When Cecelia was 15, she accompanied Fanny on a trip to Niagara Falls. So close to freedom in Canada, she took a chance and escaped from captivity. In Canada, she created a life for herself as an independent woman while Fanny went back to her home in Kentucky, where she married and had children.

Years later, Fanny and Cecelia began a cordial correspondence through the mail. Over the years, they sent many letters back and forth, keeping each other updated on their lives. Cecelia also used their relationship to search for her mother, who had not escaped slavery with her.

Not all of the letters survived, but Fanny’s son collected as many as he could find and kept them safe. Through these letters—as well as birth certificates and other records—Asher follows the two women throughout their lives. The story moves back and forth between Cecelia and Fanny, but Asher’s meticulous research weaves the two tales together. His additional writing helps to brings the story alive as well; the little details about Fanny’s family and Cecelia’s independence make the book even more interesting.

The story of Cecelia and Fanny is fascinating. Asher gets credit for taking historical facts and using them to write a riveting book that gives us look at a surprising friendship that stands as a testament to both human compassion and the ability to overcome remarkable adversity.

Cecelia and Fanny: The Remarkable Friendship Between an Escaped Slave and Her Former Mistress is available now from The University Press of Kentucky at a list price of $30.

Cecelia and Fanny The Saturday Evening Post

Here’s what he’d say: Franklin would honor Lincoln for “securing the blessings of liberty to the People of the United States … that these blessings ought rightfully to be administered, without distinction of color, to all descriptions of people.”

Benjamin Franklin fired the first shot of America’s Civil War, and Abraham Lincoln absorbed the last. The gunfire was, of course, about slavery. Franklin knew quite a bit about involuntary servitude; his father indentured him, for a predetermined period of time, to his brother James—a form of servitude from which there was no legal escape.

Slavery was far more common in colonial North America than most people realize. Tens of thousands of slaves lived in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and other northern colonies. Thus, when Franklin became leader of Pennsylvania’s abolitionist movement, he had much to do.

The singular event that, more than any other, energized emancipation forces was a Supreme Court decision regarding Dred Scott, a slave whose master had died. Since Scott spent time with his owner in Illinois and in Wisconsin territory (both nonslave regions) and had two children in those places with his new wife (also a slave), he sued the heirs to his master’s estate for his freedom when he was moved back to Missouri. A Missouri State Court denied Scott his freedom but determined that he could sue in Federal Court if he chose to. Scott and his wife did just that, but lost in Federal District Court as well. Scott, in 1857, appealed his case the U.S. Supreme Court.

In a split decision that has forever stained the entire era, a majority of the high court’s justices ruled that Scott, as a slave, was not a citizen and therefore had no right to sue in Federal Court. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, author of the majority opinion, further stated that all blacks (whether slave or free) never were, and would never be, citizens of the United States. The Court’s majority went even beyond the issues in the Dred Scott matter. They also declared unconstitutional the provision of the Missouri Compromise that precluded slavery in the Western territories.

It didn’t take long for lawyers, especially those in Illinois where the Scotts spent some time, to realize the implication of the Dred Scott decision: If a slave couple (like the Scotts) leave their master, escape to Illinois, and have children there, both the parents and their offspring still belong to their owner, just as would a pair of errant horses that wandered into Illinois, plus their new foals. This meant that some persons born in Illinois were not, in reality, free, making Illinois a de facto slave state.

A group of young attorneys living and working in Springfield, the Illinois capital, thereafter became active in politics, determined to somehow reverse the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott ruling. They prevailed upon one of their number, the eloquent Abraham Lincoln, to carry the torch of Illinois freedom into the political arena via the new Republican Party. (They even promised to sustain his law practice while Lincoln was on the stump.) Lincoln challenged Democrat Stephan Douglas for the U.S. Senate seat for Illinois. A substantial portion of the debates between Lincoln and Douglas revolved around the Dred Scott decision and the related issues of free vs. slave statehood for entering territories.

Lincoln, in a typically long-winded pre-Fourth of July (1857) speech argued that the people of Illinois, not the Supreme Court, had the right to determine the status of persons born within the state’s own borders. He said that, “Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Hamilton, Jay, and the great men of that day, made this Government divided into free States and slave States, and left each State perfectly free to do as it pleased on the subject of slavery.” Douglas won the Illinois Senate seat that year, but the debates launched Lincoln to national prominence within the Republican Party. Lincoln made a February 27, 1860 lecture at Cooper Institute that showed him a more suitable presidential candidate than the current frontrunner, New York Senator William Seward.

