He worked as an agent for American speculator William Duer to set up the Scioto Company in Paris in 1788, and to sell worthless deeds to land in the Northwest Territory which it did not own.

As American consul at Algiers, he helped draft the Treaty of Tripoli in 1796, to end the attacks of Barbary pirates of North Africa city states.

He was engaged in the Battle of Long Island and served as a chaplain for the 4th Massachusetts Brigade from September 1780 until the close of the Revolutionary War.

In 1787, he published a long and ambitious poem, The Vision of Columbus,[2] which gave him a considerable literary reputation and was once much read.

[9] In 1788, he went to France as the agent of Colonel William Duer and the Scioto Land Company, which had been registered in Paris the year before.

He was to sell lands in part of the newly organized Northwest Territory (this section is now in Ohio), and recruit immigrants for new settlements.

[11] Although he dedicated his "Vision of Columbus" to Louis XVI, he joined royal opponents in calling for the execution of the king.

[9] Barlow served as American consul in Algiers from 1795 to 1797, during the period when Barbary pirates were preying on United States and European shipping.

He helped negotiate treaties with the Barbary states of Algiers, Tripoli, and Tunis to avert future seizures of American ships.

[12] He returned to the United States in 1805, where he lived in the national capital at his mansion, known as Kalorama, now the name of a neighborhood in Northwest Washington, D.C.

[13] In addition, Barlow published Conspiracy of Kings, a Poem addressed to the Inhabitants of Europe from another Quarter of the Globe (1792).

"[3] 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.