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Rh says of Phillis Wheatley: She was one of the four illustrious women who dwelt in the United States previous to the United States century. Boston in 1761. When but six years old, she wrote a volume of She (Phillis) was brought from Africa to poems, which was published in London in 1773, while she was in that city with the son of her owner, for she was a slave. She was educated through the favor of her mistress, and was quite proficient in the Latin language. A poem, which she sent to General Washington, gave her enduring fame. Her life bore evidence that the colonial women, though some of them slaveholders, were not destitute of a lively interest in those the custom of the times placed wholly in their charge. Phillis herself is a proof that even African women, despised as they have been, have intellectual endowments, and with culture and Christian attainment may rival their fairer sisters in the expression of high thoughts in poetic phrase."

From the Boston Courant: Last week we attempted to offer a few remarks on the life and uncollected works of Phillis Wheatley, thinking thereby that the attention of our readers might once more be called to the contemplation of her genius and writings. If we have been successful, if we have succeeded in arousing even a transitory interest in her now waning memory, we could ask no more. But we shall take advantage of it, transient as it may be, to offer to the public Phillis' letter and poem to General Washington.

This poem was sent to General George Washington just after he took command of the continental army in 1775, and was intended to celebrate that event; by Sparks, the biographer of Washington; by Williams, our best historian; in truth, by almost all writers of this period, this poem was supposed to be lost. But such was not the case. The poem was sent to the publisher by the old general himself, though he said otherwise in his letter to Phillis.