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Chapter 1: What is the overview of 'Founding Fathers: An American Dream'?
Hi, listeners. Today we're bringing you a preview of a brand new show from the Noiser Podcast Network. It's called Founding Fathers, An American Dream. Hosted by Clark Peters, it tells the epic tale of the birth of the United States of America 250 years ago. Across eight episodes, hear how American patriots overthrew imperial rule and established a radical new nation.
Follow George Washington into bloody battles, travel with Benjamin Franklin on crucial missions, hear Alexander Hamilton debate the country's future. How was American independence won? Who lost out along the way? and why does it still matter today? Featuring contributions from leading historians and descendants of those involved, as well as original music and immersive sound design.
If you enjoy this taster episode, search Founding Fathers, An American Dream in your podcast app and hit follow. You'll find more episodes waiting for you now. We hope you enjoy.
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.
With the dignitaries in place, the ceremony begins. In 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 King George III of Great Britain.
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.
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.
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Chapter 2: How did Benjamin Franklin's early life shape his future?
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 travel from the stirrings of revolution to the long and bloody fight for independence.
This is the heart and soul and guts of the American Revolution.
We'll witness the early years of the American Republic, an experiment that changed the world.
The 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.
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.
A lot of the beliefs about the British government and British policies were simply conspiracy theory.
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 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.
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Chapter 3: What role did the Great Awakening play in American society?
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. Abiah 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.
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. 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. 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.
In the early years of the 18th century, there are roughly 30,000 slaves in British North America, one in 10 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.
Historian Jane Kamensky is president and CEO of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation.
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.
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Chapter 4: How did the American colonies respond to British taxation?
Louis.
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 of opportunity.
In lightning quick time, Franklin earns a fortune from publishing. At the center of his empire is the Pennsylvania Gazette, which becomes one of the most prominent newspapers in colonial America.
He's kind of one of the early self-made man stories from that period because he was an incredibly smart printer. He knew how to print the English language in ways that were captivating and compelling to his fellow countrymen.
So, when a charismatic visitor from England swoops into town, Franklin immediately spots an opportunity. It's November 1739, late in the afternoon. In the center of Philadelphia, Market Street is heaving. Horse-drawn carts and wagons line the road. Pedestrians amble alongside, mothers carrying children on their hips, groups of sauntering teenage boys, the elderly moving slowly but purposefully.
Among them is 33-year-old Benjamin Franklin. Franklin moves in and out of the jumble of bodies. He cranes his neck this way and that. A quick top of head calculation tells him there must be 6,000 people here. This is a city of roughly 15,000 inhabitants. It's astounding. Franklin claims a spot outside the wooden courthouse. If there's one thing he loves, it's an occasion.
This afternoon promises to be just that. Inside the courthouse, a man dressed head to foot in black robes gazes out on the crowd. He's 25, but his flowing white wig makes him look strangely old. No doubt, when he speaks, he seems as ancient as Methuselah. His powerful voice carries wisdom and authority well beyond his years. Around 6 p.m., he walks out onto the balcony.
There are gasps, then a reverential silence. The young man is George Whitefield. In his native England, Whitefield has a reputation as a dazzling preacher of God's word. Now, he's the talk of the colonies. This past week, he's been preaching in Philadelphia. Every day, the crowds have gotten bigger and more enthusiastic. Whitfield gesticulates and darts his arms into the air.
In his booming voice, he urges the people of Philadelphia to return to their maker. The vast audience listens in rapt silence. Whitfield's is a strict Calvinist message. Embrace the righteousness of Christ. Franklin is smitten. Not so much with the theology. As a man of the Enlightenment, Franklin is all about rationality and skepticism.
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Chapter 5: What events led to the rise of Samuel Adams as a revolutionary leader?
In the southern colonies, that meant the Anglican church. In the New England colonies, it meant the congregational church. Now, what the evangelicals, starting with Whitefield, do is they say, no, every individual gets to choose his church, and the government should not interfere with that. So it encourages people with the notion of they don't have to follow community norms.
