Key figures: Phillis Wheatley, George Washington, Thomas Paine, Joseph Reed
Summary
Phillis Wheatley (c. 1753–1784) was an enslaved African-born woman who became the first African American to publish a book of poetry: Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, issued in London in September 1773. By 1775–1776 she had been freed and was living in Boston, where she composed verse in direct response to the unfolding Revolution. In October 1775 she sent General George Washington, newly appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, a poem in heroic couplets entitled “To His Excellency General Washington.” Washington replied warmly on February 28, 1776, and the poem appeared in print — in the Pennsylvania Magazine edited by Thomas Paine — in April 1776, reaching the widest audience of any work she published during her lifetime. The episode illustrates both Wheatley’s standing as a recognized literary figure and the ways in which African American voices participated in the formation of Revolutionary American identity.
Wheatley as Poet and Pioneer
Phillis Wheatley was brought from West Africa (likely present-day Senegal or Gambia) to Boston aboard the slave ship Phillis in 1761 at approximately seven or eight years old, and was purchased by the merchant John Wheatley and his wife Susanna. Recognizing her intellectual gifts, the Wheatleys educated her in English, Latin, and classical literature — an unusual arrangement that gave Wheatley access to the Augustan poetic tradition, particularly Alexander Pope, whose heroic couplets she emulated throughout her career. By her mid-teens she was composing original verse in English that circulated among Boston’s educated elite.
In 1773 Susanna Wheatley arranged for Phillis to travel to London with the family’s son Nathaniel to seek a publisher; Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon, provided patronage and financial support. Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, issued by the London publisher Archibald Bell on September 1, 1773, made Wheatley the first African American — and one of the first American women after Anne Bradstreet — to publish a book of poetry. Shortly after her return to Boston, the Wheatleys manumitted her in 1773, reportedly under pressure from critics who noted the contradiction between celebrating her talent and holding her in bondage. (Susanna Wheatley died in 1774 and John Wheatley in 1778.) By 1775 she was living independently in Boston, composing poems on political and patriotic themes in addition to the elegies and devotional verse of her 1773 collection.
The Poem and Its Composition
In October 1775, Wheatley composed “To His Excellency General Washington” and sent it in a letter from Providence, Rhode Island, dated October 26, 1775. The poem is a formal ode in heroic couplets, forty-two lines in its printed form, praising Washington’s leadership and invoking a personified “Columbia” — an early use of what would become the standard female allegorical embodiment of the United States — as the presiding spirit of American liberty. The opening stanza addresses “Columbia’s” cause and the martial glory befitting the “great chief.” Wheatley situates Washington’s command within a providential framework consistent with her Calvinist theology: victory in the American cause reflects divine favor.
The poem was sent to Washington at his Cambridge headquarters, where he had established command during the siege of Boston. Wheatley’s covering letter explained that she had been hesitant to send the poem “lest it might be thought adulatory,” but hoped he would receive it as an expression of sincere respect.
Washington’s Reply and Invitation
Washington’s response, dated February 28, 1776, from Cambridge, was both gracious and substantive. He thanked Wheatley for her “polite notice” and praised her verses, writing that the poem displayed “a striking proof of your poetical Talents.” He explained that modesty had prevented him from publishing the poem himself — fearing the appearance of vanity — but he invited Wheatley to visit him at his Cambridge headquarters, expressing that he would “be happy to see a person so favoured by the Muses.” Washington forwarded the letter and poem to his aide Joseph Reed in Philadelphia in February 1776, asking Reed’s opinion; Reed subsequently arranged for the poem’s publication.
Publication in the Pennsylvania Magazine, April 1776
On Washington’s initiative via Reed, “To His Excellency General Washington” appeared in the Pennsylvania Magazine: or, American Monthly Museum, volume 2, in its April 1776 issue. The editor at that time was Thomas Paine, who published the poem with a brief headnote identifying Wheatley as “the famous Phillis Wheatley, the African Poetess.” The April 1776 number reached a literate colonial readership already electrified by Paine’s own Common Sense (published three months earlier in January) and by the accelerating momentum toward independence. The poem’s appearance in print, in a Philadelphia magazine edited by the foremost pamphleteer of the Revolution, gave Wheatley’s voice a reach far beyond Boston’s literary circles. The poem also appeared in the Virginia Gazette, extending its audience into the southern colonies.
Wheatley’s Visit to Washington’s Headquarters
Some time in March 1776, Wheatley visited Washington at his Cambridge headquarters — an event corroborated by contemporary accounts, though the precise date is not documented in surviving records. The meeting is notable as one of very few documented instances of an enslaved or formerly enslaved person receiving a formal audience with the Commander-in-Chief. Washington reportedly received her courteously. Boston fell out of British control on March 17, 1776, and Washington’s army departed Cambridge shortly thereafter, so the visit almost certainly occurred in the first weeks of March before the British evacuation.
Significance for Early American Letters and the Revolution
Wheatley’s “To His Excellency General Washington” is significant on several intersecting grounds. Literarily, it extended the neoclassical tradition of the verse epistle to a new American context, helping establish the “Columbia” personification that would recur throughout American public culture into the nineteenth century. Politically, it demonstrated that a formerly enslaved African-born woman could speak with authority within Revolutionary discourse — a tension that the founding generation largely failed to resolve but could not entirely suppress. Washington’s cordial response and the poem’s mainstream publication signaled, however ambiguously, a degree of acknowledgment that Wheatley’s voice merited public attention. For American literary history, the episode marks one of the earliest instances of an African American author engaging directly with the political leadership of the new republic and receiving a documented, respectful reply.
Sources
- Phillis Wheatley — Wikipedia
- Phillis Wheatley: A First for Verse in America — Library of Congress
- Enclosure: Poem by Phillis Wheatley, 26 October 1775 — Founders Online, National Archives
- George Washington to Phillis Wheatley, February 28, 1776 — Library of Congress
- To His Excellency General Washington — Academy of American Poets