Main currents in American thought An interpretation of American literature from the beginnings to 1920
Declaration of Independence. When he graduated from Princeton College
in the summer of 1771, he wrote in collaboration with Hugh Henry
Brackenridge a commencement poem entitled _The Rising Glory of
America_, in which the youthful collegians, bred up in a hotbed of
Whiggery, were as British as Pitt himself. The new English imperialism
fairly rioted in the swelling couplets. The poem is a prophecy of the
time when the British flag should wave from the Atlantic to the Pacific
over a contented people, who “warm in liberty and freedom’s cause,”
gloried in the name of Briton. Agriculture and commerce are duly
celebrated as the twin pillars of American prosperity, and the pages of
colonial history are combed for great names and heroic deeds. On the
roll of American heroes Braddock, Sir William Johnson, and Whitefield
are the most conspicuous. Oddly enough Washington’s valor at the time
of Braddock’s defeat was unknown to these collegians in 1771, but
was afterwards discovered and inserted in later editions. Following
independence Freneau revised the poem and the changed circumstances
played havoc with the colonial text. Braddock was silently expunged
together with “Britannia’s warlike troops, Choice spirits of her isle.”
“False Gallia’s sons” becomes “Gallia’s hostile sons.” A notable
tribute to English generosity seemed incongruous to Freneau after his
experience on the prison ship and was deleted. He no longer felt that
The British epithet is merciful,
And we the sons of Britain learn like them
To conquer and to spare.
What happened to Freneau during the years following his graduation is
uncertain, but in July, 1775, he appeared in New York City with his
pockets stuffed with another sort of verse, which he scattered among
the print-shops, the rebellious spirit of which may be judged from the
prayer,
_Libera Nos, Domine._--Deliver us, O Lord, not only from British
dependence, but
From the scoundrel, Lord North, who would bind us in chains,
From a royal king Log, with his tooth-full of brains,
Who dreams, and is certain (when taking a nap)
He has conquered our lands, as they lay on his map.
From a kingdom that bullies, and hectors, and swears,
We send up to heaven our wishes and prayers
That we, disunited, may freemen be still,
And Britain go on--to be damned if she will.[382]
The colonial slipped easily from Freneau and left him wholly American.
And with the colonial psychology there slipped from him also the
useless impedimenta of old-world social and political philosophies.
How far he advanced towards the democratic conception of society,
during those first rebellious years, is not clear; but he had set his
foot on a path that must conduct him far if he did not turn back.
And it is certain that he never turned back. His declaration of
independence from King George was the first of many such declarations
of independence--for himself and his fellow Americans. Thereafter
his serious business was the work of stripping from the colonial
every loyalty which still bound him to England. He supplemented the
work of Paine in teaching men whose fathers were English that they
were of another nation; that they could no longer remain both English
and American, but must make choice between the two allegiances. Year
after year he stirred the troubled waters, arousing the spirit of
nationalism by attacking everything pro-British. His attacks on the
English generals, the Tories, the royalist printers, were but means to
the great end of uprooting the traditional dependence on England and
quickening the new national psychology.
The second stimulus to Freneau’s revolutionary ardor came from the
French uprising. Later in the summer of 1775 he had quitted New York
and sailed for the West Indies. He spent two years on the Island of
Santa Cruz, then and later engaging in sea voyages about the islands
and along the American coast. They were creative years, when removed
equally from the distractions of war and the utilitarianism of America,
he was free to cultivate the romantic strain of poetry that was strong
in him. Then followed unhappier days. A period of stagnation had come
to him during the years of post-war reaction; and if fresh fuel had
not been brought from overseas to kindle anew his social enthusiasms,
it is likely that he would have drifted into a stale and unprofitable
old age. The spirit of romantic poetry was deadened by an unsympathetic
environment, but with the democratic hope rising in France came a fresh
call to arms. He discovered a larger and nobler interpretation of his
republican creed, that was to transform it into French Jacobinism
and arm it for a new leveling crusade. If he could not be a poet to
America he would enlist in the army of democracy. Not only must the
new government be made French-democratic instead of English-Whig,
but all distinctions of rank must be swept away, together with every
tyrannical dogma of church and state. In short there must be a social
house-cleaning, the limits of which were to be determined only by
reason and the common democratic good. So Freneau enthusiastically
joined with Paine and Jefferson in the partisan labor of spreading the
new faith.
His literary activity during this second period was remarkable. Songs
and odes and satires came from his ready pen in unending stream, eager,
cutting, vibrant with feeling. It requires an intimate knowledge of
the times to make out the identity of every figure at which he shoots
his arrows, but it needs no very intimate knowledge to measure the
intensity of his partisanship. The democratic hopes and fears of those
vibrant days find reflection in many an acrid verse. He was at one with
Jefferson in his concern at the monarchical reaction.
In ten short years, of freedom weary grown
The State, Republic, sickens for a throne.
The man who attached to the pen name of Peter Slender the letters O. S.
