Joel Barlow (1754-1812) was a diplomat who served as American Consul to Algiers, where he negotiated the Tripoli Treaty (1796); and American Plenipotentiary to France, where he negotiated a commercial treaty with Napoleon. He established a weekly newspaper in Hartford, CT, the American Mercury, in 1784, and published several books, including Hasty Pudding (1793), the Conspiracy of Kings (1792), and the patriotic epic poem The Columbiad (1807), from which this excerpt is taken. From 1805 to 1811, he lived in Washington, DC in an estate he named Kalorama (now the site of both the Embassy of Myanmar and the historic Myers House next door, formerly the Textile Museum, on S Street NW). The mansion stood long enough to serve as a Civil War hospital, and was razed in 1888, but the surrounding neighborhood retains the name (and the “beautiful view” which inspired it).
