WEBVTT - Phillis Wheatley 0:00:01.160 --> 0:00:04.120 Welcome to steph you missed in history class from how 0:00:04.160 --> 0:00:14.280 Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. 0:00:14.360 --> 0:00:17.640 I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. So I've 0:00:17.640 --> 0:00:21.479 had the same experience multiple times over the last year 0:00:21.560 --> 0:00:24.360 or so, which is that I've been walking through museum 0:00:24.440 --> 0:00:27.680 or a library and I've seen an exhibit on Phillis 0:00:27.680 --> 0:00:31.320 Sweetly and thought we really should do a podcast episode 0:00:31.320 --> 0:00:34.840 on her now. Then that keeps happening for at least 0:00:34.880 --> 0:00:38.479 a year, while for various reasons, other topics wind up 0:00:38.520 --> 0:00:41.000 up at the top of the list. So Phillis Sweetly 0:00:41.200 --> 0:00:44.800 is somebody who's basic biography I learned about and whose 0:00:44.840 --> 0:00:47.639 work I read in school. But it was only when 0:00:47.640 --> 0:00:49.720 I got into the research for today's show that I 0:00:49.760 --> 0:00:53.239 realized how very, very incomplete a lot of that was, 0:00:54.000 --> 0:00:58.360 and how dramatically people's perceptions and their interpretations of her 0:00:58.400 --> 0:01:01.600 life and work have shifted since eighteenth century. I mean, 0:01:01.600 --> 0:01:04.640 people have thought wildly different things about Phillis Sweetly over 0:01:04.640 --> 0:01:07.920 the years. So today we are going to talk about 0:01:08.160 --> 0:01:11.040 not only Phillis Sweetly, who was one of only three 0:01:11.080 --> 0:01:14.640 people in North America to publish their work while enslaved, 0:01:15.040 --> 0:01:17.720 but also how her place in the world of literature, 0:01:17.880 --> 0:01:21.600 especially black literature, rose and then fell, and then rose 0:01:21.640 --> 0:01:25.160 again during her life and after her death. Phyllis Wheatley 0:01:25.280 --> 0:01:28.560 was likely born in what's now Senegal or the Gambia 0:01:28.640 --> 0:01:32.720 in about seventeen fifty three. We don't have details about 0:01:32.760 --> 0:01:36.040 exactly where she was from, or which African nation or 0:01:36.040 --> 0:01:40.160 people she belonged to. Even the connection to the Senegambia 0:01:40.200 --> 0:01:43.640 region is a little tenuous. The slave ship that took 0:01:43.640 --> 0:01:47.400 her to Boston, Massachusetts did stop there, but it also 0:01:47.480 --> 0:01:50.400 made several other stops in western Africa, so it's really 0:01:50.400 --> 0:01:53.960 tricky to pin down. The crew moved south along the 0:01:54.000 --> 0:01:56.520 African coast as they tried to carry out the orders 0:01:56.560 --> 0:02:00.320 of the ship's owner, Timothy Fitch, which were to quote 0:02:00.560 --> 0:02:05.440 purchase one hundred or one hundred ten prime slaves. Phillis 0:02:05.480 --> 0:02:09.720 herself did not really fit that description of quote prime slaves. 0:02:09.919 --> 0:02:12.440 She was about seven, judging by the fact that she 0:02:12.560 --> 0:02:14.960 lost her front baby teeth by the time she arrived 0:02:15.040 --> 0:02:18.120 in Boston. She was also small, and she was in 0:02:18.200 --> 0:02:21.960 poor health. She probably would not have been purchased during 0:02:21.960 --> 0:02:25.280 the ship's first stops in Africa. But only later on 0:02:25.480 --> 0:02:27.800 and a final attempt for the crew to fill that 0:02:27.919 --> 0:02:31.280 quota they'd been given. The ship finally departed with ninety 0:02:31.400 --> 0:02:35.320 five enslaved Africans aboard, so Phillis may have been from 0:02:35.360 --> 0:02:39.000 farther south along the African coast, possibly as far south 0:02:39.120 --> 0:02:43.680 as Sierra Leone. We also don't know what Phillis Wheatley's 0:02:43.800 --> 0:02:46.919 name was before she was taken from Africa, or even 0:02:46.960 --> 0:02:50.000 what language it was in the ship she was aboard. 