“On the cusp of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the same question that Frederick Douglass posed in 1847 is still being asked today, ‘What country have I?’” This question was posed by Dr. Matthew Reising, a visiting UT professor, in his talk at Baylor about slavery, the American Revolution, and the poetry of Phillis Wheatley.
Dr. Reising was quoting a speech Douglass gave less than a decade after his escape from slavery. Douglass goes on to lament: “I have no country, for the institutions of this country do not know me nor recognize me as a man. Therefore, in a country such as this, I cannot have patriotism.”
As an Afro-Hispanic woman in this country, I have sometimes felt as Douglass did. I know people both Black and White that have felt it as well — the scornfulness toward the country built on scarred backs that carried the burdens of America and made its birth possible.
Amid such political divisiveness, should we direct scorn towards our nation? Should we turn our backs on America? Dr. Matthew Reising, a speaker for Baylor’s “America 250” initiative, explained why the enslaved, Revolution-era poet Phillis Wheatley Peters said “no.”
On October 27th, ten days before the unveiling of The Memorial to the Enslaved Persons, Dr. Reising visited Baylor to speak on Phillis Wheatley at an event jointly hosted by the Alexander Hamilton Society, The Standard, and Baylor’s “America 250” initiative. Before his current teaching position at the University of Texas, Dr. Reising earned his PhD at Baylor, where he won the award for Best Graduate Student Instructor and The Best Dissertation in Humanities Award.
Dr. Reising began his talk by acknowledging the tension Frederick Douglass saw in the American founding. He highlighted two beloved notions of the Founding: first, human equality as presented in the Declaration of Independence, and second, Madison’s contention in Federalist 39 that the American experiment is a hopeful one. However, he also recognized the darkness in the Founding by reading a shocking quote from Thomas Jefferson, where he calls the Black imagination “dull, tasteless, and anomalous.” Jefferson says that “religion indeed has produced a Phyllis Whatley [sic], but it could never produce a poet.”
Phillis Wheatley, despite all the odds stacked against her, proved Jefferson wrong.
Wheatley was born in West Africa and was captured into slavery at the age of seven. In 1761, she was sold to John and Susanna Wheatley, who were New England evangelicals and thought it was necessary to teach Wheatley how to read and write to engage with the Bible.
By 14, she had her first poem published in a colonial newspaper, and as tensions rose between England and the American colonists, she published her first book of poetry in 1773, where she argued fervently against British rule. She was freed from slavery the very next year.
Over the next ten years, Wheatley published internationally renowned poems about the Revolutionary War, education, slavery, and more. She became a celebrity in her time and corresponded with Ben Franklin and George Washington, but today she is a mere ghost in both academia and the literary world.
Her Letter to Mary Wooster, the wife of Revolutionary General David Wooster, reads:
“Forever grateful let them live to thee And keep them ever Virtuous, brave, and free — But how, presumptuous shall we hope to find Divine acceptance with the Almighty mind — While yet (O deed ungenerous!) they disgrace And hold in bondage Africa’s blameless race; Let virtue reign — And those accord our prayers Be victory ours, and generous freedom theirs.”
Such beautiful work from such an inspiring woman, and yet why is she so neglected?
Dr. Reising argues that it is due to “Bad academia, and the allergy academics have to the notion that someone would want to be Christian more than anything else — even more than their freedom.” He pointed specifically to her poem On Being Brought from Africa to America, where she thanks slavery as the means through which she encountered Christianity — a sentiment many scholars find uncomfortable and often misinterpret.
According to Dr. Reising, most academics interpret Wheatley as either:
1. Brainwashed to love America
2. A rebel who used her religion and patriotism as a ruse to further the abolitionist movement
Dr. Reising holds a different view: that Phillis Wheatley was a genuine patriot, as well as a genuine Christian. When we dismiss authors like Wheatley as unserious, Dr. Reising said, we miss the opportunity to learn from them. In an interview with The Standard, Dr. Reising reflected on an African American Political Thought class he taught at Baylor a few years ago. In that class, he said he was “very intentional about including literature as a means for understanding politics because I’m a firm believer that the serious books and essays from the African American tradition give the best accounts of what it means to be an American. I think they just cut to the heart of what America stands for and is trying to live up to.”
“I’m a firm believer that the serious books and essays from the African American tradition give the best accounts of what it means to be an American. I think they just cut to the heart of what America stands for and is trying to live up to.”
To support his interpretation of Wheatley, Dr. Reising read from her letter to the Reverend Samson Occam, where Wheatley shares her view of freedom, and states that slavery is diametrically opposed to the character of the United States.
“In every human breast, God has implanted a principle, which we call love of freedom. It is impatient of oppression, and pants for deliverance, and by the leave of our modern Egyptians, I will assert that the same principle lives in us. I assert this not for their hurt, but to convince them of the strained absurdity of their conduct, whose words and actions are so diametrically opposite.”
She echoes the sentiment implied in her letter to Mary Wooster: America’s future depends entirely upon our citizens’ continued and genuine commitment to freedom for all. Now, whether all Americans are truly committed to freedom as such, is something only time can tell.
I asked Dr. Reising why he thought Wheatley chose to stay in America when she could have left. “Phillis Wheatley saw America’s founding principles, and thought this nation could be everything human beings had been striving for. But, it needed someone who could point out its problems and hypocrisies, which was her. She loved the country for what she believed it could be, and saw the kernel of a great nation. And that’s why she was an American by choice: because she was hopeful about what America could become.” [emphasis added]
“That’s why she was an American by choice: because she was hopeful about what America could become.”
Wheatley saw the Revolution not as a distant movement, irrelevant to her, but as the vehicle through which justice, equality, and freedom could be achieved; all while noting the fact that many Americans were failing to live up to its principles.
Wheatley’s most controversial poem, On being brought from Africa to America, proves her sincere Christian faith.
Wheatley chose Christ-like commitment and patriotism over liberty, over her own desires, because she had the eyes to see what almost none of us in today’s age can see — what the true America could be. Not eyes of blind complacency, nor those of scorn, or of unrealistic optimism, but the Spirit of what this country should be.
Phillis Wheatley was a genuine Christian and American patriot. To answer the question Douglass posed, “What country have I?” She would boldly proclaim: America. A land which we should not abandon, nor turn our backs on. She had several opportunities to emancipate herself in London or return to Africa, but she chose her country. She chose America — a country that had failed her constantly, yet one that she looked at with hope and adoration. Like her, we should search for and work diligently to reclaim the spirit of liberty that America calls for. Not necessarily “my” or “our” America as individuals or interest groups, but a genuine one: united in spirit, rooted in liberty and celebrating our differences, a place where a Phillis Wheatley could become a renowned poet, regardless of her sex or race, and make the conscious choice to truly be an American.
Phillis Wheatley made that choice as a slave, in the most adverse conditions, with all odds stacked against her. If she could do it, so can you.