Prose: Newspapers and Essays
[In the following excerpt, Bowden surveys Freneau's prose writings from 1790 to 1800, including his newspaper articles and humorous essays.]
The ten years from 1790 to 1800 were the most active and public ones of Freneau's life. Although he showed during these years a marked desire to settle down in New Jersey, national events called him forth to employ his talents, ones shown earlier with the Freeman's Journal, as a newspaper editor and political essayist. Although he published one book of verse, printing himself the 1795 Poems, Written between the years 1768 and 1794, his poetry was generally written and published only to emphasize his editorial stands. In these years he married, reared a family, moved from New York to Philadelphia to New Jersey and back to New York. He retained his former intellectual interests and causes: he continued to champion debtors, to abhor slavery, to speculate about just treatment of the Indians, to admire the French, and to question established religion.
His political friendship belonged nationally to the Jeffersonian Republicans and locally to the New York Clintonians and Pennsylvania radicals. His talents were sought by three future presidents, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and James Monroe; and they were damned by two others—George Washington and John Adams. Through Freneau's newspapers, he commented on the major national events and conditions of the decade: the transition from the Washington and Adams administrations to the “Virginia Dynasty,” the periodic threats of war with both England and France, the economic instability of the times, the increase in immigration, the gradual extension of the suffrage, and the spread of deism. He tried to alter public reaction to Jay's Treaty with England, to the “X Y Z” affair, and to the Alien and Sedition Acts. In a time when the actions of England and France greatly affected conditions within the United States, Freneau's prose and his poetry, not surprisingly, deal much with these two countries. It was also a time when many in the United States were looking to other countries for assurance that their experiment in government was the “coming thing.” So Freneau's readers became well acquainted with the French Revolution and with the various forms of government adopted by the French; and they followed the trials of Ireland, of Poland, of Holland, and of Prussia. And the sufferings of the British under their king were always underscored to reassure American citizens that their way was right. Both internationally and nationally, the decade was a turbulent one; and Freneau reflected and sometimes contributed to that turbulence.
The Federalist opinion of Freneau has been the lasting one, and it has, to a large part, been an obstacle to serious study of his prose. Freneau's works never sold well in Federalist New England; Timothy Dwight summarized Connecticut opinion in 1793: “Freneau, your printer, linguist, &c., is regarded here as a mere incendiary, or rather as a dispicable tool of bigger incendiaries, and his paper as a public nuisance.”1 While Washington, in an oft-quoted phrase, described Freneau as a “rascal,” Alexander Hamilton considered Freneau a real threat to order and stability—as “a man who is continually machinating against the public happiness.”2 George Gibbs, biographer of the second Secretary of the Treasury, Oliver Wolcott, described Freneau's paper in this manner: it “was notorious for its scandalous falsehood and misrepresentation, its fulsome adoration of Mr. Jefferson, and its gross abuse of leading federal men.”3 We do not take seriously a writer so described. Too often we forget the other side—that Jefferson praised Freneau and his paper for saving the United States' republican form of government. Today, an examination of Freneau's newspapers and essays show that he was far more than a party hack; that he was fairly moderate; and that, except when his favorite causes were endangered, he was able to observe with wit and humor both sides of a question.
I FRENEAU'S NEWSPAPERS—THE DAILY ADVERTISER (1790-1791)
In 1790, in New York, Freneau first became connected with Francis Childs and John Swaine, owners of the Daily Advertiser, and later they became his financial partners in the National Gazette. The nature of Freneau's employment with the Daily Advertiser is uncertain, but the salary was sufficient for Freneau and his new wife to maintain themselves in New York. Since Freneau was not the chief editor, we cannot know how much he affected the editorial policy of the paper; and we can only guess his views from those articles and poems which he later reprinted, or from those articles which bear either his initials or a signature which he used again later. His connection with the paper was relatively short. His poems begin appearing in its pages in the spring of 1790; his prose works, possibly, in the middle of June. By February, 1791, he was looking for a change, as is evidenced by his proposals for establishing a Monmouth gazette; by May, he had left New York, even though his poems continued to appear in the Daily Advertiser until he had started the National Gazette.
Of his identifiable prose and poetry appearing in the Daily Advertiser, not many are about controversial topics. His works reflect the debate over a permanent location for the seat of Congress, but even this rather serious controversy he dealt with lightly in “Description of New-York one-hundred and fifty years hence” and in the poems “Nabby” and “Nanny.” In these, he has a housemaid of New York and one of Philadelphia give their own and their mistresses' views about the change: the New Yorker regrets the loss of the excitement; the Philadelphian welcomes the excitement but rues the increase in work.
But in “The American Soldier” (1791), Freneau dealt more directly with partisan political thinking. The veteran of the Revolutionary War is now poor, far from the center of government (“Removed alike from courtly cringing 'squires, / The great-man's Levee, and the proud man's grin”), and forgotten by it: “She leaves her soldier—famine and a name!” Freneau also struck out against any evidence of courtly manners in “Rules how to compliment great Men in a proper manner,” by pointing out that the man in power is “no more than a fellow citizen.”4 On May 27, 1791, he contributed “Lines Occasioned by reading Mr. Paine's Rights of Man.” The poem, while celebrating the Rights of Man, spends more time in emphasizing over and over the evils of monarchy and in warning the new nation against kingly pretensions: “Be ours the task the ambitious to restrain, / And this great lesson teach—that kings are vain.” All these poems reflect his growing suspicion of the “airs” assumed by Washington's administration.
In “Letter to a newly elected Young Member of the Lower House” (1790), Freneau becomes even more partisan. In advising against pride in office, he introduces the Anti-Federalist tenet of rotation in office, a limitation on reelection: “Do not suffer yourself to be intoxicated with vanity on account of your momentary exaltation.—Rotation is a mortifying consideration, but in that consists the essence of liberty; and it is this which must once more return you to the mass of the people to participate in those burthens which you had a share in imposing.” Then in “Occasioned by a Legislation Bill proposing a Taxation upon Newspapers” (1971), Freneau more directly attacks the administration for its pomp. The speaker of the poem declares “‘'tis time to tax the News’”:
“The well-born sort alone, should read the news,
No common herds should get behind the scene
To view the movements of the state machine:
One paper only, filled with courtly stuff,
One paper, for one country is enough,
Where incense offered at Pomposo's shrine,
Shall prove his house-dog and himself divine.”
In these contributions, Freneau now begins to sound more like the editor of the National Gazette that he was shortly to be.
II THE NATIONAL GAZETTE (1791-1793)
Freneau announced the type of paper the National Gazette was to be in the first issue, of October 31, 1791. It was to offer the most important foreign news from British, French, and Dutch papers, plus letters from correspondents. Domestic news would be covered by presentation of original documents, Congressional debates, and decisions of the Supreme Court. Contributions were welcome: “The most respectful attention shall be paid to all decent productions of entertainment in prose or verse that may be sent for insertion, as well as to such political essays as have a tendency to promote the general interests of the Union.”5
In the third issue, on November 7, Freneau explained that “general interests” were “the great principles upon which the American revolution was founded, a faithful adherence to which can alone preserve the blessings of liberty to this extensive empire.” There were, of course, those who interpreted the revolutionary principles differently. Freneau quoted the United States Gazette's description of his paper: “The National Gazette is—the vehicle of party spleen and opposition to the great principles of order, virtue and religion.” But a defender of Freneau explained away such charges: “Your paper is an enemy to despots, villains and knaves, consequently, they are your adversaries.” The truth about Freneau's paper lies somewhere in between: it was a partisan paper, but it was not a splenetic or an anarchic one.
For the greater part of the two years that Freneau edited the National Gazette, he kept to the plan announced in the first issue. Unlike many papers of today, he presented original state documents and allowed his readers to examine them for themselves before reading the essays of the controversialists. Although the publication was anti-Federalist, it presented in full Hamilton's yearly reports on the public debt, his important “Report on Manufactures,” his “Report on Loans,” and several others. Documents presented were not limited to national affairs; the speeches of John Hancock and George Clinton—both good Anti-Federalist governors—to their respective legislatures were given, as well as a speech by the mayor of Paris, several addresses by the king of England to his Parliament, and the constitution of France. If Freneau's readers had limited their reading to these documents only, they would have been well educated politically.
In addition to these documents and the articles from foreign papers, Freneau also clipped articles from domestic daily papers; and he published ones from both Federalist and Republican dailies, although chiefly from Republican ones. His paper was most partisan in the contributions he printed. Letters bearing news from Americans in other states, in London, in Marseilles, in the West Indies were almost totally favorable to his causes. Although the contributed essays on current controversies championed the Anti-Federalists, responses to them were printed so that both sides of the question could be read. There were few editorials as we know them today; unsigned editorial comment was limited to a few lines but was used consistently only late in the second year of publication. As “fillers” Freneau used poetry—his own or others, most of it not on controversial topics; excerpts from standard works by Swift, Samuel Johnson, or Voltaire; or amusing anecdotes.
