BY THE AGE OF TWENTY, WHEN HER BOOK OF POETRY WAS PUBLISHED, PHILLIS WHEATLEY WAS WELL KNOWN TO SOME OF THE FOUNDING FATHERS OF THIS NEW AMERICAN NATION. SHE MET GEORGE WASHINGTON, BENJAMIN FRNAKLIN AND JOHN HANCOCK. NAVAL HERO JOHN PAUL JONES SENT A NOTE WITH SOME OF HIS OWN WRITINGS TO “THE CELEBRATED PHILLIS, THE AFRICAN FAVORITE OF THE NINE MUSES AND APOLLO.”
Her most significant encounter with one of the Founding Fathers was with a man she never met. Thomas Jefferson’s stinging rebuke of Phillis Wheatley would have the most enduring impact.
According to Wheatley scholar William Robinson in 1981, “”Jefferson owned a copy of her 1773 volume of poems where her name is spelled correctly.”
Thomas Jefferson’s unfortunate, grossly unscientific and profoundly unfair criticism of the capacities of African American slaves placed the heavy burden of legitimacy on a patently false notion that would poison the American view of black achievement for the next two hundred years. It was the myth of black inferiority.
In his book NOTES ON THE STATE OF VIRGINIA (1781), Jefferson recorded his observations of African Americans.
“Comparing them by their faculties of memory, reason, and imagination, it appears to me, that in memory they are equal to the whites; in reason much inferior, as think one could scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid; and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous.”
Thomas Jefferson’s limited experience in meaningful conversation with his own slaves allowed him to reach the absurd conclusion that the men and women he owned as slaved were simpletons.
“But never yet could I find that a black had uttered a thought above the level of plain narration,” he wrote.
Jefferson’s low opinion of African American’s verbal ability came to define the future evaluation of Phillis Wheatley and her poetry.
Jefferson dismissed the writing of Phillis Wheatley. He never gave any indication that he read or evaluated a single one of her poems. Even though he owned a copy of her book with her name printed clearly and accurately, he misspelled her name the one time he mentioned it.
“Misery is often the parent of the most affecting touches in poetry,” Jefferson wrote. “Among the blacks is misery enough, God knows, but not poetry. Love is the peculiar rostrum of the poet. Their love is ardent, but it kindles the senses only, not the imagination. Religion indeed has produced a Phyllis Whately (JEFFERSON’S INCORRECT SPELLING). But it could not produce a poet.”
Thomas Jefferson’s final verdict was: “The compositions published under her name are below the dignity of criticism.”
Clearly, Jefferson was blinded by his own bias. “I advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind.”
It was a tragic mistake that took two hundred years to correct.
Phillis Wheatley had her supporters who did not share Jefferson’s white supremacist views.
A Boston merchant named John Andrews was excited about receiving his copy of Wheatley’s POEMS. A personal letter of his has been found where lets a friend know about his enthusiasm for the poet and her work. On January 28, 1774, he wrote: “At last got Phillis’ poems in print…These don’t seem to be near all her productions. She’s an artful jade (slang for young woman) and intends to have the benefit of another volume.”
Benjamin Rush, another of the nation’s Founding Fathers, signer of the Declaration of Independence and member of the Continental Congress, disagreed with Jefferson’s low opinion of Phillis Wheatley. He wrote glowingly of her talent and the pleasure she gives her readers.
“There is now in the town of Boston,” he wrote, “a free negro girl about 18 years of age, who has been but 9 years in the country, whose singular genius and accomplishments are such as not only do honor to her s*x but to human nature. Several of her poems have been printed and read with pleasure by the public.”
Dr. Henry Louis Gates makes the effort to put Jefferson’s racist views in perspective.
“No Founding Father has been the subject of more speeches, essays and books in the African-American tradition than Thomas Jefferson,” he wrote. “No other figure has been more reviled yet, paradoxically, more revered; and no other figure has had a greater shaping impact upon both the discourse of black rights and the evolution of the African-American literary tradition than Thomas Jefferson.”
