Joel Barlow
Encyclopedia
Joel Barlow was an American poet
, diplomat
and politician
. In his own time, Barlow was well-known for the epic Vision of Columbus. Modern readers may be more familiar with "The Hasty Pudding" (1793). He also drafted the Treaty of Tripoli, which includes the phrase: "the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion".
, Fairfield County
, Connecticut
. He briefly attended Dartmouth College
before graduating from Yale University
in 1778, where he was also a post-graduate student for two years. In 1778, he published an anti-slavery poem entitled "The Prospect of Peace." From September 1780 until the close of the revolutionary war was chaplain in a Massachusetts brigade. He then, in 1783, moved to Hartford, Connecticut
, established there in July 1784 a weekly paper, the American Mercury, with which he was connected for a year, and in 1786 was admitted to the bar.
At Hartford he was a member of a group of young writers including Lemuel Hopkins, David Humphreys
, and John Trumbull
, known in American literary history as the "Hartford Wits
". He contributed to the Anarchiad, a series of satirico-political papers, and in 1787 published a long and ambitious poem, The Vision of Columbus, which gave him a considerable literary reputation and was once much read. Barlow died of pneumonia in the village of Zarnowiec, between Warsaw and Krakow, on December 24, 1812.
.
as the agent of the Scioto Land Company, his object being to sell lands and enlist immigrants. He seems to have been ignorant of the fraudulent character of the company, which failed disastrously in 1790. He had previously, however, induced the company of Frenchmen, who ultimately founded Gallipolis, Ohio
, to emigrate to America. In Paris
he became a liberal in religion and an advanced republican in politics. He helped Thomas Paine
publish the first part of The Age of Reason
while Paine was imprisoned during The Reign of Terror. He remained abroad for several years, spending much of his time in London; was a member of the London Society for Constitutional Information; published various radical essays, including a volume entitled Advice to the Privileged Orders (1792), which was proscribed by the British government; and was made a citizen of France in 1792.
He was American consul at Algiers
in 1795-1797, securing the release of American prisoners held for ransom, and negotiating a treaty with Tripoli
(1796). He returned to America in 1805, and lived at his home, Kalorama
in what is now the city of Washington, D.C.
, until 1811, when he became American minister plenipotentiary to France, charged with negotiating a commercial treaty with Napoleon, and with securing the restitution of confiscated American property or indemnity therefor. He was summoned for an interview with Napoleon at Wilna, but failed to see the emperor there; became involved in the retreat of the French army; and, overcome by exposure, died at the Polish village of Żarnowiec
.
The record in the archives of the church in Żarnowiec reads
Joel Barlow was painted by Robert Fulton
and John Vanderlyn
(1798).
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
, diplomat
Diplomat
A diplomat is a person appointed by a state to conduct diplomacy with another state or international organization. The main functions of diplomats revolve around the representation and protection of the interests and nationals of the sending state, as well as the promotion of information and...
and politician
Politician
A politician, political leader, or political figure is an individual who is involved in influencing public policy and decision making...
. In his own time, Barlow was well-known for the epic Vision of Columbus. Modern readers may be more familiar with "The Hasty Pudding" (1793). He also drafted the Treaty of Tripoli, which includes the phrase: "the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion".
Biography
Barlow was born in ReddingRedding, Connecticut
Mark Twain, a resident of the town in his old age, contributed the first books for a public library which was eventually named after him.-Government:...
, Fairfield County
Fairfield County, Connecticut
Fairfield County is a county located in the southwestern corner of the U.S. state of Connecticut. The county population is 916,829 according to the 2010 Census. There are currently 1,465 people per square mile in the county. It is the most populous county in the State of Connecticut and contains...
, Connecticut
Connecticut
Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...
. He briefly attended Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College is a private, Ivy League university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. The institution comprises a liberal arts college, Dartmouth Medical School, Thayer School of Engineering, and the Tuck School of Business, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences...
before graduating from Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
in 1778, where he was also a post-graduate student for two years. In 1778, he published an anti-slavery poem entitled "The Prospect of Peace." From September 1780 until the close of the revolutionary war was chaplain in a Massachusetts brigade. He then, in 1783, moved to Hartford, Connecticut
Hartford, Connecticut
Hartford is the capital of the U.S. state of Connecticut. The seat of Hartford County until Connecticut disbanded county government in 1960, it is the second most populous city on New England's largest river, the Connecticut River. As of the 2010 Census, Hartford's population was 124,775, making...
