As we approach America’s 250th anniversary, this July 4, 2026, let’s have a look at one of our founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin.
He was not only key in winning the American Revolution, but also in drafting the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and supporting the Bill of Rights, ensuring our rights as free citizens.
https://youtu.be/NLWS4ALFMcc?si=jUPKkkBDnJTgJsrU
Ben Franklin embodied the American dream—poor boy who made good—publisher, inventor, writer, scientist, postmaster, diplomat, statesman. At the time of the Revolutionary War, he was the most famous American overseas whereas no one heard of George Washington. Ben Franklin loved London, had a residence there, the most prominent colonial (non-British) scientist elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of London.
Though the colonists had grievances with the Crown, such as the Stamp Act, “Taxation without Representation”, the Boston Massacre, Franklin remained a loyal British subject and had a vision that the Crown could patch us their differences with the colonists and expand the British Empire into North America.
But when London got news of the Boston Tea Party, Ben Franklin was called into the Privy Council of Parliament, a place called the “cockpit” (Henry VIII had cock fights there). There, he endured vicious personal verbal attacks and was stripped from his position of Deputy Postmaster of North America.
Franklin kept quiet during the long tirade of insults against him. It was said that day he went into the “cockpit” as a loyal British subject, but he came out as an American.
The Revolution? He was all in!
First, he helped draft and edit the Declaration of Independence. He changed the phrasing to “We hold these truths to be self-evident” then signed it, saying: “We must all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.”
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Allies were needed to fight the mighty British Army. As a key American diplomat, Franklin secured an alliance with France, and later Spain and the Dutch Republic, making the Revolutionary War a global war. France recognized the United States as a nation and provided military support.
The climax was in Virginia. The Americans cornered the British Army in the west and the French fleet bottled them up in the harbor to the east. Thus, General Cornwallis surrendered to General Washington and the French at Yorktown in 1781. The Americans were formally recognized their independence by the Treaty of Paris in 1783.
Next was forming a government without a king. That took a few years.
As the oldest delegate at the Constitutional Convention, Ben Franklin signed the Constitution in 1787. Franklin supported adding the Bill of Rights, though he did not live to see it happen. In his youth, he was surrounded by people, including his father, who vividly remembered the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. The mass hysteria of those trials, which resulted in executions of innocents, served as a cautionary tale during the debates of the Constitution as well as the Bill of Rights. It demonstrated what can happen with unchecked government power, religious fanaticism, and lack of legal safeguards.
Thus, the Bill of Rights corrected the Salem injustices with rights: trial by jury, no self-incrimination, right to confront accusers and cross-examination, right to a speedy and public trial, ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Also, the First Amendment guaranteed freedoms of religion, speech, press, and assembly.
But it was the Second Amendment, the right to keep and bear arms, that put teeth into the Bill of Rights as the enforcer of the rest of the rights.
The winning of the American Revolution and our Rights as a free people hung on Ben Franklin. Loyal British subject turned American. Signer of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Supporter of the Bill of Rights. Diplomat to create global alliances that won the war. And the face of our $100 bill.
America's 250th: America 250 Years in the Making
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Photos:
Franklin/wikipedia
TeaParty/wikipedia
Declaration/wikipedia
Yorktown/wikipedia
Constitution/wikipedia
$100/wikipedia
