room to move and grow and succeed. And to him, Philadelphia, even though it had had its own aristocracy, was this city