Horton, George Moses, 1798?-approximately 1880

George Moses Horton (1797-1893) could rightly be called North Carolina’s first professional poet. Born the property of Chatham County yeoman farmer William Horton, young George Moses Horton taught himself to read using an old speller and a copy of the Methodist hymnal, although he was grown before he learned to write. Especially fascinated with poetry, he composed psalm-meter verses in his head.

Young Horton was often sent to Chapel Hill by his then-master, James Horton, to sell produce. His unusually sophisticated vocabulary caught the attention of the university students, who encouraged his orations, and ultimately, the recitation of his own verse. His reputation spread, and he began to sell poems for students to send to their sweethearts, charging extra for acrostics based on the young ladies’ names. Thus for several decades he was able to purchase his own time from James Horton for twenty-five cents a day, and later from James’ son Hall for fifty cents. He earned the admiration and support of Governor John Owen, University presidents Joseph Caldwell and David L. Swain, and newspapermen William Lloyd Garrison and Horace Greeley. A professor’s wife and novelist, Caroline Lee Hentz, encouraged him and arranged for the publication of a collection, The Hope of Liberty. The book, the first published in the South by a black man, did not sell enough copies for Horton to purchase his freedom, nor did two subsequent collections.

He finally gained his freedom after the Civil War, and moved north. Horton spent his final years in Philadelphia, writing Sunday School stories and working for old North Carolina friends who had moved to the city. He did not enjoy the popularity there that he had known in Chapel Hill, and the details of his death are unknown. UNC scholar Collier Cobb described Horton as a “man of letters before he had learned to read…and as an author who supported himself and his family in an intellectual center before authorship had attained the dignity of a profession in America.” Noel Yancey has called him “UNC’s first poet-in-residence.”

Horton Middle School in Pittsboro is named for him, and there are plans to place a State Highway Historical Marker in his honor pending the determination of a documented location. He has been the subject of several books, dissertations, and scholarly papers, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill recently purchased one of his manuscripts at auction.

George Moses Horton (1798–after 1867), "the Black bard of North Carolina", was an African-American poet from North Carolina who was enslaved. His first collection, The Hope of Liberty (1829), was intended to earn enough to purchase his freedom, but failed to do so. He did not become free until 1865, when Union troops and the Emancipation Proclamation reached North Carolina.

Horton is author of the first book of literature published in North Carolina. Phillis Wheatley published in London during the colonial period after Boston publishers turned her down. But Horton is the first African-American author to be published after the United States gained independence.

Horton was born into slavery on William Horton's plantation in 1798 in Northampton County, North Carolina.[1] He was the sixth of ten children; the names of his parents are lost to history.[2]

His owner relocated when Horton was a very young child; in 1800, the boy and several family members were taken to accompany the master to a new tobacco farm in rural Chatham County. In 1814 William Horton gave the youth as property to his relative James Horton.[1] In 1819, the estate was broken up, and George Horton's family was separated. His poem "Division of an Estate", written years later, reflected on this experience.[2]

Becoming known as a poet, Horton attempted unsuccessfully to earn enough money from his poetry to purchase his freedom. Sometime in the 1830s, he "married" (legal marriages were not permitted) Martha Snipes, an enslaved woman owned by Franklin Snipes in Chatham County.[3]: 146  The couple had two children, Free and Rhody. Little else is known about the family.[4]

At age 60, which means about 1858, he described himself as "Belonging to Hal Horton living now in Chatham County".[5]: 1248 

The editorial "Explanation" that opens The Hope of Freedom speaks of Horton's desire to emigrate to the new colony of Liberia; the collection was published so as to encourage donations. A few of the abolitionist papers[which?] suggested raising money to buy his freedom and pay his passage to the colony. These efforts were unsuccessful and Horton was not freed until 1865, when Union troops arrived in his area. Under the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, they liberated all the enslaved in the states that had seceded. Horton befriended a young Union officer with that group, William H. S. Banks. He left Chapel Hill with Banks, traveling to Philadelphia in the free state of Pennsylvania. Banks helped Horton get his collection Naked Genius published the same year.[6]

Now a free man, at the age of 68 Horton lived in Philadelphia, where he continued to write poetry for local newspapers. His poem "Forbidden to Ride on the Street Cars" expressed his disappointment in the unjust treatment of Blacks after emancipation.[4] Arriving in Philadelphia before the summer of 1866,[7] he wrote Sunday school stories on behalf of friends who lived in the city.

Disappointed with the racial discrimination he encountered in Philadelphia, Horton did succeed in emigrating to Bexley, Liberia,[5]: 1244  arriving January 7, 1867.[3]: 151–152  This is the last known reference to him. While later death dates are found in some recent publications, his death location, date, and burial are unknown.[6] He may have returned to Philadelphia.[5]: 1244  There is no known photograph or drawing of Horton.

