Historical records indicate that Benjamin Franklin owned at least two enslaved individuals during his lifetime, specifically a married couple named Peter and Jemima who worked in his Philadelphia household. While this number is significantly lower than many of his wealthy contemporaries or other Founding Fathers who owned hundreds of people, it remains a critical and often overlooked aspect of his biography that complicates his legacy as a champion of liberty. Franklin eventually came to view slavery as morally repugnant and economically inefficient, leading him to free his slaves and become an active abolitionist later in life. He served as the president of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and even petitioned Congress to end the institution, demonstrating a profound evolution in his thinking that distinguished him from peers who maintained slaveholding practices until death despite their revolutionary rhetoric about freedom and natural rights.
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