0:02:50.200 --> 0:02:52.799 Arrived in Boston, as we mentioned, and that happened on 0:02:52.919 --> 0:02:57.080 July eleven, seventeen sixty one, with seventy five enslaved Africans 0:02:57.120 --> 0:03:01.600 still living after the eight week transatlantic journey. In August, 0:03:01.800 --> 0:03:05.160 John and Susannah Wheatley purchased her, and they named her 0:03:05.200 --> 0:03:07.400 after the ship they bought her from, which was called 0:03:07.400 --> 0:03:12.200 the Charming Phyllis, also known simply as Phyllis. By the 0:03:12.200 --> 0:03:15.280 time the ship arrived in Boston, Phillis herself was in 0:03:15.360 --> 0:03:18.080 poor enough health that she was considered to be refuse, 0:03:18.480 --> 0:03:21.000 which was the term that was used for enslaved people 0:03:21.040 --> 0:03:23.960 who were too old, sick, or injured to be sailable. 0:03:24.560 --> 0:03:28.040 Charles J. Stratford, who was descended from one of Susannah 0:03:28.040 --> 0:03:32.520 Wheatley's relatives described it this way. Quote In or about 0:03:32.560 --> 0:03:35.680 the year seventeen sixty one, a slave ship arrived in 0:03:35.720 --> 0:03:39.120 Boston Harbor with the cargo of slaves. Aunt Wheatley was 0:03:39.160 --> 0:03:42.080 in want of a domestic. She went on board to purchase, 0:03:42.240 --> 0:03:45.080 and looking through the ship's company of living freight, her 0:03:45.120 --> 0:03:48.760 attention was drawn to that of a slender, frail female child, 0:03:49.080 --> 0:03:52.920 which at once enlisted her sympathies. Owing to the frailty 0:03:52.960 --> 0:03:55.720 of the child, she procured her for a trifle, as 0:03:55.720 --> 0:03:58.600 the captain had fears of her dropping off his hands 0:03:59.040 --> 0:04:04.080 without emolument by death. John Wheatley was a prosperous tailor 0:04:04.160 --> 0:04:07.520 and merchant, and he and his wife Susannah had twin children, 0:04:07.640 --> 0:04:10.640 Mary and Nathaniel, who were about eighteen at the time, 0:04:11.400 --> 0:04:14.720 and the family quickly realized that Phillis was really bright. 0:04:15.440 --> 0:04:19.159 John and Susannah gave their children, especially Mary, permission to 0:04:19.240 --> 0:04:23.400 tutor her. By the age of about nine, just two 0:04:23.480 --> 0:04:26.680 years after she arrived in Boston, Phyllis had learned how 0:04:26.680 --> 0:04:30.039 to speak, read, and write in English. In addition to 0:04:30.120 --> 0:04:34.400 doing extensive Bible study, she also started learning Latin and Greek, 0:04:34.640 --> 0:04:39.279 including translating part of Avid's Metamorphoses, expanding it into the 0:04:39.320 --> 0:04:43.200 poem Naobian Distress for her children Slain by Apollo. Later on, 0:04:44.240 --> 0:04:48.880 she also studied literature, history, geography, and astronomy, and she 0:04:49.000 --> 0:04:53.159 also read lots and lots of poetry. Her work is 0:04:53.200 --> 0:04:57.240 most often compared to English neo classical poet Alexander Pope, 0:04:57.279 --> 0:04:59.560 but she read the work of other poets, including some 0:04:59.600 --> 0:05:03.240 from the colonies. One of these was Mather Byles, whose 0:05:03.279 --> 0:05:07.680 seventeen forty four poems on Various Occasions may have inspired 0:05:07.720 --> 0:05:11.320 the structure and arrangement of Phillis's own book. She was 0:05:11.400 --> 0:05:13.720 so voracious in her education that she was allowed to 0:05:13.760 --> 0:05:16.440 spend more time in study than in domestic labor at 0:05:16.440 --> 0:05:19.560 the Wheatly home. This was well before the rise of 0:05:19.640 --> 0:05:22.800 anti literacy slave codes, which were passed and most of 0:05:22.839 --> 0:05:25.479 the South in the early nineteenth century and made it 0:05:25.520 --> 0:05:28.560 illegal to teach enslaved people to read and write. But 0:05:28.640 --> 0:05:31.760 even so in the eighteenth century it was not typical 0:05:31.960 --> 0:05:35.800 at all to educate enslaved people. Even though she had 0:05:35.880 --> 0:05:39.920 no formal education. Phillis Wheatley's tutoring and her self study 0:05:40.040 --> 0:05:42.800 also went well beyond what would have been expected for 0:05:42.839 --> 0:05:47.520 eighteenth century white women. In seventeen sixty seven, two men 0:05:47.640 --> 0:05:50.839 from Nantucket visited the Wheatly home and they told a 0:05:50.880 --> 0:05:53.520 story about how they had been sailing there from Boston 0:05:53.600 --> 0:05:57.680 when a storm struck their ship. They had narrowly escaped disaster. 