{"id":269247,"date":"2025-10-13T09:06:24","date_gmt":"2025-10-13T14:06:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staging.banneroftruth.org\/us\/?p=269247"},"modified":"2025-10-13T09:06:24","modified_gmt":"2025-10-13T14:06:24","slug":"the-pen-of-an-untutord-african-phillis-wheatley-1753-1784","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.banneroftruth.org\/us\/resources\/articles\/2025\/the-pen-of-an-untutord-african-phillis-wheatley-1753-1784\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The Pen of an Untutor’d African’: Phillis Wheatley (1753\u20131784)"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following article by Ian Shaw is featured in the November 2025 issue of the Banner of Truth Magazine (no. 746). You can subscribe to the magazine in print or digital formats<\/a> for eleven edifying issues each year.<\/p>\n

\u2018It is ironic that of all the people one might expect to hold a low view of God because of their circumstances, the African slave actually held the highest view. Despite all the suffering and oppression of slavery, slaves maintained a view of God that emphasized his sovereignty and his goodness. They were committed to the biblical revelation that exalted God in all his perfections.\u2019\u2014Thabiti Anyabwile1<\/a><\/sup>T. M. Anyabwile, The Decline of African-American Theology<\/em> (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2007).<\/span><\/p>\n

During the Great Awakening in America, \u2018All across the British Atlantic world, African slaves were converting to Christianity in large numbers through the new Evangelical movements.\u20192<\/a><\/sup>J. Coffey, \u2018Evangelicals, Slavery and the Slave Trade: from Whitefield to Wilberforce\u2019 (Anvil<\/em> 24 (2): 2007), p.101.<\/span> Gilbert Tennent, speaking of a preaching tour in the winter of 1740-41, when he was in Charlestown, wrote, \u2018Multitudes were awakened, and several had received great consolation; especially among the young people, children and negroes.\u20193<\/a><\/sup>A. A. Alexander, The Log College<\/em> (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1968), 32. Through this and subsequent articles on Jupiter Hammon, Lemuel Haynes and Olaudah Equiano, when referring to ethnic and national groups, I sometimes but not always capitalize \u2018White\u2019 and \u2018Black.\u2019 Conventions on this matter differ between the UK and America. For example, quotations from Lemuel Haynes in a later article show him tending to capitalize \u2018Black\u2019 and write \u2018white\u2019 in lower case, as when he wrote, \u2018Liberty is Equally as precious to a Black man, as it is to a white one.\u2019 There may be instances where readers will feel that I have been inconsistent and perhaps inappropriate in my practice, for which I ask forbearance.<\/span> In similar terms, William Tennent wrote to one of his correspondents, Thomas Prince. Speaking of his ministry in Freehold, New Jersey, October 11, 1744, he recorded, \u2018Some negroes, I trust, are made free in Christ, and more seem to be unfeignedly seeking after it\u2019 (p. 231). Samuel Davies, later to become the President of the College of New Jersey, wrote in 1757, \u2018What little success I have lately had, has been chiefly\u00a0among the extremes of Gentlemen and Negroes. Indeed, God has been remarkably working among the latter. I have baptized 150 adults.\u2019 It was \u2018from Calvinism this generation of black authors drew a vision of God at work providentially in lives of black people, directing their sufferings yet promising the faithful among them a restoration to his favour and presence.\u20194<\/a><\/sup>J. Saillant, Black Puritan, Black Republican: The Life and Thought of Lemuel Haynes, 1753\u20131833<\/em> (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 4.<\/span><\/p>\n

After preaching a final sermon on one visit to Philadelphia and retiring to his lodgings, Whitefield recorded, \u2018Near 50 Negroes came to give me thanks for what God had done for their souls.\u2019 He considered this an answer to prayer, saying, \u2018I have been much drawn in prayer for them, and have seen them wrought upon by the word preached.\u2019\u00a0On Whitefield\u2019s death in 1770, An Elegiac Poem, on the Death of that Celebrated Divine, and Eminent Servant of Jesus Christ, the Reverend and Learned George Whitefield,<\/em>\u00a0appeared, containing the following lines:<\/p>\n

