April 14, 1775 — The Day America's First Abolition Society Was Born
Fifteen months before the Declaration of Independence, and just five days before the first shot of the Revolution, seventeen men gathered in a Philadelphia tavern to found the world's first formal anti-slavery society. Two of the names on that charter — Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush — would later sign the Declaration.
"All Men Are Created Equal" — 15 Months Before That Sentence Was Written
On July 4, 1776, Thomas Jefferson put the famous line into the Declaration of Independence: "all men are created equal … endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights."
But in the very city where that sentence would be written, a small group was already trying to live out that principle more than a year earlier.
April 14, 1775 — The Rising Sun Tavern
On that afternoon, at a small tavern on Philadelphia's Third Street, seventeen men gathered. Most were Quakers. Among them were doctors, lawyers, and printers.
There, they founded an organization:
The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage
It was the first formal anti-slavery society in the world.
The name says exactly what it did. At first, the Society focused on a single task — finding free Black people who had been illegally kidnapped and re-enslaved, and providing them with free legal representation to reclaim their freedom.
Five Days Later, War Broke Out
On April 19, 1775, the first shots of the American Revolution rang out at Lexington and Concord.
The Society dissolved in the chaos of war.
It would wait nine years to come back.
1784 — They Gathered Again
The year after the war ended, the original members reconvened. They broadened the mission and changed the name:
The Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery
Known ever since by its initials — PAS, the Pennsylvania Abolition Society. It has operated continuously for over 240 years and still exists today.
1787 — Benjamin Franklin Becomes President
Benjamin Rush, portrait by Charles Willson Peale
In 1787 — the same year he attended the Constitutional Convention — an 81-year-old Benjamin Franklin became the Society's president.
His fellow founder Benjamin Rush was the organization's intellectual engine within Philadelphia's medical and learned circles.
Both men were among the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence.
At 82, Franklin's Final Public Letter
In February 1790, two months before his death, Franklin formally petitioned the United States Congress to abolish slavery.
Congress debated the petition bitterly and then rejected it. Southern members were enraged. Representative James Jackson of Georgia delivered a speech openly mocking Franklin.
From his sickbed, Franklin wrote a final satirical essay in response — a mock letter from a fictional Muslim pirate using the exact same reasoning the Southern congressmen had used to defend slavery, holding up a mirror to show how thin their logic was.
He sent it to a newspaper, and 24 days later, on April 17, 1790, he died.
Why This Story Matters
The Founding Fathers did not simply look the other way on slavery. Some of them knew it was a fundamental contradiction — even Jefferson admitted as much privately.
But the people who acted were a different group: the Quakers, doctors like Rush, and an elderly Franklin.
It would take America another 88 years to actually keep the promise that "all men are created equal" — until Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, and the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865.
But the first flag in that long journey was raised on April 14, 1775, in a Philadelphia tavern.
🎯 Dates to Remember
| 1775-04-14 | World's first anti-slavery society founded (17 members) | | 1775-04-19 | Lexington & Concord; the Society suspends activity | | 1776-07-04 | Declaration of Independence adopted | | 1784 | Society reorganized as PAS | | 1787 | Franklin becomes President of PAS | | 1790-02 | Franklin petitions Congress to abolish slavery | | 1790-04-17 | Franklin dies | | 1865 | 13th Amendment — slavery abolished |
Through ninety Aprils, one thread of conscience ran unbroken.
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