Where was she born? What did her parents call her? What were their hopes and dreams for her?
We cannot answer any of these questions about the young woman we know as Phillis Wheatley, because she came to America as a slave. Information about her origins was unimportant to the slave traders who viewed her as nothing more than another line in the ledger. A piece of property, a bit of profit: no more, no less.
But Phillis Wheatley found a voice for herself that broke through the enforced silence of the slave trade. As a teenaged girl, she mastered the complex art of 18th century English poetry, becoming the most famous African-American woman in Western society during the early 1770s. This
Founding Mother challenged all the assumptions of her day by demonstrating that talent knows no boundaries of race, gender, or other human conditions.
(Crossposted at Progressive Historians)
"Phillis," the young slave
Little is known of Phillis Wheatley's life before she was purchased as a 7 year old slave by Susannah Wheatley and John Wheatley. John was a well-off Boston merchant and tailor. Susannah dubbed the little girl "Phillis" after the ship that brought her to Boston harbor. The girl may have been from Senegal or Gambia; she later remembered seeing her mother pouring water in a ritual to greet the rising sun. This could indicate that Phillis' birth family were Fula, African Muslims who greeted the morning sun with such a prayer.
If this is the case, it is just possible that Phillis was already acquainted with reading Arabic script before she learned Roman letters in her new home. That could account for the astonishing rapidity with which the young girl mastered English reading and writing in her new home after the Wheatley's daughter, Mary (who aspired to be a schoolteacher) began tutoring Phillis in literacy. Within 16 months, Phillis had mastered reading so well that she could read the entire Bible.
Up to this point, Phillis' treatment was not entirely unusual. We often think of slaves as being forbidden to read and write in the Americas, but such restrictions were not universal in the late 18th century. The harsh restrictions imposed across the South in the wake of Nat Turner's Rebellion in 1831 were not in effect in Massachusetts during the 1760s.
Late 18th century American slavery, although already race-based and inheritable, still retained some vestiges of the English indenture and apprenticeship system from which it legally and socially derived. Free servants and household slaves alike might be considered part of the family, to be harshly disciplined if necessary, or treated with affection, albeit always as social inferiors. By educating Phyllis well enough to read the Bible and accept Christianity, the Wheatleys might have simply been fulfilling the long-established role of masters and mistresses in improving their servant's moral and religious lives.
Phillis Wheatley, precocious poet
But Phillis's education did not stop there. At 12, she had mastered Greek and Latin and had become a devotee of Alexander Pope and John Milton. She could translate Ovid into heroic couplets. At a time when few women even studied Latin, Phillis had already read widely in classical mythology and literature, mastering its allusions in a fashion absolutely necessary for good 18th century literary style, which made extensive use of Biblical and Classical allusions.
At the age of 14, Phillis published a poem in the Rhode Island Mercury. The poem is based on a shipwreck and the miraculous escape of its survivors. "On Messrs. Hussey and Coffin," like the most fashionable 18th century English poetry, makes full use of classical allusion:
"On Messrs Hussey and Coffin"
Did Fear and Danger so perplex your Mind,
As made you fearful of the Whistling Wind?
Was it not Boreas knit his angry Brow
Against you? or did Consideration bow?
To lend you Aid, did not his Winds combine?
To stop your passage with a churlish Line,
Did haughty Eolus with Contempt look down
With Aspect windy, and a study'd Frown?
Wheatley was not only a devotee of classical literature, however; she was already a devout Congregationalist who believed in the predestination of all souls. In the next lines she turns form classical allusion to solemn religious writing:
— the Great Supreme, the Wise,
Intends for something hidden from our Eyes.
Suppose the groundless Gulph had snatch'd away
Hussey and Coffin to the raging Sea;
Where wou'd they go? where wou'd be their Abode?
With the supreme and independent God,
Or made their Beds down in the Shades below,
Where neither Pleasure nor Content can flow....
Blest Soul, which sees the Day while Light doth shine,
To guide his Steps to trace the Mark divine.
It is an extraordinary poem for a young person to compose; it is even more extraordinary in light of the limitations placed on Wheatley by her sex, color, and condition of servitude.
It is important to note that Wheatley is not the first African-American woman known to have composed poetry; Lucy Terry Prince of Rhode Island and Vermont has that honor. A great storyteller, preacher, and orator who gave testimony before the Supreme Court in the 1790s, Terry began composing poetry sometime in the 1740s or 1750s. "The Bar's Fight" recounts a 1746 battle between English settlers in Deerfield and a Native American raiding party. Contrast its rhythmic style–essential for oral transmission–with Wheatley's Augustan-type poetry:
...Eunice Allen see the Indians coming
And hoped to save herself by running
And had not her petticoats stopt her
The awful creatures had not cotched her
And tommyhawked her on the head
And left her on the ground for dead.
