6 Land Fever

Joel Barlow: American Citizen in a Revolutionary World

CHAPTER SIX

Land Fever

The literary recognition Barlow received during 1787 still left him unable to make a living by his poetry. Nor was he tempted to embark on another heroic epic as a friendly critic had suggested. Instead, the appearance of The Vision of Columbus raised with new urgency questions about the course he and Ruth should take. Though Barlow continued to do some legal work, it did not suit his temperament. He might have dabbled in the law longer, however, had not another enterprise attracted him that was more compatible with his visionary nature—the settlement and development of the western territory to which the United States had won title in the Peace of Paris.

In 1783 Britain, France, and Spain had recognized the new nation’s claim to lands extending to the Mississippi River. Though they disagreed about where on the river the new nation’s title terminated, no one disputed that the United States had ended the war with considerably more territory than its citizens currently occupied. This circumstance caught the attention of people on both sides of the Atlantic. In Common Sense (1776), Thomas Paine had suggested that western lands could be used to pay for the Revolution, and after 1783 the West seemed to be the nation’s principal asset. Congress’s failure to acquire revenue powers under the Articles of Confederation made exchanging that debt for land its most eligible option. Several southern states with undisputed claims to western lands were using them to honor the bounties they had offered soldiers during the war. If Congress could persuade the states with conflicting claims over lands north of the Ohio River to cede them, the national government would be able to follow the example of the southern states.

Middlemen entrepreneurs were eager to help governments wishing to dispose of their lands and pioneers wishing to settle them. Settlement required more than the acquisition of secure title, though that was the principal benefit purchasers expected from speculators. Settlers also needed supplies to tide them over until they became self-sufficient. Speculators were willing to provide these services because they expected to purchase large tracts of land more cheaply than an individual could buy a plot. They could do so because governments preferred receiving lump sums for their lands to retailing them to individuals. State and national governments alike sought to promote settlement because they knew eventually it would produce additional revenue. The federal government had an added stake in the rapid settlement of its western domain lest this vast expanse slip from the nation’s grasp. The pressure to settle the area in turn made the government willing to shoulder the expense of negotiating the removal of Native Americans and protecting settlers.

Speculators were willing to offer governments large, lump sums because they expected the value of virgin lands to appreciate as they were settled. This appreciation would help to offset losses that might otherwise have been incurred after the first settlers claimed the best land in an unsettled region.¹ Limitless profits seemed to be in store for anyone who could draw emigrants from overpopulated Europe to America’s undeveloped lands, but expectations of profit did not depend only on foreign immigration. Barlow understood the difficulties the rising price of Fairfield lands had created for his father in providing for his numerous sons. The western territories promised liberation to American patriarchs burdened by their fertility as well as to those seeking to escape the oppressive sway of European monarchies. Thus the disposal of these lands conformed to Barlow’s expectations about the liberating potential of the American Revolution at home and abroad.

New lands were of particular interest to Connecticut because after 1750 the colony had started exporting its people. Connecticut’s initial commitment to the Revolution owed much to its desire to solidify a claim to the Susquehanna lands in north central Pennsylvania. In 1769 Connecticut had begun issuing title to petitioners settling those lands. When in 1774 the Susquehannah Company claimed that five thousand people had moved to Pennsylvania’s Wyoming Valley, Connecticut organized them into Westmoreland County, entitled to representation in the General Assembly. Westmoreland County fared badly during the Revolutionary War after British-sponsored Indian raids seriously weakened Connecticut’s foothold in northern Pennsylvania. By the end of the war only two thousand settlers remained, many of them widows and children. Congress’s December 1782 decision in favor of Pennsylvania’s claim to the land further dimmed their prospects.

Almost immediately, Pennsylvania began despoiling Connecticut settlers of their titles to the soil and their improvements. During 1783 and 1784 the clash between Connecticut settlers and Pennsylvanians led to occasional skirmishing between them. Barlow identified with the Connecticut settlers, and in early 1785 the Mercury serialized a long essay entitled, “The claims of Connecticut to Lands west of the Delaware, deduced from authentic records and fairly stated,” that highlighted Pennsylvania’s mistreatment of the settlers.² After losing the dispute over the Susquehanna lands, the best hope for Connecticut’s veterans lay in the creation of a national domain north of the Ohio River. The author of the essay on Connecticut’s western claims argued that such a domain could not only sink the revolutionary debt but also provide a “perpetual patrimonial estate to defray the necessary expenses of the united states. Additionally it would form a strong and permanent band of union, because it would be equally the property of every citizen of the united States.”³

Most of the states with western claims agreed, and beginning in 1782 New York ceded all of its claims to lands west of its border with Pennsylvania. Virginia, which claimed all of the Old Northwest, followed suit in 1784, with most of its claims north of the Ohio. But Virginia acted on condition the other states with overlapping claims make similar cessions. Massachusetts, whose original charter resembled Connecticut’s in extending to the “South Sea,” complied in 1785, relinquishing its right to portions of modern Michigan and Wisconsin. In May 1785, Congress provided for the survey of this emerging national domain into townships six miles square, setting a minimum purchase price of $1 per acre and a minimum land purchase of 640 acres. Connecticut’s legislature exempted a 120-mile stretch of land in Ohio, usually referred to as the Western Reserve, from its 1784 cession of the state’s western claims as compensation for its recent losses in northern Pennsylvania.

