Please help I don't have much time 40 points
The old man took up his pen sometime in March of 1790 and began to write. As he had done so many times before, he addressed a serious topic by turning it upside down: Rather than attack slavery, Benjamin Franklin defended it, but by writing in the voice of an Algerian who supported the enslavement of white Christians. Franklin wrote the piece, under the name of Historicus, as a letter to the editor of the Philadelphia newspaper Federal Gazette. He was responding to a congressional debate that had been prompted by a petition from the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage. Franklin was the society’s president. The petition had asked that Congress “countenance the Restoration of Liberty to those unhappy Men, who alone in this land of Freedom, are degraded into perpetual Bondage.” Several congressmen spoke out against the petition, most prominently Georgia’s James Jackson, and Congress eventually ruled that the Constitution prevented it from interfering with slavery. So Franklin, 84 years old and ailing, prepared his final piece of public writing. “Reading last night in your excellent Paper the speech of Mr. Jackson in Congress against their meddling with the Affair of Slavery,” it began, “it put me in mind of a similar One made about 100 Years since by Sidi Mehemet Ibrahim, a member of the Divan of Algiers, which may be seen in Martin’s Account of his Consulship, anno 1687.” In fact, the speech couldn’t be seen anywhere, as Franklin made the whole thing up. But he helpfully provided a translation of Ibrahim’s remarks. “If we forbear to make Slaves of their People, who in this hot Climate are to cultivate our Lands? Who are to perform the common Labours of our City, and in our Families? Must we not then be our own Slaves?” Jackson had cited the Bible to buttress his support for slavery. Sidi Mehemet Ibrahim relied on the Koran. It didn’t take a particularly astute reader to note the parallels. Franklin died less than a month later, with the abolition of slavery still 75 years and a civil war away. His campaign, the last one in a career filled with great campaigns, remained unfinished. It was also one that Franklin had embarked on late in life, the final step in the long transformation he made from slave owner to abolitionist.

a. What is his primary purpose?

b. What does "embarked" mean?

c. What is the purpose of the petition to Congress mentioned in the italicized print?

d. In the line “the enslavement of white Christians” (lines 19–31), what did Franklin hope to accomplish?