NEIGHBORS OF THE COSMOS CLUB

RICHARD B. PARKER

The story of Joel Barlow and his Kalorama

One of the most distinguished early residents of Washington, DC, was Joel Barlow, a diplomat, poet, and businessman—and a leading intellectual light in the early 19th century. Had he been around when the Cosmos Club was started, he very likely would have been one of its founders. His protege Robert Fulton, with whom he tested prototype vessels, including a model of the Clermont, in nearby Rock Creek, might easily have been a founding member as well.

Barlow’s estate, Kalorama, covered much of what is now known as the Kalorama area of Northwest Washington. Kalorama, or “fine view” in Greek, was just across Florida Avenue (then known as Boundary Street) from the present site of the Cosmos Club. The gatehouse, at the intersection of Florida Avenue and R Street, was designed by noted architect Benjamin Latrobe. The Kalorama estate extended north as far as what is now Calvert Street, bounded on the east by, successively, Florida Avenue, Connecticut Avenue and Columbia Road, and bounded on the west by Rock Creek (see Figure 1).

One of the more engaging figures in US diplomatic history, Barlow was born in Redding, Connecticut in 1754, and was a graduate of the Yale class of 1778. After service as an army chaplain during the Revolution, he settled for a while in Hartford, Connecticut, where he founded a weekly newspaper, The American Mercury, and briefly practiced law. Along with Jonathan Trumbull, Timothy Dwight, Lemuel Hopkins, Richard Alsop, Theodore Dwight, and David Humphreys, Barlow was one of the Connecticut (or Hartford) Wits—young men who wrote popular satiric verse on current events in the post-Revolution period.

In 1788, Barlow went to Paris to promote and sell shares in the Scioto Land Company, a speculative land scheme that failed, stranding a number of French purchasers in the wilds of Ohio. He is generally accounted unwitting and blameless in that affair, and the purchasers survived to found the thriving town of Gallipolis. He became a political journalist and remained in Europe until 1804, and was made a citizen of France in recognition of his republican writings. He addressed the French National Convention, ran unsuccessfully for parliamentary office in the Savoy, survived the Terror, and went into the shipping business, prospering through, among other things, astute exploitation of American neutrality in the wars between France and its neighbors, and prudent investment in French government bonds.

Barlow’s reputation as a leading intellectual in his day rested largely on his writings. His epic patriotic poem The Vision of Columbus appeared in a small volume in 1787. It was a financial and critical success, and made him a reputation in both Europe and the United States. Louis XVI, to whom The Vision was dedicated, bought 25 copies and George Washington purchased 20.

Figure 1. This map, based on a 1881–90 survey, shows the location of Joel Barlow's Kalorama estate.

Twenty years later, Barlow published an ambitious, expanded revision entitled The Columbiad, which incorporated 450 quarto pages and 12 engravings on heavy stock with an elegant binding. Its typography was much admired, but it was not a critical success. Barlow’s most recent biographer, James Woodress, called it a “dinosaur in the clay pits of history.” Thomas Jefferson, in thanking Barlow for sending him a copy, said that the affairs of state prevented his reading it for more than a few minutes at a time but he looked forward to reading it at his leisure when he retired to Monticello, a model tactful response to keep in mind for such occasions. Another, shorter, poem, The Hasty Pudding, in praise of polenta, or cornmeal mush, which he had encountered in the Savoy and which reminded him of home, was very popular, although modern readers may find it difficult to share his enthusiasm for the subject, no longer a popular food item in the United States.

The Columbiad was not a total loss. My copy of The Life and Letters of Joel Barlow by Charles Burr Todd (New York: Putnam’s, 1886) has an interesting handwritten marginal note by some member of the family who owned it, referring to an issue of the Hartford Courant of unknown date. The note explains that French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau had suggested a monument to Barlow for proposing the creation of the League of Nations. In the last vision of The Columbiad, the hero beholds a general congress of the nations, assembled to provide for the settlement of all vexed questions by a court of arbitration.

BARLOW’S NEXT CHALLENGE

In 1795, 12 years before publication of The Columbiad, Barlow was picked, somewhat fortuitously, to go to Algiers as consul. The first choice had been his partner in the shipping business, Colonel Benjamin Hicheborn of Boston, but he had pleaded poor eyesight. Barlow’s mission was to help Joseph Donaldson, who had negotiated a peace treaty in September 1795 that provided for the release of some 100 American seamen held captive in that city. They were the survivors out of 132 men on 13 American ships captured by corsairs from Algiers, which was then a provincial capital of the Ottoman Empire. Governed by a garrison of soldiers referred to at the time as the “Algerines,” a substantial portion of its revenues came from privateering, or legalized piracy. Together with the other “Barbary Powers,” Morocco, Tunis, and Tripoli, Algiers maintained that it was at war with all other countries with which it had no peace treaty. Such treaties were signed normally only in return for substantial cash payments and promises of subsequent annual payments. A similar situation prevailed in Tunis and Tripoli, both semi-independent “regencies” of the Ottoman Empire, but they were not holding any American prisoners at the time.

