Benjamin Franklin died at his Philadelphia home after a long illness, aged 84. Statesman, inventor, and diplomat, he had helped draft the Declaration of Independence and secured the French alliance that won American independence. An estimated 20,000 people attended his funeral, a staggering turnout for a city of roughly 28,000 residents.
Franklin's final months were agonizing. He suffered from pleurisy and an abscess in his lung that made breathing a constant torment, yet he continued dictating letters and even drafted an antislavery petition to Congress just weeks before his death, one of his last public acts.
He died in the early evening surrounded by family. His grandson later recounted that Franklin, ever practical, had told his daughter he preferred to lie on his side to ease his breathing, and did so until the end. He was buried beside his wife Deborah in the Christ Church Burial Ground, per his simple request that the stone read only 'Benjamin and Deborah Franklin.'
The scale of mourning stunned contemporaries. Clergy of every denomination, foreign dignitaries, and ordinary Philadelphians turned out in numbers rarely seen in the young republic. The French National Assembly, learning of his death, declared three days of mourning, an extraordinary honor for an American. Franklin's life had spanned the founding of the printing trade in the colonies, groundbreaking electrical experiments with kites and keys, and the diplomacy that made the United States possible; few men had touched so many corners of the century he helped define.