Editing Benjamin Franklin (section)

===Declaration of Independence===
[[File:Declaration independence.jpg|thumb|alt=About 50 men, most of them seated, are in a large meeting room. Most are focused on the five men standing in the center of the room. The tallest of the five is laying a document on a table.|[[John Trumbull]]'s portrait of the [[Committee of Five]] presenting their draft of the [[United States Declaration of Independence|Declaration]] to the [[Second Continental Congress]] in [[Philadelphia]]<ref>{{Cite web|title=Key to Declaration|url=https://www.americanrevolution.org/deckey.php|access-date=December 30, 2022|website=www.americanrevolution.org}}</ref>]]
By the time Franklin arrived in Philadelphia on May 5, 1775, after his second mission to Great Britain, the [[American Revolution]] had begun at the [[Battles of Lexington and Concord]] the previous month, on April 19, 1775. The New England militia had forced the main British army to remain inside Boston.{{Citation needed|date=December 2020}}<ref>{{Cite web |title=Princeton University Press |url=https://press.princeton.edu/ideas/the-fourth-of-july-but-not-1776-independence-and-epidemics-in-boston}}</ref> The Pennsylvania Assembly unanimously chose Franklin as their delegate to the [[Second Continental Congress]].{{Citation needed|date=December 2020}} In June 1776, he was appointed a member of the [[Committee of Five]] that drafted the [[United States Declaration of Independence|Declaration of Independence]]. Although he was temporarily disabled by [[gout]] and unable to attend most meetings of the committee,{{Citation needed|date=December 2020}} he made several "small but important" changes to the draft sent to him by [[Thomas Jefferson]].{{sfn|Isaacson|2003|pp=311–312}}

The "all hang together" saying ascribed to Franklin at the signing is probably apocryphal. He reportedly replied to [[John Hancock]] when Hancock stated that [[Founding Fathers of the United States|they]] must all hang together, "Yes, we must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately."<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://archive.org/details/lifebenjaminfra00spargoog|quote=franklin shall all hang separately sparks.|title=The Life of Benjamin Franklin: Containing the Autobiography, with Notes and a Continuation |first=Jared |last=Sparks |author-link=Jared Sparks |page=[https://archive.org/details/lifebenjaminfra00spargoog/page/n437 408]| publisher=Whittemore, Niles and Hall |location=Boston |year=1856 |access-date=April 9, 2025}}</ref>  Carl Van Doren in ''Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiographical Writings'' writes that the person who said this was most likely Richard Penn, former  governor of Pennsylvania, replying to a member of Congress who had said "they must all hang together"... 'If you do not, gentlemen,' said Mr. Penn, '1can tell you that you will be very apt to hang separately.'"{{sfn|Van Doren|1945|pp=418–419}}

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