Editing Joel Barlow (section)

=== Poetry and writing ===
In 1807, he published the epic ''Columbiad'', an extended edition of his ''Vision of Columbus''. It added to his reputation in some quarters, but on the whole it was not well received.<ref name="EB1911"/>

The poem for which he is now best known is his mock heroic ''The Hasty-Pudding'' (1793), first published in ''[[New York Magazine]]'' and now a standard item in literary anthologies.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Lemay|first=J. A. Leo|year=1982|title=The Contexts and Themes of 'The Hasty-Pudding'|journal=[[Early American Literature]]|volume=17|issue=1|pages=3–23|jstor=25056448}}</ref> In addition, Barlow published ''Conspiracy of Kings, a Poem addressed to the Inhabitants of Europe from another Quarter of the Globe'' (1792). He continued writing political essays, publishing ''Political Writings of Joel Barlow'' (2nd ed., 1796) and ''View of the Public Debt, Receipts and Expenditure of the United States'' (1800).<ref name="EB1911"/> But much of his political speculation never passed beyond his voluminous notebooks, many of which are conserved in Harvard's [[Houghton Library]].

He also composed a satirical version of the British national anthem "[[God Save the King]]", called "[[God Save the King#Historic republican alternative|God Save the Guillotine]]".<ref>[https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/8410734 A song. Tune-"God save the guillotine"]{{Dead link|date=February 2020 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}, stanford.edu catalogue</ref>

Historian William H. Goetzmann describes Barlow as a [[cosmopolitanism|cosmopolitan]], along with [[Thomas Jefferson]], [[Benjamin Franklin]], engineer [[Robert Fulton]], and [[Thomas Paine]], the last two of whom Barlow befriended in France. Barlow believed that the new country of America was a model [[civilization]] that prefigured the "uniting of all mankind in one religion, one language and one Newtonian harmonious whole"<ref name="goetzmann143">Goeztmann (2009), ''Beyond the Revolution'', p. 143</ref> and thought of "the American Revolution as the opening skirmish of a world revolution on behalf of the rights of all humanity."<ref name="goetzmann142"/> An optimist, he believed that scientific and republican progress, along with religion and people's growing sense of humanity, would lead to the coming of the Millennium. For him, American civilization was world civilization. He projected that these concepts would coalesce around the rebuilding of the temple in [[Jerusalem]].<ref name="goetzmann143"/>