The Rights of Man and American Revolutionary Literature

Any attempt to understand the literature of a certain time and place by identifying a single “spirit of the times” is naïve and inevitably misleading. It is this type of oversimplification that gives rise, at least in part, to the rather strict system of genrefication that has come to organize the texts we read. Of course the processes of genrefication and generalization serve to help us make sense of a seemingly endless pool of literature, and decide what even qualifies as literature. Making sense of literature by generalizing and simplifying, however, often blinds a reader to the complex interaction of personal and cultural ideologies that help shape any given text. To develop this in a more concrete way, let’s consider the literature produced in American during what may be called the revolutionary era. Even a cursory glance at some of the literature of this time seems to reveal the general “spirit of the times”: a preoccupation with the natural rights of man, a heightened concern with the institution of slavery. Indeed, the “spirit of the times” seems summed up by the very act that formally began the era we are here concerned with: America’s declaration of independence from Britain. Yet any attempt to understand the literature of this period as unified by the spirit of independence serves to obscure as much as to instruct. Although, as we will see, certain themes and concerns seem central to a great deal of the literature of the American revolutionary era, merely recognizing these themes and concerns will only get us so far in our attempt to understand the literature produced during this era. Once we recognize these themes, we must examine the ways in which they are used within a given text, and what the various ways in which common themes are employed reveal about the cultural context in which the texts were produced. Here I aim to examine the literature of the American revolutionary era not through generalization (though of course some generalization is perhaps inevitable) but through complication. I will consider four writers—Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Phillis Wheatley, and Philip Freneau. As we will see, the writing of all of these authors is animated by a concern with the rights of man and a consciousness of the injustices of slavery. These authors, though, seem to employ these concerns in different ways; it will be instructive to identify and examine such differences.

Let’s begin with two works that we can consider together because of various thematic and strategic similarities: Paine’s Common Sense and Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. Indeed, it is difficult to miss the influence the former seems to have had on the latter. Both texts follow a similar structure: each is, basically, a list of the negative aspects of Britain’s “long and violent abuse of power” over the American colonies, culminating in a call for separation from Britain (Paine, 630). In a sense, Jefferson’s work can be viewed, perhaps, as a response to Paine’s: Common Sense calls for independence; the Declaration, of course, declares such independence. “A government of our own is our natural right,” Paine says (636). Perhaps today this seems a completely noncontroversial assertion, but in 1776, this would have been a fairly radical thought in much of the world. Although Paine seems to feel this claim is a given, it stands in direct opposition to a much older ideology of the western world: the “natural” right of a king to rule. Indeed, a model of power such as the Great Chain of Being suggests that man does not have a natural right to his own government. Instead, he is placed in a hierarchy, situated above women and all other creatures, but clearly below the king and God. In asserting man’s right to a government of his own, Paine turns the older western concept of “the universal order of things” on its side, so to speak (636). That is, he seems to argue in favor of a horizontal power structure. One man’s subjugations to another, Paine seems to say, is unnatural.

Of course the presence of such ideas is unmistakable in the Declaration, in which Jefferson appeals to the “laws of nature and of nature’s God”—perhaps the same laws of nature to which Paine refers (652). “We hold these truths to be self evident:” Jefferson memorably writes, “that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by the Creator with inherent and inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” etc. (652). It is important that Jefferson establishes these natural rights of man early in the Declaration, as the remainder of the text is basically a catalog of the ways in which Britain has violated these rights of man. As such charges accrue, the rhetoric intensifies, culminating in one final charge against the King (though this charge would be removed before the publication of the Declaration). “He has waged cruel war against human nature itself,” Jefferson says, “violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere” (655). Of course, Jefferson here refers to Britain’s practice of enslaving Africans. Clearly, this is intended to be the climax of Jefferson’s argument, though the fact of its eventual deletion and Jefferson’s own involvement with (and apparent support for) the institution of slavery should tip us off to the strategic purpose of this passage. Surely, indicting the king for starting and continuing the practice of slavery in the Americas is intended to operate metaphorically. After all, the Declaration does not produce a call for abolition, but for freedom from British rule. When Jefferson reminds the reader of the king’s injustices toward “the persons of a distant people,” he also refers to the white colonists. This indictment seems to act as a warning to the people of the American colonies. Since the king has enslaved the people of one country—Africa—he is more than capable of enslaving that of another: America (though of course not a country yet).

Though both Paine and Jefferson seem very adamant about the injustices of depriving any individual of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” their ideologies of natural rights and independence are inextricable from the pervading cultural ideologies of white supremacy and patriarchy. Though they seem to call for independence, their patriarchal and euro-centric worldviews dictate that they are simply calling for independence of the white man from other white men. The question of the “equality” of such others as the woman or the African would not even be popularly addressed for quite some time, let alone answered.

