JOEL BARLOW The Sage of KALORAMA Patriot - Author - Diplomat On exhibit at Woodrow Wilson House from March 24, 2004 through June 21, 2004 To mark the two-hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the birth of ambassador and author Joel Barlow, the Woodrow Wilson House is mounting an exhibition, “Joel Barlow – The Sage of Kalorama.” The exhibition will open on March 24, 2004 at the Woodrow Wilson House, a National Trust Historic Site in Washington, DC, which stands just yards from the site of Kalorama – Barlow’s last home. This will be the sole venue for the exhibition, which will remain on view until June 21, 2004. The exhibition will shed light on an underappreciated and fascinating figure in the founding of the nation. It will chronicle the life of this Connecticut farmer who rose from Puritan colonial beginnings to become a model man of the Enlightenment. A Yale educated wit, essayist and author, Barlow was a patriot in Washington’s army, America’s first popular author, patron of the work of Robert Fulton, friend of Thomas Jefferson, a citizen of revolutionary France, liberator of the Barbary captives and the nation’s first diplomat to die at his post in service to the nation. On view will be original copies of Barlow’s works, including The Vision of Columbus (1787) which would become Barlow’s epic poem and America’s first bestseller, The Columbiad (1807). Important loans from the National Portrait Gallery will include the Barlow portrait by Robert Fulton, a portrait sketch on paper by John Vanderlyn and a plaster copy of the Houdon bust, the original of which is in the White House collection. Objects relating to Kalorama on loan from the U.S. Department of State include Barlow’s portrait by Charles Wilson Peale (1807), a Sheffield wine cooler used at Kalorama that was a gift from Thomas Jefferson and a landscape painting by Charles Codman of the Kalorama estate. In addition to being the nation’s first author to receive fair pay for his work, Barlow’s career led him into many adventures. As a Yale student, he fought at the Battle of Brooklyn and later became a chaplain with Washington’s army at West Point. After the Revolution, he started the American Mercury in Hartford where he became one of the satirical Connecticut Wits who provided commentary on the hope and promise of the new republic. In an effort to sell western land in Ohio, Barlow made his way to France where he met Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine and as the French Revolution began to stir moved on to London where, along with Joseph Priestly, Thomas Hardy and Mary Wollstonscraft, he cheered on the republican wave of revolution. His Advise to the Privileged Orders in Several States of Europe, along with Paine’s Rights of Man, was found to be seditious and forced Barlow to leave England. He became a citizen of revolutionary France and ran for election to the National Assembly from the Department of Savoy. Although he lost, it was while spending time in the Piedmont that he wrote his most popular poem, The Hasty Pudding, a rambling epic about the warmth and wholesomeness of the corn meal pudding of his New England youth raised to culinary art as polenta in Italy. After the French Revolution turned into the Terror, Barlow came to the aid of his friend Tom Paine as he was being arrested, smuggling the manuscript for The Age of Reason to safety and having it published. Back in Paris in 1796, Barlow was called upon by President George Washington to negotiate the release of 119 American sailors held captive by the Barbary States. Barlow personally won the favor of the Dey of Algiers and secured the ransom of the sailors with the promise of a new American frigate and $800,000 in gold. The treaty of friendship with the Barbary States of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli was among the first for the new American nation. Barlow went on to take in a young American by the name of Robert Fulton who had just left the studio of Barlow’s friend Benjamin West in London. Barlow taught the young artist and inventor French and helped him secure a trial before Napoleon of an improved submarine, the Nautilus in 1800. Barlow helped to finance the submarine project but was even more helpful to the young inventor introducing him to the new American Minister, Robert Livingston. Livingston took great interest in the promotion of Fulton’s steamboat, underwriting the cost of the working model that sailed the Seine in 1803 and that would eventually sail the Hudson as the Clermont. Barlow’s home in Paris, across from the Luxembourg Gardens, was the center of expatriate American life. He amassed a great library and continued his writings and literary work. In one political essay, he called for a United States of Europe some 200 years before the creation of the European Union. In another tract, he called for the freedom of the seas and trade which was echoed in Woodrow Wilson’s famous 14 Points and in Article 41 of the United Nations Charter. Nevertheless, Barlow was growing weary of European politics and the rise of Napoleon. His friend Jefferson had become President in 1802 and urged Barlow to return to his native land and take a house in Washington