Horton disliked farm work, and while young, in his limited free time he taught himself to read using spelling books, the Bible, and hymnals.[2] Learning poetry and snippets of literature, Horton composed poems in his mind, since he did not learn to write until much later. The University of North Carolina, in Chapel Hill, was 8 miles (13 km) from his home. As a young adult, Horton delivered produce to the university students and kitchens.[8]: 3  He got along well with the students and they saw his gifts: "Some how or other they discoverd a spark of genius in me".[9]: xiv  He composed and recited poems for students, some of whom transcribed his pieces. In addition, he composed poems, usually love poems, by commission for individual students at 25¢ to 75¢ each, "besides many respectable suits of clothes".[9]: xvi  The students also gave him many books: he tells us of "Murray's English Grammar and its accordant branches [(Murray's studies of other languages)]; Samuel Johnson's Dictionary in miniature, and also Walker's [Rhyming Dictionary] and [Thomas] Sheridan's [A Complete Dictionary of the English Language], and parts of others. And other books of use they gave me, which I had no chance to peruse minutely, Milton's Paradise Lost, [James] Thompson's Seasons, parts of Homer's Iliad and Virgil's Ænead ( [sic]), Beauties of Shakespear, Beauties of Byron, part of Plutarch, [Jedidiah] Morse's Geography, The Columbian Orator, [Richard] Snowden's History of the [American] Revolution, [Edward] Young's Night Thoughts, and some others".[9]: xv–xvi 

Horton mentions Leonidas Polk as among the many students he had contact with.[9]: xv  This indicates a date in the early 1820s.

In 1828 a number of newspapers in North Carolina and beyond discussed Horton's work.[10] In 1829, his poems were published in a collection titled The Hope of Liberty, which was intended but failed to raise enough funds to purchase his freedom.[11] The book, funded by the politically liberal journalist Joseph Gales, was published the same year as David Walker's An Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World.[12]

Horton is believed to be the first Southern Black to publish poetry.[1] Though he knew how to read, he published the book before he had learned how to write. As he recalled, "I fell to work in my head, and composed several undigested pieces."[13]

By 1832, Horton had learned to write, helped by Caroline Lee Hentz, a writer and the wife of a professor at the university. Teaching Blacks to read and write was legal in North Carolina until 1836, when restrictions were increased because of fears about slave revolts. She also helped get at least two of his poems published in a newspaper.[1]

Horton had composed a poem on the death of Hentz's first child. As he recalled: "She was extremely pleased with the dirge which I wrote on the death of her much lamented primogenial infant, and for which she gave me much credit and a handsome reward. Not being able to write myself, I dictated while she wrote."[13] She sent another of Horton's poems to her hometown newspaper in Lancaster, Massachusetts, where it was published on April 8, 1828, as "Liberty and Slavery".[2]

Horton's first book was republished in 1837 under the title Poems by a Slave. It was reprinted with a biography and poetry by Phillis Wheatley a year later.[6] This book was published by Boston-based publisher and abolitionist Isaac Knapp. Newspapers again took note of Horton, calling him "the colored bard of Chapel Hill".[14]

In 1845, Horton published another book of poetry, The Poetical Works of George M. Horton, The Colored Bard of North-Carolina, To Which Is Prefixed The Life of the Author, Written by Himself. Newspapers took notice again in December–January 1849 – 1850,[15] and advertisements for the book were printed in a Hillsborough newspaper from 1852 into 1853.[16] Horton was given direct credit for some poems published in newspapers in 1857 and 1858.[17] A short announcement/review of his last book, Naked Genius appeared in the Raleigh Daily Progress on 31 August 1865. [18]

Horton gained the admiration of North Carolina Governor John Owen, influential newspapermen Horace Greeley and William Lloyd Garrison, and numerous other Northern abolitionists. He was said to be an admirer of Byron, whose poetry he used as a model.[19]

er Horton's first poem was published in the Lancaster, Massachusetts, Gazette, his works were published in other newspapers, such as the Register in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Freedom's Journal in New York City.[2] Horton's poetic style was typical of contemporary European poetry and was similar to poems written by free white contemporaries, likely a reflection of his reading and his work for commission.[20] He wrote both sonnets and ballads. His earlier works focused on his life in slavery. Such topics, however, were more generalized and not necessarily based on his personal experience. He referred to his life on "vile accursed earth" and the "drudg'ry, pain, and toil" of life, as well as his oppression "because my skin is black".[20]

His first collection was focused on the issues of slavery and bondage. He did not gain enough in sales from that book to purchase his freedom; in his second book, he mentions slavery only twice.[21] The change in theme is also likely due to the more restrictive climate in the South in the years leading up to the Civil War.[4]

