THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD

The most memorable writing in eighteenth-century America was done by the Founding
Fathers, the men who led the Revolution of 1775-1783, and who wrote the Constitution
of 1789. None of them were writers of fiction. Rather, they were practical philosophers,
and their most typical product was the political pamphlet. They shared the
Enlightenment belief that human intelligence - 'reason' - could understand both nature
and man. Unlike the Puritans - who saw man as a sinner - the Enlightenment thinkers
were sure man could improve himself. They wanted to create a happy society based on
justice and freedom.

The writings of Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) show the Enlightenment spirit in

America at its most optimistic. His style is quite modern and even today his works are a
joy to read. Although he strongly disagreed with the opinions of the Puritans, his works
show a return to their 'plain style.' At the same time, there is something 'anti-literary'
about Franklin. He had no liking for poetry and felt that writing should always have a
practical purpose. His Poor Richard's Almanac (1732-1757) gives useful moral advice.
Almanacs, containing useful information for farmers and sailors (about the next year's
weather, sea tides, etc.) were a popular form of practical literature. Together with the
Bible and the newspaper, they were the only reading matter in most Colonial
households. Franklin made his Almanac interesting by creating the character 'Poor
Richard'. Each new edition continued a simple and realistic story about Richard, his
wife and family. He also included many 'sayings' about saving money and working hard
("Lost time is never found again; and what we call time enough, always proves little enough." "Up
sluggard, and waste not life; in the grave will be sleeping enough." "God helps them who help
themselves." "Three may keep a secret if two of them are dead." "Glass, china, and reputation are easily
cracked and never well mended." "Fish and visitors smell in three days." - for more see the
Addenda)

In 1757, Franklin collected together the best of his sayings, making them into an essay
called The Way to Wealth. This little book became one of the bestsellers of the Western
world.

Franklin was a very active man. He worked as a printer of books and newspapers. As a
scientist he wrote important essays on electricity. Although he wrote a great deal,
almost all of his important works are quite short. He invented one type of short prose
which greatly influenced the development of the story-telling form in America, called the
'hoax' or the 'tall-tale' (later made famous by Mark Twain). A hoax is funny because it is
so clearly a lie. In his Wonders of Nature in America, Franklin reports 'the grand leap of
the whale up the falls of Niagara which is esteemed by all who have seen it as one of
the finest spectacles in Nature.'

Franklin's major book is his Autobiography. The first part of the book, begun in 1771, is
an entertaining description of his life up to early manhood. The second part was written
in 1784 when Franklin was a tired old man, and the style is more serious. Franklin now
realizes the part he has played in American history and writes about himself 'for the
improvement of others.' His Autobiography is many things. First of all it is an inspiring
account of a poor boy's rise to a high position. Franklin tells his story modestly, omitting
some of the honors he received and including mention of some of his misdeeds, his
errata as he called them. Viewing himself with objectivity, he offers his life story as a
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lesson to others. The Autobiography is a how-to-do-it book, a book on the art of self-
improvement.

ADDENDA

POOR RICHARD
(1734)