Because accepting Connecticut’s cession threatened to nullify Virginia’s conditional cession, Congress initially refused Connecticut’s offer. That refusal fueled sentiment among the settlers and their backers in the Susquehannah Company to continue resisting Pennsylvania. Despite the efforts of moderates in both states to quiet the controversy, an unwelcome impasse persisted in northern Pennsylvania. Congress found it alarming because as the postwar recession deepened, the West came to look like its only asset in providing for the Revolutionary War debt. At the same time, the British refusal to surrender the posts in the Northwest portions of the territory it had ceded under the Peace of Paris reminded Congress that title without occupation was meaningless. Low-intensity civil wars on the frontier—like that in Pennsylvania’s Wyoming Valley—discouraged westward migration and distracted attention from more pressing priorities.

Settlement of the Susquehanna dispute thus became linked with a compromise worked out in Congress during 1786 whereby the Connecticut cession was eventually accepted, even though it involved recognizing the state’s claim to the Western Reserve. In exchange, Connecticut’s delegates backed away from insisting that Congress rather than Pennsylvania determine the rights of Connecticut settlers to the Susquehanna lands and accepted Pennsylvania’s pledge to treat Connecticut settlers justly. Extremists in the company sought to sabotage this understanding by sending more settlers to contest Pennsylvania’s jurisdiction. They even toyed with forming a new state around the nucleus of the Connecticut settlements on lands that extended into southern New York, where Massachusetts had a competing claim.

Barlow let himself become associated with the extremists during a Susque-hannah Company meeting at Hartford on December 26 and 27, 1786, for which he served as “Clerk Pro Tem.” The meeting ended by naming him one of twenty-one commissioners with authority to confirm titles granted by the company to proprietors and settlers, to order surveys, and to grant title to squatters settling on vacant lands. The company also empowered its commissioners to create new townships within the area of the company’s original purchase from the Indians. Any five of their number could form a court to settle all disputes among those claiming company lands in direct violation of Pennsylvania’s sovereignty. Barlow’s minutes of the Hartford meeting drew the condemnation of a Pennsylvania legislative committee charged with investigating the Connecticut settlements. It accused the company of trying to revive “the pretended title to a large territory within this state” and to erect “it into a separate government independent of” Pennsylvania.⁴

When Barlow realized that the company’s actions were working at cross purposes with the efforts of Connecticut’s representatives in Congress to trade the state’s claims to the Susquehanna lands for congressional recognition of the Western Reserve, he distanced himself from the company’s activities. But he had not done so before May 17, 1787, when—in the capacity of secretary—he authorized John Franklin to represent the interests of the Susquehannah Company settlers before Congress. Franklin had petitioned that the Connecticut legislature become involved in the Company’s dispute and was known to favor the formation of a new state between New York and Pennsylvania. Though the wording of Franklin’s commission—bearing Barlow’s signature—specified that his mission was to persuade Congress to establish the Connecticut settlers’ “private right of soil and property to the lands,” Franklin was given authority to do anything “you may judge necessary” on behalf of the Susquehannah Company, provided it was legal. That was giving Franklin a lot of discretion, which in the past he had not used to quiet the controversy.⁵

Fortunately for Barlow, another, less controversial land venture materialized during 1787. The Ohio Company was formed by two Massachusetts generals, Rufus Putnam and Benjamin Tupper. Early in 1786 they had invited former members of the Massachusetts line with continental bounty rights to join in an association to buy some of Congress’s lands bordering the Ohio River. The Company had its eye on a specific stretch of territory in what today is southeastern Ohio. It purposely eschewed northern Ohio because the organizers did not wish to become parties to a conflict over the Western Reserve. Though Congress had accepted Connecticut’s cession, Virginia had yet to confirm its conditional cession of the area. At the time, Massachusetts was involved in a controversy with New York about each state’s competing claims to western New York, which would be resolved by a compromise arrived at in Hartford on September 16, 1786. The compromise traded the recognition of New York’s jurisdiction for the validation of Massachusetts’ title to the land, but it failed to induce the Ohio Company to shift its focus to western New York for another reason.

The October 22, 1784, Treaty of Fort Stanwix entered into between Congress and the Six Nations had specifically recognized the Indians’ title to a major portion of those lands. The remainder were proximate to Fort Niagara, which the British still occupied. The lingering British presence threatened to slow, if not totally obstruct, efforts to extinguish Indian title in the area. By contrast, the Indians in the January 21, 1785, Treaty of Fort McIntosh explicitly renounced title to all lands the Ohio Company wanted. The military leaders of the Ohio Company also preferred federal lands in the West to lands in New York or Pennsylvania because they expected to get a better bargain from an impoverished Congress than they were likely to get from a large, relatively prosperous state. Army officers would attract veteran soldiers whose familiarity with the hardships of camp life ideally qualified them to become settlers. The Ohio Company thought its ability to settle the country quickly with men committed to the union and capable of defending themselves would enhance its bargaining power with Congress.

