page_title: James Monroe Whitfield
section_title: Poetry and writing
hierarchical_section_title: James Monroe Whitfield / Poetry and writing
caption_attribution_description: English: J. M. Whitfield and excerpt of "America"
context_page_description: James Monroe Whitfield was an African-American poet, abolitionist, and political activist. He was a notable writer and activist in abolitionism and African emigration during the antebellum era. He published the book "America and other poems" in 1853, which is still in print.
context_section_description: Whitfield published a small volume of poetry in 1853 entitled "America and other poems" (publisher James S. Leavitt of Bufffalo) which was dedicated to his friend Martin Delany. Half of the poems are about slavery, the other half about art, nature or people such as John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, or Joseph Cinque. Whitfield found success publishing poems related to abolitionism elsewhere as well, many being printed in The Liberator and The North Star. Whitfield's poems often expressed the oppression affecting African Americans, and moral corruption in politics and religion. One of Whitfield's most famous poems was America, published in 1853 in his poetry book. The poem embodies many of Whitfield's ideas about the hypocrisy of American freedom and democracy, and the difficult lives for both freed and enslaved Africans in the US.
  Another of his famous poems, written in 1867 after the Civil War, deals with the topic of the two ships that sailed to the New World in 1620, marking the dual beginnings of America and slavery. It was read before a crowd of two thousand people in San Francisco at a celebration commemorating the fourth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation.  
  Excerpt:
  More than two centuries have passed
     Since, holding on their stormy way,
  Before the furious wintry blast,
     Upon a dark December day,
  Two sails, with different intent,
     Approached the Western Continent.
  
  One vessel bore as rich a freight
     As ever yet has crossed the wave;
  The living germs to form a State
     That knows no master, owns no slave.
  She bore the pilgrims to that strand
     Which since is rendered classic soil,
  Where all the honors of the land
     May reach the hardy sons of toil.
  
  The other bore the baleful seeds
     Of future fratricidal strife,
  The germ of dark and bloody deeds,
     Which prey upon a nation's life.
  The trafficker in human souls
     Had gathered up and chained his prey,
  And stood prepared to call the rolls,
     When, anchored in Virginia's Bay--
caption: J M Whitfield and excerpt of "America"
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