Young Samuel Allen, Oh! lack a-day
Was taken and carried to Canada.
–Lucy Terry, "The Bar's Fight"
Wheatley continued to write and publish her poetry over the next few years, earning a great deal of attention for herself and for her master and mistress. Her poems were often religious in nature; she mourned the death of superstar preacher George Whitefield with praise for his service in preaching so widely to Americans of every color:
He pray'd that grace in ev'ry heart might dwell,
He long'd to see America excell;
He charg'd its youth that ev'ry grace divine
Should with full lustre in their conduct shine...
"Take him my dear Americans, he said,
"Be your complaints on his kind bosom laid:
"Take him, ye Africans, he longs for you,
"Impartial Saviour is his title due:
"Wash'd in the fountain of redeeming blood,
"You shall be sons, and kings, and priests to God."
—Phillis Wheatley, "On the Death of Mr. George Whitefield"
Phillis Wheatley, American celebrity
It seemed preposterous to some white Bostonians that an African-American slave woman could have composed the elegant odes. Attempts by the Wheatleys to publish some of Phillis's best poems in a book were met with opposition from Boston printers. In 1772, Phillis Wheatley defended her authorship in court, examined by prominent Bostonians including the Reverend Charles Chauncey, John Hancock, Thomas Hutchinson( Royal governor of Massachusetts), and Andrew Oliver (lieutenant-governor). The men attested that Wheatley had indeed the talent and wit and that they believed she had composed the poems:
WE whose Names are underwritten, do assure the World, that the POEMS specified in the following Page, were (as we verily believe) written by Phillis, a young Negro Girl, who was but a few Years since, brought an uncultivated Barbarian from Africa, and has ever since been, and now is, under the Disadvantage of serving as a Slave in a Family in this Town. She has been examined by some of the best Judges, and is thought qualified to write them.
Phillis traveled to England in the company of Nathaniel Wheatley, son of the Wheatley family. There she attracted the attention of Selina Hasting, the Countess of Huntingdon, who had a great interest in African-born authors (she also aided Olaudah Equiano in publishing his memoirs). A devout Methodist who sponsored numerous chapels, the Countess may have been impressed with the religious nature of Wheatley's poetry as well as with her overall skill. She seems to have helped Wheatley gain recognition from many fashionable Europeans and Americans
The Countess also commended Wheatley to William Legge, the Earl of Dartmouth, appointed Secretary of State for the British North American colonies in 1772. These prominent patrons proved invaluable to Wheatley, who managed to get her works into book form in 1773, with the London publication of Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral.
Like other poetry of the time, Wheatley's works do not seem very personal to modern eyes. She couched her feelings and thoughts in the elaborate metaphors of the day, writing even about slavery in a surprisingly detached and even positive fashion:
`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 neither sought nor knew.
Note, however, that even when saying her slavery is a "mercy," Wheatley does not passively accept racism. In the next stanza, she turns her own conversion into a plea for spiritual equality, chastising those who do not think Africans worth of salvation:
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.
—Phyllis Wheatley, "On Being Brought from Africa to America" 1773
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Phillis Wheatley and Slavery
Wheatley also used her own experiences in slavery to draw comparisons with the worsening colonial situation of the early 1770s, as political relations between Massachusetts and the British government began to deteriorate, the outbreaks of rebellious violence barely controlled by military occupation. Having experienced this tyranny, she would not wish any form of tyranny on others:
...I, young in life, by seeming cruel fate
Was snatch’d from Afric’s fancy’d happy seat:
What pangs excruciating must molest,
What sorrows labour in my parent’s breast?
Steel’d was that soul and by no misery mov’d
That from a father seiz’d his babe belov’d:
Such such my case. And can I then but pray
Others may never feel tyrannic sway?
—Phyllis Wheatley, "To Darthmouth,"
Wheatley's most extensive statement on slavery came not in poetic form but in a letter that she wrote to the Reverend Samson Occam, published in 1774. In it, she explains her belief in predestination–all things, even African slavery, are a part of God's plan. Still, she chastised those "modern Egyptians"–meaning American slave-traders–for wanting liberty for themselves (from Britain) while denying it to others (African slaves):
... in every human Breast, God has implanted a Principle, which we call love of Freedom; it is impatient of oppression, and pants for Deliverance--and by the Leave of our modern Egyptians I will assert that the same principle lives in us. God grant Deliberance in his own Way and Time, and get him honour upon all those whose Avarice impels them to countenance and help forward the Calamities of their fellow Creatures. This I desire not for their Hurt, but to convince them of the strange Absurdity of their Conduct whose Words and Actions are so diametrically opposite, How well the Cry for Liberty, and the reverse Disposition for the exercise of oppressive power over others agree I humbly think it does not require the penetration of a Philosopher to determine."