Putnam and Tupper enlisted the Rev. Manasseh Cutler to join them in leading the company. A native of Connecticut, Cutler had graduated from Yale a decade before Barlow and had served as chaplain in the Massachusetts line between 1776 and 1778. In addition to presiding over a Massachusetts parish, Cutler was a polymath with wide-ranging interests in science and medicine and connections to match those interests. What he lacked in wealth he made up for in influence. One authority speculates that Cutler was responsible for the exclusion of slavery from federal territory north of the Ohio River, which Congress wrote into its Northwest Ordinance in 1787.⁶

However, Cutler’s influence failed to solve the difficulties the Ohio Company encountered in raising capital. After a year in which only a quarter of the $1 million in depreciated certificates it sought had been subscribed, it decided to recruit subscribers from other states. Connecticut was the logical place to turn because of its proximity and the state’s fiscal problems, which disposed its continental veterans to expect better treatment from a private company than from their own legislature. Samuel Holden Parsons, who saw in the unsettled West his best opportunity to reconstitute a shattered fortune, was ripe for cooption. As Connecticut’s highest ranking continental officer at the end of the war, his example could be determinative.

The postwar depression enhanced the Ohio Company’s appeal to Congress by making the exchange of public land for depreciated certificates look more feasible than raising money through taxation. Even after it seemed as though the Philadelphia convention would have a happy issue, supporters of the new government believed its chances of succeeding would be directly proportional to the amount of debt that could be extinguished in exchange for federal lands. The smaller the debt the new government faced, the more likely it would be to establish its credit and authority now that Shays’s Rebellion in Massachusetts had made clear the consequences of resorting to heroic taxation. If the new government fell into a similar trap, its enlarged powers would prove meaningless.

The principal sticking point for Congress was the land the Ohio Company wanted to purchase. The company’s tract was bounded by the Scioto River to the west and watered by the Muskingum River flowing through its eastern portion. The Ohio River that constituted its southern boundary also intersected with two major Kentucky rivers, the Great Kawanha and the Little Kawanha. Finally, a large military reserve that Virginia had exempted from its cession of 1784 lay directly to the northwest along the Scioto River. The company knew what to ask for because Benjamin Tupper had recently surveyed the region.

In January 1787, Congress rebuffed Manasseh Cutler, whom the company had deputed to negotiate the purchase of the lands.⁷ Congress was more receptive when Parsons approached it on May 9. However, some still questioned whether the Ohio Company’s offer was in the best interests of the United States since it required Congress to grant more acreage than the company initially had money to pay for.⁸ Congress was also busy with providing for the government of this territory and was hobbled by the departure of some of its members for the constitutional convention at Philadelphia. Lack of a congressional quorum led Parsons to return to Connecticut empty-handed at the beginning of June.

Cutler replaced him on July 9, but it still looked as though no bargain could be struck because of Congress’ continued dissatisfaction with the company’s offer. Cutler in all likelihood would have again been rebuffed had not William Duer intervened. As secretary to the board of treasury, Duer was in a strategic position to tailor the proposal in a way that would overcome the reluctance of at least some congressmen. He advised Cutler to enlarge the company’s proposed purchase from 1.5 million acres to 5 million acres and suggested that a second company, known as the Scioto Company, take responsibility for the additional acreage. The Scioto Company would not start paying for its additional lands until the Ohio Company completed its purchase. Duer expected Congress to warm to a proposal that retired a larger portion of the debt. At the same time, Duer hoped to benefit from acquiring a major stake in the speculation. Since the additional grant from Congress increased the burdens its backers were assuming, Duer promised to provide the New England investors with reinforcements from New York.

On July 29, 1787, Manasseh Cutler and Winthrop Sargent entered into two separate contracts with the treasury board, both largely fashioned by Duer. Under the first contract, the Ohio Company purchased outright 1.5 million acres for $1 million. Half was to be paid up front, and the remaining $500,000 was due upon the completion of a land survey. Half a million acres were set aside to pay for the survey or were assumed to be waste. A second contract granted Cutler, Sargent, and their associates the 3.5 million additional acres on the same terms as in the first contract. But title for this tract would only pass after the associates, subsequently known as the Scioto associates, completed the $3 million payment in six equal installments over a three-year period.⁹

Congress does not seem to have been aware that the two contracts involved distinct entities. The Scioto associates—including Cutler, Sargent, and Duer—counted on the Ohio Company rapidly settling and developing its lands to make the Scioto lands more saleable. At the same time, the second company would benefit the first because, according to an internal agreement between the two, the Scioto lands would wrap around the north and west of the Ohio Company settlements. All the Scioto associates had to do was find the capital Congress required to complete the purchase within the time frame specified in its contract.