They don't have to follow government's norms if it violates their individual conscience. And you can see how that might be a parallel then when people a generation later are thinking about rejecting the authority of Britain.
Not that Benjamin Franklin is thinking very much about rejecting the authority of Britain, at least not yet. Let's jump forward 16 years. In January 1756, Franklin spends his 50th birthday wet and cold, trudging along a narrow, slippery pass in the Blue Mountains of Pennsylvania. In a life of constant reinventions, Franklin's latest incarnation is an unlikely one.
A wartime commander leading 170 men on a special mission. Eventually, they reach their destination. What they discover is a scene of utter devastation. Corpses strewn throughout a deserted village. They bury the dead, then build a fortification. They hope this will protect their fellow colonists from the enemy.
The conflict Franklin is caught up in is the French and Indian War, part of a broader struggle between Britain and France, also known as the Seven Years' War. The two European powers are battling for control of North America. Franklin is firmly on the side of his king on protecting the stability and growth of the British colonial project.
Hence, his brief stint as a colonel on active duty, in which he spends time trying to repel attacks from native warriors who have sided with the French. In an attempt to shore up support in the colonies, he publishes a cartoon, a snake cut into several portions. Each represents a different colony. Beneath, a simple message, join or die.
At that time, Franklin was a diehard British subject, and he claimed that the British colonies needed to unite if they were going to successfully respond to the challenges of this war. They needed to unite or they would die. But he wasn't claiming they needed to unite against the British government. It's that they needed to unite against their French opponents in this war.
Professor Andrew O'Shaughnessy of the University of Virginia is the author of The Men Who Lost America.
Today we seem as the quintessential American, But actually, like a lot of the later patriots, he was very pro the Empire, arguably more than the British. People like Franklin wanted to expand the British Empire. They wanted settlers to move west into Native American territory, which the British were against because they realized it would lead to war and expenditure.
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Chapter 6: How did the tensions between colonists and British soldiers escalate?
He's looking for a special person, his adult son, William, who is now a law student in London. Benjamin Franklin, child of a Boston craftsman, has landed his family at the epicenter of imperial power. It's a truly astonishing rise.
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.
Franklin is delighted with his new king. Most Americans are.
George III, when he came to power, he was seen as a great breath of fresh air. He wanted to introduce a new type of politics. He felt that governments had become incredibly corrupted. The same people had been in power for ages. And what is interesting is that the caricatures and the press were much less deferential to the monarchy in Britain than the Americans.
And they reprinted some of this stuff, but you really don't get Christendom of the King in America until 1774.
Franklin shares King George's misgivings about the men in government. He's troubled by conversations with certain elder statesmen. one informs Franklin that London calls the shots in the colonies. Their little legislatures, their ideas about self-government, that's all irrelevant. Franklin is stunned, as he often is when talking to Londoners about America.
Britain in the 1750s and 60s was becoming much more nationalistic and jingoistic. Franklin complained that the ordinary people in Britain knew nothing about America. And he also said that every Englishman feels themselves to be governor of America.
Britain's ideas about itself and its empire are crucial to our story.
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Chapter 7: What was the significance of the Boston Massacre in the revolution?
Hi, listeners. If you're enjoying this taster episode, then search Founding Fathers, An American Dream in your podcast app and hit follow. You can listen to more episodes of Founding Fathers straight after this one.
We're back in Franklin's hometown of Boston. A 43-year-old man stomps his way, heavy footed, down the street. He's headed for an elm tree that everybody in town is talking about. Rooted at the corner of Essex Street and Orange Street, the tree was planted by settlers more than a century earlier. A living symbol of the colony's past and present. The man is short, stocky.
You might say he has a look of an English bulldog about him. He's scruffy, too. His jacket ill-fitting, as though he's wearing someone else's by mistake. This is Samuel Adams. a prominent player in Boston politics. Like Benjamin Franklin, he's also a newspaper man. In the pages of the Boston Gazette, he insists that American colonists have the same rights as all British subjects.
