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The Redheaded libertarian @TRHLofficial - “In October 1775, Phillis Wheatley, a 22-year-old Boston poet, wrote General George Washington, enclosing a poem she had written in his honor. The poem, titled “To his Excellency General George Washington,” concludes:
Fix’d are the eyes of the nations on the scales,
For in their hopes Columbia’s arm prevails.
Anon Britannia droops the pensive head,
While round increase the rising hills of dead.
Ah! cruel blindness to Columbia’s state!
Lament thy thirst of boundless power too late.
Proceed, great chief, with virtue on thy side,
Thy ev’ry action let the goddess guide.
A crown, a mansion, and a throne that shine,
With gold unfading, WASHINGTON! be thine.
Washington replied:
“I thank you most sincerely for your polite notice of me, in the elegant Lines you enclosed; and however undeserving I may be of such encomium and panegyrick, the style and manner exhibit a striking proof of your great poetical Talents. In honour of which, and as a tribute justly due to you, I would have published the Poem, had I not been apprehensive, that, while I only meant to give the World this new instance of your genius, I might have incurred the imputation of Vanity. This, and nothing else, determined me not to give it place in the public Prints.
If you should ever come to Cambridge, or near Head Quarters, I shall be happy to see a person so favourd by the Muses, and to whom nature has been so liberal and beneficent in her dispensations. I am, with great Respect, Your obedt humble servant,
G. Washington”
Wheatley had published her first volume of poetry two years earlier, to considerable acclaim in both Europe and America. What makes the story of the talented young poet particularly remarkable is that when Phillis Wheatley published her book, she was a slave, brought from Africa as an 8-year-old girl and sold on a Boston auction block.