Woolman, John 123Africans are children of God and therefore equally likely to
become angelic as their white counterparts.
Despite or due to the many opinions on the signifi -
cance of Wheatley’s poetic work, her publication succeeds
in bringing the discussion of the African American wom-
en’s literary production in America into the 18th century.
See also: American Revolution; Hammon, Jupiter; Sene-
gambiaAlexis Pauline GumbsBibliography
Caretta, Vincent. Phillis Wheatley: Th e Complete Writings. New
York: Penguin Classics, 2001.
Hayden, Robert. Kaleidoscope: Poems by American Negro Poets.
New York: Harcourt and Brace, 1967.
Hunter, Jane Edna, 1882–1950. Phillis Wheatley: Life and Works.
Cleveland: National Phillis Wheatley Foundation, 1948.
Johnson, James Weldon. Th e Book of American Negro Poetry. New
York: Harcourt and Brace, 1922.
Loggins, Vernon. Th e Negro Author. Port Washington, NY: Ken-
nikat Press, 1964.
Matons, R. Lynn. “Phillis Wheatley—Soul Sister?” Phylon 33, no.
3 (1972):222–30.Woolman, John
John Woolman (1720–1772) was born October 19, 1720,
into a rural Quaker community in Burlington County,
West Jersey. Abandoning lucrative business opportunities
in favor of a more balanced life, he became an infl uential
itinerant Quaker minister, and was instrumental in that
church’s adoption of a strong antislavery position. Although
abolitionism was not new in Woolman’s era, his persistence,
genuine commitment to the Quaker doctrine of universal
love for both slaves and slaveholders, and persuasive writ-
ing is oft en credited as a driving force behind the Quaker
Church’s commitment to abolitionism.
John Woolman, son of Samuel Woolman and Elizabeth
Burr Woolman, grew up on his father’s farm on the Ranco-
cas Creek, six miles south of its juncture with the Delaware
River. He attended the local Quaker school. At 21 Woolman
went to work for a local merchant in the nearby town of
Mount Holly. During his apprenticeship, in the winter of
1742, his employer asked Woolman to draw up a bill of sale
for a female slave. Although Woolman completed the task,
the uneasiness he felt crystallized his belief that keepingAct, and poems in support of the freedom of the colonists.
In 1776, she wrote a poem “To His Excellency George
Washington” in celebration of the American Revolution.
R. Lynn Matson points out that in Wheatley’s many elegies,
she represents death as a journey across water, a metaphor
also found in many spirituals developed and sung by en-
slaved people.
June Jordan points out that in her poem “To the Uni-
versity of Cambridge,” Wheatley attributes her writing to
an “intrinsic ardor,” not to the generosity or tutoring of the
Wheatley family, and applauds Wheatley for creating her-
self as a poet in an incredibly unlikely circumstance. Wheat-
ley’s most relevant and remembered poem within African
American studies is her poem “On Being Brought from Af-
rica to America,” which is thought to deal most explicitly
with the situation of slavery from which the poet wrote at
the time. Many critics complain that Wheatley depicts her
enslavement as a good thing when she writes that mercy
was what brought her from a “pagan land,” but others cel-
ebrate the fact that Wheatley used her tenuous position as
prodigy poet to argue against racism. Wheatley states that
Phillis Wheatley, born in West Africa and brought to colonial Mas-
sachusetts as a slave, became an accomplished poet in Boston and
traveled to London to publish her work. (Library of Congress)