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Franklin in the 1750s owned two slaves, whom he eventually freed, and also ran advertisements for slave sales in his ''Pennsylvania Gazette''. As a youth he had been a runaway himself. As a diplomat he supported slavery, but for Franklin slavery was always more of a political than a moral problem. Late in life he reversed directions and supported the abolition of the slavery slave trade (but not slavery itself). He When the case of Somerset v Stewart was decided Franklin was happy that Liberty carried the day, but the hypocrisy of emancipation at home and slavery enforced abroad did not escape him. In an article for the ''London Chronicle'', Franklin wrote:<ref>[https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-19-02-0128 The Sommersett Case and the Slave Trade, 18–20 June 1772]</ref> <blockquote>Pharisaical Britain! to pride thyself in setting free a single Slave that happens to land on thy coasts, while thy Merchants in all thy ports are encouraged by thy laws to continue a commerce whereby so many hundreds of thousands are dragged into a slavery that can scarce be said to end with their lives, since it is entailed on their posterity!</blockquote> Later, he joined the Pennsylvania Abolition Society and became their president in 1787; his was primarily honorific. The Society had hoped he would bring up the issue of slavery at the Constitutional Convention, which he declined to do, realizing that it would be too contentious of an issue. In November 1789, he published his ''Address to the Public'' which appealed for the emancipation of slaves and the further education of free blacks.<ref>David Waldstreicher, ''Runaway America: Benjamin Franklin, Slavery, and the American Revolution''(2004)</ref>