The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin

by H.W. Brands

In February 1790 he forwarded an antislavery petition to Congress. “Mankind are all formed by the same Almighty Being, alike objects of his care, and equally designed for the enjoyment of happiness,” the petition read. At a time when the “spirit of philanthropy and genuine liberty” was abroad in America, a legislature explicitly chartered to secure the blessings of liberty to the American people could not ignore this gross denial of liberty to slaves. “These blessings ought rightfully to be administered without distinction of colour to all descriptions of people.” To tolerate any less was to contradict the meaning of the Revolution. “Equal liberty was originally the portion, and is still the birthright of all men.” Americans of goodwill looked to Congress for “the restoration of liberty to those unhappy men who alone in this land of freedom are degraded into perpetual bondage, and who amidst the general joy of surrounding freemen groan in servile subjection.”