0:05:58.440 --> 0:06:01.560 Phillis overheard their conversation and she wrote a poem about it, 0:06:01.600 --> 0:06:05.400 which became her first published work on Mrs Hussey and Coffin, 0:06:05.800 --> 0:06:08.320 and that was printed in the December twenty one, seventeen 0:06:08.360 --> 0:06:11.680 sixty seven edition of the Newport, Rhode Island Mercury. She 0:06:11.839 --> 0:06:16.200 was fourteen at the time. By seventeen seventy, so just 0:06:16.240 --> 0:06:19.720 a few years later, tensions were rising between Britain and 0:06:19.760 --> 0:06:24.680 its colonies. Although the Wheatly family were by all accounts loyalists, 0:06:24.760 --> 0:06:28.599 meaning that they were loyal to Britain, Phyllis's sympathies were 0:06:28.640 --> 0:06:32.160 with the Patriots cause. She attended church at the Old 0:06:32.200 --> 0:06:34.839 South Meeting House, which is a place that comes up 0:06:34.839 --> 0:06:38.120 over and over again in stories about the Revolutionary War, 0:06:38.800 --> 0:06:42.440 and in seventeen seventies she wrote two poems about relevant 0:06:42.480 --> 0:06:45.040 events of the day that made it really clear which 0:06:45.080 --> 0:06:47.919 side she was on the first, on the death of 0:06:48.000 --> 0:06:51.640 Mr Snyder murdered by Richardson. She describes the murder of 0:06:51.640 --> 0:06:54.599 a boy named Christopher Snyder or Cider at the hands 0:06:54.640 --> 0:06:59.560 of customs officer Ebenezer Richardson. In this poem, she describes 0:06:59.600 --> 0:07:03.000 Christopher her as a murdyr. The second is on the 0:07:03.040 --> 0:07:05.640 affray in King Street on the evening of the fifth 0:07:05.640 --> 0:07:10.080 of March seventeen seventy. It's not completely clear whether the 0:07:10.160 --> 0:07:13.800 second one, which is obviously about the Boston massacre, has survived. 0:07:14.400 --> 0:07:16.560 There is a poem with that name that was published 0:07:16.800 --> 0:07:20.320 in the Boston Evening Post on March twelfth, seventeen seventy, 0:07:20.360 --> 0:07:22.920 but it was not signed, and while some critics say 0:07:22.920 --> 0:07:26.960 it's the same poem, others are not so sure. That 0:07:27.040 --> 0:07:29.520 was a pretty common way of describing the Boston massacre, 0:07:29.560 --> 0:07:32.960 which is why it's believable that two different poets could 0:07:32.960 --> 0:07:35.680 have written a poem about it with roughly the same title. 0:07:36.880 --> 0:07:39.560 It was also in seventeen seventy that Phyllis Wheetlely wrote 0:07:39.600 --> 0:07:42.320 the poem that would make her famous. This was called 0:07:42.600 --> 0:07:46.080 an Elegaic Poem on the death of that celebrated divine 0:07:46.200 --> 0:07:49.720 and eminent servant of Jesus Christ, the Reverend and Learning 0:07:49.880 --> 0:07:53.920 George Whitefield. Whitefield was an Anglican deacon who toward the 0:07:53.920 --> 0:07:57.200 colonies that employed a style of preaching that was incredibly 0:07:57.320 --> 0:08:01.400 dynamic and charismatic. He was really instrumental in the religious 0:08:01.400 --> 0:08:05.080 revival that was known as the Great Awakening. How to say, 0:08:05.080 --> 0:08:10.440 these are not the snappiest poem titles. They all tend 0:08:10.440 --> 0:08:13.640 to run a little long. Uh. Phillis wrote the elegy 0:08:14.000 --> 0:08:18.560 shortly after Whitefield died on September seventeen seventy. It was 0:08:18.600 --> 0:08:22.480 first circulated as a pamphlet in cities like Boston and Philadelphia. 0:08:23.160 --> 0:08:25.760 In seventeen seventy one, it was reprinted along with the 0:08:25.800 --> 0:08:29.680 funeral sermon that Ebenezer Pemberton had delivered on October eleventh, 0:08:29.800 --> 0:08:34.480 seventeen seventy. This reprinting gave Wheatley an audience on both 0:08:34.520 --> 0:08:37.200 sides of the Atlantic, especially after she sent a copy 0:08:37.240 --> 0:08:41.000 to Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon. In addition to his 0:08:41.080 --> 0:08:44.040 preaching tours in the colonies, white Field had been the 0:08:44.080 --> 0:08:49.160 Countess's personal chaplain. Almost instantly, Phillis Wheetley became the most 0:08:49.240 --> 0:08:52.839 famous African in Britain and its colonies, very well known 0:08:52.880 --> 0:08:55.360 as a poet, and we will talk about what followed 0:08:55.400 --> 0:08:58.920 and the now famous Phillis Wheatley's writing career. After a 0:08:59.040 --> 0:09:08.200 quick sponsor, Phillis sweetly kept writing new poems in the 0:09:08.200 --> 0:09:11.680 early seventeen seventies. Although some of them were published in 0:09:11.760 --> 0:09:14.800 pamphlets and newspapers, she didn't really want to just scatter 0:09:14.920 --> 0:09:17.880 them all around, publishing them and lots of different places. 