Power Points: God at Work through Women Leaders Yesterday and Today

Phillis Wheatley

BY LEECY BARNETT

’Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land, Taught my benighted soul to understand That there’s a God, that there’s a Saviour too: Once I redemption neither sought nor knew...1

Growing Phillis Wheatley was a slave, a woman, a poet, and a Christian. This was a unique combination for Pre-Revolutionary Boston, much less any other place or time.

Born in West Africa, Phillis’ earliest memory was being kidnapped from her family at age six or seven. She did not write about her own suffering but lamented her parents’ loss: “What sorrows labour in my parent’s breast? Steel’d was that soul and by no misery mov’d that from a father seiz’d his babe belov’d...”2 When she arrived in Massachusetts, her whole identity became wrapped up in her position as a slave: she was named after the slave ship in which she had endured the horrors of the Middle Passage, the Phillis. It was fortuitous for Phillis that instead of being enslaved by farmers who would use her for manual labor, she was bought by the well-off Wheatley family to be Mrs. Wheatley’s personal servant, destined to take care of her as she grew old. The Wheatleys recognized Phillis’ abilities and taught her how to read (something that would later become illegal in the Southern slave states). It is estimated that “within eighteen months of arriving in the [American Colonies], Wheatley had been able to read the most difficult passages in the Bible, and by twelve she was reading Greek and Latin.”3

Women in 18th-century America had limited educational opportunities. Poor women received little or no education, while genteel women were taught the basics of reading and writing and other accomplishments that would fit their expected roles as wives and mothers. God’s providence had led Phillis to an acquaintanceship with a family that encouraged their daughters to learn. The extended Mathers family were the descendants of Increase and Cotton Mather, leading ministers of their day. The Mather girls had access to their family’s extensive library. From the many classical references in her poetry, it is likely that Phillis had access to that library as well. A recent biographer states, [the Mather girls] “were Wheatley’s cohort. Some of them may have taught her, shared books or showed her how to get them...they became her first readers.”4

AS FOR YOU, YOU MEANT EVIL AGAINST ME, BUT GOD MEANT IT FOR GOOD. (GENESIS 50: 20A NASB)

As soon as she could write, Phillis began composing rhymes. At 13, “Wheatley—after hearing a miraculous saga of survival at sea—wrote ‘On Messrs. Hussey and Coffin,’ a poem which was published on 21 December 1767 in the Newport, Rhode Island, Mercury.” 5 In 1773, at age 20, Wheatley became the first African American to publish a book of poetry. After her book, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral was published, the Wheatleys finally freed their remarkable slave. Phillis used her writing to address the issues of the day. A strong supporter of the American Revolution, she wrote poems that expressed her Thoughts on Tyranny, one On General Gates praising his victory at Saratoga, and she sent one To His Excellency George Washington. Washington wrote back to her, acknowledging her kindness and talent. Phillis’ poem to George Washington was later published by Thomas Paine.

But by far the most common theme of Wheatley’s poetry was her Christian faith. Influenced by the preaching of George Whitfield, the revivalist who sparked the Great Awakening in America, it seems Phillis trusted Christ not long after arriving in America. In one of her earliest poems addressed to students at Harvard, she encouraged them to pay attention to:

The blissful news by messengers from heav’n, How Jesus’ blood for your redemption flows. See him with hands out-stretcht upon the cross; Immense compassion in his bosom glows; He hears revilers, nor resents their scorn: What matchless mercy in the Son of God!6

Some may question how a slave could embrace the faith of her masters. Phillis abhorred slavery, but she saw the hand of God in her being transported to America. In On Being Brought from Africa to America, she said, “’Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land” and introduced her to God and Savior. She undoubtedly took comfort from the ex-slave Joseph’s message to his enslavers: As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good. (Genesis 50: 20a NASB).

1 Wheatley, P. (1773). On being brought from Africa to America. In Poems on various subjects, religious and moral. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/409/409-h/409-h.htm

2 Wheatley, P. (1773). To the Right Honourable William, Earl of Dartmouth. In Poems on various subjects, religious and moral. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/409/409-h/409-h.htm

3 Graves, D. (2023, June 12). Phillis Wheatley was a slave, a Christian, and a widely-known poet. Christian History Institute. https://christianhistoryinstitute.org/it-happened-today/6/12

4 Waldstreicher, D. (2023). The odyssey of Phillis Wheatley: A poet’s journey through American Slavery and Independence. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, p. 43.

5 O’Neal, S. (n.d.). Phillis Wheatley. Poetry Foundation. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/phillis-wheatley

6 Wheatley, P. (1773). To the University of Cambridge, in New-England. In Poems on various subjects, religious and moral. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/409/409-h/409-h.htm