[MUSIC] Welcome back to our class on Benjamin Franklin. In the previous lecture, we explored his last years, his death, and special bequests he made to both Boston and Philadelphia. We're now going to explore two important ethical challenges that must be examined for a complete picture of Benjamin Franklin. Those two ethical challenges are racism and slavery. Throughout much of his nearly 85 years, Benjamin Franklin's prejudices about the country's immigrant groups such as Germans, as well as the indigenous population and black Americans, both enslaved and free shaped his views. There are many, many examples of xenophobic, racist, and frankly abhorrent things Franklin says about racial and ethnic groups. For example, Franklin writes about being suspicious of quote others. He describes German immigrants as quote alien who will quote, swarm into our settlements. Franklin also writes that Native Americans are quote drunken savages who delight in war and take pride in murder, and about enslaved people who are quote sullen, malicious, revengeful, and by nature thieves. In a 1751 essay entitled Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind Peopling of Countries etc. Franklin's writing is clearly filled with prejudice, and as Franklin honestly acknowledges he has partiality to his own white race. Franklin believes at this point in his life that whites are quote a brighter light, but we should also be particularly aware of his meaning. Surprising to our contemporary ears is the fact that Franklin considers white different than we do. To him only a very small number of Saxons and English are classified as white. Many people we think of as quintessentially white today, Franklin does not consider white. Indeed, Franklin does not classify Swedes, Germans, and French as white, but rather as what he terms tawny. Franklin's prejudice against certain immigrant groups is clearly exemplified in his writing on the Germans in Pennsylvania. While Pennsylvania is a pluralistic colony, in terms of religion and countries of origin, Franklin worries about German immigrants, overwhelming America and altering its resources, language, character, and government. Franklin refers to the Germans in his writings as quote, aliens and thinks of them as very different from Anglo Saxon Americans. In 1753, he writes of Germans quote, few of their children in the country learn English. The signs in our streets have inscriptions in both languages. Unless the stream of their importation could be turned, they will soon so outnumber us that all the advantages we have will not be able to preserve our language and even our government will become precarious. Franklin claims he is not against German immigration in small numbers, quote, I say I am not against the admission of Germans in general, for they have their virtues, their industry, and frugality is exemplary. They are excellent husbandmen and contribute greatly to the improvement of a country. Nonetheless, Franklin fears the Germans who have already arrived are quote, generally of the most ignorant, stupid sort of their own nation, and that they will drag down the country if they continue to immigrate at such a fast pace. Taken together, these examples show Franklin's tendency for racism and xenophobia. Indeed, they almost sound like some of America first ear's who have arisen at various points in US history, including our contemporary moments. Franklin's views on the Germans reflect a common view among his peers during his time. For instance, Henry Muhlenberg, one of the founders of the first Lutheran church in North America claims Germans will flood the nation with quote, unprecedented wickedness and crimes. Muhlenberg also writes, what a fearful thing it is to have so many thousands of unruly and brazen sinners come into this free air and unfenced country. These are inflammatory racist statements, especially for Muhlenberg who, ironically himself recently arrived as a German immigrant to the American colonies. Franklin's prejudice against the Germans, particularly his calling them moors comes back to haunt him in the 1764 election for the Pennsylvania Assembly. To curry favor with and secure the votes of the German immigrants, the political party favoring the pens and opposed to Benjamin Franklin use Franklin's words against him. Ultimately Franklin lost his race for reelection to the Colonial Assembly because of that racism. Obviously there is xenophobia prejudice and racism in Franklin's view on race. Of note, Franklin never goes as far as to suggest that German immigrants should be denied the vote or not counted in the population much less that they should be deported. Whatever his prejudices early in his life in 1732, Franklin is happy to start printing the very first German language newspaper in the American colonies to sell to the German immigrants in Pennsylvania. It should be noted that this newspaper ultimately failed financially, but that wasn't because Franklin wasn't totally invested in its success. Franklin also has a complicated relationship with Native Americans. Throughout the 18th century, tensions and conflicts between colonial settlers and Native Americans are recurrent. As the population of colonists rise, they push further west, invading Native American lands often inciting retaliation. Franklin recognizes that these tensions spell danger for the colonial