To say they didn’t speak again at Thanksgiving was an understatement. 🤣 From well-regarded UT history professor H. W. Brands, about writing his biography of Benjamin Franklin:
At times I thought I knew Franklin better than he knew himself. Franklin spent eighty-four years living his life. Understandably he didn't always remember at eighty what he thought or did on a given day when he was forty. But I had his whole life laid out before me in his letters. He might forget but I had the record.
And yet . . .
There was something about Franklin that bothered me, one important part of his life I couldn't figure out. He and his son William parted ways during the Revolutionary War, with Franklin becoming a rebel and William remaining a loyalist. I could understand their estrangement as long as the war lasted. They were two strong-minded men with firm opinions. Franklin became estranged from most of his British friends during the war. After the war he reconnected with them. Not with William.
In fact he rejected attempts at reconciliation. His grandson Temple, William's son, surreptitiously arranged a meeting between Benjamin and William in Southampton, England, where the ship carrying Ben and Temple home from France stopped before setting out on the Atlantic. William, the defeated loyalist, was living in London and came to Southampton knowing his father would be there. Ben did not know that William would be there.
He wasn't happy when he saw his son. William offered the hand of friendship and filial attachment, but Ben refused to take it. He turned his back on his son, never to see him again.
