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Philadelphians; counted white merchants among his
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RACE AND CI TI ZENSHI P I N THE EARLY REPUBLI C
friends; and was a confidant of Paul Cuffe, the New
Bedford Afro-Indian shipbuilder, merchant, and ship
captain who sailed the deep blue seas all the way
to Africa. Moreover, Forten held before him the pre-
amble of the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776, as-
suring him that, if the revolutionary generation re-
mained true to its words, the doctrine of human
equality would be the future. All men, it read, are
born equally free and independent, and have certain
natural, inherent, and inalienable rights. The pre-
amble of Pennsylvania s gradual abolition act of 1780
also affirmed the unitary nature of humankind, what
the legislators called a universal civilization : It is
not for us to enquire why, in the creation of man-
kind, the inhabitants of the several parts of the world
were distinguished by a difference in feature or com-
plexion. It is sufficient to know that all are the work
of an Almighty Hand . . . who placed them in their
various situations [and] hath extended equally his
care and protection to all. Forten believed in what
a modern scholar of citizenship has claimed was
the general presumption of the post-revolutionary
period that membership [in civil society] was ac-
quired automatically by all those born under the Re-
public. 4
But Forten s faith that white Pennsylvanians
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THE FOR GOTTEN FI FTH
would honor these commitments was wearing thin
by the early years of Jefferson s presidency. Like most
black and some white Philadelphians, Forten took
satisfaction in the slave rebellion in Saint Domingue
(to become Haiti), which began in 1791 and ulti-
mately overthrew the brutal French slave regime and
established the first black republic in the Americas.
But he also had to take the measure of the fear of
many white northerners, and of almost all white
southerners, that the news from Saint Domingue
would spread black rebellion all over America.5
Forten knew that refugees from southern slavery, fil-
tering into Philadelphia, caused white resentment,
and that Irish immigrants in the 1790s competed un-
easily with free black people for bottom-rung jobs.
He watched uneasily as Congress rejected petitions
from black Philadelphians and the Pennsylvania Ab-
olition Society to rescind the hated Fugitive Slave Act
of 1793 and abolish the still-flourishing slave trade.6
If the rise of racial hostility in the City of Broth-
erly Love shook Forten s belief in one American
peoplehood, he was more distressed by an outbreak
of racial rancor on July 4 in about 1804 that struck at
the notion of free black birthright citizenship. For
years, Philadelphians of all classes and colors had
gathered in the square facing Independence Hall,
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RACE AND CI TI ZENSHI P I N THE EARLY REPUBLI C
where the nation s birth certificate had been signed,
to listen to speeches about the blessings of liberty
and the prospects for national greatness. But this
time, sullen whites drove free black citizens from the
festivities with a torrent of curses. At this moment
James Forten s political awakening occurred, perhaps
also spurred by Congress s failure in 1804 to pass a
bill that would free male slaves by their twenty-sec-
ond birthday and female slaves by their nineteenth, a
measure supported by many northern Jeffersonians.7
The worsening situation on the ground in Philadel-
phia sickened Forten. Black Philadelphians, he wrote,
dare not be seen after twelve o clock in the day, upon
the field to enjoy the times without fearing assault
from whites like the destroying Hyena or the avari-
cious Wolf. In allowing white toughs to control pub-
lic spaces in the city and to drive black Philadel-
phians from the celebration of nationhood, white
political leaders and municipal authorities implicitly
renounced the idea that citizenship was the entitle-
ment of all free people regardless of color. Is it not
wonderful, Forten exclaimed sarcastically, that the
day set apart for the festival of liberty, should be
abused by the advocates of freedom, in endeavoring
to sully what they profess to adore? 8
Forten s alarm increased as the Pennsylvania legis-
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THE FOR GOTTEN FI FTH
lature began considering bills in 1804 to seal the state
off from incoming black migrants, to impose a spe-
cial tax on black householders for the support of the
poor of their color, to require all free black adults to
carry freedom certificates, to sentence those failing to
produce a certificate, without jury trial, to seven years
imprisonment, and to sell into slavery any black per-
son convicted of a property crime in order to com-
pensate the victim. Each of these provisions directly
assaulted the principle that citizenship conferred
fundamental privileges and immunities without dis-
tinction of color. For nine years such bills failed in
the legislature, but in 1813, when the mayor and city
councilmen of Philadelphia supported such bills,
Forten took up his pen. Search the legends of tyr-
anny and find no precedent, he thundered in five
published letters. It has been left for Pennsylvania to
raise her ponderous arm against the liberties of the
black, whose greatest boast has been that he resided
in a state where civil liberty and sacred justice were
administered alike to all. 9
What had happened to the revolutionary vision of
unalienable rights? When the founding fathers and
the writers of Pennsylvania s constitution said all
men are created equal, did they mean only white
men (as many historians have asserted ever since)?
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RACE AND CI TI ZENSHI P I N THE EARLY REPUBLI C
Forten denied this emphatically. This idea [of natu-
ral rights], he affirmed, embraces the Indian and
the European, the Savage and the Saint, the Peruvian
and the Laplander, the white Man and the African,
and whatever measures are adopted subversive of this
inestimable privilege, are in direct violation of the let-
ter and spirit of our Constitution, and become sub-
ject to the animadversion of all, particularly those
who are deeply interested in the measure. The legis-
lative bills, Forten cried, would convert the center of
American benevolence into a center of repression:
The story will fly from the north to the south, and
the advocates of slavery, the traders in human blood,
will smile contemptuously at the once boasted mod-
eration and humanity of Pennsylvania! And where,
he asked, would slaves emancipated in the South go?
Shut every state against him, and, like Pharaoh s
kine, drive him into the sea. Is there no spot on
earth that will protect him? Against their inclination,
his ancestors were forced from their homes by traders
in human flesh, and even under such circumstances
the wretched offspring are denied the protection you
afford to brutes. 10
Forten s incandescent rhetoric about universal
rights and his attempt to hold back the rising tide of
race-based legislation in the early nineteenth century
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THE FOR GOTTEN FI FTH
made him the most important free black voice in
the nation as the War of 1812 unfolded. More than
black clergymen, who at this time were the princi-
pal spokesmen of their communities and nearly the
only black men who could put the printed word be-
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