- What causes a man or woman to forsake their country and take up arms against it.

For most Americans, the Civil War is the prime example, but decades earlier most North American colonists were deciding where their loyalties lie.

In the book "Our First Civil War" author, H.W Brands shares with readers a behind the scenes look at historical figures, making that choice on Newsmakers.

(brooding music) Thank you for joining us on Newsmakers.

Most of us learn about the Revolutionary War in grade school.

It's pretty straight forward the American colonists live under British rule in July of 1776.

The colonists declare their independence with the help of France the colonists defeat Britain, but there's far more to that story.

Some colonists were loyal to the throne others were fine with the status quo while others rebelled.

These decisions divided communities and families.

As a guest of Grand Valley State University's Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies and the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation, author H.W Brands asked the fundamental question, "What causes a man to forsake his country and take up arms against it?"

It's the theme of his new book, "Our First Civil War Patriots and Loyalists in the American Revolution."

H.W Brands holds the Jack S. Blanton Senior Chair in history at the University of Texas at Austin.

You've written about Benjamin Franklin, Andrew Jackson, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR and Ronald Reagan.

Just to name a few.

H.W Brands thank you so much for joining us.

Good to see you again.

- Delighted to be with you again.

- Hey.

So many books have been written.

This one it's so intriguing because I feel as though there is this personal poll, right?

You could place yourself in that situation.

So that fundamental question that you ask, "What is it that could 'cause somebody to forsake their country and take up arms?"

That does seem to be the theme.

- So I'm delighted to hear that you say you feel this personal poll because it's an approach I take to history that isn't shared by every historian.

But what I really wanna do is to make the past come alive for my readers, by putting them, by immersing them as fully as I can in the particular moment.

And I do this in large part by choosing individuals who have articulated what their thinking, have articulated their views, typically in letters, in journals, sometimes in public statements.

And so I want my readers and I do this with my students as well.

I teach at the University of Texas.

I want them to see history from the inside out rather than from the outside in.

I find that I actually, I can't help writing history as biography.

And so I've written some dedicated biographies, but even when I'm writing something what amounts to the story I wrote, a generation people?

I can't write about the whole generation.

I have to pick out several people that I can focus on, so I can get to know them, so I can get, I let my readers get to know them.

And so they can figure out and I can figure out why these people did what they did, because I'm convinced again and again, that the big issues of history decided sort of one by one by the individuals who make those choices.

And this is especially true in this story.

- So when you're going through this, right, 'cause there's history is hindsight.

So how can you keep the history out of it while you're delving in to the decision-making process of these historical figures?

- Ah, so that's the question.

History actually has two meanings and I'm use it as two meanings.

One is the stuff that happened in the past.

The other is the stories we tell about the stuff that happened the past and the history that we tell about the stuff that happened in the past, for that hindsight is essential.

So we know how it turned out and how do we explain.

Why it turned out the way it did, but the other version of the stuff that happened in the past, how do we understand that for to allow an insight into that I think we have to deliberately abandon hindsight.

We have to forget how it turned out and so when I'm looking at George Washington, who decides to, as you put it, so aptly as I do in the book.

Who decides to forsake his country and take arms against it?

This is a huge leap.

So it doesn't seem so huge to us who are the beneficiaries of his success.

And we know that the United States was going to go on to become the most powerful, the richest, most successful country in world history.

So of course George Washington is gonna decide for this country, of which he is gonna be the father, but there's really in the moment.

There's no of course about it at all, because he could have chosen to do it differently, which is one of the reasons that I focus on several patriots.

Those are the ones who opt for independence, but also several loyalists, the ones who don't.

Why was Washington?

How was Washington different?

How were the revolutionaries the rebels, the patriots, how were they different from the people who decided to remain loyal?

And it's a question that everybody in a democracy makes at some point or other.

So to what extent do we stick with the status quo and when do we decide that there has to be a change?

Now for most of us fortunately, it doesn't come down to the point of, okay I'm gonna overthrow my country and start a new one.

Thankfully, that doesn't happen very often, but it's still a question of what causes two people, let's say, who observed the same external events to come to opposite conclusions about what to do about it.

So this is at the heart of the story that I try to tell.

- And you focus on two biggies, right?

Washington you've mentioned really the military leader, but Benjamin Franklin.

And I find it fascinating that had events changed, who would we remember and who might we not?

