Essay Five

Coreen Harris

HST 300 Essay Five

                   The  stories configured during the age of sail were  riveting in their presentation of one’s struggle for hope, faith and liberty. Jeffery Bolster’s written work, Black Jacks, and the memoir of Ouladah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of Ouladah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa, the African comprises the pursuit of freedom as one struggles with the subjectivity of their hope, faith and liberty aboard ship.  Were these two texts similar or different to each pursuit of freedom?

                  Jeffery Bolster’s Black Jacks argues that the hardship for most coloured men aboard ship were runaway slaves that were voluntarily and involuntarily taken into the Royal Navy during the War of 1812.  Bolster prolifically attempts to tell the tale of the coloured sailors. The tale of most slaves had ran away from a mean slave-owner were easily confiscated by a British troops. Those that were involuntarily grabbed up in this manner were called impressed into the Royal Navy. Did these runaway slaves become the property of the United Kingdom?  Yes, they were the confiscated property of the British realm during wartime. Were these impressed sailors, citizens of the new, young nation- America or British citizens?  They fought decisively as kinsmen, and maintained those allegiances even in the confines of Dartmoor Prison No. 4.  At the Dartmoor Prison, the cruelties were atrocious, but the coloured men survived and thrived.  Many of the men were not only surviving dysentery and physical punishment as a condemned prisoner of war, but they survived to speak of spiritual matters.  Coloured and white men of the age of sail were meeting to hear the testimonies, preaching and singing of songs of worship. It was at this time, at the prison, which produced the fervent faith of religious zeal in these men. These men that were deemed as another man’s property intended to toil the planter’s field under the hot sun.

       Impressed, coloured sailors were needed to fight during the war. They had a keen intelligence of how to sail through rough waters and adapt to an ever-changing environment of the open seas. Men, such as Ouladah Equiano, aka Gustuvus Vassa, was one of these men that could adapt to an ever-changing environment.  He was just child when he was forced to become a slave. He tells his tale on enslavement not as a “saint, a hero or tyrant,”(Equiano, pg. 2) His project encompasses the African experience on the open seas during the age of sail.  He portrays the harsh reality of slave labour on aboard ship.  The life of a slave was harsh, and Equiano sharpened his own skills but given opportunities in the role of education (reading and writing) by a benevolent, Christian master, he explains “when I compare my lot with that of my countrymen, I regard myself as a particular favorite of Heaven, and acknowledge the mercies of Providence, in every occurrence of my life”(pg.2) Hence, Equiano’s account, here relates his present situation with his faith in the divine will of his own life.

     His account of enslavement aboard ship can be compared to the coloured prisoners of Dartmoor Prison No. 4. Similarly both groups grieved the exploitation of other slaves.  Equiano grieves, “thus at the moment expected my toils to end, was I plunged, as I was supposed, in a new slavery… my service had been perfect freedom… I wept very bitterly for some time, and began to think what I must have done.”(pg.117) Equiano’s servitude to his master began to change. Concern for his own, personal state of freedom transfers into a conscious decision to help others out of enslavement. This transfer of concern for oneself into the greater good of other’s freedom can be viewed in Bolster’s Black Jacks under the testimony of William Godfrey to the Congress of the United States of America. Godfrey’s testimony incorporates the conditions for the coloured prisoners of the British realm would become property of American planters again and no longer men, as he explains, “neither have I, knowing myself to be an American as well for what reason, I do not wish to serve them.” (Bolster,Pg. 117). Thus coloured prisoners of war, those were once sailors of the open seas, which were once deemed as another man’s property-, were to become seekers of freedom. Their freedom was a refusal to serve the enemy that enslaved their bodies to physical bondage. But these few that could break the shackles of human bondage were free in their concept of liberty to the role of education and spiritual enlightenment.

