Questions to ask Benjamin Franklin

Franklin's life, and why 2026 is a good year to interview him

Franklin was born in Boston on 17 January 1706, the youngest son of Josiah Franklin, a candle and soap maker. At twelve he was apprenticed to his brother James, a printer. At seventeen he ran away to Philadelphia, where by 1729 he owned the Pennsylvania Gazette. He published Poor Richard's Almanack from 1732 to 1758, retired from daily printing in 1748 and spent the next years on electricity.

In 1776 he was seventy, the oldest member of the committee that drafted the Declaration of Independence. America's 250th anniversary makes this the year to ask him about it. He signed the Declaration, sailed for France that autumn, won the French alliance of February 1778, helped negotiate the peace of 1783 and, at 81, signed the Constitution in 1787. He died in Philadelphia on 17 April 1790. Our America 250 founders guide sets him beside the other signers.

The runaway apprentice: questions about his youth

• 1. Why did you run away from your apprenticeship with your brother James?
• 2. You wrote letters to your brother's newspaper as “Silence Dogood”, a middle-aged widow. Why pretend to be someone else?
• 3. You arrived in Philadelphia in 1723 with almost no money. What do you remember of that first morning?
• 4. How did you teach yourself to write well?

What the record says: the Autobiography (Part One, written in 1771) tells all of this in his own words. The Silence Dogood letters ran in James Franklin's New-England Courant in 1722, when Ben was sixteen. He describes copying essays from The Spectator, then rewriting them from memory to train his style. He also lists his “errata”, his word for the mistakes of his life, which makes good material for a follow-up question.

The printer and citizen: questions about Philadelphia

• 5. What was the point of Poor Richard's Almanack, and who was Richard Saunders?
• 6. You started a lending library, a fire company and an academy. Which are you proudest of?
• 7. You drew up a list of thirteen virtues. Which one did you fail at most?
• 8. Your son Francis died of smallpox at four. What did you learn from that?

What the record says: the Library Company of Philadelphia began in 1731, the Union Fire Company in 1736, and the academy that became the University of Pennsylvania in 1749 to 1751. The thirteen virtues are in Part Two of the Autobiography; he admits Order gave him the most trouble. On Francis, who died in 1736, he wrote that he long regretted not having him inoculated and urged parents not to make the same choice.

The scientist: questions about electricity

• 9. What did you mean by “positive” and “negative” electricity?
• 10. Did you really fly a kite in a thunderstorm, and what actually happened?
• 11. Why did you refuse to patent the lightning rod or your stove?
• 12. How did it feel when the Royal Society gave you the Copley Medal in 1753?

What the record says: his letters to Peter Collinson in London were published as Experiments and Observations on Electricity (1751). The kite experiment is usually dated to June 1752 and is known from his own short account in the Pennsylvania Gazette of October 1752 and from Joseph Priestley's 1767 history. Lightning did not strike the kite directly; he collected charge from the storm through a wet string to a key. Our article did Franklin fly a kite in a storm sets out the evidence.

The revolutionary of 1776: questions for the 250th anniversary

• 13. You spent years in London trying to keep the colonies British. When did you give up on that?
• 14. In January 1774 you were attacked for an hour in the Privy Council's Cockpit. What did that day change?
• 15. In spring 1776 Congress sent you to Canada to win the Canadians over. Why did it fail?
• 16. On 11 June 1776 you were named to the committee to draft a declaration. What did you add, and what did you leave to the younger men?
• 17. What was it like to sign a document that could get you hanged for treason?
• 18. You crossed the Atlantic in winter 1776, aged seventy, while the war was going badly. Why go?

What the record says: the Committee of Five was Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Franklin, Roger Sherman and Robert R. Livingston. Jefferson wrote the draft; Franklin and Adams made small changes. Tradition credits Franklin with changing “sacred and undeniable” to “self-evident”, but scholars debate whose hand made the edit, so present it as a possibility. The Cockpit attack came from Solicitor General Alexander Wedderburn over the Hutchinson letters. Franklin left for France in late October 1776 and reached Paris in December.

The diplomat: questions about Paris

• 19. How did you persuade France to sign an alliance in February 1778?
• 20. Why did Parisians love your fur cap and plain clothes?
• 21. John Adams found you lazy in Paris. What would you say to him?
• 22. Your son William stayed loyal to the King. Could you ever forgive him?

What the record says: the American victory at Saratoga (October 1777) gave France the confidence to sign the treaties of 6 February 1778. Franklin worked closely with the foreign minister, the Comte de Vergennes. Adams, a fellow commissioner from 1778, complained in letters and his diary about Franklin's late hours and social life; their quarrel is a good debate topic, and our Hamilton vs Adams comparison shows how sharp Adams could be. William Franklin, the last royal governor of New Jersey, met his father once more, in England in 1785, coldly.

The old man: questions about the Constitution and slavery

• 23. At 81 you were the oldest delegate in 1787. Why did you urge everyone to sign a plan you did not fully like?
• 24. You owned enslaved people, including Peter, Jemima and King. How do you explain that?
• 25. In 1790 you signed a petition asking Congress to act against slavery. What changed your mind, and was it too late?
• 26. You mocked a congressman's defence of slavery by writing as an imaginary Algerian. Why use satire?

What the record says: his closing speech of 17 September 1787 was read for him by James Wilson. He became president of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society in 1787 and signed its petition to the First Congress in February 1790. His last published piece, signed “Historicus” in the Federal Gazette in March 1790, was the Algerian satire. Historians such as David Waldstreicher (Runaway America, 2004) stress how late and limited his change was. A fair answer says both things: he profited from slavery for decades, and he turned against it at the end.

Sample answers from Franklin's own pen

Each of these is a sourced line from his writings. Build an answer around one, then add the date and the setting.

For question 4 or any question about books:

For question 5, on the job of a printer:

For question 23, on the Constitution:

For a question about the national bird, use his letter to his daughter Sarah Bache of 26 January 1784, where he joked that the bald eagle was a bird of “bad moral character” and the turkey more respectable. He was mocking a medal design; he never formally proposed the turkey.

Questions Franklin could not answer, and lines he never said

• He knew nothing of electric grids, light bulbs or the hundred-dollar bill. Ask instead what he hoped electricity might do.
• He did not invent daylight saving time. His 1784 letter to a Paris journal, urging Parisians to get up earlier to save candles, was a joke.
• “We must all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately” is not found in any record from 1776; it first appears in print decades later. Use it only as a legend.
• “A republic, if you can keep it” comes from the notes of a fellow delegate, James McHenry, not from Franklin's own papers. Say so if you use it.
• Posters credit him with lines about insanity being the same thing done over and over. There is no evidence he wrote it.

The rule: if you cannot find a quotation in his Autobiography, his letters or a dated newspaper, treat it as unproven. How to check if a quote is real shows the steps.

Rehearse with a Franklin who answers back

Franklin was famous for turning a question into a story. To practise your follow-ups, you can talk to an AI recreation of Benjamin Franklin on Yuga, by voice or text. It is free to start and works on iPhone and Android. It is built from his writings and the historical record, but it is a recreation and can be wrong, so your project should cite the Autobiography and the letters, not the app.

Where to read Franklin's own words

• The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, free on Project Gutenberg. Read Part One for his youth and Part Two for the virtues.
• Founders Online (founders.archives.gov), run by the National Archives, has his letters from the Yale edition of The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, searchable by date and correspondent.
• Experiments and Observations on Electricity (1751), also on Project Gutenberg.
• The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, both with transcripts at the National Archives.
• Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, run by the National Park Service, includes Franklin Court, the site of his house.