Courteous Readers,

Your kind and charitable Assistance last Year, in purchasing so large an Impression of my
Almanacks, has made my Circumstances much more easy in the World, and requires my grateful
Acknowledgment. My Wife has been enabled to get a Pot of her own, and is no longer oblig'd to borrow
one from a Neighbour; nor have we ever since been without something of our own to put in it. She has
also got a pair of Shoes, two new Shifts, and a new warm Petticoat; and for my part, I have bought a
second-hand Coat, so good, that I am now not asham'd to go to Town or be seen there. These Things
have render'd her Temper so much more pacifick than it us'd to be, that I may say, I have slept more,
and more quietly within this last Year, than in the three foregoing Years put together. Accept my hearty
Thanks therefor, and my sincere Wishes for your Health and Prosperity.
In the Preface to my last Almanack, I foretold the Death of my dear old Friend and Fellow-Student,
the learned and ingenious Mr. “Titan Leeds”, which was to be on the 17th of October, 1733, 3 h. 29 m.
P.M. at the very Instant of the xxx of xxx and xxx. By his own Calculation he was to survive till the 26th of
the same Month, and expire in the Time of the Eclipse, near 11 a clock, A.M. At which of these Times he
died, or whether he be really yet dead, I cannot at this present Writing positively assure my Readers;
forasmuch as a Disorder in my own Family demanded my Presence, and would not permit me as I had
intended, to be with him in his last Moments, to receive his last Embrace, to close his Eyes, and do the
Duty of a Friend in performing the last Offices to the Departed. Therefore it is that I cannot positively
affirm whether he be dead or not; for the Stars only show to the Skilful, what will happen in the natural
and universal Chain of Causes and Effects; but 'tis well known, that the Events which would otherwise
certainly happen at certain Times in the Course of Nature, are sometimes set aside or postpon'd for wise
and good Reasons, by the immediate particular Dispositions of Providence; which particular Dispositions
the Stars can by no Means discover or foreshow. There is however, (and I cannot speak it without
Sorrow) there is the strongest Probability that my dear Friend is “no more”; for there appears in his
Name, as I am assured, an Almanack for the Year 1734, in which I am treated in a very gross and
unhandsome Manner; in which I am called a false Predicter, an Ignorant, a conceited Scribler, a Fool,
and a Lyar. Mr. Leeds was too well bred to use any Man so indecently and so scurrilously, and moreover
his Esteem and Affection for me was extraordinary: So that it is to be feared, that Pamphlet may be only
a Contrivance of somebody or other, who hopes perhaps to sell two or three Year's Almanacks still, by
the sole Force and Virtue of Mr. Leeds's Name; but certainly, to put Words into the Mouth of a
Gentleman and a Man of Letters, against his Friend, which the meanest and most scandalous of the
People might be asham'd to utter even in a drunken Quarrel, is an unpardonable Injury to his Memory,
and an Imposition upon the Publick.
Mr. Leeds was not only profoundly skilful in the useful Science he profess'd, but he was a Man of
exemplary Sobriety, a most sincere Friend, and an exact Performer of his Word. These valuable
Qualifications, with many others, so much endear'd him to me, that although it should be so, that,
contrary to all Probability, contrary to my Prediction and his own, he might possibly be yet alive, yet my
Loss of Honour as a Prognosticator, cannot afford me so much Mortification, as his Life, Health and
Safety would give me Joy and Satisfaction. I am,
Courteous and kind Reader,
Your poor Friend and Servant,
Octob. 30. 1733.R. SAUNDERS.
______

Would you live with ease,

Do what you ought, and not what you please.

Principiis obsta.

Better slip with foot than tongue.

You cannot pluck roses without fear of thorns,

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Nor enjoy a fair wife without danger of horns.

Without justice, courage is weak.

Many dishes many diseases,

Many medicines few cures.

Where carcasses are, eagles will gather,

And where good laws are, much people flock thither.

Hot things, sharp things, sweet things, cold things

All rot the teeth, and make them look like old things.

“Blame-all” and “Praise-all” are two blockheads.

Be temperate in wine, in eating, girls, & sloth;

Or the Gout will seize you and plague you both.

No man e'er was glorious, who was not laborious.

What pains our Justice takes his faults to hide,

With half that pains sure he might cure 'em quite.

In success be moderate.

Take this remark from “Richard” poor and lame,

Whate'er's begun in anger ends in shame.

What one relishes, nourishes.

Fools multiply folly.

Beauty & folly are old companions.

Hope of gain
Lessens pain.

“All” things are easy to Industry,

“All” things difficult to “Sloth.”

If you ride a Horse, sit close and tight,

If you ride a Man, sit easy and light.

A new truth is a truth, an old error is an error,

Tho' “Clodpate” wont allow either.

Don't think to hunt two hares with one dog.

Astrologers say,
This is a good Day,
To make Love in May.

Who pleasure gives,

Shall joy receive.

Be not sick too late, nor well too soon.

Where there's Marriage without Love, there will be Love without Marriage.

Lawyers, Preachers, and Tomtits Eggs, there are more of them hatch'd than come to perfection.

Be neither silly, nor cunning, but wise.

 4

Neither a Fortress nor a Maidenhead will hold out long after they begin to parly.

Jack “Little” sow'd little, & little he'll reap.

All things are cheap to the saving, dear to the wasteful.

Would you persuade, speak of Interest, not of Reason.