- Well, so one way I put the question is, that if there had never been an American Revolution, which of the founding fathers, the founding generation would any of us today have ever heard of.

And the only confident answer I can give to that question is Benjamin Franklin.

George Washington, well George Washington became famous precisely because he took a leadership role in the American Revolution.

Thomas Jefferson, ah, the author of the "Declaration of Independence," no revolution, no declaration of independence, but Franklin was already world famous before any of these events, which actually is another illustration of the degree to which he was a very unlikely revolutionary.

Revolutionaries tend to be young people.

It's natural I think, for the younger generation to say to the older generation, I don't want your world.

I want a different world.

In Franklin's case, it was just the opposite.

Some people have spoken of the founding fathers, but then there's Franklin, who was a founding grandfather.

He was all generation older than everybody else.

- So we're seeing this as the revolutionary and Franklin is in London for some time, I feel like we're jumping forward a little bit here in the story, but it's fascinating that he is this world-class scientist at the time, right?

He is American, but he's still pretty loyal to the throne.

He's in London and he's enjoying his life, but he's also the representative of America and what is happening across the ocean.

- The fact that Franklin spent 18 years of his adult life as a resident in London is really crucial to understanding, first of all, why Franklin ultimately decided what he did, but why he was misunderstood on both sides of the Atlantic.

Because Franklin went to London as the representative or the agent of the Pennsylvania assembly.

The Pennsylvania assembly had issues with its governor.

The governor was appointed by the king.

The assembly was elected by the people of Pennsylvania and when the people of Pennsylvania wanted their viewpoint conveyed to the British government directly, they couldn't count on the governor to deliver it because the governor owed his loyalty somewhere else.

So they hired Franklin.

Franklin went to London and he thought, this is the greatest place on earth to live.

He was this world famous scientist.

He was also a very easy going fellow.

Somebody who fit in, who told great stories, easily made friends and everybody loved Benjamin Franklin and Franklin loved London.

He thought I could not find a place to live that it's more congenial and suited to the things that I value in life.

Franklin was not simply a loyal supporter of the British Empire.

He was an enthusiastic of the British Empire because the British Empire had allowed Franklin to flourish as very few people flourish in any time or any place.

And Franklin would have moved to London permanently if he had been able to talk his wife Debra to join him.

But Debra, she was a Philadelphia girl and she said, I don't wanna move.

So Franklin always kept sort of one foot back in Philadelphia, but it took him a long time to get back.

So he was 18 years in London and he only left after he became convinced that the British government was so pig headed, that it would not allow someone like him to become a full Englishman.

Franklin was born in Englishman, died in America.

If it had been up to him, he would have died in Englishman again.

He was proud of being an Englishman.

He was thrilled to have the British Empire had accomplished, but the mere fact that he had been born in America always stigmatized him in the eyes of a certain class of people in Britain.

And finally it became a matter of personal insult.

Franklin felt insulted by the fact that his American origin was held against him.

And in Franklin's case, it was pretty much a matter of, okay, if you won't let me really be an Englishman, then I will become an American because you give me no chores.

- So here in the states, there is that feeling, there is that vibe and you have these colonists who have to make some choices, right?

Because you can kind of see the direction where things are headed.

If the colonies are that second class, and that's the feeling, it's not everyone, right?

There are still those who are loyal, what is happening then in the colonies where choices have to be made.

As I mentioned earlier in the open and communities with neighbors and within their own families, and Franklin is a case for that.

And I'm sure we'll get to that, but the overall feeling.

- So one of the questions that I always deal with in my works of history is, "to what extent human nature is stable and predictable over time?"

So in our day and age, we know people, some people are simply harder to please than other people.

Some people are sort of quick to fly off the handle and say, this is terrible, let's do something else.

Other people are sort of more patient and say, oh, mine will be perfect.

Let's see if we can fix it.

And you can see that in the case of the generation that had to make this choice about becoming patriots that is rebels or remaining loyal to the British government.

There were people who were hardly distinguishable from Franklin in social background, connections, just sort of general view of the world who chose to be loyal.

Who chose the path of reform rather than revolution.

Look much everybody in America dislike some of the laws that the British government passed, but there were those who said, okay, it's a bad law let's petition the government.

Let's get them to repeal it.

If we have to, let's try to affect a change in the government in London, we'll bring in the opposition party and there'll be more favorably inclined toward us.

