On May 5, 1775, a packet ship arrived in Philadelphia after a six-week passage across the Atlantic from England. This was a common enough occurrence, since the city’s bustling waterfront along the Delaware River usually teemed with ships carrying passengers and merchandise from all over the world. The ship nestled beside a waiting dock, its gangplank enabling the weary human cargo to plant their feet on dry land.

One of the passengers was an old man accompanied by his teenage grandson. The old man’s face was distinctive, though not yet the icon it was later to become. A large oval face was framed by a fringe of long gray hair that fell unbound to his shoulders. Slightly hooded blue-gray eyes peered over rectangular glasses, and a well-shaped nose hovered above a thin slash of a mouth, just now pursed in concentration as he carefully walked down the swaying gangplank.

Benjamin Franklin was coming home to his adopted city after an absence of about a decade. He was the most famous man in colonial America, honored for his many inventions and his contributions to science. Franklin was also a public figure, comfortable in the world of politics and letters. Dr. Franklin — he held an honorary degree from Scotland’s prestigious University of St. Andrews — had been an agent representing colonial interests in Great Britain.

Franklin’s homecoming was bittersweet. There was a growing rift between Britain and its 13 American colonies, and Franklin had devoted months of time and effort trying to repair the breach and effect reconciliation. In truth, the good doctor was a very reluctant revolutionary, at least in the beginning. He loved Britain, and harbored dreams of ‘that fine and noble China vase the British Empire’ growing ever greater in wealth and power.

The dream was becoming a nightmare, however, and the ‘noble China vase’ was teetering on the edge of a precipice. One more gust of political turmoil and it would fall and smash into pieces. The last couple of years in England had not been happy ones for Franklin; in fact, they had transformed him slowly from ardent Anglophile to committed revolutionary.

Franklin had once been blindly in love with Britain; now the scales fell from his eyes. His efforts at reconciliation were spurned, a British minister characterizing Franklin as ‘one of the bitterest and most mischievous enemies this country [Britain] had ever known.’ Having heard the term ‘American’ spat out like some loathsome obscenity, Franklin, his patience ended, decided to go home. He also decided that complete independence from Britain was the best course of action.

When Franklin arrived in Philadelphia, he could not be sure of his reception. Years before, he had written to a friend that there was a possibility he would be looked on ‘in England of being too much an American, and in America of being too much an Englishman.’ Those worries evaporated the moment Franklin and his 15-year-old grandson, Temple, touched shore. People shouted his name, and there were spontaneous cheers to mark his progress. As the word spread, church bells even pealed in welcome.But the colonies were in turmoil. The First Continental Congress denied that the British Parliament had any authority to tax the colonies. That, the first Congress insisted, was exclusively the right of their own colonial assemblies. Rhetoric soon turned to bloodshed, when fighting broke out between Massachusetts farmers and British troops at Lexington and Concord.

A few days after Franklin’s arrival, the Second Continental Congress met in Philadelphia in the Pennsylvania statehouse (now Independence Hall) on Chestnut Street to discuss the issues and plan a course of action. The birth of the United States was not an easy one, and it ultimately involved a long, painful and exceedingly slow gestation. In fact, it took a year, from the spring of 1775 to the summer of 1776, for a majority of congressmen to finally accept the reality of independence.

Benjamin Franklin was chosen to be one of Pennsylvania’s congressional representatives only a day after his return from England. He accepted the post, but made sure that he did not reveal his true feelings on the touchy issue of independence. In the meantime, he served on several congressional committees, keeping up a pace that would have exhausted a 30-year-old, much less a man who had recently passed his 69th birthday.

Congress created a Continental Army for mutual defense and appointed George Washington, a distinguished Virginian, as its commander in chief. British troops in Boston were already besieged by American forces, and an expedition was soon organized to invade and capture Canada for the rebel cause.

While Congress deliberated, argued and occasionally dithered, questions began to arise in the minds of many members — should America seek foreign aid; would the United Colonies be better off if they entered into a foreign alliance; or should they go it alone, trusting in God and the righteousness of their cause?

