Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706–April 17, 1790) was an American printer, writer, scientist, inventor, and statesman, and one of the founding figures of the United States. Born in Boston, he established himself in Philadelphia before becoming an influential participant in the American Revolution and the creation of the republic. His career connected colonial commerce and civic improvement with the international intellectual networks of the Enlightenment. (loc.gov)

Franklin gained an international reputation through his investigations of electricity, particularly the electrical nature of lightning, and through practical inventions. His publishing business and writings, including Poor Richard’s Almanack, carried his ideas to a broad readership, while his civic projects promoted education and the exchange of useful knowledge. During the Revolution, he helped secure the alliance with France and negotiated the peace recognizing American independence; he subsequently participated in framing the United States Constitution. His later public activities included leadership of Pennsylvania’s abolition society, following earlier participation in slaveholding. These varied activities make his life a significant subject in the histories of science, literature, diplomacy, and American political institutions. (loc.gov)

Early Life, Apprenticeship, and Family

Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston, Massachusetts Bay Colony, on January 17, 1706, the youngest son and fifteenth of seventeen children born to Josiah Franklin across two marriages. His mother, Abiah Folger, was Josiah’s second wife; his father supported the household by making soap and candles. Benjamin received about two years of formal education, attending Boston’s grammar school and then George Brownell’s school for writing and arithmetic. His schooling ended when he was ten, after which he worked in his father’s business. Reading continued outside school: he borrowed books and saved money to purchase them, developing interests that exceeded the occupational training available within the household. (findingaids.loc.gov)

In 1718, aged twelve, Franklin became an apprentice to his older brother James, a Boston printer. The arrangement joined instruction in printing to an indenture intended to bind him until he was twenty-one. James founded the New-England Courant in 1721, giving Benjamin experience in newspaper production as well as access to a public audience. Between April and October 1722, the sixteen-year-old contributed fourteen letters under the name Silence Dogood, adopting the voice of a minister’s widow rather than submitting work openly as the printer’s younger brother. The fictional correspondent commented on social conduct, education, and abuses of authority. These pieces made pseudonymous humor and social criticism part of his writing before he had an independent press. (findingaids.loc.gov)

Relations between the brothers deteriorated, and Franklin left his apprenticeship without permission in 1723. After seeking employment in New York, he continued to Philadelphia, where he found work with the printer Samuel Keimer. Pennsylvania governor William Keith encouraged him to establish a printing business and travel to London to obtain equipment. Franklin arrived there late in 1724, but Keith’s promised support did not materialize. He instead supported himself as a journeyman printer, working first for Samuel Palmer and then for John Watts. His London employment during 1724–1726 extended his experience beyond colonial workshops; he returned to Philadelphia in October 1726. (richard-bell-4j9x.squarespace.com)

Franklin had courted Deborah Read before leaving for England. During his absence she married John Rogers, who subsequently deserted her. In 1730, Franklin and Deborah established a household in a relationship generally described as a common-law marriage, rather than a formally solemnized wedding. Deborah also helped raise his son William, born outside marriage around 1730–1731; William’s biological mother has not been identified. Benjamin and Deborah had two children together: Francis Folger, born in 1732, who died of smallpox aged four in 1736, and Sarah, commonly called Sally, born in 1743. William’s uncertain maternal identity should not be confused with his documented upbringing in their household. (nps.gov)

Deborah’s contribution extended beyond domestic management. She tended the shop, folded and stitched pamphlets, and purchased used linen rags for papermaking. Surviving shop books and ledgers record the business activities of both Benjamin and Deborah, providing evidence independent of his later recollections. Their household also accommodated relatives, apprentices, boarders, and, over time, free and enslaved Africans. The familiar account of Deborah first seeing Franklin as a disheveled young arrival in Philadelphia belongs to his retrospective autobiographical narrative; the account books and correspondence more directly document her continuing work in the household and family enterprise. (diglib-legacy.amphilsoc.org)

Printing, Publishing, and Commercial Independence

Franklin established his Philadelphia printing business with Hugh Meredith in 1728, with financial backing from Meredith’s father, Simon. Routine commissions—advertisements, handbills, and legal forms—provided its initial foundation; the shop also sold paper, blank books, and writing supplies. In 1729 the partners purchased the struggling *Pennsylvania Gazette* from Samuel Keimer. Franklin developed its combination of colonial news, essays, editorial commentary, and entertainment, while an expanding volume of advertisements strengthened its commercial position. Meredith withdrew in 1730. That year, commissions to print the Pennsylvania Assembly’s votes and laws added a comparatively dependable institutional customer to a business otherwise reliant on numerous small transactions. (franklinpapers.org)

Expansion beyond Philadelphia depended on partnerships rather than Franklin’s personal supervision of every press. He supplied equipment and retained a financial interest while other printers managed local operations: printing offices established through such arrangements included Charleston in 1731 and New York in 1742. Lewis Timothy, formerly one of Franklin’s employees, became a Charleston partner, extending the business network through the South Carolina Gazette. These arrangements linked Franklin’s capital and access to printing materials with the labor and local knowledge of other practitioners. (tile.loc.gov)

