Of course, what the records do not reveal are the interactions between James Forten and his tenants. We cannot tell from individuals’ names and occupations how and where rents were paid, what kind of bargaining went on, and what degree of deference Forten expected and received from the men and women who lived in his properties. It is the minutiae of these tenant-landlord relationships, complicated as they may well have been by factors of race and class, that continue to elude us and leave a vital part of the story untold. 146</p>
<p>Equally elusive is the attitude of the white business community toward James Forten. Well-to-do Quaker Susanna Emlen knew something of Forten. In 1809 she sent a relative in England a copy of a Letter written by a black man of Philada to one of the friends of his oppressed brethren. She added a few words about the letter’s author. He is a person of good character and considerable property employing at his sail loft many white persons. [O]n his marriage a few years ago it was said a number of the most respectable merchants in Philada called to congratulate him and drink punch with him. 147</p>
<p>Merchant Abraham Ritter indicated something of the mixed response to James Forten.</p>
<p>Mr. Forten was a gentleman by nature, easy in manner, and affable in intercourse; popular as a man of trade or gentleman of the pave, and well received by the gentlemen of lighter shade. He was very genteel in appearance, good figure, prominent features, and upon the whole rather handsome than otherwise. 148</p>
<p>Beyond Ritter’s thumbnail sketch there are stray references to white businessmen greeting him in the street. Though he belonged to a proscribed race, it was no uncommon thing to see him shaking hands, or walking arm in arm, with merchants of the first respectability. 149 As his various court cases suggest, they were not reluctant to borrow money from him, either. Nor did they simply set their prejudices aside when it came time to ask for a loan. The inventory of Forten’s estate proves that white merchants and shippers also loaned him money on occasions. How his various business relationships began and progressed, who visited Forten at his home and who called on him at his place of business, who took him by the hand and who greeted him in the streetthese are the dimensions of his life as a gentleman of the pave on which the records are silent.</p>
<p>African-American organizations elected James Forten to their boards. He served on the vestry of St. Thomas’s Church many times from its founding to his death. He was a man who knew how to take care of business, in all its facets, whether it was arranging a loan or advising on the investment of funds. He was an officer of the African Lodge, whose records are replete with references to his handling of finances. He helped coordinate the raising of funds to support black schools and colleges. He gave white abolitionists advice on handling the marketing of antislavery publications. In short, what he did not know about the making and investing of money was probably not worth knowing.</p>
<p>In addition to his real estate interests and his moneylending, Forten held stocks and shares in various enterprises, including insurance companies and banks. For instance, he owned shares in the Mount Carbon Railroad Company, in the anthracite region of Pennsylvania’s Schuylkill County. The brainchild of a consortium of businessmen in Philadelphia, Berks, and Schuylkill Counties, the company was incorporated in 1829. It opened books at a number of places, including the Philadelphia Coffee House. Shares cost $50 apiece. Like other rail lines in the region, it was intended to transport coal from the coal fields to the Schuylkill Canal. From the canal it would be transshipped to the Delaware, and eventually taken to Philadelphia for export. By 1827 more than 3,000 vessels per year were leaving Philadelphia loaded with coal. [153] James Forten knew a good investment when he saw one.</p>
<p>Precisely how wealthy James Forten was at any one point in his career is difficult to gauge. Most accounts indicate that the sail loft did a thriving business. An obituary noted that for many years until his death, Forten was the leading sailmaker in this city. 154 A white visitor in the 1830s marveled at the number of orders he had. He paid $10,000 per year in wages (a figure that seems impossibly high given what journeymen sailmakers earned), and had at one time the sails for ninety-five vessels engaged. 155 Evidence like this is useful. Account books and ledgers would be even more useful.</p>
<p>In 1838, in a bid to defeat the proposal to disfranchise people of color in Pennsylvania, white abolitionist Benjamin C. Bacon and African-American minister Charles W. Gardner went from house to house in Philadelphia’s black community gathering data on schooling, home ownership, employment, and the like, for a massive census the Pennsylvania Abolition Society was undertaking to prove the general worthiness of black citizens. James Forten opposed disfranchisement, and spoke up loudly for equality before the law, but he withheld the details of his personal fortune, which must have been considerable. In 1832 he was paying tax on Bonds, Mortgages, Bank Stock and Ground Rents. 156 However worthy the causeand he was clearly in sympathy with the aims of the Pennsylvania Abolition Societythere were some things an astute businessman kept to himself.</p>
<p>IF THE NARRATIVE of James Forten’s life as a gentleman of the pave has many more loose ends than, for example, the story of his involvement in the antislavery crusade, or his relationships with various family members, it is largely because of the nature of the evidence. His business interests were many, and it was as a businessman that he would often define himself. For example, when he wrote his friend, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, he alluded again and again to his need to attend to business. Business prevents more at this time. 157 I would have answered your Letter earlier had it not been owing
to a multiplicity of business. 158 You know I am a man of business, and have not always time at my disposal. 159 Perhaps these were polite excuses for his delay in answering the editor’s letters but, when all was said and done, he was a man of business. Sadly, the records that should enable us to get to the heart of his success in business have simply not survived. Pulling together the scattered pieces of the puzzle, the loose threads of half a century spent in the amassing of an impressive fortune, is a task that intrigues even as it ultimately frustrates. In matters of business James Forten did as any good gentleman of the pave would do. Aware that idle talk about one’s affairs could prove costly, he kept his counsel
and he keeps it still.