Freneau, Philip Morin

Freneau, Philip Morin (1752-1832), American poet and journalist, known as the poet of the American War of Independence, born in New York, and educated at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University). His reputation as a satirist was first achieved with a series of vitriolic poems attacking the British, written shortly after the outbreak of the Revolution. Early in 1780, Freneau took part in a privateering expedition to the West Indies. He was captured by the British and imprisoned on board a ship in New York harbour. The harsh treatment he received during his confinement provided him with material for The British Prison-Ship, a Poem in Four Cantoes (1781). While working in the post office at Philadelphia (1781-1784), he continued to produce brilliant, satiric verse in the same patriotic vein.

Freneau spent the next six years at sea, and in 1791 Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson appointed him a translator. While serving in that capacity, Freneau founded and was editor of the National Gazette, a newspaper that gave forceful expression to the libertarian ideals of Jeffersonian democracy and that attacked the American statesman Alexander Hamilton and the Federalist party. Freneau retired in 1793 to his farm in New Jersey. Among his most famous individual poems are “The Wild Honeysuckle”, “The House of Night”, and “The Indian Burying Ground”.