*Poor Richard’s Almanack* first appeared late in 1732 for the calendar year 1733, under the fictitious compiler’s name Richard Saunders. Its calendar and astronomical information made it a recurring practical reference, while weather predictions, instruction, jokes, and proverbial observations supplied additional reasons to purchase and retain it. Franklin used humor alongside maxims about industry, thrift, and conduct rather than presenting an uninterrupted moral treatise. He later reported in his autobiography that annual sales approached 10,000 copies; this figure is his retrospective account, not an independently established total for every issue. For the 1758 almanac, he gathered earlier sayings into a preface framed as Father Abraham’s speech to people attending an auction. Subsequently circulated as The Way to Wealth, it gave material originally embedded in a commercial annual a separate publishing life. (loc.gov)

Printing paper money joined another commercial opportunity to Franklin’s economic advocacy. His 1729 pamphlet, A Modest Enquiry into the Nature and Necessity of a Paper-Currency, supported the issuance of bills of credit; he subsequently secured profitable currency-printing work for Pennsylvania and also printed for New Jersey and Delaware. Counterfeiting made the physical construction of notes especially important. Franklin’s leaf designs reproduced intricate natural vein patterns that were difficult to imitate by engraving. The process involved making a plaster impression, casting a metal printing surface from it, and mounting that surface at type height. Mica in the paper and complicated combinations of typefaces, symbols, and punctuation provided further distinguishing features: security depended on both the printed image and the material carrying it. (loc.gov)

In January 1748 Franklin entered an eighteen-year partnership with David Hall and withdrew from daily printing management at age forty-two. Hall took charge of the establishment and edited and published the Gazette, while Franklin retained a commercial interest. Retirement therefore meant delegation, not the immediate abandonment of publishing or the liquidation of his business. The arrangement freed time for scientific investigation and public affairs while preserving income from the enterprise. The partnership continued until 1766, when Franklin sold his share to Hall; Hall then formed the successor firm of Hall and Sellers with William Sellers. (franklinpapers.org)

Civic Associations and Public Institutions

In 1727 Franklin and fellow Philadelphia tradesmen established the Junto, a club connecting intellectual discussion with mutual assistance and civic projects. Members met on Friday evenings to discuss questions concerning morals, politics, and natural philosophy. Franklin’s rules favored inquiry rather than competitive debate: participants were to seek truth without displaying a desire to win arguments. Discussion also addressed practical needs, including opportunities to assist members’ businesses and improvements that might benefit the community. The club provided a network through which proposals could be examined and supporters recruited before projects were presented more widely. (nationalhumanitiescenter.org)

The Library Company of Philadelphia extended this cooperative approach to reading and access to books. Franklin and fellow Junto members drew up its articles of agreement on July 1, 1731. Subscribers paid forty shillings initially and undertook to contribute ten shillings annually for purchases and maintenance. Pooling these payments made books available that individual members could not readily afford. This was a shareholder-supported lending institution, rather than a free municipal library: its financial basis was the continuing commitment of subscribers. Among the earliest shareholders were Robert Grace, Joseph Breintnall, and Thomas Hopkinson, alongside Franklin. (librarycompany.org)

Fire protection combined organized voluntary labor with financial risk-sharing. On December 7, 1736, thirty men formed the Union Fire Company with Franklin’s encouragement. Members supplied leather buckets and bags or baskets for carrying goods away from threatened buildings, and met monthly to discuss prevention and firefighting methods. Other applicants were encouraged to establish additional companies, widening coverage rather than merely enlarging one organization. In 1752 Franklin and fellow firefighters helped establish the Philadelphia Contributionship, a mutual insurance company whose policyholders shared risks. Its initial policies covered buildings for renewable seven-year terms; surveyors inspected properties, and directors used their reports to decide acceptance and rates. (ushistory.org)

Pennsylvania Hospital arose from a proposal by physician Thomas Bond, who envisioned an institution specifically for treating sick and injured people rather than another poorhouse. Franklin helped secure subscriptions and legislative support, while Bond and other organizers supplied medical expertise and institutional management. To overcome objections to public expenditure, Franklin obtained an Assembly commitment of £2,000 conditional on private contributors raising the same amount. This arrangement made public funding dependent on demonstrated voluntary support and gave donors an incentive to subscribe. The hospital received its charter in 1751 and began admitting patients in rented premises in 1752. (archives.upenn.edu)

Franklin’s Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pensilvania (1749) advocated combining useful learning with intellectual cultivation. His proposed curriculum emphasized English, mathematics, history, geography, and knowledge applicable to commerce and public responsibilities. The resulting academy was a collective undertaking: Richard Peters served among its founding trustees, and the academy and charity school opened in 1751. A college charter followed in 1755 under Provost William Smith, creating a further institutional stage in the development of the University of Pennsylvania. Franklin’s preference for practical education did not eliminate classical instruction from the institution that the trustees established. (almanac.upenn.edu)

