American Songbook Note: PHILLIP FRENEAU ADDRESSES NAKED LIBERTY ON HIS KNEE

Freneau is known as “the poet of the Revolution” with such works as “The Rising Glory of America” and was an early exponent of Romanticism. Here, the opinionated Matawan, NJ resident is playing pat-a-cakes with pretty Liberty, as a good anti-Federalist ought to do in his spare time. In his poem “Death’s Epitaph,” Freneau put these words into Death’s mouth: “slaves and Caesars were the same to me!” It is a sentiment I think the Princeton-educated Freneau could probably have been heard to utter as he downed his rum at the old Poet’s Inn–now a Mediterranean Cuisine eatery.