Beginning in 1765, Phillis Wheatley began writing to the Reverend Samson Occum, a Mohegan Indian who was an ordained Presbyterian minister, sparking a friendship between the two poets even though Phillis was substantially younger—eleven years old—at the time. As the nation found itself in the throes of an impending revolution seeking independence from Britain, Phillis drafted this letter to address what she saw as the hypocrisy of a nation demanding liberty and freedom while also still holding a firm grip on the enslavement and oppression of Blacks residing in the colonies. Though slavery was certainly the primary target of her letter, her gender spelled another growing concern in the colonies that freedom would only be extended to white males—a continuation of the same British patriarchal system that the colonists were claiming to be against.