America

“On Being Brought from Africa to America” by Phillis Wheatley (1773)

In “On Being Brought from Africa to America,” the speaker thanks New England for bringing her to the Christian promise of New England. The speaker then chides these same upstanding New England Christians, arguing they should acknowledge Africans as being just as capable and worthy of salvation as they are.

“American Liberty” by Philip Freneau (1775)

Philip Freneau’s “American Liberty” reflects the more traditional verses of the Revolutionary Era. Stately and straightforward, Freneau celebrates the American Revolution as a just and heroic struggle that will enable Americans to be “free”—the same quality of liberty that Wheatley also valorizes in “America.” Like Wheatley’s poem, Freneau’s “American Liberty” is written in heroic couplets.

“Bars Fight” by Lucy Terry (1746, published in 1855)

Lucy Terry (1733-1821) shared much of the same biographical background as Wheatley. Both were enslaved with roots in West Africa, both were educated by the white families who enslaved them. This poem is widely regarded as the first poem published by an African American. The poem—an account of an Indigenous group’s raid on a colonial settlement in which two families are viciously slaughtered—adopts the careful heroic couplets of Neo-Classical poetry, and brought some critical acclaim for Terry.