Philip Morin Freneau
reason as he “sketched the sacred right of man,” meaning that Paine utilized the very authority central to a monarch’s claim for authority—God—and “sketched” out its application to democratic rule. Freneau imagines the shared reactions of his fellow readers, who “glow . . . with kindling rage” at every instance of “the rights of men aspersed, / freedom restrained, and nature’s law reversed” (27–28). Monarchy and any government not respectful of innate rights appear as unnatural, or against the order of things. Freneau offers up Columbia, symbol of the American republic, as a shining example, “famed through every clime,” of how democracy can thrive (49). He opens four lines with the phrase “without a king” to mark the fortunate present of America as well as the hopeful future for Britain’s current colonies (36, 37, 41, 50). This phrase concludes the poem with a never-ending future “to see the end of time” (50).
For Discussion or Writing 1. Read THOMAS PAINE’s Rights of Man. How does Freneau’s celebration of the text reflect the content of Paine’s book? How does it differ? What might account for these differences? 2. How does the promise of 1776, depicted in Freneau’s “A Political Litany,” compare with the reality of an American republic, as captured in this poem?
“To Sir Toby” (1792) Freneau wrote about the conditions of island slaves beginning in 1790 with a piece that looked specifically at the condition of West Indian creoles. He based this poem, often entitled “The Island Field Negro,” on his own eyewitness accounts of life in Jamaica in the early 1800s while he was employed aboard the Dromelly (Marsh 97). He opens the poem with a seemingly unlikely quotation from William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice that follows a conversation between two young lovers, Jessica and Lorenzo. The passage fits the general
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structure of Freneau’s poem, however, as he continually refers to the jarring dissonance between what is (slavocracy) and what should be (the abolition of slavery). In the passage from Shakespeare, the lovers are transported by the music they hear and wonder at the figure incapable of being moved or having his fi ner emotions heightened. Their conclusion is that such a character’s “affections [are] as dark as Erebus.” Thus, by casting the white man who is insensitive to music and any sympathetic connections it should foster as “dark” and “black,” Freneau reverses the common associations of race and morality to rage against slave owners. He continues this reversal of white and black by cataloging the atrocities slave owners mete out against fellow human beings. Rather than refer to the slave’s sufferings, he cleverly turns his attention to those infl icting the violence with lines like “one to the windmill nails him by the ears” (26). Lest the readers miss his condemnation, he writes of slaves “driven by a devil, whom men call overseer” (34). Their predatory nature sets them as one of several “nature’s plagues”: “Snakes, scorpions, despots, lizards, centipees” (9–10). The juxtaposition of reptiles with “despots” demonstrates that their participation in slavery removes them from humanity. Freneau also employs the inversion of binaries by juxtaposing the beauty of Jamaica’s landscape with its hellish conditions. He draws upon classical allusions to describe the island: “Here Stygian paintings light and dark renew, / Pictures of hell, that Virgil’s pencil once drew” (47–48). Virgil’s images of the underworld, found in book 6 of his Aeneid, parallel, in Freneau’s mind, the scenes of slavery witnessed in Jamaica. This comparison continues as slave ships, referred to as “Guinea ships” in the poem, are sailed by “surly Charons,” referring to the boatman who shuttles the dead over the river Styx and into the underworld (49–50).
For Discussion or Writing 1. Freneau employs Shakespeare and Virgil as literary predecessors to draw cultural authority for his position against slavery. Read act 5, scene 1