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Introduction
Opening Salvo Philip Freneau was born in New York City in 1752. His father was a French Huguenot and his mother was a Scot. Used originally as a term of derision, the derivation of the name Huguenot remains uncertain. It may have been a French corruption of the German word Eidgenosse, meaning a confederate. In the 18th century questioning the status quo would label one as both an enemy of the state as well as an enemy of God. This was not taken lightly. This spirit of inquiry and independence from accepted thoughts and principles stayed with Mr. Freneau his entire life. Revolution and a new world order were in the air. Song For Philip Freneau
Philip Freneau 1752 - 1832
The young Mr. Freneau's college classmates read like a whose who of American History: Hugh Brackenridge and Brockholst Livingston both American Supreme Court Justices; Gunning Bedford a framer of the Constitution; Aaron Burr a Vice-President; Henry Lee an army colonel; James Madison a President; among others. As his roommate and close friend, James Madison, regarded Mr. Freneau's wit and verbal skills in high regard and felt he was a most powerful wielder of words. Mr. Freneau became a 'poet of the Revolution" and may be regarded as one of the creators of what became American literature.
Full of literary and political enthusiasm, Mrs. Freneau and Brackenridge collaborated on a picturesque narrative, "Father Bombo's Pilgrimage," which presents comic glimpses of life in eighteenth-century America and may be the first work of verse/fiction written in America. Mr. Freneau's life after Princeton reflected his times and talents. He tried teaching and hated it. He spent two more years studying theology, but gave it up. Because of his upbringing and schooling he had a deep obligation to perform public service. His satirical wit was set against the British and in 1775 his verse stemmed from his strong sense of patriotism. However, he distrusted politics and had a personal yearning to escape social turmoil and war. The private poet within him struggled against his public role. In 1776 the "poet of the revolution" set sail for the West Indies where he spent two years writing of the beauties of nature and learning navigation by what he stated as a "trial by fire" method.
During his time spent in Jamaica and the Bermudas, he saw the ugliness of slavery and began a life-long fight against this 18th century-held belief. Again he was at odds with his background of owning slaves on his family estate in Monmonth, NJ. This caused him to pen his anti-slavery poem, "To Sir Tobey," a long prose-poem, a first of its kind in American literature.
Soon after this he returned to service. His romantic wanderings were over for a while. He returned to his beloved New Jersey to find his home burned and joined the militia and sailed the Atlantic as a ship captain. After suffering for six weeks on a British prison and hospital ship, he poured his bitterness into his political writing and into much of his poetry of the early 1780s.
In 1790 his friends Mrs. Madison and Jefferson persuaded him to set up his own newspaper in Philadelphia to counter the powerful Hamiltonian paper of John Fenno. Mr. Freneau's National Gazette upheld Jefferson's democratic - republican principles and even condemned President Washington's foreign policy. Mr. Jefferson later praised Mr. Freneau for having "saved our Constitution which was galloping fast into monarchy", while President Washington grumbled about "that rascal Freneau". After a number of years spent in the public arena, Mr. Freneau withdrew in 1801, when Mr. Jefferson was elected president. He retired to his farm and returned occasionally to the sea. During his last thirty years, he worked on his poems, wrote essays attacking the greed and selfishness of corrupt politicians, and sold pieces of his lands to produce a small income. He discovered that he had given his best years of literary productivity to his country, for it had been in the few stolen moments of the hectic 1780's that he found the inspiration for what are considered as his best poems, such as "The Indian Burying Ground" and "The Wild Honey-Suckle", a poem which has established him as an important American precursor of the Romantics.
On a cold evening in December of 1832 when he was almost 82, Mr. Freneau was walking home from a meeting of the circulating library in Philadelphia during a snowstorm when he fell and broke his hip, and froze to death. He was found the next day lifeless. His tombstone simply reads: "poet's grave."
And again this is not an academic paper on a favorite American poet. This is just my introduction to you. I hope that I have opened a window into a soul of a great poet and that you will look out and feel the breeze of greatness. Thanks. For more from Harry visit his columns: December, then, before; and his poetry: December, now, then and before. Or his online home. |
Cheshire Cat
Nothin' Better
Greetings
and Happy New Year. Beginnings, reinvention, and revolution are
a young person's game. This month I would like to reintroduce
you to Philip Freneau - an American revolutionary war hero and
poet. I first encountered him when I was playing at revolution
back in 1960s. I was introduced to Philip Freneau's poetry and
political writings as a college student, in my first class on
American poetry. His words not only had the ring of truth then,
but are important for our time now. Poetry and social redefinition
seem to go hand-in-hand. America's greatest poets have always
been agents of change and laid claim to social relevancy. When
change is in the air, they can take personal experience and explain
it universally. Let me take you back in time when both America's
future and Mr. Freneau's life were on the line. Going back to
a beginning seems to me as a good way to welcome in a new year.
Philip
Freneau, after completing a traditional grammar school education
in the classics in Monmouth County under the tutelage of William
Tennent, entered the College of New Jersey (Princeton University).
Philip Freneau's Scottish mother believed that her oldest of
five children would graduate and join the clergy. Though he was
a serious student of theology and a stern moralist all his life,
Mr. Freneau heard the call of the muse.
