Relevance of Wheatley's Work
Historical
Phillis Wheatley’s brief life straddled an incredibly rich period in American History. It was a period of intense debate. Massachusetts, Wheatley’s home, would become the cradle of the Revolutionary movement. In the coming decades, it would also become the capitol of the Abolitionist movement. While questions concerning freedom were ringing out around Boston and over tariffs, an entirely different issue was being batted around the lecture halls of Europe.
Philosophical
Renaissance and Enlightenment philosophers such as Kant and Hume were themselves engaged with the question of slaves. Their concerns were not legislative. They and their peers were debating the classification of the race to which Wheatley belonged: Africans. They entertained such distinctions as whether Africans even shared a common ancestry with Europeans (that is, are they human like us?) and if so, their lack of industry across the continent that they occupied seemed to indicate a level of inherent inferiority. From which link do they dangle on the Great Chain of Being?
State of Race at the Time
Most classroom discussions concerning slavery seem to focus on the events leading up to the civil war. The Revolutionary War period during which Wheatley lived and her adopted home of Boston offer the opportunity to discuss the state and role of slavery across the colonies. For example, what does the class imagine were the differences between the experiences of a slave in New England as opposed to the American South? What is the difference between a slave-owning society and slave-driven economy? Wheatley’s life offers many rich contradictions on which to draw. While she was, by all accounts, warmly cared for and educated by her masters, there is no record of a single African child enrolled in any school in Boston at the time. The Wheatley’s were kind slave owners, but masters, none-the-less. Philis was only freed following the publication of her sole collection, a corresponding tour of England and the death of Sussanah. The population of Boston at the time was recorded as 15,520, a full 1,000 of those individuals were African slaves. Of the 1,000 African slaves only 18 were the free blacks that pepper most narratives of Wheatley’s life.
Acknowledgements
Much of the above information is owed to Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s Essay, "Mister Jefferson and the Trials of Phillis Wheatley", available at www.neh.gov/whoweare/gates/lecture.html.
In addition, University of Maryland Professor, Vincent Carretta's "Phillis Wheatley & Her Book" which serves as an excellent introduction to the searchable facsimile discussed below and can be found at www.sc.edu/library/zellatest/wheatley/carretta.html.
Author: John McCormack, Hammond School (Columbia, SC)
