American Diplomat and Nation Builder.

• Author: Sempa, Francis P.
• Position: 'Joel Barlow: American Diplomat and Nation Builder' - Book review

American Diplomat and Nation Builder

Review by Francis P. Sempa

Joel Barlow: American Diplomat and Nation Builder by Peter P. Hill, Potomac Books, 2012. ISBN-13: 978-1-59797-682-4, 271 pp., $34.95.

Joel Barlow strove to be America's epic poet, but circumstances determined that instead he would become what biographer Peter P. Hill calls a diplomat and nation builder. Hill's new biography of this neglected figure of the early years of the American republic is a work of scholarship and erudition. It vividly brings to life the complex character of Barlow and the interesting diplomatic era in which he operated to further U.S. interests.

Barlow was born in Redding, Connecticut, and attended Dartmouth and Yale during the mid-1770s, just as the American Revolution was gaining full steam. Hill notes that Barlow served briefly as a Connecticut volunteer in General Washington's army that retreated from Long Island. Barlow also served as an army chaplain and delivered sermons that were well received by Washington and his officers. He wanted, however, to be a poet not a clergyman, and after the war he began to write his first epic poem which was subsequently published as The Vision of Columbus. Barlow also started a literary weekly called the American Mercury which provided a useful vehicle for his occasional poetry.

Poetry, however, did not pay the bills so Barlow studied for the Connecticut bar and entered politics, winning election to the New Haven Common Council in 1786. Barlow also joined a group of writers, the Hartford Wits, who Hill describes as like-minded law-and-order satirists that supported a stronger central government to defend against the political unrest brought on by the sharp economic depression of the mid-1780s.

In what Hill describes as the sorriest chapter in Barlow's life, in 1787 the would-be poet joined an Ohio real estate company that enticed French emigres to buy land west of the Allegheny Mountains. Barlow traveled to Paris as the company's European representative. When the French Revolution broke out, the number of potential French emigres increased, and Barlow's company sold land to hundreds of them. By 1790, the company was in financial ruins, apparently the victim of embezzlers. Although not implicated personally, Barlow's company effectively defrauded the French emigres. Barlow's career in real estate was over.

Barlow was one of many Americans who strongly supported the goals of the French Revolution. In July 1789, he...