User:Baileyberhannan/George Moses Horton

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= George Moses Horton = George Moses Horton (1798– approximately 1883 ), was an African-American poet from North Carolina who was enslaved until 1865. Horton is the author of the first book of literature published in North Carolina as well as the first African-American author to be published after the United States gained its independence.

In his first collection, The Hope of Liberty (1829), Horton wrote it with the intention to earn enough money to purchase his freedom, but failed to do so. Horton did not gain his freedom until Union soldiers and the Emancipation proclamation reached North Carolina.

Early Years (1789-1865)
Horton was born into slavery on William Horton's plantation in 1798 in Northampton County, North Carolina. He was the sixth of ten children; the names of his parents are lost in records throughout time.

When Horton was six years old (1797), William Horton relocated his family and slaves to a Chatham County, North Carolina. This farm is where Horton lived until the end of the Civil War. In 1814 William Horton gave the younger slaves as property to his relative James Horton.

Horton began an interest in learning to read and write by listening to The Bible read aloud and hymns he heard. He learned to read based on what he was hearing during Revail meetings (which was mainly The Bible) calling them his 'reading lessons'. Horton began compiling pieces based on the verses that he remembered from the King James Version of the Bible.

Around 1817, Horton began taking the approximately ten mile trip south toward Chapel Hill in order to sell fruits and farm products by orders of his master. Here, Horton took his ability for composing to write love poems for the University of North Carolina student, selling them for 25 cents or more. The students of UNC-Chapel Hill, grew an interest to Horton due to his ability to sounded verse and his desire for greater knowledge. The students would give Horton books including grammar books and various dictionaries.

Caroline Lee Hentz, author, playwriter and wife of Nicholas Hentz a professor at UNC-Chapel Hill,took an interest in Horton. Teaching him at write and improved his verses. She was highly influential in getting his poems, Liberty and Slavery and Slavery (1828), published to the Lancaster Gazette in April of 1828 and wrote in the preface an introductory note. In June of the same year she sent a third Horton poem, On Poetry and Musick (1828) to be published by the Gazette to also be published. The three poems were renamed to be placed into his first collection, The Hope of Liberty (1829).

The Hope of Liberty (1829)
The first collection Horton had publish in July of 1929.