The Biography of Benjamin Franklin; The man who promoted the abolition of slave trade
Benjamin Franklin was born in 1706 at Boston. He was the 10th son of a soap and candlemaker. He obtained some formal education but was self-taught basically. He served as an apprenticeship to his father between the ages of 10 and 12. After which, he went to work for his half brother James, a printer.
In 1721, the latter founded the New England Courant, the 4th newspapers in the colonies. Franklin secretly contributed 14 essays to it, his first published writings.
In 1723, due to dissension with his half-brother,Franklin moved to Philadelphia, where he obtained employment as a printer. He spent just a year there and then sailed to London for 2 more years. Back in Philadelphia, he rose rapidly in the printing industry. He published The Pennyslvania Gazette (1730-1748), which had been founded by another man in 1728, but his most successful literary venture was the annual Poor Richard's Almanac (1733-1758). It won a popularity in the colonies second only to the Bible, and its fame eventually spread to Europe.
In 1730, Franklin had taken a common-law wife, Deborah Read, who was to bear him a son and daughter, and he also apparently had children with another nameless woman out of wedlock. By 1748 he had achieved financial independence and gained recognition for his philantrophy and the stimulus he provided to such civic causes as libraries, educational institutions, and hospitals. Energetic and tireless, he also found time to pursue his interest in science, as well as to enter politics.
In the year 1736-1751, he served as a clerk, 1751-1764 as a member of the colonial legislator, 1737-1753 as the deputy postmaster of Philadelphia and in 1753-1774 as the deputy postmaster general of the colonies.
In addition, he represented the Pennyslvania at the Albany Congress (1754), called to unite the colonies during the French and the Indian war. The Congress adopted his "Plan of Union," but the colonial assemblies rejected it because it encroached on their powers.
1757-1762 and 1764-1775, Franklin resided in England, originally in the capacity of agent of Pennyslvania and later for Georgia, New Jersey and Massachusetts.
During the latter period, which coincided with the growth of colonial unrest, he underwent a political metamorphosis. Until then a contented English man in the outlook, primarily concerned with Pennyslvania provincial politics, he distrusted popular movements and saw little purposes to be served in carrying principles to the extremes. Until the issue of palamentary taxation undermined the old alliances, he led the Quaker party attack on the Anglican proprietary party and its Presbyterian frontier allies. His purpose throughout the years at London in fact had been displacement of the Penn family administration by royal authority-the conversion of the province from a proprietary to a royal colony.
It was during the Stamp Act crisis that Franklin evolved from leader of a shattered provincial party's faction to celebrated spokesman at London for American rights.
Although as agent for Pennyslvania he opposed by every conceivable means the enactment of the bill in 1765, he did not at first realize the depth of colonial hostility. He regarded passage as unavoidable and preferred to submit to it while actually working for its repeal.
Franklin's nomination of a friend and political ally as stamp distributor for Pennyslvania, coupled with his apparent acceptance of the legislation, armed his proprietary opponents with explosive issues. Their energetic exploitation of them endangered his reputation at home until reliable information was published demostrating his unabated opposition to the act. Mob resentment threatened his family and home in Philadelphia until his tradesman supporters rallied against it.
Subsequently, Franklin's defence of the American positiob in the House of Commons during the debates over the Stamp Acts repeal brought back his prestige at home.
May 1775, Franklin returned to Philadelphia and he became a distinguished member of the Continental Congress. Thirteen months later, he served in the committee that drafted the Declaration of Independence. He subsequently contributed to the government in other important ways. He was the general postmaster, and took over the duties of president of the Pennyslvania constitutional convention.
After his return, within less than a year and a half, Franklin set sail once again for Europe, where he started a career as a diplomat that would occupy him for the most
of his life. In the years 1776-1779, as one of the three commissioners, he directed the negotiations that led to treaties of commerce and alliance with France, where the people adulated him, but he and the other commissioners squabbled constantly.
While he was sole commisssioner to France (1779-1785), he and John Jay and John Adams negotiated the Treaty of Paris (1783), which ended the War of Independence.
In the year 1785, back in the U ited States, Franklin became president of the supreme Executive Council of Pennyslvania. At the Constitutional Convention, though he did not approve of many aspects of the finished document and was hampered by his age and ill-health, he missed few if any sessions, lent his prestige, soothed passions and compromised dislutes.
In his twilight years, working on his Autobiography, Franklin could look back on a fruitful life as the toast of two continents. Energetic nearly to the last. In the year 1787, he was elected as the first president of Pennyslvania Society for promoting the abolition of slavery- a cause to which he had committed himself to since the 1730s.
His final public act was signing a memorial to Congress recommending dissolution if the slavery system. At the age of 84 in 1790, Franklin passed away in Philadelphia and was laid to rest in Christ Church Burial Ground.
