Philip Freneau: Thomas Jefferson’s mouthpiece

The Poet of the American Revolution

Author

By Philip Freneau

Publish Date

July 1, 2021

For July the Fourth, 1799

Once more, our annual debt to pay,
We meet on this auspicious day
That will, through every coming age,
Columbia’s patriot sons engage.

From this fair day we date the birth,
Of freedom’s reign, restored to earth,
And millions learn, too long depraved,
How to be govern’d, not enslaved.

Thou source of every true delight
Fair peace, extend thy sway,
While to thy temple we invite
All nations on this day.

O dire effects of tyrant power!
How have ye darken’d every hour,
And made those hours embitter’d flow
That nature meant for joys below.

With sceptred pride, and brow of awe
Oppression gave the world her law,
And man, who should such law disdain,
Resign’d to her malignant reign.

Here on our quiet native coast
No more we dread the warring host
That once alarm’d, when Britain rose,
And made Columbia’s sons her foes.

Parent of every cruel art
That stains the soul, that steels the heart,
Fierce war, with all thy bleeding band,
Molest no more this rising land.

May thy loud din be changed for peace,
All human woe and warfare cease,
And nations sheath the sword again
To find a long, pacific reign.

Soon may all tyrants disappear
And man to man be less severe;
The ties of love more firmly bind,
Not fetters, that enchain mankind.

But virtue must her strength maintain,
Or short, too short, is freedom’s reign,
And, if her precepts we despise,
Tyrants and kings again will rise.

No more an angry, plundering race,
May man in every clime embrace,
And we on this remoter shore,
Exult in bloody wars no more.

On this returning annual day
May we to heaven our homage pay,
Happy, that here the time’s began
That made mankind the friend of man!—

Philip Freneau (1752-1832) was an American poet and political writer raised in Monmouth County, NJ. Because of his long poem “The British Prison Ship,” which related his experiences as a POW, Freneau has been called “The Poet of the American Revolution.” After the war, Freneau became Thomas Jefferson’s mouthpiece in the bitter political feuds against Alexander Hamilton. Ironically, since these feuds spilled over into attacks on Hamilton’s peers and friends, including George Washington, the Poet of the American Revolution also earned the undying animosity of the father of our country. While Freneau’s poetic output was uneven, his work provides a literary witness to America’s founding.