31 Facts About Joel Barlow

Joel Barlow was an American poet, diplomat, and politician.

Joel Barlow worked as an agent for American speculator William Duer to set up the Scioto Company in Paris in 1788, and to sell worthless deeds to land in the Northwest Territory which it did not own.

Joel Barlow stayed in Paris, becoming involved in the French Revolution.

Joel Barlow was elected to the Assembly and given French citizenship in 1792.

Joel Barlow served as US minister to France from 1811 to his death on December 26,1812, in Zarnowiec, Poland.

Joel Barlow briefly attended Dartmouth College before he graduated from Yale College in 1778, where he was a member of Brothers in Unity, along with Noah Webster, who was a good friend at the time.

Joel Barlow was an original member of the Society of the Cincinnati in the State of Massachusetts.

Joel Barlow was a Mason and he became a good friend to Thomas Paine.

In 1809, Joel Barlow was elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia.

In Hartford, Joel Barlow became 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".

Joel Barlow contributed to The Anarchiad, a series of satirico-political papers.

Joel Barlow was to sell lands in part of the newly organized Northwest Territory, and recruit immigrants for new settlements.

Joel Barlow had previously recruited a group of French to emigrate to America.

In Paris, Joel Barlow became a liberal in religion and an advanced republican in politics.

Joel Barlow believed that "American civilization was world civilization", and was enthusiastic about the cause of world republicanism.

Joel Barlow became involved with the French Revolution, going so far as to be elected to the French Assembly, and being granted French citizenship in 1792.

Joel Barlow helped Thomas Paine publish the first part of The Age of Reason while Paine was imprisoned during The Reign of Terror in France.

Joel Barlow remained abroad for several years, spending much of his time in London.

Joel Barlow published various radical essays, including a volume entitled Advice to the Privileged Orders.

Joel Barlow served as American consul in Algiers from 1795 to 1797, during the period when Barbary pirates were preying on United States and European shipping.

Joel Barlow used United States Department of State funds for bribes and ransoms to free more than 100 American merchant sailors held by pirates.

Joel Barlow helped negotiate treaties with the Barbary states of Algiers, Tripoli, and Tunis to avert future seizures of American ships.

Joel Barlow returned to the United States in 1805, where he lived in the national capital at his mansion, known as Kalorama, now the name of a neighborhood in Northwest Washington, DC.

Joel Barlow composed a satirical version of the British national anthem "God Save the King", called "God Save the Guillotine".

Joel Barlow projected that these concepts would coalesce around the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem.

In 1811, Joel Barlow was appointed as US minister to France; he sailed across the Atlantic on the USS Constitution.

Joel Barlow's task was to negotiate an end to the Berlin Decree and the Milan Decree, as well as obtain the release of American ships and crews held by the French during the Napoleonic wars.

Joel Barlow befriended, and was served as consul and prize agent, by the United-Irish exile David Bailie Warden.

In October 1812, Joel Barlow set off for Vilnius to negotiate a treaty with the French foreign minister, who was based in Lithuania to prepare for the French invasion of Russia.

Joel Barlow chose to take the southerly route to return to Paris, by way of Krakow and Vienna.

Joel Barlow became ill and died of pneumonia on December 26,1812, in the Polish village of Zarnowiec.