Freneau, Philip [Morin] (1752–1832), born in New York of Huguenot ancestry, was educated privately and at the College of New Jersey (Princeton). There he was a classmate of Madison and Brackenridge, and with the latter wrote the poem The Rising Glory of America, which was read at the graduation exercises (1771) and published the following year. While at college he also wrote “The Power of Fancy” and other poems. After assisting Brackenridge in teaching in Maryland (1772), at the outbreak of the Revolution he wrote eight biting satirical poems, which included General Gage's Soliloquy (1775) and General Gage's Confession (1775). He discovered poetry to be a poor profession, however, and turned to a secretaryship in the home of a prominent planter on the island of Santa Cruz in the West Indies, where he wrote “The Beauties of Santa Cruz,” “The Jamaica Funeral,” and “The House of Night,” romantic poems inspired by the lush tropical atmosphere. On his voyage home (June 1778) he was captured by the British, but was soon set free. After a short stay at home, he set out again for the West Indies (1780), only to be captured and, after a questionable trial, remanded to the British prison ship Scorpion in New York harbor. After a period of brutal treatment and starvation he was exchanged as a prisoner of war (July 1780). His experiences inspired the poem The British Prison Ship (1781). During the next three years he was employed in the Philadelphia post office, and in his leisure poured forth a steady stream of satirical poetry that confirmed his title of “the poet of the American Revolution.” In 1784 he sailed as master of a brig bound for Jamaica, and during the following six years led a life filled with dangers on the Atlantic and Caribbean. Meanwhile he wrote poems of life at sea, and published his first collection, Poems (1786), as well as a volume of Miscellaneous Works (1788). After his marriage in 1790 he abandoned the sea to become editor of the New York Daily Advertiser, and later, after an appointment by Jefferson as translating clerk of the State Department, on October 31, 1791, began the publication of his National Gazette, a sparkling Jeffersonian paper that particularly attacked Hamilton. During the two years of his editorship and his government appointment, Freneau was accused by Hamilton of being Jefferson's anti‐Federalist mouthpiece, and even Washington called him “that rascal Freneau.” He published Poems Written Between the Years 1768 and 1794 (1795), and after a brief editorship of the Jersey Chronicle edited the New York Time‐Piece (1797–99). On retiring to his plantation at Mount Pleasant, he issued a series of essays entitled Letters on Various Interesting and Important Subjects (1799). His last years were spent in New Jersey, although from 1803 to 1807 he was driven by poverty to serve again as a master of coastline freighters. In 1809, he published a two‐volume edition of his collected poems, and in a final edition of 1815 included the patriotic and satirical poems prompted by the War of 1812. A scholarly edition of his poems was edited by F.L. Pattee (3 vols., 1902–7), and a selection of his prose, edited by H.H. Clark as The Philosopher of the Forest, appeared in 1939. Last Poems (1946) contains 50 poems, mainly on topics of the day, originally published in periodicals between 1815 and 1832. Among his best‐known short poems of freedom are Libera Nos, Domine, the ode God Save the Rights of Man, “To the Memory of the Brave Americans, On the Memorable Victory of John Paul Jones, and To My Book, while among his noteworthy poems of romantic fancy are “The Indian Burying Ground,” “The Wild Honey Suckle,” “The Indian Student,” On a Honey Bee, On Retirement, To a Catydid, and Advice to a Raven in Russia.

Philip Morin Freneau

Philip Morin Freneau (1752-1832) was an American poet, essayist, and journalist. Remembered as the poet of the American Revolution and the father of American poetry, he was a transitional figure in American literature.

Philip Freneau's life alternated between ardent political activity and attempts to escape to the solitude he thought necessary to a poet. Born in New York on Jan. 2, 1752, he graduated from Princeton in 1771, when with Hugh Henry Brackenridge he wrote a rousing poem, The Rising Glory of America. A period of school teaching and study for the ministry followed. At the outbreak of the American Revolution, Freneau composed vitriolic satires against British invaders and Tory countrymen. But then he withdrew to the Caribbean, writing his ambitious early poems, The Beauties of Santa Cruz and The House of Night.

Returning in 1778 to his home in New Jersey, Freneau joined the local militia and sailed as a privateer. In 1780, on release from British imprisonment, he wrote the bitter poem The British Prison-Ship and the enthusiastic American Independence. The next 4 years were dedicated to patriotic prose and verse in the Freeman's Journal. In 1784 he again went to sea as master of vessels which plied between New York and Charleston. His poetry at this time was concerned with native scene and character.

Though nurtured on English poets such as Alexander Pope, Freneau strove now for an "American" idiom, producing in The Wild Honey Suckle and The Indian Burying Ground verses of quiet distinction. His first two collections were Poems (1786) and Miscellaneous Works (1788). In 1790 he returned to partisan journalism, ultimately working as editor of the outspoken National Gazette. He so earnestly opposed Federalist policies that George Washington called him "that rascal, Freneau," though Thomas Jefferson credited him with saving the country when it was galloping fast into monarchy.

In the early 1800s, after another period at sea, Freneau retired to his farm in New Jersey. Collected editions of his poetry appeared in 1795, 1809, and 1815; new poems appeared in periodicals into the 1820s. He died on Dec. 18, 1832.

The most prolific poet of his generation, Freneau produced verse uneven in quality, often marred by anger, haste, or partisanship, but sometimes exhibiting original lyric power. He anticipated such American romantic poets as William Cullen Bryant and Edgar Allan Poe. His prose is less often successful.

Further Reading

Biographical and critical studies of Freneau include Samuel E. Forman, The Political Activities of Philip Freneau (1902); Lewis Leary, That Rascal Freneau: A Study in Literary Failure (1941); Nelson F. Adkins, Philip Freneau and the Cosmic Enigma: The Religious and Philosophical Speculations of an American Poet (1949); and Jacob Axelrad, Philip Freneau, Champion of Democracy (1967). □

Philip Freneau , 1752–1832, American poet and journalist, b. New York City, grad. Princeton, 1771. During the American Revolution he served as soldier and privateer. His experiences as a prisoner of war were recorded in his poem The British Prison Ship (1781). The first professional American journalist, he was a powerful propagandist and satirist for the American Revolution and for Jeffersonian democracy. Freneau edited various papers, including the partisan National Gazette (Philadelphia, 1791–93) for Jefferson. He was usually involved in editorial quarrels, and, influential though he was, none of his papers was profitable. His political and satirical poems have value mainly for historians, but his place as the earliest important American lyric poet is secured by such poems as "The Wild Honeysuckle,""The Indian Burying Ground," and "Eutaw Springs."

Bibliography: See his Poems (ed. by F. L. Pattee, 3 vol., 1902–7) and Last Poems (ed. by L. Leary, 1946); biography by L. Leary (1941, repr. 1964); studies by P. M. Marsh (1968 and 1970).

Freneau, Philip Morin (1752–1832), the ‘poet of the American Revolution’, and miscellaneous writer, editor, and journalist, was born in New York. In 1780 during the Revolutionary War he was captured by the British, an experience which prompted the bitter satire of his poem The British Prison-Ship (1781), one of his many attacks on the British. His first collection of verse, Poems (1786), was followed by various volumes of essays, poems, etc. His verse ranged from the satirical and patriotic to works such as ‘The Wild Honey Suckle’ (1786), a nature poem of delicacy and sensitivity which heralds Romanticism.