Reading the American Past: Printed Page 199
DOCUMENT 10–4
James Forten Protests Pennsylvania Law Threatening Enslavement of Free African Americans
During the decades after the Revolution, northern states slowly ended slavery, usually by gradual emancipation laws. Pennsylvania led the way with its 1780 abolition law, but by 1812, many whites sought to limit the growing numbers of free blacks by a law prohibiting African Americans from entering the state. James Forten, a freeborn African American who was a wealthy sailmaker in Philadelphia, published an attack on the proposed legislation as a violation of natural rights, the law, the Constitution, and simple humanity. Forten's protest, excerpted here, illustrates both the authority and the limits of revolutionary ideals in defining the freedom of African Americans. The proposed Pennsylvania law never passed, although similar laws passed in other northern states in the years before the Civil War.
Letters from a Man of Colour, on a Late Bill before the Senate of Pennsylvania, 1813
We hold this truth to be self-evident, that GOD created all men equal, and [it] is one of the most prominent features in the Declaration of Independence, and in that glorious fabric of collected wisdom, our noble Constitution. This idea 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 letter and spirit of our Constitution. ...
These thoughts were suggested by the . . . late bill, before the Senate of Pennsylvania, to prevent the emigration of people of colour into this state. It was not passed [and] . . . we sincerely hope, the white men, whom we should look upon as our protectors, will become convinced of the inhumanity and impolicy of such a measure. ... This is almost the only state in the Union wherein the African[s] have justly boasted of rational liberty and the protection of the laws, and shall it now be said they have been deprived of that liberty, and publicly exposed for sale to the highest bidder? Shall colonial inhumanity that has marked many of us with shameful stripes, become the practice of the people of Pennsylvania . . . ? People of Pennsylvania . . . doom us not to the unhappy fate of thousands of our countrymen in the Southern States and the West Indies; despise the traffic in blood, and the blessing of the African will forever be around you. Many of us are men of property, for the security of which, we have hitherto looked to the laws of our blessed state, but should this become a law, our property is jeopardized, since the same power which can expose to sale an unfortunate creature, can wrest from him those estates which years of honest industry have accumulated. ... We grant there are a number of worthless men belonging to our colour, but there are laws of sufficient rigour for their punishment. ... Punish the guilty man of colour to the utmost limit of the laws, but sell him not into slavery! . . . If he is too indolent to labour for his own subsistence, compel him to do so; but sell him not into slavery. By selling him you do not make him better, but commit a wrong. ... Many of our ancestors were brought here more than one hundred years ago; many of our fathers, many of ourselves, have fought and bled for the independence of our country. Do not then expose us to sale. Let not the spirit of the father behold the son robbed of that liberty which he died to establish. ...
The Constitution of Pennsylvania . . . declared “that all men are born equally free and independent, and have certain inherent and indefeasible rights, among which are those of enjoying life and liberty.” . . . Has the God who made the white man and the black, left any record declaring us a different species. Are we not sustained by the same power, supported by the same food, hurt by the same wounds, pleased with the same delights, and propagated by the same means. And should we not then enjoy the same liberty, and be protected by the same laws. ... It cannot be that the authors of our Constitution intended to exclude us from its benefits, for just emerging from unjust and cruel emancipation, their souls were too much affected with their own deprivations to commence the reign of terrour over others. They knew we were deeper skinned that they were, but they acknowledged us as men, and found that many an honest heart beat beneath a dusky bosom. They felt that they had no more authority to enslave us, than England had to tyrannize over them. They were convinced that if amenable to the same laws in our actions, we should be protected by the same laws in our rights and privileges. Actuated by these sentiments they adopted the glorious fabric of our liberties, and declaring “all men” free, they did not particularize white and black, because they never supposed it would be made a question whether we were men or not. ...