M.--One of the Swinish Multitude--would not fail to take the part of
the private soldier neglected by the state:
Sold are those arms which once on Britons blazed,
When, flushed with conquest, to the charge they came;
That power repelled, and Freedom’s fabrick raised,
She leaves her soldier--famine and a name![383]
Nor would he fail to capitalize the aristocratic contempt of the
Federalists for that same swinish multitude.
Lodge where you must, drink small-beer where you can,
But eat no roast pig, if no Federal man....
Your mouth was made for rye or barley bread;
What claims have you to halls of state,
Whose business is to stand and wait,
Subservient to command?
What right have you to white-bread, superfine,
Who were by nature destin’d for “_a swine_”--
As said good Edmund Burke,
The drudge of Britain’s dirty work,
Whose mighty pamphlets rous’d the royal band![384]
During the tumultuous year of ’93 Freneau issued a series of
_Probationary Odes by Jonathan Pindar, Esq._, which reflect sharply
the partisan passions aroused by the French Revolution. They were
lampoons directed at members of government who were in the democratic
black-book, chiefly John Adams, Knox, and Hamilton. The introductory
poem was addressed _To all the Great Folks in a Lump_; the second, _To
Atlas_, was an attack on Hamilton; the third, _To A Select Body of
Great Men_, was a lampoon of the Senate; and the fourth, _To a Would Be
Great Man_, was addressed to Freneau’s particular _bête noire_, John
Adams. This last, apropos of _Davila_, will serve to show the popular
reception which that unfortunate work received.
Daddy Vice, Daddy Vice,
One may see in a trice
The drift of your fine publication.
As sure as a gun
The thing was just done
To secure you a +PRETTY HIGH+ station.
When you tell us of _kings_
And such pretty things
Good mercy! how brilliant your page is!
So bright is each line
I vow you’ll shine
Like--a glow worm to all future ages.
On Davila’s page
Your discourses so sage
Democratical numskulls bepuzzle,
With arguments tough
As white leather or buff,
The republican Bull Dogs to muzzle.
’Tis labor in vain,
Your senses to strain,
Our brains any longer to muddle;
Like Colossus you stride
O’er our noddles so wide
We look up like frogs in a puddle.
If Freneau’s hatred of the men who opposed the democratic movement
was immeasurable, his enthusiasm for the new age of reason that he
believed was rising was as boundless. His pages during those years of
Jacobin radicalism are dotted thick with odes to liberty and addresses
to republicans; probably more fully than any other pages they reflect
the spirit that in England and America was forming Tom Paine clubs,
and projecting innumerable programs of social reform. A new social
conscience was stirring in Freneau, broadening immensely the horizon of
his thought; and if he counted rather too confidently on the appeal to
reason to bring the golden age, he proved himself thereby a true child
of his generation. In such lines as these one discovers the spirit that
moved Godwin to write _Political Justice_.
How can we call those systems just
Which bid the few, the proud, the first,
Possess all earthly good;
While millions robbed of all that’s dear
In silence shed the ceaseless tear,
And leaches suck their blood....
Let laws revive, by heaven designed,
To tame the tiger in the mind
And drive from human hearts
That love of wealth, that love of sway,
Which leads the world too much astray,
Which points envenomed darts:
And men will rise from what they are;
Sublimer, and superior, far,
Than Solon guessed, or Plato saw;
All will be just, all will be good--
That harmony, “not understood,”
Will reign the general law.
For, in our race, deranged, bereft,
The parting god some vestige left
Of worth before possessed;
Which full, which fair, which perfect shone,
When love and peace, in concord sown,
Ruled, and inspired each breast.[385]
In quite another vein, that reveals Freneau’s unusual mastery of
colloquial prose, is the following passage, impersonating Robert
Slender, the country philosopher.
Mr. Editor,
Having heard that there was a tavern at about the distance of a
mile or so from my favorite country spot, where now and then a few
neighbors meet to spit, smoke segars, drink apple whiskey, cider
or cider-royal, and read the news--a few evenings ago, I put on my
best coat, combed out my wig, put my spectacles in my pocket, and a
quarter dollar--This I thought was right; for although Mrs. Slender
told me eleven-pence was enough, says I, I’ll e’en take the quarter
dollar, for a man always feels himself of more consequence when he
has got good money in his pocket--so out I walks with a good stout
stick in my hand, which I always make a point to carry with me,
lest the dogs should make rather freer with my legs than I could
wish. But I had not gone more than half the way, when, by making a
false step, I splash’d my stocking from the knee to the ancle. Odds
my heart, said I, see what a hand I have made of my stocking; I’ll
be bail, added I, I’ll hear of this in both sides of my head--but
it can’t now be helped--this, and a thousand worse accidents,
which daily happen, are all occasioned by public neglect, and the
misapplication of the public’s money--Had I, said I, (talking to
myself all the while) the disposal of but half the income of the
United States, I could at least so order matters, that a man might
walk to his next neighbor’s without splashing his stockings or
being in danger of breaking his legs in ruts, holes, gutts, and
gullies. I do not know, says I to myself, as I moralized on my