So those are the ones who remained loyalists, but there were others who ultimately prove harder to please, or in some cases, it was a matter that in their personal lives, they experienced something differently than the others.

And so two of the individuals that I look at are Benjamin Franklin and his son, William Franklin.

And as you mentioned, this question of whose side are you gonna take?

It split this family right in two and Benjamin Franklin, the father in this case, unusually is the one who hopes for overturning the status quo and starting something new.

William Franklin is the one who's more inclined to stand part to stick with what we have.

And he, again, he doesn't think that every law that the British government's passed is a good law.

So these are not people who are simply apologists for the British government, but when it comes right down to it, they say we're better off staying in the British Empire and fixing it, then abandoning the British Empire and maybe fighting a war to do it, and then risking our futures and our children's future on this unknown thing that hasn't yet come into existence.

- As a historian is there the thought that had there been no Revolutionary War, there still would have been an America in the end?

- So this is one of those imponderable questions.

If no American Revolution War, what would have happened?

Well, I think it's pretty clear to say that what is now the United States would not still be British colonies.

There aren't any British colonies left.

So the world has changed.

If not for an American Revolution.

I suspect that what would happen for what we now know is the United States would have evolved more or less the way Canada evolved.

And this has a lot to do with the fact that British the gradually changed their notions of what they wanted and expected out of an empire.

Now, having said that, one of the reasons the British changed their attitudes about what an empire should consist of, is that they lost the war to keep the American colonies.

So if there hadn't been such a war, maybe it would have taken something else to convince them that they need to make a change.

So counterfactual history, this sort of what if thing.

It's intriguing and it's useful, but only up to a point.

You could say, okay, if the American colonies had not declared independence in 1776, what would North America look like in 1800?

Okay, I would be willing to hazard a guess as to that.

1900, 2021?

No that's too far in the future.

There are too many other things that would intervene.

- And we know it happened.

And we know it impacted the Franklin family to the point where what happens to the loyalists.

He asks what I think is interesting about this history.

We know about the patriots, what happened to all the loyalists?

There's not much really written about them.

- No, and I'll first answer your question by saying the reason we don't know much about the loyalist is that after the war is over, it is not a story that either side wants to tell.

The patriots have no interest in telling the story of the people who fought against them and tried to defeat them.

And on the other hand, the British, who might have wanted to say, okay, yeah, celebrate these people who are loyal to us.

Now they still looked upon the loyalists as these Americans who were sort of second-class people.

But furthermore, after the war is over a war that the British lost, these loyalists they're simply reminders of this expensive, eventually fruitless war that Britain fought.

Here they're an analogy can be drawn to the American experience in the Vietnam War and the experience of American veterans of the Vietnam War.

After that war was over the Vietnam vets received no homecoming parades.

They were largely overlooked.

It certainly felt that way to very many of them.

And much of this had to do with the fact that once the war ended in an American defeat, most Americans did not want to be reminded of that defeat.

So they turned their faces and went on to something else, leaving the Vietnam vets behind.

Well, that's exactly what happened with the British and the loyalists.

The British did evacuate loyalists from New York and other parts of the American colonies now in the United States.

By the way on this subject.

So the book was at the printer.

I'd all finished writing.

The book was at the printer when the American evacuation from Afghanistan took place.

And I was watching on television as very many people were and asking myself what's gonna become of those people in Afghanistan who fought on the side of the Americans.

Are their lives gonna be fought?

Is their property gonna be taken?

Are they gonna be able to get out?

That's exactly the situation was faced by the American loyalists at the end of the American Revolution.

Because the side that they had chosen is leaving and so just as Afghan refugees try to push their way onto the planes, leaving the airport of Kabul, loyalist crammed the way onto the British ships, leaving New York Harbor.

And as many as a 100,000 fled, the United States at the end of the American Revolution, most of them went to Canada.

Some went to the West Indies, some went to England.

Some of them former slaves for example, wound up in West Africa and in Sierra Leone, a colony that the British government founded precisely for freed slaves, but they largely disappeared from history because nobody really wants to hear their story.

- But for William Franklin as governor of New Jersey, how he installed as governor of New Jersey with the rift between father, he's there, he's a loyalist.

He remains loyal and when the declaration of independence is signed, that's when there's a declaration of war.

What happens with him is that loyalist?