Scientific cooperation took an intercolonial form in Franklin’s May 14, 1743, Proposal for Promoting Useful Knowledge among the British Plantations in America, the founding proposal for the American Philosophical Society. Philadelphia members were to meet monthly to exchange observations and experiments, consider communications from distant members, and circulate valuable contributions for further comment. Subjects included plants, minerals, agriculture, manufactures, and other practical improvements. Franklin served as an early secretary and later president; correspondence with learned societies in London and Dublin connected this American exchange with wider networks of natural knowledge. (oll-resources.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com)

Electrical Research and International Scientific Recognition

Franklin’s electrical investigations in the late 1740s examined how charge could be transferred, stored, and discharged. Using rubbed glass tubes, insulated supports, and Leyden jars—early forms of the capacitor—he compared the behavior of bodies connected to the ground with those isolated on wax or glass. His experiments showed that charging a jar involved opposite electrical states on its inner and outer sides: an external conducting connection allowed these states to discharge together. He also investigated the glass itself, arguing that the jar’s capacity to hold charge did not reside simply in the water or metal placed inside it. These trials made insulation, conducting connections, and the arrangement of materials central to his explanation of electrical storage. (gutenberg.org)

By 1747, Franklin was describing bodies as electrically “positive” and “negative,” or “plus” and “minus.” His single-fluid interpretation supposed that ordinary matter normally contained a characteristic quantity of “electrical fire”: an excess produced the positive state, a deficiency the negative state. Friction transferred this fluid rather than creating it, and discharge restored equilibrium. This provided a framework for treating charging as redistribution and for explaining the balance between opposite charges in a Leyden jar. It was nevertheless a historical model, not modern particle theory. In modern terms, electrons carry negative electric charge; adding electrons can make an object negative, while removing them can make it positive—the reverse of identifying positive charge with an excess of Franklin’s fluid. (gutenberg.org)

Franklin connected laboratory electricity with lightning through similarities including luminous flashes, branching paths, noise, and effects on metals. In 1750 he proposed an elevated, insulated iron rod from which an observer could draw sparks when an electrified cloud passed overhead. The apparatus was intended to test cloud electrification, not to receive a direct lightning strike. Experiments organized by Thomas-François Dalibard in France successfully drew electricity from an elevated rod in May 1752, preceding Franklin’s reported kite experiment in Philadelphia. Franklin’s proposal therefore supplied an experimentally testable connection between atmospheric phenomena and laboratory electrical effects, rather than a discovery of electricity itself. (psrc.aapt.org)

The evidence for the kite experiment requires a distinction between contemporary publication and later narrative. Franklin’s notice in the Pennsylvania Gazette of October 19, 1752, announced that a kite-based version had succeeded in Philadelphia and described its apparatus, but did not explicitly identify him as the experimenter. Joseph Priestley’s fuller account, published in 1767, placed the trial in June 1752 and identified Franklin’s son William as his assistant. In the described arrangement, rain-wetted twine conducted charge toward a metal key, while a dry silk ribbon provided insulation; sparks from the key could charge a Leyden jar. A direct strike was neither necessary nor part of the reported result. Benjamin West’s dramatic painting of approximately 1816 belongs to the experiment’s later commemoration, not its contemporary documentation. (psrc.aapt.org)

Lightning protection developed from Franklin’s experiments showing that pointed conductors could draw charge from nearby electrified objects. He proposed pointed metal rods above buildings, connected down their exteriors to the earth. His expectation that points might silently discharge approaching clouds must be distinguished from the rod’s additional function of conducting a lightning stroke to ground. Meanwhile, Peter Collinson, a London merchant and Fellow of the Royal Society, circulated Franklin’s communications and arranged their publication as Experiments and Observations on Electricity in 1751. Published in London by Edward Cave, the collection made the Philadelphia investigations available to European experimenters. The Royal Society awarded Franklin its Copley Medal in 1753 for his electrical research and elected him a Fellow in 1756. (psrc.aapt.org)

Inventions and Investigations of the Natural World

Franklin described his Pennsylvania fireplace, commonly called the Franklin stove, in An Account of the New Invented Pennsylvanian Fire-Places (1744), promoting a model manufactured by his friend Robert Grace. Its partitioned iron plates separated the passage of fresh air from the smoke: incoming air was warmed before entering the room, while combustion gases were directed toward the chimney. The design sought to distribute heat more effectively and reduce the warmth escaping with the exhaust, thereby requiring less wood than an ordinary fireplace. Airflow management, rather than simply enclosing a fire in iron, was central to its intended operation. (loc.gov)