The National Gazette, during its two years of publication, constantly kept three interrelated issues before its public; and rarely was one issue presented without mention of one or the other. The paper opposed England's domination of America in any way, and it favored friendship with France. Nationally, it opposed the schemes and plans of Alexander Hamilton. And, in matters of social and governmental conduct, it opposed any tendency toward monarchical trappings or traits. Hamilton was accused of favoring England and of instituting royal customs in government; England was accused of encouraging trappings of royalty and of abetting Hamilton's financial schemes. The National Gazette attacked the English and their adherents in almost every way possible, and it supported France through the wilder days of the Revolution. When news reached America that King Louis had been executed, Freneau, noting that the British court was in mourning for him, added: “Follies of this kind might be forgiven to the prejudices of the European, but that the silly American, just emancipated from a tyrant, should join in the whine of condolence, is indeed lamentably absurd and wholly ‘out of order.’” And Freneau printed Brackenridge's famous mot, “Louis Capet has lost his Caput,” and his comment on it: “From my use of a pun, it may seem that I think lightly of his fate. I certainly do. It affects me no more than the execution of another malefactor.”
Much of the controversy stirred by the National Gazette resulted from its criticism of George Washington, and much of this criticism had to do with the administration's so-called monarchical trappings. But the criticism was slow to come. On February 23, 1792, Freneau reported on the previous day's celebration of the president's birthday: “the day concluded with every mark of harmony, good order, and undissembled joy.” A year later, however, “Valerius” warned against such celebrations; and a correspondent wrote, “the monarchical farce of the birthday was as usual, kept up.” The paper associated Washington's habit of holding levees with monarchism; and by January 5, 1793, the comments became pointed. In an article entitled “To the Noblesse and Courtiers of the United States,” the writer sarcastically suggested that a poet laureate was wanted by the administration, one who would praise “levees, drawing-rooms, stately nods instead of shaking hands, titles of office, seclusion from the people, &c.” This attack was a little too pointed for many, and “Mirabeau” felt obliged on February 13 to defend his right to criticize the President. Generally, such criticism of Washington as was found in the pages of the National Gazette was rather mild by today's standards. When Washington was directly named, the criticism was couched as warnings and advice: the advice most often given to him was for him to beware of flatterers and of his advisers.
The adviser the National Gazette most earnestly wished Washington to ignore was, of course, Alexander Hamilton. As with that of Washington, the criticism of Hamilton began slowly but intensified. His plan for the excise tax was criticized, as were his recommendation for the national bank and his “Report on Manufactures.” The real attack on Hamilton began on March 15, 1792, with the beginning of the “Brutus” essays about Hamilton's funding system. Essays attacking the funding system continued as long as the National Gazette did. Other controversies periodically took newspaper space from these three major ones, although the essayists usually managed to connect the current controversy with the “sins” of Hamilton, the English, or the monarchists.
The two hottest controversies during the years of the National Gazette were the charges against secretary of state Jefferson that were derived from his employment of Freneau as government translator and from the Genet affair. Both subjects, coincidentally, were debated during the summers, when Congress had recessed—almost as if the lack of other news caused these issues to receive more attention than they otherwise would have. On April 23, 1792, Freneau responded to a charge against him: “He must be a venal wretch, indeed, who thinks that because a man holds a lawful office under government, therefore he is obliged to approve and flatter the most arbitrary measures of that government.” Thus the charge of Freneau's serving two masters, the government and the opposition to the government, was raised early; but it was not pursued because other news soon displaced it. The attack was renewed at a time when Freneau, at least, was reduced to printing such contributions as a discussion of a clause in the Vacant Lands Act and advice on the rotation of crops.
On July 28, the National Gazette reprinted Hamilton's query as to whether Freneau's government salary was paid him for translations “or for publications, the design of which is to vilify those to whom the voice of the people has committed the administration of our public affairs.” Freneau replied that “the above is beneath a reply,” but he added that an impartial editor is far better than one who is a flatterer. For the most part, Freneau left his defense to others, and the controversy soon widened into a discussion of Jefferson's political principles. Freneau reprinted from the American Daily Advertiser Monroe's “Vindication,” but he also reprinted defenses of Hamilton's stand on the debate. The charges against Jefferson and Freneau were periodically revived; Freneau defended himself once more in his paper of October 20, 1792:
The National Gazette is supported, and only supported, by upwards of thirteen hundred subscriptions from honest and independent citizens of the United States, through every part of the Union—the end and tendency of this paper is to countenance the great revolutional principles of America—principles that the Editor will adhere to and support, independent of all influence, in every possible circumstance and situation, and for the dissemination of which, or any abuse of which, he considers himself responsible to the public, to whose republican interests he is forever devoted.
Still, the Federalists kept alive the charge that Freneau was only Jefferson's paid editor.
The second of Freneau's famous newspaper controversies occurred the following summer, again after Congress had recessed—during the time when many citizens had left Philadelphia for fear of yellow fever. As with so many issues, Freneau's treatment of the Genet affair was not impartial, although, as with others, he did present both sides. Genet, the new French ambassador, arrived in Philadelphia Thursday, May 16, 1793, after a triumphant journey from Charleston, and Freneau described him for his Saturday readers: “We have no doubt but the popular character and engaging affability of Citizen Genet, will gain him the esteem of the inhabitants of this city and country; and awaken in them sentiments of gratitude for our generous allies, the defenders of the rights of man and real friends to America in the dark days of war and desolation.” The National Gazette never changed its mind about the worth of Genet. When Genet came under attack for violating the principles of Washington's neutrality proclamation about the French Revolution, many essayists appeared in the pages of the National Gazette to defend him. And his defenders remained true even after John Jay and Rufus King revealed that Genet had threatened, in defiance of Washington, to appeal to the people to reverse the policy of neutrality. When Genet protested to the president in a letter, and when Jefferson replied with a rebuke that such correspondence should be addressed to him as secretary of state, the defenders became less enthusiastic. Still, Freneau, in an editorial comment, felt able to reassure the French that “the hearts of the people, and their hands, if necessary, are with them and their cause.”
Freneau did not turn all of his paper over to political controversialists: his readers were informed about subjects other than political ones. That Freneau shared the inquiring and projecting spirit of the Enlightenment is seen from the space he gave to reports of the various philosophical societies and the attention he paid to findings in agriculture—why crop rotation was favored, what to do about the Hessian fly that was attacking wheat. The paper reported with enthusiasm various projects for canal construction, as it did various archaeological discoveries—old bones found, the controversy over the nature of the Indian mounds. For a time, David Rittenhouse, president of the Philadelphia Philosophical Society, presented his meteorological observations to the paper. Articles on Saturn, the formation of mountains, and Captain William Bligh's safe arrival in the West Indies with his cargo of plants also informed the scientific-minded of Freneau's readers.
Freneau's selection of short accounts shows his interest in reform. He strongly favored a patent bill to protect American inventors, editorialized in favor of the arts and artists, discoursed on the need for improvement in the debtors' prison system, and seemingly printed every account he could find of attempts to halt the slave trade and to encourage political rights for Negroes. He reprinted a review of Phillis Wheatley's poems, a review which he probably approved since her poetry was damned in it as being too much in the English style. Freneau's paper was cited by the opposition for encouraging irreligion, but there are few such instances. He did print a notice of the Deist Elihu Palmer's lecture in Philadelphia, and he approved the dissolution of monasteries in France, but there is little else of this nature.
Freneau's unsigned editorial comments are few and far between, especially in the first year when he relied chiefly on signed contributions and articles from other papers. Most of the short unsigned fillers, however, sound unmistakeably like Freneau, as does a comment on the Americans' unnatural love of gold, or this observation, printed in his paper in May, 1792: “From the present degraded state of royalty in Europe, its secret patrons in this country cannot possibly deduce any arguments in favour of American Kings and Princes.” The sentiment is his, and so is the style. “Rules for changing a limited Republican Government into an unlimited hereditary one” (July 4, 1792) is a longer piece that is undoubtedly Freneau's. The first eight rules are sarcastic and clear, as is this excerpt from rule five: “As the novelty and bustle of inaugurating the government will for some time keep the public mind in a heedless and unsettled state, let the Press during this period be busy in propagating the doctrines of monarchy and aristocracy. For this purpose it will be particularly useful to confound a mobbish democracy with a representative republic, that by exhibiting all the turbulent examples and enormities of the former, an odium may be thrown on the character of the latter.” As the rules continue, however, they become essentially short essays protesting the Hamiltonian system of finance. In becoming longer, they lose their strength as satire and sarcasm.
Freneau's prose is best when it allows his indignation and bitterness to show through his philosophic calm, as when he commented in his paper in February, 1793, about the Federalists' use of George Washington: “It is an old trick of designing characters, to cry up a single individual as the life, safety and sine qua non of a nation; and by deifying him, to make themselves the real sovereigns over the people.” From sections of an essay on Genet, contributed May 22, 1793, by “An Old Soldier” (undoubtedly one of Freneau's pen names), it seems that Freneau is not so good at praising as censuring—his praise is too high flown, too literary, too contrived: “The bosoms of many hundred freemen beat high with affectionate transport, their souls caught the celestial fire of struggling liberty, and in the enthusiasm of emotion, they communicated their feelings to the worthy and amiable representative of the French nation. What a delicious repast for a mind interested in the cause of humanity!” Freneau is best when he speaks simply and ironically.