Some men grow mad by studying much to know,

But who grows mad by studying good to grow.

Happy's the Woing, that's not long a doing.

Don't value a man for the Quality he is of, but for the Qualities he possesses.

“Bucephalus” the Horse of “Alexand” hath as lasting fame as his Master.

Rain or Snow,
To “Chili” go,
You'll find it so,
For ought we know.
Time will show.

There have been as great Souls unknown to fame as any of the most famous.

Do good to thy Friend to keep him, to thy enemy to gain him.

A good Man is seldom uneasy, an ill one never easie.

Teach your child to hold his tongue, he'l learn fast enough to speak.

He that cannot obey, cannot command.

An innocent “Plowman” is more worthy than a vicious “Prince.”

“Sam's Religion” is like a “Chedder Cheese”, 'tis made of the “milk” of one & twenty Parishes.

Grief for a dead Wife, & a troublesome Guest,

Continues to the “threshold”, and there is at rest;
But I mean such wives as are none of the best.

As Charms are nonsence, Nonsence is a Charm.

An Egg to day is better than a Hen to-morrow.

Drink Water, Put the Money in your Pocket, and leave the “Dry-bellyach” in the “Punchbowl.”

He that is rich need not live sparingly, and he that can live sparingly need not be rich.

If you wou'd be reveng'd of your enemy, govern your self.

A wicked Hero will turn his back to an innocent coward.

“Laws” like to “Cobwebs” catch small Flies,

Great ones break thro' before your eyes.

Strange, that he who lives by Shifts, can seldom shift himself.

As sore places meet most rubs, proud folks meet most affronts.

The magistrate should obey the Laws, the People should obey the magistrate.
 5

When 'tis fair be sure take your Great coat with you.

He does not possess Wealth, it possesses him.

“Necessity” has no Law; I know some Attorneys of the name.

Onions can make ev'n Heirs and Widows weep.

Avarice and Happiness never saw each other, how then shou'd they become acquainted.

The thrifty maxim of the wary “Dutch”,

Is to save all the Money they can touch.

He that waits upon Fortune, is never sure of a Dinner.

A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.

Marry your Son when you will, but your Daughter when you can.
______

By Mrs. “Bridget Saunders”, my Dutchess, in Answer to the “December” Verses of last Year.

He that for sake of Drink neglects his Trade,

And spends each Night in Taverns till 'tis late,
And rises when the Sun is four hours high,
And ne'er regards his starving Family;
God in his Mercy may do much to save him.
But, woe to the poor Wife, whose Lot it is to have him.
______

He that knows nothing of it, may by chance be a Prophet; while the wisest that is may happen to miss.

If you wou'd have Guests merry with your cheer,

Be so your self, or so at least appear.

Famine, Plague, War, and an unnumber'd throng

Of Guilt-avenging Ills, to Man belong;
Is't not enough Plagues, Wars, and Famines rise
To lash our crimes, but must our Wives be wise?

Reader, farewel, all Happiness attend thee:

May each “New-Year” better and richer find thee.

*
* *

The period just before the start of the Revolution saw a flood of political journalism. This
was mostly in the form of pamphlets rather than newspapers, because the pamphlet
was cheap to publish and the author, if he wished, did not have to give his name.

The greatest pamphlet-writer of the American Revolution, Thomas Paine (1737-1809),

was born in England. Here he became an enthusiastic devotee of the revolutionary
theories advanced by the French philosophes (Montesquieu, Rousseau): natural rights,
equality of mankind, the pure state of nature, the Rousseauistic social contract. Men's
native freedom and equality cannot be maintained among them, hence the necessity of
shaping a form of association which defends and protects the person and property of
each. The 'social contract' entails 'the complete alienation or surrender of each member
with all his rights to the community," "the moral collectivity called the State."
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When Paine was 37, he met Benjamin Franklin in London and was persuaded to go to
America. Two years later, he wrote Common Sense (1776), one of the most important
pamphlets in American history. Its clear thinking and exciting language quickly united
American feelings against England. "There is something absurd in supposing a
continent (America) to be perpetually governed by an island (Britain)," Paine wrote.
Between 1776 and 1783, he issued a series of 13 pamphlets, called The Crisis. The
Crisis I appeared the day after the American leader, General George Washington, was
defeated in the Battle of Long Island. It contains the most famous passage in all of
Paine's writings:

These are times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this
crisis, shrink from the service of his country....Tyranny, like Hell, is not easily conquered.