, established there in July 1784 a weekly paper, the American Mercury, with which he was connected for a year, and in 1786 was admitted to the bar.
At Hartford he was a member of a group of young writers including Lemuel Hopkins, David Humphreys
David Humphreys (soldier)
David Humphreys was a American Revolutionary War colonel and aide de camp to George Washington, American minister to Portugal and then to Spain, entrepreneur who brought Merino sheep to America and member of the Connecticut state legislature...
, and John Trumbull
John Trumbull
John Trumbull was an American artist during the period of the American Revolutionary War and was notable for his historical paintings...
, known in American literary history as the "Hartford Wits
Hartford Wits
The Hartford Wits were a group of American writers centered around Yale University and flourished in the 1780s and 1790s. Mostly graduates of Yale, they were conservative federalists who attacked their political opponents with satirical verse...
". He contributed to the Anarchiad, a series of satirico-political papers, and in 1787 published a long and ambitious poem, The Vision of Columbus, which gave him a considerable literary reputation and was once much read. Barlow died of pneumonia in the village of Zarnowiec, between Warsaw and Krakow, on December 24, 1812.
Poetry
In 1807 he had published in a sumptuous volume the Columbiad, an enlarged edition of his Vision of Columbus, more pompous even than the original; but, though it added to his reputation in some quarters, on the whole it was not well received, and it has subsequently been much ridiculed. The poem for which he is now best known is his mock heroic Hasty Pudding (1793). Besides the writings mentioned above, he published Conspiracy of Kings, a Poem addressed to the Inhabitants of Europe from another Quarter of the Globe (1792); View of the Public Debt, Receipts and Expenditure of the United States (1800); the Political Writings of Joel Barlow were published (2nd ed., 1796) but much of his speculation never passed beyond his voluminous notebooks, many of which are conserved in Harvard's Houghton LibraryHoughton Library
Houghton Library is the primary repository for rare books and manuscripts at Harvard University. It is part of the Harvard College Library within the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Houghton is located on the south side of Harvard Yard, next to Widener Library.- History :Harvard's first...
.
Diplomacy
In 1788 he went to FranceFrance
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
as the agent of the Scioto Land Company, his object being to sell lands and enlist immigrants. He seems to have been ignorant of the fraudulent character of the company, which failed disastrously in 1790. He had previously, however, induced the company of Frenchmen, who ultimately founded Gallipolis, Ohio
Gallipolis, Ohio
As of the census of 2000, there were 4,180 people, 1,847 households, and 1,004 families residing in the village. The population density was 1,156.2 people per square mile . There were 2,056 housing units at an average density of 568.7 per square mile...
, to emigrate to America. In Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
he became a liberal in religion and an advanced republican in politics. He helped Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
Thomas "Tom" Paine was an English author, pamphleteer, radical, inventor, intellectual, revolutionary, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States...
publish the first part of The Age of Reason
The Age of Reason
The Age of Reason; Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology is a deistic pamphlet, written by eighteenth-century British radical and American revolutionary Thomas Paine, that criticizes institutionalized religion and challenges the legitimacy of the Bible, the central sacred text of...
while Paine was imprisoned during The Reign of Terror. He remained abroad for several years, spending much of his time in London; was a member of the London Society for Constitutional Information; published various radical essays, including a volume entitled Advice to the Privileged Orders (1792), which was proscribed by the British government; and was made a citizen of France in 1792.
He was American consul at Algiers
Algiers
' is the capital and largest city of Algeria. According to the 1998 census, the population of the city proper was 1,519,570 and that of the urban agglomeration was 2,135,630. In 2009, the population was about 3,500,000...
in 1795-1797, securing the release of American prisoners held for ransom, and negotiating a treaty with Tripoli
Tripoli
Tripoli is the capital and largest city in Libya. It is also known as Western Tripoli , to distinguish it from Tripoli, Lebanon. It is affectionately called The Mermaid of the Mediterranean , describing its turquoise waters and its whitewashed buildings. Tripoli is a Greek name that means "Three...
