Phyllis Wheatley was born in western Africa (probably Gambia) in 1753. As a young girl, she was kidnapped and sold into slavery, eventually becoming the property of Boston trader John Wheatley. At any early age, Phyllis showed signs of intellectual curiosity; her owner allowed her to read and write, and she parlayed that into a prolific career as a poet. In 1767, at the age of 13, she published her first poem in Newport, but found American publishers reluctant to publicize the work of an enslaved woman. John Wheatley contacted the Countess of Huntingdon, a British noblewoman who supported abolition, for assistance; the Wheatleys traveled to London in 1771, meeting with British evangelicals and abolitionists, and two years later her first collection of poetry, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral were published to great acclaim.
Wheatley’s work made a sensation on both sides of the Atlantic; she was praised for her mastery of the rhyming couplet, her ability to quote and translate classical writers like Ovid and Homer, and most particularly her bold relation of Christianity to the slave experience. Her poem “On Being Brought from Africa to America” urged her white readership to “Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain, /May be refin’d and join th’ angelic train.” Although later critics often chided Wheatley for her apparent connection of Christianity with civilization (implying, if ungenerously read, that she preferred enslavement in America to freedom in Africa), she could also be forthright in her condemnation of slavery:
But how presumptuous shall we hope to find
Divine acceptance with the Almighty mind
While yet o deed ungenerous they disgrace
And hold in bondage Afric: blameless race
Let virtue reign and then accord our prayers
Be victory ours and generous freedom theirs.
Wheatley’s renown in the United States increased when she became among the first intellectuals to endorse the American Revolution. Despite the decidedly ambivalent attitudes of the Founders towards slavery, she encouraged them to live up to their ideals, corresponding with George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and other notables who were impressed by her force of intellect. She wrote a fulsome tribute to Washington, glossing over his own status as a slaveowner in favor of his inspirational role as leader of the Continental Army:
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.
The General was impressed, writing Wheatley a letter praising her as “favored by the muses” and inviting her to visit his headquarters. The two did meet in March 1776, shortly before Washington captured Boston, although no close record of their conversation was preserved.
Wheatley’s work was widely publicized during the Revolution, and became inspirational to readers of all races. Wheatley is believed to have coined the term “Columbia” to praise the new nation, viewing great inspiration in the promise of liberty it offered, if not its crabbed, oppressive reality. In 1784, shortly after America succeeded in winning its independence, Wheatley gloried in the promise of the new country:
Britannia owns her Independent Reign,
Hibernia, Scotia, and the Realms of Spain;
And Great Germania’s ample Coast admires
The generous Spirit that Columbia fires.
Auspicious Heaven shall fill with fav’ring Gales,
Where e’er Columbia spreads her swelling Sails:
To every Realm shall Peace her Charms display,
And Heavenly Freedom spread her gold Ray.
Unfortunately, Wheatley wasn’t well-honored by the country she so enthusiastically supported. She married John Peters, a free Black man living in Boston. Peters was an ambitious, well-connected businessman but found it difficult to support himself in wartime Massachusetts; white businessman preferred to collaborate with their own race, and Peters and Phyllis soon fell into poverty. Phyllis had three children, at least one of whom (and possibly all of them) died in childhood, and she worked as a charwoman to support the family. At the time same time she celebrated Glorious Columbia, Wheatley and her family lived in her niece’s cramped apartment in Boston, “in a state of the most abject misery, surrounded by all the emblems of a squalid poverty!”
Wheatley died on December 5th, 1784, while her husband was serving in a debtor’s prison. She’s alternately been venerated as a pioneering Black poet, or criticized for writing poetry that seemed uncritical of America’s contradictions – something which a close reading of her work doesn’t support. Much about her private life remains shrouded in mystery (for years, even the circumstances of her death remained cloudly), which allowed later scholars and critics to project upon her more easily.
In recent years, historians have found her private writings, including correspondence with British and American abolitionists. She was not only an American patriot but fully committed to ending slavery, however reluctant she sometimes appeared to tackle the issue. Phyllis Wheatley fully recognized the contradictions of African-American life, especially in a country that boasted of freedom while holding millions in bondage. Like many African-Americans, past and present, she earnestly hoped that the United States would live up to its loudly stated ideals – something at which the country has never been fully successful.