He pray\u2019d that grace in every heart might dwell:
\nHe long\u2019d to see\u00a0America<\/em>\u00a0excell…
\nHe urg\u2019d the need of HIM to every one;
\nIt was no less than GOD\u2019s co-equal SON!
\nTake HIM ye wretched for your only good;
\nTake HIM ye starving souls to be your food.
\nYe thirsty, come to this life-giving stream:
\nYe Preachers, take him for your joyful theme:
\nTake HIM, \u2018my dear AMERICANS,\u2019 he said,
\nBe your complaints in his kind bosom laid:
\nTake HIM ye\u00a0Africans<\/em>, he longs for you;
\nImpartial SAVIOUR, is his title due;
\nIf you will chuse to walk in grace\u2019s road,
\nYou shall be sons, and kings, and priests to GOD.<\/p>\n

\u2018Compos\u2019d in America by a Negro Girl Seventeen Years of Age,\u2019 the poet\u2019s name was Phillis Wheatley.5<\/a><\/sup>P. Wheatley, Complete Writings: Phillis Wheatley.<\/em> (London: Penguin Books, 2001). Simonetta Carr has written a life of Wheatley (Phillis Wheatley. Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2021).<\/span> She had been seized \u00a0from Senegal and Gambia, West Africa, when she was about seven years old, and transported to the Boston docks with a shipment of slaves, who because of age or physical frailty were unsuited for rigorous labour in the West Indian and Southern colonies. We know through ship manifest records for the Phillis,<\/em>\u00a0that she was taken to America in 1761 where, in the month of August, she was purchased by John Wheatley of Boston. \u2018In want of a domestic,\u2019 Susanna Wheatley, wife of prominent Boston tailor John Wheatley, purchased \u2018a slender, frail female child … for a trifle,\u2019 because the captain of the slave ship believed that the waif was terminally ill, and he wanted to gain at least a small profit before she died. Here she became the enslaved servant of Susanna Wheatley. Her original birth-name is unknown. The origins of her name are a combination of the boat she had been sold from and the owners\u2019 family name.<\/p>\n

Phillis was treated well and, despite being owned by the family, they arranged for her to be educated by private tutors in several subjects, including Latin and Greek. She was \u2018so brilliant that she began to publish serious poems as a young teenager.\u20196<\/a><\/sup>J. G. Basker, Amazing Grace: An Anthology of Poems About Slavery, 1660-1810<\/em> (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002), p. 170.<\/span> By the time she was eighteen, Wheatley\u00a0had gathered a collection of twenty-eight poems for which she, with the help of Mrs Wheatley, ran advertisements for subscribers in Boston newspapers in February 1772. By the age of twenty, Phillis was no longer tied to the family estate, and in 1772 she was tasked in accompanying the eldest son, Nathaniel, to England, as the family thought it would improve her ailing health as well as her chances of becoming a published poet, in contrast to the attitudes of the colonists. Within a year, Phillis was the first African-American to be published, on the release of her first volume of poetry in 1773.<\/p>\n

Her Poetry<\/h2>\n

She reflected thus on her life:7<\/a><\/sup>In \u2018To the Right Honourable William, Earl of Dartmouth\u2019 on his appointment as minister to America.<\/span><\/p>\n

I, young in life, by seeming cruel fate
\nWas snatch\u2019d from Afric\u2019s fancy\u2019d happy seat
\nWhat pangs excruciating must molest,
\nWhat sorrows labour in my parent\u2019s breast?
\nSteel\u2019d was that soul and by no misery mov\u2019d
\nThat from a father seiz\u2019d his babe belov\u2019d:
\nSuch, such my case. And can I then but pray
\nOthers may never feel tyrannic sway?<\/p>\n

Her 1770 poem on the death of Whitefield was a pivotal poem in Wheatley\u2019s life. Whitefield was not the only one for whom she wrote an elegy. She published\u00a0An Elegy, Sacred to the Memory of that Great Divine, The Reverend and Learned Dr. Samuel Cooper.<\/em> She wrote a poem to no less than the first president of the United States, George Washington, with whom she had corresponded and whom she was later privileged to meet. She was thought to be only thirteen when she wrote \u2018To the University of Cambridge, in New England,\u2019 urging,<\/p>\n

Still more, ye sons of science ye receive
\nThe blissful news by messengers from heav\u2019n,
\nHow Jesus\u2019 blood for your redemption flows.
\nSee him with hands out-stretch\u2019t upon the cross;
\nImmense compassion in his bosom glows;
\nHe hears revilers, nor resents their scorn:
\nWhat matchless mercy in the Son of God!<\/p>\n