His later works, especially those written after his emancipation, expressed rural and pastoral themes. Like other early Black American writers such as Jupiter Hammon and Phillis Wheatley, Horton was deeply influenced by the Bible and African-American religion.[21]

The earliest known critical commentary on Horton's writing is from 1909 by University of North Carolina professor Collier Cobb. He dismissed Horton's antislavery themes, saying: "George never really cared for more liberty than he had, but was fond of playing to the grandstand.".[22]

In 2017 the only known essay by Horton, "Individual Influence", was published for the first time.[5]

George Moses Horton
1798–1883
Born a slave on William Horton’s tobacco plantation, George Moses Horton taught himself to read. Around 1815 he began composing poems in his head, saying them aloud and “selling” them to an increasingly large crowd of buyers at the weekly Chapel Hill farmers market. Students at the nearby University of North Carolina bought his love poems and lent him books. As his fame spread, he gained the attention of Caroline Lee Whiting Hentz, a novelist and professor’s wife who transcribed his poetry and helped publish it in her hometown newspaper. With her assistance, Horton published his first collection of poetry, The Hope of Liberty (1829), becoming the first African American man to publish a book in the South—and one of the first to publicly protest his slavery in poetry.

Horton hoped to earn enough money from the publication of his book to buy his freedom, but his attempts were denied despite significant support from members of the public, including the governor.

He learned to write in 1832. In the early 1830s, with a weekly income from his poems of at least $3, Horton arranged to purchase his time from his owner, and became a full-time poet, handyman, and servant at the university. He continued to buy his own time for more than 30 years while publishing a second collection of poetry, The Poetical Works (1845), and continuing to appeal for his freedom.

After the Civil War, Horton traveled with the 9th Michigan Cavalry Volunteers throughout North Carolina. During those travels, he composed the poems that make up his third collection, Naked Genius (1865), published in Raleigh. After 68 years as a slave, he settled in Philadelphia for at least 17 years of freedom before his death, circa 1883.

His legacy is celebrated by the residents of Chatham County: he is the namesake of Horton Middle School, June 28 was declared George Moses Horton Day in 1978, and in 1997 he was declared the Historic Poet Laureate of Chatham County. Horton’s poetry is featured in the Norton Anthology of African American Literature, and in 1996 he was inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame. A selection of his poems appears in The Black Bard of North Carolina: George Moses Horton and His Poetry (1997, ed. Joan R. Sherman).

Horton’s poetry displays a keen ear for rhythm and rhyme and a circumspect understanding of human nature. His poetry explores faith, love, and slavery while celebrating the rural beauty of Chatham County, home of the plantation on which Horton spent much of his life.

A historic marker stands near where Horton’s plantation was located.

George Moses Horton (circa 1797-circa1883) was a Chatham County, N.C., slave who taught himself to read and compose poetry. By the age of 20, he began visiting the University of North Carolina and selling to the students acrostic love poems based on the names of their girlfriends. His literary efforts were encouraged by a number of well-placed individuals, including the novelist Caroline Lee Hentz, North Carolina Governor and later University President David L. Swain, and newspaperman Horace Greeley.

Hentz helped Horton publish his first work, "Liberty and Slavery," in the Lancaster [Mass.] Gazette on 8 April 1829. This was the first known poem written by a slave protesting his status. Horton's "The Hope of Liberty," also published in 1829, was the first publication in the South by an African American.

[Adapted from the Dictionary of North Carolina Biography. For further information, see The Black Poet by Richard Walser (1966).]

OTHER HORTON HOLDINGS IN THE SOUTHERN HISTORICAL COLLECTION

Additional Horton manuscripts can be found in the following collections:

From the Pettigrew Family Papers (#592), seven poems, 1836 and undated (folder 568):

"The Emigrant Girl"

"On Ghosts"

An acrostic (Doctrine Davenport) "Mr. Davenport's address to his lady"

An acrostic (Mary M. Davenport) "His lady's reply"

An acrostic (Mary Pettigrew Davenport) "To their little daughter"

"The Pleasures of a College Life"

An acrostic (Julia Shepard) "On the pleasures of beauty"

From the Gillespie and Wright Family Papers (#275), two acrostics on the same sheet, undated (folder 17):

"Lo Twilight memorys sweet and pleasing beam"

"Joy may revive in sorrows lonely vale"

From the David L. Swain Papers (#706), three letters, 1844, 1853, and undated:

To: Gov. Swain from George M. Horton of colour, 3 September 1844

To: [Horace Greely] from George M. Horton of colour, 11 September 1853

To: Gov. Swain from George M. Horton, poet, [undated]