What was phillis wheatleys role in the revolutionary war

Date accessed. Chicago - Michals, Debra. Phillis Wheatley ca. Edited by Debra Michals, PhD Works Cited. Armenti, Peter. Accessed February 10, Berkin, Carol. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Gale, History in Context. Although often forgotten today, her poetry won the admiration of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin. Wheatley was not the only notable African American period of the Revolutionary Period or the first. Jupiter Hammon was the first African American published in America in at the age of 50 and like Wheatley, he was a devout Christian who used the Bible and the language of liberty to criticize the institution of slavery.

Wheatley was born in in Gambia. Around the age of seven or eight, she was forcibly kidnapped and brought across the Atlantic on the Phillis and was soon sold as a slave to John and Susanna Wheatley of Boston. Hussey and Coffin. Bell, New-York Historical Society Library. Collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Your friend and very humble servant Phillis Wheatley. Queenstreet Boston July — 15th. I send you and your family my sympathy.

Phillis Wheatley was born around the year in West Africa. When she was seven or eight years old, she was forced to endure the Middle Passage , and when she arrived in Boston, she was sold to John and Susanna Wheatley. They named her Phillis after the ship that brought her from Africa. Phillis was a brilliant child, and her owners encouraged her to learn to read and write. Phillis proved to be a very talented poet.

John and Susanna were proud of her work, and they began publishing it in newspapers in These early works made her the first African woman published in the colonies. Her owners and readers loved her work, but they still viewed her as property. By , Phillis had enough poems to make a book, but she could not find an American publisher for it.

So, the Wheatleys sent Phillis to London with their son to find a publisher, and in , her book, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, made its debut.

It was widely praised. Publishing a book was not the only thing Phillis accomplished in London. In England, there was a law that no slaveowner who brought an enslaved person to England could force them to return to the colonies. Phillis used this law to negotiate with the Wheatleys and gain her freedom. Phillis Wheatley lived the rest of her life in Boston, where she continued to write poetry.

However she is thankful for her conversion to Christianity and the opportunity to go to heaven regardless of her color. She wrote about political issues of the time such as the Stamp Act.

Today there are fifty five surviving poems written by Phillis Wheatley. It is believed that she wrote twice as many but a house fire destroyed them.

Phillis Wheatley is notorious for having been the first woman and African American to publish a book. What makes her exceptional is that she accomplished it while being a slave. About Arras WordPress Theme.