0:09:18.240 --> 0:09:21.080 She wanted to publish them together in a book, and 0:09:21.120 --> 0:09:23.920 by seventeen seventy two she had written enough to do it. 0:09:24.520 --> 0:09:27.560 But to fund this book's publication, she needed to find 0:09:27.640 --> 0:09:31.280 subscribers to commit to buying the work in advance. I 0:09:31.280 --> 0:09:34.599 imagine this as sort of a colonial version of Kickstarter. 0:09:36.040 --> 0:09:38.880 Either she or Susanna Wheatley, you're possibly both of them, 0:09:38.920 --> 0:09:43.520 working together, started placing advertisements for this forthcoming book, with 0:09:43.600 --> 0:09:48.720 Ezekiel Russell as its printer, but sometime that summer Phillis 0:09:48.760 --> 0:09:52.640 turned her attention to publishing in England instead. The reasons 0:09:52.640 --> 0:09:55.360 for this are not entirely clear. There are a number 0:09:55.360 --> 0:09:57.680 of accounts that claim that she wasn't able to find 0:09:57.760 --> 0:10:00.880 enough subscribers in the colonies, but They don't really cite 0:10:00.880 --> 0:10:04.800 primary sources for that, but there is a seventeen seventy 0:10:04.840 --> 0:10:08.480 three letter from one of her subscribers, John Andrews of Boston, 0:10:08.840 --> 0:10:12.760 who suggested that it was really for financial reasons. Basically 0:10:12.960 --> 0:10:16.440 she was getting better terms from a London press. The 0:10:16.760 --> 0:10:21.120 not enough subscribers argument usually comes along with the explanation 0:10:21.200 --> 0:10:24.080 that racism was the root cause of her not finding 0:10:24.120 --> 0:10:27.359 an audience in the colonies. And this was not racism 0:10:27.520 --> 0:10:30.760 as in white readers maliciously not wanting to read the 0:10:30.760 --> 0:10:34.080 work of a black person. It was really racism, as 0:10:34.120 --> 0:10:37.880 in white readers disbelieving that a black person could have 0:10:38.040 --> 0:10:42.320 even written it. For the institution of slavery to exist 0:10:42.440 --> 0:10:44.640 the way that it did in the American colonies, it 0:10:44.679 --> 0:10:47.959 had to rest on the idea that Africans were less 0:10:47.960 --> 0:10:52.400 than human and were inherently less intelligent than Europeans. So 0:10:52.440 --> 0:10:55.240 there were definitely people on both sides of the Atlantic 0:10:55.280 --> 0:10:58.559 who thought that Wheatley's poems must be some kind of fraud. 0:10:59.800 --> 0:11:02.400 We we dealt with this by getting some of Boston's 0:11:02.440 --> 0:11:06.440 most prominent men to sign an attestation that she really 0:11:06.559 --> 0:11:10.120 was the author of her own poems. This included Massachusetts 0:11:10.160 --> 0:11:15.800 Governor Thomas Hutchinson, Lieutenant Governor Andrew Oliver, the Reverend Mother Biles, 0:11:15.840 --> 0:11:19.440 and the Reverend Samuel, mother nephew and son of Cotton Mother, 0:11:20.040 --> 0:11:24.720 the Reverend Charles Chauncey, and John Hancock. A copy of 0:11:24.720 --> 0:11:30.320 this attestation, dated October seventeen seventy two, appeared in Lloyd's 0:11:30.360 --> 0:11:34.160 Evening Post and British Chronicle in September of the following year, 0:11:34.640 --> 0:11:37.400 and a slightly reworded version of it was part of 0:11:37.400 --> 0:11:40.160 Wheatley's first book as well. And here's what the book 0:11:40.280 --> 0:11:44.960 version said. Quote, we whose names are underwritten do assure 0:11:45.080 --> 0:11:48.840 the world that the poems specified in the following page were, 0:11:49.280 --> 0:11:52.720 as we verily believe, written by Phillis, a young Negro 0:11:52.840 --> 0:11:56.719 girl who but a few years since brought an uncultivated 0:11:56.760 --> 0:12:01.200 barbarian from Africa, has ever since been and now is 0:12:01.440 --> 0:12:04.200 under the disadvantage of serving as a slave and a 0:12:04.240 --> 0:12:07.600 family in this town. She has been examined by some 0:12:07.679 --> 0:12:12.560 of the best judges, and is thought qualified to write them. 0:12:12.559 --> 0:12:15.720 