An Address to the Public

by Benjamin Franklin

November 09, 1789

Edited and introduced by Ray Tyler

1. What does Franklin see as the duty of America's national policy toward enslaved people when emancipation happens? Do you think Franklin considered emancipation inevitable? How does Franklin describe the effects of slavery on people in bondage?

2. How does the Germantown Mennonites' protest against slavery differ from Benjamin Franklin's arguments in An Address to the Public? Do they focus on the same problems created by enslavement? What can the two documents teach us about slavery in British North America?

1688: The Germantown Quakers Protest Slavery

Draft of The Declaration of Independence

Massachusetts Antislavery Petition

Envisioning an African American Regiment

50 Core American Documents: An Interview with the Editor, David Tucker

Slavery and Its Consequences

Introduction

When Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) died in 1790 at age 84, he was likely the most famous American in the world. His lengthy career as an author, publisher, diplomat, scientist, and philosopher led to great fame and prosperity. Few Americans, however, know about Franklin’s connection to American slavery. Franklin and his common-law wife, Deborah, first purchased enslaved people, Peter and Jemima, in the late 1740s. Franklin revised his will in 1757 before embarking on a diplomatic mission to England, promising manumission to Peter and Jemima should he die in Europe. King, an enslaved man accompanying Franklin to England, escaped and found work with a woman who taught him to read, write, and play musical instruments. Franklin tracked him down and chose to sell him to his new employer rather than return him to enslavement.

Franklin changed his view of the morality of slavery as he aged. What prompted that change cannot be documented. Perhaps his experience with King’s escape began that process. Perhaps it was Franklin’s tour of a school for Black Americans in Philadelphia, where he discovered that the children’s “memory” was “equal to that of white children.” What is certain is that Franklin was named President of the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery in 1775 and began opposing slavery more vigorously in the 1780s. In 1788, he argued that God had created all men “of one flesh.” Two years later, Franklin endorsed and forwarded to the first Congress a petition calling for an end to the practice because it was inconsistent with American liberty. In the same year, Franklin penned “An Address to the Public.” Resources must accompany emancipation, Franklin argued, “To instruct, to advise, to qualify those, who have been restored to freedom, for the exercise and enjoyment of civil liberty.”

—Ray Tyler

History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. George W. Williams, ed. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1883. Page 431.

It is with peculiar satisfaction we assure the friends of humanity, that, in prosecuting the design of our association, our endeavors have proved successful, far beyond our most sanguine expectations.

Encouraged by this success, and by the daily progress of that luminous and benign spirit of liberty, which is diffusing itself throughout the world, and humbly hoping for the continuance of the divine blessing on our labors, we have ventured to make an important addition to our original plan; and do therefore earnestly solicit the support and assistance of all who can feel the tender emotions of sympathy and compassion, or relish the exalted pleasure of beneficence.

Slavery is such an atrocious debasement of human nature, that its very extirpation, if not performed with solicitous care, may sometimes open a source of serious evils.

The unhappy man, who has long been treated as a brute animal, too frequently sinks beneath the common standard of the human species. The galling chains that bind his body do also fetter his intellectual faculties, and impair the social affections of his heart. Accustomed to move like a mere machine, by the will of a master, reflection is suspended; he has not the power of choice; and reason and conscience have but little influence over his conduct, because he is chiefly governed by the passion of fear. He is poor and friendless; perhaps worn out by extreme labor, age, and disease.

Under such circumstances, freedom may often prove a misfortune to himself, and prejudicial to society.

Attention to emancipated black people, it is therefore to be hoped, will become a branch of our national policy; but, as far as we contribute to promote this emancipation, so far that attention is evidently a serious duty incumbent on us, and which we mean to discharge to the best of our judgment and abilities.

To instruct, to advise, to qualify those, who have been restored to freedom, for the exercise and enjoyment of civil liberty, to promote in them habits of industry; to furnish them with employments suited to their age, sex, talents, and other circumstances; and to procure their children an education calculated for their future situation in life – these are the great outlines of the annexed plan, which we have adopted, and which we conceive will essentially promote the public good, and the happiness of these our hitherto too much neglected fellow-creatures.

A plan so extensive cannot be carried into execution without considerable pecuniary resources, beyond the present ordinary funds of the Society. We hope much from the generosity of enlightened and benevolent freemen, and will gratefully receive any donations or subscriptions for this purpose, which may be made to our Treasurer, James Starr, or to James Pemberton, Chairman of our Committee of Correspondence.

Signed by order of the Society,

B. Franklin, President

Philadelphia, 9^th of November, 1789

See Our List of Programs

Conversation-based seminars for collegial PD, one-day and multi-day seminars, graduate credit seminars (MA degree), online and in-person.

Programs

Check out our collection of primary source readers

Coming soon! World War I & the 1920s!

Bookstore