About the Author

Julie Winch is Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. She is the author of three books on African American history.

Reviews

"Winch's magnificent biography...sets the record straight, restoring Forten to the position he achieved for himself in life: a "gentleman of color" and an American patriot in the front rank of the fight for freedom."--Philadelphia Inquirer
"Rediscovering the life of the once-prominent Forten, largely unknown today, Winch has achieved something quite profound and affecting...Indefatigable research and lucid prose combine to produce a book whose importance cannot be overstated."--Kirkus Review, starred
"Winch has done a masterful job of researching and piecing together Forten's life...This new critical biography not only restores him to his rightful place in American history, but also presents readers with an invigorating and challenging new portrait of pre- and post-Revolutionary race relations and identities...[Winch's] scholarship is both outstanding and vital."--Publisher's Weekly
"Winch inventively used historical context to find her subject's place in 19th-century Philadelphia and goes deep inside Forten's social and intellectual world to explain his quest for respect as a citizen and a man...This first biography of Forten does much to reveal a complexity and range of experience among 19-century blacks."--Library Journal
"This book put me in the presence of Mr. James Forten, an African American, who in the time of slavery was, indeed, a gentleman. The freedom he enjoyed was the freedom he himself created. It was a great pleasure to have spent some time in his company."--Ossie Davis
"Thoroughly researched and well-written...[Winch] has made a valiant effort to mine the extant archival materials. Thanks to her creative and tireless detective work, many facets of Forten's life and times are illuminated...[A] fine study. It will stand as the definitive biography of Forten and as one of the premier works on the antebellum African-American experience."--American Historical Review
"At long last we have a deeply researched, well-written biography of James Forten, a black veteran of the American Revolution who, in Horatio Alger style, became a wealthy sailmaker, an employer in Philadelphia of many whites as well as blacks, and one of the first black abolitionists. As a result of Julie Winch's exhaustive research, she must know almost as much about sailmaking and black Philadelphia as James Forten did."--David Brion Davis, Director of the
Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, Yale University
"Julie Winch has written the best biography of an antebellum African American I have read in many years. Exhaustively researched and stunningly argued, her biography of Philadelphia's James Forten belongs on the shelf of every American historian. Our understanding of race relations in one of the centers of African American life is immeasurably advanced by this rich study."--Gary B. Nash, University of California, Los Angeles, and author of First City:
Philadelphia and the Forging of Public Memory
"The definitive biography of James Forten, his family, and his community. Julie Winch's impressive mastery of the historical sources allows her to paint an intimate and textured portrait, richly illuminating the political, social, and economic life of America's first generations. This impressive story of a distinguished African American will inform the scholarly debate on race and society in early America for years to come."--James Oliver Horton and Lois E.
Horton, co-authors of In Hope of Liberty and Hard Road to Freedom

"Winch's magnificent biography...sets the record straight, restoring Forten to the position he achieved for himself in life: a "gentleman of color" and an American patriot in the front rank of the fight for freedom."--Philadelphia Inquirer "Rediscovering the life of the once-prominent Forten, largely unknown today, Winch has achieved something quite profound and affecting...Indefatigable research and lucid prose combine to produce a book whose importance cannot be overstated."--Kirkus Review, starred "Winch has done a masterful job of researching and piecing together Forten's life...This new critical biography not only restores him to his rightful place in American history, but also presents readers with an invigorating and challenging new portrait of pre- and post-Revolutionary race relations and identities...[Winch's] scholarship is both outstanding and vital."--Publisher's Weekly "Winch inventively used historical context to find her subject's place in 19th-century Philadelphia and goes deep inside Forten's social and intellectual world to explain his quest for respect as a citizen and a man...This first biography of Forten does much to reveal a complexity and range of experience among 19-century blacks."--Library Journal "This book put me in the presence of Mr. James Forten, an African American, who in the time of slavery was, indeed, a gentleman. The freedom he enjoyed was the freedom he himself created. It was a great pleasure to have spent some time in his company."--Ossie Davis "Thoroughly researched and well-written...[Winch] has made a valiant effort to mine the extant archival materials. Thanks to her creative and tireless detective work, many facets of Forten's life and times are illuminated...[A] fine study. It will stand as the definitive biography of Forten and as one of the premier works on the antebellum African-American experience."--American Historical Review "At long last we have a deeply researched, well-written biography of James Forten, a black veteran of the American Revolution who, in Horatio Alger style, became a wealthy sailmaker, an employer in Philadelphia of many whites as well as blacks, and one of the first black abolitionists. As a result of Julie Winch's exhaustive research, she must know almost as much about sailmaking and black Philadelphia as James Forten did."--David Brion Davis, Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, Yale University "Julie Winch has written the best biography of an antebellum African American I have read in many years. Exhaustively researched and stunningly argued, her biography of Philadelphia's James Forten belongs on the shelf of every American historian. Our understanding of race relations in one of the centers of African American life is immeasurably advanced by this rich study."--Gary B. Nash, University of California, Los Angeles, and author of First City: Philadelphia and the Forging of Public Memory "The definitive biography of James Forten, his family, and his community. Julie Winch's impressive mastery of the historical sources allows her to paint an intimate and textured portrait, richly illuminating the political, social, and economic life of America's first generations. This impressive story of a distinguished African American will inform the scholarly debate on race and society in early America for years to come."--James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton, co-authors of In Hope of Liberty and Hard Road to Freedom

Less than a decade ago, Forten remained a footnote in books on U.S. and African-American history. This new critical biography, the first serious work on his life and legacy, not only restores him to his rightful place in American history, but also presents readers with an invigorating and challenging new portrait of pre- and post-Revolutionary race relations and identities. Forten was born in 1766 into a free-born African-American family in Philadelphia, and his ideas and politics were formed by ideals of freedom espoused by Thomas Paine and other colonial writers. He went to sea as a privateer under Stephen Decatur, was captured by the British and, after a stay in London, became apprentice to a sail maker; in 1798, he took over the business, which prospered. His obituary in 1842 noted that he was "the leading sailmaker in the city." But Forten was also noted for his role in public life, particularly his intense involvement in the abolition movement, his close association with William Lloyd Garrison and the 1813 publication of his influential book, Letters from a Man of Colour. Winch, a professor of history at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, has done a masterful job of researching and piecing together Forten's life from family and business records, newspapers, tax rolls, letters and journals. But the strength of the book aside from rediscovering Forten is the careful and often surprising research into the complexity of African-American life in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Winch never skirts difficult issues: Forten's aunt owned slaves and may have even been involved in the slave trade. And whether she is explicating the role of black freemasonry or how intermarriage with whites and Indians created endlessly complicated social and racial identities for "black" Americans, her scholarship is both outstanding and vital. (Jan.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.