Though Cutler and Duer struck their bargains with Congress in late July 1787, Cutler did not present the first contract to the Ohio Company until it met on August 29. The news spread quickly to Connecticut. In September, Barlow wrote Noah Webster: “We have contracted for a quantity of lands near the mouth of the Muskingum equal to what a million of dollars will pay for at 2/3 of a dollar pr acre in contil securities.” One share in the venture required only an investment of $1,000 in paper certificates and $10 in specie.¹⁰ Barlow reported to Abraham Baldwin that he had collected $12,000 in certificates, which he intended to subscribe for twelve shares. The Ohio Company succeeded in making its initial payment of $500,000 on October 27, to which Duer contributed $143,000 in depreciated certificates.¹¹ By that time Barlow had acquired rights to eighteen additional shares despite a company bylaw that no individual should hold more than five of its shares.

The limitation could easily be bypassed by distributing the excess shares among kin. An account book reflecting Barlow’s activities after he had become an agent of the company shows Aaron holding five shares and Jabez holding one, while Joel held four.¹² By the company’s articles of agreement each “division” of twenty shareholders was supposed to have an agent. But thirteen of the sixteen agents at the Ohio Company’s November 10 meeting each assumed responsibility for collecting subscriptions from more than twenty people. Only Sargent’s and Cutler’s 146 and 167 shares respectively exceeded Barlow’s 140 shares.¹³

The Ohio Company quickly came to regard Barlow as their chief point man for recruiting Connecticut subscribers. From the company’s perspective, Barlow’s war record as a continental officer in the Massachusetts line, together with his experience gathering subscriptions for his epic poem, perfectly qualified him for the task. Many of his former friends from the officer corps of the army were prominent in the Ohio Company, but Barlow’s contacts reached well beyond Massachusetts veterans. Of the subscribers to the first edition of The Vision of Columbus, 394, or slightly more than half the total, were Connecticut residents. The advantage of having a widely known agent could not have escaped the attention of the Ohio Company’s leaders. Barlow, for his part, didn’t need prodding to exert himself on the Ohio Company’s behalf because its affairs seemed much less messy than those of the Susquehannah Company.

Barlow’s willingness to take a prominent role in the Ohio Company soon led to his involvement with the Scioto Company. The sponsors of the latter company had divided its domain into thirty shares, each representing roughly one hundred thousand acres. Duer was given thirteen shares to dispose of, while Cutler and Sargent retained control over another thirteen shares. The remaining four shares were reserved for disposal in Europe under Duer’s direction, either by sale of the preemption right or mortgage. To broaden the base of the Scioto Company, Cutler and Sargent distributed fractional shares to Samuel Holden Parsons, Benjamin Tupper, Rufus Putnam, and Return Jonathan Meigs. Duer employed the same technique but with an eye to expanding the company’s access to capital. He gave the largest portion of shares to Andrew Craigie, a Massachusetts native who had settled in New York after serving as apothecary-general of the continental army. Since the end of the war, Craigie had participated in a transatlantic consortium of investors interested in the depreciated American debt.¹⁴

The most significant figure in Craigie’s network was Daniel Parker, who hailed from Craigie’s hometown. Parker had emerged in the early 1780s as a supplier of New York flour to Wadsworth and Carter, the contractors responsible for provisioning Rochambeau’s expeditionary force. In 1782 Parker joined William Duer in the contracts Robert Morris let for provisioning the continental army. With the peace, Parker invested as did Craigie and Morris in a series of ventures that included the first American entry into the China trade. Parker was not alone in overextending himself in the postwar period, but at the onset of the recession in 1784 he pursued the novel route of moving to Europe to avoid his American creditors. Though these included his former partners, they proved forgiving once he began including them in the syndicates he started organizing among Dutch and French investors to speculate in the U.S. debt. In 1786, Craigie visited Europe to sound out Parker about participating in speculative ventures like the Ohio and Scioto Companies and returned with the information that Parker was willing “to enter into an engagement with you as will be satisfactory to you”—an oblique reference to his past debts—by promoting a land scheme among European investors.¹⁵

Both land companies assumed that the depreciated federal securities issued during the final liquidation of accounts at the war’s termination would constitute most of their capital. By 1786 these securities were selling at 20 percent of their face value, opening the prospect of the promoters acquiring a substantial quantity of land at a dramatic discount. To avoid competition the two companies agreed to focus on different constituencies in their search for capital. The Ohio Company would concentrate on domestic sources, while the Scioto associates turned to Europe. Because of Europe’s superior capital resources, the speculators assumed a substantial portion of the American debt had found its way there.

Duer originally hoped to send Royal Flint to Europe as the Scioto associates’ agent. But when Flint fell ill, the leaders of the enterprise turned to Barlow, who was Manasseh Cutler’s first choice. As a former chaplain in the Massachusetts line, Cutler was aware of Barlow’s reputation and Parsons’s approval of him. Barlow’s literary reputation might be less useful in promoting an ambitious land speculation in Europe than it was in America, but Cutler still felt Barlow would confer on the enterprise a respectability that would otherwise be lacking. James Watson, a 1776 Yale graduate and Barlow’s Hartford friend, also vouched for him. Beyond these endorsements, Barlow had several undeniable assets: he was available; he was already deeply concerned in the Ohio Company lands; and—according to Cutler—he was prepared to leave almost immediately.

