The Burning of Pennsylvania Hall

The Pennsylvania State Archives holds a small cache of letters related to an episode in the early 19th-century struggle for Black civil rights in the commonwealth, the burning of Pennsylvania Hall. The letters were written by victims of the crime, the mayor and high sheriff of Philadelphia, and the attorney general of Pennsylvania. Although Pennsylvania had passed the Gradual Abolition Act in...
read more

Shall Liberty Dwell? James Forten and the Struggle for Black Rights in Early Pennsylvania

James Forten “is not the most well-known of Revolutionary War–era patriots,” Stephan Salisbury observed in The Philadelphia Inquirer of November 14, 2021. The qualification enabled Salisbury to emphasize the importance of Forten’s contribution to the construction of the United States: “But his story is an essential American story.” It is appropriate to proclaim Forten’s life “essential” to the...
read more