Although it's become part of the popular lure about Phyllis 0:12:15.760 --> 0:12:18.960 Wheatley that this took place, there's no actual evidence that 0:12:19.040 --> 0:12:22.600 the undersigned men actually met in a group and interrogated 0:12:22.640 --> 0:12:25.520 her about her work. There's even a children's book that 0:12:25.800 --> 0:12:28.600 hinges on this supposed meeting. It's actually a much more 0:12:28.640 --> 0:12:31.120 likely scenario that there was a big meeting that was 0:12:31.240 --> 0:12:35.160 documented to have happened on October um, and that she 0:12:35.240 --> 0:12:38.360 took advantage of this gathering of prominent men to stop 0:12:38.360 --> 0:12:41.520 by and and say, hey, would you please sign this 0:12:41.600 --> 0:12:43.720 at a station that I actually wrote my own work. 0:12:45.240 --> 0:12:48.000 This at of station was not the only step that 0:12:48.120 --> 0:12:50.560 she took and getting her book published in England, and 0:12:50.559 --> 0:12:53.319 in getting people to believe that she had really written 0:12:53.400 --> 0:12:56.560 what was in the book. She also wrote to William Legg, 0:12:56.679 --> 0:12:59.720 the Earl of Dartmouth, in October of seventeen seventy two, 0:12:59.840 --> 0:13:02.240 sending him a copy of a poem she had written 0:13:02.280 --> 0:13:05.760 about him. The Earl had just been named Secretary of 0:13:05.800 --> 0:13:08.920 State for the Colonies, and she both celebrated his appointment 0:13:09.000 --> 0:13:13.840 in the poem and included another attestation of her authenticity, 0:13:13.880 --> 0:13:18.080 this one signed by Nathaniel Wheatley. Phillis also made a 0:13:18.120 --> 0:13:22.400 third connection to Selina Hastings, the Countess of Huntingdon, the 0:13:22.440 --> 0:13:25.559 one whose personal chaplain had been the Reverend George Whitefield, 0:13:26.160 --> 0:13:29.760 the Countess, Lord Dartmouth, and Susannah Wheatley were all connected 0:13:29.840 --> 0:13:33.079 through the Countess of Huntingdon's Connection, which was a network 0:13:33.120 --> 0:13:37.880 of evangelical churches and chapels. Phillis dedicated her manuscript to 0:13:37.960 --> 0:13:41.440 the Countess, who advocated for its publication in England through 0:13:41.480 --> 0:13:46.400 publisher Archibald Bill. Accompanied by Nathaniel Wheatley, Phillis went to 0:13:46.480 --> 0:13:49.840 London in seventeen seventy three to oversee the publication of 0:13:49.880 --> 0:13:53.120 her book. Sometimes this trip is also described as being 0:13:53.160 --> 0:13:56.200 for the sake of her health. She was definitely there 0:13:56.200 --> 0:13:59.400 to work on the book. By this point she'd established 0:13:59.440 --> 0:14:01.880 such a name for herself that she had a huge 0:14:02.080 --> 0:14:04.960 list of notable people to visit. Probably the name that 0:14:04.960 --> 0:14:09.560 people would be most likely to recognize today is Benjamin Franklin, 0:14:09.600 --> 0:14:12.680 who was at the time in London. If you've listened 0:14:12.720 --> 0:14:15.720 to the Dido Elizabeth Bell's segment of our episode three 0:14:15.760 --> 0:14:19.800 Astonishing Bells, you'll recall that we talked about the Somerset Case, 0:14:20.080 --> 0:14:22.680 and this was a court case decided in seventeen seventy 0:14:22.720 --> 0:14:26.280 two in which Lord Mansfield ruled that an enslaved person 0:14:26.400 --> 0:14:30.120 brought to England could not be sold back into slavery. 0:14:30.320 --> 0:14:33.480 In some places, this was interpreted as freeing all slaves 0:14:33.480 --> 0:14:36.600 in England, which it didn't really do, but it did 0:14:36.680 --> 0:14:39.800 mean that when Phillis Wheatley arrived in London the following year, 0:14:40.480 --> 0:14:43.600 under English law, she could not be forced back into slavery. 0:14:44.240 --> 0:14:46.880 It's possible that this is one of the reasons that 0:14:46.920 --> 0:14:50.040 she decided to publish her book in England rather than 0:14:50.080 --> 0:14:53.480 in the colonies. People in Boston definitely knew about the 0:14:53.520 --> 0:14:56.960 Somerset case by the time she made that decision. Fellows 0:14:56.960 --> 0:15:00.440 sweet Lee's first and only published book, which was Poems 0:15:00.480 --> 0:15:04.240 on various subjects religious and moral, was published on September one, 0:15:04.360 --> 0:15:07.840 seventeen seventy three. This is the first published volume of 0:15:07.840 --> 0:15:10.880 poetry by an African woman in the English speaking world. 