(Text of Benjamin Franklin's Petition for the Abolition of Slavery)
To the Senate & House of Representatives of the United States,
The Memorial of the Pennsylvania Society for promoting the Abolition of Slavery, the relief of free Negroes unlawfully held in bondage, & the Improvement of the Condition of the African Races.
Respectfully Sheweth,
That from a regard for the happiness of Mankind an Association was formed several years since in this State by a number of her Citizens of various religious denominations for promoting the Abolition of Slavery & for the relief of those unlawfully held in bondage. A just & accurate Conception of the true Principles of liberty, as it spread through the land, produced accessions to their numbers, many friends to their Cause, & a legislative Co-operation with their views, which, by the blessing of Divine Providence, have been successfully directed to the relieving from bondage a large number of their fellow Creatures of the African Race. They have also the Satisfaction to observe, that in consequence of that Spirit of Philanthropy & genuine liberty which is generally diffusing its beneficial Influence, similar Institutions are gradually forming at home & abroad.
That mankind are all formed by the same Almighty being, alike objects of his Care & equally designed for the Enjoyment of Happiness the Christian Religion teaches us to believe & the Political Creed of America fully coincides with the Position. Your Memorialists, particularly engaged in attending to the Distresses arising from Slavery, believe it their indispensable Duty to present this Subject to your notice. They have observed with great Satisfaction that many important & salutary Powers are vested in you for "promoting the Welfare & Securing the blessings of liberty to the "People of the United States." And as they conceive, that these blessings ought rightfully to be administered, without distinction of Colour, to all descriptions of People, so they indulge themselves in the pleasing expectation, that nothing, which can be done for the relive of the unhappy objects of their care, will be either omitted or delayed.
From a persuasion that equal liberty was originally the Portion, It is still the Birthright of all men, & influenced by the strong ties of Humanity & the Principles of their Institution, your Memorialists conceive themselves bound to use all justifiable endeavours to loosen the bounds of Slavery and promote a general Enjoyment of the blessings of Freedom. Under these Impressions they earnestly entreat your serious attention to the Subject of Slavery, that you will be pleased to countenance 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, are groaning in Servile Subjection, that you will devise means for removing this Inconsistency from the Character of the American People, that you will promote mercy and Justice towards this distressed Race, & that you will Step to the very verge of the Powers vested in you for discouraging every Species of Traffick in the Persons of our fellow men.
Philadelphia February 3, 1790
B. Franklin
President of the Society
How was this recieved in his time; Either by the public, or by fellow politicians?
The petition was debated on the floors of both houses of Congress and profoundly agitated pro-slavery elements of the legislature. In the House, delegates from Georgia and South Carolina wanted the petition to be thrown out without being discussed; for several weeks, representatives of the southern plantation complex in Congress denounced the movements behind the petition and sought to aggressively undermine discussion of the question it contained. One of the more interesting objections they had was by a Georgian representative, who noted that as Congress did not represent slaves, and that it was the pro-slavery constituents of southern representatives who would be most severely impacted by abolition, so then it was undemocratic to consider the question of anti-slavery at all.
For the rest of Congress, opinion was more divided. Few came to the defence of the petition in the Senate - only one or two Senators spoke out passionately in defence either of the right to petition or abolitionism. The rest of the Senate reacted with hostility or apathy to the question. In the House however there was a much more significant bloc of members ready to come to the defence of the anti-slavery petitioners; northern representatives largely felt that the petitions had to be considered in defence of the democratic rights of the citizenship, and framed their defence in those terms. This was an argument that elicited sympathy from moderate southerners from Virginia and Maryland, several of who joined the chorus of northern representatives demanding the right to petition be respected despite the sensitive nature of the question. One Virginian representative curiously suggested that hearing the petition would be a boon to slavery, as the slaves of the south might be more agitated if they thought Congress would not even consider the possibility of abolition, rather than if they learned Congress had rejected it after considered debate. In essence, those who came to the defence of the petition by and large tried to shift the terms of the debate from the question of slavery to the question of democratic legitimacy and civil rights of white citizens.
Even in this earliest legislative debate on slavery and abolition though, we find that a hard core of representatives from the deep south were open to the idea of splitting the union if it was the only way of upholding slavery. The petition helped to expose the divide in the American political class at the time not merely on the question of slavery, but on how far that question should even be considered. In particular, the debate is illuminating for how quickly a coalition emerged in defence of the right to petition, attracting the support of a significant number of moderate southern representatives. From the outset though, it was clear that any debate on slavery was a debate about the future of the union, and that representatives of the Deep South were quite prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to stifle even the possibility of federal abolition being discussed.
Though there was discussion in the Senate, the petition itself was thrown out after the very first day of debate. Unlike their counterparts in the House, there were very few northern Senators willing to make a significant issue out of petition rights; some responded with a certain aristocratic apathy to the notion. In the House however, a compromise solution was found. 43 representatives voted to refer the petition to a select committee for further consideration, with 11 voting against. The majority was carried by a coalition of 32 northern and 11 southern representatives, the latter all from Maryland or Virginia. Of those opposed, all 7 Deep South members voted against considering the petition, compared to just 3 from Maryland or Virginia and 1 from the north (a representative from New York).
In the end though, this was more a vote of principle than action. The select committee to which the petition was referred ultimately found that Congress could not act on any slavery petition until at least 1808, interpreting the constitutional protection of the slave trade as (quite logically) a protection of slavery as well. Perhaps motivated by the words and actions of the Deep South's representatives, whilst members of the House were very willing to uphold the right to petition in 1790, they were also very willing to uphold slavery in respect of the constitutional settlement that had made the union possible. You can read the (brief) text of the committee's report on the petition here.
It should be pointed out however that Franklin's petition was not in and of itself enormously significant, and did not gain much traction. It was not a mass petition in the way we might imagine them today, and only one of three considered simultaneously by Congress in 1790 (the other two coming from Quaker meetings). Whilst the Pennsylvania Society was sharply criticised by pro-slavery representatives, Franklin's position was a largely ceremonial one within the Society, and he would die within weeks of the petition reaching Congress. Furthermore, as you can see, it isn't very specific - it was a challenge of principle more than policy. None of the petitions offered any kind of particular solution to the problem of slavery, they merely stated their opposition to it and a desire to see the institution abolished.
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