Speed was of the essence if the Scioto associates were to make their payments at bargain rates because the prospect of the Philadelphia convention was already raising the price of federal securities in America. Duer remained unenthusiastic about Barlow, sensing his visionary disposition and fearing his lack of business experience. Duer also realized one had to give a European agent a free hand to benefit from his agency. Finally, Barlow was not the sort of person the Duers normally associated with. Duer had inherited a British fortune and his wife—often referred to as “Lady Kitty”—was the daughter of Lord Sterling, a Revolutionary War general who claimed a disputed Scottish title. The Duers’ home in New York City resembled a nobleman’s establishment, and Barlow was never socially at ease with Duer.¹⁶

Duer eventually bowed to the pressure exerted by his other partners. He certainly could not question Barlow’s intelligence and cultural competence, qualities that might be critical in attracting the right sort of backers in Europe. Barlow knew hardly any French, but there was a sizable English-speaking community in France, composed predominantly of merchants. During February 1788, Duer summoned Barlow to New York City to discuss the agency, but he delayed making a final commitment until he heard further from his European contacts about the prospects of the speculation. In the interim, Barlow traveled to Boston to confer with Flint, stopping in Providence to meet with Sargent. These conversations were designed to familiarize Barlow with the details of the speculation and to acculturate him to the ways of the partners. Barlow appears to have satisfied them, and eventually Duer acquiesced as well, after concluding that the only alternative was to abandon the speculation.

Barlow for his part saw the agency as a way to put his and Ruth’s fortunes on a more secure footing. Half-brother Jabez’s fate served as a warning. He had not prospered in Connecticut and was among the forty-eight men sent out by the Ohio Company to attend the surveyors, whose work had to be completed before settlement could proceed. Barlow had no intention of following in his brother’s footsteps. Barlow’s literary interests led him to prefer contact with an advanced culture to life on the primitive frontier. He also had trouble imagining Ruth, who continued to suffer ill health, as a pioneer woman. The West for him would remain an object of speculation, and the Scioto Company’s European strategy looked as though it was more likely to hold the key to future riches than the Ohio Company.

In addition to his expenses, the associates offered Barlow a substantial stake in the venture. Cutler and Sargent had already conveyed to him roughly four thousand acres of Scioto lands in recognition of his active promotion of the Ohio Company in addition to one-sixtieth of their Ohio Company lands. Flint also had acquired a substantial interest in the Ohio and Scioto Company lands, which—together with fifty thousand acres of lands on the Wabash River and 7,500 acres of lands on the Mississippi associated with another speculation—he transferred to Barlow, probably as a form of life insurance for Ruth should Barlow die during his agency. Shortly before Barlow sailed for Europe, Duer added to Barlow’s stake by conveying one-sixtieth of his Scioto lands to him.¹⁷ With so much riding on Barlow’s management, Duer wanted to be sure that Barlow realized he stood to profit handsomely from his efforts.

Having been a landless farm boy, Barlow was undoubtedly dazzled by the prospect of becoming proprietor of a vast inland empire. However, that did not make it any easier for him to leave Ruth for what they both realized would be at least a year. Circumstances did not allow time for indecision. Both companies were aware of the effect a new federal government was already having on the price of the securities with which they hoped to pay Congress for their Ohio lands. While it was still not clear that the new government would be ratified—and if ratified whether it could be successfully implemented—the process had progressed far enough to make it imperative that Barlow leave immediately, which somewhat eased his pain at parting with Ruth. Since they had not acquired a house of their own and had been unable to start a family, Ruth could spend the interval visiting family and friends. The probability that Ruth, now in her early thirties, and Joel would not have children was verging on certainty. And if Joel managed his mission successfully, he would return to the United States comfortable, if not rich. Barlow sought financial independence primarily as a means of pursuing his literary ambitions. His mission could also lead to literary contacts in Europe where poets like Alexander Pope and James Thomson not only enjoyed national renown but had achieved financial independence as writers. Barlow had more curiosity about Europe than most provincial Americans and was eager to drink at the fountain of an older, more developed culture.

An Atlantic crossing in the eighteenth century required considerable preparation. For the better part of a month, Barlow busied himself making the necessary arrangements. He would not go completely alone, as Nathaniel Greene’s widow asked him to escort her son George Washington Greene to Paris, where Jefferson and Lafayette had promised to supervise his education. Barlow met with all the principals in the Scioto speculation, who agreed to advance monies to cover his expenses in Europe, though “with all Regard & Attention to the most rigid Economy.”¹⁸ On May 4, Duer gave Barlow his full power of attorney to act for the Scioto associates, though the document bore the date of May 16, 1788, when he was initially scheduled to depart. Contrary winds delayed him for nine days. Ruth did not tarry to see his vessel sail because she had found a convenient means of getting back to brother Dudley’s place in Greenfield, Connecticut, more than a week before.

