“a Poem, on the Rising Glory of America” (1771)

Hugh Henry Breckenridge

“A Poem, on the Rising Glory of America” (1771)

Context: Breckenridge and Freneau were both university students at the College of NJ (Princeton) pre-Revolutionary War. They were writing in a contest for the best poem about “America”, even though it wasn’t officially a nation state yet. Breckenridge wrote his in 1771 and Freneau may have collaborated, but then went on to publish his own poem in 1786 with many of the same lines.

1. How do the poems envision Columbus?

- Second stanza (ACATO)- “The period fam’d when first Columbus touch’d / The shore so long unknown, thro’ various toils, / Famine and death, the hero made his way, / Thro’ oceans bestowing with eternal storms.’

- Made to sound mythological, classically heroic, sacrificing to get to America

2. What does the word “America” in the title mean- North? South? Central? Whole continent?

- “Rising” instead of risen transitioning process, dynamic

- First Stanza (LEANDER)- “The rising glory of the Western world” “America” begins as a term identifying the entire New World as differentiated from the Old World.

-By the second stanza, however, he starts to differentiate from the Amazon, Mexico and Peru vs. the North… ongoing process of America being seen as a narrower, more Anglo-American entity

3. How do they envision Spanish American and Spain?

- Second Stanza- “The tale of Cortez, furious chief, ordain’d / With Indian blood to dye the sands and choke ‘ Fam’d Amazonia’s streams with the dead!” … “by thirst of gold ‘ Depriv’d of life: which not Peru’s rich ore / Nor Mexico’s vast mines coul’d then redeem.”

- Cortez pitted against Columbus as conquering vs. discovering the antithesis of a hero: furious, less noble, greedy

- Spanish as lazy, unwilling to labor, getting rich at the expense of others

4. What do they portray as the qualities of North America?

- Agricultural, Garden of Eden/ Utopia reference (Freneau)

- Science, freedom and commerce

- *** The...