Benjamin Franklin was a great leader in the American Revolution. He had many jobs in his life. He was a politician, a writer, a musician, a scientist and an inventor, so now read about some of the ways he helped America.

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Benjamin Franklin was born in 1706 in Boston. He was the fifteenth of seventeen children. Franklin loved to read, but his family didn't have enough money for him to go to school, so he had to work with his dad. At around 12 years old, Benjamin started to work with his brother James who was a printer. The brothers had a fight and Benjamin ran away to Philadelphia. Soon he started his own print shop and he started to write his own newspaper, The Pennsylvania Gazette. In a few years he wrote Poor Richard's Almanac, where he made up some famous saying like "early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise." Franklin had a very good sense of humor and he loved to have fun. He made so much money from Poor Richard's Almanac that he could afford to spend time doing other things that he really enjoyed. He founded the first public library, the first volunteer fire company, the first postal system, and the first college in Pennsylvania. Even though he was born in Boston, he felt Philadelphia, Pennsylvania was his home.

One of Franklin's famous discoveries was proving that lightning was actually electricity. He flew a kite in a storm, and the kite got hit by lightning. There was a key on the end of the kite string which sparked when the lightning hit. This proved that lightning was electricity. Then, Franklin made a metal rod that protected houses from lightning. He also invented the fuel-saving Franklin stove, the lightning rod, and a special lens for eyeglasses called bifocals.

Benjamin Franklin also helped the colonists. First Franklin helped stop the Stamp Act by telling the British that the Americans would never pay the taxes. Later he joined the Continental Congress to decide what to do about war with England. In 1776, he helped write the Declaration of Independence.

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The British had sent prisoners to the colonies. Franklin wrote in his newspaper, The Pennsylvania Gazette, that the colonies should send rattlesnakes to Britain. Benjamin Franklin drew this cartoon in May, 1754, at the beginning of the war with France. He put it in his newspaper. This cartoon about the "disunited state" of the colonies helped Franklin show how important it was for the colonies to be united. There was a superstition that a snake which had been cut into pieces would come back to life if the pieces were put together before sunset.

As Colonists moved closer to fighting against Great Britain, Franklin's snake cartoon was used as symbol of American unity and American independence. In 1774, Paul Revere added it to the top of The Massachusetts Spy and showed the snake fighting a British dragon.

During the American Revolution, he convinced the French to help the Americans. Franklin told the French that if the Redcoats won the war that the British would be too powerful. The French and British were enemies, so having Great Britain be this powerful would be bad for the French. The French sent supplies to the colonists through Franklin and his spies. Franklin became popular in France once the colonists won the war.

Franklin helped write the Constitution of the United States, which were the laws for the new country, and he signed four of the most important documents in the new country's history. These were the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Treaty of Alliance with France, and the Treaty of Paris, 1783. Benjamin Franklin did amazing things to help get the new country going.