Author Background

Born in Africa (probably in Senegal or Gambia), Phillis Wheatley (ca. 1753-1784) was enslaved at the age of seven or eight when she was bought by John  Wheatley  (1703–1778) of Boston to serve as his wife Susannah’s companion. Susannah fostered Wheatley’s intellectual avidity by having her daughter Mary oversee Wheatley’s education. Wheatley became well-read in the Bible, classical literature, and English literature, responding especially to the works of Alexander Pope and John Milton. She also converted to Christianity, becoming a member of the Old South Congregational Church.

Writing Career

Her first poem, “On Messrs. Hussey and Coffin” (1767), was published in  the Newport Mercury. What brought her  attention  as  a  writer—let   alone an articulate black female slave—was her 1771 broadside elegy on George Whitefield (1714–1770), a famous evangelist minister. Touted thenceforth as a prodigy, Wheatley traveled to London for the publication of her Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773). There she became a minor celebrity, meeting the lord mayor of London, Benjamin Franklin, and William Legge, the 2nd Earl of Dartmouth (1731–1801). To the latter, she appealed for justice for those “snatched” from Africa, taken from their “parent’s breast” and deprived of freedom.

The same year that her Poems were published, Wheatley was freed from slavery. She was with Susannah when she died a year later. Wheatley married John Peters, a free black man, in 1778, the same year John Wheatley died. Wheatley and her husband lived in poverty. In 1779, a proposal for a second volume of her poetry appeared, promising several letters and thirty-three poems, but the promise was never fulfilled. None of the projected poems have been discovered, either. Over the course of her marriage, Wheatley lost two children and died in 1784 soon after the birth of her third. She and her infant were buried together in an unmarked grave.

In the past, her poetry was deemed unoriginal, as giving little  sense  of  Africa, her race, or her life as a slave. This reading attests to Wheatley’s strategic success in opposing prevalent views of women, blacks, and slaves during her era. Her poems are now recognized for their strong assertion of equality among all humankind and their strong-minded expression of self to contemporary readers who denied that selfhood.

On Being Brought from Africa to America (1773)

‘Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,

Taught my benighted soul to understand

That there’s a God, that there’s a Saviour too:

Once I redemption neight fought nor know,

Some view our sable race with scornful eye,

“Their colour is a diabolic die.”

Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,

May be refin’d, and join th’ angelic train.

To His Excellency General Washington (1776)

Celestial choir! enthron’d in realms of light.

Columbia’s scenes of glorious toils I write.

While freedom’s cause her anxious breast alarms,

She flashes dreadful in refulgent arms.

See mother earth her offspring’s fate bemoan,

And nations gaze at scenes before unknown

See the bright beams of heaven’s revolving light

Involved in sorrows and the veil of night!

The goddess comes, she moves divinely fair,

Olive and laurel binds her golden hair:

Wherever shines this native of the skies,

Unnumber’d charms and recent graces rise.

Muse! bow propitious while my pen relates

How pour her armies through a thousand gates,

As when Eolus heaven’s fair face deforms,

Enwrapp’d in tempest and a night of storms;

Astonish’d ocean feels the wild uproar,

The refluent surges beat the sounding shore;

Or thick as leaves in Autumn’s golden reign.

Such, and so many, moves the warrior’s train.

In bright array they seek the work of war.

Where high unfurl’d the ensign waves in air.

Shall I to Washington their praise recite?

Enough thou know’st them in the fields of fight.

Thee, first in place and honours,—we demand

The grace and glory of thy martial band.

Fam’d for thy valour, for thy virtues more.

Hear every tongue thy guardian aid implore!

One century scarce perform’d its destined round,

When Gallic powers Columbia’s fury found;

And so may you, whoever dares disgrace

The land of freedom’s heaven-defended race!

Fix’d are the eyes of nations on the scales,

For in their hopes Columbia’s arm prevails.

Anon Britannia droops the pensive head.

While round increase the rising hills of dead.

Ah! cruel blindness to Columbia ‘s state!

Lament thy thirst of boundless power too late.

Proceed, great chief, with virtue on thy side,

Thy ev’ry action let the goddess guide.

A crown, a mansion, and a throne that shine.

With gold unfading, Washington! be thine.

To this George Washington replied with the

following lines:

Cambridge, February 2d, 1776.

Miss Phillis:

Your favour of the 26th October did not reach my hands till the middle of December. Time enough, you will say, to have given an answer ere this. Granted. But a variety of important occurrences continually interposing to distract the mind and withdraw the attention, I hope will apologize for the delay, and plead my excuse for the seeming but not real neglect. I thank you most sincerely for your polite notice of me, in the elegant lines you enclosed; and however undeserving I may be of such encomium and panegyric, the style and manner exhibit a striking proof of your poetical talents; in honour of which, and as a tribute justly due to you, I would have published the poem, had I not been apprehensive that, while I only meant to give the world this new instance of your genius, I might have incurred the imputation of vanity. This, and nothing else, determined me not to give it place in the public prints. If you should ever come to Cambridge, or near headquarters, I shall be happy to see a person so favoured by the muses, and to whom Nature has been so liberal and beneficent in her dispensations.

I am, with great respect, your obedient humble servant.

George Washington.

Sources

Heartman, Charles.  Phillis Wheatley (Phillis Peters): a Critical Attempt and a Bibliography of her Writings.  Internet Archive, 1915, https://archive.org/details/philliswheatleyp00hear/page/20/mode/2up

Kurant, Wendy.  Becoming America: An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution.  2019, English Open Textbooks, https://oer.galileo.usg.edu/english-textbooks/19  CCA-SA 4.0

Wheatley, Phillis.  Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral.  Project Gutenberg, 1996, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/409/409-h/409-h.htm#link2H_4_0007

Wheatley, Phillis.  “On Being Brought from Africa to America.”  Public Domain.

Wheatley, Phillis.  “To His Excellency George Washington.”  Public Domain.