Theirs was a three-decade-long bond that, more than any other pairing, would forge the United States. Vastly different men, Benjamin Franklin—an abolitionist freethinker from the urban north—and George Washington—a slaveholding general from the agrarian south—were the authors of American independence and the two key partners in the attempt to craft a more perfect union at the Constitutional Convention. And yet their teamwork has been little remarked upon in the centuries since. Formed during the French and Indian War and rekindled during the Second Continental Congress in 1775, the friendship between Franklin and Washington gained historical significance during the American Revolution, when victory required their mutual coordination and cooperation. In the 1780s, the two sought to strengthen the union, leading to the framing and ratification of the Constitution, the founding document that bears their stamp.