Benjamin Franklin

The recent war with France had expanded England’s empire, but left its treasury depleted. In the spring of 1765, the king’s ministers and Parliament came up with a new way to raise more money from the American colonies: The Stamp Act. Now, all legal documents, newspapers, books, almanacs—even decks of playing cards—would need official stamps, purchased from the government.

After reading Thomas Jefferson’s draft of the Declaration of Independence, Franklin offered only a few edits, but one of them was pivotal. In his draft, Jefferson’s most important sentence began, “We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable, that all men are created equal…” Franklin crossed out “sacred and undeniable” and wrote in “self-evident.”

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.

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.

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.