The War of Independence. For years English ministers had made plans to impose
certain new taxes on the prosperous Americans to help pay for their Seven Years' War.
King George III, who had just inherited a vast empire from his grandfather, was not
prepared for gentle measures. He appointed George Grenville as prime minister.
Grenville, a financial specialist, knew next to nothing about colonial affairs, and he
struggled to consolidate the crown's territories in North America. He called for a
standing army to be supported by the Americans, an army which would cost some
£300,000 annually, and which proved to be a major cause of the American Revolution.

Another bad mistake of the British: the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which closed the
rich lands beyond the Alleghenies to settlement by Americans. Frontiersmen beyond
the proclamation line in northwestern Pennsylvania were ordered to retreat, to abandon
their cabins. Refusing to move out, they saw their cabins burned to the ground by the
king's men.

Few Americans, however, were prepared to challenge the king's rule. A violent wrench
of mind and spirit was required to turn the colonists from complacency to revolution.
The change occurred in 1761, when Boston was inflamed over the Writs of Assistance.
That year the British government displayed unusual zeal in an effort to enforce the Acts
of Trade and Navigation Act. All shipped articles would be liable for inspection on the
authority of the royal "Writs". Customs inspectors could forcibly open all cargoes that
entered or left their ports.

James Otis, the defense attorney, pleaded, "This writ is against the fundamental
principles of English law!" Although the governor and judges eventually found a way of
deciding the case in favor of the crown, Otis had been heard.

A further mistake of Grenville's government was the Stamp Act, which demanded that
colonists buy stamps from royal distributors for a whole range of documents and
activities (worth about £100,000 a year). A few courageous members of Parliament
spoke against the Stamp Act and predicted that the Americans would rise in revolt. But
the Crown easily swept opposition aside, and a vote for the bill in the Commons was
245 to 49. Reaction in America was instant and violent. Patrick Henry, a lawyer and
member of the House, is supposed to have said: "Caesar had his Brutus; Charles the
First his Cromwell; and George the Third..." Interrupted by the mounting furor, he
managed to press on: "...and George the Third may profit by their example. If this be
treason, make the most of it!"
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In October, 1765, delegates from nine colonies met in New York and declared the
Stamp Act unconstitutional. "Liberty, Property, and No Stamps" were key words
emblazoned on American banners. The colonists decided to enter no business activity
that required the stamps. Trade came to a standstill; in some colonies even the courts
closed. Hurt by the American boycott, British merchants called for parliamentary action.
The British troops managed to avoid an open clash with the Americans, but the crisis
intensified.

Two years later, Charles Townshend, George III's chancellor of the exchequer,
imposed his tax program of 1767, which included a long list of imports to America on
which it laid duties. Taxed were such essentials as glass, lead, and paint. The
Americans reacted by imposing a boycott on British goods.

In February, 1770, there occurred the Revolution's first fatality. A threatened customs
officer fired his musket into a crowd of tormentors and killed a boy named Christopher
Snyder. The customs officer, spared a lynching, was later convicted of murder "in self-
defense." This incident was followed by another more serious one, called the "Boston
Massacre", in March 1770, when the British soldiers killed five Americans who'd
approached their garrison.

Lord North, the new prime minister, realized that the Townshend duties were
economically unsound and had most duties cancelled except for the high duty on tea.
The Americans' reaction was quick: ships bearing the monopolistic tea should not be
allowed to land.

In December 1773 three East India Company ships had arrived in Boston. The city
declared that the governor must arrange to have the tea sent back to England. When
he refused to issue clearance papers for the ships, some citizens became Indians in
disguise. In the course of a drizzly evening, 342 chests were taken out of the holds and
dumped into Boston harbor by unrecognizable "Mohawks."

To George III, the Bostonians' action was treasonous. The king's ministers pushed into
law a series of bills known as the Intolerable Acts, which were designed to punish
Boston by changing Massachusetts's system of government. The British closed the port
of Boston to all shipping until the rebellious people paid £15,000 for the destroyed tea.
The blockade would shortly have starved Boston if it had not been for the help from
other colonies. From Connecticut came hundreds of sheep; other New England states
sent cattle, fish, flour, money. The Carolinas sent rice, while from Virginia came corn,
wheat and flour.

