Professor Jane Kamensky

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.

Franklin embodies the kind of social mobility and geographic mobility that is quite common for free people in Britain's Western colonies and entirely uncommon in Home Island's Britain.

By the 1760s, he's become the most famous colonial on the face of the globe.

He's feted as an American original all over London and France.

He is the person whom Parliament calls in to be their America whisperer.

what the hell is going on over there?

The person you ask is Franklin.

And whether someone who was born as he was could have had that steep an ascent anywhere else in the world, I think the answer is no.

I think Samuel Adams had a kind of almost oracular voice, and he was hot-headed.

He's impious, he's impolitic, he calls them as he sees them with a plain, clear voice like a bell.