Back in the eighteenth century when slavery uprising happened in America, slavery was a debatable issue. Hence, the opinions toward it were a concern at that time. On July 4th, 1776, The Declaration of Independence was written to declare that the America was a separate country that had its own sovereignty rights. It was also stated that the two most important things that were “all men are created equal”, and they would have certain rights “among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”. Slavery was a norm at that time, so the question arisen is how the Founding Fathers - leaders of America thought and took action about slavery. According to the Declaration, slavery is unacceptable. Among the Founding Fathers, George Washington …show more content…
However, we cannot tell from his action whether he was a supporter. In Franklin’s letter to the Public, he wrote,”Slavery is such an atrocious debasement of human nature, that its very extirpation, if not performed with solicitous care, may sometimes open a source of serious evils.”. The statement showed his disagree with slavery by the clearly description of the two words “atrocious debasement”. Franklin thoughts were aligned with the Declaration of Independence, such that slavery against what he said is human nature. However, the rest of his sentence states that if we don’t treat slaves carefully, then the slaves may rise up against the American. This finding implies that Franklin cared about the uprising of slaves more than the slaves themselves, when he said we should treat them with “solicitous care”. Franklin did not give any resolution, or take any action in his letter he wrote to the Public even after he described how bad slavery was. In his letter, it seemed like he supported equality, described how bad the slaves were suffering, what should they do in order to improve the situation. However, he did not mention any solutions for what he said. At the end of the letter, Franklin asked for everyone’s donation so the slaves can be set free, but still, he did not take much action. In general, Benjamin Franklin pointed out how bad the slavery was ,and what to do with it but he ignored and did not take much