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Congress initially established the Committee of Correspondence on November 29, 1775, to communicate with colonial agents in Britain and “friends in ... other parts of the world.” On the committee were Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Johnson, John Dickinson, and John Jay. Robert Morris, the revolutionary financier, soon joined them. Congress granted the committee extensive authority to conduct international diplomacy, including the negotiation of clandestine shipments of arms and other similar activities. Owing to the nature of the correspondence, the members began to add the word “secret” to the committee’s title, and soon it was known as the Committee of Secret Correspondence. The Committee's diplomatic duties grew, and Congress renamed it the Committee for Foreign Affairs on April 17, 1777.

Of the initial members of the committee, Benjamin Franklin was the most active. Drawing on his extensive European contacts, he began a campaign to rally international support of the American cause. On December 12, 1775, Franklin wrote to Don Gabriel de Bourbon, a prince of the Spanish royal family and one of Franklin's scholarly associates. In his letter, Franklin strongly hinted at the advantages of a Spanish alliance with the American revolutionaries. Franklin dispatched similar letters to American sympathizers in France. He sent these letters through associates whom he trusted to protect the communications from interception by the British.

Franklin, the only member with experience in foreign affairs, dominated the Committee, corresponding with friends in Europe and sounding out the possibility of an alliance with America. The French soon dispatched Julien Alexandre Achard de Bonvouloir to America to examine the feasibility of covert aid and political support, and the Committee sent its own secret agent, Silas Deane, to France for the same purposes in April 1776. Franklin himself left for Paris in late 1776 on his famous, and ultimately successful, mission to forge an alliance with France.

Thereafter, the Committee continued to correspond with Lee in London, and, after Congress appointed them in the fall of 1776, also with the commissioners in France. As the British Navy tightened its blockade, however, communication became increasingly difficult, especially after British forces seized Philadelphia in 1777. Once France formally signed an alliance with the United States in 1778, communications improved. With the alliance also came more duties for the Committee and the appointment of French Minister to the United States, Conrad-Alexandre Gérard de Rayneval.

====Committee resolved disputes between American foreign agents in Europe====

* Article: [https://history.state.gov/milestones/1776-1783/secret-committee| Secret Committee of Correspondence/ Committee for Foreign Affairs, 1775–1777] and [https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/2011-featured-story-archive/intelligence-and-the-committee-of-secret-correspondence.html| A Look Back ... Intelligence and the Committee of Secret Correspondence]