Robert Bridges Porten to Frederick Douglass, February 17, 1849
ROBERT BRIDGES FORTEN1Robert Bridges Forten (1818–64), a mathematician and orator, was a prominent black Garrisonian abolitionist and reformer. He was the son of wealthy sailmaker and abolitionist James Forten, and the father of the educator and writer Charlotte Forten Grimké. Forten was a lay leader of St. Thomas African Episcopal Church and Philadelphia’s black “Vigilance Committee.” He joined the Union army in the Civil War and actively recruited other blacks to the Northern cause. Janice Sumler-Lewis, “The Fortens of Philadelphia: An Afro-American Family and Nineteenth-Century Reform” (Ph.D. diss., Georgetown University, 1978), 42–43, 112, 128–29, 179–81; Ulle, “History of St. Thomas’ African Episcopal Church,” 189; ANB, 9:625–27, DANB, 234–35. TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS
Hartsville, Pa. 17 Feb[ruary] 1849.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS:—
I was not a little surprised on learning from your note to Mr. C. H. Chase,2The North Star published the 9 February 1849 letter from Douglass to C. H. Chase, and it appears in this volume. NS, 9 February 1849. that you have, upon a closer examination of the Constitution of the United States, discovered it not to be a pro-slavery instrument; i.e. you have found nothing in the Constitution pro-slavery. Without entering upon an elaborate discussion of this matter, permit me to direct your attention to the following clause, as a part of the written Constitution of this government: “No person held to service or labor in one State under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law therein, be discharged from such service, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such labor may be due.”3Article IV, section 2, of the U.S. Constitution contains the fugitive slave clause. The question is, Are any persons held to service or labor under the laws of any of the States? Certainly—slaves are held to service or labor under the laws of all the slave States. Now, the Constitution of the United States expressly declares, that such person so held under the laws of one State, escaping into another, shall not be discharged from such service by any laws therein, &c. It was not necessary that the word slave should have been inserted in the Constitution, in order to fix its pro-slavery character; it is sufficient that the condition of the persons referred to, is that of slavery under the laws of the slave States, to stamp it pro-slavery.
There are two classes of persons held to service or labor in the United States, viz: the apprentice and the slave. The former is held for some specific time, according to agreement between the parties; the latter, forever.—Under the above provision in the Constitution, either may be retaken in case he escape from the State in which he is held. While the Constitution does not in so many words declare slavery to be right, it does acknowledge the right to hold man as property; for under the laws of the slaveholding States, persons are held to service or labor perpetually, which constitutes a state of slavery; and the Constitution imposes strong barriers against the successful escape of such persons so held. It guarantees to the master the right to claim his fugitive slaves, and prevents any other State from affording him defence. Had the Constitution specified, that no slave, held under the laws of any State, escaping, &c., it could not more clearly have defined the right of any State to hold slaves, than it does under the provision alluded to. What is a slave? He is a person held to service or continual labor, unrewarded, under the laws of certain States of this Union. It has been said that in this clause the Constitution has no direct reference to slaves. I contend that it has a direct, but not an exclusive reference to slaves or persons held to service or labor. It refers also to the apprentice. If there is nothing in the Constitution to justify the decision of the Supreme Court, then you might with propriety vote under it, and even swear to support it. The fact of the Supreme Court deciding upon its being pro-slavery,4Forten may be referring to the 1842 U.S. Supreme Court decision written by Justice Joseph Storey in Prigg v. Pennsylvania. The case concerned the conviction of slave catcher Edward Prigg under Pennsylvania’s personal liberty law for taking a black woman and her children out of the state without first obtaining a warrant from a magistrate. The decision struck down the Pennsylvania personal liberty law, declaring state laws interfering with the return of fugitive slaves to be unconstitutional. The decision also held that slave owners had a “right of recaption” that did not require an appearance before a judge or magistrate. Finkelman, Imperfect Union, 132–33. is not the reason that I am not disposed to vote under it, or to swear to support it. It is, that the written Constitution, according to its reading, is pro-slavery; and had the Supreme Court decided that it was more anti-slavery than the Declaration of Sentiment of the Anti-Slavery Society5In the first report of the New England Anti-Slavery Society, the organization denounced the concept of human property, a position adopted by subsequent incarnations of the society. According to Forten’s argument, this final statement made the society’s declaration an explicitly antislavery document, while the absence of such a statement, as well as the presence of the fugitive slave clause, made the U.S. Constitution proslavery, regardless of any legal interpretation. New England Anti-Slavery Society, Annual Report (1833), 9–43. itself, I should not be willing to swear to support it, so long as the clause referred to remains in it, confirmatory of the falsehood. Nor is it, in my estimation, a good reason not to swear to support, simply because the framers of it, and those who adopted it, intended to give it a pro-slavery character.—It would matter but little to me what they intended, were there not a clause in it plainly setting forth that character. The corollary is, the Constitution is pro-slavery, because it sanctions and defends those laws of the slave States which have made certain persons subject forever to certain other persons of said States; i.e., under the laws of South Carolina, persons are held to service or labor perpetually, without their consent, and are thereby rendered slaves; and the Constitution of the United States provides measures for the recapture and return of such persons, in the event of their escaping into another State.—It would be satisfactory to me to read your views upon this subject. I am
anxious to know what new light has broke in upon your mind, disclosing the fact that the Constitution, “if strictly construed according to its reading,”6Forten quotes C. H. Chase’s 23 January 1849 letter to Douglass, which was printed in the 9 February 1849 issue of the North Star, and which also appears in this volume. is not pro-slavery.
Yours for the whole truth,
R. B. FORTEN.
PLSr: NS, 16 March 1849.