As the American Revolution morphed into a world war with the entrance of France and Spain, the diplomatic attempts to settle it became more complex. Europe became a hotbed of diplomatic activity, conducted by both state-sanctioned negotiators and freelancers of various sorts, all with their own agendas for negotiations. There was a series of third-party […]
It was late 1775, and William Legge, the 2nd Earl of Dartmouth, was looking out the window of his office in Whitehall, London, thinking of his enemies on both sides of the Atlantic. His letters were partly responsible for the outbreak of open warfare in America. Now a sarcastic poem in a London newspaper was […]
In the Spring of 1775, Benjamin Franklin, still stationed in England, made what he thought was a last attempt to secure a plan of reconciliation between Great Britain and her American colonies. One of the men he worked with was Adm. Lord Richard Howe. Though their efforts proved unsuccessful, at their final meeting on March […]
Benjamin Franklin made two missions to London prior to the Revolution; the first from 1757 to 1762, the second from 1764 to 1775. In the final four months of his second mission he became involved in three efforts to secure a peaceful solution to the constitutional divergence that was growing between England and her American […]
