“Slavery is such an atrocious debasement of human nature,” he wrote, “that its very extirpation, if not performed with solicitous care, may sometimes open a source of serious evils.” Apologists of slavery pointed to former slaves who became a burden on society, and used this as an argument against emancipation. What do you expect?, Franklin answered. “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
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