0:15:12.000 --> 0:15:15.760 It included that attestation of her authenticity that we read earlier, 0:15:15.960 --> 0:15:19.480 along with a letter from John Wheatley briefly detailing where 0:15:19.520 --> 0:15:21.960 she came from and how she had been educated, and 0:15:22.000 --> 0:15:25.760 concluding quote relation is given by her master, who bought 0:15:25.760 --> 0:15:28.920 her and with whom she now lives. The book's frontispiece 0:15:29.040 --> 0:15:32.040 featured a portrait of her ringed in the words Phillis 0:15:32.040 --> 0:15:35.840 Wheatley negro servant to Mr John Wheatley of Boston. That 0:15:36.040 --> 0:15:40.480 portrait is likely the work of enslaved African painter Scipio Moorehead, 0:15:40.600 --> 0:15:44.000 who was also the subject of Wheatley's poem to s M. 0:15:44.200 --> 0:15:47.520 A young African painter, on seeing his works. If you're 0:15:47.560 --> 0:15:51.160 wondering about that wording of negro servant, A lot of 0:15:51.160 --> 0:15:54.760 people who were enslaved were referred to as servants, especially 0:15:54.880 --> 0:16:00.000 in England and New England. A few weeks after Phillis 0:16:00.080 --> 0:16:04.000 arrived in England, Susannah Wheatley became seriously ill, and Phillis 0:16:04.040 --> 0:16:07.800 returned to Massachusetts to attend to her. Her ship arrived 0:16:07.800 --> 0:16:11.800 on September sixteenth, seventeen seventy three. Four days later, the 0:16:11.840 --> 0:16:15.720 Boston Gazette noted her arrival among notable passengers aboard her ship, 0:16:16.200 --> 0:16:21.840 calling her an extraordinary poetical genius. At some point not 0:16:22.000 --> 0:16:25.440 long after that, Phillis was manumented by the Wheatlies, and 0:16:25.480 --> 0:16:29.680 a letter to David Wooster dated October eighteenth, seventeen seventy three, 0:16:29.760 --> 0:16:34.040 she wrote, quote, since my return to America, my master has, 0:16:34.080 --> 0:16:36.600 at the desire of my friends in England, given me 0:16:36.680 --> 0:16:40.800 my freedom Her book had received at least nine reviews 0:16:40.840 --> 0:16:43.640 in British papers, and many of those reviews had really 0:16:43.680 --> 0:16:47.840 condemned the Wheatlies continued enslavement of her. So, even though 0:16:47.880 --> 0:16:50.360 she could really not have been forced to return to 0:16:50.440 --> 0:16:53.840 slavery under the Somerset ruling, after having been in England, 0:16:54.120 --> 0:16:57.200 the wheat Laves made that official. Phillis also took the 0:16:57.240 --> 0:17:01.320 precautionary step of sending a copy of her manumission papers 0:17:01.320 --> 0:17:03.880 to a contact she had in London for safe keeping. 0:17:05.040 --> 0:17:06.840 We're going to talk about what we know of Phillis 0:17:06.840 --> 0:17:09.960 Wheatley's life as a free woman, including a famous exchange 0:17:10.000 --> 0:17:12.600 with George Washington, but we're gonna first take a little 0:17:12.600 --> 0:17:21.520 sponsor break. By the time Phillis Swheetlely returned from England, 0:17:21.560 --> 0:17:25.639 the Colonies were definitely headed toward war with Britain. That was, 0:17:25.680 --> 0:17:30.200 of course, the Revolutionary War. George Washington was named Commander 0:17:30.200 --> 0:17:33.680 in Chief of the Continental Army on June nineteenth, seventeen 0:17:33.760 --> 0:17:37.120 seventy five, and on October twenty six of that year, 0:17:37.160 --> 0:17:39.679 Phillis Sweetley sent him a poem she had written in 0:17:39.720 --> 0:17:43.919 his honor, along with a letter. The letter read quote, 0:17:44.440 --> 0:17:47.199 I have taken the freedom to address your excellency in 0:17:47.320 --> 0:17:50.520 the enclosed poem and intreat your acceptance, though I am 0:17:50.560 --> 0:17:54.760 not insensible of its inaccuracies. You're being appointed by the 0:17:54.760 --> 0:17:58.040 Grand Continental Congress to be General Lissimo of the Armies 0:17:58.080 --> 0:18:02.680 of North America. Together, the fame of your virtues excite sensations. 