| OCR Text |
Show 74 Utah Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters aroused; in New Enqland fightiI_1g had begun. Washington 'Yas training troops as speedily as possible, but more troops were _ . needed and more money. At this time, however, there was not among the colonists a united effort toward independence. The trouble had grown out of colonial discontent and resistance to the encroachments of Parliament on the "liberties" of the colonials as Englishmen, and Englishmen most of them wished to remain: Many mem'r ers of the Congress in Philadelphia had hoped, even to the very moment of war, that some conciliation migh.t be ef Iected. And such, too', was apparently Freneau's attitude." But by the late spring of 1775 Freneau had put aside his other ambitions and thrown himself into the! revolutionary cause: Though he deserted his revolution and left America in 1776, there can be no doubt of his zeal during the last months of 1775 -zeal, that is, tempered with a sensitive distaste for mundane conflicts. Tyler points out, "The first unmistakable flashes of his satiric power which can now be recognized on themes con nected with the Revolution, belong to the pathetic and heroic year 1775, when, at last, after more than a decade of intellectual controversy, the crash of the- physical 'controversy began' to be heard As many as four or five poems, all elastic with vigor, and all steeped in satiric passion and acerbity, leaped from his ,"10 _pen that year ... .. Whether these few poems were really elastic with vigor and all steeped in satiric passion may be open to question; but one thing is certain: his help was needed. There were too many of the "summer soldier and the sunshine patriot." Mr. J, Franklin Jameson, in The American Revolution Considered as it 'Bocial Movement. shows clearly the status of national loyalty "in, those trying times following 1 775: ' ' ,,',' , .. , .. , For instance, no episode of ,the history of the; Revolution affords a finer example of patriotic sacrifice than the winter's encampment .at Valley Forge; but why were the sufferings at Valley Forge encountered? Simply because the country at .Iarqe, with whatever excuses; did not support the war, and the army which was waging it, with' any approach to the ardor which was' 'shown iii 1861, on both sides, or in 1918. Clothes and shoes and blankets and tents were lacking, ,9Leary ( ibid, pp. 5556), contradictinq Pattee, rejects "Libera.Nos Domine" as evidence that Freneau urged separation from England more than twelve months before the Declaration of .Independence, The is not to be found it originally published, but only as it was wished to establish his identity with the writers for as was formation see Philip Marsh's "Was Historical Proceedings, July, 1938. "Tyler, op. cit., p. 415. Freneau poem later revised when Freneau independence. For further in a Fighter?" in New Jersey |