The National Gazette, one of the most controversial newspapers of the time, was also one of the best. When Aaron Burr sent his wife a copy in November, 1791, he told her to give it to a friend but to “take care, however, to get it back and preserve it, as it is one of Freneau's. … If you find them amusing, you may command them regularly.”6 This paper is informative and interesting, and it is also illustrative of the controversies and styles of Freneau's time.
III THE JERSEY CHRONICLE (1795-1796)
In one of Freneau's “Old Soldier” essays published in the National Gazette on May 22, 1793, Freneau praises the French and maligns the British; but he adds that “it must not be imagined from what I have said, that my voice is for war. Could we render France any essential assistance, war would be our duty, it would be our security; but the assistance which we can give her, may be better accomplished in peace.” Too often Freneau is pictured as a rabid and radical Francophile who forgot all caution in his advocacy of the French cause. Such lack of moderation would not be in keeping with the ideal of the Enlightenment. Freneau was for republicanism but against mob democracy, even though he may have flattered the mob. In the Jersey Chronicle, however, the balance of the National Gazette is missing. Where the National Gazette allowed space for rebuttal during its controversies, the Jersey Chronicle printed very few essays that opposed its editorial stand on its main issue, Jay's Treaty with England. Generally, the Chronicle damned the treaty, which did not mention major American complaints about British incitement of Indians, impressment of American seamen, or the touchy question of trade with the West Indies. The only thing the treaty did do, it seemed, was to keep the peace—for a while. We could almost say that Jay's Treaty was the paper's reason for being, since the majority of each issue dealt with it, its reception, and its probable consequences. But Freneau once more enlightened his readers by printing the whole of the treaty.
In the Chronicle, a large amount of space is devoted to essays reprinted from other papers, chiefly the Aurora; there are very few original contributions. It is probable that Freneau is the author of some of the many essays reprinted from the Aurora, especially some of those about Jay's Treaty. Now at home in New Jersey, away from the excitement of the capital, Freneau also found time to rework some of his Daily Advertiser sketches and to compose others. In this paper there are fewer articles of the scientific sort, but Freneau does find space for recipes for bread; for extracts on the “saints” of Boston, on Ossian, and on the Shaking Quakers; and for a long essay about the character of the Chinese. Thus there was some light reading that was not devoted to denouncing the treaty with England.
In his statement of purpose in the first issue, however, Freneau did not mention the treaty. His purpose was higher: “At this time, when new Republics are forming and new Empires bursting into birth; when the great family of mankind are evidently making their egress from the dark shadows of despotism which have so long enveloped them, & are assuming a character suitable to the dignity of their species, the Editor seizes the opportunity to renew his efforts for contributing, in some small degree, to the general information of his fellow citizens in the present history and politics of the world.”7
But Freneau did not accent the positive for long. On page seven of that first issue he examined and denied the British charge that the French were in a state of anarchy; then he asked, “but if there hath been really a system of annihilation in Europe, hath not Britain all the credit of it to herself?” In the supplement to the first issue, as if to leave no doubt in his readers' minds where he stood, Freneau issued this warning: “let it never be effaced from your minds, that Great Britain sought to enslave you, that she is the enemy of freedom, that she is at this moment waging a cruel warfare against it, and that no effort of her's will remain untried to exterminate it from the Earth.” And, in support of his claims about the evil nature of Great Britain, Freneau presented, in issue after issue, letters from American sea captains telling of British harassments and depredations.
In domestic affairs, however, Freneau's paper is more balanced, for it printed essays praising, as well as those denouncing, the president. And he sounds a note of political moderation in the Jersey Chronicle which perhaps had not been needed in the National Gazette. Although giving all his support to Edmund Randolph in his argument against the administration (he was dismissed for indiscrete relations with the French minister), Freneau concludes, “when Congress meet, the ex-secretary & others implicated in censure, will undoubtedly be honorably exculpated, or charges of malconduct fully proved against them.” In other words, one should leave the decision to the legal body having jurisdiction. The most striking instance of this moderation appears in the issue of December 12 in an unsigned editorial statement. Freneau discusses the accusations on both sides concerning Jay's Treaty, and then addresses his readers: “Fellow citizens, as bodies you mean right on both sides; your hard epithets serve only to inflame each other, to our great political damage. … War should be avoided if possible, but Britain appears willing to try our patience thoroughly by her wanton and barbarous provocations. … How long we shall bear the unprovoked injuries of Great Britain, without retaliation, we ought to leave with our rulers.” If it were not for Freneau's attitude toward Britain, we would find it difficult to believe that this, and other pleas for moderation in the paper, came from Freneau's pen. The Jersey Chronicle is enlightening for one studying Freneau; but it lacked the excellence of the National Gazette for news and controversy.
IV THE TIME PIECE, AND LITERARY COMPANION (1797-1798)
Like the Jersey Chronicle, the New York Time Piece carried Freneau's name for only one year; unlike it, the Time Piece changed its nature during that year, possibly because Freneau got a new partner after six months. Although at first the paper was almost a literary gazette, Freneau's statement of purpose in the first issue does not indicate that this paper was to be any different from the others. He says he has undertaken the task because he feels that a periodical “has the fairest chance … [to] render man that exalted character, and give him that real pre-eminence which he was evidently designed to hold on the scale of animated nature.”8 Although he continued to print state documents, Freneau now educated his readers more through belles-lettres than through politics.
He filled the majority of his pages with poetry, history, light essays, and travelers' accounts. He reprinted his translation of Abbe Robin's Travels and his own Tomo Cheeki essays from the Jersey Chronicle. There were excerpts from the “best authors,” accounts of Napoleon's Italian campaign, and descriptive accounts of towns in Italy. For his poetry section, Freneau was evidently so deluged by poetry of the drearier sort that he tactfully sought after a few issues to direct his contributors to other subjects: “As the genial month of May is now scattering the clouds, and dispensing the blessings of sunshine, it is hoped, we shall be favoured, particularly from the ladies, with poetical communications of a more cheerful and lively nature.” The most prolonged controversy in his pages in the early months concerned the state of the New York theater.
By the end of May, however, Freneau had begun to allow current political controversy into his pages. On May 5, 1797, he printed a poem attacking the conservative Philadelphia printer, William Cobbett; and he reprinted, without comment, Jefferson's rash letter to Phillip Mazzei in which he complained about American Anglophiles. But the paper from June to September is so very uneven, that we have the impression that Freneau and his partner Alexander Menut could not quite decide what to do with it. There is much concern with the rising desire for war against France, especially in Freneau's “Sketches on Different Subjects.” In them, after a description of ancient and modern kings, he defines navies as existing only to take care of the overflow of nobility for insular governments; and he scorns the American navy then being built. Freneau fears it is intended for use against France, and he issues a warning to those so intending: “when the people of America are wise enough to see that war is hatching only for the benefit of comparatively few individuals, they will be cautious of listening to men who are artfully endeavoring to draw them into a snare that has produced the misery of all nations, and made the world a slaughter house, or, almost literally, a den of thieves and robbers.” Freneau also began once more to protest the government's fiscal policies; this time he wrote as “Mat. Moonshine, junior,” a rough countryman, to whom it makes sense to pay off the country's debt only by breeding pigs.
As part of the change in the Time Piece, Freneau indulged in controversy with John Fenno, his old rival of the United States Gazette, and with William Cobbett. He advised them that they should not be so frivolous when the yellow fever was again attacking Philadelphia, and he noted Fenno's misquotation of an article in the Time Piece: “and yet if fame does not greatly wrong him political honesty is a science with which he has yet to form some acquaintance.” Freneau, who quoted Cobbett as saying he had been plagued by the Time Piece, responded: “it has also been a plague to some others of his brethren, and will go on to be so, till they are hustled into their native dog-kennels.” Then he printed his poem, “To Peter Porcupine”:
From Penn's famous city what hosts have departed,
The streets and the houses are nearly deserted,
But still there remain
Two Vipers, that's plain,
Who soon, it is thought, yellow flag will display;
Old Porcupine preaching,
And Fenno beseeching
Some dung-cart to wheel him away.
Through the years, Freneau had not grown more delicate in his language of controversy.
The stronger tone of the Time Piece was possibly displeasing to Freneau's partner, for notice was given on September 13, 1797, that their partnership was dissolved. Henceforth Freneau was to be allied with M. L. Davis, the future biographer of Aaron Burr and his political lieutenant; and the style of the paper was to be changed to “make room for a greater variety of the current news of the times, and such original communications as may be had from able pens among ourselves.” As Freneau had done in previous papers, he now continued to link together aristocratic leanings, the Federalists, and the British. The new partners enlist their readers' sympathies against the British by telling them that it was a British ship which had brought the yellow fever to the United States that fall; by recalling for them that November 25 was the anniversary of the evacuation of New York by the British, and by telling them that only when Britain was peaceful would America forget those wrongs done to her.
