A famous family drama unfolds, in this exhausting biography of
Benjamin Franklin's illegitimate son. Skemp (History/Univ. of
Mass.) gives a fair but incomplete view of the troubled William,
whose early training as militia officer, legislative clerk, and his
father's confidant led to an appointment as royal governor of New
Jersey in 1762. Although young and inexperienced, William soon
proved himself equal to the tasks at hand, steering his colony on a
moderate course through the turbulence of the Stamp Act and other
provocations from Parliament that inflamed the passions of the
colonists in the 1760's and 70's. Father and son were initially of
one mind in believing continued dependence on Britain the only
sensible option, but Ben was soon swayed by circumstances and
changed sides. William, on the other hand, duty-bound to the
government that gave him his political life, was unwilling to
follow, and events quickly separated the two men irrevocably. When
the rebellion broke out in earnest, William was imprisoned by the
Continental Congress as a threat to the colonial cause. After two
years in captivity, he was given over to the British in N.Y.C.,
where he remained to organize American loyalists against the
rebels, and to plan for the day when he would be restored to his
former glory. The course of the war worked against these aims,
however, and he fled to England in the wake of the Yorktown
debacle, never to return. His ties to Ben remained severed, despite
William's best efforts at reconciliation, and he was alienated from
his own illegitimate son Temple as well. William lived out his
years in relative poverty and isolation, paying a stiff price for
his loyalty to king and country. Well-researched but hardly
superlative. At times victimized by the author's melodramatic
excess, William also dwells here largely in the shadow of
historical events; the man is glimpsed, but rarely seen. (Kirkus
Reviews)
When Benjamin Franklin flew his kite in a thunderstorm in his
famous experiment, his illegitimate son William was his only
companion. Together they traveled through the western wilds of
Pennsylvania during the French and Indian War, fought in the
colony's fractious political battles. Ben helped his son attain the
post of Royal Governor of New Jersey, and William's government
hired Ben to represent the colony in London. But when war came,
father and son were split: one acclaimed as a patriot hero, the
other a loyalist condemned by his countrymen.
In William Franklin, Sheila Skemp tells the story of this
fascinating and complex man, a man with a foot in both worlds--he
loved both King and country, and saw the interests of both as
inextricably intertwined. She follows William's early years as a
militia officer in the wars with the French, his life as a law
student in England, and his long tenure as Royal Governor of New
Jersey. Skemp highlights the close personal and political
relationship between father and son, depicting such ironic episodes
as William's defense of his father against charges that Ben was the
author of the infamous Stamp Act. But as the years passed, Ben, in
London, grew increasingly bitter toward the Crown, while William,
in America, remained devoted to the King. By the time war came,
their loyalties were divided, their relationship destroyed.
Skemp traces William's career through the tumult of revolution and
exile. Refusing to follow his fellow royal governors into asylum,
he was arrested by the patriots and jailed; his wife soon died, and
his property was confiscated. Upon release, William became
president of the Board of Associated Loyalists in New York,
where--neglected by the British and despised by the
revolutionaries--he authorized one of the most notorious atrocities
of the war, the hanging of Joshua Huddy. At war's end, Franklin
fled into exile in England, hated by his countrymen, and disowned
by the father he still venerated, and even loved.
Sweeping and authoritative, William Franklin captures some of the
great issues and personalities of the Revolutionary era, and the
bitterness of a family split between father and son, patriot and
loyalist.
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