{"id":804,"date":"2026-09-29T21:21:16","date_gmt":"2026-09-29T21:21:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/?p=804"},"modified":"2026-09-30T17:35:56","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T17:35:56","slug":"804","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/?p=804","title":{"rendered":"from M\u2019Fingal (1782)"},"content":{"rendered":"

from M\u2019Fingal<\/em> (1782), <\/span>Canto First, or The Town Meeting<\/span><\/h3>\n

by John Trumbull<\/span><\/p>\n

John Trumbull (1750-1831), a child prodigy born to the Watertown, Connecticut branch of the Trumbull family, entered Yale in 1763 at the age of 13.\u00a0 John\u2019s father, the Reverend John Trumbull (1715-1787),<\/span> was the pastor of the Watertown Congregational Church. His mother, Sarah Whitman, was the daughter of a Farmington minister. Historical evidence indicates that the family enslaved at least six people. Reverend John Trumbull\u2019s cousin, Jonathan Trumbull (1710-1785), would become Connecticut\u2019s governor in 1769, serving through the Revolutionary War until 1784. One of Jonathan\u2019s sons, also named John Trumbull (1756-1843), was the famous American artist, \u201cthe painter of the American Revolution.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In 1800, <\/span>Trumbull became a judge and stopped writing political poetry, citing that he refused \u201cany interference in the politics of the state\u2026being of the opinion that the character of a partisan and political writer was inconsistent with the station of the judge.\u201d\u00a0 He served as a judge of the Connecticut Superior Court and Supreme Court of Errors for the next twenty years.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

John Trumbull began this mock epic poem in 1776 as an expression of his observations of the tumultuous period when the Colonies decided to unite and wage war against Great Britain. The poem is told from a Patriot or \u201cWhig\u201d (as Trumbull himself would have termed it) point of view. It lays blame for the conflict on the actions of King George III, Parliament, and Great Britain as a whole and pokes fun at Americans who do not agree with the Patriot cause, particularly a fictitious Loyalist by the name of \u201cM\u2019Fingal.\u201d M\u2019Fingal represents the typical Loyalist, who in the opinion of Trumbull, is too blinded by his self-interest and stupidity to understand the loftier goals of American independence.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Canto First, or The Town Meeting<\/span><\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from M\u2019Fingal (1782), Canto First, or The Town Meeting by John Trumbull John Trumbull (1750-1831), a child prodigy born to the Watertown, Connecticut branch of the Trumbull family, entered Yale in 1763 at the age of 13.\u00a0 John\u2019s father, the Reverend John Trumbull (1715-1787), was the pastor of the Watertown Congregational Church. His mother, Sarah … Continue reading from M\u2019Fingal (1782)<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[114],"tags":[56,32,31,57,58],"class_list":["post-804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-hartford-wits","tag-democracy","tag-poem","tag-poetry","tag-satire","tag-social-commentary"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=804"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":819,"href":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804\/revisions\/819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}