- William Franklin got his job as governor in New Jersey when his father was on good terms with the British government and Benjamin Franklin recommended his son and his son had held other positions.

And so he seemed like a natural.

And perhaps the appointment of William Franklin as governor of Jersey was in part from the British perspective, a way of keeping Benjamin Franklin attached to that particular British governor.

It would make sense.

Then the rift develops between the colonies and the mother country.

William Franklin, as the serving, in fact by this time the longest serving loyal governor in the American colonies, as governor of New Jersey, he is doing what he thinks he's supposed to be doing as what he is taking an oath of office to do, to uphold British law in North America in his particular colony.

And he is doing exactly what is expected of one in his position.

His father becomes a rebel and Benjamin Franklin seems to have assumed or expected that his son would follow him.

That is from Ben Franklin is leaving the empire.

So his son should follow him out but William doesn't now, but this time William is a grown man.

He's in his 50s and so thinking, this is what I'm supposed to do.

So I, and by the way, I'm an adult now and I can make up my own mind dad.

So don't tell me what to do.

And this is exactly what he does.

And so the war, this decision for independence splits father from son, and they become alienated during the war, which is sort of expected.

If you're on opposite sides of the war, you're gonna become alienated from each other.

What is less expected and has really kind of poignant is that at the end of the war, Benjamin Franklin is this hero.

So he's on the winning side.

He's been lionized in America.

He's been lionized in France, where he has been America's chief diplomat, and he's on his way home to bang receive a hero's welcome back in America.

William Franklin is living not quite and a little bit above the edge of poverty in England.

He has a small pension from the British government, but not enough to recreate his life or lifestyle.

And he has been led by his son, Benjamin Franklin's grandson to think that Ben wants to stitch the family back together.

Ben wants to say, bygones, be bygones, and let's get back together.

We are one family.

We can be as we were before the war.

And so William Franklin goes to meet Benjamin Franklin who stops briefly in South Hampton, England.

Ben Franklin has not been told by his grandson that this is gonna happen.

That William Frank is gonna be there.

And so when William Franklin shows up Ben Franklin, who does not want to be reconciled, Ben Franklin treats his son's refusal to join him in rebellion as a personal betrayal.

And so he refuses to make amends with his son.

And so William is left standing there thinking, oh, you know, I reached out to my father and my father would have nothing to do with me.

It was doubly sort of heartbreaking.

And that Franklin was willing to declare bygones, be bygones with nearly everybody else that he knew, but not with this son.

He just couldn't bridge that gap.

- Why do you think that is?

If you could go back in time, would you want to pull Ben Franklin aside and ask him this one monumental question?

Because we talk about that personal poll, right?

These are real stories.

This is a real family.

Is that something that baffles you as somebody who has children?

- I confess that it does puzzle me a bit because I have children they're adults now.

And I cannot imagine anything that they could do, anything particularly in terms of a political decision, really?

That would cause me to say, you are no longer my son.

You are no longer my daughter.

I won't have nothing to do with you.

I simply can't imagine.

So I really would want to pull Ben Franklin aside and say, what on earth were you thinking?

I confess as someone who has written about Benjamin Franklin in this book and in previous books, but there is something at the heart of Franklin's sense of himself that I don't quite get, but we never quite get anybody besides ourselves.

And we often don't get ourselves either.

So this is not that much of a surprise.

- So as we wrap this discussion, what are some of the contemporary ramifications?

What do you see?

What are the ties in history to today?

- We live at a time when people seem to have sifted themselves out by political persuasion, by political party.

To some degree that was going on back in the 1770s and 1780s.

Now I certainly hope that we're not on the verge of a revolution of a new Civil War.

When I'm feeling hopeful, the lesson that I draw from this is, yeah, there was a time when Americans were indeed even more deeply divided than we are today, but we came out of it.

And furthermore, the consequence was the creation of a country that the world had never seen the likes of.

So I like to think that America's best days are ahead of it.

And that the divisions that we feel today are something we can get past just as the generation of the American Revolutionary War ultimately did.

- H.W Brands, the new book.

And it's a good one.

"Our First Civil War."

As always we thank you for joining us here on West Michigan.

I hope they're taking good care of you over at the Hauenstein Center in the Ford foundation.

Good to see you again sir.

- Nice to see you Patrick.

Thank you.

- And thank you for joining us.

We'll see you again soon.

(brooding music)