Let us put a case, in which the law in question operates peculiarly hard and unjust. — I have a brother, perhaps, who, resides in a distant part of the Union, and after a separation of years, actuated by the same fraternal affection which beats in the bosom of a white man, he comes to visit me. Unless that brother be registered in twenty four hours after, and be able to produce a certificate to that effect, he is liable, according to . . . the bill, to a fine of twenty dollars, to arrest, imprisonment and sale. ... It is to be hoped that in our legislature there is a patriotism, humanity, and mercy sufficient to crush this attempt upon the civil liberty of freemen [who] . . . have been the scorn, and whose calamities have been the jest, of the world for ages. ...
Are not men of colour sufficiently degraded? Why then increase their degradation. It is a well known fact, that black people, upon certain days of public jubilee, dare not to be seen after twelve o'clock in the day, upon the field to enjoy the times; for no sooner do the fumes of that potent devil, Liquor, mount into the brain, than the poor black is assailed like the destroying Hyena or the avaricious Wolf! I allude particularly to the Fourth of July — Is it not wonderful, 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. If men, though they know that the law protects all, will dare, in defiance of law, to execute their hatred upon the defenceless black, will they not by the passage of this bill, believe him still more a mark for their venom and spleen — Will they not believe him completely deserted by authority, and subject to every outrage brutality can inflict. ...
By . . . this bill . . . the police officers are authorized to apprehend any black, whether a vagrant or a man of reputable character, who cannot produce a Certificate that he has been registered. He is to be arrayed before a justice, who thereupon is to commit him to prison! The jailor is to advertise a Freeman, and at the expiration of six months, if no owner appears for this degraded black, he is to be exposed to sale, and if not sold to be confined at hard labour for seven years! . . . The Constable, whose antipathy generally against the black is very great, will take the opportunity of hurting his feelings! Perhaps, he sees him at a distance and having a mind to raise the boys in hue and cry against him, exclaims, “Halloa! Stop the Negro!” — The boys, delighting in the sport, immediately begin to hunt him, and immediately from a hundred tongues, is heard the cry — “Hoa, Negro, where is your Certificate!” — Can any thing be conceived more degrading to humanity! Can any thing be done more shocking to the principal of Civil Liberty! — A person arriving from another state, ignorant of the existence of such a law, may fall a victim to its cruel oppression. But he is to be advertised, and if no owner appears — How can an owner appear for a man who is free and belongs to no one! — If no owner appears, he is exposed for sale! — Oh, inhuman spectacle: found in no unjust act, convicted of no crime, he is barbarously sold like the produce off the soil, to the highest bidder, or what is still worse, for no crimes, without the inestimable privilege of a trial by his peers, doomed to the dreary walls of a prison for the term of seven tedious years. ... Search the legends of tyranny and find no precedent. ...
The . . . bill . . . prevents freemen from living where they please — Pennsylvania has always been a refuge from slavery, and to this state the Southern black, when freed, has flown for safety. Why does he this! When masters in many of the Southern states, which they frequently do, free a particular black, unless the black leaves the state in so many hours any person resident of the said state, can have him arrested and again sold to Slavery: — The hunted black is obliged to flee or remain and be again a slave. I have known persons of this discription sold three times after being first emancipated. Where shall he go? . . . Is there no spot on earth that will protect him! . . .
It is in vain that we are forming societies of different kinds to ameliorate the condition of our unfortunate brethren, to correct their morals and to render them not only honest but useful members to society. All our efforts by this bill, are despised, and we are doomed to feel the lash of oppression: — As well may we be outlawed, as well may the glorious privileges of the Gospel, be denied us, and all endeavours used to cut us off from happiness. ... I trust the eloquence of nature will succeed, and the law-givers of this happy Commonwealth will yet remain the Black's friend, and the advocates of Freemen.
From James Forten, Letters from a Man of Colour, on a Late Bill before the Senate of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, n.p., 1813); reprinted in Pamphlets of Protest: An Anthology of Early African-American Protest Literature, 1790–1860, eds. Richard Newman, Patrick Rael, and Philip Lapsansky (New York: Routledge, 2001), 67–72.
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