Existing comment:
Benjamin Franklin, Slavery and Race
"Slavery is such an atrocious debasement of human nature."
-- Benjamin Franklin, An Address to the Public, from the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, 1789
Franklin's attitudes about slavery and race evolved over the course of his life. The changes in his thinking can be glimpsed in his family life, his printing career and in his political and civic activities.
Franklin was a slaveholder for much of his adult life. Until the 1750s, he, like many, assumed that enslaved Africans were morally and intellectually inferior to whites.
This assumption changed for Franklin when he helped set up schools designed to educate slave children. Observing one of the classes, Franklin concluded that the capacity for learning and morality among black children was equal to that of white children. His wife, Deborah, was also supportive of this project and was moved at the progress that the pupils made.
Still, Franklin did not free his slaves. The enslaved Africans who are mentioned in Franklin's correspondence over the course of thirty years include Peter, Jemima, King and George. In a 1757 will, he declared "that my Negro Man Peter, and his Wife Jemima, be free after my Decease," but Franklin long outlived them. By the time he wrote his final will, Franklin's discomfort with slavery had become more pronounced: in that will, Franklin stipulated that his son-in-law free his slave as a condition of inheritance.
Early in his printing career, Franklin printed several anti-slavery tracts for their Quaker authors, but conscious of his reputation and the need to build his business he did not affix his name to these publications. |