His “double spectacles,” subsequently known as bifocals, addressed the inconvenience of alternating between reading and distance glasses. In a letter to George Whatley dated May 23, 1785, Franklin explained that he had lenses of the two kinds cut in half and combined within each frame, placing the less convex distance portion above the more convex reading portion. Lowering his eyes brought the reading segments into use; raising them allowed him to see farther away. He also described their usefulness at dinner in France, where seeing both his food and other diners’ facial movements helped him follow conversation. The letter documents his arrangement and personal use; it should not be treated as establishing either an invention date of 1785 or exclusive priority over every earlier combination-lens design. (loc.gov)

The glass armonica, completed in 1761, mechanized the already established practice of producing musical tones by rubbing wet fingers around glass rims. Working with a London glassmaker, Franklin arranged graduated glass bowls concentrically along a horizontal iron spindle, separated and secured with cork. A foot treadle rotated the assembly, leaving both hands free to touch the exposed rims and sound several notes together. Each bowl’s dimensions and thickness determined its pitch, eliminating the need to tune individual drinking glasses by changing their water levels. Franklin’s contribution was this integrated instrument, not the discovery that glass could produce musical tones. He described it to Giambatista Beccaria on July 13, 1762; Mozart and Beethoven subsequently composed for the instrument. (fi.edu)

Franklin’s work on the Gulf Stream similarly combined practical questions with knowledge supplied by others. In 1768 he collaborated with his cousin Timothy Folger, a Nantucket sea captain, to chart the current’s course and dimensions. Folger contributed mariners’ experience of a current that could impede westbound Atlantic crossings; Franklin helped turn that knowledge into a printed navigational aid. Their chart indicated how vessels could avoid sailing against the stream, rather than attributing differences in passage times solely to winds or distance. Spanish explorers had described the current centuries earlier, so Franklin did not discover it. His contribution lay in collaborating on its mapping and circulating information useful to Atlantic navigation; he also published a chart and navigational observations in 1786. (blogs.loc.gov)

His explanation of the aurora borealis remained more conjectural. In “Suppositions and Conjectures on the Aurora Borealis,” written around December 1778 and read at the French Académie des Sciences on April 14, 1779, he proposed that electrical charge accumulated in polar regions, with snow and moisture contributing to conditions that produced luminous discharges. This extended his electrical interpretation of natural phenomena but did not establish the aurora’s physical mechanism. Modern explanation instead involves energetic particles, principally electrons, guided into the upper atmosphere through processes in Earth’s magnetosphere. Collisions excite atmospheric oxygen and nitrogen, which emit light as they return to lower-energy states; interaction between the solar wind and Earth’s magnetic environment supplies energy to the system. (loc.gov)

Autobiography, Moral Thought, and Religious Belief

Franklin began his unfinished *Autobiography* in England in July–August 1771, initially addressing it to his son William. He resumed it in France in 1784, continued in Philadelphia in 1788–1789, and added a short final part near the end of his life. These separate periods of composition distinguish the memoir from a continuous contemporary journal: an internationally prominent statesman was reconstructing his youth, commercial advancement, and civic achievements decades afterward. Its account gives particular prominence to reading, work, useful associations, and the correction of mistakes. Because the completed portions chiefly concern his earlier career and contain little about the American Revolution, the text requires comparison with correspondence, business papers, and public records rather than treatment as a complete life history. (guides.loc.gov)

In the second part, Franklin described a project of moral self-examination organized around thirteen virtues: temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity, and humility. Each had a short operational definition. Temperance concerned restraint in eating and drinking; industry meant directing time toward useful employment; frugality restricted expenditure to purposes benefiting oneself or others. Justice included not only avoiding injury but also performing duties owed to other people. This was therefore an account of ethical conduct extending beyond commercial success. His recording system used a page for each virtue, seven columns for the days of the week, and thirteen horizontal lines. During an evening review, he marked each detected fault with a black spot in the appropriate cell. He intended to concentrate on one virtue each week while continuing to record failures in all thirteen, completing a course in thirteen weeks. (ushistory.org)

The memoir also records resistance to this orderly scheme. Franklin found order especially difficult to maintain, and his recollection did not claim that the tables had produced faultlessness. Humility entered the list after a Quaker friend criticized his pride and overbearing manner in discussion. Its precept invoked Jesus and Socrates as models. Franklin distinguished improvement in the outward appearance of humility from mastery of the disposition itself, observing that even overcoming pride could become a new occasion for pride. Such qualifications make the episode a historical account of attempted habit formation, with acknowledged limitations, rather than a demonstration that virtue could be mechanically perfected. (ushistory.org)

His religious writings likewise show changes rather than a single unaltered creed. Published in London in 1725, A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain argued that divine omnipotence and goodness entailed necessity and undermined an absolute distinction between virtue and vice. Franklin subsequently rejected its reasoning and destroyed most of his copies. The private “Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion,” dated November 20, 1728, instead joined speculative theology to devotional practice. It distinguished an incomprehensible supreme being from subordinate divine beings, identifying the creator of the solar system as the appropriate object of human worship. Its sequence of adoration, petition, and thanksgiving connected divine favor with virtuous conduct; prayers requested assistance in cultivating justice, sincerity, benevolence, and restraint rather than simply obtaining material advantages. (loc.gov)

