Philip Freneau
Philip Freneau, in full Philip Morin
Freneau (b. Jan. 2, 1752, New York, N.Y.
[U.S.]—d. Dec. 18, 1832, Monmouth
county, N.J., U.S.), American poet,
essayist, and editor, known as the “poet
of the American Revolution.”
After
graduating from Princeton University in
1771, Freneau taught school and studied
for the ministry until the outbreak of
the American Revolution, when he began
to write vitriolic satire against the
British and Tories. Not until his return
from two years in the Caribbean islands,
where he produced two of his most
ambitious poems, “The Beauties of Santa
Cruz” and “The House of Night,” did he
become an active participant in the war,
joining the New Jersey militia in 1778
and sailing through the British blockade
as a privateer to the West Indies.
Captured and imprisoned by the British
in 1780, Freneau wrote in verse
bitterly, on his release, The British
Prison-Ship (1781).
During
the next several years he contributed to
the Freeman’s Journal in Philadelphia.
Freneau became a sea captain until 1790,
when he again entered partisan
journalism, ultimately as editor from
1791 to 1793 of the strongly Republican
National Gazette in Philadelphia.
Freneau alternated quiet periods at sea
with periods of active newspaper work,
until he retired early in the 19th
century to his farm in Monmouth county.
Well
schooled in the classics and in the
Neoclassical English poetry of the
period, Freneau strove for a fresh idiom
that would be unmistakably American,
but, except in a few poems, he failed to
achieve it.
