Major funding for backstory is provided by an anonymous donor, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation.

From Virginia Humanities, this is backstory.

Welcome to backstory, the show that explains the history behind today's headlines. I'm Nathan Connolly.

I'm Joanne Freeman.

And I'm Ed Ayers.

If you're new to the podcast, all of us and our colleague, Brian Ballot, are all historians and each week we explore the history of one topic that's been in the news.

Today we're going to start off in Philadelphia around 1730, when Benjamin Franklin welcomed his first child, a son named William.

It was a day of happiness for the Franklin family, but a complicated one. William was illegitimate. In fact, the circumstances of his birth are unknown to this day.

Whatever his reasons, Benjamin ended up adopting William and the two developed an intimate bond.

Benjamin called himself an endulgent father, and from all we can tell, I think he was.

That's historian Sheila Skimp.

He was the kind of father that I think all fathers probably are. I'm going to give my kid, but I never got what I was growing up.

And one of the people who observed Benjamin and William in England when they were there together said, you know, these two are more like companions than father and son.

And I think other people observed the same thing.

By the time William reached adulthood, father and son had become close political allies.

While Benjamin was away in England as postmaster general, William was appointed royal governor of New Jersey in 1763.

And despite the distance, they looked out for each other's interests on both sides of the Atlantic.

Moderate in their politics, Ben and William shared a love for the king as did many a loyal subject, and did everything in their power to support the British Empire.

But as things started to unravel between Britain and America, so too to the relationship between Benjamin and William.

In 1774, Benjamin was fired from his position in the British government as postmaster general, and William, ever loyal to the crown, saw this as a blessing in disguise.

He hoped that this would pave the way for his father's triumphant return to America to restore harmony on the heels of what would come to be known as the Boston Tea Party.

Little did he know that his father's support for British rule was waning?

...