Did Benjamin Franklin Help Write The Declaration Of Independence

The question comes up more often than you'd think. " Both are partly right. Someone mentions the Founding Fathers, someone else says "Franklin wrote the Declaration," and a third person jumps in with "No, that was Jefferson.Both are partly wrong.

The short answer: Benjamin Franklin didn't write the first draft. Worth adding: thomas Jefferson did. But Franklin was in the room where it happened — literally — and his fingerprints are on the final document in ways most people never learn.

The Committee of Five and How It Actually Worked

On June 11, 1776, the Second Continental Congress appointed a Committee of Five to draft a declaration of independence. The members: Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, John Adams of Massachusetts, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, and Robert R. Livingston of New York.

Congress didn't assign them equal writing duties. They chose Jefferson to pen the first draft. Adams later recalled the conversation: Jefferson initially demurred, saying Adams should write it. Think about it: adams refused. "Reason first: You are a Virginian, and a Virginian ought to appear at the head of this business. Which means reason second: I am obnoxious, suspected, and unpopular. You are very much otherwise. Reason third: You can write ten times better than I can.

Jefferson wrote the draft in his rented rooms at the corner of Seventh and Market Streets in Philadelphia, working over roughly seventeen days in June. He drew on his own earlier draft of the Virginia Constitution, George Mason's Virginia Declaration of Rights, and the political philosophy of the Enlightenment — especially John Locke.

Franklin, then seventy years old and suffering from gout and kidney stones, didn't write the draft. But he read it. So did Adams. Both men made edits in the margins before the committee submitted the "fair copy" to Congress on June 28.

The "Self-Evident" Edit Everyone Misses

Here's the most famous Franklin contribution, and it's a single word change that shifts the entire philosophical weight of the opening.

Jefferson's original draft read: "We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable."

Franklin crossed out "sacred and undeniable" and wrote "self-evident."

Why does it matter? In real terms, "Sacred and undeniable" appeals to divine authority — these truths are true because God says so. "Self-evident" appeals to reason — these truths are true because any rational person can see they're true. The shift moves the Declaration's foundation from theology to Enlightenment rationalism. It makes the document accessible to deists, skeptics, and believers alike.

Franklin didn't leave a note explaining the change. He didn't need to. The edit speaks for itself.

Other Franklin Edits in the Rough Draft

The Library of Congress holds the "Rough Draft" — Jefferson's handwritten copy with edits from Adams and Franklin visible in the margins. Franklin's handwriting is distinctive: cramped, slanted, the product of a lifetime setting type.

He suggested cutting a passage where Jefferson blamed King George III for the transatlantic slave trade. Which means franklin knew the Southern delegations would never accept it. He was right — Congress deleted that entire section anyway.

He also trimmed Jefferson's tendency toward flourish. Punchier. This leads to " Cleaner. Where Jefferson wrote "the preservation of their lives & liberties & estates," Franklin shortened it to "their lives, liberties, and properties.More memorable.

Adams made more edits overall — about twice as many — but Franklin's were surgical. Worth adding: he knew how words worked on a page. He'd been a printer since age twelve.

Franklin in Philadelphia: The Summer of 1776

By June 1776, Franklin had already lived several lives. Scientist who'd tamed lightning. Printer. Diplomat who'd spent years in London trying to prevent the very breach now becoming inevitable. Postmaster General of the colonies. Publisher of Poor Richard's Almanack*. The only man to sign all four of the key founding documents: the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Alliance with France, the Treaty of Paris, and the Constitution.

He arrived at the Pennsylvania State House (now Independence Hall) each day in a sedan chair, carried by two men — his gout made walking agonizing. Still, he was the oldest delegate by a wide margin. The next oldest was Stephen Hopkins of Rhode Island at sixty-nine.

During the congressional debates over July 1–4, Franklin mostly listened. He spoke rarely. Here's the thing — when he did, delegates quieted. On July 1, as John Dickinson argued against independence, Franklin passed a note to a colleague: "We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.

The line wasn't new — he'd used variations before — but the timing made it legendary.

