Freneau, Philip Morin

Freneau, Philip Morin (1752–1832) poet, journalist; born in New York City. A major early American poet, he won renown as "poet of the American Revolution" for his burning anti-British satires at the Revolution's outbreak. After a hiatus in the West Indies, where he wrote lyric verse with Romantic elements, he was captured by the British at sea and imprisoned under harsh conditions described in The British Prison-Ship (1781). He was a sea captain later in the 1780s and wrote some of his best verse, including The Hurricane and The Wild Honey Suckle. In a new phase of his life, Freneau became editor of the New York Daily Advertiser in 1789; then from 1791 to 1793, backed by Thomas Jefferson, he capably edited the fiercely democratic National Gazette, in rivalry with John Fenno's Federalist paper. In later years, his reputation besmirched by enemies, he earned a meager living as a sea captain, farmer, and tinker.