Life & Wisdom Quote by Jupiter Hammon

Hammon writes with the careful tact of someone who knows exactly how precarious it is to address power while standing inside its reach. The sentence is stitched together from deference and daring: he praises the recipient for having "kindness and good will" toward the oppressed, then uses that compliment as a lever to smuggle in his real purpose. The flattery is not ornamental; it is a strategy. By framing the reader as already compassionate, he makes it harder for them to reject what follows without betraying their own self-image.

The phrasing "those you thought were oppressed" is the quietest knife in the line. Hammon doesn’t grant the listener full authority over reality; he hints that their understanding of oppression is partial, mediated by distance, convenience, and perhaps denial. He’s also testing them: are they merely sympathetic in theory, or willing to be implicated in practice?

"I am sure you will not despise what I have wrote" reveals the emotional stakes. For an enslaved Black poet in 18th-century America, being dismissed wasn’t just a literary slight; it was a rehearsal of the broader social logic that treated Black thought as disposable. Hammon’s appeal to "service" is equally loaded. He positions his writing as useful, not disruptive - a canny move in a culture that punished enslaved people for appearing too assertive. Yet beneath the modesty is a claim to intellectual and moral authority: his words can help the oppressed because he speaks from inside their condition. The line performs a delicate double act: it flatters the helper, but it also insists the oppressed can author the terms of their own rescue.