Actually, despite the new partners' promises, the paper did not carry many contributed essays about current controversies. There were, however, more original contributions by Freneau—some fanciful, some serious. One article, written from the point of view of “u,” “g,” and “h,” was addressed to the American printers “who, no doubt, think the new fangled spelling very neat and fashionable, and besides lay their account in finding at the year's end a considerable diminution of expense in the article of types.” Equally light is “Ridiculous Distress of a Country Weekly News Printer.” Because of rains, the printer's exchange newspapers failed to arrive, and so, with the aid of a traveler, guessing at foreign news, he composed his paper anyway: “The whole from being a number of hearsays, rumours, and reports, was the mere shadow of news: but still it was a newspaper; and gave great and general satisfaction!!!” On October 16, Freneau began printing “The Book of Odes,” which dealt satirically with current conditions; and the “Hezekiah Salem” essays began on October 23.
Of more serious nature was a series of three essays by Freneau signed “A.B.” and entitled “On Imprisonment for Debt.” The first is of uneven quality, and in it Freneau tries to trace the philosophical and legal origins of imprisonment for debt. The second essay is stronger, as it departs from philosophical questing. Freneau suggests that benevolent societies be formed to alleviate the miseries of the imprisoned debtor's family, and he also proposes that the debtors be put to work since idleness leads to wickedness: “Where is there an instance of a person shut up in jail for one, two, three or more years, that did not come out a worse character than he went in.” In the final essay, he suggests a plan to introduce trades in jails and to sell the resultant work at a low price in shops, thus enabling those imprisoned to work themselves out of debt. Freneau had long protested against debtors' prisons, but this series contains his most coherent statement on the subject.
Freneau himself came close to being imprisoned for debt in New York this winter, but he somehow escaped and joined his brother in Charleston. On March 19, 1798, shortly after his return, the Time Piece announced that the business in the future would be conducted by the firm of M. L. Davis & Co. Thus Freneau finally disassociated himself from a venture which began much like a general interest magazine but which was transformed into a party newspaper. The paper was never very successful, and Freneau was probably never very happy with it.
V ESSAY SERIES
Throughout his journalism career, Freneau took advantage of the easily available newspaper space to present essays on different subjects. His best are those signed by one of his created characters—characters who allow Freneau to pose as a detached observer of society, or as one who is all too attached to it but who sees it from a different viewpoint than his own. He started this type of essay in the Freeman's Journal with his “Pilgrim” series, and he continued it in his Miscellaneous Works with the character now named “The Philosopher of the Forest.” In the Daily Advertiser, the character became Opay Mico, a visitor from another culture, and he became Tomo Cheeki in Freneau's Jersey Chronicle and Time Piece. Freneau created Hezekiah Salem for the Time Piece, and he resurrected Robert Slender (who had also appeared in the Miscellaneous Works) for a series in the Aurora in 1800. The quality of these essays is uneven, for Freneau is not so good when talking the elevated language of the philosopher as he is when he writes as the common man on topics of current interest. The Pilgrim, the Philosopher, Tomo Cheeki—all are inferior to Robert Slender.
Despite the weakness of some of the “Pilgrim” essays, the character does give Freneau a wide scope in his compositions; for, since the Pilgrim has traveled the world widely, he can discuss comparative manners and morals. He has lived long, so he can offer sage advice. He lives in the country, and thus can comment on the virtues of a rural life; but he is not far from Philadelphia, and therefore can offer detached observations on the fads and fashions of town life. Freneau achieves even more flexibility by making the Pilgrim an advice-giving columnist. Thus, without excessive manipulation, Freneau can have the Pilgrim talk on any subject by simply composing a letter to him—and some of the letters are better creations than the answers.
Unfortunately, the Pilgrim (or Freneau) all too often believes that the elevated style is best, as in this example from the Pilgrim's musings on the Christmas season: “Amidst this melancholy scene, so congenial to my feelings, amid these clouds, these snows, these leafless trees, that afford us the liveliest emblematic views of the vanity of life; when the birds have ceased their notes, when the quadrupeds of the wood have shrunk into their dens to wait the return of the spring, is it becoming that the human race alone, who are brought into the world naturally more helpless than the meanest of the brute creation, should give themselves up to riot and drunkenness?”9 This style is not consistently used, but Freneau returns to it all too often.
In this first series, Freneau was, however, developing ideas of a style proper for an American public. On January 30, 1782, he chides “Bryan O'Krazie,” an Irish preacher, for using Latin and elegant verse in his sermons to a backwoods audience: “adapt your discourses to the plain understandings, and even to the ignorance of the generality of those who are to hear you, and I think a parish will soon be at your service.” In concluding his letter of advice, the Pilgrim shows himself firmly a member of the Enlightenment: “Let what you say be your own, and convince the world that God has given you and every man among the moderns an originality of reason and understanding, as well as to the moralists, poets, and philosophers of antiquity.”
The passages of the Pilgrim's that are the most vigorous are on subjects which Freneau feels most strongly about, as when he insists on January 2, 1782, that England is the cruelest nation: “After a criminal is suspended to a gibbet, no nation but this takes him down when but half dead, rips up his bowels, tears out his heart, and throws it reeking with blood into his face!” But even without a sensational subject, the Pilgrim can be direct, as when he discusses that Jeffersonian ideal, agrarianism:
If a man can be said to possess an independent fortune, it is he whose industry draws immediately from the earth the necessary supports of life. None need be poor where there is plenty of lands, and where people are suffered to purchase at a reasonable rate, and can say, “This is our own.” Health, cheerfulness, and a contented mind, are the natural attendants on a rural life; and if there remain on this earth any traces or resemblances of the first paradise, they existed among the forests, mountains, and vallies of this western world.
Such philosophizing seems much more genuine, less latinate, less trite, than the Pilgrim's musings on Christmas.
Of the Pilgrim's contributions, one of the most interesting consists of letters from four correspondents and the Pilgrim's responses to them—all printed January 16, 1782. The first is from “Eliakim Stout, Koachman to Mrs. Margery Fidget,” which, as the Pilgrim says, “I shall give it precisely as it was sent to me, that his ideas may not suffer any alteration by being wrought into a more elaborate diction”:
but ever since we have been in this toun, my mistrus has spent the evaning out, and she stais there sum times til five o'klok in the morning; and it maks no ods to her what sort of wether it is, because she sits in the hous by the fier, but I and the horses stay in the rane; and I wunders how the poor things keeps so fat, for I cant, and I eats hearty too; if their skins didnt turn the rane beter than my koat, I am shure they would katch kold, and bark like our Watch, as I do; but then I feeds 'em and rules 'em well; aie, I wish my mistrus would tak as much kare of me, as I dos of them.
Freneau's experiment in the dialect of the uneducated is, unfortunately for this series, only an experiment.
In the second letter, “Rachel Sleepless,” a young girl from the country who is now a housemaid, phrases her complaint this way: “I hope you will advise people of note to fall upon some other methods of living that their domestics may enjoy some little satisfaction in life, as well as themselves.” While both servants express approximately the same sentiments, the first letter, being more natural, makes its point better. The third letter has “Maria Flutter” plead, “do, sir, say something in favour of plays. The young people of the city are really tired of their lives for want of some such entertainment now and then in the winter evenings.” Here, as with the coachman, Freneau has caught the style and the sentiment of his character fairly accurately. The last letter is from “Timothy Legible,” a book salesman who is indignant that he is not offered more for his wares: “The other day I was offered four and six pence for Locke upon Human Understanding, and two dollars for Shakespear's works compleat.” These correspondents, despite their stock names, have credible complaints.
For each correspondent, the Pilgrim composes a solution. He advises Mrs. Margery Fidget to keep earlier hours, and for the people she visits to keep sheds for visiting horses and the kitchen for the coachmen; Rachel is advised to return to the country where earlier hours are kept; he forbids plays to Maria until she can “convince her friends that she returns from that species of diversion better and wiser than she went.” As for the bookseller, the Pilgrim offers little hope—he must “exchange his books for commodities in more demand, viz. a few casks of sugar, indigo, hides, tallow, soap, candles, &c. &c.” The whole series is done in a light manner: although Freneau is intent on lecturing his audience, the letter-answer device enables him to do so in an entertaining, albeit nonphilosophical, manner.
For Miscellaneous Works (1788), his first published volume containing prose, Freneau gathered together many of his essays from the Freeman's Journal—some he rewrote; others he rearranged. He took six of the “Pilgrim” essays, added five others, and formed a series under the pen name of the “Philosopher of the Forest.” In his rearrangement, most of the essays now bear the same level of seriousness and the same philosophical tone. The character is the same as the Pilgrim; in fact, the Philosopher introduces himself as such: “I have now spent upwards of thirty years wandering up and down the world as a pilgrim; a line of life which I can assure you, has, like all others, its hardships, discouragements and difficulties, as well as its pleasures and advantages.”10 The Philosopher is, however, more given to discuss general tendencies than was the Pilgrim. Through him, Freneau discusses the nature of man. In essays two and three, Freneau reworks the creation myth. Firando, Nature's journeyman, endows all animals, including man, with virtue. But, on returning from a brief absence, Firando discovers his inept colleagues have created discord, symbolized by the rattlesnake. All Firando can do to correct the situation is to give the snake rattles. Thus man, originally virtuous, must live with discord; or, as the Philosopher expresses it in a later essay, “discord and disorder are interwoven with the nature and constitution of the human race.”