Conclusively, Jeffery Bolster’s Black Jacks and the memoir of Ouladah Equiano, expresses freedom of physical, human bondage as a real possibility for all people- men, women and children that were enslaved. Their freedom may be a mental freedom- they cannot imprison their minds and souls. The hope, faith and liberty of these few would begin a new society, which began around the time of the age of sail. Most historians concluded that most escaped slaves were capitalistic profit-seeking peoples, but these two texts disagree with this presumption. Yes, Equaino would be taken to a better societal position during the mid 18^th Century, as a published author, but he would gain freedom for himself and others by impressing a new mindset upon those that were not able to read or write. His example of a person that was once the property of another to be a real man would inspire many others to do the same. In comparison, the coloured prisoners of Dartmoor Prison No.4 during the beginning of the 19^th Century were able to adapt to their situation as sailors abroad ship, prisoners of war and pursuers of freedom of their activities that were incorporated with spiritual worship that did not segregate whites and coloured shipmates. They fought side by side and died that way too. When tempted with financial gain over their white contemporaries they fought beside, many coloured sailors refuse to take the Royal Navy muster, which made involuntary sailors. Why was this done? These men may have heard the stories of Ouladah Equiano, a man that gain his freedom from the compassion of others.  But these prisoners of war may have not gained their freedom the way Equiano had. They decided maintain a kinship with their fellow prisoners. They gained their freedom with the hope and faith of brotherhood. The real difference between Bolster’s text and Equiano’s memoirs was an attempt of freedom as a brotherhood and Equiano’s as a prior individual that desired a spiritual brotherhood of all those that were still enslaved.

Works Cited
Bolster , Jeffery Black Jacks. Pages 117. 
Equiano, Ouladah ( Gustavus Vassa), The Interesting Narrative of Ouladah Equiano, the African. 

Equiano, Olaudah. The interesting narrative of the life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written by himself. ... Vol. Volume 2.Second edition. London,  [1789]. Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Gale. Arizona State University AULC. 14 Apr. 2012
<http://find.galegroup.com.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/ecco/infomark.do?&source=gale&prodId=ECCO&userGroupName=asuniv&tabID=T001&docId=CW101535045&type=multipage&contentSet=ECCOArticles&version=1.0&docLevel=FASCIMILE

my essay 2

Coreen Harris

Essay Two

HST 300

In Afro Latino Voices, Kathryn McKnight and Leo Garofalo, build upon John Thornton’s work, expanding his analysis both the role of Africans who lived in Africa were it affected by the political relations between Africans and Europeans, as explained in the letters of Queen Njinga of the Ndogno, developed a creole culture in the New World.

          First any slave culture may be developed from a military conquest.  Before 1624, it was believed by many Eurocentric historians, Portuguese envoys were accessed communications between the Ndogno tribes- an effort to open trade for slave labor.  According to Thornton, “after 1624, they became embroiled in a long series of wars that might be called the Wars of the Ndogno Succession, in which Portuguese officials hoped to place a pliant king on Ndogno’s throne and met with resistance of Queen Njinga” (Thornton, pg. 100). In a complementary study, McKnight and Garofalo examine the first hand account of Queen Njinga, as she addressed the Portuguese military commander Bento Baanho Cardosa in 1626, which opened political communications of European diplomacy.  At a time when commerce, not industry was deemed as the superior form of economic activity, Kathryn McKnight and Leo Garofalo maintains the Ndogno were a people that embraced a great ethic of self-improvement. Queen Njinga writes “[I] t caused me great grief that an Aires’ fortress there were Portuguese forces there that I have received with great kindness because they were vassals of the king of Spain, to whom I recognized obeisance as a Christian… that in Ambaca a large force had gathered waiting for Your Honor to move against me to free the Portuguese held in captivity. Nothing is accomplished by force and to so would bring both me and them harm because everything can be done peacefully and without force.”(McKnight and Garofalo, pg. 43).  Queen Njinga consciously embraces her Christian faith for herself and her people as part of their identity as members of a progressive Atlantic community. The ambivalence, with which she did so, is key to Thornton’s argument that the Ndogno wars were multivariant to the development of a creole culture in the New World.

Next, McKnight and Garofalo pay particular attention to explaining how Portuguese and Ndogno changed in relations, according to Queen Njinga’s letter to the general of Angola in 1655.  Her letter, motivated by a desire for economic advancements, Matamba (Ndogno) immigrants established precarious and sometimes unruly settlements that gradually became more cohesive. How is this possible?  Thornton argues, “whereas the conquest of land necessarily required administration of larger areas and expansion of military resources, the acquisition of slaves only required a short campaign that need not create any new administrative conditions”(Thornton, pg. 106). Please read the following excerpt of Queen Njinga’s letter in 1655 (McKnight and Garofalo, pg. 47):

The one I have the most grievance with in Governor Salvador Correia {de Sà} to whom I gave the slaves Your Lordship knows about and made two hundred banzoes for Commander Rui Pegado who arrived as an envoy of his majesty, may God protect him, and assured me that my sister would be brought back to me and that there would be complete peace. I decided I could not break my royal word (and accepted his assurances). Because of this and other treacheries, I roam the forest, far from my own lands, with no one to inform His Majesty, may God protect him, from unease, when to be at peace with the said commander and His Majesty’s Governors is what I most desire.  (Pg. 47)

This attainment of ideological stability and emergence of family networks in Africa and across the Atlantic was attainable because of stable ruling elites, like Queen Njinga.

