The Wheatleyan Moment

Despite the recent profusion of interest in Phillis Wheatley by literary scholars, who increasingly recognize her artfulness and her challenge to slavery, she has not been seen as a political actor in her own time. This essay argues for her canny timing and careful interventions in the politics of slavery from 1772 to 1784. The "Mansfieldian moment" in the politics of slavery can also be called a Wheatleyan moment, when leading whites were forced to respond to the art and politics of slaves and their allies. Wheatley garnered specific and consequential responses from Lord Dartmouth, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson. A more interactive approach to the politics of slavery explains much about Wheatley's strategies as well as the range of specific responses to antislavery among participants in the American Revolution—responses that cannot be ascribed merely to racism or the lack thereof.