Well into the 1770's the rioting of the Americans was focused not upon independence
but upon autonomy. Virginia and Massachusetts were the major centers of agitation
against the British.

The First Continental Congress was assembled at Philadelphia in 1774 to discuss the
Massachusetts situation. Some colonists were neutral or apathetic, while some were
devoted to the British. But the moderates were shouted down, and the Congress issued
a defiant declaration of colonial grievances and rights.

On April 19, 1775, 700 British soldiers marched from Boston to forestall a rebellion of
the colonists by capturing a colonial arms depot in the nearby town of Concord. At the
village of Lexington the first shot in the War of Independence was fired. The British
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easily captured Lexington and Concord, but as they marched back to Boston they
were harassed by hundreds of Massachusetts volunteers. By June, 10,000 American
soldiers had besieged Boston, and the British were forced to evacuate the city in March
1776.

In May, 1775, a second Continental Congress had met in Philadelphia and began to
assume the functions of a national government. This Congress founded a Continental
Army and Navy under the command of George Washington, a Virginia planter and
veteran of the French and Indian War. It printed paper money and opened diplomatic
relations with foreign powers. On July 2, 1776, the Congress finally resolved "that these
United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states."]

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) was the chief author of the Declaration of

Independence. This document emerged from the philosophical and practical
atmosphere that produced Common Sense. Jefferson realized that he was not, like
Paine, addressing an immediate, local audience but was speaking to the entire world
and to many generations yet unborn. The Declaration presented a public defense of the
American Revolution, including a lengthy list of grievances against the British king,
George III. Also, it explained the philosophy behind the revolution:

(1) men have a natural right to "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness";
(2) governments can rule only with the consent of the governed;
(3) any government may be replaced if it fails to protect the rights of the people.

Thanks to its beautiful style, the Declaration is also a fine work of literature. Although it
was written during a difficult time in the war, the Declaration is surprisingly free from
emotional appeals. It is a clear and logical statement of why America wanted its
independence. Jefferson made no attempt to be original. Rather, he built upon the
ideas of such philosophers as John Locke. The Declaration was revised 86 times
before it was finally signed on July 4, 1776.

Jefferson believed that man did not have to depend on God to improve the world, and
should use his own wisdom to do the improving by himself. As a typical Enlightenment
thinker, he believed that all humanity is naturally good: "Nature has implanted in our
breasts a love of others, a sense of duty to them, a moral instinct."

Institutions are merely the servants of man, and whenever institutions are not proving
most beneficial to humanity, those institutions must be modified and totally replaced.
Inspired largely by John Locke's Treatise on Government, Jefferson proclaimed "life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" as the basic human needs. Any government
failing to bestow these "natural rights" adequately must be superseded by a
government truly representing the citizenry, obeying the will of the majority, and
constantly laboring to promote "natural rights." Because the British Crown and
Parliament had failed to fulfil these obligations to America, they had forfeited their
claims to the colonists' loyalty. Therefore "these united colonies are, and of right ought
to be, free and independent states."

Jefferson saw a threat to American democracy in the thinking of the 'Federalists', who
favored a strong central government for the new American republic [some even wanted
to make George Washington king!]. The Federalist Papers (1787-1788) - 85 essays -
were the major documents of those opposed to Jefferson's thinking (Alexander
Hamilton wrote 51 of the essays). The Federalists wanted a form of government and
society which would not be easily upset, a centralized government to protect property
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and to stimulate industry and trade. Hamilton conceived of a republic led by the élite,
secure against the dangerous rule of the masses.

Jefferson, however, felt the people should be able to change the form of their society
whenever they thought it necessary. He even accepted the idea that a new American
revolution might happen someday: "A little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and
as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical."

At first, the war went badly for the Americans. The British captured New York City in
September 1776, and Philadelphia was captured a year later. The tide turned in
October 1777, when a British army under General John Burgoyne surrendered at
Saratoga, in Northern New York. Encouraged by that victory, France seized an
opportunity to humble Britain, her traditional enemy. France began to supply the
colonials with munitions and other necessities. On January 7, 1778, France agreed to a
friendship and trade treaty with the United States, and on February 6, they entered into
a full alliance.