Conclusively, McKnight and Garofalo’s analysis of primary sources that openly and cleverly argue Thornton’s argument that “slaves, although no longer surrounded by their familiar home environment relationships, village, and family, were nevertheless not in a culture wilderness when they arrived in Americas”(pg. 205). Motivated by a desire for economic advancement, Portuguese immigrants Africans established precarious and unruly settlements that became more cohesive with the attainment of ideological stability as seen in the emergence of family networks. .

essay three

Coreen Harris

HST 300

Essay Three

“And we are scatterings of Africa

On a journey to the stars

Far below we leave forever

Dreams of what we were

 ~ Johnny Clegg

Bolster’s book is riveting. Structured around the War of 1812 that encompasses the age of sail.;  it tells the tale, as Bolster argues,  of the utterly unpredictable road of the life of an African American sailor. Like every good story teller, Bolster kept his stories tightly wound.   The story of Dartmoor Prison No.4 pleas a case of African American seamen or sailors to be Americans first and creoles second.  Jeffery Bolster has a remarkable capacity to breathe life into complicated rhetoric. His surprising talent for revealing hidden traces of an international culture of those at sea and revelation of “Americanism” in the times of the African American age of sail at the Dartmoor Prison.

First,  the contextualizing and critiquing in these developments  of culture into Americanism  was read in John Thornton’s text, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World 1400-1650  (1992).  In Thornton’s view Bolster, together with other colleagues such as Kathryn McKnight and Leo Garofola, have dramatically enhanced African socio-cultural studies as a separate field. Their premise of the field, however, has remained conservative, in Thornton’s eyes, despite the political liberalism of some of its components. “Black sailor’s patriotism in 1814 asserted attachment to the United States  and their right to belong”(Bolster, pg. 116). It is not enough that Jeffery Bolster  asked why African American men- why they refused  to take up into the roll call of the Royal Navy upon their impressment into the Royal Navy or why Shakespearean theatre critics  had failed to  produce theatrical literary criticism in the quality of slave productions of Richard III (pg. 123). But the very nature of prison life at Dartmoor Prison No. 4   meant that there was an international community or society.   As Bolster notes, ”black sailors built a nation-within-a-nation in Dartmoor Prison”, which created a shared power between white and black prisoners.   Thornton argues the case of the creation of fraternities amongst slaves of the Kongo, which analyzed how Africans could be participants  in the broad patterns  and trends of western social and cultural developments yet create, live in, and be shaped by what many Americans see as a distinctive regime.

Second,  African Americans believed in a higher purpose  of what it was to be an American.  To express Americanism would be a society that defined itself in economic  and cultural components, and Bolster defines Americanism, which began in the age of sail for many African American sailors that had become prisoners of war. Scholars, such as Thornton, McKnight and Garofalo agree with a Marxist  perspective of slaves and escaped ones were capitalistic profit seekers as those that may have stolen other slaves to be sold or were marketplace workers in the urban cities of Latin America. In comparison, Bolster defines the issue of impressment into the Royal Navy for most prisoners of war. Yet he distinctly expressed  that many African American refused the enrollment of the muster,  but it the refusal of profit from the “[T]o assume that men like Backus, Godfrey and Potter were situating themselves as Americans simply to gain official American assistance, or to stick with white shipmates,  is to ignore their conscious decision-making”(Bolster, pg. 117).   But what is more convincing is Bolster’s argument for William Godfrey’s testimonial correspondence to the Congress of the United States of America, of the conditions of impressed seamen after 1815, which disagrees with the presumption of  Africans and creolized escaped slaves of Africa and Latin America- to be a subsequent creole culture were capitalistic profit seeking people.  “Neither have I , knowing myself to be an American as well for what reason, I do not wish to serve them.” (pg. 117).

