Wheatley Panel is convened.

(Summer) In an effort to prove that her servant was the author of her poems and get them published, Susana Wheatley asks a group of 18 men, including John Hancock, Gov. Thomas Hutchinson, to review the work. The panel subsequently declares, “The poems … were (as we verily believe) written by Phillis, a young negro girl, who was but a few years since, brought an uncultivated barbarian from Africa, and has ever since been, and now is, under the disadvantage of serving as a slave in a family in this town.” Despite their judgment, no Colonial publisher is found to print them.