Ben Franklin & Pennsylvania's Role in Ending Slavery

On JULY 26, 1775, Benjamin Franklin became the first Postmaster General of the United States, a position he held under the British Crown before the Revolution.

Franklin's public career began when he organized Pennsylvania's first volunteer militia during threaten attacks from Spanish and French ships.

Franklin then proposed a General Fast, which was approved by the Colony's Council and printed in his Pennsylvania Gazette, December 12, 1747:

"As the calamities of a bloody War ... seem every year more nearly to approach us ... there is just reason to fear that unless we humble ourselves before the Lord & amend our Ways, we may be chastized with yet heavier Judgments,

We have, therefore, thought fit ... to appoint ... a Day of Fasting & Prayer, exhorting all, both Ministers & People, to observe the same with becoming seriousness & attention, & to join with one accord in the most humble & fervent Supplications;

That Almighty God would mercifully interpose and still the Rage of War among the Nations & put a stop to the effusion of Christian Blood."

Franklin published evangelist George Whitefield's sermons, thereby spreading the Great Awakening Revival.

Franklin established a volunteer fire department, a circulating public library, an insurance company, a city police force, a night watch and a hospital.

He set up the lighting of city streets and was the first to suggest Daylight Savings Time.

He invented bifocal glasses, the Franklin Stove, swim fins, the lightning rod, and coined the electrical terms "positive" and "negative."

In 1754, Franklin wrote a pamphlet, "Information to Those Who Would Remove to America," for Europeans interested in sending their youth to this land:

"Hence bad examples to youth are more rare in America, which must be a comfortable consideration to parents. To this may be truly added, that serious religion, under its various denominations, is not only tolerated, but respected and practised.

Atheism is unknown there; Infidelity rare and secret; so that persons may live to a great age in that country without having their piety shocked by meeting with either an Atheist or an Infidel.

FWIW: The following timely lesson reveals the awareness our Founding Fathers had about ISLAM and SLAVERY .

"Theodore Parker" [1810-1860] wrote the book, “Historic Americans”, in which he writes about founding father, Ben Franklin, abolitionist extraordinaire, quoting the Koran in defending his abolition petition to Congress.
You can read the book on line here: http://tinyurl.com/aa96dnm

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You see the young nation in its infancy. “Hercules in his cradle, “ said Franklin; but with a legion of the mystic serpents about him. If the rising sun shines auspicious, yet the clouds threaten a storm, long and terrible. “

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VI. Franklin, an old man of eighty-four, is making ready to die. The great philosopher, the great statesman, he has done with philosophy and state craft, not yet ended his philanthropy. He is satisfied with having taken the thunderbolt from the sky, bringing it noiseless and harmless to the ground; he has not yet done with taking the sceptre from tyrants. True, he has, by the foundation of the American state on the natural and inalienable rights of all, helped to set America free from the despotism of the British king and Parliament. None has done more for that. He has made the treaty with Prussia, which forbids privateering on land or sea. But now he remembers that there are some six hundred thousand African slaves in America, whose bodies are taken from their control, even in time of peace – peace to other men, to them a period of perpetual war. So in 1787, he founds a society for the abolition of slavery. He is its first President, and in that capacity signed a

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petition to Congress, asking “the restitution of liberty to those unhappy men, who alone in this land of freedom are degraded into perpetual bondage;” asks Congress “that you will step to the very verge of the power vested in you for discouraging every species of traffic in the persons of our fellow-men.” 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; and, with the exception of a letter to his sister and one to Mr. Jefferson, it was the last line which ran out from his fertile pen. - written only twenty-four days before his death. What a farewell it was! . . .to be continued
This old man, “the most rational, perhaps of all philosophers,” the most famous man in America, now in private life, waiting for the last angel to unbind his spirit and set him free from a perishing body, makes his last appearance before the American people as President of an abolition society, protesting against American slavery in the last public line he writes! One of his wittiest and most ingenious works is a plea for the bondman,

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adroit, masterly, short, and not to be answered. It was fit to be the last scene of such a life. Drop down the curtain before the sick old man, and let his healthy soul ascend unseen and growing.

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