Joel Barlow

American poet and diplomat Joel Barlow (1754-1812) is remembered as one of the Connecticut wits. He moved beyond New England to become one of the most cosmopolitan men of his generation.

Joel Barlow, born in Redding, Conn., on March 24, 1754, briefly attended Dartmouth and then went to Yale, from which he celebrated his graduation with the Poem on the Prospect of Peace (1778). As a collegian, he served briefly in the Connecticut militia in 1776. The nine years after his graduation were busily filled with school teaching, graduate study, further service in the Army as chaplain, newspaper editing and almanac making, a runaway marriage, preparing a revision on American principles of Isaac Watt's Psalms (1785), reading for the bar, and, with versifying friends, correcting overly democratic countrymen in the satirical Anarchiad (1786). His principal attention during these years, however, was directed toward completing and preparing for publication his long epic poem in heroic couplets, The Vision of Columbus (1787). This poem, dedicated to the king of France and sponsored by George Washington, brought Barlow something more than local fame as a forecaster in verse of what the new United States might become, both in commerce and in art.

In 1788 he went to Europe as agent for a company that wanted to sell western lands to French emigrants. That failing, he became a political journalist in France and England, to the dismay of his New England friends, because he was associated now with Thomas Paine, Horne Tooke, and Mary Wollstonecraft. In 1792 he published Advice to the Privileged Orders, in prose, and The Conspiracy of Kings, in verse, both antimonarchial tracts, and A Letter to the National Assembly, which brought him honorary citizenship in the new French Republic. The best-remembered of his writings of this period, however, is The Hasty Pudding (1796), written in homesick memory of a favorite New England dish.

Wealth came to Barlow suddenly and mysteriously, probably through shipping activities. As consul to Algiers (1795-1797), he arranged treaties with native rulers of Tripoli, Algiers, and Tunis. He was friend and adviser to young Robert Fulton and to Thomas Jefferson. In 1805 he returned to the United States, to expand and revise The Vision of Columbus to The Columbiad (1807)—a magnificently printed but woodenly written book. In 1811-1812 he was U.S. minister to France. He died in Poland on Dec. 24, 1812, en route as representative of President James Madison to a conference with Napoleon.

Further Reading

Selections from Barlow's writings are most readily found in V.L. Parrington, ed., The Connecticut Wits (1926). Biographical materials first gathered in Charles Burr Todd, Life and Letters of Joel Barlow (1886), and Theodore A. Zunder, The Early Years of Joel Barlow (1934), have been expanded in James L. Woodress, A Yankee's Odyssey: The Life of Joel Barlow (1958). See also John Dos Passos, The Ground We Stand On (1941), and Leon Howard, The Connecticut Wits (1943).

Additional Sources

Bernstein, Samuel, Joel Barlow: a Connecticut Yankee in an age of revolution, New York: Rutledge Books, 1985. □

Barlow, Joel (1754–1812), one of the Connecticut Wits, graduated from Yale (1778), taught school, managed a business, preached, entered military service, was admitted to the bar (1786), contributed to The Anarchiad, and wrote a new version of the Psalms, all of which occupations were incidental to his lifelong ambition to write the great American epic. This work, The Vision of Columbus (1787), was finally revised as The Columbiad (1807), which he considered his masterpiece. He went to Europe (1788) and during 17 years of residence abroad changed from a conservative Connecticut Puritan to a cosmopolitan Democrat. As a reward for A Letter to the National Convention of France (1792) he was made a French citizen. Inspired by his friend Paine, he next wrote his Advice to the Privileged Orders (1792), in which he sets forth the thesis that the state is the responsible agent of all society rather than of any one class, and that its duty is to safeguard the social heritage as a common asset held in trust for future generations. It was during this residence in France that Barlow wrote his charming little poem Hasty Pudding (1796), for which he is best remembered. In 1795 he was appointed consul to Algiers, where he effected important treaties. Upon his return to the U.S. (1805) he published a Prospectus of a National Institution to be Established in the United States for research and instruction in the arts and sciences. He lived the quiet life of a scholar for six years, and in 1811 was appointed minister to France. He died near Cracow, Poland, on his way to meet Napoleon, with whom he hoped to consummate a treaty.

Joel Barlow , 1754–1812, American writer and diplomat, b. Redding, Conn., grad. Yale, 1778. He was one of the Connecticut Wits and a major contributor to their satirical poem The Anarchiad (1786–87). His own epic, The Vision of Columbus (1787), brought him fame in America and Europe and was revised later as The Columbiad (1807). Inspired by his friend Thomas Paine, he wrote Advice to the Privileged Orders (1792), urging that the state must represent not a class but the people and must be responsible for the welfare of the individual. His Letter to the National Convention of France on the Defects in the Constitution of 1791 won him French citizenship. His best-known lighter work is a mock eulogy, The Hasty-Pudding (1796). Appointed U.S. consul to Algiers in 1795, Barlow succeeded in releasing many American prisoners and in negotiating treaties with Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli. Sent to Europe in 1811 to negotiate a commercial treaty with Napoleon I, he was caught in the disastrous retreat of the armies from Moscow and died from exposure.

Bibliography: See biography by R. Buel, Jr. (2011); study by A. L. Ford (1971).

Barlow, Joel (1754–1812), American poet and diplomat, born in Connecticut, who is remembered as the author of The Columbiad (1807, originally published as The Vision of Columbus, 1787), a patriotic epic in heroic couplets, and of the mock-epic, The Hasty-Pudding (1796). Barlow was one of the ‘Hartford Wits’.