The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin: Parts 14 and 15
Bonus:
Summary: Ben Franklin tries to form a defense compact, and is caught in the middle of a dispute between a friend and the PA assembly.
Commentary: Doubling up today since 14 is so short. That, conveniently, means I'm not in sync with the day of the month. 14 is basically just Franklin trying to set up a mutual defense system for the colonies. It fails, and he says that the whole revolution may have been prevented if it'd passed, due to less taxes. I'm inclined to say Britain would've found some other excuse to tax the colonies and it wouldn't have matterd.
15 deals with a conflict between the Pennsylvania Assembly and governor, and includes a very off color dinner party joke:
“Franklin, why do you continue to side with these damned Quakers? Had not you better sell them? The proprietor would give you a good price.” “The governor,” says I, “has not yet blacked them enough.” He, indeed, had laboured hard to blacken the Assembly in all his messages, but they wiped off his colouring as fast as he laid it on, and placed it, in return, thick upon his own face; so that, finding he was likely to be negrofied himself, he, as well as Mr. Hamilton, grew tired of the contest, and quitted the government.
Franklin would eventually become an abolitionist, but was (I think, the timeline is a little fuzzy) still a slave owner at this point. It'd be easy to try to charitably read this as an attempt to "knock down" an off color joke with another embarrassing the teller, but I think he's laughing with, not at here. Sometimes history and heroes are uncomfortable.
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