Washington Invited Her To Visit Him After She Sent Him One Of Her Poems
George Washington and the cause he was championing, which faced such formidable obstacles, impressed Phillis Wheatley. She wrote a letter addressed to the generalissimo of the North American forces, “To His Excellency General Washington,” in late 1775, as the Continental Army was engaged in combat with the Redcoats in Boston. The couplet that concluded the letter imagined a patriot George III succeeding the oppressive George III in the Americas, one who was crowned without regard to divine right or inherited privilege, but by proven merit:
“Thy ev’ry action let the goddess guide / A crown, a mansion, and a throne that shine / With gold unfading, WASHINGTON! Be thine.”
Wheatley wrote the poem in the hopes that Washington would treat enslaved people with the equality and freedom espoused by the American Revolution.
Deeply moved by the tribute, Washington later replied to Wheatley from his Cambridge headquarters. One of the interesting facts about Whiles Wheatley is it is the only letter that is known to have been written by Washington to a slave, and it was written while he was living in a home that would later be occupied by another poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The general sent a letter with an invitation to visit him at his headquarters and stated, “However undeserving I may be of such encomium and panegyric, the language and method give a stunning proof of your poetical talents.” When Colonel Joseph Reed, a friend of Washington's, received the poem, he had it published in the newspapers. Even while his pamphlet Common Sense was igniting the independence movement in 1776, Thomas Paine would get Wheatley's work published by the Pennsylvania Gazette. During the time when the British departed Boston, it is thought that Washington and Wheatley met, either in Cambridge or subsequently in Providence. It is unknown what topics Wheatley and Washington discussed, but it is reasonable to believe that his encounter with the young woman aided in his development and helped him to better grasp and advance the idea of liberty.
