abolitionism, n.Trivia

Benjamin Franklin was president of an abolitionist society and required his daughter to free her slave in order to get her inheritance.

James Buchanan regularly bought slaves with his own money in Washington, D.C. and quietly freed them in Pennsylvania

Thomas Jefferson, a slaveholder, refused to recognize Haiti after the Haitian Revolution and imposed a trade embargo on them to ensure their economic failure, for fear that a successful slave revolt in the West Indies would inspire slaves in the US

Jefferson’s first draft of the Declaration of Independence criticized King George III for enslaving Africans, and for over-ruling Virginia’s attempt to ban Slavery. In it, Jefferson called slavery a “cruel war against human nature".

Benjamin Franklin was a slaveowner for much of his life until he visited a school for black children and discovered that African ignorance was not inherently natural but come from lack of education, slavery and negative environments.