In conclusion,  African American Americanism was defined by the cultural and economic developments that challenged those who were of the distinctive slave regime into a sailor. Through Bolster’s storytelling of the age of sail throughout the War of 1812, his book sufficiently described the African American’s reistance to slavery and impressment.  He challenges the prsumptions of Americanism as inherited ideas of slavery to shape both a world view  and response to  the intellectual and ideological assaults on slavery and its survived creole culture into a strengthened African American culture.

Libérti, égalité et fraternité Essay Four

Liberté, égalité et fraternité

In Sue Peabody’s Peabody’s book “There Are No Slaves in France”: The Political Culture of Race and Slavery in the Ancien Regime, the reader was introduced to the French policy that were no slaves present in France. According to a royal edit of 1315, King Louis X emphasized a tradition of no slavery amongst Frenchmen. King Louis X legislation was understood, but entirely appreciated. This remarkable legislation of the “freedom from slavery” would be revised in a 1716 ordinance, as a result, of court case revisions to this 1716 ordinance (Peabody, 234) Does Peabody’s claim that, in the third quarter of the eighteenth century, “members of France’s intellectual and judicial elite appropriated the symbol of the slave to criticize perceived excesses of royal authority” (p. 10). The author might have helped herself on this score had she considered how politically and ideologically the blacks’ struggle for freedom related to the growing contemporary debate on Louis X social and economic relations?

 An instance of the cort case revision of the 1716 ordinance, was a case created by Verdelin vs. Boucauex.  The Boucauex versus Verdelin  case was between “slave” (Boucauex) and Verdelin(owner) was based upon the suit of false captivity and lack of wages for nine years of labor. Not just imprisonment, but captivity. Peabody summates the course of the case resulting in Boucauex’s freedom from Verdelin.  But the reviewing court, named the Paris Admirality court,  granted freedom but restitution for Monsieur Boucauex’s hard labor. 

Peabody notes in her analysis, that this case was a moment of plain compromise of the clearly set legislation of the admirality court and the successive legislation of the French people since Louis X policies. This was not being enforce by the Frecnh legislation. The legistion by 1738 turned it legislative enforcement in the “Ploice de Noir” which enforced imprisonment for those were slaves and/ or interracially married without proper identification of their French citizenship .  The enforcement of the “Police de Noir” came to a head upon the false imprisonment of 150 slaves. These slaves challenged the French admirality court and its statutes. The governing French Parliment released 150 initial slaves the case was based upon,  and numerous that had been arrested since the beginnins of the case. Peabody argues,  they fought their case based upon color distinctions not the coined term “slavery”. Their color distinctions granted freedom to proper registration for citizenship, marriage certificates, identification that will permit them to become eventual land owners.

In conclusion, these two court cases that were boldly and judiciously approached the Parisien admirality court enforce harsh legislation of the “Police de Noir” until 1777. Peabody concludes, the use of racial language and distinctions became

legal commonplace by the late eighteenth century, because it preserved the myth that all Frenchmen were free—to which all parties, the monarchy included, subscribed—while protecting society against the potentially costly impact of its universal application; even the advocates of slave emancipation used racial language when it was of benefit to clients for whom a case could be made that they were of nonblack ancestry. Thus, by 1782, “the notion of racial purity was firmly entrenched in the minds of even the staunchest defenders of freedom” (p. 135).However,  after much bitterness and loss, the French peoples of the Second Republic would  grant counsel and  successfully filed and heard many instances where slaves who were living in France sued for their freedom . Thus the new legislation, based upon King Louis X compassionate legislation of the Middle Ages, permeated the people of France into a whole people outlawing slavery.

Final Paper

THE FOLLOWING POEMS were written originally for the Amusement of the Author, as they were the Products of her leisure Moments. She had no Intention ever to have published them; nor would they now have made their Appearance, but at the Importunity of many of her best, and most generous Friends; to whom she considers herself, as under the greatest Obligations.  1   As her Attempts in Poetry are now sent into the World, it is hoped the Critic will not severely censure their Defects; and we presume they have too much Merit to be cast aside with Contempt, as worthless and trifling Effusions.  2   As to the Disadvantages she has laboured under, with Regard to Learning, nothing needs to be offered, as her Master’s Letter in the following Page will sufficiently show the Difficulties in this Respect she had to encounter.  3   With all their Imperfections, the Poems are now humbly submitted to the Perusal of the Public.  4

The following is a Copy of a LETTER sent by the Author’s Master to the Publisher.

