To His Excellency General Washington

Historically, verse has been wielded to forge and reforge national identity: recounting harrowing battles, and heroic lineages to generate the pathos of national pride. Famously, Virgil (a poet cited among Wheatley’s influences) was commissioned by the Romans to pen the Aeneid—the epic linking the Roman people as direct descendants to the Homeric conflict at the fall of Troy. Wheatley mythologizes Columbia in similar fashion by borrowing Roman and Hellenistic imagery in the creation of the poem’s centerpiece and metaphorical construction, “Columbia” (Line 2) "The Goddess" (Line 9). The speaker implores the goddess to act as a guide for General Washington’s every action.

“Columbia” embodies the early spirit of America as a goddess of the classical era. The name Columbia was first coined in the 1730s, in allusion to the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus, and referred to the American commonwealth of colonies. Prior to any final declaration of independence from English rule, representatives from each colony considered themselves disparate bodies—even referring to themselves as separate countries. In “To His Excellency General Washington,” Wheatley’s dramatic gesture succeeds in creating a mythology for the burgeoning country. Ultimately, Wheatley’s images and rationalist ideals put forth in the poem solidified several of the touchstones held today as icons of American patriotism.