which he described as “a lovely seat…on a high hill commanding a most extensive view of the Potomac.” Jefferson, along with James Madison also wanted Barlow to write the first complete history of the United States and promised full access to their papers for the project. In the summer of 1805, after a visit to Benjamin West in London, Barlow arrived at New York and traveled to his native Connecticut to renew his old friendship with Noah Webster. Barlow had been away from his homeland for seventeen years, leaving before the new nation's Constitution had been established and returning as Lewis and Clark were exploring the great promise of the west. On his way to Washington, Barlow stopped off in Philadelphia to have his portrait painted by Charles Wilson Peale and seek a publisher for his revised version of Vision of Columbus. In 1807, the final version entitled Columbiad was printed by Fry and Kammerer, the best American printer, with illustrations by Robert Smirke and plates paid for by Robert Fulton. At a cost of $10,000, it was the most expensive book ever printed up to that time; each deluxe folio cost $20 a copy. Once in Washington, Barlow purchased the hilltop property suggested by Thomas Jefferson and renamed the run down estate “Kalorama”, Greek for “beautiful view”. He added stables and planted an orchard, then commissioned Benjamin Latrobe, the architect of the U.S. Capitol, to make additions and build a gardener’s lodge and elaborate entrance gate. He moved his entire Paris library to Kalorama and sold off additional copies to Secretary of State James Madison who along with his wife Dolley was a frequent visitor. He wrote Jefferson and exchanged gardening and horticulture tips as well as commentary on republican politics of the day. His niece married Andrew Ellicott, the surveyor of the city of Washington, who Barlow helped to receive a postmaster’s position in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He visited Jefferson at Monticello and traveled with Latrobe to Harper’s Ferry and Bedford Springs. During his years in Washington, he petitioned Congress and wrote a tract, Prospectus of a National Institution to be Established in the United States in support of an old Yale friend, Josiah Meigs, then President of the University of Georgia, to establish a National University. Even with Jefferson’s support and funding from the estate of George Washington in hand, the measure was narrowly defeated in Congress. Meigs would be successful several years after Barlow’s death and became the first President of Columbian College, now the George Washington University in Washington, DC. Barlow established himself at Kalorama as the model man of the enlightenment. Like Jefferson, he ascribed to the life of an agrarian republican and surrounded himself with the latest inventions, including indoor plumbing. Although he had spent many years away from his native land, he found that he had many friends and supporters. In 1810, the new President, James Madison called on Barlow to become the new Ambassador to France. England was at war with Napoleon’s France and both nations had set up blockades of American shipping. In July of 1811, Barlow set off from Kalorama for the port of Annapolis where President Madison ordered the flagship of the American Navy, the USS Constitution to carry the new Ambassador to his post. Barlow took up residence at his old house in Paris and endeavored to secure promises from Napoleon to end the blockade of American ships and release any seized ships. At their first meeting, Napoleon agreed to many of Barlow’s claims and agreed to work out a treaty. They agreed to meet again to negotiate a trade agreement, but when Napoleon left to fight the Russian campaign Barlow was forced to go to Wilna, Lithuania to meet him. In route, Barlow wrote his last epic poem, Advise to a Raven in Winter, a commentary on Napoleon’s quest for empire. With news of Napoleon’s defeat and retreat from Russia, Barlow was forced to flee; he caught pneumonia and died on December 26, 1812 in the Village of Zarnowiec between Warsaw and Krakow. The first American Diplomat to die at his post, he is buried in the village churchyard a world away from the Connecticut hills of his birth and his beloved Kalorama. The Woodrow Wilson House, a National Trust Historic Site and Washington’s only presidential museum, offers a thorough glimpse of life in 1920’s Washington through the eyes of Woodrow Wilson and his wife Edith. The Wilson’s personal effects, furnishings, decorative arts and clothing, as well as State gifts, intermingle in their elegant 1915 town-home, arranged as they were in 1921. The exhibition is open during regular museum hours, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday. Woodrow Wilson House is located at 2340 S St. NW, in the Kalorama neighborhood, just off Embassy Row in Northwest, Washington. The museum is within walking distance of Metro Rail, Dupont Circle station (Red Line). On street parking is limited. Parking and access for persons with disabilities is available. FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT Meg Nowack, Curator, Tel: 202 387 4062, ext. 20. E-mail: mnowack@woodrowwilsonhouse.org