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The Redheaded libertarian @TRHLofficial - “In October 1775, Phillis Wheatley, a 22-year-old Boston poet, wrote General George Washington, enclosing a poem she had written in his honor. The poem, titled “To his Excellency General George Washington,” concludes:
Fix’d are the eyes of the 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.
Washington replied:
“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 panegyrick, the style and manner exhibit a striking proof of your great 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 Head Quarters, I shall be happy to see a person so favourd by the Muses, and to whom nature has been so liberal and beneficent in her dispensations. I am, with great Respect, Your obedt humble servant,
G. Washington”
Wheatley had published her first volume of poetry two years earlier, to considerable acclaim in both Europe and America. What makes the story of the talented young poet particularly remarkable is that when Phillis Wheatley published her book, she was a slave, brought from Africa as an 8-year-old girl and sold on a Boston auction block.
Purchased by Boston merchant John Wheatley to be a maid for his wife Susanna, Phillis was illiterate and spoke no English. But the Wheatleys soon recognized her talents and hunger for learning. Tutored by Susanna and the Wheatley children, by age 12 Phillis could not only read and write, but she had developed a proficiency in Latin and had demonstrated a gift for poetry. She was given light duties and encouraged to devote herself to her studies and her poetry. In 1773 Phillis traveled with the Wheatleys’ son Nathaniel to London, where she was received as a celebrity and where her book was published.
After she began publishing her poems, there was a great deal of skepticism concerning their authorship. To dispel it, the introduction of her book included a statement signed by 18 prominent Bostonians, attesting to the fact that Phillis did indeed write the poems. Interestingly, the signatories included both John Hancock and royal governor Thomas Hutchinson.
The Wheatleys freed Phillis in November 1773, after she returned to America. She continued to live with them until the deaths of John and Susanna, espousing the Patriot cause in her poetry during the war.
In 1778 Phillis married John Peters, a free black grocer. She bore three children before Peters abandoned the family, leaving Phillis in poverty and requiring her to take a job as a scullery maid in boarding house, a job for which she was physically and mentally ill-suited. When she fell ill in late 1784, two of her three children had already died. Phillis followed them on December 5, 1784, dying at the age of 31. Her third child, an infant son, died within hours of his mother’s death, and both were buried in an unmarked grave.
Phillis Wheatley died 241 years ago today.
The image is from the frontispiece of her 1773 book Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral.”
Source: Daily Dose of the American Rev
https://x.com/TRHLofficial/status/1996919707895570541
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