Mouhamadou bah

ENG2200

Proof: Noonan

9/25/23

The life of Benjamin Franklin.

In reading Franklin’s autobiography, I found many things that were very interesting. Before I read this autobiography all I knew about Benjamin Franklin was that he was successful and that he was a face on a $$ bill, but I did not know how successful he was.

In his autobiography I learned so much about him, like he was the one who invented the lightning rod, and that he was the only one who agreed to the independence of the United States. Also, he was the one who was sent away to Paris to secure help from the French royal family to fight for their independence. Franklin was a scientist, and politician, and many other things to put it simply a genius of his time. In The autobiography, it also says that before he became so successful, he was just an ordinary poor person just like any other, but with a lot of questions he wanted answered. I think it’s really inspiring that he followed his dreams of being a great scientist.

But I also started thinking that since he was so smart and successful and wanted humans to live better by doing everything in his power to help establish the independence of U.S. then why did he not question or try to solve slavery?

I once read this article about Frederick Douglas a black man who was invited to give a speech during an Independence Day celebration and what he said shook the crowd because he found it offensive when he was asked to give a speech about what independence meant to him even though he was enslaved for many years and his kind is still being enslaved in some states to this day. So why didn’t Franklin help abolish slavery after he established independence in the U.S.?

Something that I found interesting in the second reading, A Narrative of a native Africa, is that both characters were similar and different in a few ways. For example, smith and Franklin both lived in the Americas, but their upbringing was very different. Smith was an African noble who got enslaved and brought to the Americas, whilst Franklin was born and raised here and had all the resources, he needed to continue his studies.

in his biography, smith talks about how he was enslaved, how he gained his freedom, and how he fought against slavery. Franklin’s biography was about his life, how he made the breakthroughs he did, his successes, and how he helped establish U.S. independence.

They clearly both lived different lives.