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.A trip to London followed in 1724, although financial support promised to Franklin by Pennsylvania’s governor fell through and he was forced to find work as a printer.Returning to Philadelphia in 1726, he began a rise that was professionally and financially astonishing.By 1748, he was able to retire, having started a newspaper; begun a tradesmen’s club called the Junto; founded the first American subscription library; become clerk to the Pennsylvania legislature; established the first fire company; become postmaster of Philadelphia; established the American Philosophical Society; and launched Poor Richard’s Almanac, the 80D O N ’ T K N O W M U C H A B O U T H I S T O R Ycollection of wit, wisdom, and financial advice he produced for twenty-five years.Franklin turned his attention to science and politics.He performed his electrical experiments—most famously the silken kite experiment, which proved that lightning and electricity were the same force of nature—and he invented the lightning rod.He added to his list of inventions with bifocal eyeglasses and the efficient Franklin stove.A key mover in the Pennsylvania legislature, he was sent to England as the colony’s agent in 1764, emerging as the leading spokesman against the Stamp Act.(His illegitimate son William, who had assisted at the famous kite experiment, became the colonial governor of New Jersey and remained a loyalist.In 1776, William Franklin was arrested and declared a “virulent enemy to this country.” Exchanged with a patriot prisoner, William lived out his life in London, while Franklin raised William’s son Temple.The deep fracture of this relationship was never repaired.) With war looming, Franklin returned to America a month before the battles at Lexington and Concord.During the war, he sat in the Second Continental Congress, was a member of the committee that formed to draft the Declaration, and soon afterward was sent to Paris to negotiate an alliance with the French, staying in Europe to make the terms of peace.Must Read: The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin by H.W.Brands.Nathan Hale (1755–76) A Connecticut schoolteacher, Hale joined Washington’s army but saw no action.When Washington called for volunteers to gather information on British troops, Hale stepped forward.Recognized and reported by a Tory relative, he was arrested by the British, in civilian clothing with maps showing troop positions.After confessing, Hale was hanged.While his dignity and bravery were widely admired and he became an early martyr to the rebel cause, his famous last words of regret are most likely an invention that has become part of the Revolution’s mythology.The words have never been documented.Say You Want a Revolution81John Hancock (1736–93) The richest man in New England before the war, Hancock, an ally of the Adamses, was a merchant who had inherited his wealth from an uncle who had acquired it through smuggling.Hancock’s purse assured him a prominent place among the patriots, and he bankrolled the rebel cause.Hancock attended the Continental Congresses and served as president of the Congress.Despite a total lack of military experience, Hancock hoped to command the Continental army and was annoyed when Washington was named.He was the first and most visible signer of the Declaration, but his wartime service was undistinguished, and after the war he was elected governor of Massachusetts.Patrick Henry (1736–99) Far from being a member of the Virginia aristocracy, Henry was the son of a frontier farmer whose first attempts to earn a living met with failure.Through influential friends, he was licensed to practice law and made a name for himself, eventually winning a seat in the House of Burgesses.An early radical and an ambitious self-promoter, Henry represented frontier interests against the landed establishment and was known throughout the colonies for his fiery orations.He went to both Continental Congresses, and following the first, he returned to Virginia to make the March 20, 1755, speech for which he is most famous.He was elected first governor of Virginia, and sent George Rogers Clark to expel the British.After the war he opposed the Constitution, but later reversed himself.His poor health kept him from taking a position offered in Washington’s administration.A m e r i c a n V o i c e sPa t r i c k H e n r y to the House of Burgesses: Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?.I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!82D O N ’ T K N O W M U C H A B O U T H I S T O R YThomas Jefferson (1743–1826) Born into a well-off farming family in Virginia’s Albemarle County, the Declaration’s author distinguished himself early as a scholar, and gained admission to the Virginia bar in 1767.Although no great admirer of Patrick Henry’s bombastic style, Jefferson was drawn to the patriot circle around Henry after Jefferson was elected to the House of Burgesses, having provided voters with rum punch, a colonial tradition for candidates.His literary prowess, demonstrated in political pamphlets, prompted John Adams to put Jefferson forward as the man to write the Declaration, a task he accepted with reluctance.Most of his war years were spent in Virginia as a legislator and later as governor.After his wife’s death, in 1783, he joined the Continental Congress and served as ambassador to France, where he could observe firsthand the French Revolution that he had helped inspire.Returning to America in 1789, Jefferson became Washington’s secretary of state and began to oppose what he saw as a too-powerful central government under the new Constitution, bringing him into a direct confrontation with his old colleague John Adams and, more dramatically, with the chief Federalist, Alexander Hamilton.Running second to Adams in 1796, he became vice president, chafing at the largely ceremonial role.In 1800, Jefferson and fellow Democratic Republican Aaron Burr tied in the Electoral College vote, and Jefferson took the presidency in a House vote.After two terms, he returned to his Monticello home to complete his final endeavor, the University of Virginia, his architectural masterpiece.As he lay dying, Jefferson would ask what the date was, holding out, like John Adams, until July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration.Richard Henry Lee (1732–94) A member of Virginia’s most prominent family and the House of Burgesses, Lee was a valuable ally of Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams.Sent to the Continental Congress in 1776, he proposed the resolution on independence and was one of the signers of the 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