The architects of the American literary canon have always struggled between aesthetics and the demands of historicity

With all the followers of her school,

Uproar and Rage and wild Misrule…

Despite its patriotic leanings, the poem remains a balanced satire showing both the promises and dangers of democracy. Therefore, Trumbull is the first to explore one of the major, if obvious, themes of American discourse in a poem.

At the end of the war in 1783, Timothy Dwight accepted the pastorate in Greenfield, now part of Fairfield, and settled there. The idyllic village overlooking Long Island Sound inspired another work, Greenfield Hill, an amiable celebration of the beauty of the pastoral landscape and of solid American virtues, where:

… the rich enjoyments round me spring,

Where every farmer reigns a little king;

Where all to comfort, none to danger, rise;

Where pride finds few, but nature all supplies;

Where peace and sweet civility are seen,

And meek good-neighbourhood endears the green.

This poem’s anthemic praise of native land, people, and values prefigures Walt Whitman, and its rejection of European values and norms could have been penned by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Dwight found something special about America, in the rural simplicity of farmers and villagers, about its landscape and its people.This theme of the importance of community is continued in Dwight’s other works, as well, in essays like “The True Means of Establishing Public Happiness” or his memoir Travels in New England and New York. His friend David Humphreys made a similar attempt to define the national character, but focused on the individual rather than the community. He was also the least “poetic” of the Wits, and it is instructive to look at his other forms.

While talking with the old General Israel Putnam in the 1780s, Humphreys decided to write his biography, contributing to the classic stories like Putnam crawling into the wolf den alone and riding down the steps in Greenwich to escape the redcoats. These stories may have had their origin in truth, but written down by Humphreys they had more in common with a young George Washington chopping down a cherry tree. Unsurprisingly, Putnam’s fanciful story was a huge success, and initiated a succession of semi-mythological hagiographies of national figures. Modern biographers like myself can pooh-pooh these works today, but they were in fact instrumental in creating the mythology that brought Americans together.We often forget that the people of that time were divided more than we are today, that there was absolutely no idea of what an “American” was. So, by writing about a figure like General Putnam, Humphreys was attempting to define a national character, to point and say, this is what an American is. In the early 19th century when he was president of Yale, he did it again in a drama called The Yankey in England. It may not have been the best play, but was one of the first to codify the “Yankee” character for many people, a national type that would dominate American literature until the cowboy replaced it sixty years later. Furthermore, Israel Putnam, the Yankee, and the cowboy all have something in common, their love of individual freedom, and this continues to be a defining characteristic of Americans. We can see how the Wits’ attempt to build a national, mythological literature might be a fruitful way to incorporate them into the modern canon. We can use this attempt to study the Wits, or vice versa, not only to maintain historical accuracy but to shine a light on the enduring literary concerns of the country. In doing this, we must resist exaggerating the quality or importance of their writing. As scholars or readers we might still agree that they failed to truly define or criticize their age properly, failed to reach the heights of contemporary British poets, or failed to trigger the Renaissance of letters they desired. Once we start looking at the Wits through these eyes, nearly everything they wrote seems to come into sharp focus. When Barlow sat at a smoky Savoyard inn and ate a dish of hasty pudding, under the name polenta, he was inspired to write about the virtues of this classic New England dish. But we might say that he is not just writing about a beloved recipe. When he writes “all my bones were made of Indian corn” he defines national character by food.But leaving them out of the canon for these reasons is misguided. The same might be said for numerous other important American writers to whom 21st century snobs like me have turned an intolerant eye, from James Fenimore Cooper to Edna St. Vincent Millay. For the sake of historical veracity, we must weave back in the works of Amy Lowell, Anna Hempstead Branch, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and so on. Literary movements that gathered around The Knickerbocker or The Masses should be discussed alongside the transcendentalists of The Dial and the modernists of The Criterion.As America’s first literary movement, Joel Barlow, John Trumbull, Timothy Dwight, David Humphreys, and their friends demonstrated clearly that the new nation would find its own voice and create its own literature. They focused introspectively on the concerns of their age: human progress, individual freedom, community good, and the promises and dangers of democracy. They were pioneers in defining a national character, outlining a new way of life, and creating a national mythology. Like many pioneers they encountered difficulties, some of their own making, but others would follow the trembling path they carved through the dense forests of early America, clearing the brush so that today we can walk a broad and level highway.