There is, however, some relief to this gloomy picture. The fourth essay describes the country parson who lives near by, and it praises him for being humble and happy in his rustic surroundings: Freneau always praised the idyllic country life. Despite some present evils, typified by the Indians' being dispossessed of their lands, the Philosopher sees a greater future: “It is not easy to conceive what will be the greatness and importance of North America in a century or two to come, if the present fabric of Nature is upheld, and the people retain those bold and manly sentiments of freedom, which actuate them at this day.” Man is vicious now, but the future holds hope.
A few essays are satirical, but Freneau works to make them consistent with the Philosopher's character. Number five, “Containing some particulars relative to the Island of Snatchaway,” criticizes Great Britain, but the Philosopher, in a headnote, softens the criticism: “At the same time that we delineate the vices and follies of this Island, let us not forget, that she is a friend to science; maintains a bold, warlike, and enterprising race of men; and may justly boast of having produced a considerable number of persons, whose actions and sentiments have done real honour to the nature of man.”
The wrongs of England presented in the essay, however, are those Freneau was to constantly argue: there is much talk of liberty but little in fact exists. The people are allowed to complain; but, “in return for this glorious privilege, the people at large are the slaves of the rich and great; are saddled with kings, royal families, lords spiritual and temporal, and myriads of their needy dependents.” In this essay, Freneau also shows his championship of France: “The people of Fickle-land, on the opposite coast of the continent, although, perhaps, the most civilized, brave, generous and humane in the world, are the perpetual objects of their abuse and ridicule.”
Number nine, also somewhat satirical, deals with the United States by having a Polish visitor converse with the clergyman and the Philosopher. The traveler, who had expected to find all good in America, voices his dissatisfaction with it. The clergyman reminds the traveler that he should not have expected felicity on this earth, but the Philosopher disagrees—felicity is only to be apprehended through man's senses and through examples in this real world. The essay is well organized, for it gives Freneau, through the traveler, an opportunity to chide Americans for their pettiness, and, through the Philosopher and clergyman, a chance to discuss the more abstract problem of good and evil. The essay is a good blend of the abstract and concrete.
For more relaxed discussions of mundane matters, Freneau used Robert Slender, the weaver in the poem “A Journey from Philadelphia to New-York.” After a preliminary “Advice to Authors” and “Robert Slender's Idea of the Human Soul,” the Slender essays are divided into two sections: “Tracts and Essays on Several Subjects” and “Essays, Tales, and Poems.” In “Advice to Authors,” we are told that Slender is a weaver, a traveler, and an author: “Writing and weaving seem to have been rather his amusements than his serious occupations; and one proof of his having been a man of sense is, his not having depended upon authorship alone for a subsistence.” Thus Slender is an independent craftsman, and his independence enables him to wander at will, to observe what he finds interesting, to travel when and where he feels like it. While Freneau could not endow Slender with much classical learning, he did give him an inquiring mind and common sense. He is not rich, but neither is he excessively poor; he is one of the ruled, not a ruler. He is, as Freneau would proudly claim him to be later, “One of the Swinish Multitude”—and thus he is one of the very few spokesmen for this class in the American literature of Freneau's lifetime.
The Slender of Miscellaneous Works likes to form rules and to dispense advice, and his rules in “Advice to Authors” make sense in an amusing way. He warns against dedicatory epistles and against scholars, for “a mere scholar and an original author are two animals as different from each other as a fresh and salt water sailor.” Many of the rules deal with handling poverty with equanimity, on the assumption that to be an author is to be poor. Slender concludes that, if Fortune is fickle, one should not fall into bad habits “but retire to some uninhabited island or desert, and there, at your leisure, end your life with decency.” Slender's “Directions for Courtship” are the same mixture of sense and nonsense. One is never to write to a loved one, and never to talk geography to her. Above all, one never refers to any portion of the anatomy—a rule which enables Freneau to satirize some of the euphemisms of his day.
Slender confidently advises authors and lovers; he also gives “Rules and Directions how to Avoid Creditors, Sheriffs, Constables, &c.” After a beginning premise that “there is certainly no moral evil in the mere circumstance of being in debt,” twelve rules follow. (1) Know the streets and geography of Philadelphia well. (2) Leave one's usual dwelling place. (3) Do not mingle with one's neighbors. (4) Appear only in fogs or at night. (5) Make sure the coast is clear before appearing. (6) Keep in mind always what one's creditors look like. (7) One shouldn't worry if one meets a creditor who is a philosopher, a mathematician, or a politician—he won't see one. (8) If one does meet a creditor, one should know something with which one can flatter his ego, so he will forget the debt. (9) If one is small, one should keep behind someone taller. (10) One should not carry a lantern at night. (11) One is not even safe on Sunday; someone may track one home. (12) If caught, one should have a letter prepared saying that one has just inherited an estate. Debtors and debtors' prisons were always one of Freneau's causes, but only as Slender does he discuss them so lightheartedly.
Slender is also a philosopher, but one who explains himself with everyday examples. In his “Idea of the Human Soul,” he posits that man is “still sustained in the necessary perfection by the wisdom of the deity”; but, when accounting for different personalities, he compares men to water with different alcoholic spirits added. The analogy bemuses him, and he contemplates enthusiastically the addition of American whiskey: “we are carried beyond ourselves into those joyous regions where the first source of generosity, bravery, benevolence and good-nature is displayed to our enraptured view.” It is typical that Slender talks more confidently of the effects of whiskey than of the origins of the soul.
Slender, a good observer, is good at characterizations. An old bachelor is “the most selfish of all human beings,” and a tutor is “an animal that would be truly worthy of pity, if there were any reason to believe that he himself was at all sensible of the misery of his condition.” A series of short essays describing men of varied fortune as seen on the streets of Philadelphia is especially good. “The Market Man” on his way to market is gloomy but pleased on his return; “The Man in Business” pays attention to nothing as he walks, and he “is little better than a perambulating machine, till he comes to the scene of action, his counting house, or his law shop.” In contrast, “The Man out of Business” walks slowly, looks about him, and his talk “most commonly turns upon the scarcity of money or the peculiar and unparalleled poverty and rascality of the present age.” When Slender describes “The Debtor,” he shifts to first person. He, as a debtor, avoids creditors, shivers a lot when he sees them, “and it is only at church, on Sundays, that I can look one or more of them in the face with any tolerable degree of composure.”
In “The City Poet,” we expect Freneau to vent his spleen about the frustrations of publishing poetry; but Slender's attitudes and viewpoints are maintained. The essay gives the meeting between Slender and Menalcas, the poet, who raves about the country life: “‘Here the inhabitants are innocent and happy, and, in my opinion, bear some considerable resemblance, in their manners, to the ancient people of the golden age.’” Freneau the poet has several poems which claim the same thing; but Freneau the essayist is now writing, and his creation, Slender, responds: “‘Strange, thought I, that the man can be so entirely ignorant of the world as to imagine, that the distance of little more than half a mile from the city can produce such a change in himself as well as in the morals of the people: he must, no doubt be poetically mad!’” This is what makes Freneau so enjoyable and interesting—his ability to mock himself. But Freneau is not done with poets yet, for the group criticizes Menalcas for attempting a biblical epic, and Slender cautions him: “‘If poetry, as being the language of exalted passion, has its peculiar charms and captivating beauties for some minds, we ought still to remember that prose is the language of sober reason, and therefore of infinitely more use in the affairs, and for the amusement of the generality of mankind, than the other.’” This is not only the rationalist Freneau speaking but also the democratic Freneau who had in mind service to other men.
Of the first series of Slender's essays, “The Splenetic Indian” is perhaps the most uneven, for Freneau is again poking fun at one of his cherished poetic ideas—the concept of the Noble Savage. But Freneau cannot entirely deny the concept, and so the essay points in many different directions and achieves many different moods. Slender, escorted to an Indian village by Tomo-cheeki, welcomes the experience, for “I thought myself happy that I had been permitted to come into the world in an age when some vestiges of the primitive men and their manner of living were yet to be found.” The Indian, Tomo-cheeki, too, fears the vanishing of his race—he had a dream in which his ancestors appeared: “Brother, it is time thou hadst also arrived in our abodes: thy nation is extirpated, thy lands are gone, thy choicest warriors are slain; the very wigwam in which thou residest is mortgaged for three barrels of hard cider!”