On a brilliant Sunday morning, Barlow boarded the British-built packet vessel of little more than 400 tons that the French had captured during the Revolutionary War. After passing through the Narrows, it set course for Le Havre. At this time Atlantic crossings undertaken from west to east in the late spring were more uncomfortable than they were dangerous. Because the vessel that carried Barlow was not a fast sailor, he could expect to be at sea for about six weeks. Due to the prevailing winds and currents, this particular crossing took just over four weeks. Barlow suffered miserably from seasickness despite encountering only one storm as they entered the English Channel. His problems began almost from the moment he boarded the vessel in New York. Most people adjust to a vessel’s motion with time. That Barlow failed to do so suggests that he was suffering from an inner-ear disorder, a hypothesis supported by the relief he derived from closing his eyes and lying on his back and from his ability later in life to make such ocean crossings with far less distress.¹⁹ His misery was heightened by the cramped, dirty quarters and foul food available.

While the disagreeableness of the ocean crossing engrossed Barlow’s attention, events in America were further compromising his mission. Just before he landed in Le Havre, New Hampshire ratified the new Constitution, thus insuring that it would go into effect. New Hampshire’s action brought in Virginia and New York later that summer because neither state wanted their voices to be ignored in shaping the new government. As these developments became known in Europe, American securities rose. Daniel Parker would respond to the news by authorizing Andrew Craigie to acquire any amount of the American debt at double the price he had been prepared to give earlier in the year.²⁰ That meant that the European capital Barlow sought was much more likely to be interested in speculating in the rising value of American securities than in the settlement and development of the American West.

In a letter to Duer, Barlow described his physical condition on arrival in France as one in which “my brain vibrates like a pendulum & my eye will scarcely follow my pen.”²¹ The first weeks of his stay in Europe were devoted to recovering his balance and strength. Had he fully understood the implications of developments back home and in Europe, his recovery might have been even slower. As Barlow was in the process of exchanging the New World for the Old, both were being transformed in ways that exceeded the powers even of his visionary imagination.

Barlow found fascinating the many differences between the Old and New Worlds that daily came to his notice. Much as he marveled at the sophistication of his new surroundings, however, the responsibility he bore to his American partners was never far from his mind. As soon as he was able, he set out for Paris with the young George Washington Greene in tow. Two Swedish merchants, who happened to be fluent in English and French, assisted them on their journey. Barlow delivered young Greene into Lafayette’s care, taking the occasion to renew his acquaintance with the man who had proved so crucial in securing Louis XVI’s patronage for Barlow’s epic. The American also carried official dispatches as well as letters of introduction to Jefferson. The year before, Barlow had sent him a copy of The Vision of Columbus. Jefferson now invited Lafayette and Barlow to join him, along with a protégé of his own, William Short, in planning young Greene’s education.

Of more immediate import, however, was Barlow’s meeting with Daniel Parker, the American in Europe best situated to introduce Barlow to investors with the kind of money the Scioto associates needed. Significantly, Parker did not choose to have Barlow remain long in Paris. On July 12, just nine days after Barlow’s arrival in the French capital, the two men set out for London. During the course of the previous year, it had become clear that the French state could no longer meet its financial obligations. The most obvious means to redress the budgetary imbalance would have been for the propertied classes to have shouldered their share of the public burdens. However, they, together with many of the clergy, proved more interested in defending their privileges. The crisis had ripened as first one and then another financial minister failed to extract the concessions that would have restored the solvency of the French state. With no one prepared to compromise, the Crown’s only option narrowed to summoning the Estates-General—which had last met in 1614. Louis XVI resorted to this expedient after interest payments on France’s public debt were suspended on August 16, 1788.

Well before the summoning of the Estates-General, it was obvious where events were headed. Though Parker used the looming bankruptcy of France to justify going to London, he also realized that French capital might be turned more advantageously to other speculative ventures and wanted to avoid tapping the local capital market for speculation in American lands. Barlow lacked the knowledge to understand the situation. His first impressions of France were of an advanced society where poverty was less evident than he had expected. He had little inkling that the political options for avoiding a violent revolution were vanishing, though hints that revolutionary change was imminent did not alarm him. Like most Americans, Barlow distrusted centralized power and welcomed the summoning of the Estates-General. He remained optimistic about the tendency of events in France, declaring that “the Patriots have seen too much the example of liberty in America” to submit to anything short of a constitution on the American model.²²

Despite the loss of its colonies in the American war, Britain’s finances were healthier than France’s. Other factors, however, made Britain’s capital market unreceptive to American land speculations. Though Anglo-American trade was beginning to revive, the British government and much of the British public had yet to warm to American independence. After the Peace of 1783, Parliament had vested the Privy Council with the authority to regulate trade between the two nations. It excluded American vessels from Britain’s colonial trade and only allowed them to carry U.S. products directly to Britain. America had friends in Britain’s mercantile circles, but the capital of those trading with the new nation was already tied up in commercial ventures.

