He was a reluctant revolutionary
Franklin was one of the last of the Founders to support complete independence from Britain. He advocated for peaceful compromise and the maintenance of the empire despite having spent several years living in London and holding royal posts, once remarking that "every encroachment on rights is not worth a rebellion." He declared the Boston Tea Party to be a "act of terrible injustice on our behalf" in 1773 and demanded that the East India Company be made whole for its losses.
By the time he returned to the United States for the Second Continental Congress in 1775, Franklin had grown disenchanted with the monarchy, but many of his fellow patriots still had their doubts about him because of his previous support for King George III. Before he publicly announced his support for American independence, a few even suspected he might be a British spy.
After independence was declared, Franklin sailed for France on October 27, 1776, as a member of a commission authorized by Congress to negotiate a commercial treaty with Louis XVI’s government. In 1778 Franklin signed a Franco-American Treaty of Alliance. Thus, from those first furtive winter meetings at Carpenter’s Hall in Philadelphia three years earlier, aided by Franklin’s wise guidance and diplomacy, emerged massive French moral, monetary, material and eventually direct military support for the American colonial cause.
