To His Excellency General Washington

Despite his titular stance, General Washington does not enter the poem until the fourth of five stanzas. Instead, “His Excellency General Washington” is more a showcase of neoclassical style and its ability to heighten and elevate a given feeling, moment, person, or event. In this case, General Washington’s heroism in the clash against British forces is heightened to mythological status, alluding in Line 6 to the spectacle of the colonial rebellion on a world stage that was at the time populated by imperialist superpowers. To capture the enormity and significance of such a daring rebellion, Wheatley composes the poem in heroic couplets. In his landmark epic Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer championed the heroic couplet, which are used for composing verse extolling tales and figures of heroism throughout much of 17th and 18th century poetry. Each of Wheatley’s lines is a 10 or nearly 10 syllable lines with its duplicate end rhyme and imagery echoed in the immediate next.

In Lines 13–28, Wheatley’s imagery empowers the poem’s middle passages, guiding the reader to the poem’s turn at Line 23, and on to the end of the poem. At Line 13, Wheatley’s speaker issues a second invocation, this time directly to the muse which makes a prologue of the opening stanza. Wheatley also leaves behind the metaphorical construction of the goddess “Columbia” (Line 2) behind, turning to a dramatic battle scene.

In Lines 16-22, Wheatley’s depictions of battle draw power—not from depictions of clashing swords or lines of men exchanging musket fire, but rather by the sublime images of nature she uses to frame the action. In Line 15, Wheatley invokes Eolus, the god of wind. While this serves as another allusion to the pagan iconography of Ovid and Homer, it also brings the high drama and energy of a strong gale force into the imagery of the poem: “As when Eolus heaven's fair face deforms, / Enwrapp'd in tempest and a night of storms;” (Line 15). Rather than trying to depict military stratagem, with which Wheatley may or may not have been familiar (and common civilian readers surely wouldn’t be at all), Wheatley draws on the shared experience of a gale force to relay the urgency and power of a battle to her readership.

Wheatley’s reference to wind, storms, and the ebb and flow of the surf also allude to the breath at work in the reading of the line “refluent surges beat the soundings shore” (Line 18). The word “refluent” (Line 18) relates to the tide’s backward flow. As earlier noted, heroic couplet works in pairs of rhyming lines. While reading such a construction aloud (which was commonly done at social gatherings during the time in which this poem was published), the effect is a sing-song patterning much like the “1-2-3” of a waltz step or the in and out of a tide. By focusing on the repetitive sound of nature, Wheatley is also specifically evoking and drawing attention to the sound of poetry.

In poetry, the “turn” represents a change in thought or direction. Here, the turn comes at Line 23, where Wheatley finally introduces the titular General Washington into the poem: “Shall I to Washington their praise recite / Enough thou know'st them in the fields of fight” (Line 23). By introducing Washington at the poem’s turn, Wheatley positions the general with dramatic weight and presence, with lines 27-28, suggesting a desperate call to action by Columbia herself, “Fam'd for thy valour, for thy virtues more, / Hear every tongue thy guardian aid implore!” (Lines 27-28). From here, the poem’s speaker strictly refers to Washington in the pronouns of high formal language “thou” and “thine” Not only is this a highly formal register, but it also ensures there is no confusion: The speaker is directly addressing General Washington.

In Line 28, Wheatley writes, “One century scarce perform'd its destined round, / When Gallic powers Columbia's fury found” (Lines 29-30). This alludes to the French and Indian Wars—a series of conflicts that began in 1688 when French troops contended to lay claim to North American territories held by the crown. Wheatley raises this as a warning of the colonies’ prowess in driving off imperialist interests. In the poem’s final stanza, the speaker returns to the subject of General Washington, this time giving the warrior sway to “Proceed, great chief, with virtue on thy side” (Line 39). By evoking the question of virtue, Wheatley both acknowledges the severity of war, but absolves Washington of wrongdoing. This moralization of war seems to go hand in hand with a throne “that shine[s]” (Line 41), positioning Washington not only as the revolution’s “great chief” (Line 39), but also implying a justly deserved crown for his role in the American Revolution.