Early Politics

Benjamin Franklin's letters to his brother's newspaper, the New England Courant under the pseudonym Silence Dogood were some of his first public political writings. "Silence" was critical of Boston society and advocated for better treatment of women. Franklin continued his political writing his entire life and was often criticized for printing works of his own and of others that were critical of current prevailing opinions and customs.

When Franklin sold his printing business in 1748, he committed himself to the emerging political scene in the colonies. In 1753, he was appointed deputy postmaster general (he had been named postmaster in Philadelphia in 1737) and was a delegate from Pennsylvania at the Albany intercolonial congress to discuss the French and Indian War. His Albany Plan forshadowed much of the U.S. Constitution but was not adopted in Franklin's original form. He also proposed a militia for Philadelphia in his pamphlet "Plain Truth."

International Politics -- Pre-Revolution

In 1757, during the French and Indian War, Franklin was appointed Pennsylvania's agent to London. The colonists wanted to tax land belonging to the Penn family to finance the war; the Penns, Quakers, opposed the war and refused to pay taxes. Franklin argued successfully for the state, against the Penns. He stayed in England for five years, representing the colonies. His success brought him back to England in 1764 to argue (successfully) against the Stamp Act. He remained in England until 1775.

The Hutchinson Letters Affair
Thomas Hutchinson, the royal governor of Massachusetts, wrote a series of letters to the British government recommending additional British troops to quash the growing rebellion. At the end of 1772, Franklin received the letters anonymously, and showed them to some Boston friends. Although he did not want the letters published, some were leaked to the Boston Gazette and Bostonians were outraged. They drove Hutchinson out of America. When the British government accused three innocent men of publishing the letters, in 1773, Franklin admitted his guilt. Parliament publicly reprimanded and humiliated Franklin. His reputation and relationship with the British damaged, Franklin returned to America in 1775 and began working for American independence.

The American Revolution

Franklin traveled to Canada to enlist support for the war against the British, but with no luck. After he returned, he was appointed delegate to the Second Continental Congress (the first having occured while he was in England), where he was on the committee to draft the Declaration of Independence. A few months later, in September, 1776, Franklin went to France with Arthur Lee and Silas Deane to gain assistance from France. He was already a celebrity in France, and managed to negotiate significant loans and grants from the French king. He negotiated the Treaty of Alliance between France and the United States in 1778 and helped send the Marquis de Lafayette to America to train the troops. At the end of the Revolutionary War, Franklin worked with John Jay and John Adams to negotiate the Treaty of Paris, signed at Versailles on September 3, 1783. He had been appointed the first U.S. "minister plenipotentiary" to France in 1778, and lived outside Paris until 1785, when he returned to Philadelphia.

Post-Revolution

As president of the Pennsylvania executive council, Franklin stayed active in American politics. In 1787, he was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention and signed the U.S. Constitution, making him the only person to sign all three major revolutionary documents: the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Paris and the Constitution. With the Revolution over, Franklin turned to a new cause. He became a champion of slaves and advocate for abolition. He was president of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage, and he freed his own two slaves. He published an "Address to the Public" describing the need to educate slaves and freemen and help them become assimilate into American society. In his will, one of the conditions to which he held his son-in-law Richard Bache was "I also give him the bond I have against him, of two thousand and one hundred and seventy-two pounds, five shillings, together with the interest that shall or may accrue thereon, and direct the same to be delivered up to him by my executors, canceled, requesting that, in consideration thereof, he would immediately after my decease manumit and set free his Negro man Bob."