After 1778 the fighting shifted largely to the South. In 1781, 8,000 British troops under
General George Cornwallis were surrounded at Yorktown, Virginia, by a French fleet
and a combined French-American army under George Washington's command. In the
face of complete disaster, Cornwallis surrendered on October 19, 1781. Six days later
Lord North received news of the capitulation, threw up his arms and called out time and
again, "O God! it is all over!"

The Treaty of Paris, signed in September 1783, recognized the independence of the
United States and granted the new nation all the territory north of Florida, south of
Canada and east of the Mississippi River.

In Revolutionary America, both prose and poetry had a political or 'practical' purpose.
Philip [Morin] Freneau (1752-1832), for example, who is generally regarded as the
best poet of his time, was fully committed to the cause of the Revolution and most of
his poetry served that cause. But "the poet of the Revolution" had the misfortune to be
a "transitional" poet, imitative in the old mode, not yet fully aware of, or able to create,
the new romantic mode.

Freneau fulfilled the dream of his wine merchant father, Pierre Fresneau (old spelling)
when he entered the Class of 1771 to prepare for the ministry. Well versed in the
classics in Monmouth County under the tutelage of William Tennent, Philip entered
Princeton as a sophomore in 1768, but the joy of the occasion was marred by his
father's financial losses and death the year before. In spite of financial hardships,
Philip'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,
Freneau found his true calling in literature. As his roommate and close friend James
Madison recognized early, Freneau's wit and verbal skills would make him a powerful
wielder of the pen and a formidable adversary on the battlefields of print. Freneau soon
became the unrivaled “poet of the Revolution” and is still widely regarded as the “Father
of American Literature.”'

Although Freneau had produced several accomplished private poems before college, it
was the intense experience of pre-Revolutionary-War Princeton that turned the poet's
interest to public writing. Political concerns led Madison, Freneau, and their friends
Hugh Henry Brackenridge and William Bradford, Jr., to revive the defunct Plain Dealing
 10
Club as the American Whig Society. Their verbal skirmishes with the conservative
Cliosophic Society provided ample opportunities for sharpening Freneau's skills in
prose and poetic satire. Charged with literary and political enthusiasm, Freneau and
Brackenridge collaborated on a rollicking, picaresque narrative, Father Bombo's
Pilgrimage to Mecca in Arabia, which presents comic glimpses of life in eighteenth-
century America. This piece, acquired by Princeton and published by the University
Library (1975), may well be the first work of prose fiction written in America.

During their senior year Freneau and Brackenridge labored long on another joint
project to which Freneau contributed the greater share. Their composition was a
patriotic poem of epic design, “The Rising Glory of America,” a prophecy of a time when
a united nation should rule the vast continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific. At the
commencement exercises of September 1771, Brackenridge read this poem to a “vast
concourse of the politest company,'' gathered at Nassau Hall. The poem articulated the
vision and fervor of a young revolutionary generation.

Freneau's life after Princeton was one of change and conflict. He tried teaching and
hated it. He spent two more years studying theology, but gave it up. He felt a deep
obligation to perform public service, and his satires against the British in 1775 were
written out of fervent patriotism. At the same time he distrusted politics and had a
personal yearning to escape social turmoil and war. The romantic private poet within
him struggled against his public role. Thus, paradoxically, 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. Suddenly in 1778, he returned to New Jersey and
joined the militia and sailed the Atlantic as a ship captain. After suffering for six weeks
on a British prison ship, he poured his bitterness into his political writing and into much
of his voluminous poetry of the early 1780s.

By 1790, at the age of thirty-eight, with two collections of poetry in print and a
reputation as a fiery propagandist and skilful sea captain, Freneau decided to settle
down. He married Eleanor Forman and tried to withdraw to a quiet job as an assistant
editor in New York. But politics called again. His friends Madison and Jefferson
persuaded him to set up his own newspaper in Philadelphia to counter the powerful
Hamiltonian paper of John Fenno. Freneau's National Gazette upheld Jefferson's
“Republican” principles and even condemned Washington's foreign policy. Jefferson
later praised Freneau for having “saved our Constitution which was galloping fast into
monarchy,'' while Washington grumbled of “that rascal Freneau” - an epithet that
became the title of Lewis Leary's authoritative biography (1949).