With the exception of the last clause, the speech is in keeping with Romantic mournfulness, which is furthered by Slender's comment as they arrive at the Indian village: “The situation was highly romantic, and of that kind which naturally inclines one to melancholy.” But the tone soon shifts. Tomo-cheeki, recalling that he has signed his lands away, contemplates suicide, asserting that there is nothing new under the sun. But a French trader appears and offers brandy in exchange for beaver skins. This, Tomo-cheeki decides after tasting the brandy, is something new: “I have now learned wisdom, and am convinced that it is variety alone that can make life desirable.” And suddenly, a new, unlooked-for moral has been introduced. The mixture in this essay of the realistic portrayal of the Indian and the Romantic view of him demonstrates the mixture in Freneau of hard-headed rationality and some dissatisfaction with this attitude.
This same mixture also appears in one of the more interesting selections in the second series of Robert Slender's essays, “Light Summer Reading.” The placement of this essay under Slender's name, plus the headnote (“Which may possibly please such as have a true taste for modern Novels”) leads us to suspect that Freneau is attempting to satirize the sentimental novel. But this essay also suffers from Freneau's mixture of satiric and serious treatment. The plot, if such it is, shows a visitor to Bermuda being told of Marcia, whose dominant trait is melancholy. She is pining away for a student who impressed her and then sailed away. The visitor and his guide encounter a poet who sends her verses—some of the local inhabitants think these verses help to make her mad. Later, the two discover Marcia has died and pass by her funeral. While the officiating clergyman goes back for his forgotten book, an Indian addresses the mourners on the subject of death; but he is accused of heresy by the clergyman on his return. This very slender plot line gives Freneau the opportunity to discuss melancholy, poetry, and the afterlife. Some of the discussion is in fun; some, seriously done.
“Light Summer Reading” often seems mockingly autobiographical. Thrown in apparently gratuitously is the information that Marcia has a canary and has received a poem asking her to release it. Now in 1778, Freneau had composed “On Amanda's Singing Bird,” with these lines, phrased by the canary: “Dear Amanda!—leave me free, / And my notes will sweeter be; / On your breast, or in the tree!” This poetic mockery continues as Slender quotes “To Marcia,” which describes the girl listening to the poet:
She sate, regardless of my art,
And counted seconds by the clock:
And thus, she cry'd, shall verse decay;
And thus the world shall pass away!
An aspiring poet would not find Marcia's reaction very complimentary. The last line of another poem included in “Light Summer Reading” is one which Freneau later reworked for the more famous “The Wild Honeysuckle.” In its original form, the line appears as follows:
So drooping hangs the fading rose,
When summer sends the driving shower,
So to the grave Marcella goes,
Her whole duration but an hour.
Marcia finally died, we are told, after reading a similar poem about the misery of man, the brevity and infelicity of life, and the certainty of death. Although Freneau wrote several poems of this type, the spokesman in the essay deplores the reading of such works by the young. “Light Summer Reading,” while faulty, is intriguing because Freneau mocks his own poetic ideas and attitudes.
The other longer selection of Slender's second series, “The Voyage of Timberoo-Tabo-Eede, an Otaheite Indian,” is more consistent but also more derivative. A three-part account, the first gives instructions from the king of the island to his explorers which order them to sail to the East and to take possession of all countries they find, to conduct themselves according to their own customs; to extort necessary food by capturing or killing the native prince, and to take along a priest to keep them faithful. The second part is the journal kept by Timberoo of the voyage. He describes the intense cold, then the first inhabited town, where the language “seemed barbarous in a high degree, as being very unlike our own.” Timberoo spends much time describing the land's religion, but he does not think much of it: “it is high time for some benevolent divinity to descend upon the island a second time, as it is at present overrun with every species of wickedness.” The third section is shortest—a State Paper of Otaheite that concludes that a conquest of such a land would not be worth the effort. Freneau's premise—having a barbarian set out to civilize the world—is good; but, once Timberoo arrives in the civilized land, Freneau abandons most of the attempt to maintain the fiction; and the middle section devolves into cynical observations that are not necessarily consistent with Freneau's barbaric traveler.
The remaining Slender essays in Miscellaneous Works are more lighthearted. “The Power of Novelty” begins philosophically with the statement of Nature's bounteous variety, but it soon becomes more concrete with the specific complaint of a newspaper editor who feels the need to season his paper with various disasters, “but peace has ruined everything.” In “The Sick Author,” Slender visits the writer in his garret. The author, in delirium, tells of his former lives—now he is “doing penance in the character of an American poet.” Typical of Slender (if somewhat reminiscent of Swift) is “The Academy of Death. A Fragment,” in which Slender dreams he visits that illustrious Academy where are lodged all the great sages of antiquity. He, as a lowly weaver, is about to be shooed away by Death, but is granted time to question some of the guests—a device which gives Freneau a chance to speculate about the looks and manners of his favorite authors. Among other information, Slender is told by Homer that Ulysses stayed so long from Ithaca because Penelope was a jilt and a shrew. The dream breaks off just when, we suspect, Freneau's invention ran out. Immediately following, and perhaps meant to be a companion piece, is “Robert Slender's Idea of a Visit to a Modern Great Man.” In it, the emphasis is on the fact that Slender, a weaver and a tradesman, does not need to be, and is not, treated with good manners by his “betters.” While Slender often wanders off into uncharacteristic subjects, Freneau never lets us forget that he is one of the common people. Of the two major spokesmen of Miscellaneous Works, Slender is the more original and more likeable character.
To the Philosopher of the Forest, Freneau gave those essays written in the character of moralist, traveler, and sage; the majority of the rest he ascribed to Robert Slender. But Freneau could attribute to neither character a few of the essays, which include an exchange between Christopher Clodhopper and Priscilla Tripstreet on extravagances, a dissertation on “esquire,” a complaint about “little” men called “The Picture Gallery,” Adam Blackbeard's “A Discourse upon Beards,” and “The Antiquarian,” a discourse against too-great pride in mere book learning. The subject matter of this variety ranges from the minuscule to the profound; the tone, from light pleasantry to heavy sarcasm.
Among the better essays in this group is “The Sailor's Relief,” in which an innkeeper proposes that a ship be built on dry land for the relief of out-of-work sailors. Freneau uses the hoary device of an innkeeper's producing a sailor's manuscript left behind in lieu of payment. But the manuscript is short, and it is recorded, as the innkeeper assures us, in the sailor's own dreadful language. Once more Freneau writes in dialect: “At 12 last night, fell in with a watchman, the new building then bearing due west, and Christ church steeple nearly fourth east. As bad luck would have it he carried no lanthorns, so that he suddenly boarded me in the dark, and at the first shock carried away all the breast hooks of my new blue jacket, the starboard lifts of my half worn castor hat, and nearly two thirds of the after leech of my old great coat.”
When we turn from this frivolity to an essay like “On City Burying Places,” we find an entirely different Freneau. In this work in which he protests against burials in churches and within city limits, he responds to the defense that, in churches, the dead remind us of our mortality: “But to be put in mind of death and sleep at the same time is rather overdoing the matter; for I must confess that most of our pulpit orators display so little of oratorial gesture in their persons, and so little of energetic eloquence in their discourses, that between the dead men that surround us in the adjacent graves, and the living man in the pulpit, I most frequently return drowsy, discontented and melancholy from a place where I vainly hoped to have my spirits raised.” Although making a serious point, Freneau still seeks to leaven the matter with wit.
The prose of Miscellaneous Works often reveals Freneau's faults as a prose stylist. Too many of the essays are unfocused because they lack a singleness of purpose. This fault is, perhaps, one of enthusiasm—Freneau wants to comment on too many things in each essay. But the “Philosopher of the Forest” series is more consistent in tone than the “Pilgrim” series in the Freeman's Journal, and the character of Robert Slender remains fairly consistent. The essays in Miscellaneous Works are essentially revisions of first attempts; the ideas and the originality are here, but Freneau later achieved greater skill in producing a consistent series of essays.
The series of which Tomo-Cheeki is the spokesman was written over almost a decade: Freneau used essays previously published in the Daily Advertiser (August-September, 1790) and added original ones to form the series in the Jersey Chronicle (May-October, 1795). This series he in turn revised, reordered, and extended to form the final series of the Time Piece. These essays return to the well-used device of a traveler's giving his impressions of his first visit to “civilization.” But instead of using his commentator as a chiefly satirical device, Freneau uses Tomo-Cheeki as a Noble Savage. Thus he is a traveler who, while expressing his amazement at the white man's ways, also gives the reader his own positive values that are derived from the way of Nature and Reason. In these essays, therefore, we find again the Pilgrim and the Philosopher of the Forest; but he appears this time in Indian regalia.
Our introduction to this philosophical Indian comes because, again, his landlord has discovered a manuscript which Tomo-Cheeki has left behind. The landlord describes his guest as grave and melancholy: “While his fellow deputies were carousing in taverns and dram shops, he would walk into the fields and woods.”11 The first essay in the manuscript gives initial impressions—the cobblestones hurt Tomo-Cheeki's feet; and all the faces he sees are discontented because the people have “turned aside from the walks of nature.” The second essay gives his description of what the “walks of nature” are. In the savage life, all wants are satisfied by nature. There is no private property, no taxes, no jealousy, no fear: “We are carried along upon the great wheel of things. We trouble ourselves not about the uncertainties, or the seeming irregularities of its motions. When the comet extends its long glittering tail over our thick forests, or when the moon puts on her black mantle of mourning, we apprehend no cause of alarm. It is the work of the great spirit of the universe, who sleepeth not, but day and night guides his wonderful machine in the way that is best.” Tomo-Cheeki is an amazingly Enlightened Indian, for in speaking of the universe as a machine, he echoes Isaac Newton.