settlements, but he also recognizes many positive attributes of the Native Americans. In 1747, plain truth pamphlet, Franklin writes, quote, and is our country any more than our city altogether free from danger? Perhaps not, we have it's had a long peace with the Indians, but it's a long peace indeed, as well as a long lane that has no ending. The French, know the power and importance of the six nations and spare no artifice pains or expense to gain them to their interest. In 1751, Franklin writes to his friend James Parker about the Iroquois Confederacy and contrasts it with the disarray and antagonism, if not outright hostility of the colonies, one to another. In his comments, we can see both his racism and his admiration simultaneously for the Indians. He says, it would be a very strange thing if six nations of ignorant savages should be capable of forming a scheme for such a union and be able to execute it in such a manner, as that it has subsisted ages and appears indissoluble. And yet that a like union should be impracticable for ten or a dozen English colonies to whom it is more necessary and must be more advantageous, and who cannot be supposed to want an equal understanding of their interests. Franklin's call for colonial unity, announced at the Albany Conference in 1754, is a direct result of military and diplomatic conflicts between the colonists and the Native American tribes and their French allies. The indigenous people of Lancaster County largely lived peacefully with their white neighbors. They bartered for food and traded handicraft wares. Indeed, many were converted to Christianity. The Susquehanna tribe lived on land in Lancaster area granted to them by William Penn in the 1690s. With the end of the seven years war in the middle of the 18th century and driving the French out of the area around Pittsburgh and the Ohio Valley, tensions rise in Western Pennsylvania. Frontier settlers, mainly the Scotch Irish in Paxton Township in Lancaster County are organized by their minister John Elder to stand up to Native American attacks. They are outraged that the Quaker dominated Pennsylvania assembly does not support military actions against the Indians. So, on December 1763 the white settlers of Paxton attack members of the Susquehanna tribe. The attack is totally unprovoked, reputedly drunk, they kill and scalp six Native Americans mutilate their bodies and burn their homes. The colonial government now led by Governor John Penn William Penn's grandson holds hearings and determines that the incident is murder. Governor Pen places the surviving Susquehanna in protective custody in Lancaster, the largest town in the western part of the state at that time. On December 27 1763, the Paxton's attack again. This time they kill six adults and eight children scalping them and mutilating their corpses. Franklin is totally outraged by the Paxton's murder of innocent, defenseless and peaceful Native Americans, he writes and prints his narrative of the Late Massacre. It's a history of the peaceful relationship between the Native American tribe and the colonists. In his pamphlet, Franklin offers a complete denunciation of the Paxton boys as they are known. Franklin notes that he is not writing about all Native Americans, especially those battling quote, my countrymen, but he also notes that the quote six nations have kept faith with the English ever since we knew them now near 100 years. He argues that native Americans would have been safer among heathens such as Turks and Arabs than the whites of Western Pennsylvania. Ultimately, he writes, quote, in short, it appears that the Indians would have been safe in any part of the known world except in the neighborhood of the Christian white savages of Pakistan and Donegal. Yay, unhappy perpetrators of this horrid wickedness reflect a moment on the mischief ye have done and disgrace you've brought on your country, on your religion and your bible. Like many Europeans, Franklin refers to Native Americans as savages throughout his life. But in the 1783 pamphlet remarks concerning the savages of North America, he questions that terminology. He writes, savages we call them because their manners differ from ours, which we think the perfection of civility. They think the same of theirs. Franklin clearly has prejudices and is extremely xenophobic and racist over his lifetime. But this prejudice is not blind. He's able to clearly and explicitly condemn the behavior of whites, calling them savages when they abuse Native Americans. And he's also able to admire many of the attributes of people he is prejudiced against the Germans as well as the Indians. Ultimately, it's not clear that Franklin ever comes to a coherent view of race, a notion of human equality that holds that all individuals should be respected regardless of the race or ethnicity as human beings. But it does seem Franklin has a deep appreciation for goodness and decent behavior, regardless of the race of the people who do it. He respects people who treat others well. And he easily condemns horrible acts by people in his own white race. Over the next two lectures, we're going to delve into Franklin's evolution on the issue of slavery. We'll explore the slaves Franklin owned, and then consider his writings about slavery and his role in trying to end slavery through the Pennsylvania abolition society. [MUSIC]