In 1767, aged fourteen, she had written \u2018An Address to the Deist,\u2019 refuting their scepticism. It opens with boldness, taking on a task normally of ordained men. She hints at this in her opening line:<\/p>\n

Must Ethiopians be employ\u2019d for you?
\nGreatly rejoice if any good I do.
\nI ask O unbeliever, Satan\u2019s child
\nHath not thy saviour been too much revil\u2019d
\nTh\u2019 auspicious rays that round his head do shine
\nDo still declare him to be Christ divine
\nDoth not the Omnipotent call him son?
\nAnd is well pleas\u2019d with his beloved One\u2014?
\nHow canst thou thus divide the trinity\u2014<\/p>\n

And urges,<\/p>\n

Seek the Eternal while he is so near \u2026
\nAt the last day where wilt thou hide thy face
\nThe Day<\/em> approaching is no time for Grace.
\nToo late perceive thyself undone and lost \u2026<\/p>\n

Her most famous poem is \u2018On Being Brought from Africa to America’:<\/p>\n

\u2019Twas mercy brought me from my\u00a0Pagan<\/em>\u00a0land,
\nTaught my benighted soul to understand
\nThat there\u2019s a God, that there\u2019s a\u00a0Saviour<\/em>\u00a0too:
\nOnce I redemption neither sought nor knew.
\nSome view our sable race with scornful eye,
\n\u2018Their colour is a diabolic die.\u2019
\nRemember,\u00a0Christians<\/em>,\u00a0Negros<\/em>, black as\u00a0Cain<\/em>,
\nMay be refin\u2019d, and join th\u2019 angelic train.<\/p>\n

Her poem expresses the view that it was God\u2019s larger plan for her salvation, rather than the wickedness of slave traders, that determined the events of her life.8<\/a><\/sup>Perhaps the most helpful reflection on this question by a Black reformed writer is Carter, A. J. 2016. Black and Reformed: Seeing God\u2019s Sovereignty in the African-American Christian Experience.<\/em> \u00a0New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing.<\/span> But she also undermines White complacency, reminding Christians (with an apt pun on cane sugar-refining) that blacks and whites are equal in the divine plan. In her poetic eulogy to General David Wooster she castigated patriots who confess Christianity yet oppress her people:<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>But how presumptuous shall we hope to find
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>Divine acceptance with the Almighty mind
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>While yet, O deed ungenerous, they disgrace
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>And hold in bondage Afric\u2019s blameless race.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>Let virtue reign and then accord our prayers
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>Be victory ours and generous freedom theirs.<\/p>\n

\u2018The pen of an untutor\u2019d African\u2019<\/h2>\n

She had sent her poem on Whitefield to the Countess of Huntingdon, who then acted as her patron. When doing so she had said, \u2018The Tongues of the Learned are insufficient, much less the pen of an untutor\u2019d African, to paint in lively characters the excellencies of this citizen of Zion.\u20199<\/a><\/sup>All the quotations from her letters are from Wheatley, (2001), pp. 139-164.<\/span><\/p>\n

John Thornton, perhaps the key figure in the circle of the Clapham \u2018Saints,\u2019 was in correspondence with Wheatley on several occasions. She wrote to him in July 1772, in reply to him, \u2018I thank you for recommending the Bible to be my chef [sic]<\/em>\u00a0Study \u2026 O that my eyes were more open\u2019d to see the real worth, the true excellence of the word of truth, my flint heart Soften\u2019d with the grateful dews of divine grace.\u2019 She wrote again on her return to America in late 1773, with a remarkable open boldness, urging him, \u2018disdain not to be called the Father of Humble Africans and Indians; though despised on earth on account of our colour, we have this Consolation, if he enables us to deserve it, \u201cThat God dwells in the humble & contrite heart.\u201d O that I were more and more possess\u2019d of this inestimable blessing; to be directed by the immediate influence of the divine Spirit in my daily walk & Conversation.\u2019<\/p>\n

