How did Benjamin Franklin play an important role in the abolition of slavery?

Answer 1

Franklin both owned and sold slaves, a fact that is hardly touched on in most biographies. David Waldstreicher, in his recent book Runaway America, writes: [Franklin] profited from the domestic and international slave trade, complained about the ease with which slaves and servants ran off to the British army during the colonial wars of the 1740

Answer 2

Franklin both owned and sold slaves, a fact that is hardly touched on in most biographies. David Waldstreicher, in his recent book Runaway America, writes: [Franklin] profited from the domestic and international slave trade, complained about the ease with which slaves and servants ran off to the British army during the colonial wars of the 1740’s and 1750’s, and staunchly defended slaveholding rebels during the Revolution. He owned a series of slaves between 1735 and 1781 and never systematically divested himself of them. After 1731 he wrote publicly and regularly on the topics of slavery and racial identity but almost never in a straightforwardly antislavery or antiracist fashion. He declined to bring the matter of slavery to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 when asked to do so by the abolition society that he served as president. Yet as early as 1751 Franklin had pointed out the economic weakness of slavery, and in 1758 had suggested the establishment of the first school for African American children. Franklin’s views gradually changed as he grew older. After about 1770 his writings became progressively more anti-slavery, and in a letter to the London Chronicle he called slavery "a constant butchery of the human species by the pestilential detestable traffic in the bodies and souls of men." After the Revolution, Franklin was involved with the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, and served as its president for a time. In 1789 he drafted a petition condemning slavery and sent it to Vice President John Adams. The petition was rejected, as Franklin had anticipated. Franklin, who as a former indentured servant was the only Founding Father to have been "owned" by someone else, came to see both the economic and the moral paradox of American freedom and American slavery.

Answer 3

What important role did Benjamin Franklin play

Answer 4

Franklin founded the first abolitionist society