Founding Fathers - The Most Famous Duo

The Franklins

A Promising Beginning

The most famous father-son duo of the American Revolution is the Franklins: famed scientist, publisher, philosopher, and diplomat Benjamin Franklin and his son, William Franklin. As with everything about Franklin, this tale is complex and twisted, evoking the tragedy of a war that was as much a civil conflict as a revolution. William lived in his father's shadow, who was arguably the most celebrated and renowned man of his age - a truly international celebrity. William played a pivotal role in some of Franklin's most famous exploits (the electricity experiment, for instance) but received little to no credit or recognition. Living under the shadow of a famous father had both advantages and disadvantages. The often frugal Ben Franklin paid for William to attend the prestigious Inns at Court, where he studied law. This launched him into a career that, had the British won the war, would have marked him as one of the Empire's premier men.

Founding Father Benjamin Franklin

The Bastard Prodigy

William was illegitimate and may have been the child of Ben’s long-suffering wife, Deborah Read, prior to their marriage. Benjamin acknowledged his son after he had been married to Deborah for seven years, the legally allotted time before bastards could be legitimized. The recognition of William’s parentage was kept secret at that time. After completing his studies at the Inns of Court, William returned to America in 1762 with Downes, a wealthy heiress to a sugar plantation fortune in Barbados. However, the elder Franklin was displeased with this choice, as he had another bride in mind for William. Disagreement over William’s marriage further strained an already troubled relationship. Before the rebellion escalated into a revolution, the two Franklins were partners in politics, publishing, grand real estate schemes in the Illinois country, and conflicts with Indians on the Pennsylvania frontier. However, William was very much the junior partner, dependent on his father for income even after his appointment as governor. William’s salary was often delayed for as much as three years.

Royal Governor of New Jersey William Franklin

The King's Servants?

While in England, William developed close relationships with government ministers, leading to his appointment as Royal Governor of New Jersey in 1762. This prestigious appointment came at an unfortunate time. Just as William assumed his new role, a newspaper hostile to the Franklin family revealed the younger Franklin’s illegitimacy. At the very moment William became one of the most significant political figures in colonial America, the scandal of his illegitimacy erupted on both sides of the Atlantic. Meanwhile, Ben Franklin began his journey from loyal conciliator to ardent rebel. His dealings with the British as the colonies' representative in London made him realize that Americans would always be viewed as second-class citizens. Called before the Council on a trumped-up charge, his treatment resulted in a definitive break, and Franklin became the elder statesman of the American Revolution from that time on.

Proprietary House - NJ Governor's Mansion

A Loyal Prisoner

But William continued to act as George III’s loyal subject. As Royal Governor and supporter of the British constitution, he urged conciliation on both sides. As the war escalated, William engaged in what was inaccurately labeled as treasonous correspondence with members of Parliament and the King’s ministers. His letters provided information on American troop movements and included pleas for reasonableness from the crown. William was arrested by order of the Continental Congress but refused to give his “parole” or word that he would cease his counter-revolutionary activities. Over a two-year period beginning in 1776, William was confined under increasingly horrific conditions. Ben refused to intercede for him. He finally left Litchfield, Connecticut, under terrible conditions. While most upper-class prisoners would stay at Moses Seymour's house, Franklin was thrown into the common jail, in a dungeon-like cell filled with excrement. 

Franklin was confined in a common prison like this

During his incarceration, William’s wife had become seriously ill. Her serious condition even prompted George Washington to plead for her husband’s freedom to save her life. However, William spent eight months in Litchfield jail before he was exchanged for a POW held by the British. The once robust and handsome Franklin emerged toothless, emaciated, and destitute; his health ruined and his hair gone. Washington’s fears about William’s wife were validated. Shortly before her husband’s release, Elizabeth Downes Franklin died at the age of 43. William believed his wife’s death was caused by their long separation and his ill-treatment while imprisoned.