PHILLIS was brought from Africa to America, in the Year 1761, between Seven and Eight Years of Age. Without any Assistance from School Education, and by only what she was taught in the Family, she, in sixteen Months Time from her Arrival, attained the English Language, to which she was an utter Stranger before, to such a Degree, as to read any, the most difficult Parts of the Sacred Writings, to the great Astonishment of all who heard her.  5   As to her WRITING, her own Curiosity led her to it; and this she learnt in so short a Time, that in the Year 1765, she wrote a Letter to the Rev. Mr. OCCOM, the Indian Minister, while in England.  6   She has a great Inclination to learn the Latin Tongue, and has made some Progress in it. This Relation is given by her Master who bought her, and with whom she now lives.

JOHN WHEATLEY.

Boston, Nov. 14, 1772.  7

To the PUBLICK.

AS it has been repeatedly suggested to the Publisher, by Persons, who have seen the Manuscript, that Numbers would be ready to suspect they were not really the Writings of PHILLIS, he has procured the following Attestation, from the most respectable Characters in Boston, that none might have the least Ground for disputing their Original.  8   WE whose Names are under-written, do assure the World, that the POEMS specified in the following Page, 1 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.  9     His Excellency THOMAS HUTCHINSON, Governor,

  The Hon. ANDREW OLIVER, Lieutenant-Governor.

The Hon. Thomas Hubbard,
The Hon. John Erving,
The Hon. James Pitts,
The Hon. Harrison Gray,
The Hon. James Bowdoin,
John Hancock, Esq;
Joseph Green, Esq;
Richard Carey, Esq;
The Rev. Charles Chauncey, D.D.
The Rev. Mather Byles, D.D.
The Rev. Ed. Pemberton, D.D.
The Rev. Andrew Elliot, D.D.
The Rev. Samuel Cooper, D.D.
The Rev. Mr. Saumel Mather,
The Rev. Mr. John Moorhead,

Mr. John Wheatley, her Master.  10   N. B. The original Attestation, signed by the above Gentlemen, may be seen by applying to Archibald Bell, Bookseller, No. 8, Aldgate-Street.  11 [i]

The present scholarship about Phillis Wheatley has been about the poetry not the life of the poet.  Wheatley’s intellectual and aesthetic developments must be investigated in this thesis. She has been more easily recognized in England and Europe than in America. In the previous century, many scholar thought of Phyllis Wheatley’s poetry was indifferent to racial cause of slavery in the United States of America. However in the past few years, many scholars have found more poems, facts and letters about her life and relationships with those that were trying to abolish slavery in the 18^th Century.  Now in the last few years, historical and literary opinions are starting to change about Phillis Wheatley. According to scholar Sondra O’Neale, her essay on Wheatley’s experimentation with poetry portrayed the current “social, political and religious culture of eighteenth century, and to see her grasp of biblical myth, language and symbol permit her conducive vehicle to make subtle, yet effective statements against slavery.”[ii] O’Neale goes on about Phillis Wheatley, “ used her talents and her success” as a writer “ to wage subtle war against it”[iii]. Her methodology in the war against slavery, maintains O’Neale, “include biblical language and allusions” whose implications were to turn “from the practice of slavery” the “biblical knowledgeable” of her day.[iv] 

Her superior African intellect- with talents that were subjugated by Enlightened intellectuals for “scientific commentary”, evangelical Christians to promote a Christian witness amongst blacks and others in the developing Abolitionist movement to prove Blacks were not merely deaf, dumb or blind animals will be discussed in this paper. 

When she was only seven years old Wheatley was forcibly leaving her homeland in Gambia, Africa. She found herself to be up for auction to be sold into bondage in Boston, Massachusetts on July 11, 1761. By the age of eleven, she had acquired knowledge and skill of the English language.[v] Thus by the age of fourteen in 1767, Phillis Wheatley became a published, public poet, in the event of her poem, On Messrs. Hussey and Coffin, being published. Which would be her purpose for her entire life. Her education had advanced, and at this time she began to be tutored by the “Harvard graduate, minister of the Old South Church, one-time prolific poet, and encourager of young poets, Mather Byles. Wheatley soon became an excellent student of Latin, as her superb version of Ovid’s Niobe episode from Book VI of the Metamorphoses ably attest.[vi]

