AP Success - AP US History: The Quest For Freedom Is Universal
Phillis Wheatly was a literate enslaved woman who was the first black woman to have a book of poems published.
. . . No more, America, in mournful strain Of wrongs, and grievance unredress’d complain, No longer shall thou dread the iron chain, Which wanton Tyranny with lawless hand Had made, and with it meant t’enslave the land. Should you, my lord, while you peruse my song, Wonder from whence my love of Freedom sprung, Whence flow these wishes for the common good, By feeling hearts alone best understood, I, young in life, by seeming cruel fate Was snatch’d from Afric’s fancy’d happy seat: What pangs excruciating must molest, What sorrows labour in my parent’s breast? Steel’d was that soul and by no misery mov’d That from a father seiz’d his babe belov’d: Such, such my case. And can I then but pray Others may never feel tyrannic sway?
Wheatley, Phillis. "Poem on tyranny and slavery," 1772.
Question 1
Briefly identify one perspective about slavery expressed in the excerpt.
Question 2
Briefly compare one way in which the aspirations expressed in the excerpt are similar to those of American colonists in the 1770s.
Question 3
Briefly explain one specific action Britain took during the Revolutionary War to appeal to the aspirations expressed in the excerpt.
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