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Phillis Wheatley

Phillis Wheatley Phillis Wheatley was America's first black poet. She was born in Senegal, Africa in 1753 and she was sold into slavery at the age of seven to John and Susannah Wheatley of Boston. Phillis was soon accepted as a member of the family, and was raised with the Wheatley's other two children. Phillis soon displayed her remarkable talents by learning to read and write English. At the age of twelve she was reading the Greek and Latin classics, and passages from the Bible. At thirteen she wrote her first poem. Phillis became a Boston sensation after she wrote a poem on the death of the evangelical preacher George Whitefield in 1770. Three years later thirty-nine of her poems were published in London as "Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral." It was the first book to be published by a black American. Most of Phillis Wheatley's poems reflect her religious and classical New England upbringing. Writing in heroic couplets, many of her poems consist of elegies while others stress the theme of Christian salvation. Phillis Wheatley died in 1784. Harriet Tubman was born in 1820 in Dorchester co., Md. Her parents were from the Ashanti tribe of West Africa, and they worked as slaves on the Brodas plantation. In 1844, Harriet married a free black man named John Tubman. In 1849 Harriet’s fears were realized when the owner of the Brodas plantation died and many of the slaves were scheduled to be sold. After hearing of her fate Harriet planned to escape that very night. Harriet made a 90-mile trip to the Mason-Dixon Line with the help of contacts along the Underground Railroad. Harriet's trip was successful, and she settled in Philadelphia. She worked as a dishwasher and made plans to rescue her family. The next year, Harriet traveled back to Maryland and rescued her sister's family. She then returned to transport her brothers to the North. She went back for her husband, but he had remarried and did not want to follow her. In 1857, Harriet finally returned for her parents and settled them in Auburn, New York. She was nicknamed the "Moses of her people" for leading them to freedom. In all, Harriet made 19 trips on the Underground Railroad and freed more than 300 slaves. With the arrival of the Civil War, Harriet became a spy for the Union army. She later worked in Washington DC as a government nurse. At the end of the war, Harriet returned to her parents in Auburn. In 1897, her bravery even inspired Queen Victoria to award her a silver medal. On March 10, 1913, Harriet died of pneumonia. She was 93 years old. Prior to 1837, abolitionist organizations flourished all across America. Due in part to the prosperous agricultural crops of the South, it was clear that slavery would not end soon. Once their actions became known, southern abolition organization soon vanished. To continue their operations in the South was sure to meet with violent resistance that often included death. Quakers and other sympathetic groups had over the years developed a path of freedom to the North. It was referred to as the Underground Railroad and began during the early 1830's. During the day, fugitive Black slaves were often fed and housed by sympathetic Whites. During the evening, slaves would follow the North Star, the flow of rivers, or look at the moss on trees to guide them to the North. Once they were in the North, abolitionist organizations helped them flee into Canada. At the ripe old age of 15, Harriet Tubman began her crusade to free Southern slaves. From 1848 until the start of the Civil War, she was a single handedly responsible for bringing over 300 slaves to freedom. When she came calling, slaves did not have a choice to stay or flee. Any resistance was met with a revolver that she kept at her side. During the Civil War, Ms. Tubman led raids into the South that liberated thousands of Blacks from the bondage of slavery. Nat Turner was born on October 2, 1800 in Southampton County, Virginia. He was born on the farm of Benjamin Turner. His mother was taken from Africa while in her teens and was renamed Nancy and his father was a second-generation slave. Nat learned to read and write when he was a child. It was illegal in Virginia to teach a slave to read, out of fear that they would read abolitionist writings and begin revolts, but somehow he learned. Most likely, his master's family taught him. His grandmother, Bridget, had become a Christian and passed on the religion to Nat, which gave him all the more reason to read the Bible. Once he became a Christian, religion and freedom were synonymous in his mind. He believed himself divinely appointed to lead his fellow slaves to freedom. In 1831, Turner decided tat the time had come for him to lead his people out of bondage. On August 21st, he and his 60 followers began by killing Turner’s master, Joseph Travis, and his family. Within twenty-four hours 60 whites had been killed. The revolt was spreading until the main groups of blacks were met and overpowered by state and federal troops. More than 100 slaves were killed in the encounter and 13 slaves and 3 free Negroes were hanged. Turner was captured on October 30th and was executed on November 11th. Although the so-called Southampton Insurrection was quickly crushed and Turner was caught and hanged, it was the most serious uprising in the history of U.S. slavery and virtually ended the organized abolition movement in the South. Denmark Vesey, born in Africa in 1767, became a slave to Captain Vesey. With the winning of the lottery in 1800, which totaled an estimated $600 to $1500,Denmark bought his freedom. Although Denmark had his freedom, he never forgot about those who continued to endure the hardships and torture of slavery. It was at this time he that began working as a carpenter to support himself and began planning a slave revolt to free his people. Reading documents like the Declaration of Independence, debates concerning the Missouri Compromise, and passages about the prophets Joshua and Zachariah in the Old Testament sustained his vision of freedom. In 1822, he and other freedmen gathered over 500 knives and daggers for an attack. They solicited over 9,000 freedmen and slaves to be involved in the attack. This would have been the largest slave uprising in the history of America. However, before Vesey and the freedmen could actually enact their planned insurrection in the summer of 1822, some slave informants told their owners of the revolt. Vesey's plans of freedom for Africans in slavery were demolished. As a direct result of the informants' actions, over a hundred arrests were made, including four whites who encouraged the revolt. Confessions gathered from several leaders arrested led to the capture and execution of Denmark Vesey later that year. Thirty-five followers were hung and another thirty-five rebels were sold to West Indian plantation owners. Gabriel Prosser born in 1776, was a slave child to the family owned by Thomas Henry Prosser