He also follows the thinkers of the Enlightenment in speculating about the reasons for man's leaving this golden state of nature. Tomo-Cheeki asserts that originally there was perfect equality, but man has now become “a mean, base, cruel and treacherous being.” The reason for this change is social organization: “It is from false forms of government that the far greater part of human miseries and human vices are derived.” In the tenth essay, Tomo-Cheeki repeats this thesis and elaborates on it. Social organization leads men to be miserable by making them want too much. To Tomo-Cheeki, the solution is easy: “Instead then, of contriving thousands of wants, why is it not the first care of legislators to diminish these wants to a very few in number?—Let the head men begin with shewing the simple people that they may be satisfied with three or four enjoyments, and the people will soon follow in their path.” This statement is about as political as Tomo-Cheeki ever gets, and he soon returns to his more positive position of the goodness of nature.
While philosophically accepting the idea that each race, including that of the Indian, must end to make way for a better man, Tomo-Cheeki still mourns the Indian's fate. In one essay, Freneau protests expeditions against the Indian as being against the law of Nature: “Why then would you anticipate her designs, and by every means in your power hurry us in a moment from this earth, before nature has said, There is an end to the children of the forest?” Tomo-Cheeki declares that armies are sent by the whites “to propagate a principle as disgraceful to your pretended age of philosophy, as it is repugnant to truth and reason, that the rights of an Indian are not the rights of a man!” The concluding essay reinforces this theme. In a letter, Tomo-Cheeki compares the white and Indian races to big ships and weeds which are on or in the same stream. The one should not seek to destroy the other, since both are subject to the river's power, which may destroy them both. As in this essay, Tomo-Cheeki is always reasonable, sane, and Enlightened. He does not, however, have the sense of humor of Robert Slender: we are not comfortable with Tomo-Cheeki, whereas we relax with Slender.
The essay series signed by Hezekiah Salem is the shortest and most frivolous. Beginning in the Time Piece on October 23, 1797, the seven essays of this group are scattered irregularly through the papers. The individual parts of the series should not even be considered to be essays, for they are really sketches that display Salem's eccentric personality. Through Hezekiah Salem, Freneau takes the opportunity to poke fun at the New Englander, thus anticipating the satire of Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper. Salem, the son of a weaver, has been a minister who once considered teaching psalmody as a profession, an ex-whaler, and a pumpkin lover. But Salem is more than a vehicle for caricaturing the New Englander. Like Slender, he is one of the common people; in fact, he constantly stresses that he is a “little” man. Sly, cunning, and somewhat cowardly, he lives by his wits and by his skill at handicrafts.
The first two sketches establish the character of Hezekiah Salem as a typical New Englander. Nothing does this better, Freneau seems convinced, than a description of his love of pumpkins. Salem declares that the best pumpkins, like the best poets, grow in New England—and that this fact is not to be attributed to coincidence, for pumpkins are the source of inspiration for the New Englander: “When he sits down in his easy chair to reflect soberly and sedately, a pumpkin is the first object that strikes his attention.”12 Salem continues his discussion of the pumpkin in the second sketch, since, “in verity it may be said, this is a subject that cannot easily be exhausted.” Irving, later, also described geographical regions by their produce.
Salem, who at one time shared the religious fervor of New England, had been a minister for twenty-five years before he was forced to leave his post after a deacon of his church had discovered him playing ninepins on the bowling green—an entertainment unworthy of his calling. Salem accepted the action that threw him “from the more elevated part of mankind to a situation among the low and simple”; packed a canoe with his possessions, “consisting of a dog, a cat, a chest of old sermons and other writings, &c., seven pumpkins of the best and largest kind, a hoe, a spade, a straw bed, and some apparel of coarse sort and quality”; and made his way to Long Island. There, after a stint at whaling, he settled down to make baskets which he sent to New York, sending with them his articles to the Time Piece. Given this intellectual, traveling background, we fear that Salem will become another Philosopher of the Forest or Pilgrim, but Freneau does not allow Salem to have serious speculation.
Three of the sketches emphasize Salem's smallness, and they show him giving advice to other small men about how to compensate for their stature. In “Rules how to get through a crowd,” perhaps the best of the series, he complains of the effort it takes to see anything in a crowd. After getting knocks and bruises by trying to force his way through, Salem finally hit on the most effective method: “Smoking in a crowd, together with a strong breath of garlic, soon procures to a man, a little vacant circle, wherein he may stand at his ease, and as he advances, he remaineth still the centre of the circle.” In “A Few Words on Duelling,” Salem stresses the contrast between his size and that of his challenger, “Benjamin Bigbones, a man of huge stature and forbidding countenance.” In “A Scrap, from a Keg, of Hezekiah Salem's Sermons,” in which Salem addresses little men directly, he tells them that they are short only by comparison with others, that their very smallness gives them advantages in moving around more easily. If their soul is great, so are they.
The most philosophical Salem becomes is in “From Hezekiah Salem's Last Basket,” in which he gives rules for maintaining a philosophical atmosphere. One must keep the cleaning woman out of the study, must have on hand a generous supply of pumpkin beer, and should live in a “howling” house: “where sitting pensively in a long winter evening, when the wind is to the eastward, and clouds impending, a melancholy sort of music plays through the eaves, and awakens the mind to contemplation.” Salem charitably gives rules for achieving such a house, the chief of which is to neglect one's business, and thus one's house. Despite his eccentricities, which provide the reader with amusement, Salem remains a literary device for light mockery rather than a character who can be clearly visualized.
VI LETTERS ON VARIOUS INTERESTING AND IMPORTANT SUBJECTS
The Letters of Robert Slender, published first in the Aurora, then as a pamphlet in December, 1799, are essentially political propaganda; but they include some of Freneau's best prose. Much of their content is ephemeral: they talk of the contest for Pennsylvania governor between the Federalist James Ross and the Republican Thomas McKean, the Alien and Sedition Acts and trials, the John Adams administration's policy for Santo Domingo, and the case of the impressed sailor-mutineer Jonathan Robbins. Although the specific topics may be ephemeral, the attitudes and chief character are lasting. Naive Robert Slender has to have complex matters explained to him, but he is a devastating logician who reasons from the tenets he holds. His common sense triumphs over the more educated, sophisticated minds—the lowly and honest triumph over the rich and hypocritical. In these Letters, Freneau uses a variety of devices to keep the reader's interest. Whereas earlier series consisted of a diary, in which impressions were recorded, or missives from a relatively stationary recluse, the spokesman in this series moves among a variety of men, argues with them, is frightened by them, and discusses the latest political news with them.
There is a plot of sorts in Letters on Various Interesting and Important Subjects. The first letter, signed “Monarchist,” claims that the governors of the people, by history and by natural right, can do as they please. Slender reveals in the second letter that he is puzzled by “Monarchist” and that he has decided to stop taking Fenno's Federalist paper, “not that I disliked his politics, but because he taught the children to curse, and speak bawdy.”13 So he writes his intention to take Benjamin Bache's firmly Republican Aurora instead. As the letters continue, Slender, educated by his friend and neighbor the Latinist, becomes more firmly convinced that the Aurora's politics are the right ones, and supports them, albeit fearfully, in face of the scorn of the village, and his own fears of ostracism and of pursuit by minions of the Federalist government. The series ends with a strong and firm call by Slender to all honest men of the United States to support the Republicans, to oppose the Federalists, and to cast their votes proudly in the upcoming election. Thus Slender begins as an unthinking Federalist, becomes an unsure Republican, and finally ends as a firm and courageous one. As long as there are two opposing political parties, the humor of these letters will have validity.
In the introductory address, the Latinist serves as a foil for Slender, who has come to him to announce his project for publishing the letters. The Latinist, who tries to discourage him, objects because Slender is not rich, has no titles to string after his name, and no great patron. Slender solves these objections by declaring he will list himself as O. S. M. (One of the Swinish Multitude); then, in worrying about his dedication, he becomes vocal: “I'll dedicate to all their masters—To the Freemen of the United States; and I'll bet you a pair of boots, that my plain stories, shall be by them as well received, with my plain name, and O. S. M. as some of the productions of these flashy fellows, with a string of titles, which are of no other use to American freemen, than to lull them to sleep.” For political purposes, Freneau evidently did not hesitate to appeal to any current anti-intellectualism. But Slender claims his purpose is to arouse the country “to a more ardent love of their country's rights—to more watchfulness, and to stricter enquiry,” and such may also have been Freneau's justification.