16 years younger than Franklin, Adams is one of many of his generation marked by the Great Awakening. He's powered by an evangelical passion To him, Parliament's taxes are not only unjust, they are ungodly.
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.
Today, on an August afternoon, 1765, he gazes up into the branches of the elm tree. Directly above him, a figure dangles, limply, in the sunlight. It's not a dead body, but a dummy, an effigy of the government official responsible for overseeing the Stamp Act in Massachusetts. It's been placed there by activists connected to Adams. One of them is Ebenezer McIntosh,
Locally, McIntosh is known as a bullish tough guy, often seen leading his South End gang in fights versus the rival North End gang. Dust-ups in Boston are no rare thing. As the sun fades, the effigy is cut down from the tree, but not laid to rest. Ebenezer McIntosh arrives. A huge crowd gathers around him. The effigy is held aloft and paraded through the streets. They behead it, then burn it.
When they reach the official's house, windows are smashed. Some of the crowd break in and raid the wine cellar. The message is pure Boston, a bold, direct statement of resentment and rage.
It's not the wealthiest people who are showing up in this mob. There are a lot of sailors, artisans, shipbuilders. It is the working people of Boston who have been worked up by Sam Adams' publications against the Stamp Tax and against any colonist who has spoken out in favor of the Stamp Tax.
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Chapter 8: What can we expect in the next episode of 'Founding Fathers'?
Life for Hutchison is as indulgent as it gets in dour New England. There are no theaters there. The puritanical establishment banned those years ago. But an Anglo-American's home is his castle, and Hutcheson's overflows with oil paintings, exquisite furniture, and fine fabrics. Tonight, he takes a seat at his highly polished dining table. Surrounding him are several of his children.
From his kitchens, servants deliver trays of rich delicacies. Bottles of delicious French wine are brought from the cellar. But before Hutchinson can fill his belly, a servant hurries in. There's an urgent message. A mob is on its way, led by the pugnacious Ebenezer McIntosh. Hutchinson needs no further explanation. These last few weeks have unleashed a popular fury.
From his perspective, it's an outbreak of mass insanity, a hive-minded carnival of violence fueled by overheated rhetoric and deranged conspiracy theories. Hutchison orders his children to get out of the house, anywhere will do, just as long as it's away from the advancing mob. The house must be secured. Hutcheson tears around the place, doors are locked, windows shut fast.
He flees for the safety of a neighbor's house. Soon thousands of Bostonians descend, all intent on popular justice. In a chorus of smashing glass and splintering wood, Macintosh's followers break in. Looting and destruction ensues. The antique furniture is tossed into the street and set alight. Wooden paneling is stripped down. Walls are knocked through.
Everything that's not nailed down is either ruined or stolen. Even the servants' clothes are pilfered. By sunrise, the rioters have made their exit. Hutchinson stands in front of the rubble. It is, he says, the rage of devils that has come to Boston. The trashing of Hutchinson's house is mimicked throughout the colonies. Tax collectors everywhere are in a state of panic.
Many quit their posts in the hope that it'll save them from the mob. To harness and control this energy, the colony's political elites attempt to make common cause. Leaders from nine colonies decide to gather in New York City. At the meeting, delegates draw up a Declaration of Rights and grievances. It adds an official air to the events.
There's no doubt, this is not just the bellyaching of a few amped up Bostonians. Across the ocean, Benjamin Franklin grows agitated.
Initially, he's somewhat detached from the real view of Americans. He opposed the Stamp Act, but once he thought it was going to go into effect anyway, he arranged for one of his friends to become the stamp collector in Pennsylvania. He was very calculating, but I think it is also a testimony to his fondness for Britain.
In Parliament, a place almost as rowdy as Boston, there's more than a little sympathy for the colonies. In January 1766, Franklin buys a pamphlet. He turns his pages eagerly. Inside is the text of a speech just delivered by William Pitt, a leading figure in the Whig Party that pushes the interests of Parliament over those of the monarch.
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