In his letter to Ezra Stiles of March 9, 1790, Franklin affirmed one creator God, divine providence, worship, the immortality of the soul, and judgment after death according to conduct. He identified doing good to other people as the service most acceptable to God and regarded these principles as fundamental across religious sects. His admiration for the moral teaching of Jesus did not amount to assent to all doctrines of Christianity: he explicitly expressed doubts about Jesus’s divinity while declining a dogmatic judgment. The letter also described financial contributions toward different denominations’ places of worship and requested that Stiles not publish the communication, separating his private theological reservations from his practical support for religious communities. (louisiana-anthology.org)

Colonial Officeholding and the Breakdown of Imperial Relations

Franklin served as clerk of the Pennsylvania Assembly from 1736 to 1751 and as an elected member from 1751 to 1764. His postal appointments extended his responsibilities beyond provincial affairs: he became Philadelphia’s postmaster in 1737 and, on August 10, 1753, joint deputy postmaster general for British North America with William Hunter of Virginia. Franklin surveyed postal roads, standardized accounting, arranged for riders to travel by night as well as day, and admitted all newspapers to the mail for a small fee. These changes strengthened the infrastructure through which commercial correspondence and political news circulated between colonies; they also helped the North American Crown Post become profitable in 1760. In 1763 he traveled approximately 1,600 miles inspecting roads and post offices between Virginia and New England. (loc.gov)

Colonial cooperation initially meant strengthening, rather than abandoning, the British imperial connection. On May 9, 1754, Franklin published “Join, or Die” in the Pennsylvania Gazette, depicting the colonies as separated portions of a snake. Its immediate purpose was cooperation against French expansion and France’s Indigenous allies, not independence from Britain. Representing Pennsylvania at the Albany Congress, Franklin helped formulate the Albany Plan of Union, adopted by the delegates on July 10. It proposed a Crown-appointed president general and a Grand Council selected by colonial assemblies, with responsibilities for common defense, Indigenous relations, and raising revenue. The plan preserved provincial governments but transferred specified powers to a common authority. Colonial governments rejected it or failed to act, while British officials preferred arrangements directed from London. (loc.gov)

Franklin’s missions to London in 1757–1762 and 1764–1775 began with Pennsylvania’s internal constitutional disputes. As the Assembly’s agent, he challenged the Penn proprietors’ resistance to legislation taxing their estates alongside other property. His later mission sought to replace proprietary government with royal government, rather than end British sovereignty. This position distinguished opposition to the Penn family’s privileges from opposition to monarchy. His agency subsequently expanded to include Georgia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, making him an intermediary between several colonial legislatures and British ministers. (archives.gov)

The Stamp Act of 1765 shifted the dispute toward Parliament’s authority over colonial taxation. Franklin initially underestimated colonial resistance and expected compliance once the measure became law; reports of opposition changed his response. Examined before the House of Commons on February 13, 1766, he distinguished parliamentary duties regulating external trade, which colonists had accepted, from internal taxes imposed without their consent. He argued that military enforcement would not make Americans purchase stamps and that resistance would damage British commerce by encouraging colonial manufactures. His testimony supported the repeal campaign, although repeal was a parliamentary decision shaped by wider political and commercial pressures, not his achievement alone. (loc.gov)

The Hutchinson letters affair further damaged his position as an imperial intermediary. In December 1772 he transmitted to Massachusetts private correspondence by Thomas Hutchinson and other officials, expecting restricted circulation. Published in 1773, the letters intensified controversy over official proposals to restrict colonial liberties and prompted a petition for Hutchinson’s removal. On January 29, 1774, during the Privy Council proceedings on that petition, Solicitor General Alexander Wedderburn publicly attacked Franklin’s character and conduct; Franklin remained silent. He was subsequently dismissed from his imperial postal office. These events did not produce an instantaneous conversion to independence: after returning to Philadelphia in May 1775, he still distinguished resistance from complete separation. His June 27 letter to John Sargent allowed Britain another opportunity to preserve the connection, while warning that it might be the last. (postalmuseum.si.edu)

Revolutionary Leadership and Independence

Pennsylvania’s Assembly selected Franklin as a delegate to the Second Continental Congress on May 6, 1775, immediately after his return from Britain. His congressional work included proposals for a more durable intercolonial government: on July 21, Congress heard his plan for a confederation, although it took no action on it at that time. On July 26, Congress appointed him postmaster general under its own authority, rather than that of the Crown. His instructions authorized him to appoint deputies and establish a postal route from Falmouth, in present-day Maine, to Savannah, Georgia, with connecting routes as necessary. The appointment placed an essential communications network under congressional control during the American Revolution. (visit.archives.gov)

