I had heard they wouldn’t let Franklin write it because they were afraid he would put a joke in it.
The Declaration of Independence: Benjamon Franklin
Https://www.thirteen.org/programs/benjamin-franklin/declaration-independence-ev7upl/
Franklin offered only a few edits, but one of them was pivotal. In his draft Jefferson’s most important sentence began, “ We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable, that all men are created equal….”Franklin crossed out ‘sacred and undeniable’ and wrote in ‘self-evident’”