Author: Jessica Corsentino
Interviewer: Bailey McDonald
As tensions between the American colonies and England escalated to violence in 1776, the revolutionaries were woefully unprepared to fight for their freedom, so they sent their most qualified representative—Benjamin Franklin—to France to ask for help. The French were enjoying an intellectual renaissance and Enlightenment ideals from thinkers like Locke and Voltaire were all the rage. They eagerly followed the unfolding revolution because they viewed it as the embodiment of those fashionable values. The seventy-year-old publisher-turned-statesman was already well-known in French circles for his scientific endeavors, but his involvement in the American revolution made him a legitimate celebrity.
Image: Benjamin Franklin. Photography. Encyclopædia Britannica ImageQuest. Accessed Apr 16, 2019.
https://quest.eb.com/search/139_2009211/1/139_2009211/cite.