Did Benjamin Franklin have children with his slaves?

There is no credible historical evidence suggesting that Benjamin Franklin fathered children with enslaved women, distinguishing him from several other prominent Founding Fathers who are known or strongly suspected to have done so. Franklin owned very few enslaved people compared to his peers, and those he did own were primarily domestic servants in his Philadelphia household rather than plantation laborers, which reduced the opportunity for such relationships. More importantly, Franklin's evolving views on race and slavery led him to become an outspoken abolitionist who actively worked against the institution he once participated in, making it unlikely he would have engaged in the sexual exploitation that characterized slaveholder behavior. While historians cannot prove a negative with absolute certainty, the absence of any contemporary allegations, family traditions, or genetic evidence stands in stark contrast to the well-documented cases involving Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and others. Franklin's legacy regarding race remains complicated by his early slave ownership, but available scholarship does not support claims of interracial progeny resulting from coercive relationships with enslaved women under his control.