Family Feud outlives Political Peace

After the war, the Franklins' relationship remained strained, and they never reconciled. Like so many Loyalists—perhaps around 100,000—William went into exile. In 1785, just before Benjamin’s final return to America, William sought reconciliation during a meeting in France. Benjamin, at 79, obese and suffering from debilitating gout and kidney stones, rejected his son. Franklin bequeathed the majority of his fortune to his grandson William Temple Franklin while demanding payment for loans his son had repaid years earlier. William suppressed his anger and transferred all of his extensive property in America, including his mansion in New Jersey. After his release in 1778, the ex-governor moved to London, where he rented a modest home. He passed away in 1813.

William Temple Franklin

Founding Fathers Part Two  - Another Palmetto Duo

Father:  Slave Trader and Political Leader

Henry Laurens was one of the wealthiest and influential of the South Carolina planter class.  Laurens became a political leader during the Revolutionary War. He also happened to be the largest slave trader in the colonies too.  In the 1750s alone, his Charleston firm oversaw the sale of more than 8,000 African slaves. When Laurens succeeded John Hancock as President of the Congress he became an important political ally of George Washington and the two maintained close correspondence throughout some of the darkest days of the war. The elder Laurens was someone who Washington could trust would work the sometimes feckless and indecisive Congress.  His support for the Indispensable Man is a little-noted but critical sidebar that led to Washington's continued leadership of a Cause often thought lost but never forsaken.

                                                                               

                                                                         Henry Laurens
                                                                

An Idealistic Son

His son John Laurens was born in Charleston on October 28, 1754. The younger Laurens traveled to London in 1771 for schooling before moving to Geneva, Switzerland, in May 1772. Laurens returned to London to study law in the Middle Temple at the Inns of Court. He returned to an America at war with its motherland and was appointed to the staff of George Washington. Laurens was perhaps the most idealistic and forward-thinking of the First Patriots. While on Washington’s staff he became very close friends with Alexander Hamilton and (along with his father in Congress) played a key role in countering a movement against the commander in chief, which included his winning a duel with one of Washington’s adversaries. He showed reckless courage at the battles of Brandywine, Germantown in which he was wounded, and Monmouth, where his horse was shot out from under him. Lafayette praised his courage and marveled that he had not fallen in the battle. Laurens was an idealist who believed that the republican principals the Americans were fighting for were hypocritical if they continued to utilize slave labor. Strongly influenced by the growing abolitionist literature that circulated in England while he was studying, Laurens encouraged those around him, including Washington, to consider freeing their slaves. The responses that Laurens received were mixed. Some, such as the Marquis de Lafayette, eventually came to the same conclusion. Others, such as Washington, remained hesitant, fearing the economic and social upheaval such a measure would cause.

                                                                                
                                                                      John Laurens

After the British shifted military operations to the South, Laurens proposed that South Carolina arm slaves and grant them freedom in return for their military service. In March 1779 Congress approved his idea and commissioned him a lieutenant colonel. Elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives, Laurens introduced his black regiment plan but met overwhelming defeat. His belief that blacks shared a similar nature with whites and could aspire to freedom in a republican society would set Laurens apart from most prominent southerners in the Revolutionary period. When the British threatened Charleston in May 1779, Laurens opposed Governor John Rutledge’s plan to surrender the city. Later that year he commanded an infantry column in the failed assault on Savannah. Laurens was captured when Charleston finally surrendered to the British in May 1780 but was soon exchanged.

Siege of Charleston

A Youthful Diplomat

Because of his integrity and devotion to duty (and his French fluency), Congress appointed Laurens special minister to France. He arrived in France in March 1781 and quickly obtained a loan from the Netherlands to buy more military supplies and French assurances of active military support. Laurens served once more under Washington at Yorktown where the young prodigy represented the American army in negotiating the British surrender.

Clandestine Warfare and an Untimely Death

Returning south (and losing a final plea for a black regiment) Laurens served under General Nathaniel Greene in the always vicious southern theater. He operated a local spy network that gathered intelligence on British activities around Charleston. To the everlasting loss of his country and his state, Laurens was killed on August 27, 1782, during a meaningless skirmish on the Combahee River.

