The Revolutionary generation and the grip of racism: Sarah Forten’s poetry

When light is shone on the pervasive presence Americans of African descent -- and several Indian nations -- held in the struggle for American independence, an obvious question arises: What did they get for it, and why not? It wasn't nothing, but it was far less than they expected and earned.

A useful perspective can be found in the poetry of Sarah Louisa Forten, daughter of wealthy Philadelphia businessman James Forten. Her father, a Revolutionary War veteran, believed that "white" people of the Revolutionary generation had been benevolent, and their sons had betrayed them. Coming to adulthood in the 1820s, Sarah believed "there has always existed the same amount of prejudice in the minds of Americans toward the descendants of Africa; it wanted only the spirit of colonization to call it into action."

Both perspectives were partly true. The American Revolution, like every revolution, had its factions, rivalries, jealousies, competing interests, and blatant corruption. Many voices had opposed enlisting soldiers of African descent at all.

It was also true, even in the southern states most dependent on slavery, that a revolutionary generation which found it embarrassing to hold slaves, while proclaiming liberty, was succeeded by a generation that proclaimed slavery a positive good -- and Africans simply not part of the human species entitled to liberty.

Sarah Forten, with all the refinement and comfort that wealth and education could provide, also knew the sting of being rebuffed as living 'above her station' and excluded from various public venues on account of her complexion. Like her father, she knew that her family's tenuous success was at risk, so long as slavery persisted anywhere in the nation. And so she wrote:

Our sires who once, in freedom's cause,
Their boasted freedom sought and won,
For deeds of glory gained applause,
When patriot feelings led them on.
And can their sons now speak with pride,
Of rights for which they bled and died,-
...Oh surely they have quite forgot,
That bondage once had been their lot;
The sweets of freedom now they know,
They care not for the captive's woe.
The poor wronged slave can bear no part
In feelings dearest to his heart;
He cannot speak on freedom's side,
Nor dare he own a freeman's pride...
...And sad and hard his lot must be,
To know that he can ne'er be free;
...And will not justice soon arise,
And please the cause of the despised?
For oh! My country must it be,
That they will find a foe in thee?

(Information posted here, and excerpts from Sarah Forten's poem, taken from Julie Winch's A Gentleman of Color: The Life of James Forten.)