After another decade of feverish public action, Freneau withdrew again in 1801, when
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 1780s that he found
the inspiration for his best poems, such as “The Indian Burying Ground'' and “The Wild
Honey Suckle,'' a beautiful lyric which established him as an important American
precursor of the Romantics.

Most students of Freneau's life and writing agree that he could have produced much
more poetry of high literary merit had he not expended so much energy and talent for
his country's political goals. In a way, though, he had fulfilled his father's hopes for him,
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for he had devoted his life to public service as a guardian of the morals of his society
and as a spokesman for the needs of its people (Alexander Leitch, A Princeton
Companion, Princeton University Press. 1978).

Freneau ought not to be completely forgotten, although he seldom wrote more than a
line or two at a time that is in any way memorable. Even his titles can repel us with their
solemn, dry abstractness: On the Universality and Other Attributes of the God of
Nature, or On the Uniformity and Perfection of Nature.

No imperfection can be found

In all that is, above, around, -
All, nature made, in reason's sight
Is order all, and all is right.

His most readable verse is to be found neither in his philosophic poems nor among his
poems on the Revolution, but in his Gothic long poem The House of Night, which
foreshadows Poe, and in his poems on the American scene. Among the latter, The
Wild Honey Suckle has a memorable final couplet, which are probably the best lines
Freneau ever wrote.

The space between, is but an hour,

The frail duration of a flower.

Poets of the Revolutionary era often imitated the 'neoclassical' style and themes of the
great English poets. This style was taken from ancient Greek and Roman writers.
Usually they wrote in couplets, but they also experimented with other forms, like blank
verse. The neoclassical poets often used old-fashioned language in their poetry. Words
like 'blade' and 'steed' were preferred to the more common terms, 'knife' and 'horse.'

ADDENDA

WILD HONEY-SUCKLE

Fair flower, that dost so comely grow,

Hid in this silent, dull retreat,
Untouched thy honied blossoms blow,
Unseen thy little branches greet;
...No roving foot shall crush thee here,
...No busy hand provoke a tear.

By Nature's self in white arrayed,

She bade thee shun the vulgar eye,
And planted here the gaurdian shade,
And sent soft waters murmuring by;
...Thus quietly thy summer goes,
...Thy days declinging to repose.

Smit with those charms, that must decay,

I grieve to see your future doom;
They died--nor were those flowers more gay,
The flowers that did in Eden bloom;
...Unpitying frosts, and Autumn's power
...Shall leave no vestige of this flower.

From morning suns and evening dews

At first thy little being came:
If nothing once, you nothing lose,
 12
For when you die you are the same;
...The space between, is but an hour,
...The frail duration of a flower.

In the years immediately after the Revolution, there were also some hopeful beginnings
in drama. Although French and Spanish Catholic priests had used drama for religious
education among the Indians, drama developed very slowly in the English colonies.
The New England Puritans, and some other Protestant groups, believed that the
theatre was "an invention of the Devil," bad for the morals of the people. In the South,
far away from the Puritan influence, there were a few theatres. America's first theatre
was in Williamsburg, Virginia, and Thomas Godfrey’s Prince of Parthia (written in
1759, produced in 1767) was probably the first American play to be professionally
produced. But it wasn't until after the Independence that American theatre became
interesting.

An interesting figure of the time is J. Hector St. John de CrÈvecoeur (1735-1813),

who for most of his adult life considered himself an American. He was born a French
aristocrat and went to America in 1755, and settled down as a farmer in New York
State. He was against the Revolution when it broke out and returned to France until it
was over. His Letters from an American Farmer (1782) contain one of the earliest
explanations of the American personality, and are still widely read. As Susan Manning
says, this book deserves to be called the first piece of American fiction.

He did not describe America as a utopia. Yet he saw far more hope and health in a
society where "individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men" than in the
older, closed societies of Europe. He was afraid that this happiness would be destroyed
by the Revolution. To Crèvecoeur, the ideal American was a man who cooperates with
his neighbours, while earning his own living from farming.