0:18:02.720 --> 0:18:07.120 Not easy to suppress your generosity. Therefore, I presume will 0:18:07.160 --> 0:18:11.320 pardon the attempt, wishing your excellency all possible success in 0:18:11.359 --> 0:18:15.480 the great cause you are so generously engaged in. This 0:18:15.640 --> 0:18:20.119 poem ends with the widely quoted lines, Proceed great chief, 0:18:20.240 --> 0:18:23.800 with virtue on thy side. By every action, let the 0:18:23.840 --> 0:18:27.399 Goddess guide a crown, a mansion, and a throne that 0:18:27.560 --> 0:18:33.720 shine with gold unfading. Washington be thine that Washington is 0:18:33.760 --> 0:18:39.199 in all caps. Washington's reply, dated February tenth of the 0:18:39.240 --> 0:18:42.440 following year, began with an apology for taking so long 0:18:42.480 --> 0:18:45.359 to answer. It then went on to say, quote the 0:18:45.480 --> 0:18:48.520 style and manner exhibit a striking proof of your great 0:18:48.520 --> 0:18:52.040 poetical talents, in honor of which, and as a tribute 0:18:52.080 --> 0:18:55.159 justly due to you, I would have published the poem 0:18:55.240 --> 0:18:58.360 had I not been apprehensive that while I only meant 0:18:58.400 --> 0:19:00.840 to give the world this new instance of your genius. 0:19:01.200 --> 0:19:04.840 I might have incurred the imputation of vanity. This and 0:19:04.920 --> 0:19:07.840 nothing else determined me not to give it place in 0:19:07.880 --> 0:19:11.000 the public prints. If you should ever come to Cambridge 0:19:11.080 --> 0:19:13.560 or near headquarters, I shall be happy to see a 0:19:13.600 --> 0:19:16.480 person so favored by the muses and to whom nature 0:19:16.520 --> 0:19:20.159 has been so liberal and beneficent in her dispensations. I 0:19:20.240 --> 0:19:26.640 am with great respect, etcetera, etcetera. They're historians are divided 0:19:26.680 --> 0:19:30.240 about whether she actually met George Washington and Cambridge. But 0:19:30.280 --> 0:19:32.359 it cracks me up that this letter is basically like 0:19:32.520 --> 0:19:35.400 I would have published this incredibly flattering poem you wrote 0:19:35.400 --> 0:19:40.240 about me, but then people might think I'm vain. Perhaps 0:19:40.280 --> 0:19:43.879 to get around that accusation of vanity, George Washington also 0:19:43.920 --> 0:19:47.600 sent the poem to Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Reid and closing 0:19:47.600 --> 0:19:50.040 it in a letter that talked about all kinds of 0:19:50.040 --> 0:19:55.160 other various unrelated matters before concluding quote, I recollect nothing 0:19:55.200 --> 0:19:57.919 else worth giving you the trouble of unless you can 0:19:57.960 --> 0:20:00.760 be amused by reading a letter and pol addressed to 0:20:00.800 --> 0:20:04.120 me by Mrs or Miss Phyllis Wheatley and searching over 0:20:04.160 --> 0:20:06.679 a parcel of papers the other day, in order to 0:20:06.800 --> 0:20:10.280 destroy such as were useless. I brought it to light again. 0:20:10.840 --> 0:20:13.280 At first with a view of doing justice to her 0:20:13.320 --> 0:20:16.920 great poetical genius. I had a great mind to publish 0:20:16.960 --> 0:20:20.159 the poem, but not knowing whether it might be considered 0:20:20.280 --> 0:20:23.680 rather as a mark of my own vanity than as 0:20:23.680 --> 0:20:26.879 a compliment to her, I laid it aside until I 0:20:26.960 --> 0:20:31.960 came across it again in the manner just mentioned. Lieutenant 0:20:31.960 --> 0:20:36.000 Colonel Reid apparently took the hint. The poem was published 0:20:36.000 --> 0:20:39.840 in Pennsylvania Magazine in April of seventeen seventy six, and 0:20:39.920 --> 0:20:44.120 other publications picked it up from there. With the onset 0:20:44.119 --> 0:20:47.520 of the Revolutionary War, things got a lot more difficult 0:20:47.560 --> 0:20:51.639 for Phyllis Wheatley. Susannah Wheatley had died on March third, 0:20:51.760 --> 0:20:55.520 seventeen seventy four. Then Nathaniel Wheatley had actually died a 0:20:55.600 --> 0:20:59.399 year before. His mother, Mary and John Wheatley both died 0:20:59.480 --> 0:21:04.040 in seventy seventy eight, So the Wheatly's had kept Phillis 0:21:04.119 --> 0:21:07.560 in bondage, but they'd also essentially been filling the role 0:21:07.640 --> 0:21:11.520 of her patrons. Without their support, she had trouble selling 0:21:11.560 --> 0:21:14.920 poems and making ends meet, especially since the war meant 0:21:14.960 --> 0:21:19.399 that reader's