In his oration, Lincoln asked (and answered), “Who were our fathers that framed the Constitution? I suppose the ‘thirty-nine’ who signed the original instrument may be fairly called our fathers who framed that part of the present Government.” Using carefully documented evidence from their public pronouncements on slavery, Lincoln proved that a majority of “our fathers” opposed the spread of slavery from the original slave states. The strongest opponents of all, Lincoln said, “were several of the most noted anti-slavery men of those times — as Dr. Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and Gouverneur Morris.”

Lincoln’s supporting footnote for this assertion included “Franklin’s Petition to Congress for the Abolition of Slavery” of February 1790 (mentioned in a previous blog). Moreover, Lincoln, in that footnote, quoted Franklin’s core demand: “That you will be pleased to countenance the restoration of liberty to those unhappy men, who alone in this land of freedom are degraded into perpetual bondage, and who, amidst the general joy of surrounding freemen, are groaning in servile subjection; that you will devise means for removing this inconsistency from the character of the American people; that you will promote mercy and justice toward this distressed race; and that you will step to the very verge of the power vested in you for discouraging every species of traffic in the persons of our fellow-men.”

Benjamin Franklin’s 1790 Petition to Congress, aimed at “the gradual abolition of slavery,” finally achieved its objective 75 years and 600,000 casualties later. The U.S. Constitution’s 13th Amendment (1865) reads simply, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

Franklin’s role in the abolition movement proved pivotal by opening the issue to Congressional debate. To achieve this end, Franklin employed the same sequence of steps he used to create Pennsylvania Hospital and other enterprises: 1) Establish or take over a group dedicated to the goal; 2) Solicit public support through newspaper articles; 3) Raise money for the effort; 4) Write letters to important persons about the mission; 5) Petition the ruling powers for action. If these measures didn’t work, Franklin went to plan B: Publicly mock the opposition with biting satire and then repeat steps four and five.

Franklin’s effort to drum up public backing for abolition included every means an experienced media mogul would likely employ, including themed jewelry as a fashion statement. Just as today’s AIDS and breast cancer groups sell easily identifiable adornments to their supporters, in the late 18th century cameos depicting human bondage were worn as ornaments by ladies who espoused abolition. The British started the fad. When the potter and antislavery activist Josiah Wedgwood joined the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, he had his designer create a white-on-black cameo of the group’s seal. It depicted a kneeling African slave — chains and shackles around his wrists and ankles, arms raised in prayer — surrounded by the question, “Am I not a man and a brother?” Wedgwood’s factory made many such cameos, which abolitionists mounted in bracelets, brooches, tie-pins and combs. It was an effective emblem for the enlightened. (England abolished slavery in 1807.)

The cameo, its motto, and its image became as popular among American abolitionists as it was for their counterparts in England. Soon everything from painted silks to snuffboxes depicted what Franklin called “the suppliant.” (Today, the image is available on T-shirts, mugs, and mouse pads.)

Today, some malign Franklin for having owned slaves and for advertising slaves in his newspaper. It would be more appropriate, instead, to applaud Franklin for his transformation from slave owner to abolitionist — and an aggressive one at that — who spent the last three years of his life trying to end what he called the “atrocious debasement of human nature.”

If Franklin returned to the United States today, he would first be welcomed home by Philadelphia’s mayor, a man of African ancestry. Later, Franklin might meet to discuss foreign affairs with the black woman who served as the nation’s Secretary of State. He would be honored at the White House by our black president from whom he’d no doubt learn about Abraham Lincoln, his Cooper Institute speech of 1860, and the Civil War. And, although horrified by the extent of the bloodshed, Franklin would commend the outcome, for it represents the worthy culmination of his last public undertaking.

Abraham Lincoln The Saturday Evening Post

Here’s what he’d say: “I told you so!” Franklin, after all, both created the job of president and promoted the abolition of slavery, so Barack Obama’s inauguration represents the final conjunction of two of Franklin’s most significant contributions to life in America.

Franklin first proposed a central government for British North America during the Albany Congress in 1754, fully 27 years before the U.S. Constitution incorporated his ideas in our founding document. The head of this central government would be a president-general, appointed by the British monarch. In this way, Franklin hoped the constant feuding between the 13 colonies would end, easing trade.