Franklin, prescient as usual, foresaw the need of foreign aid. He wrote to a friend in July 1775 that Americans ‘have not yet applied to any foreign power for assistance, nor have we offered our commerce for friendship. Perhaps we never may; it is natural to think of it, if we are pressed.’

These musings, which many felt but dared not speak aloud, took more concrete form after August 23, 1775, when King George III declared the colonies to be in open rebellion. While the majority of Congress still hesitated to make the final, irrevocable break with the mother country, it was deemed prudent to prepare for the worst.

To this end a Committee of Secret Correspondence was formed on November 29, 1775, with the mission of ‘corresponding with our friends in Great Britain, Ireland and other parts of the world.’ The last part of the sentence, ‘other parts of the world,’ seems to have been added casually, and made purposely unclear, perhaps to allay the fears of those members of Congress who still hoped for reconciliation. In reality, ‘other parts of the world’ could only mean the rest of Europe, including Britain’s hereditary enemies France and Spain.

The Committee of Secret Correspondence was, in fact, an embryonic State Department. (Its title was changed to Committee for Foreign Affairs in April 1777, once the need for secrecy had been obviated by the Declaration of Independence.) The committee’s distinguished members included Franklin, Virginian Benjamin Harrison, John Jay of New York, Marylander Thomas Johnson and Pennsylvanian John Dickinson.

Benjamin Franklin quickly became the committee’s most prominent member. He had many connections in Europe, and his fame abroad might open doors otherwise closed to America. Among intellectuals, he was celebrated as the ‘man who dared the lightning’ and a true apostle of the Enlightenment. His famous experiment in the 1750s had proven beyond a doubt that lightning was indeed electricity. Franklin also created one of the first batteries, and even coined the use of the words ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ to describe electric charges.

Franklin immediately took up his quill, writing a flurry of letters to his still-wide circle of European friends. He entered the murky world of diplomacy and espionage literally at the stroke of a pen. Philadelphia was as yet unoccupied by British troops, but it was almost certainly occupied by British spies, so Franklin had to exercise caution.Where to begin? Charles Guillaume-Frederic Dumas was an intellectual, by some accounts a Swiss, who was living in The Hague. The Netherlands was no longer a great power, but its strategic location assured that it was a major ‘listening post’ of European politics. In his December 9, 1775, missive, Franklin made Dumas an agent of the Committee of Secret Correspondence.

Acting as the committee’s spokesman, Franklin told Dumas that America might find it necessary ‘to ask the aid of some foreign power.’ The latter’s task was clear: ‘As you are situated at The Hague, where ambassadors from all the courts reside, you should make use of the opportunity…discovering, if possible, the disposition of the several courts to such assistance or alliance.’

Franklin’s hope of foreign aid was not as far-fetched as it may have seemed at the time. When King Louis XVI came to the throne in 1774, he appointed Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes, as his new foreign minister. Vergennes was a career diplomat with a lifetime’s worth of experience. A monarchist to the core, he did not understand the complex issues of taxation and self-government that were threatening to tear the British empire completely asunder. Vergennes was certain of only one thing — Britain’s troubles might provide France with a golden opportunity for revenge.

France’s defeat in the Seven Years’ War was a national humiliation, and to suffer that defeat at the hands of the British only added to the disgrace. When the war ended, France was forced to surrender Canada and its vast holdings along the Mississippi River drainage. Only two small fishing islands off the south coast of Newfoundland, Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, remained of what was once a great French empire in North America.

Late in 1774 Vergennes wrote: ‘The quarrel between the colonies and the British government seems to grow more serious every day….It may prove the most fatal blow to the authority of the metropolis [London].’ The foreign minister wanted to help the struggling Americansby Eric Niderostprovided, of course, that they proved themselves capable of winning. The French were not going to throw away money and possibly lives on a losing proposition.

But Vergennes needed to base his decisions on solid, reliable intelligence. Reports from America were often fragmentary and sometimes contradictory. Vergennes knew that ultimately the American revolt would be decided on the battlefield. Could an American ‘army of peasants’ stand up to trained British regulars?

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