SOURCE: "Dilemma of the Dutiful Servant: The Poetry of Jupiter Hammon," in Language and Literature in the African American Imagination, edited by Carol Aisha Blackshire-Belay, Greenwood Press, 1992, pp. 105-17.

In the following excerpt, Johnson discusses factors that might have influenced Hammon's writings. These factors include Hammon's religion, his life as a slave, eighteenth-century politics and society, and the works of other writers.

The poetry of Hammon reveals a devoutly religious man who assimilates the predominant religious views of colonial New England. Because of this he has been accused of being too conciliatory in his attitude toward enslavement. While he does not always speak out against enslavement, he does speak for equality and unity of both the enslaved and master. Upon close examination, the poetry of Hammon reveals his ability to absorb the basic tenets of Christianity, yet use those precepts to mediate a stronger response to enslavement. In...