Now from the fatal place another flies,
Falls in her flight, and languishes, and dies.
Another on her sister drops in death;
A fifth in trembling terrors yields her breath;
While the sixth seeks some gloomy cave in vain,
Struck with the rest, and mingled with the slain.
One only daughter lives, and she the least;
The queen close clasp'd the daughter to her breast:
"Ye heav'nly pow'rs, ah spare me one," she cry'd,
"Ah! spare me one," the vocal hills reply'd:
In vain she begs, the Fates her suit deny,
In her embrace she sees her daughter die.
* "The queen of all her family bereft,
"Without or husband, son, or daughter left,

Wheatley evidently has acquired the language skills, as it may be read here, for its proper classical content. This excerpt from the poem depicts Noibe experiencing the lost of her children. . Perhaps Wheatley depiction of Ovid’s very popular play, Metamorphoses, may portray an account of Wheatley’s life in Gambia with her family. In her correspondence with her friend, Obour Tanner, can anyone find any kind of manuscript memories of her home in Africa?  Under further view of this poem, according to scholar Sondra O’Neale, Wheatley is constrained to the subject’s proper authentication of Ovid’s vision; furthermore, in language and symbol, Wheatley used these constraints to conduct a subtle statement against slavery. She eloquently portrays the African queen clasping the hand of her daughter. This allusion moves the reader to sense her touch in their hands. You can feel the embrace, and then her daughter dies.

According to scholar, Carole Chandler Waldrup, “Susannah Wheatley was impressed by the young girl’s poetic ability. She assigned only light household work to Phillis and became an ardent promoter of the publication of her poems.”[vii]  Despite her woeful drawbacks of her enslavement, she was able to meet different Enlightenment intellectuals that were friends or acquaintances to John and Susannah Wheatley. For example, Wheatley began a life long communication Mohegan Indian minister and graduate of Dartmouth College, Samson Occom. She would have the enormous pleasure of meeting her life-long friend, Obour Tanner on the slave ship that brought her to America.  Wheatley would keep a very long correspondence between Obour Tanner and herself, as seen in a letter she wrote, “let us rejoice in the wonders of God’s infinite love in bringing us from a land semblant of darkness itself, and where the divine revelation (being obscur’d) is darkness. Here the knowledge of the true God and eternal life are made manifest; but there, profound ignorance overshadows the land”[viii] Thus Phyllis Wheatley urges her beloved friend and confident that the conduct of crude slaveholders, or the slave trade is wrong and un-Christ like behavior.  Why did she write about this? According to Carole Chandler Waldrup, Phillis was in contact with Susannah Wheatley and her erudite, cultured, Christian residents of the Boston society, and it was foreseeable that she would accept Susannah Wheatley’s views and theology.  Moreover, “it was to her credit that Phillis did not take advantage of her unique position, but rather regarded Wheatleys as true friends and benefactors. She did not become self-important because of her difference. Although she was invited to dine in homes of wealthy people, she learned to refuse to seat at the family table and to request that a sidetable be set up for her to dine apart”[ix] Thus she views it all together, and she consider her new friends embracing the Christian faith, which she learned from Susannah Wheatley, the end of slavery was to come.  

In the following year, Wheatley would compose enough poems for the publication of a book. And by August 1771 she would be baptized minister and advisor, Samuel Cooper. Then by September 1773, she had a publisher from London, England to publish her book of poetry. The publisher was the Countess of Huntington, Selina Hastings. She and Wheatley would meet several dignitaries, including the Earl of Dartmouth. While in London, she had an informal reception with Benjamin Franklin, an avid spokesman for equal human rights under God-given natural laws. He wrote to his cousin about his meeting with Wheatley. “Upon your recommendation I went to see a Black poetess and offered her any services I could do for her”[1] When she returned back to Boston in 1773, Wheatley was to become public figure. According to Frank Shuffleton, “her connections with Countess Huntington were primarily defined by religious concerns, they never the less always seem to been, on Wheatley’s side at least, entangled in complex ways with discourses about slavery and freedom.”[x]  The paradigm of the antislavery assessment allowed Wheatley’s writings to grow in more maturity throughout her artistic achievements. According to the critical literary opinion of Phillis Wheatley, many have reprimand her for insensitivity to her fellow slaves and racial issues; as a result, she developed a reputation for being comfortable with Colonial living. Recall, when she went to London for the publication of the book, it would be published at the height the antislavery debates in Boston. And her previous writings, she had written with classical political and theological themes. She maintained friendships with several prominent clergy members that knew of her slave owners. Phillis Wheatley, like so many other slaves and indentured servants that would listen to, patriotic reverend George Whitefield, as he preach out in the streets of Boston. One of her revered published poems was the Elegy for the Death of George Whitefield. She may have sat down at the church and listened to his words of divine illumination that God’s children are created equal. He ministered to her spiritual needs and many others.