of the Brookfield Plantation in Henrico County. As an adult, Gabriel Prosser would pronounce the cause of independence for himself and for all slaves. Unlike the vast majority of slaves, Gabriel had been educated in his youth. He became a blacksmith, a skill that gave him access to life beyond the plantation. In 1800, he began to lay plans to take the city of Richmond, Virginia, by force. He planned to invade Richmond, attack the armory, and arm his rebel slaves. By August of 1800, he had thousands of slaves enlisted and had stored up an armory of weapons, including guns. Two followers betrayed him and, on the day of his revolt, with over a thousand followers ready to attack Richmond, the bridges into Richmond had been destroyed in a flood. The state militia attacked him the next day and he and his followers were hanged. Although Prosser's revolt ended in defeat, it terrified slave owners throughout the south. Prosser's revolt was the closest America came to a revolution on the same scale as that in Haiti. Frederick Douglass was born in 1817, in Talbot County, near Easton, Maryland. He was the child of a slave mother and an unknown white father. He greatly resented the frequent abuses of his condition. Yet he managed to learn how to read and write and to conspire successfully for freedom. He escaped in 1838, married a free colored woman in New York City, and moved to an abolitionist atmosphere at New Bedford, Massachusetts. Then began his remarkable career as a devoted follower of Garrison and an influential orator and agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. In 1845 he published the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. After visiting England and Ireland, where he was lionized, he returned in 1847 with enough funds to publish his newspaper, North Star, which not only demanded immediate emancipation but also woman suffrage and other liberal causes. President Lincoln counseled with him on race questions and postwar presidents rewarded him with various honors such as the minister-ship to Haiti. He died in 1895. William Lloyd Garrison was born in 1805, in Newburyport, Massachussets. In 1831 Garrison founded the Liberator, a militant antislavery newspaper, to promote the abolitionist cause. For 35 years, he campaigned for immediate and complete abolition of slavery. Favoring moral persuasion over violence or political involvement, he helped organize The American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833 and was its president (1843-65). Leaders of the Liberty and free-Soil parties overshadowed Garrison in the 1840s, but he continued to scandalize Northern audiences. In 1854 garrison attained additional national notoriety when he burned a copy of the Constitution at a meeting in Framingham, Mass., on July 4. The coming of the Civil War gave him the status of a hero, but later historians and biographers continued to differ on his merits. After 1865, when the Liberator was discontinued, Garrison concerned himself with other reform movements, especially women’s suffrage and temperance. William Lloyd Garrison died in 1879. Sojourner Truth was born as Isabella Baumfree in 1797. She was a slave in Hurley, New York, and spoke only Dutch during her childhood. Sold and resold, denied her choice in husband, and treated cruelly by her masters, Truth ran away in 1826, leaving all but one of her children behind. After her freedom was bought for $25, she moved to New York City in 1829 and became a member of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. In 1853, she helped form a utopian community called "The Kingdom," at Sing, New York, which was soon disbanded following the death and possible murder of its leader. After the death of her son, she took the name Sojourner Truth to signify her new role as traveler telling the truth about slavery. She set out on June 1, 1843, walking for miles in a northeasterly direction with 25 cents in her pocket, and rested only when she found lodging offered by either rich or poor. First she attended religious meetings, then began to hold meetings herself. As she logged mile after mile, her fame grew and her reputation preceded her. In 1864, she was invited to the White House, where President Abraham Lincoln personally received her. Later she served as a counselor for the National Freedman's Relief Association, retiring in 1875 in Battle Creek, Michigan. She died in 1883. A famous abolitionist by the name of Frederick Douglass bought a two-story home in Rochester, New York for his wife and the children and on December 3, 1847, began his second career, when his four page weekly newspaper, the North Star, came off the presses. Once the North Star began to circulate Douglass's friends in the abolitionist movement rallied to join in praising it. However, some local citizens were unhappy that their town was the site of a black newspaper, and the New York Herald urged the citizens of Rochester not to support the North Star. Rochester later came to take pride in the North Star and its editor. Along with the good will of Rochester's abolitionist and female political activists, Douglass received encouragement from the local printer's union. The North Star received a number of glowing reviews, but unfortunately the praises did not translate into financial success. The cost of producing a weekly newspaper was high and subscriptions grew slowly. For a number of years, Douglass was forced to depend on his own savings and contributions from friends to keep the paper afloat. He was forced to return to the lecture circuit to raise money for the paper. Douglass's newspaper continued publication as a weekly until 1860 and survived for three more years as a monthly. After 1851, it would be titled Frederick Douglass' Paper. Douglass's newspaper symbolized the potential for blacks to achieve whatever goals they set. The paper provided a forum for black writers and highlighted the success achieved by prominent black figures in American society. The Liberator was founded in 1831 by a famous abolitionist by the name of William Lloyd Garrison. The Liberator was a militant antislavery newspaper that promoted the abolitionist cause. This newspaper had a small circulation, but it was influential and at times aroused violent public reaction. In speaking engagements and through the Liberator and other publications, Garrison advocated the immediate emancipation of all slaves. This was an unpopular view during the 1830s, even with northerners who were against slavery. Though circulation of the Liberator was relatively limited, there were less than 400 subscriptions during the paper's second year and Garrison soon gained a reputation for being the most radical of abolitionists. His approach to emancipation stressed nonviolence and passive resistance. After the end of the Civil War in 1865, Garrison published his last issue of the Liberator. After thirty five years and 1,820 issues, Garrison did not fail to publish a single issue. 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