It appears certain that Phillis was the first person to apply to George
Washington the phrase, "First in peace." The phrase occurs in her poem
addressed to "His Excellency, General George Washington," written in 1775.
The encomium, "First in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his
countrymen" was originally used in the resolutions presented to Congress
on the death of Washington, December, 1799.

Phillis Wheatley's poetry is the poetry of the Eighteenth Century. She
wrote when Pope and Gray were supreme; it is easy to see that Pope was her
model. Had she come under the influence of Wordsworth, Byron or Keats or
Shelley, she would have done greater work. As it is, her work must not be
judged by the work and standards of a later day, but by the work and
standards of her own day and her own contemporaries. By this method of
criticism she stands out as one of the important characters in the making
of American literature, without any allowances for her sex or her
antecedents.

According to "A Bibliographical Checklist of American Negro Poetry,"
compiled by Mr. Arthur A. Schomburg, more than one hundred Negroes in the
United States have published volumes of poetry ranging in size from
pamphlets to books of from one hundred to three hundred pages. About
thirty of these writers fill in the gap between Phillis Wheatley and Paul
Laurence Dunbar. Just here it is of interest to note that a Negro wrote
and published a poem before Phillis Wheatley arrived in this country from
Africa. He was Jupiter Hammon, a slave belonging to a Mr. Lloyd of
Queens-Village, Long Island. In 1760 Hammon published a poem, eighty-eight
lines in length, entitled "An Evening Thought, Salvation by Christ, with
Penettential Cries." In 1788 he published "An Address to Miss Phillis
Wheatley, Ethiopian Poetess in Boston, who came from Africa at eight years
of age, and soon became acquainted with the Gospel of Jesus Christ." These