Benjamin Franklin: “An Address to the Public”

Benjamin Franklin had many facets to his life, of which writing was only one. For most of his lifetime he was physically strong and fit. On sea voyages he would swim in the ocean, circumnavigating the ship on which he was sailing and taking the opportunity to observe sharks and other mysteries of the sea. He was an outdoorsman who had a vigorous life on city streets and in the countryside. But his writings outlived him, and it is through them that he is now best known. He valued clarity in his writing, which has resulted in some misunderstandings about his artistry. Some critics have foolishly insisted that he lacked a poetic sensibility or that he sacrificed art for plainness. A reading of his texts proves both charges to be incorrect. Instances of sharp, powerful metaphorical imagery may be found even in his essays of persuasion, and they are abundant in his writings about the friction between America and Great Britain as well as in those about his hopes for a unified America with a republican government emerging from the Revolutionary War. In Franklin’s vision for America, every person would be a sovereign, most answerable to himself or herself for success and failure, for whom happiness would be a life well lived. At the end of his life, as president of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, Franklin wrote “An Address to the Public,” asking for public support of a plan to emancipate slaves and to educate free blacks and their children so that they could become better citizens of American society.