Joel Barlow

Joel Barlow
Sketch of Joel Barlow
Born	(1754-03-24)March 24, 1754 Redding, Connecticut Colony
Died	December 26, 1812(1812-12-26) (aged 58) Żarnowiec, Duchy of Warsaw (now in Poland).
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Yale University
Occupation	poet, businessman, diplomat, politician
Notable work	The Hasty-Pudding (1793)

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.

In his own time, Barlow was known especially for the epic Vision of Columbus, though modern readers may be more familiar with The Hasty-Pudding (1793). He also helped draft the Treaty of Tripoli in 1796, which includes the phrase: "the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion".

Barlow was born in Redding, Fairfield County, Connecticut. He briefly attended Dartmouth College before he graduated from Yale College in 1778, where he was also a postgraduate 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, he was chaplain in a Massachusetts brigade. Then, in 1783, he moved to Hartford, Connecticut. In July 1784, he established a weekly paper called American Mercury with which he was connected for a year. In 1786, he 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 was an ardent patriot in the American Revolution. He was engaged in the Battle of Long Island and served as a chaplain for the 4th Massachusetts Brigade. He was a Mason and he became a good friend to Thomas Paine.