He was the only person to sign all four of its founding papers: the Declaration of Independence, the treaty with France, the peace accord with Britain, and the Constitution. In addition, he devised the first federal scheme for America, the unfulfilled Albany Plan of 1754, under which the separate states and a national government would have shared power. And the Articles of Confederation he proposed in 1775 were a closer approximation of the final Constitution than were the weak and ill-fated alternative Articles adopted in 1781.
