Source identified1
Image design Golden Hour
Read & copy
“In every human Breast, God has implanted a Principle, which we call Love of Freedom;”
Meaning & context
Wheatley argues from shared human nature that love of liberty is not limited by race, directly challenging the contradiction between professed freedom and slavery.
Source details
Letter to the Reverend Samson Occom, February 11, 1774, published in the Connecticut press and represented by the National Constitution Center. Wheatley’s explicitly religious and natural-rights argument condemns oppression while speaking from the historical context of Atlantic slavery.