The corsairs of Algiers, operating under government orders, would seize ships of “enemy” powers on the high seas and sell them and their cargoes in Algiers or elsewhere. The crews were sent to Algiers, where, except for the officers, they were employed as slaves, often at hard labor. They could be ransomed, however, for payment of an agreed sum. Before the Revolution, the American colonists had been protected by the British treaty with Algiers, but following the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1783, by which Britain recognized the independence of the United States, Americans became fair game. Two American ships were captured off the coast of Portugal in 1785. A second contingent of 11 ships was captured in 1793.

Trade with the Mediterranean countries was important to the US economy and this early hostage crisis became a matter of great national concern. George Washington said to Congress in 1795, “This subject, than which none deserves a more affectionate zeal, has constantly commanded my best exertions.” Accordingly, at a time when total federal receipts were on the order of $6 to $7 million per year, Joseph Donaldson had been authorized to spend up to $800,000 ($11 million in today’s money). The Dey, or ruler of Algiers, initially set the price for peace and ransom of the captives at $2.2 million. Donaldson finally agreed to pay $585,000, of which $200,000 was for ransom, plus an annual payment of 21,000 gold sequins, or about $42,000. When all the expenses plus payments in kind were added in, the total cost of the Algiers treaty was $992,463.25, according to the US Treasury. We settled for much less with Tunis and Tripoli.

Unfortunately, implementation of the Algiers treaty was held up by lack of funds. The Algerines, like everyone else, demanded to be paid in gold. US credit was good in Europe, but no gold was to be had and no end was in sight. Meanwhile, the American captives were dying of disease. The financial knot was untied by Barlow, who arrived in Algiers on March 4, 1796, after a stormy voyage from Alicante. He proved to be a man of courage and negotiating skill, as well as of great personal charm. Part of the transaction was a frigate worth $90,000 that Barlow offered to soften the Dey’s anger at the delay in payment, without having prior authorization to do so. Henry Kissinger had nothing on him when it came to freewheeling. This transaction marked the first major US military arms deal.

The prisoners were released on July 13, 1796, and the largest contingent of them, 65 in number, arrived in Philadelphia on February 9, 1797. They were feted at a local tavern, reappeared briefly in the newspapers in their hometowns, and then disappeared from view altogether. Some, perhaps most of them, returned to the sea, the only occupation they knew.

Barlow remained in Algiers as United States consul until the summer of 1797, when he returned to Paris and his residence at 50 rue de Vaugirard. His letters home describing his experiences and his dealings with the Dey are good-humored classics. His view of the Algerines would not be considered politically correct today, but he got along with them famously.

Barlow had met and been befriended by Thomas Jefferson when Jefferson was minister to France (1785- 89) and had remained in correspondence with him on a variety of subjects after Jefferson returned to the United States to become secretary of state in George Washington’s first cabinet. On May 3, 1802, Jefferson, then in the second year of his own presidency, wrote to Barlow inviting him to come to Washington to live, saying

...This may be considered as a pleasant country residence, with a number of neat little villages scattered around within a mile and a half, and furnishing a plain and substantially good society. The whole population is about six thousand. Mr. Madison and myself have cut out a piece of work for you, which is to write the history of the United States, from the close of the war downwards. We are rich ourselves in materials and can open all the public archives to you, but your residence here is essential, because a great deal of the knowledge of things is not on paper, but only within ourselves, for verbal communication ... P.S. There is a most lovely seat adjoining this city, on a high hill, commanding a view of the Potomac, now for sale. A superb house, gardens, etc., with thirty or forty acres of ground. It will be sold under circumstances of distress, and will probably go for half of what it has cost. It was built by Gustavus Scott, who is dead bankrupt...

In spite of this invitation, Barlow and his wife Ruth Baldwin did not leave France for the United States until 1804, and did not come to Washington until 1807. After toying with the idea of buying Mt. Vernon, they settled on the place Jefferson had recommended, then named Belair, and renamed it Kalorama. They paid $14,000 for the house and 30 acres of land. They immediately began remodeling and expanding the house, which quickly became a social and cultural center of attraction, noted for its large library and the hospitality provided by the Barlows. Barlow started but never finished the history Jefferson wanted, and his own project for the founding of a “national institution” also remained unfulfilled.

The national institution project, inspired by what Barlow had seen in France and England, envisaged a university complex that would include a school of mines, a school of roads and bridges, a conservatory of arts, a museum of natural history, a museum of arts, a national library, a mint, a military academy, a prytaneum or public hall for official hospitality, a school of medicine, a veterinary school, an observatory, and district colleges throughout the country. He drafted, with Jefferson’s help, a bill for the creation of this institution that was introduced in the Senate in 1806 but was referred to a committee and died there. Opposition from already established schools and colleges and the absence of congressional interest in non-material development were blamed for the lack of action. Jefferson and Barlow evidently continued to discuss the project, but Jefferson did not agree with everything proposed. Jefferson doubted the utility of a veterinary school, for instance, writing in a letter of December 25, 1808, “They have long had these institutions in Europe. Has the world as yet received one iota of valuable information from them? If it has, it is unknown to me."

