The Boy Who Refused England

James Forten was fourteen years old when he shipped aboard the privateer Royal Louis in 1781. He was free, Black, and Philadelphian — the son of a sailmaker who had worked on the wharves his entire life. When the Royal Louis was captured by the British, Forten expected the worst. Black prisoners were routinely sold into slavery in the West Indies.

Instead, the British captain's son took a liking to Forten and offered him passage to England, where he could live comfortably and receive an education. It was a genuine offer, and for a fourteen-year-old facing a prison ship, it must have been tempting beyond measure.

Forten refused. He reportedly said he would not betray his country. He spent seven months on the prison ship Jersey in New York Harbor — a floating death trap where disease killed more American prisoners than any British battlefield. He survived. Most did not.

After the war, Forten returned to Philadelphia and apprenticed to a white sailmaker named Robert Bridges. Within a decade he owned the loft, employed a mixed-race workforce of thirty men, and became one of Philadelphia's wealthiest residents. He spent his fortune and his influence on the abolitionist cause, insisting that the Revolution's promise of equality applied to all Americans.

His great-granddaughter, Charlotte Forten Grimké, would continue the family's activism into the Civil War era. The through line from the boy on the prison ship to the abolitionist movement runs directly through Philadelphia.