Benjamin Franklin’s ‘anti-Semitism’ debunked

In the past, I’ve written here and elsewhere about Benjamin Franklin’s influence on Judaism. A number of people, in response to those pieces, expressed surprise that Franklin would have had an impact on Judaism given that he was (so they said) antisemitic (a term I’m purposely not hyphenating or capitalizing, as it’s never been about opposition to “Semites” or “Semitism,” but rather to Jews). In this article, which coincides with Franklin’s Jan. 17 birthday, I’ll focus on the Founding Father’s actual relationship with the Jews of his day and on the much later, false claims of him being an antisemite. 

The notion of Franklin’s antisemitism first emerged some 80 years ago, in 1934, with the publication of a fraudulent text commonly known as “Franklin’s Prophecy.” Like other, older anti-Jewish falsifications that have long since been debunked, including the blood-libel canards and “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” forgery, “Franklin’s Prophecy” continues to be touted as true even though it’s been discredited many times.

On Feb. 3, 1934, William Dudley Pelley – head of the pro-Nazi Silver Legion of America and publisher of the weekly American journal “Liberation” – ran an article titled “Did Benjamin Franklin say this about the Hebrews?”, containing a supposed excerpt from the hitherto unknown diary of Charles Coatesworth Pinckney, South Carolina’s delegate to the Constitutional Convention.

As presented by Pelley, “Charles Pinckney’s Diary” contained the record of a diatribe (or “prophecy”) by Franklin against Jews during the convention, including a description of Jews as “a great danger for the United States of America” and as “vampires,” as well as an admonition to have the Constitution bar and expel them from the country lest in the future they “dominate and devour the land” and change its form of government. 

By August 1934, “Franklin’s Prophecy” had been published in Nazi Germany. Nazi leaders and sympathizers disseminated the fraud in German, French and English, and in Germany, Switzerland and the U.S.  (Several versions of “Franklin’s Prophecy” circulate widely in many more languages today, including Arabic, in which these texts have found a welcoming home among anti-Zionists.)

In September 1934, “Franklin’s Prophecy” reached American historian Charles A. Beard, best known for his 1913 “An Economic Interpretation of the U.S. Constitution.” Beard began a search for the source of “Franklin’s Prophecy,” which included consulting with other scholars, such as John Franklin Jameson, chief of the Manuscripts Divisions of the Library of Congress. Six months later, in March 1935, his conclusions were published by “The Jewish Frontier” in an essay titled “Charles Beard Exposes Anti-Semitic Forgery about Benjamin Franklin.”

Summing up the results of his investigations, Beard wrote: “All these searches have produced negative results. I cannot find a single original source that gives the slightest justification for believing that the ‘Prophecy’ is anything more than a bare-faced forgery. Not a word have I discovered in Franklin’s letters and papers expressing any such sentiments against the Jews as ascribed to him by the Nazis – American and German. His well-known liberality in matters of religious opinions would, in fact, have precluded the kind of utterances put in his mouth by this palpable forgery.”

Henry Butler Allen, the director of the Franklin Institute, in Philadelphia, also weighed in on the chicanery of “Charles Pinckney’s Diary.”

“Historians and librarians have not been able to find it or any record of it having existed,” Allen stated.

The responses of Beard, Allen and several others were collected into the pamphlet “Benjamin Franklin Vindicated: An Exposure of the Franklin ‘Prophecy’ by American Scholars,” published in 1938. 

Two very good and more recent discussions of the emergence and debunking of “Franklin’s Prophecy” can be found in Nian-Sheng Huang’s book “Benjamin Franklin in American Thought and Culture, 1790-1990” (American Philosophical Society, 1994), and in Claude-Anne Lopez’s New Republic article “Prophet and Loss” (Jan. 27, 1997).

Huang shows “Franklin’s Prophecy” to be an extreme case of exploiting, vulgarizing and distorting Franklin’s image. The ease with which the “Prophecy” has spread and its staying power demonstrate how successful bigots have been in misappropriating the American Founding Father’s good name and fame for their purposes.

However, as Lopez points out, despite his famous liberality in matters of religious opinions, Franklin actually did use anti-Jewish language twice on paper in 1781. That was in private letters, and the language used there, though offensive, does not come near the vitriol Franklin is purported to have publicly uttered in the “Prophecy.” Indeed, Franklin, who owned slaves and featured slaves for sale in his newspaper prior to becoming an abolitionist, was not always a man free of prejudice, including toward blacks and Jews.

Nonetheless, Franklin did eventually free his slaves and become an anti-slavery activist. In 1788, he also contributed money to Congregation Mikveh Israel, the oldest formal Jewish congregation in Philadelphia. This occurred during a time when the small congregation was burdened with debt incurred from constructing its synagogue and had turned to its neighbors, “worthy fellow Citizens of every religious Denomination,” for assistance.

Among those stepping forward to help was Franklin, who gave five pounds to Congregation Mikveh Israel – not a huge sum of money, perhaps, but an atypical donation for an antisemite and a donation very much in line with what is known of Franklin’s approach to religion.

In his article “Benjamin Franklin: Champion of Generic Religion” (2000), historian David T. Morgan argues that “no one to this very day is quite sure of Franklin’s religious beliefs,” but concludes that Franklin “can best be described as a Deist.” His personal creed notwithstanding, “all religions were essentially the same” to Franklin. Viewing any religion as potentially useful, he was “a proponent of all religions and sects” and “treated all religions alike,” Morgan wrote.

With Morgan’s description in mind, it is not surprising that Franklin would assist in alleviating Congregation Mikveh Israel’s debt and ensuring a Jewish presence in Philadelphia.

None of this history is likely to dissuade antisemites from claiming that “Franklin’s Prophecy” contains the words of Benjamin Franklin as recorded in “Charles Pinckney’s Diary.” Antisemites, whatever other shadowy matters consume them, are not much concerned with what is true or false, or what is real or unreal. That should not, however, allow for Franklin’s reputation to be unnecessarily tarnished among those who do concern themselves with such questions.

SHAI AFSAI (ggbi@juno.com) lives in Providence. He will speak on a Franklin-related topic, “Benjamin Franklin’s Influence on Judaism,” on Jan. 22, at Congregation Beth Sholom, 275 Camp St., Providence, 401-621-9393, as part of its “CBS Speaks” dinner and lecture series. All “CBS Speaks” dinners and talks are open to the public. The dairy dinner will begin at 5:30 p.m., following services. To make reservations, or for more information, contact Office@BethSholom-RI.org.