Papers of Benjamin Franklin, Volume 44

This volume in the venerable Papers of Benjamin Franklin covers March 16 through September 12, 1785, Franklin's final days as minister to France and his voyage home.

Volume 44 of The Papers of Benjamin Franklin covers Franklin's final months as minister to France and his voyage back to America. He received his long-awaited permission from Congress to return home; accepted the king's parting gift of a diamond-studded portrait; settled his accounts; and arranged for a passage home for himself and his grandsons William Temple Franklin and Benjamin Franklin Bache. Franklin's last public act in France was signing the Prussian-American Treaty of Commerce, which contained three unprecedented articles: the two Franklin had written in 1782 guaranteeing protections during wartime for noncombatants, and a third article guaranteeing humane treatment for prisoners of war.

Franklin instructed the French government on the culinary uses of maize and wrote a rambling "eye-witness" account of China that contains directions for making tofu. On the coast of England, before embarking for America, he met with his Loyalist son William and witnessed William's signing over his American property to his son William Temple. On the homeward-bound voyage Franklin wrote three major scientific papers, including the copiously illustrated "Maritime Observations". His original line drawings are reproduced for the first time in this volume. A section of supplementary documents from the French mission is also included.