Phillis Wheatley Peters’s poem “To the Right Honourable William, Earl of Dartmouth, His Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for North-America, &c.” was published in her collection Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral in 1773.
In this poem, Wheatley Peters addresses the newly elected secretary of state with a hope that he will prove less tyrannical than his predecessor. Under Lord Dartmouth’s new leadership, she writes, no more will America “dread the iron chain / Which wanton Tyranny with lawless hand / Had made, and with it meant t’ enslave the land.” Wheatley Peters goes on to assert her own authority to speak on matters of enslavement as she herself was “snatch’d from Afric’s fancy’d happy seat.” She expresses her hope that “Others may never feel tyrannic sway,” directly linking her own enslavement with British governance of the North American colonies.
As these quotations suggest, “To the Right Honourable William, Earl of Dartmouth” is a powerful poem, one that offers the perspective of an enslaved worker on the relationship between Great Britain and its colonies in North America during the years immediately prior to the Declaration of Independence. Wheatley Peters herself is a remarkable author, often cited as the first African-American woman to publish a volume of poetry. She was born free in Western Africa and was kidnapped as a child and brought to Boston by enslavers. In Boston, John Wheatley purchased her to be an enslaved domestic for his wife, and gave her the name Phillis Wheatley. We do not know the name she was born with. During her time in the Wheatley household, she learned to read and write, and her skills as a scholar and poet became clear. Her poetry, including the piece selected for this gallery, circulated informally and her reputation as a poet grew. The publication of her collection Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral in London in 1773 secured her place as one of the most prominent poets of her day, and an important voice in the antislavery movement.
Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral has been edited and published by the Women Writers Project in the Women Writers Online collection. As of fall 2026, WWO contains more than 480 texts written, translated by, or attributed to women, first published in print and in English between 1526 and 1850. By bringing a diverse collection of women’s voices together, the WWP seeks to make works by authors such as Wheatley Peters accessible to a wide audience of teachers, students, scholars, and the general reader.
Note: This introduction is necessarily brief, but Phillis Wheatley Peters’s full biography is well worth reading. For more on her life and the impacts she had on American literature and history, see “Tracing the Life of Phillis Wheatley Peters” by Jay Moschella and “Phillis Wheatley” by Sondra A. O’Neale.
