A Conversation on Slavery
On January 30, 1770, an annonymous missive, entitled A Conversation on Slavery appeared in the Public Advertiser, a Philadelphia newspaper. Written in the style of three individuals -- an Englishman, an American, and a Scotsman -- having a discussion concerning the problem of slavery and the slave trade, the three present a daming testimony of the moral failings of each participant's society. The American character is forced to deflect criticisms from his two companions about the practice of keeping slaves while still clamoring for political liberty at home, turns the tables on the Scot and Englishman by pointing out that their own societies kept men in bondage in the same manner as Americans kept African-Americans. A Conversation would remain an anonymous writing until 1934, when its authorship was proven to belong to one of America's Founding Fathers: Benjamin Franklin. The Conversation is considered the turning point in Franklin's long relationship with the institution of slavery away from his younger years as a slave owner, to an abolitionist.
Benjamin Franklin the Slave Owner
Franklin's attack upon slavery in all forms in the Conversation was the first time that he had engaged the inefficacies of the peculiar institution in a public form. In his earlier years as a publisher in Philadelphia, Franklin had often printed advertisements for the sale of slaves in his newspaper. And, until 1751, Franklin had kept a slave couple himself, until he sold them for being an uneconomic burden on his household. At times in later years, Franklin would continue to keep slaves.
In a letter written in 1758 from London to his wife Deborah in Philadelphia, Franklin spoke of two slaves in his possesion; one named Peter the other King. Peter was described as being well behaved and acting in the manner that Franklin felt a slave should, whereas King had "ran away" from Franklin's house "nearly two years ago." While Franklin would have been well within his rights to reclaim the runaway when he eventually found him, he let King stay in the employ of a local woman who had taken him in, perhaps hinting at Franklin's ambivalence towards the institution of slavery as a whole.
The Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery
In the years just prior to the American Revolution, Franklin started to cultivate a relationship with leading American abolitionists, namely Anthony Benezet. Franklin's stance on slavery changed from objecting to it on an economic level, to seeing it as a moral ill that plagued the early American state. In 1784, Franklin was appointed the head of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, one of the first public interest groups to attack slavery in the new American nation. In this capacity, Franklin wrote his most strenuous critiques of the practice of slave keeping. As a co-author of An Address to the Public, by the Pennsylvania Society, Franklin wrote that slavery, "is such an atrocious debasement of human nature," that allowing the practice to continue was akin to committing evil acts. Franklin's views on slavery, that it was not only an economic ill that harmed the American nation, but also one that destroyed the moral footing of the state was a complete change from his earlier, slave owning days.
Sources:
Isaacson, Walter. Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, Simon & Schuster: 2003.
Willcox, William B., ed. The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, Yale University Press: 1972.
Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery. An Address to the Public, Philadelphia: 1789.
