SOURCE: “George Moses Horton's Hope of Liberty: Thematic Unity in Early American Black Poetry,” in CLA Journal, Vol. XXIV, No. 4, June, 1982, pp. 441-50.

In the following essay, Cobbs argues that Horton's first published book of poetry has a common theme throughout what some critics have called a random assortment of poems—the motif of flight.

A hundred and fifty years after its publication in 1829 in Raleigh, North Carolina, George Moses Horton's Hope of Liberty¹ is a little-read landmark in the development of black American poetry. There is no point in claiming for this slim volume of twenty-two poems either great intrinsic literary worth or lasting influence on the progress of either white or black literature. We don’t know how many copies of the first edition were published, but literary historians are unanimous in claiming that sales were disappointing. None of the poems contained more than a few...