The Signing: August 2, Not July 4

Here's a detail that surprises people: Franklin didn't sign the Declaration on July 4, 1776.

July 4 was the day Congress adopted the final text. Most delegates signed that day. Think about it: the famous engrossed copy — the one on display at the National Archives — wasn't ready until August 2. Franklin signed it, his large, steady signature near the bottom of the Pennsylvania column.

He was seventy years old. The youngest signer, Edward Rutledge of South Carolina, was twenty-six. Forty-four years between them.

When Hancock called for unity — "We must be unanimous; there must be no pulling different ways" — Franklin reportedly muttered, "Yes, we must indeed all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately."

The line appears in multiple contemporary accounts. It sounds like Franklin. Whether he said it exactly that way on that exact day matters less than the fact that everyone believed he would.

What Franklin Thought About the Document Later

Franklin never wrote a memoir of the Declaration's drafting. His Autobiography* breaks off in 1757, decades before 1776. But his letters from the 1780s reveal his view.

In a 1783 letter to Robert Morris, he called the Declaration "that glorious instrument." In 1787, writing from Paris to Benjamin Rush, he said the principles it contained were "the best the world ever saw."

He also knew its limits. The Declaration proclaimed equality while the new nation permitted slavery. So franklin, who had owned enslaved people earlier in life, became an abolitionist in his final years. In 1790, months before his death, he petitioned Congress as president of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society to end the slave trade. The petition was tabled.

He died April 17, 1790. The Declaration he'd helped shape had been the law of the land for fourteen years. The Constitution he'd helped write had been ratified for two.

Common Misconceptions Worth Clearing Up

Myth: Franklin wrote the first draft. No. Jefferson did.

Myth: Franklin was the primary editor of Jefferson's draft. He was one of five on the Committee of Five, and his edits were significant but few — mostly tightening phrasing and suggesting "self-evident" for "sacred and undeniable." The heavier editorial work fell to Adams and the full Congress, which deleted roughly a quarter of Jefferson's text, including the passage condemning the slave trade.

Myth: Franklin signed first or most prominently. John Hancock, as president of Congress, signed first and largest — centered, bold, unmissable. Franklin signed with the Pennsylvania delegation, his name tucked between Robert Morris and John Morton. His signature is clear and confident, but not showy.

Myth: Franklin was the "father" of the Declaration. He was its elder statesman, its diplomat, its consensus-builder. The intellectual architecture belongs to Jefferson; the political muscle to Adams; the legal precision to Livingston and Sherman. Franklin's role was quieter: he made the room work. He absorbed friction. He gave the enterprise credibility it couldn't have bought.

Myth: He was a reluctant revolutionary. By July 1776, Franklin had spent a decade trying to prevent the break. He'd testified before Parliament, written satirical broadsides, negotiated in London until humiliation drove him home. But once independence became inevitable, he didn't hesitate. He signed the Declaration, the Treaty of Alliance with France, the Treaty of Paris, and the Constitution — the only founder to sign all four founding documents.

The Measure of the Man

Franklin's contribution to the Declaration wasn't a sentence or a clause. It was the weight of a lifetime.

He brought the respect of European courts, the trust of wary delegates, the instinct for compromise that kept the fractious colonies from flying apart. He knew that words on parchment meant nothing without the alliances to defend them, the institutions to sustain them, the people willing to die for them.

In his final public act — that 1790 antislavery petition — he reminded the new nation that the Declaration's promise remained unfulfilled. "Mankind are all formed by the same Almighty Being," he wrote, "alike objects of his care, and equally designed for the enjoyment of happiness."

Congress ignored him. The contradiction would take a civil war to begin resolving.

But the old printer's apprentice, the runaway, the self-made philosopher of Philadelphia, had done his part. He'd given the revolution its best chance. He'd helped write the words that would outlive empires.

When visitors now stand before the faded parchment in the National Archives, squinting at the signatures, they often miss Franklin's. It's not the largest. Not the first. But it anchors the column from below — steady, deliberate, the foundation the others rest upon.

We must all hang together.*

He did. And the document held.