This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories,

a show where America is the star and the American people.

On January 29, 1774, Benjamin Franklin was called to appear in Britain

before a select group of the King's advisors in an octagonal-shaped room in a palace known as the

cockpit. Though Franklin entered the room as a dutiful servant

of the British crown, he left as a budding American revolutionary. And it was this event that

ultimately pitted Franklin against his own son, suggesting that the revolution was in no small

part a civil war.

Here to tell the story is renowned Franklin historian Sheila Skempe,

author of The Making of a Patriot, Benjamin Franklin at the Cockpit.

Let's take a listen.

Benjamin Franklin was not a provincial man.

As a young boy, he had lived in England for 18 mostly pleasurable months when he was still

trying to figure out what he wanted to do with his life.

He returned in 1757, remained in London five more years.

This time, he came not as a bewildered boy trying to find his way in the big city,

but as a man whose intellectual credentials had dazzled men of letters throughout Western Europe.

He'd already conducted his famous kite experiment, becoming known everywhere as the man who tamed the lightning.

He'd been admitted to London's prestigious royal society and honor a few Englishmen and even fewer Americans were ever able to attain.

And once in England he was whined and dined and feted and celebrated everywhere he went.

...