But when Susannah Wheatley died suddenly, in 1774, Wheatley, as a slave, continued to live at the Wheatley mansion and write verse.[xi]  According to Carole Chandler Waldrup, “Wheatley took the death of ‘beloved mistress’ very grievously. Wheatley said she felt ‘like one forsaken by her parent in desolate wilderness,’ and praised Mrs. Wheatley for ‘her uncommon tenderness for 13 years and unwearied diligence to instruct me in the principles of the true religion’. Surprisingly, Susannah Wheatley did have the opportunity to live long enough to view a copy of Phyllis’ book, Poems on Various Subject, Religious and Moral. [xii] But Wheatley maintained her attendance at Old South Church in Boston with the Wheatley family. According to Frank Shuffleton in a Wheatley’s letter to Samson Occum, she hailed the glorious privilege of “civil and religious Liberty… there is no enjoyment of one without the other.”[xiii] By the year 1778, Phillis Wheatley had made her departure from the Wheatleys in British occupied Boston.  Upon invitation, she visited future American President, George Washington upon his stay at Cambridge in 1776. And in 1778, Phillis Wheatley would marry John Peters, a free black man. After becoming a wife and mother, thus Phillis Wheatley had no acceptance from publishers of her poetry. It presumed that the British occupation prevented the occurrence. But many of her friends did not care for her choice in a husband. According to scholar Carole Chandler Waldrup, “they described him as a shopkeeper, ‘who wore a wig, carried a cane, and felt himself superior to all kinds of labor.’ But John Peters abandoned her with their third child on the way. She found work as a maid in a boarding house, and in few months later, in 1784, three poems were published… It was published under her married name”[xiv]

Now in the last few years, historical and literary opinions are starting to change about Phillis Wheatley. According to scholar Sondra O’Neale’s essay on Wheatley, her experimentation with poetry portrayed the current “social, political and religious culture of eighteenth century, and to see her grasp of biblical myth, language and symbol permit her conducive vehicle to make subtle, yet effective statements against slavery” (145). O’Neale goes on about Phillis Wheatley, “ used her talents and her success” as a writer “ to wage subtle war against it”(157). Her methodology in the war against slavery, maintains O’Neale, “include biblical language and allusions” whose implications were to turn “from the practice of slavery” the “biblical knowledgeable” of her day (157).[xv] 

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[1]

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[i] Wheatley, Phillis. Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. London : A,Bell, 1773 ; Bartleby.com, 2010. http://www.bartleby.com/150/100.html. 5/05/2011

[ii] O’Neale, Sondra. 2001. A Slave's Subtle War: Phillis Wheatley's Use of Biblical Myth and Symbol. Source: Early American Literature, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Fall, 1986), p. 145

Published by: University of North Carolina Press Stable

[iii] Ibid. page 157.

[iv]  Ibid. Page159.

[v] The Oxford Companion to African American Literature. 1997. Page 770.

[vi] The Oxford Companion to African American Literature. 1997. Page 770.

[vii] Waldrup, Carole Chandler. 1999. More Colonial Women: 25 Pioneers of Early America. Page 81.

[viii] Wheatley. Poems and Letters. Page 23-4.

[ix] Waldrup, Carole Chandler. 1999. More Colonial Women: 25 Pioneers of Early America. Page 81.

[x] Carretta and Gould. Genuis in Bondage. Excerpts: Shuffleton, Frank. “On Her Own Footing”. 2001. 176-78.

[xi] Oxford Companion to African Literture. 197. Page 771.

[xii] Waldrup, Carole Chandler. More Colonial Women: 25 Pioneers of Early America. Page 84.

[xiii] Shuffleton, Frank. “On Her Own Footing”. 2001. Page 181.

[xiv] Waldrup, Carole Chandler. More Colonial Women: 25 Pioneers of Early America. Pgs. 85-86.

[xv] O’Neale, Sondra. A Slave's Subtle War: Phillis Wheatley's Use of Biblical Myth and Symbol. Source: Early American Literature, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Fall, 1986), pp. 144-165

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