A Person of Good Character and Considerable Property

by Julie Winch

James Forten, 1766-1842, Philadelphia merchant (Courtesy of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Leon Gardiner Collection.)

That James Forten saw himself first and foremost as a businessman is obvious from even a cursory glance at his letters to his antislavery friends. "Business prevents more at this time." "I would have answered your Letter earlier had it not been owing . . . to a multiplicity of business." "You know I am a man of business, and have not always time at my disposal."1 The white abolitionists who worked with him over the years in the crusade to end slavery and secure equal rights for all Americans made much of James Forten's success against the odds, his worldly victory, as well as his spiritual and intellectual victory, over racial oppression, but few of them knew or understood the economic realities he grappled with.

James Forten's contributions to the antislavery movement and the cause of civil rights are fairly well known, and they are not my focus here. My aim in this essay is to discuss James Forten the man of business. And yet, to explore the roots of Forten's success in the world of commerce is not to ignore his work as one of the most vocal black reformers in antebellum America. His ability to make money was central to his social activism. Without his wealth, and the independence that wealth gave him, he could have been neither a generous supporter of the antislavery cause nor an outspoken critic of American racism. His success in his various business endeavors was crucial to his emergence as one of the most forceful and articulate African American leaders of the first half of the nineteenth century.

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Reputation as a businessman
Gaining a sense of the scope of James Forten's commercial activities during his long career in business is not easy. To begin with, most accounts of his various endeavors are highly impressionistic. Abolitionist Lewis Tappan was a merchant and had a better feel for the maritime trades than many of his colleagues, but his lack of direct involvement in the outfitting of vessels shows in his rather misleading sketch of Forten as a businessman:"Mr. Forten was a sailmaker. He . . . was considered among the most eminent in his day...It was said by the secretary of the navy, 'Mr. Forten can undertake to rig a seventy­four­gun ship, and not call for any money until the job is done.'" 11 Did Forten do work for the navy, as Tappan implied? Perhaps he did. After all, he had served with two of its first commodores. Stephen Decatur Sr. had commanded the Royal Louis when Forten went to sea during the Revolutionary War, and Thomas Truxtun had been the captain of the ship on which Forten sailed to London as a merchant seaman. Forten may also have reaped some advantages from the appointment in 1813 of William Jones, a Philadelphia merchant and captain, as secretary of the navy. He and Forten probably knew one another. Jones might have employed Forten to work on one of his merchant vessels and could well have put business his way when he became secretary of the navy. However, the records of the Philadelphia Navy Yard contain no mention of James Forten. Even if he was fitting out navy vessels at some point in his career, he was probably not doing so when Lewis Tappan met him in the 1830s. By then it was navy policy to replace civilian sailmakers with warrant officers. 12

	Without his wealth, and the independence that wealth gave him, he could have been neither a generous supporter of the antislavery cause nor an outspoken critic of American racism.
	— Julie Winch

According to another writer, James Forten "was a friend of the late Louis Clopier [sic] and Stephen Girard, " both of them very successful merchants and ship owners. As an active member of the business community, Forten would have known both men both by sight and reputation, and they would have heard of Robert Bridges's black protégé. Clapier's warehouse was near Forten's sail­loft. He may have given Forten work, but his records have not survived. As for Forten's links with Girard, any idea that the two men could have been seen walking arm and arm along Front Street discussing sail plans is undermined by an examination of disbursements on Stephen Girard's vessels, which reveal he never employed Forten. 13

Impressionistic accounts of James Forten's growing wealth and influence are not without their value, though. They serve to indicate his reputation—a reputation that extended well beyond his native city. His role as a phenomenon, a successful black businessman, was well established within a decade of his taking over Robert Bridges's sail­loft. Dramatist William Dunlap, no enthusiast for abolition, wrote in 1806: "In Philadelphia, where the emancipation of the Blacks originated[,] there are more free people of that colour than in any other place in the union. Most of them are degraded & vicious but there are many useful and respectable" individuals. He singled out "a rich sail maker, having many journimen [sic] & apprentices under him. 14

Word of James Forten's growing wealth and his reputation for probity soon spread. In 1807 a London journal took note of him, although it managed to misspell his name:

As a tribute due to merit it may be stated, that there is now resident at Philadelphia, James Torten [sic], a man of colour, who received an education at the school established by the Society of Friends in that city, where he carries on the sail-making business .... [He] is engaged in that branch more extensively than any other person at Philadelphia. He possesses considerable property, acquired by his own industry . . . and is very much respected by the citizens generally. 15

Two years later, Philadelphia Quaker Susanna Emlen described Forten to a relative in London as "a person of good character and considerable property employing at his sail­loft many white persons." She added: "[O]n his marriage . . . it was said a number of the most respectable merchants . . . called to congratulate him and drink punch with him." 16

Another Philadelphian, Captain Charles Perry, carried word of Forten to Cuba. In 1817 Perry sailed to Havana to pick up a cargo of sugar and coffee. There he happened to meet merchant Alonso Munoz. Munoz told Perry about a problem he was facing. He had been sent a young prince to educate by King Sherker, an important slave trading contact on the Guinea coast. Munoz could not get the lad a suitable education in Cuba, but he wanted to keep Sherker's goodwill. What could he do? Perry told Munoz about James Forten. The upshot was that Perry brought the prince back to Philadelphia and entrusted him to Forten, along with sacks of Cuban coffee to pay for the child's schooling. 17

Robert Layton of New Orleans had heard of the well-to-do sailmaker. When he bought a slave in 1824 and discovered that the youth had been born free in Philadelphia, that he had been kidnapped, and that he was related to Forten, Layton was inclined to pursue the matter, rather than just beating the young man into silence. Layton knew Forten was influential enough to make trouble. He was also reputedly rich enough to afford to be generous to anyone who helped a member of his extended family. It was largely thanks to Forten's fame as a wealthy and highly respectable man of business that young Amos Dunbar was restored to freedom. 18

So much for general impressions. What was the reality of James Forten's life as a black businessman? How did he make money? How did he invest it? How did he treat his employees? What did his money mean in terms of influence? How did he interact with other members of the predominantly white business community? Was he, as he struggled to be, a successful entrepreneur who happened to be a man of color? Or did his contemporaries see him as a man of color first and a man of business second?

Trying to put James Forten's business career into perspective is like trying to assemble a jigsaw puzzle with many of the most important pieces missing and only a vague sense of what the finished picture should look like. The paper trail is woefully inadequate. Tax records indicate Forten owned "Bonds, Mortgages, Bank Stock and Ground Rents," but in 1838, when the Pennsylvania Abolition Society compiled a census of Philadelphia's African American population, Forten withheld certain details. However worthy the cause—and the census was undertaken to prove black citizens were industrious and deserving of full civil rights—he considered his personal wealth a private matter. 19 As for the records of the firm of James Forten & Sons, they were presumably destroyed when the sail­loft was sold after Forten's death. The family carefully preserved personal correspondence, but receipts, ledgers, and rent books were consigned to the kitchen fire or the sail­loft stove.

Regrettable though the loss of Forten's business papers is, a few pieces of the puzzle have survived. There are the records of some of his customers. There are stray letters people found worth keeping for one reason or another. (One recipient noted: "This letter is preserved because it was from . . . a Negro-gentleman .... He was in possession of a fortune made by his own industry.") 20 Forten bought and sold real estate, and those transactions generated deeds. He sued people, and buried in court dockets are at least the outlines of those cases. The dockets provide names, and the censuses and city directories yield biographical data to attach to those names. Tax records indicate who some of his tenants were. The wills he executed offer additional insight into his reputation. Who trusted him enough to have him take care of their estates? What organizations appointed him to oversee their finances? Finally, though the records of his sail­loft have not survived, those of several other lofts up and down the Atlantic seaboard have. Allowing for different local and regional conditions, and for the very significant fact that none was operated by a man of color, we can learn something of how a successful sailmaker ran his business.

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Excerpted with permission from "'A Person of Good Character and Considerable Property': James Forten and the Issue of Race in Philadelphia's Antebellum Business Community," Business History Review, Summer 2001.

Julie Winch is a professor of history at the University of Massachusetts in Boston.

From Business History Review

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