Founding Fathers & Sons

Who’s your Daddy? 

I apologize for using a clichéd phrase to introduce this blog, but the topic is anything but trite. Throughout the American War for Independence, many father-son pairs served together, particularly in local militia units that emerged and disappeared with the changing tides of conflict. Some, however, fought at the highest levels of the Revolution. With Father’s Day approaching, I thought it would be worthwhile to profile a few of these remarkable duos. To keep things concise, I’ll be sharing these stories in three separate blogs this week, so stay tuned!

Part One

A Pair of Irishmen from the Palmetto State

This pair of First Patriots hails from South Carolina, originally from Ireland. Jonas Lynch fought alongside the Irish in their valiant yet hopeless stand against William of Orange's forces. The final resistance to William's mercenary army surrendered after the siege of Wexford in 1691. Many fled to France, where they hoped to take up the cause under the King of France. Unlike so many Irish expelled from their homeland following the defeat in the Irish wars, Jonas Lynch made his way to America. He became a successful planter. His son, Thomas, was born in Berkeley County in 1727. 

Thomas Lynch Sr. also engaged in planting and owned extensive rice fields along the Santee River and other waterways, as well as a vast estate known as Hopsewee Plantation on the North Santee River. He became the second wealthiest man in the colony. Lynch was also the leading statesman in the colony, serving in the Colonial Legislature of South Carolina and representing South Carolina in the Stamp Act Congress of 1765, which included heading the committee that drafted the petition to the House of Commons and serving as a representative to both the first and second Continental Congresses. Lynch Sr. would have been a signer of the Declaration of Independence representing South Carolina. Unfortunately, he suffered a massive stroke in the early part of 1776. With the father struck down, the South Carolina Assembly named his son, Thomas Lynch Jr., to take his place. 

Thomas Lynch Junior

Thomas Lynch Jr. was born in 1747 at his family's Hopeswee Plantation. Unlike his father, he had the advantage of a world-class education, attending elite schools in America before going to Eton and Cambridge, where he studied law in London. He returned to America, made a grand marriage, and took up planting like his father. As the son of one of the most fervent revolutionaries and influential men in the colony, Lynch Jr. naturally took a keen interest in politics and enjoyed strong support from the electorate. During the years 1774-76, while his father served in the Continental Congress, Thomas Jr. worked on the home front, attending the first and second provincial congresses as well as the first State legislature and serving on the State constitutional committee. In 1775, the younger Lynch accepted a captaincy in the First South Carolina Regiment of Continentals. This upset his father, who hoped to use his influence to obtain a higher rank for his son. Unfortunately, young Captain Lynch contracted bilious (an intestinal ailment) fever while on recruiting duties in North Carolina. Incapacitated, he was forced to abandon his nascent military career. 

Triumph and Tragedy

However, when Thomas Sr.’s condition in Philadelphia proved grave in the spring of 1776, South Carolina’s Assembly sent Thomas Jr. to the Continental Congress. Despite his own significant medical issues, the younger Lynch dutifully traveled to Philadelphia, where he remained throughout the summer.  During that revolutionary season, it was the younger Lynch, not the father, who got to vote for and sign the Declaration of Independence.  The Lynches were the only father-son team that served concurrently in the Continental Congress.  

But personal tragedy followed political triumph, and more blows to the father and son, the First Patriots, were yet to come. Both Lynches’ health worsened, and by the end of the year, they headed homeward. Thomas Sr. never made it back. En route, in Annapolis, MD, a second stroke took the life of the elder Lynch. Thomas Jr. returned home a broken man—physically and emotionally. Late in 1779, he and his wife headed to France in an attempt to regain his health. They sailed for the Dutch island of St. Eustatius in the West Indies to find a ship back across the ocean, but a storm struck, and their ship was lost at sea. This was a common occurrence during the age of sail, but the tragedy is not just personal (Thomas Jr. left no male heirs). The loss of the father and son team was a loss for the fledgling nation, which could have used the considerable talents and dedication of the Lynches of South Carolina.

The Harbor at Saint Eustatius