WILLIAM FRANKLIN

by Sheila L. Skemp ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1990

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.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1990

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Oxford Univ. Press

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1990

Categories: NONFICTION