On June 11, 1776, Congress appointed Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston to the Committee of Five, charged with preparing a declaration of independence. Jefferson composed the principal draft; Franklin’s contribution was that of a reviewing committee member and editor, not its principal author. His best-known editorial contribution is the substitution, generally attributed to him, of “self-evident” for Jefferson’s “sacred and undeniable” in the statement introducing human equality and rights. The committee submitted its draft on June 28, after which Congress made further revisions. Franklin therefore participated in a multistage drafting process whose surviving text records Jefferson’s composition, committee review, and congressional decisions. (loc.gov)

The decision for independence, adoption of the declaration, and signing were separate acts. Congress voted for independence on July 2 and adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. On July 19 it ordered an engrossed copy prepared for signatures; delegates began signing that copy on August 2. Franklin, aged seventy, was among the signatories. His signature expressed Pennsylvania’s participation in the collective congressional act, rather than a claim to individual authorship of the document. (loc.gov)

At the same time, Franklin presided over Pennsylvania’s constitutional convention, which met in Philadelphia from July 15 to September 28, 1776. This was a state constitution-making body, distinct from the Continental Congress: its task was to replace Pennsylvania’s proprietary governmental framework, not to declare independence for all thirteen colonies. The resulting constitution vested legislative authority in a single elected chamber, with annual terms, and provided a Supreme Executive Council rather than a governor. Franklin’s convention presidency also involved wartime administration. A July 1776 broadside bearing his name urged Pennsylvania’s militia to proceed rapidly into New Jersey, implementing Congress’s request for defensive mobilization. (phmc.state.pa.us)

The Revolution also produced a lasting political division within Franklin’s family. His son William, New Jersey’s last royal governor, remained loyal to the Crown while Benjamin supported independence. Revolutionary authorities briefly detained William in January 1776 after intercepting a dispatch to British intelligence. Following his attempt to convene the colonial legislature, they arrested him again in June and sent him to Connecticut, where he was imprisoned. Released to British authorities in a prisoner exchange in October 1778, he went to British-occupied New York and subsequently to England. Their estrangement was thus associated with documented, opposing public allegiances during the war, rather than merely a private family disagreement. (nj.gov)

Diplomacy in France and the Peace Settlement

Franklin arrived in France in December 1776 to secure recognition of American independence, financial assistance, military supplies, and an alliance against Great Britain. He served alongside Silas Deane and Arthur Lee on the congressional commission conducting negotiations. His international reputation for research on electricity gave the mission unusual visibility: French intellectuals and aristocrats associated him with the Enlightenment, while his plain dress and fur cap reinforced an image of republican simplicity that he deliberately cultivated. Portraits of Franklin circulated on medallions, watches, rings, and snuffboxes. His residence at Passy, outside Paris, became a center of American diplomatic activity. This celebrity encouraged support for the American cause, but negotiations still depended on French assessments of military prospects and strategic advantage. (oboculturalheritage.state.gov)

The French foreign minister, Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes, regarded the rebellion as an opportunity to weaken Britain after France’s losses in the Seven Years’ War. French assistance had already passed through clandestine channels, including arrangements involving Deane, before a formal alliance became possible. Vergennes initially hesitated to commit openly, particularly while American military prospects remained uncertain. News reaching France in December 1777 of the British surrender at Saratoga changed that calculation. It demonstrated American military viability, while reports of possible Anglo-American reconciliation increased the urgency of securing an alliance before Britain could recover its colonies through negotiation. (history.state.gov)

On February 6, 1778, Franklin, Deane, and Lee signed two distinct agreements with France. The Treaty of Amity and Commerce recognized the United States and established a framework for commercial relations. The Treaty of Alliance provided for common military action if war broke out between France and Britain during the American conflict. Its declared purpose was to maintain American sovereignty and independence, including independence in commerce. Neither ally could conclude a truce or peace with Britain without the other’s formal consent, and both pledged to continue fighting until American independence was assured by the peace settlement. These obligations linked recognition and trade to a military partnership without making the two treaties interchangeable. (oboculturalheritage.state.gov)

Franklin’s subsequent work included repeated requests for loans and supplies rather than merely maintaining ceremonial relations with the French court. Assistance encompassed arms, ammunition, uniforms, troops, and naval forces; French military and naval operations contributed directly to the British surrender at Yorktown in 1781. Such support served France’s struggle against Britain as well as American independence, and resulted from the work of French officials, military commanders, and other American representatives alongside Franklin. Financial negotiations continued even during the peace discussions: after the preliminary Anglo-American agreement in 1782, Vergennes protested the Americans’ handling of negotiations but nevertheless approved another loan despite France’s financial difficulties. (history.state.gov)