She was deeply saddened by the death of her mistress, telling a frequent correspondent, \u2018I have lately met with a great trial in the death of my mistress \u2026 I was a poor little outcast and stranger when she took me in: not only into her house but I presently became a sharer in her most tender affections. I was treated by her more like her child than her Servant,\u2019 and recorded how she departed \u2018in inexpressible raptures, earnest longings and impatient thirstings for the upper <\/em>courts of the Lord.\u2019 She also wrote to Thornton on Mrs Wheatley\u2019s death, giving a more extensive account of how at the close \u2018she eagerly longed to depart to be with Christ.\u2019 Phillis \u2018sat by the whole time at her bedside and Saw with Grief and Wonder, the Effects of Sin on the human race.\u2019 \u2018Where had been our hopes,\u2019 had not Christ taken away the sting of death.<\/p>\n

Thornton had obviously entertained the idea that she should return to Africa with two others as missionary to her people. It was not feasible, one reason being that she was then \u2018an utter stranger\u2019 to the language of the peoples from whence she had originated. \u2018How on my arrival how like a Barbarian I Should look to the Natives.\u2019 In a subsequent letter to Thornton, it is clear the debt she feels to him for \u2018such uncommon tenderness for thirteen years from my earliest youth\u2014such unwearied diligence to instruct me in the principles of true Religion.\u2019 She saw him as a father and wished, following Mrs Wheatley\u2019s death, that \u2018you could in these respects Supply her place, but this does not seem probable from the great distance of your residence\u2019 (October 1774).<\/p>\n

She was also in correspondence with Samuel Hopkins. In February 1774 and again later, she was telling him of copies of \u2018my books\u2019 (her poetry collection), and of knowing of two \u2018Negro men\u2019 who wished to return from Britain \u2018desirous of returning to their native country, to preach the gospel.\u2019 She expressed her desire to do all she could, despite her weakness, \u2018to promote this laudable design.\u2019 Indeed, she rejoiced hearing of conversions, writing to a Rhode Island correspondent, \u2018It gives me very great pleasure to hear of so many of my Nation, Seeking with eagerness the way to true felicity.\u2019 Two months later she tells the same correspondent of her poor health all the last winter.<\/p>\n

John Wheatley emancipated Phillis in 1778, three months before the death of her mistress, allowing Phillis to marry John Peters, another free Black person and grocer, three months later. However, the couple struggled with ill-health, low income and poor work, leading to the death of two of their infant children. The financial situation for the family worsened and in 1784 Phillis\u2019 husband was imprisoned for the accumulation of his debts, forcing her to work as a scullery maid at a boarding house to support them. Phillis died on December 5, 1784, at the age of 31, found by other Wheatley family members \u2018reduced to a condition too loathsome to describe,\u2019 uncared for and alone. Their last surviving child died in time to be buried with his mother.<\/p>\n

Wheatley was much praised by her contemporaries. Jane Dunlap, of whom little is known and who described herself as a poor Bostonian \u2018in an obscure station in life,\u2019 published in 1771 a volume of poems inspired by Whitefield\u2019s sermons and dedicated to his memory. The example of Wheatley had moved her to write.<\/p>\n

Shall his due praises be so loudly sung
\nBy a young Afric damsel\u2019s virgin tongue?
\nAnd I be silent! and no mention make
\nOf his blest name, who did so often speak
\nTo us, the words of life,
\nFetch\u2019d from the fountain pure,
\nOf God\u2019s most holy sacred truth;
\nWhich ever shall endure.<\/p>\n

Her life and writing may move others also.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ian Shaw is a member of York Evangelical Church, York, England.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Photo credit (visible when article is shared on social media): A first edition of the book\u00a0Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, <\/em>by Phillis Wheatley, C<\/a>ollection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following article by Ian Shaw is featured in the November 2025 issue of the Banner of Truth Magazine (no. 746). You can subscribe to the magazine in print or digital formats for eleven edifying issues each year. \u2018It is ironic that of all the people one might expect to hold a low view of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65473,"featured_media":269248,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"resource-author":[19982],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-269247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","resource-author-ian-shaw"],"yoast_head":"\n'The Pen of an Untutor'd African': Phillis Wheatley (1753\u20131784) – Banner of Truth USA<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"'The Pen of an Untutor'd African': Phillis Wheatley (1753\u20131784)\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The following article by Ian Shaw is featured in the November 2025 issue of the Banner of Truth Magazine (no. 746). 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