Dr. Gates makes the astounding assertion that: “If Phillis Wheatley was the mother of African-American literature, there is a sense in which Thomas Jefferson can be thought of as its midwife. Blacks took on Jefferson’s challenge immediately following the Revolution.”
“Jefferson’s comments about the role of their literature,” said Gates, “became the strongest motivation for blacks to create a body of literature that would implicitly prove Jefferson wrong. This is Wheatley’s and Jefferson’s curious legacy in American Literature.”
Today, the fact that the exquisite poetry of Phillis Wheatley is now required reading in college courses stands as the ultimate rebuke to Thomas Jefferson’s bigoted judgments and failed effort to silence a voice of eternal, glowing beauty.
ON THE DEATH OF A YOUNG LADY OF FIVE
YEARS OF AGE.
FROM dark abodes to fair, etherial light,
The enraptured innocent has winged her flight;
On the kind bosom of eternal love
She finds unknown beatitude above.
This know, ye parents, nor her loss deplore,
She feels the iron hand of pain no more;
The dispensations of unerring grace
Should turn your sorrows into grateful praise;
Let then no tears for her henceforward flow,
No more distressed in our dark vale below.
Her morning sun, which rose divinely bright,
Was quickly mantled with the gloom of night;
But hear in heaven's blest bowers your Nancy fair,
And learn to imitate her language there.
"Thou, Lord, whom I behold with glory crowned,
"By what sweet name, and in what tuneful sound
"Wilt thou be praised? Seraphic powers are faint,
"Infinite love and majesty to paint.
"To thee let all their grateful voices raise,
"And saints and angels join their songs of praise."
Perfect in bliss, she, from her heavenly home,
Looks down, and smiling, beckons you to come.
Why then, fond parents, why those fruitless groans?
Restrain your tears, and cease your plaintive moans.
Freed from a world of sin, and snares and pain,
Why would you wish your daughter back again?
No--bow resigned: let hope your grief control,
And check the rising tumult of the soul.
Calm in the prosperous and adverse day,
Adore the God who gives and takes away;
Eye him in all, his holy name revere;
Upright your actions, and your hearts sincere;
Till, having sailed through life's tempestuous sea,
And from its rocks, and boisterous billows free,
Yourselves safe landed on the blissful shore,
Shall join your happy babe to part no more.
TO A LADY, ON THE DEATH OF HER
HUSBAND.
GRIM monarch! see, deprived of vital breath,
A young physician in the dust of death:
Dost thou go on incessant to destroy,
Our griefs to double and lay waste our joy?
Enough, thou never yet wast known to say,
Though millions die the vassals of thy sway:
Nor youth, nor science, nor the ties of love,
Nor aught on earth thy flinty heart can move.
The friend, the spouse, from his dire dart to save,
In vain we ask the sovereign of the grave.
Fair mourner, there see thy loved Leonard laid,
And o'er him spread the deep, impervious shade.
Closed are his eyes, and heavy fetters keep
His senses bound in never-waking sleep,
Till time shall cease, till many a starry world
Shall fill from heaven, in dire confusion hurled;
Till nature in her final wreck shall lie,
And her last groan shall rend the azure sky:
Not, not till then, his active soul shall claim
His body, a divine, immortal frame.
But see the softly-stealing tears apace
Pursue each other down the mourner's face:
But cease thy tears, bid every sigh depart,
And cast the load of anguish from thine heart:
From the cold shell of his great soul arise,
And look beyond, thou native of the skies;
There fix thy view, where, fleeter than the wind,
Thy Leonard mounts, and leaves the earth behind.
Thyself prepare to pass the vale of night,
To join forever on the hills of light.
To thine embrace his joyful spirit moves,
To thee, the partner of his earthly loves;
He welcomes thee to pleasures more refined,
And better suited to the immortal mind.
Posted By: Richard Kigel
Friday, January 1st 2010 at 6:57PM
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