In 1782 Franklin rejected proposals that would have left the states within the British Empire with limited autonomy. Working with John Adams and John Jay, he negotiated preliminary peace articles signed on November 30, 1782, whose operation depended on an Anglo-French settlement. The definitive Treaty of Paris, signed by the three Americans and British representative David Hartley on September 3, 1783, recognized the thirteen states as free, sovereign, and independent. It established boundaries extending west to the Mississippi River, with a northern line running through the Great Lakes region and a southern boundary adjoining the Floridas. Economic provisions preserved American fishing rights on the Newfoundland banks and elsewhere, prohibited legal impediments to recovering prewar debts, and declared Mississippi navigation open to British subjects and American citizens. Congress was to recommend restitution of confiscated Loyalist property to the states, rather than guarantee its return directly; Britain undertook to withdraw its forces. (history.state.gov)

Pennsylvania Leadership and the Federal Constitution

Franklin left France in July 1785 and reached Philadelphia in September. In October he was elected president of Pennsylvania’s Supreme Executive Council, serving until 1788. Under the state’s 1776 constitution, executive authority belonged to the president and council collectively, rather than to an independently empowered governor. The General Assembly and council annually elected the president from among the councillors. Together, the president and council appointed officials, administered pardons, corresponded with other states, and executed legislation; the president also held the title of commander-in-chief, although personal command required the council’s approval. Franklin’s presidential work included signing land grants and performing ceremonial duties. His office was therefore Pennsylvania’s chief executive position, but its powers operated within a deliberately collective structure. (loc.gov)

At eighty-one, Franklin was the oldest delegate to the Constitutional Convention that met in Philadelphia from May to September 1787. His interventions combined arguments about representation with efforts to reduce antagonism between delegations. In a speech drafted for June 11, he urged restraint during the dispute over proportional representation, describing the delegates’ purpose as consultation rather than contention. His contribution became more concrete in the committee appointed to reconcile large and small states. Meeting on July 3 under Elbridge Gerry’s chairmanship, the committee considered a proposal introduced by Franklin and subsequently modified: representation in the first chamber would follow population, while states would vote equally in the second. The first chamber would also control the origination of money bills, which the second could not amend. Roger Sherman and other committee members participated in this accommodation; it was not Franklin’s unaided design. (loc.gov)

The committee’s July 5 report proposed one representative for every 40,000 inhabitants in the first chamber, with at least one for each state, and equal state voting in the second. This package linked the larger states’ demand for population-based representation to the smaller states’ insistence on political equality. Although its details underwent further revision, the arrangement anticipated the division between the House of Representatives and Senate in the United States Constitution. Franklin’s role lay in helping formulate and negotiate an accommodation within a committee and convention whose members continued to disagree over its terms. (nps.gov)

On June 28, amid contentious debate over representation, Franklin proposed opening each day’s proceedings with prayer, recalling the practice of the Continental Congress. Sherman seconded the motion. The recorded discussion did not produce its adoption: Alexander Hamilton and others feared that introducing prayers at that stage might cause public alarm, while Hugh Williamson observed that the convention lacked funds to employ a chaplain. Edmund Randolph proposed a Fourth of July sermon instead, which Franklin seconded, but the convention adjourned without voting on the motion. The documented episode therefore does not support later accounts in which Franklin’s appeal immediately established daily prayers or resolved the convention’s divisions. The familiar claim that Hamilton rejected prayer as unnecessary “foreign aid” is also a later embellishment, not the recorded objection. (nps.gov)

On September 17, James Wilson read Franklin’s final address to the convention. Franklin acknowledged that he did not approve every provision, but explained that experience had repeatedly led him to revise opinions once held with confidence. He doubted that another convention would necessarily produce a better constitution and argued that a general government was necessary. His endorsement thus rested on accepting an imperfect agreement and supporting its administration, not on claiming that its provisions were beyond criticism. He urged dissatisfied delegates to reconsider their certainty and sign together. Franklin then signed the Constitution as a Pennsylvania delegate, giving his assent to the negotiated document rather than presenting it as principally his own creation. (etc.usf.edu)

Slaveholding and Antislavery Activity

Franklin’s involvement in slavery extended over several decades before his leadership in organized abolitionism. Surviving records document his ownership of enslaved people between 1735 and 1781. When he and his son William traveled to London in 1757, they brought two enslaved men, Peter and King, as personal servants; King escaped in 1758 and received shelter in Suffolk. Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette carried advertisements offering enslaved people for sale and seeking the capture of fugitives. His printing business nevertheless also circulated antislavery arguments: in 1738 it printed Benjamin Lay’s All Slave-keepers That Keep the Innocent in Bondage, Apostates. Publication of such material therefore coexisted with, rather than immediately ended, Franklin’s participation in slaveholding. (americanhistory.si.edu)

Support for Black children’s education became an important part of his changing position. He helped organize and finance schooling for both enslaved and free Black children. In a letter to John Waring dated December 17, 1763, Franklin described visiting a Philadelphia school with the Reverend William Sturgeon and observing examinations in reading and the catechism. He reported that the pupils’ comprehension and memory appeared equal to those of white children, explicitly acknowledging that the visit had challenged his earlier prejudices. The letter documents a revision of his assumptions about intellectual capacity, although it did not itself announce a program of emancipation. (nps.gov)

