West Point

West Point, New York, is where the United States Military Academy was established in 1802. This former fort is located at a curve in the Hudson River that was the most defensible point in the Hudson Highlands. Built during the Revolutionary War (1775-83), with Tadeusz Kosciuszko putting his military engineering skills into play, this New York fort became the strategic base connecting New England with the rest of the states. Benedict Arnold, the commander of West Point, plotted to surrender the fortifications to the British but was foiled in his treason by the capture of Major John Andre. After the war the United States government maintained an outpost at West Point, purchasing the land in the 1790s.

A military academy had been a dream of George Washington and the Federalist Party, but they never successfully put one into place. However, the academy was finally established under the administration of Thomas Jeeeerson. Unlike the Federalist Party, Jefferson and the Democratic-Republican Party did not see the academy as the training ground for the children of the well-born. Instead, they viewed it as a republican institution, and Jefferson insisted that West Point be open to the sons of all citizens. His hope was to replace the Federalist Party-dominated officer corps, where appointments had often been based on personal connections, with a more republican officer corps, where talent and ability would be crucial. For Jefferson, establishing a military academy became another way for him to counter what he saw as the aristocratic pretensions of the Federalist Party.

Further reading: Theodore J. Crackel, Mr Jefferson’s Army: Political and Social Reform of the Military Establishment, 1801-1809 (New York: New York University

The Illustrated History of West Point (West Point, N. Y.: Harry N. Abrams, 1991).

Whately, Thomas (d. 1772) government official Although a minor official in Great Britain, Thomas Whately played a significant role in the developing imperial crisis of the 1760s and 1770s. As a secretary for George Grenville in the treasury office, Whately drew up the Stamp Act (1765). In the process he solicited the opinion of as many experts on colonial affairs as possible, including Thomas Hutchinson. Ignoring most of this advice, which indicated that colonists would oppose the measure, Whately drafted a reasonable law that the British thought would be self-enforceable.

Whately also wrote the pamphlet, The Regulations Lately Made concerning the Colonies and the Taxes Imposed Upon Them, Considered (London, 1765), which not only defended the Sugar Act (1764) but also elaborated upon the idea of virtual representation. Whately admitted that it was a violation of liberty to impose taxes without the consent of representatives of the taxed. However, he argued that the colonists were represented in Parliament in the same manner that all British subjects were represented: “for every Member of Parliament sits in the House not as a Representative of his own Constituents, but as one of that August Assembly by which all the Commons of Great Britain are represented.” In other words, each member of Parliament protects the “Rights and Interests” of the whole empire. This was a powerful argument in the 18th century and was taken seriously by many colonists. Daniel Dulany responded by arguing that since Parliament could pass taxes on the colonists that had no impact on the people of Great Britain, even by the standards of virtual representation, Parliament did not represent the colonists.

Whately remained an active politician and member of Parliament until his death in 1772. But even from the grave, he exerted some influence on the imperial crisis. Benjamin Franklin had gained possession of a series of letters written by Thomas Hutchinson to Whately, in which the Massachusetts official had decried the course of events in Boston in the late 1760s. Franklin forwarded the letters to Boston, where they were made public in 1773, destroying the last vestiges of Hutchinson’s popularity and leading to his recall as governor.

See also corporatism; resistance movement.

Further reading: Bernard Bailyn, The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974); Robert Middlekauff, The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982); Edmund S. Morgan and Helen M. Morgan,

The Stamp Crisis: Prologue to Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1953).

Wheatley, Phillis (1753?-1784) Senegalese-born American poet and former slave

This African-American prodigy surprised European Americans of the revolutionary generation with her ability to command language and write poetry. Wheatley was born in Africa and was captured by slave traders when she was about eight years old. She was fortunate in that she was brought to Boston and sold to an affluent family— the Wheatleys—as a household slave. Susanna Wheatley treated young Phillis kindly, teaching her to read and write English. Phillis’s extraordinary talents soon became apparent, and she even learned enough Latin to translate Ovid. Still only a teenager, she began to write poetry on religious themes that astonished her white patrons. By 1772 several of her poems had been published, and her fame spread across the Atlantic. The Wheatleys sent Phillis to England in 1773, where she impressed a new round of patrons. A volume of her poetry was published in England, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773). But the illness of her North American patroness, Susanna Wheatley, compelled her to return to Boston. Soon after arriving in Boston, Phillis received her manumission papers. For the next few years, even though her ex-owners both died, she continued to write poetry, some of which supported the resistance to Great Britain. In 1778 Phillis married a free black, named John Peters. Their life was a struggle together. She had three children, but two died in early infancy. Never of a strong composition, Phillis died in poverty and obscurity in 1784, about age 30.

Phillis Wheatley was an important symbol for her time. She was the first African-American writer to get published. In an age when men such as Thomas Jefferson denied

The intellectual equality of blacks, the achievements of an African American such as Phillis Wheatley came to be a powerful antislavery argument. While much of her work was religious, she not only wrote some patriotic poetry but also explored issues of race. In her 1773 poem “On Being Brought from Africa to America” she wrote:

‘Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,

Taught my benighted soul to understand That there’s a God, that there’s a Savior too:

Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.

Some view our sable race with scornful eye,

“Their colour is a diabolic die.”

Remember Christians, Negroes, black as Cain,

May be refin’d, and join th’ angelic train.

See also slavery; slave trade.

Further reading: William H. Robinson, Phillis Wheatley and Her Writings (New York: Garland, 1984); David Grimsted, “Anglo-American Racism and Phillis Wheatley’s ‘Sable Veil,’ ‘Lengthened Chain, and ‘Knitted Heart,’” in Women in the Age of the American Revolution, eds. Ronald Hoffman and Peter J. Albert, 338-444 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1989).