conflicting claims of Parliament and the colonies were of no
avail, and early in 1775 he sailed for home.

Franklin's stay in America lasted only eighteen months, yet
during that time he sat in the Continental Congress and as a
member of the most important committees; submitted a plan for a
union of the colonies; served as Postmaster General and as
chairman of the Pennsylvania Committee of Safety; visited
Washington at Cambridge; went to Montreal to do what he could for
the cause of independence in Canada; presided over the convention
which framed a constitution for Pennsylvania; was a member of the
committee appointed to draft the Declaration of Independence and
of the committee sent on the futile mission to New York to
discuss terms of peace with Lord Howe.

In September, 1776, Franklin was appointed envoy to France and
sailed soon afterwards. The envoys appointed to act with him
proved a handicap rather than a help, and the great burden of a
difficult and momentous mission was thus laid upon an old man of
seventy. But no other American could have taken his place. His
reputation in France was already made, through his books and
inventions and discoveries. To the corrupt and licentious court
he was the personification of the age of simplicity, which it was
the fashion to admire; to the learned, he was a sage; to the
common man he was the apotheosis of all the virtues; to the
rabble he was little less than a god. Great ladies sought his
smiles; nobles treasured a kindly word; the shopkeeper hung his
portrait on the wall; and the people drew aside in the streets
that he might pass without annoyance. Through all this adulation
Franklin passed serenely, if not unconsciously.