Quote · The Rest Is History
684. Franklin: Revenge of the American Genius (Part 2)
Where this was said
Franklin's Final Act: Anti-Slavery Petition and a Swiftian Masterpiece
At 1:07:40 · chapter starts 1:07:20
Franklin's final public acts were acts of repentance and resistance. In February 1790, aged 84, he presented to Congress a petition calling for liberty for those 'unhappy men who alone in this land of freedom are degraded into perpetual bondage' — a former slave owner making one of the earliest formal congressional anti-slavery arguments [1] — Tom Holland "At 84, weeks before his death, Franklin published a satirical pamphlet under a Muslim pseudonym deploying pro-slavery arguments to condemn …" 1:07:10 . When Congress rejected it, Franklin published one final piece of writing: a satirical pamphlet attributed to a fictional Muslim propagandist, Sidi Mehmet Ibrahim, deploying the exact arguments used by American pro-slavery voices to defend the Barbary States' enslavement of Europeans. The parallel was devastating and deliberately Swiftian in its structure — the same technique as 'A Modest Proposal.' Tom calls it a brilliant act of repentance, arguably derived from Jonathan Swift, and Franklin's most intellectually satisfying late work. It was the last thing he published. On 17 April 1790, Benjamin Franklin died, aged 84.