Perhaps it seems only inevitable that the themes of natural rights and slavery would appear in the writing of Phillis Wheatley—a black woman and former slave—but, as we have seen, the ways in which these themes are dealt with are almost never as simple as we might expect. For a case in point, let’s consider Wheatley’s poem “On Being Brought From Africa to America.” These deceptively straightforward eight lines contain a surprising depth of meaning. “’Twas mercy brought me from my pagan land,” Wheatley begins. Taken literally, the beginning of this poem presents a surprising view of slavery from the point of view of an African slave. The speaker seems to have completely sold out to the white supremacist and Christian ideologies that served to perpetuate the institution of slavery. To call being made a slave “mercy” seems cowardly on the part of the speaker, and simply false. But a more careful reading of the poem reveals a contrary view. “Some view our sable race with scornful eye” she continues, “’Their color is a diabolic die.’ / Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain, / May be refined, and join the angelic train” (5-8). A very surface reading of these lines seems to support our initial feeling that the speaker is merely buying into the ideologies of her captor. A more careful reading, however, reveals this poem as quite radical. First, we should consider the speaker’s word choice. She calls her race the “sable race.” This is a curious and instructive detail that seems to suggest a purpose contrary to merely aligning oneself with the dominant ideologies of the white man. Sable, though it refers to black, has a positive connotation, and suggests a celebration of the blackness it refers to. The two final lines of the poem are particularly instructive. By employing the imperative “remember,” the speaker adopts a superior, commanding tone, a very bold tone for a slave to adopt indeed. Further, by associating Negroes with Cain, the speaker seems to remind the reader (presumably the white reader, since most blacks were not readers at all) that blacks are children of Adam and Eve, too, and thus protected by God. Also, the structure of the second to last line is ambiguous. Is she reminding Christians that Negroes “May be refined?” Or is she claiming that both Christians and Negroes may be refined? Either way, the poem culminates on a note of equality. Though the Negro has the inferior position in life, both have the opportunity in the afterlife to “join the angelic train.”
Though Wheatley’s poetry seems to lack the passion and frankness of latter African American writers, such as Langston Hughes or Malcolm X, she can certainly be viewed as a seed of a long and important tradition of African American literature, and her strategy adopted in “On Being Brought from Africa to America” reveals a lot about the culture in which it was produce. Firstly, we can assume that any poem that more frankly condemned the institution of white supremacy over blacks probably would not have been published in the first place. The very necessity of Wheatley’s subtlety reveals how extremely powerful and pervasive the ideologies that perpetuated slavery were. Furthermore, the instances of shame and self-hate in the poem (no matter how sarcastic or ironic) reveal the way in which personal ideologies are filtered through cultural ideologies. Even though we can read Wheatley’s poetry as condemning the ideologies that have served to perpetuate slavery, these very ideologies permeate and animate the author’s writing.

Philip Freneau’s hatred of slavery is apparent in his poem “To Sir Toby.” “If there exists a hell—the case is clear—,” he begins, “Sir Toby’s slaves enjoy that portion here” (1-2). Indeed, the body of the poem is simple enough. Freneau compares the condition of Sir Toby’s slaves in Jamaica to that of hell itself. It certainly seems, then, that Freneau’s poem is a genuine condemnation of the practice of slavery. What is curious to note though, is that Freneau writes about a British plantation in Jamaica, even though he had ample contact with Slavery in the states. When we consider some events of his life, we perhaps suspect Freneau of being more anti-British than anti-slavery. Like Jefferson, Freneau largely ignores the issue of America’s involvement in the slave trade. That these writers seem so passionate about the injustices of slavery without acknowledging such injustice in their own back yard, so to speak, certainly gives us cause to consider some ulterior purpose in choosing as a subject the institution of slavery. As we have seen, Jefferson employed the issue of slavery in a metaphorical sense, deflecting any “blame” for slavery from America and onto the British. Similarly, Freneau seems to be using the issue of slavery as a means of condemning the British. When we consider the fact that Freneau was, in 1780, captured by a British ship and treated cruelly (as recounted in his poem “The British Prison Ship”) we suspect that anti-British sentiments have, for Freneau, primacy over anti-slavery sentiments. This is not to accuse Freneau of total insincerity. Rather, it is to reveal the complex way in which the issue of slavery animates his poetry.

As the foregoing illustrates, the writing of the American revolutionary era cannot, and should not, be understood as merely unified by a concern for independence and the rights of man. Like all literature, the texts we have considered were not produced within a vacuum. Rather, they were produced within a specific cultural context, and a careful consideration of the texts bespeaks the complex ways in which various ideologies are filtered through one another as a text is produced. Of course, certain topics are bound to appear in the literature of an era, but it is the multiplicity of ways in which these topics are dealt with that allows us to understand the cultural context in which the literature was produced.