The life of Phillip Morin Freneau. The hardships that he had to go through throughout his life. The type of essays and poetry he wrote. Where he began the interest of public writing and how he got that interest.
             Freneau was born in 1752, as a child Freneau had no idea that he was going to be a poet and a satirist. He went to an ordinary school and by the time he was about to go to college he had decided that he wanted to go in to the ministry. Going to college for Freneau was a huge accomplishment for him and his family. He had fulfilled the dream of his wine merchant father, Pierre Fresneau.(Encarta 97 1)
             Freneau was extremely well versed in the classics in his old school Monmouth County under the tutelage of William Tennent. Freneau entered Princeton as a sophomore in 1768; he was the class of 1771. Unfortunately, this joyous occasion was short lived due to his father's financial losses and death. In spite of those hardships Freneau's Scottish mother had very high hopes and believed that her oldest of the five children would graduate college and join the clergy. Freneau realized that he a lot resting on him his mother and his
             Younger brothers and sisters so he gave 110% on his studies.
             John Witherspoon, a moderate Calvinist of the Scottish commonsense school of philosophy, was the president of Princeton at the time. When Freneau and Witherspoon first met Freneau fell in love with his beliefs. They both had the understandings. Witherspoon believed that educated men should lead society to improvement through appeals to "the simple perceptions of common sense the ability to 'sense' the truth that all people, to some degree, share and that is the foundation of all reasoning"(Encyclopedia of American Literature) . At Princeton Freneau learned leadership and trained in the methods of commonsense reasoning through daily exercises in declamation. At these sessions Freneau expounded on many topics, ...