Although Barlow contracted a severe respiratory virus then raging in London, he nevertheless managed to make the rounds, meeting Americans with business interests like the brothers John and Nathaniel Cutting and the painter John Trumbull. Trumbull, one of the few Connecticut graduates of Harvard in Barlow’s generation, was a man with whom he remained on civil though distant terms for the rest of his life.²³ He also widened his circle of acquaintances to include several English radicals like Horne Tooke and Thomas Paine. Audiences were even arranged for him with the Marquis of Lansdowne and Sir Joseph Banks, the president of the Royal Society, but none of these contacts were serious prospects as investors.²⁴ Barlow realized that dining out six days a week with a widening circle of acquaintances was “bad oeconomy” for a man of business, but he justified it on the grounds that he was collecting valuable information.²⁵

When Barlow learned that every state but North Carolina and Rhode Island had ratified the new constitution, he welcomed the development as “surprising the world more . . . than in any of their former atchievements” [sic].²⁶ He was slow in realizing how the resulting rise in the value of the American debt, in conjunction with the French government’s desperate need for funds, would affect the availability of capital in Europe. Speculators had begun to see opportunity for trading France’s American debt at a steep discount for ready cash. When Britain turned out to be a dry well for the Scioto Company, Parker steered Barlow toward the Low Countries. This course allowed Parker to test how intense the competition to acquire France’s American debt had become among the continent’s capitalists.

Since 1782, Low Country bankers had shown much more interest than the rest of Europe in betting on America’s future. Two Dutch banking houses, the Amsterdam firms of Wilhem and Jan Willink and of Jacob and Nicholas Van Staphorst, served as commissioners of the U.S. loans in the Netherlands and paid most of the nation’s bills in Europe, including the annual interest on the outstanding Dutch loans. The Van Staphorst brothers were known to be interested in American lands, and Parker thought their response to the Scioto speculation would probably prove decisive.²⁷ At the end of the first week in September, Barlow and Parker left London for Brussels, via Dover and Calais, to meet with them.

The Van Staphorsts proved unwilling to commit themselves. Parker and Barlow lingered in Brussels because the Van Staphorsts had shown enough interest to suggest that they might change their minds. Before the two men headed back to Paris, Barlow tried a one-day excursion on his own to Antwerp, where he had trouble finding anyone who could speak English. This inability to communicate helped reconcile him to returning to Paris. Not the least of its many delights would be the repeated invitations from Jefferson and Lafayette to dine, chiefly in the company of Americans with whom the French patriot often surrounded himself. Parker and Barlow had been back in Paris for less than a week when they received a new summons from the Van Staphorsts to return to Brussels. They set out on October 5 only to find after their arrival that the Van Staphorsts were in Antwerp. An interview there ended as inconclusively as their first one had, leading Parker to turn to schemes for providing the bankrupt French state with cash in exchange for its American debt at a steep discount.

Proposals for transferring France’s American debt to private hands had been circulating in Europe since 1786. In June 1788, Parker had provided Jacques-Pierre Brissot de Warville, who represented a syndicate of European investors, with a letter of introduction to Andrew Craigie in New York pursuant to such a scheme.²⁸ Barlow was unaware that Brissot’s mission in America paralleled his in France. Nor did Parker yet know that Brissot had concluded an agreement by which Duer, Craigie, and Parker became equal partners with Brissot’s European sponsors in an enterprise.²⁹ The promoters of the scheme wanted to borrow enough money to pay interest on the American debt’s face value, which would have appreciated it to par. They then hoped to use the appreciated securities to purchase other assets at bargain prices. Barlow, as the hired agent of a competing enterprise and without resources of his own, had nothing to contribute to such undertakings. As the scramble for funds intensified among Duer’s speculating friends, Barlow would find himself progressively more isolated.³⁰

Documentation concerning Barlow’s life between October 1788 and July 1789 has largely disappeared, but it isn’t difficult to image how he spent his days. Learning French would have consumed a good deal of his time. Then there were multiple invitations to dine in the company of a growing circle of French and American friends. Everyone in Paris was debating the political pros and cons of various constitutional proposals for France. As an American, Barlow’s opinion was in demand, though not nearly as much as Jefferson’s before he returned to the United States in the autumn of 1789 to become secretary of state. We do know from Barlow’s reaction to criticisms of the new U.S. Constitution that he felt most Frenchmen were ignorant of the true nature of liberty. But he was not yet in a position to contribute directly to the debate over what would be the best constitution for France. When not otherwise occupied, he could sample the many cultural delights of Paris, including the public baths, the opera, the theater, and the perpetual carnival at the Palais Royal.³¹

Barlow’s routine in the French capital contrasted with that of Gouverneur Morris, who arrived in January 1789. As the member of the Philadelphia convention principally responsible for the final wording of the U.S. Constitution and the agent of Robert Morris, Gouverneur Morris had access to Parisian circles that Barlow was denied. Fluent in French, Morris also came equipped with a shrewdness that enabled him to make the most of his entrée to official circles. Despite being encumbered with a wooden leg—the result of a 1778 carriage accident—his tall, imposing figure caught the attention of the women who presided over society. He fell in love, as much as a man of his cynical temperament was capable of falling in love, with the beautiful young Countess de Flahaut. She was married to someone twice her age, and Morris ended up competing successfully with the Bishop of Autun, later known as Talleyrand, for her attention and sexual favors.