published in the Connecticut Gazette, March 11, 1774
Phillis Wheatley, African-American Artist
Wheatley is known to have supported other African-Americans in their artistic endeavors. The only known portrait of her made during her lifetime was created by Scipio Moorhead, slave to the Reverend John Moorhead, neighbor of the Wheatleys. It is Scipio's hand we have to thank for the thoughtfully posed image of Phillis, a woman of letters, that graces her book. Scipio was also a poet, and Phillis Wheatley wrote a poem praising both of his talents:
Still may the paint's and the poet's fire
To aid thy pencil, and thy verse conspire!
And may the charms of each seraphic theme
Conduct thy footsteps to immortal fame!
High to the blissful wonders of the skies
Elate thy soul, and raise thy wishful eyes.
Thrice happy, when exalted to survey
That splendid city, crown'd with endless day,
Whose twice six gates on radiant hinges ring:
Celestial Salem blooms in endless spring.
" To S. M., a Young African Painter, On Seeing His Works " by Phillis Wheatley
Wheatley was herself praised by another poet, Jupiter Hammon, who is believed to be the first African-American to have his poem appear in print. His poems are primarily religious and reflect his calling as a preacher and orator. In 1778, he addressed the following lines to Phillis, calling on Wheatley to focus on her religiosity rather than on classical learning or other distractions:
Miss Wheatly; pray give leave to express as follows:
O, come you pious youth: adore
The wisdom of thy God.
In bringing thee from distant shore,
To learn His holy word.
That thou a pattern still might be,
To youth of Boston town,
The blessed Jesus thee free,
From every sinful wound....
...Come, dear Phillis, be advisíd,
To drink Samaria's flood;
There nothing is that shall suffice,
But Christ's redeeming blood.
When thousands muse with earthly toys,
And range about the street,
Dear Phillis, seek for heaven's joys,
Where we do hope to meet.
Composed by Jupiter Hammon, Hartford, August 4, 1778
"An Address to Miss Phillis Wheatly [sic], Ethiopian Poetess, in Boston, who came from Africa at eight years of age, and soon became acquainted with the gospel of Jesus Christ."
Perhaps Hammon's words were intended to console Wheatley, for in 1778 she found herself in the midst of personal crisis.
Although she had been formally manumitted in 1773, she remained with the Wheatley family until 1778, when Mary Wheatley died. This left Phillis, who seems to have suffered from ill health, with few resources. She married one John Peters; surviving correspondence to her friends suggests that he was not well-liked and quickly squandered Phillis' money while running up debts of his own.
Wheatley continued to write but had a hard time making ends meet. In 1779, she sought to get a new edition of her poems published in Boston but could not get enough backers. She and Peters had two young children, both of whom had died when she and Peters separated in early 1784.
Wheatley worked as a domestic servant, still trying to get a second volume of poetry published and perhaps renew her fortunes. In ill-health and poverty, she gave birth to the couple's third child and died shortly thereafter on December 5, 1784; her baby followed her shortly into death.
Phillis Wheatley, Founding Mother
Her second volume of poetry disappeared after her death, as has Wheatley herself; her burial spot is unknown. Briefly the most famous Black woman in the Western world, her work was reprinted in 1801 but then languished for much of the 19th century.
She was hailed by Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps as an important forerunner of later Black writers in their 1949 collection The Poetry of the Negro. Beginning in the 1960s, her reputation was much debated among scholars; was Wheatley a collaborator with a racist system, or a woman who cleverly subverted the expectations of her day in order to make subtle protests against slavery and other forms of oppression?
Those who admire her will be pleased to know that she was honored in 2003 with a statue as part of the The Boston Women's Memorial, where her image sits in permanent poetic reflection alongside the likenesses of Lucy Stone and Abigail Adams.
For Further Reading
Young readers will enjoy Kathryn Lasky's A Voice of Her Own: The Story of Phillis Wheatley, Slave Poet.
Wheatley's works are now widely available in an affordable volume of her complete writings.
For a wider look at early Black authors in England and America, Vincent Caretta and Philip Gould offer Genius in Bondage: Literature of the Early Black Atlantic. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. explores Wheatley's critical fortunes in her time and in our own in The Trials of Phillis Wheatley: America's First Black Poet and Her Encounters with the Founding Fathers.
P.S. Got History?
Get your Revolutionary fix with mkfox's
Forgotten Founding Fathers series, to which this series is a companion. And don't miss Unitary Moonbat's ongoingHistory for Kossacks series. And the past is always present over at Progressive Historians--check it out for an eclectic blend of history by and for the people!
All images believed to be in public domain.