[In the following excerpt, Palmer criticizes Hammon's poetic style and his "intoxication " with religion, suggesting that Hammon could have made a stronger statement against slavery.]

Throughout his life, Hammon was able to reach remarkable stages of self-awareness and self-assertiveness. In this regard, Hughes and Bontemps state that "Hammon was an intelligent and privileged slave, respected by his master for his skill with tools and by some of his fellow slaves for his power as a preacher" [Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps, eds., The Poetry of the Negro, 1949]. Thus, first as a preacher and later as a published poet, Hammon emerged as one of the foremost and influential shapers of non-militant modes of thinking and of religious preoccupations of his people.

The preaching tradition, along with the saving of souls, caught up in the black experience of slavery and oppression, did not spring into existence suddenly. In the book, Black Preaching, Henry Mitchell says that the earliest record of the conversion of blacks in the colonies is that of "Anthony, Negro; Isabel, Negro; William, their child, baptised on February 16, 1623, in Elizabeth City County in Virginia." In his time, Hammon became a moving force in perpetuating this tradition of preaching and saving souls….

Due to his fondness for preaching, the major portion, if not all, of Hammon's poetry is religious in tone and is usually dismissed by critics as being of little aesthetic value. His poetry, however, is filled with didacticisms and aphorisms. Note this fact in selected verses of his first published poem, An Evening Thought: Salvation by Christ With Penitential Cries.

The reader becomes immediately aware of the contrived and forced rhymes and the poor quality of the verse patterns, which are archetypes of the early Methodist hymns. In fair appraisal, however, the critic simultaneously sees in the poet's crudely penned lines folksy themes that depict the mores of a people who envisioned a life lived righteously "on this side of Jordan" would reap rich rewards on the other side. [Jean] Wagner says that Hammon's verses "represent a halfway stage between the guileless art of the unknown composers of spirituals and the already much wordier manner of the black popular preacher" [Black Poets of the United States, 1973].

Eighteen years after Hammon's first verses appeared in print, a poem entitled A Poetical Address to Phillis Wheatly, Ethiopian Poetess, reached the reading public. From this the following stanza is taken:

Throughout this poem, the poet based his theme on the fact that it was divine providence which brought Phillis Wheatley from heathen Africa to a land where she could know the true religion and teach it to others.

In this and in all of his other poems, there are marked irregularities. The omission at times of one syllable and at other times two seems to mar the poetic line. Yet these profuse examples of syncopation, so characteristic of Negro dance rhythms, are fascinating. The stanzaic form is quatrain and the dominant metrical pattern is iambic tetrameter. Such prosody provides facile reading and almost puerile comprehension.

From "The Kind Master and the Dutiful Servant," part of the dialogue is as follows:

Hammon's style here is conversational in tone. Like others, this poem and especially "A Poem for Children with Thoughts on Death" are meant to touch the heart strings with repetitions, predictable rhymes, and uncomplicated structures. All of the subject matter is basically religious with intent to move the heart and spirit, not the mind nor the muscle. It is surprising that in all of his writings the reader is unable to find one statement abhorring slavery and the deprivations of the black people of his era.

Considering the numbers of blacks who listened to Hammon's preachments, one can vividly envision the leadership he could have exerted in apparent struggles for freedom. A pervasive sense of dissatisfaction with American life for blacks in pre-American Revolutionary days had to have its roots in discontent, protest, and rebellion, even in the North. Not so with Hammon! He was content as a "dogooder", a religious man who believed in and taught the virtue of obedience to oppressed slaves. I must caution, however, that in evaluating Hammon's religiosity, the critic must not just study obvious racial feelings rampant at that time but the religious feelings of Hammon as well. He was thoroughly indoctrinated in the Christian ethic and was truly unable to function otherwise.

In this regard, Wanger disagrees with this premise and concludes his excerpt exclaiming the lack of significance of Hammon's contribution to Afro-American literature with the plausible statement that

… passiveness and resignation obscure the genuineness of Hammon's religiosity, so that today we view his Christian faith as something alien to him. His morality also remains undeveloped, and seemingly restricted to Saint Paul's admonition: "Slaves, obey your masters!" He lets fall not a word that might be taken to criticize slavery, in which he sees only the manifestation of divine foresight and mercy. Thus the deportation of Africans to America becomes a kind of providential pilgrimage toward knowledge of the one true God. [Black Poets in the United States]

Today, readers of Hammon's poetry and prose, in their benignancy, will surely admit that the poet possessed a workable knowledge of 18th century writing styles despite the simplistic quality of his productivity. Readers will concur, too, that his emotional involvement with religion, to the point where it approaches intoxication, as one critic puts it, was so intense that the words and the expressions are forced into verse mold almost as a procrustean endeavor.

Personally, I feel, however, that as a product of the uncultivated Negro imagination and temperament, Hammon's writing, sparse as it is and undistinguished, forms an uncommon contribution to American belles-lettres of the 18th century because of its simplicity and its honesty. It is a quaint prelude to the rich and varied songs which were to burst spontaneously from black writers a century later, songs which would make up the great gift from Africa to the art of America.