Investigates the underlying rhetorical functions of how Benjamin Franklin used the medal to praise the national characters of France and the United States in those two countries, while he also used it to influence government policy in Malta and to vindicate himself from criticism in England. (KEH)

Addresses the basic conflict between the Enlightenment's humanitarian credo and slavery, the opposing beliefs of the pro-slavery movement and the abolitionists, and the resulting changes in the perceptions of blacks brought about by the emancipation literature of the French philosophers and writers of the eighteenth century. (BJV)