A WINTRY END

Figure 2. A portrait of Joel Barlow by Charles Willson Peale

Barlow’s stay in Washington was brief. In 1811, President Madison sent him to Paris as minister (as a modest, middle-class nation, we did not send ambassadors in those days) with the twin tasks of pressing claims regarding American shipping and establishing normal trade relations between the two countries. The French had been seizing American vessels trading with England and this interference with neutral rights was a serious problem for the United States. When the Barlows arrived, the French were hospitable and outwardly sympathetic, but they played a delaying game. Finally, in October 1812, Barlow was invited by the foreign minister to come to Vilna, Napoleon’s winter headquarters, to conclude negotiations and sign a treaty of commerce. Barlow, accompanied by his young nephew Thomas, made the difficult trip with considerable misgivings, arriving in Vilna on November 18.

Barlow never met with Napoleon. By the time he arrived, the French campaign in Russia was already in trouble and by early December the troops and diplomats at Vilna were in full retreat in the terrible Polish winter. Barlow got only as far as Zarnowiec, a small village near Krakow, where he died of pneumonia on December 24 or 26, at the age of 58. His family reported he died on the 24th, but the Zarnowiec church records clearly state the date as December 26. His is the second name on the large bronze plaque listing diplomats who died abroad that hangs in the entrance hall of the US Department of State.

Barlow was buried in the Zarnowiec churchyard and was never disinterred, but his grave’s location is unknown today. The marble monument placed over his grave by his wife has long since disappeared. A marble plaque inside the church reads:

Joel Barlow
Plenipotens Minister
a statibus unitis America
ad Imp. Gallorum & Reg. Italia
Itinerando hicce obiit
26 December 1812

The plaque was placed there by a grateful Polish soldier, Adam Jakub Piwowarski, whom Barlow had found freezing by the roadside and had taken into his coach, thereby saving him from death.

On June 28, 1998, at the church in Zarnowiec, a rugged piece of pink limestone with bronze plaques in Polish and English describing Barlow’s career briefly and explaining why he is buried there was dedicated by Francis Scanlan, the American consul general in Krakow, and other dignitaries. Funds for the plaque were raised by the writer, in cooperation with the American Center of Polish Culture, also in Washington, and DACOR (Diplomatic and Consular Officers Retired).

Ruth Barlow returned to Washington after her husband’s death and continued to live at Kalorama until her death in 1818 at the age of 62. She was buried in a brick tomb that would have been just across 22d Street from the Cosmos Club, along with her brothers, Senator Abraham Baldwin, and Associate Supreme Court Justice Henry Baldwin, plus other members of her family. The remains were moved to Oakhill Cemetery in Georgetown when Massachusetts Avenue was extended and the Kalorama tract was developed into the quarter of the city that we know today. The house, which had served as a hospital during the Civil War, became dilapidated and was destroyed in 1888 by the developers who put up the Woodrow Wilson and Herbert Hoover houses, which are mentioned in “A Look Around the Neighborhood,” by Douglas Reid Weimer (see Cosmos 1999, Volume 9, page 87). Figure 2. A portrait of Joel Barlow by Charles Willson Peale.

Figure 3. "Kalorama" by Charles Codman, who painted the Barlow home overlooking Rock Creek.

Joel Barlow, his writings, and his Washington estate are largely forgotten today. The denizens of the Kalorama district are unaware of them, and he had no direct descendants to keep his memory green. Although he and Ruth had no children, there are descendants of his brother Aaron. One of them was a well-known Washington lawyer, also named Joel Barlow, who died in 1997.

There are several portraits of Barlow to be found, however. The most notable, by Charles Willson Peale (see Figure 2), hangs in the diplomatic reception rooms of the Department of State. His portrait by Robert Fulton is in the Indianapolis Museum of Art. A famous bust of him by Jean-Antoine Houdon, the French sculptor, is in the White House. At last inquiry, it was in storage rather than being displayed.

Several images also exist of the Kalorama estate, including some Civil War period photographs of the house that are now in the archives at the Washington Historical Society. There are at least two paintings and a watercolor of Kalorama, to my knowledge. One of these, by Charles Codman, can be viewed in the diplomatic reception rooms of the Department of State (see Figure 3).

With this brief history of Joel Barlow and Kalorama in mind, take a post-prandial stroll up 22nd Street the next time you come to the Club for lunch. Go up the “Spanish steps” and turn left on S Street one block to 23rd. You will be standing in front of Herbert Hoover’s house, now the Myanmar Embassy. As you can see from the map, the Kalorama residence stretched from there to the Textile Museum next door. There is nothing left to mark the site.

Additional Resources:

Woodress, James. A Yankee’s Odyssey: The Life of Joel Barlow. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1958.

Richard B. Parker (CC ’82) is a retired diplomat. An Arabic language specialist, he served as US ambassador to Algeria, Lebanon, and Morocco during the Ford and Carter administrations. He currently is working on a book on the United States and the Barbary Corsairs.

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