In 1787 Franklin became president of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery. The organization originated on April 14, 1775, as a society assisting free Black people unlawfully held in bondage; it was reorganized in 1784 and 1787 and incorporated in 1789. Its purposes combined opposition to enslavement with assistance to people living in freedom. A plan adopted on October 26, 1789, specified a twenty-four-member committee divided into four branches: inspection, guardianship, education, and employment. These were to protect people against wrongs, arrange apprenticeships, support school attendance, preserve records of births, marriages, and manumissions, and help secure work. The plan also prescribed supervision of conduct and religious instruction, embedding practical assistance within a paternalistic framework. Donations and subscriptions were to support a separate fund for these activities. (archives.gov)

On February 3, 1790, Franklin signed the society’s petition asking Congress to act against slavery and the slave trade. It presented perpetual bondage as inconsistent with American professions of liberty and requested action extending to the limits of congressional authority. Rather than specifying a single emancipation mechanism, the petition urged legislators to use their constitutional powers to restore liberty and discourage trafficking in human beings. Its appeal thus brought the society’s abolitionist objectives before the new federal government, while recognizing that the scope of federal power would shape the response. (archives.gov)

The petition was introduced in the House of Representatives on February 12 and the Senate on February 15, 1790. Proslavery legislators denounced it, and its reception produced heated congressional debate. The Senate took no action; the House referred it to a select committee, which reported on March 5. The proceedings did not produce legislation abolishing slavery or the slave trade. Franklin’s presidential signature gave the society’s demands national prominence, but the petition did not secure the changes it requested. (archives.gov)

Death, Documentary Record, and Commemoration

Franklin died in Philadelphia on April 17, 1790, aged 84, less than three months after signing the Pennsylvania abolition society’s petition to Congress. His death brought to a close a public career that had continued into his final year. Commemoration was not uniform even within the federal government: the House of Representatives voted to wear black crepe in his memory, whereas the Senate declined a comparable observance, according to Senator William Maclay’s diary. On February 19, 1791, Thomas Jefferson wrote to William Smith recalling the exceptional respect Franklin had commanded in France, providing an early account of his international reputation. (archives.gov)

The surviving documentary record includes incoming and outgoing correspondence, letterbooks, journals, scientific observations, manuscript essays, and diplomatic records. The Library of Congress collection contains approximately 8,000 items spanning 1726–1907, principally from the 1770s and 1780s; the later dates reflect associated material rather than Franklin’s own lifespan. Particularly substantial are records of his diplomatic missions, including negotiations in London in 1775, the American legation’s letterbooks for 1779–1782, and the peace commissioners’ records for 1780–1783. Scientific and personal correspondence supplies a different perspective, connecting his investigations and household affairs with the formal record of the American Revolution. (loc.gov)

Preservation involved both family custody and institutional acquisition. William Temple Franklin, his grandson and former secretary, retained the principal groups of manuscripts and used them for his Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Benjamin Franklin, published in 1817–1818. The United States government purchased these papers from the bookseller Henry Stevens in 1882; they subsequently passed from the State Department to the Library of Congress in transfers made in 1903 and 1922. A broader editorial enterprise, The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, was established in 1954 under the joint auspices of Yale University and the American Philosophical Society. Its first volume appeared in 1959. By bringing together documents dispersed among repositories and supplying historical annotation, the edition differs from any single archival collection; its texts are also represented in Founders Online. (blogs.loc.gov)

Posthumous publication helped sustain Franklin’s image as a printer and practical moralist. The Autobiography first appeared in book form in French in 1791, followed by an English edition in London in 1793. William Temple Franklin’s 1818 text became the standard version, but John Bigelow’s 1868 edition was the first complete publication of all four parts directly from Franklin’s manuscript. Popular adaptations offered a more compressed moral identity: The Art of Making Money Plenty in Every Man’s Pocket, first printed as a printed rebus in 1791, combined lessons about honesty, industry, and frugality with his familiar fur-cap likeness. An 1817 New York printing by P. Maverick demonstrates the continued circulation of this combination of portraiture, entertainment, and practical instruction. (loc.gov)

Visual commemoration similarly selected particular roles. Benjamin West’s Benjamin Franklin Drawing Electricity from the Sky (1816) represented the scientific investigator, while Anton Hohenstein’s nineteenth-century lithograph Franklin’s Reception at the Court of France, 1778 presented the revolutionary diplomat before Louis XVI. The latter is explicitly an idealized reconstruction, not an eyewitness record of the reception. Such images document Franklin’s subsequent representation as scientist and statesman; their retrospective compositions must be distinguished from contemporary correspondence and experimental reports when reconstructing particular events. (npg.si.edu)

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