George Moses Horton was born a slave in Northampton County, North Carolina and moved as a child to Chatham County. Although he could not write, he taught himself to read and began composing poetry, which he dictated. He became well known by selling poetry from his vegetable cart to students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A professor's wife and novelist, Caroline Lee Hentz, encouraged him to publish his work by sending his poem "Liberty and Slavery" to her hometown newspaper in Massachusetts, the Lancaster Gazette. It became not only Horton's first published poem, but also the first poem by a slave reflecting on his condition. The Hope of Liberty (1829) was Horton's first published collection of poetry and the first book published by an African American in the South. However, the edition did not sell well. It was later reprinted in 1837 as Poems by a Slave in Philadelphia and Boston. A second collection of poems, The Poetical Works of George M. Horton, the Colored Bard of North Carolina; to which is Prefixed the Life of the Author, was published in 1845. Horton's last book of poetry, Naked Genius, was published in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1865. After the Civil War, he lived for some time in Philadelphia, but the place and date of his death are not known.

The Poetical Works of George M. Horton, the Colored Bard of North Carolina; to which is Prefixed the Life of the Author included a short autobiography and forty- three poems. In his preface, "Life of the Author," Horton offers a short account of his time in slavery and his development as a poet. He describes his struggles to acquire books and poems in order to teach himself the art of composition. He closes by noting his successes in Boston and thanking those who helped him along the way, including Hentz, for whom he wrote a eulogy. The friendship was somewhat unlikely, because Horton published his poetry in order to gain his freedom, while Hentz later became famous for her pro-slavery novel, The Planter's Northern Bride (1854). The poems of The Poetical Works use a variety of rhyme schemes, from the ballad to blank verse, and cover topics such as love, college life, death, slavery and nature. This collection also includes some comic and ceremonial pieces.

See also the entry for George Moses Horton from the Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, available on this site.

Works Consulted: Garraty, John A. and Mark C. Carnes, eds., American National Biography, New York: Oxford University Press, 1999; Powell, William S., ed., Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1979-1996.

Harris Henderson