Joel Barlow

Joel Barlow (March 24, 1754 – December 26, 1812) was an American poet, diplomat, and politician. In politics, he supported the French Revolution and was an ardent Jeffersonian republican.

He 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. Scholars believe that he did not know the transactions were fraudulent. He stayed in Paris, becoming involved in the French Revolution. He was elected to the Assembly and given French citizenship in 1792.

In his own time, Barlow was known especially for the epic poem The Columbiad, a later version of the Vision of Columbus (1807), though modern readers rank The Hasty-Pudding (1793) more highly.

As American consul at Algiers, he helped draft the Treaty of Tripoli in 1796, to end the attacks of Barbary pirates of North Africa city states. He also served as U.S. minister to France from 1811 to his death on December 26, 1812, in Żarnowiec, Poland.