(1796). He returned to America in 1805, and lived at his home, Kalorama
Kalorama, Washington, D.C.
The Kalorama area within the Northwest Quadrangle of Washington, D.C., includes two adjacent, quite affluent historical residential neighborhoods, Kalorama Triangle and Sheridan-Kalorama. The area is accessible from the Dupont Circle and Woodley Park Metro stations, as well as various bus lines...
in what is now the city of Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
, until 1811, when he became American minister plenipotentiary to France, charged with negotiating a commercial treaty with Napoleon, and with securing the restitution of confiscated American property or indemnity therefor. He was summoned for an interview with Napoleon at Wilna, but failed to see the emperor there; became involved in the retreat of the French army; and, overcome by exposure, died at the Polish village of Żarnowiec
Zarnowiec, Silesian Voivodeship
Żarnowiec is a village in Zawiercie County, Silesian Voivodeship, in southern Poland. It is the seat of the gmina called Gmina Żarnowiec...
.
The record in the archives of the church in Żarnowiec reads
Anno 1812, Decembris 26 at 1 o'clock P.M. before us the rector of the Zarnowiec parish and civil recorder of the village of Zarnowiec, Pilica County, Department of Cracow, there came Hon. John Blaski, postmaster and Mayor of the village Zarnowiec, residing here and thirty-six years old, and Idzi Baiorkiewicz, residing at his farm of two quarts at Zarnowiec and thirty-three years old, and declared that his Excellency, Joel Barlow, Minister Plenipotentiary at the Court of Emperor of the French and King of Italy, died on the above day at 12 o'clock at noon in the house No. 1 while journeying from Warsaw to Paris, at the age of fifty-six, son of unknown parents, and husband of her Excellency Mrs. Margaret nee Baldwin, residing in the American city of Ridgefield. After reading this to the present we undersigned it with the witnesses, Rev. Stanislaus Bajorski, civil recorder; John Blaski, witness; Idzi Baiorkiewicz, witness.
Joel Barlow was painted by Robert Fulton
Robert Fulton
Robert Fulton was an American engineer and inventor who is widely credited with developing the first commercially successful steamboat...
and John Vanderlyn
John Vanderlyn
John Vanderlyn was an American neoclassicist painter.-Biography:Vanderlyn was born at Kingston, New York. He was employed by a print-seller in New York, and was first instructed in art by Archibald Robinson , a Scotsman who was afterwards one of the directors of the American Academy of the Fine Arts...
(1798).
Legacy
- Barlow, OhioBarlow, OhioBarlow is an unincorporated community in western Barlow Township, Washington County, Ohio, United States. Although it is unincorporated, it has a post office, with the ZIP code of 45712. It lies at the intersection of State Routes 339 and 550 near the South Fork of Wolf Creek, which meets the...
is named in his honor. - He was one of the contributing editors of the first agricultural magazine in America, the Agricultural MuseumAgricultural Museum (periodical)The Agricultural Museum was the first agricultural periodical magazine published in the United States, first printed July 4, 1810.- History :...
. - Joel Barlow High School in Redding, CT
Further reading
- Bernstein, Samuel. Joel Barlow: a Connecticut Yankee in an age of revolution (1985)
- Buel, Richard. Joel Barlow: American Citizen in a Revolutionary World (Johns Hopkins University Press; 2011) 448 pages
- Woodress, James. A Yankee's Odyssey:the life of Joel Barlow (1958)
- Pelanda, Brian. Declarations of Cultural Independence: The Nationalistic Imperative Behind the Passage of Early American Copyright Laws, 1783-1787 Journal of the Copyright Society of the U.S.A., Vol. 58, p. 431, 2011.
External links
- The Conspiracy of Kings; A Poem: Addressed to the Inhabitants of Europe, from Another Quarter of the World (London, 1792) online PDF edition.
- Guide to Joel Barlow's works at Houghton Library, Harvard University