1905, London, E.P. Dutton and Company, 204 pages of 314 (Page 205 to 314 are a biography of Franklin’s later life by W. MacDonald)

In the late 1700’s all English books and their American versions began with a draft scheme, a very extensive, wordy table of contents. An example from the beginning of Franklin’s draft scheme is reproduced here.

“My writing. Mrs. Dogwood’s letters. Differences arise between my Brother and me (his temper and mine). Their cause in general. His Newspaper. The Prosecution he suffered. My Examination. Vote of Assembly. His manner of evading it. Whereby I became free. My attempt to get employ with other Printers. He prevents me. Our frequent pleadings before our Father. The final Breach…”

Franklin reconstructs his family history as best he can and uses the term “bred to” indicating the fact that a boy was born, intended for a certain trade, either his father’s, grandfather’s or uncle’s trade and was considered to have a genetic aptitude for that trade. He traced his family history in documents back to 1555, “By that register, I perceived that I was the youngest son of the youngest son for five generations back.” His family came along as part of the apprenticeship tradition in which the master of the apprentice had the full rights of a father, these rights being signed over by the parent amounting to a kind of brutal residency with corporal punishment continuing into adulthood and increasing in severity at puberty with this often resulting in runaway at age 16. Franklin was the 16th son of his father to two wives, the first having given out on number 10, it seems. Being the youngest and most intelligent son, at age eight, Franklin’s father decided that he would be his church tax, and he would be his tithe.

Franklin hated this life and made known his desire to go to sea, which is where many runaways would seek their livelihood. Franklin’s puritan father was horrified by the prospect of his brilliant son living the sinful life of a sailor. At age 12, Franklin was bound over to his oldest brother and signed a contract for his own indenture, to last until age 21. His father arbitrated disagreements during his apprenticeship under his brother, sometimes siding with Franklin.

Below are some excerpts of Franklins description of his apprenticeship with his brother.

“Though a brother, he considered himself as my master, and me, an apprentice… My brother was passionate, and had often beaten me, which I took extremely amiss. I fancy his harsh and tyrannical treatment of me might be a means of impressing me with that aversion to arbitrary power that has stuck to me through my whole life.”

At age 16, Franklin, with the aid of a friend, was given passage by a ship’s captain to New York on the pretense that he had impregnated a naughty girl and would be forced into a disadvantageous marriage. Ship’s captains operated under strict penalties for transporting any fugitive servants. On the way from New York to Philadelphia, Franklin was befriended by a Quaker slave mistress with servants in tow who advised him against consorting with lower class women, two of whom were arrested for theft at the end of this trip and would have been sold into servitude for this crime. Once Franklin made his way to Philadelphia, he was questioned by a Quaker who appeared to be trying to determine if he were a runaway. Franklin paints a picture of a slave nation, “He brought me to the crooked billet in Water-street. Here I got a dinner; and, while I was eating it, several sly questions were asked me as it seemed to be suspected from my youth and appearance, that I might be some runaway.”

My reading of this autobiography shows Franklin to have been a remarkable man. No wonder the French were so impressed with him. The English, of course, hated him as a traitor. He was one of the driving personalities behind the movement to outlaw indentured servitude in the Northern states with multiple anti-slavery statutes adopted by Northern states and territories before his death, although these were nullified by the Constitution of the United States of America, in which provisions for the retrieval of escaped servants were inserted due to the demands of Virginia landholders and other southern aristocrats. At the time of Franklin’s death in 1788, there was a mass migration of poor whites, many of them runaways, from Maryland and Virginia down the Ohio River, where the territorial assembly outlawed slavery.