Life & Wisdom Quote by Jupiter Hammon

Hammon’s question lands like a trap laid with politeness. He starts from a moral axiom his audience can’t easily dodge: you already know murder is wicked. Then he pivots to a scenario engineered for the enslaved condition: the “master” committing violence, and the enslaved person being tempted to treat that example as permission. It’s not just about homicide; it’s about the daily pedagogy of power, the way domination teaches by demonstration.

The genius is the asymmetry baked into the setup. Masters can kill with near-impunity; the enslaved are asked to imagine themselves in court, needing an “excuse.” Hammon exposes a brutal truth without naming it outright: the law and the moral narrative are not the same thing for everyone. By framing it as a rhetorical question, he forces the listener to supply the answer and, in doing so, to internalize a standard that is both spiritual and strategic. The subtext is survival: don’t let the master’s brutality recruit you into self-destruction, because the system will punish you for the very violence it models.

Context matters: Hammon, an enslaved Black poet and early African American published writer, often worked within Christian exhortation. Here, that religious register becomes a coded critique. He can’t openly indict slaveholders as criminals, but he can spotlight the scandal of “master” and “murder” sharing a sentence. The line functions as moral instruction, social diagnosis, and quiet resistance, all while wearing the acceptable mask of piety.