John Trumbull (April 24, 1750 – May 11, 1831) was an American poet.
Trumbull was born in what is now Watertown, Connecticut, where his father was a Congregational preacher. At the age of seven he passed his entrance examinations at Yale University, but did not enter until 1763; he graduated in 1767, studied law there, and in 1771–1773 was a tutor (taking part in teaching and supervising the undergraduates).[1]
While studying at Yale, he contributed to ten essays in 1769 and 1770, titled "The Meddler", imitating The Spectator, to the Boston Chronicle, and in 1770 similar essays, signed " The Correspondent" to The Connecticut Journal and New Haven Post Boy. [1]
While a tutor he wrote his first satire in verse, The Progress of Dulness (1772–1773), an attack in three poems on educational methods of his time. His great poem, which ranks him with Philip Freneau and Francis Hopkinson as an American political satirist during the American Revolutionary War, was M'Fingal, the first canto of which, "The Town-Meeting", appeared in 1776 (dated 1775).[1][2]
In Canto IV, "The Vision," the last canto of M'Fingal, the Scottish background of the protagonist and accounts of the North Carolina Highlanders are featured, along with discrimination by the Whigs between Tories and the British soldiery. The mock epic presentation of the pageant of the war is evident in this canto, and the economic impact of the war is given its fullest treatment in the burlesque of the Ghost of Continental Money which ends the vision.[3]
After the Revolutionary War, Trumbull was a staunch Federalist, and with the "Hartford Wits" David Humphreys, Joel Barlow and Lemuel Hopkins, wrote "The Anarchiad", a poem directed against the enemies of a firm central government.[1] He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1791.[4]
