The book is well written and impeccably researched. He was captured and imprisoned during the war, while Ben lived in luxury in Paris. William stayed loyal to England during the Revolutionary War. By 1776, William was the Royal Governor of New Jersey. They enjoyed many years together working on scientific and diplomatic matters. He married in his twenties and also fathered an illegitimate son, William, whom he adopted. It is only recently information about his personal life has been coming out. Shortly before his death, Franklin wrote his son, William, “nothing has ever hurt me so much…as to find myself deserted in my old age by my only son and not only deserted, but to find him taking up arms against me, in a cause wherein my good name, fortune, and life were all at stake.”īen Franklin kept his private life very private. Like Nathaniel Philbrick and David McCullough, Epstein is a storyteller first and foremost, a historian who weaves together fascinating incidents discovered in long-neglected documents to draw us into the private world of the men and women who made America. George Washington made efforts to win William’s release, while his father, to the world’s astonishment, appeared to have abandoned him to his fate.Ī fresh take on the combustible politics of the age of independence, The Loyal Son is a gripping account of how the agony of the American Revolution devastated one of America’s most distinguished families. In 1776, the Continental Congress imprisoned William for treason.

By then, William was Royal Governor of New Jersey, while Ben was one of the foremost champions of American independence. The outbreak of the American Revolution caused a devastating split between father and son. He was invited to walk in the procession of the coronation of George III Ben was not. On a diplomatic mission to London, it was William who charmed London society. After the famous kite-in-a-thunderstorm experiment, it was William who proved that the electrical charge in a lightning bolt travels from the ground up, not from the clouds down.

He adopted the boy, raised him, and educated him to be his aide.

When he was twenty-four, Franklin fathered a child with a woman who was not his wife. In The Loyal Son, award-winning historian Daniel Mark Epstein throws the spotlight on one of the darker episodes in Franklin’s biography: his complex and confounding relationship with his illegitimate son William. But this image obscures the scandals that dogged him throughout his life. His wit, his charm, his inventiveness-even his grandfatherly appearance-are legendary. The dramatic story of a founding father, his illegitimate son, and the tragedy of their conflict during the American Revolution-from the acclaimed author of The Lincolnsīen Franklin is the most lovable of America’s founding fathers.

The Loyal Son by Daniel Mark Epstein