The Colonial and Revolutionary Periods 75Writing Revolution: Poetry, drama, fiction
In verse, an important tradition was inaugurated by two African-American poets of
the time, Jupiter Hammon (1711–1806?) and Phillis Wheatley (1753–1784). Lucy
Terry had, of course, become known earlier for her poem “Bars Fight,” but Hammon
was the first African-American poet to have his work published, since Terry’s was
handed down for a while in the oral tradition. Born a slave, Hammon published a
broadside, Evening Thought: Salvation by Christ, With Penitential Cries, a series of 22
quatrains, in 1760, and then a prose work, Address to the Negroe: In the State of New
Yo r k, in 1787. The poetry is notable for its piety, the prose for its argument that black
people must reconcile themselves to the institution of slavery. Some of Hammon’s
thinking here is registered in his poem to Phillis Wheatley, “An Address to Miss
Phillis Wheatly, Ethiopian Poetess, in Boston, who came from Africa at eight years of
age, and soon became acquainted with the gospel of Jesus Christ” (1778). “O Come
you pious youth: adore / The wisdom of thy God, /” the poem begins, “In bringing
thee from distant shore, / To learn his holy word.” It then goes on to argue that it was
“God’s tender mercy” that brought Wheatley in a slave ship across the Atlantic to be
“a pattern” to the “youth of Boston town.” “Thou hast left the heathen shore, / Thro’
mercy of the Lord, /” Hammon declaims, addressing Wheatley directly, “Among the
heathen live no more, / Come magnify thy God.” It is worth emphasizing that all
Hammon’s publications are prefaced by an acknowledgment to the three genera-
tions of the white family he served. Anything of his that saw print was, in effect,
screened by his white masters, and, in writing, was probably shaped by his awareness
that it would never get published without their approval. That anticipated a common
pattern in African-American writing. Slave narratives, for instance, were commonly
prefaced by a note or essay from a white notable, mediating the narrative for what
was, after all, an almost entirely white audience – and giving it a white seal of
approval. And it has to be borne in mind when reading what Hammon has to say
about slavery: which, in essence, takes up a defense of the peculiar institution that
was to be used again by Southern apologists in the nineteenth century – that slavery
could and should be seen as a civilizing influence and a providential instrument of
conversion.
African-American writers of the time, and later, were, in effect, in a different
position from their white counterparts. The growth in readership and printing
presses, the proliferation of magazines, almanacs, manuals, and many other outlets
for writing all meant that the literary culture was changing. A system of literary
patronage was being replaced by the literary marketplace. Poets like Hammon and
Wheatley, however, were still dependent on their white “friends” and patrons. For
Equiano, fortunately, the friends, subscribers, and readers were abolitionists. For
Hammon, the friends were, quite clearly, otherwise. Phillis Wheatley enjoyed the
cooperation and patronage of Susanne Wheatley, the woman who bought her in a
Boston slave market when she was 7 years old, and the Countess of Huntingdon.
It was with their help that her Poems appeared in 1773 in London, the first volume
of poetry known to have been published by an African-American. The poetry reflectsGGray_c01.indd 75ray_c 01 .indd 75 8 8/1/2011 7:54:57 AM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 54 : 57 AM