The leak that ruined Ben Franklin’s reputation and spurred the Tea Party
was one of the authorized viewers, and Adams, as one of the radicals, did not care about respecting Franklin’s request. He began writing about the existence of the letters and his opinion of them. By mid-June 1773, the letters were published in full in the Boston Gazette.
Demonstrations and riots ensued, with demands for the removal of the governor. The uproar also contributed tosix months later, in which a mob of radicals dumped British tea into Boston Harbor. In London, the search was on for the leaker whose actions had caused such mayhem. The original recipient of the letters, Thomas Whately, had died, but his brother Charles Whately accused a customs officer named John Temple. Temple denied the charge and challenged the brother to a duel.The duel was a “clumsy, almost comical affair,” according to historian Kenneth Lawing Penegar in his book “.” Temple, overweight and nearly deaf, began the fight before either man’s aides had arrived.
In January, Franklin was summoned to appear before the privy council, the king’s most senior advisers. To make matters worse, a few days before his scheduled appearance, the news about the Boston Tea Party hit British shores. The solicitor general, who presided over the hearing, excoriated and insulted him at length before firing him from his post.
Franklin, his reputation destroyed, returned to the colonies in March 1774. Rather than change people’s minds about the conflict between the colonies and the empire, the whole affair had changed only one mind: his own. He now supported American independence.
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