The Slender of the dedication is, however, the “educated” Slender; in the beginning letters, he is still timorous about these heretical Republican notions; therefore, the ringing Republican declamation belongs to the Latinist. In Letter Two, Slender asks this neighbor to explain the “Monarchist.” The Latinist admits that it is true about princes' having absolute power; then, becoming more and more oratorical, he declares that even if the rich in the United States are wicked, the American farmers still are virtuous: “but said my friend (leaping to his feet, whilst I shrunk into a corner) the sun will arise with ten-fold glory; the demons of war, discord, and desolation shall be disappointed—true religion shall banish pretence and hypocrisy, and America Shall Still Be Free.”
Slender's timorousness is constantly underlined. Since the evils that the Federalist papers predict for America are totally believed by him, he constantly fears a French invasion, a siege of burning and looting by the United Irishmen, and anarchy around the next corner. When he overhears two men in the tavern talk about an aristocrat and describe one as a great beast the English left behind after the war, Slender trembled on his way home, “looking on this side, and that, for fear it would leap upon me from some of its lurking places.” Even in Letter Seven, well into the series, Slender is still fearful. He wants to flee somewhere for safety, for “our President, said I, said our country was in danger of being turned into a bedlam by French principles—But I doubt that we stand in more danger of turning it into a slaughterhouse by wicked practices.” Slender's wife, however, does not want to leave; and the Latinist counsels moderation. A new fear hits Slender in the tenth letter, for he is horrified that his writings might be considered seditious. In the fifteenth letter, the Latinist warns against the reestablishment of monarchy in the United States; and Slender is once more overwhelmed: “God help us, said I, I feel very much afraid indeed; I think I see the red coats once more march along the Delaware—I think I hear the groans of freeborn Americans from the hulk of the Jersey prison ship—my blood runs cold.”
In addition to fears created by his gullibility in believing all the news stories, Slender has other problems to contend with. He seems surrounded by local Federalists who disapprove of his writing for the Aurora. His cousin Simon Simple fears Slender will be contaminated by the Aurora's Bache: “Why he is represented all thro' this neighborhood as a most strange sort of a man, and moreover suspected somehow of a kind of an inclination for democracy, and writing and printing about liberty; and how that all men ought to be equal, and that the present system, which (as Mr. Fenno says) no body understands, is better than the good old kingly government, which you know our wise fathers always loved.”
Slender's fledgling faith in the Republican principles is also shaken by the diatribes of his neighbor, and the Latinist can hardly calm him after Slender hears this statement which has been initiated by a discussion of jury trial for traitors:
this country would have been yet happy under the king of Great Britain; but we were such plagued fools as to give the designing fellows liberty to prate; they stirred up the common people, and chiefly the hot-headed rebellious Irish, by which means the detestable sin of resisting the Lord's anointed was committed, and under this sin our whole country lies, and for this, and this only, have we been punished with first, the Hessian Fly, second the Yellow Fever, and lastly by rebellion; and yet, with all this before our eyes, some of you wish to have these men freed, and talk about juries forsooth! but we'll jury them, and judge them too.
Only when writing as Robert Slender does Freneau allow himself to write such colloquial speeches, but such writing evinces his fine ear for political demagoguery.
In discussing the case of Jonathan Robbins, an impressed sailor (who may or may not have been an American) who had led a mutiny on a British ship, Freneau allows the Latinist to speak sarcastically: “but you must remember, this was a frigate belonging to his Britannic Majesty; the chief supporter of order, good government, humanity and religion in the world.” But Slender is not allowed such subtlety in his speeches—his reactions are consistent. When the Latinist mentions how bad a precedent the case is, Slender says, “I think, I see slavery rattling her chains and sharpening all her instruments of torture—What shall we do?—how shall we escape? … Is there no help?” The Latinist advises against fleeing and recommends the ballot box as the best help. Although Freneau does not portray Slender as having an education beyond his character and station, he does permit him to confound the local minister in debate, but only with the result that a neighbor tells Mrs. Slender, “Mr. Slender is an infidel—a speaker against the clergy—a puller down of religion—and his reverence says so!”
Letter Twenty-two, one of the best of Freneau's prose pieces, shows Slender as talking to himself on the way to the tavern:
Having heard that there was a tavern at about the distance of a mile or so from my favourite country spot, where now and then a few neighbours 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 neighbour'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 splash'd stocking, but money might with more profit be laid out in repairing the roads, than in marine establishments, supporting a standing army, useless embassies, exhorbitant salaries, given to many flashy fellows that are no honour to us, or to themselves, and chartering whole ships to carry a single man to another nation.
In this one paragraph, Freneau has characterized Slender as a man who is “one of us.” While the trip to the tavern is humorous, we sympathize with Slender for his splashed stockings. The incident of the mudhole leads naturally to the diatribe about the government, and we again sympathize since this speech is a natural one that contains a natural reaction.
In the last letter, Freneau abandons his devices for involving Slender in dilemmas or dialogues; instead, he presents him as a political orator who is pleading with the public to cast their votes in the right way. The letter is a tour de force, for Slender tries to appeal to all, even while apparently shunning the votes of some:
Ye aristocrats, and great men, whether merchants, doctors, proctors, or lawyers, who sigh for greatness, and long for dominion, whose hearts yearn for the glory of a Crown, the splendor of a court, or the sweet marrow bones that are to be pick'd in his Majesty's kitchen—whose eyes ache painfully, once again to see the stars, crosses, crescents, coronets, with all the hieroglyphicals, enigmaticals, emblematicals, and all the other cals, including rascals, which adorn the court of kings—give a strong, true, and decided vote for James Ross, who supports, approves, hopes for, longs for, and sighs for all these.
Not exhausted by this one sentence, Slender later turns to those he favors, the multitude; and he directs their votes to McKean and Liberty.
The Letters are truly literary political propaganda. That Freneau, educated, refined, poetic, could enjoy creating Robert Slender is but another indication of his great versatility. Even though he promised that, if this volume sold successfully, a second volume would be published, it never appeared. The volume, as it stands, is a chronicle of Slender's political reactions to the governor's election of 1800—it comes to its natural conclusion with Letter Twenty-four. The education of Robert Slender had been completed.
Although Slender signatures continue to appear in the Aurora after the McKean-Ross election (most notably when Slender comments on the tie vote between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr: “why, then the devil and A. H.—It—n are at the bottom of this balloting”), Freneau seems to have abandoned him in his later essay series. In 1804, when Tench Coxe led the Quids, a third party, against the Jeffersonian Republicans and the Federalists in Pennsylvania, Freneau adopted the Bunkers as spokesmen. The Bunkers were farmers who were less philosophical and who were more terrified of democracy, democrats, and Jeffersonians than Slender. But these letters do not have the charm of the Slender letters, possibly because they are negative, being anti-Coxe rather than pro-Republican. This time, finally, Freneau was an advocate of the “ins” after being so long on the offensive. Following the Bunker series, Freneau did little more with published prose. In 1816, he contributed a short observation about spots on the sun to the New York Weekly Museum, and in 1822 he adopted the tone of the old man, wise in the ways of the world, for “Recollections of Past Times and Events.” While these contributions show his learning, his reading, and his skill as a stylist, they do not approach his greatest prose achievement—the character of Robert Slender, O. S. M.
Notes
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George Gibbs, Memoirs of the Administration of Washington and John Adams Edited from the Papers of Oliver Wolcott (New York, 1846), I, 107.
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Harold C. Syrett, ed., The Papers of Alexander Hamilton (New York, 1969), XII, 196.
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Gibbs, p. 79.
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Marsh, [Philip M.] ed., The Prose of Philip Freneau, [New Brunswick: The Scarecrow Press, 1955] p. 263. All references to contributions to the Daily Advertiser are taken from this volume.
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“To the Public,” National Gazette, October 31, 1791, p. 1. Further quotations of contributions to this paper are taken directly from the National Gazette.
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Matthew L. Davis, Memoirs of Aaron Burr (New York, 1852), I, 306.
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“To the Public,” Jersey Chronicle, May 2, 1795, p. l. All further quotations of contributions to this paper are taken directly from the Jersey Chronicle.
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“To the Public,” The Time Piece, and Literary Companion, March 13, 1797, p. 1. Quotations from this paper come directly from The Time Piece.
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Marsh, [Philip M.,] ed. The Prose of Philip Freneau, [New Brunswick: Scarecrow Press, 1955,] p. 42. Quotations from “The Pilgrim” are taken from this source.
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The Miscellaneous Works of Mr. Philip Freneau (Philadelphia, 1788), p. 285. Quotations from Miscellaneous Works are taken from this edition.
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“Tomo Cheeki, the Creek Indian in Philadelphia,” The Time Piece, and Literary Companion, March 15, 1797, p. 8. Quotations of the “Tomo Cheeki” essays are from this source.
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“On the Culture of Pumpkins. By Hezekiah Salem, late of New England,” The Time Piece, and Literary Companion, October 23, 1797, p. 1. All quotations from “Hezekiah Salem” are from this source.
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Letters on Various Interesting and Important Subjects, intro. Harry Hayden Clark (New York, 1943), p. 15. Further quotations from the Letters follow this edition.
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That Poet Freneau: A Study of the Imagistic Success of The Pictures of Columbus
Philip Freneau (1752-1832)
