"The first thing we need to understand is Ben Franklin was petitioning Congress for the abolition of slavery in the USA:"
As well as in the last two paragraphs of Theodore Parkers quotes:
"This petition was the last public act of Franklin, the last public document he ever signed. He had put his hand to the Declaration of Independence; to the treaties of alliance with France and Prussia; to the treaty of peace with Great Britain, now he signs the first petition for the abolition of slavery. Between 1783 and 1790 what important events had taken place! For three years he had been President of Pennsylvania, unanimously elected by the Assembly every time save the first, when one vote out of seventy-seven was cast against him. He had been a member of the Federal Convention, which made the Constitution, and, spite of what he considered to be its errors, put his name to it. Neither he, nor Washington, nor indeed any of the great men who helped to make that instrument, thought it perfect, or worshiped it as an idol. But now, as his last act, he seeks to correct the great fault, and blot, and vice of of the American government – the only one which, in seventy-six years, has given us much trouble. The petition was presented on the 12th of February, 1790. It asked for the abolition of the
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slave trade, and for the emancipation of slaves. A storm followed; the South was in a rage, which lasted till near the end of March. Mr. Jackson, of Georgia, defended the “peculiar institution.” The ancient republics had slaves; the whole current of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, proved that religion was not hostile to slavery. On the 23rd of March, 1790, Franklin wrote for the National Gazette the speech in favor of the enslavement of Christians. He put it into the mouth of a member of the Divan of Algiers. It was a parody of the actual words of Mr. Jackson, of Georgia, as delivered in Congress a few days before; the text, however, being taken out of the Koran. It was one of the most witty, brilliant, and ingenious things that came from his mind. This was the last public writing of Dr. Franklin ..."
I know - what I meant is that most readers wouldn’t go that far (certainly on FR, where nobody ever reads beyond the first sentence), and the headline was definitely misleading.