Regarding slavery, as a young Philadelphia businessman, Franklin owned a slave couple, which he later sold because they were too costly to maintain. Moreover, his Pennsylvania Gazette frequently advertised slaves for sale. The justification for slavery in North America revolved around the status of Africans as either “beasts” or infidels — heathens who didn’t know Christian teachings and hadn’t been baptized. This stance led to heated debates about what happened when Africans became Christianized.

Gradually the notion took hold among certain sects that blacks who converted to Christianity should be freed from bondage. Quakers were among the first to insist on this principle, excommunicating meeting house members who held Christianized slaves. This, in turn, fueled missionary zeal among those who saw slavery as ungodly. They set up schools to teach blacks the reading skills needed to study and absorb the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

In 1758, a school for Negroes was opened in Philadelphia. Many slave owners disparaged such schools, claiming that Africans were incapable of learning to read or write. Franklin, however, came to the opposite conclusion. In 1763 he visited one such school and wrote about the experience to a British friend, saying that he had “visited the Negro School … and had the Children thoroughly examin’d.” Franklin reported, “They appear’d all to have made considerable Progress in Reading for the Time they had respectively been in the School, and most of them answer’d readily and well the Questions of the Catechism; they behav’d very orderly, show’d a proper Respect and ready Obedience to the Mistress, and seem’d very attentive.” Franklin concluded, “From what I then saw, [I] have conceiv’d a higher Opinion of the natural Capacities of the black Race, than I had ever before entertained. Their Apprehension seems as quick, their Memory as strong, and their Docility in every Respect equal to that of white Children.”

Franklin, during the 1787 U.S. Constitutional Convention, was effectively governor of Pennsylvania and head of his state’s delegation to that assemblage. Shortly after the convention ended, however, Franklin returned to private life, at least for a while, retiring from Pennsylvania’s presidency on November 5, 1788. By then, Franklin was already president of an organization started 10 years earlier by righteous-minded Quakers called The Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage and for Improving the Condition of the African Race. The group’s stated objective was “to use such means as are in their power, to extend the blessings of freedom to every part of the human race.”

As soon as his government duties ended, Franklin got down to the business of abolishing slavery. He used his considerable energy, skill, and prestige to make things happen. He thus became the leader of the abolitionist movement.

Franklin approached the antislavery project with a level of commitment equaling his dedication to civic achievement during his earlier tradesman days. In November 1789, Franklin issued “An Address to the Public” in which he called slavery “such an atrocious debasement of human nature” that eliminating it without proper preparation could “open a source of serious evil.”

Franklin’s antislavery campaign ultimately led to America’s Civil War. Our nation’s new constitution put off for 20 years any laws limiting slavery. This would allow congressmen to set the matter aside and deal with more pressing questions, such as how to pay off national debts and whether to maintain a standing army during peacetime.

However, Benjamin Franklin, the nation’s patriarch, sent a petition to the First Continental Congress soon after it convened. This document, from Franklin’s pen, raised religious and moral issues to condemn slavery.

Franklin’s petition reminded Congress that they had been given power for “promoting the Welfare and securing the blessings of liberty to the People of the United States” and declared “that these blessings ought rightfully to be administered, without distinction of Color, to all descriptions of People.” The document asked Congress for “the Restoration of liberty to those unhappy Men, who alone in this land of Freedom are degraded into perpetual Bondage … groaning in servile Subjection.” Franklin’s signature at the bottom of the petition, seemingly larger than usual, insured open debate on the subject. And debate they did: The discourse laid out the issues that continued to come up with increasing animosity for the next 70 years.

Indeed, Franklin opened a can of worms that Congress could not close. At the time, however, the balance between free and slave states shackled progress towards emancipation. The debate in our nation’s capital over the contentious issue of slavery, however, eventually split the country in two.

Abraham Lincoln was, in effect, carrying out Benjamin Franklin’s objective when he emancipated slaves in the conquered regions of the South.

If Ben Franklin came back to life today, he’d burst with pride over the outcomes of two of his favorite projects: the abolition of slavery and the formation of a national American government. However, he’d wonder why it took more than 230 years for these two objectives to coalesce in the election of a black president of the United States of America.

America’s First Black President Barack Obama The Saturday Evening Post