In Studies in Classic American Literature, D. H. Lawrence declared, "Franklin is the real

practical prototype of the American. Crèvecoeur is the emotional." If Franklin enunciates
the image of the pragmatic American, the bourgeois businessman with realistic goals of
personal success, Crèvecoeur gives form to the idealistic American image. Especially in
Letter III ("What is an American?") he portrays the American as the veritable Adam.
Escaping from the tyrannical Old World, the American can make the "fresh start."

The American is a new man who acts upon new principles; he must therefore entertain new ideas
and form new opinions. From involuntary idleness, servile dependence, penury, and useless
labour, he has passed to toils of a very different nature, rewarded by ample subsistence. This is
an American.

In the early years of the New Republic, there was disagreement about how American
literature should grow. There were three different points of view. One group was
worried that American literature still lacked national feeling. They wanted books which
expressed the special character of the nation, not books which were based on
European culture. Another group felt that American literature was too young to declare
its independence from the British literary tradition. They believed the United States
should see itself as a new branch of English culture. The third group also felt that the
call for a national literature was a mistake. To them, good literature was universal,
always rising above the time and place where it was written. The argument continued
for almost 100 years, but as American literature grew and flowered, the greatest writers
found a way to combine the best qualities of the literature of the Old and New Worlds.
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Novels were the first popular literature of the newly independent United States. This
was astonishing because almost no American novels were written before the
Revolution. Like drama, the novel had been considered a "dangerous" form of literature
by the American Puritans. Novels put "immoral" ideas into the heads of young people.
In fact, the first American novel, William Hill Brown's Power of Sympathy (1789), was
suppressed as "morally dangerous" soon after it was published. In England, however,
the Puritan writer John Bunyan had published a great novel-like work, The Pilgrim's
Progress (part one, 1678).

In the early days of independence, American novels served a useful purpose. Unlike
poetry, the language of these novels spoke directly to ordinary Americans. They used
realistic details to describe the reality of American life.

The first important novelist and first professional man of belles lettres in American
history was Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810). The Gothic novelists of late 18th
century England are the literary progenitors of Brown. He is closest to Clara Reeve in
employing familiar locales and rationalistically explaining away his horrendous
mysteries at the end, but he is also indebted to Walpole's Castle of Otranto, Mrs.
Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho, and the psychological thrillers of William Godwin. His
interest in the psychology of horror greatly influenced Hawthorne and Poe many years
later, and even Faulkner. Brown actually surpassed his Gothic antecedents in the
exploration of warped mental states and in developing a tendency to portentous
symbols. Like these three writers, Brown had the ability to describe complicated (and
often cruel) minds. His Gothic romances were carefully documented in fact and
pseudo-science.

Wieland (1798), Brown's best-known novel, is an epistolary "Gothic romance" in the

European style. The elder Wieland, a German mystic, emigrates to Pennsylvania,
builds a mysterious temple on his estate, and dies there one night by spontaneous
combustion. His wife dies soon afterwards, leaving her children, Clara and the younger
Wieland to fate's mercy. They live in a world of horror: murders are committed, people
speak with the voices of others or suddenly explode into flames. As in all of his works,
Brown's story is filled with emotional power. In Ormond (1799), seduction is the central
theme. The evil seducer is finally killed by the heroine, Constantia, probably the best-
drawn woman in American fiction before Henry James. Except in Hawthorne's Scarlet
Letter, American novelists were apparently so dominated by the masculine challenge of
American life as to give short shrift to women characters. Shelley was enthralled with
Brown's heroine, celebrating her in two poems of 1817, To Constantia, Singing and To
Constantia.

Edgar Huntly (1799), like the other works of Brown, has elements of the horror story:
the murder of large number of people by the Indians, sleepwalking, the insanity of the
hero and narrator, Huntly. In the most exciting scene, Huntly wakes up in the total
blackness of a cave (he has been sleepwalking) where he must fight a mountain lion.
This novel is the first to introduce to American fiction the vast, challenging wilderness.
The Indian here is not the noble savage of European literature but the savage horror of
the untamed continent. Little by little Brown's heroes discover that they can neither
understand nor direct their own lives. Life is "disastrous and humiliating." With this
philosophy, it is not surprising that Brown spent his last years writing political pamphlets
against the optimistic philosophy of Thomas Jefferson.