attention was really focused on other matters. On 0:21:19.480 --> 0:21:23.680 April one, seventy eight, Phyllis Wheatly and a free black 0:21:23.720 --> 0:21:27.800 man named John Peters announced their engagement. They married on 0:21:27.880 --> 0:21:32.320 Thanksgiving Day of that year, which was November six. Most 0:21:32.359 --> 0:21:35.879 biographers have not been very kind to John Peters. That 0:21:36.040 --> 0:21:38.320 kind of paint him as a shiftless man who could 0:21:38.320 --> 0:21:41.720 not get his act together, But in reality, things were 0:21:41.840 --> 0:21:45.640 extremely difficult for free black people in New England during 0:21:45.640 --> 0:21:49.160 the Revolutionary War. Jobs were hard to find, the pay 0:21:49.320 --> 0:21:52.160 was often so low that it wasn't enough to live on. 0:21:52.720 --> 0:21:55.600 So John Peters tried his hand at running a grocery 0:21:55.720 --> 0:21:58.119 and a bakery in a saloon, but he just was 0:21:58.200 --> 0:22:01.720 not able to get a stable, finding antil footing under him. 0:22:01.760 --> 0:22:04.440 He also referred to himself as a doctor and at 0:22:04.480 --> 0:22:07.399 one point practice law, and some biographers have made a 0:22:07.440 --> 0:22:09.119 great big deal of the fact that he didn't have 0:22:09.160 --> 0:22:12.240 a license to do either of those, even though there 0:22:12.440 --> 0:22:15.400 was not a licensing body that he could have applied 0:22:15.400 --> 0:22:18.400 to you at the time, Yeah, that was pretty common 0:22:18.440 --> 0:22:22.600 practice this in this for people to hang out their 0:22:22.600 --> 0:22:26.200 shingle and say they were a professional in a field 0:22:26.240 --> 0:22:29.560 where today we would have a lot more um paperwork 0:22:29.760 --> 0:22:33.680 and applications and approvals before you could use those words. 0:22:33.960 --> 0:22:37.720 For sure, that is not exclusive to John Peters at all. 0:22:39.240 --> 0:22:41.560 We really don't know much at all about the last 0:22:41.600 --> 0:22:44.200 few years of Phillis Wheatley's life, except that they seem 0:22:44.280 --> 0:22:48.000 to have been lived in poverty. John Peters wound up 0:22:48.000 --> 0:22:50.679 in and out of jail for debt, and Phillis may 0:22:50.720 --> 0:22:53.359 have had as many as three children, although there are 0:22:53.400 --> 0:22:56.920 no records kept of their births or deaths. She died, 0:22:57.040 --> 0:23:00.280 most likely due to complications from childbirth, on this number 0:23:00.320 --> 0:23:03.879 five sev four, at the age of thirty one, with 0:23:03.960 --> 0:23:08.080 most sources agreeing that her newborn died on that same day. 0:23:08.359 --> 0:23:11.640 Before she died, Phillis sweetly had written a second book, 0:23:11.760 --> 0:23:14.639 which she had tried to publish in seventeen seventy nine, 0:23:14.760 --> 0:23:18.200 but she couldn't find sufficient subscribers to do it again. 0:23:18.280 --> 0:23:22.920 This was during the Revolutionary War. It was difficult. That 0:23:23.000 --> 0:23:27.840 manuscript unfortunately has been lost. John Peters does seem to 0:23:27.880 --> 0:23:31.160 have gotten his financial worries straightened out after the war 0:23:31.280 --> 0:23:34.000 was over and led an upstanding life from that point. 0:23:34.760 --> 0:23:36.920 He is the last person known to have had access 0:23:36.960 --> 0:23:39.680 to that manuscript. He may have taken it with him 0:23:39.760 --> 0:23:43.359 when he eventually left Boston, but exactly where he went 0:23:43.560 --> 0:23:46.439 or what happened to the manuscript is just not clear. 0:23:47.680 --> 0:23:52.000 Fifty seven of Phyllis's poems survived today. Forty six of 0:23:52.040 --> 0:23:56.240 them were published during her lifetime. In nine six, what 0:23:56.400 --> 0:23:59.119 was believed to be her last poem was unearthed. That 0:23:59.240 --> 0:24:02.320 was titled an Elegy on Leaving, and it was published 0:24:02.600 --> 0:24:06.080 in Armenian Magazine, which would later become Methodist Magazine, in 0:24:06.200 --> 0:24:11.240 July four. This magazine was edited by John Wesley, the 0:24:11.280 --> 0:24:14.240 founder of Methodism, and it seems as though whoever sent 0:24:14.320 --> 0:24:18.679 the poem to him incorrectly attributed it. According to research 0:24:18.760 --> 0:24:22.040