Just before the meeting of the Estates-General, Morris was invited to join the prestigious Club de Valois. In addition to Lafayette and Talleyrand, it included such luminaries as the Abbé Sieyès, the marquis de Condorcet, and the explorer and naval officer, Louis-Antoine Bougainville. Barlow realized he would never be included among Morris’s circle of friends and connections. He had to settle for the café society of the Palais Royal, where Morris also cut a much larger figure than Barlow.³² It took more than a year before Barlow became acquainted with some of the new men who would shape France’s revolution. The most important of these would be Brissot, whose mission to America with Parker’s endorsement undercut Barlow’s mission in Europe.

Before Parker learned of Brissot’s agreement with Duer and Craigie, he approached Morris about joining the group of investors he was assembling to purchase the American debt held by the French government. If Barlow had known of Parker’s overtures to Morris, it would have enhanced Barlow’s growing sense of powerlessness and irrelevance. In time, however, the comparative influence of Barlow and Morris would be reversed. Barlow and Brissot eventually became friends and political allies, incurring Morris’s hostility.³³ Morris thought the French ought to retain the monarchy and aristocracy, while Barlow and Brissot wanted France to become a republic. But during the interval in which everyone was waiting for the Estates-General to meet, Barlow was little more than an isolated spectator.

Many men, confronting the situation Barlow faced at the beginning of 1789, would have retired to America. Paris was certainly expensive, and returning home would have cut his losses. At first Barlow had not felt threatened by the high cost of living because he expected his expenses to be covered by the Scioto associates. He later complained that he had been provided with less than half of what he had been promised, which forced him to borrow on the assumption that he would eventually be compensated. Only belatedly did Barlow recognize that the “persons in France and Holland to whom I was recommended [Parker and Van Staphorst] and ordered to apply . . . were amusing me with false hopes.” It took him three-quarters of a year to grasp that “their interest as dealers in the American funds rendered them enemies to the sale of any lands which were to be paid for to the united states in those funds.”³⁴ Still, Barlow rejected the idea of immediately returning to America, even though he complained to Winthrop Sargent about his personal poverty.³⁵

His fear of undertaking another Atlantic crossing was probably the primary reason. He felt he had only narrowly survived the west-east transit undertaken in the late spring, which had the reputation of being shorter and easier than the return journey. What would be the effect of an east-west crossing, where one could expect to encounter head winds? The best time to make the latter crossing was in April or May as the winter westerlies abated. If he were going to return to the United States, he should have begun planning his trip in March 1789. But, as Barlow later admitted, that was the month in which he decided to stay in France.

His decision also reflected a reluctance to return without anything to show for a year’s effort, yet his conviction that something positive could still be extracted from his mission owed more to his past than present prospects. Barlow had grown used to extracting advantage from unpromising circumstances. Michael Baldwin’s expulsion of him from the family had led the older Baldwin children to adopt him first as a sibling and then as husband and brother-in-law. Where others had suffered economically from joining the army, Barlow had managed to improve his fortunes. He had then staked his future on writing an ambitious epic poem that he knew would be a hard sell in America. Nonetheless, his army connections and stubborn persistence enabled him to get the king of France to accept its dedication and to extract a modest profit from its publication. Barlow was used to the unexpected. Change seemed in the cards during the autumn of 1788 and winter of 1789, and Barlow assumed the advantages associated with unprecedented circumstances would outweigh the dangers.

During 1789 there was no better place from which to view the growing political excitement than Paris. Barlow witnessed at close quarters the first meeting of the Estates-General. When the three Estates became deadlocked in controversy, the Third Estate, joined by some of the nobility and clergy, proclaimed themselves the representatives of the nation. The deputies then took an oath not to disband until they had given France a constitution. The Estates-General thus transformed itself into the National Assembly. Within weeks it had adopted sweeping social reforms, including the abolition of feudal privileges and the church’s tithe, as well as the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen.

Not all of these events took place peacefully. The meeting of the Estates-General at the beginning of May was preceded by the Réveillon riots, which took twenty-five lives. Louis XVI’s dismissal of his finance minister, Jacques Necker, on July 11 led to the storming of the Bastille on July 14. Barlow’s later claim that no one had died as a result of the Revolution was willfully inaccurate because the Parisian mob displayed the heads of the more prominent men they had killed outside the Hôtel de Ville. Barlow had more reason to be disillusioned by the irresolute, spoiling role Louis XVI played in the unfolding drama, since Barlow’s dedication of The Vision of Columbus had painted the King in entirely different hues.

Barlow’s decision to remain in France meant that his separation from Ruth would last longer than both had expected. Some Americans visiting Europe took advantage of the availability of women and the anonymity that a large city afforded to cultivate new intimacies. Despite Gouverneur Morris’s observation that Barlow was improperly flirting with Col. Samuel Blackden’s wife at one of Jefferson’s dinners, Barlow appears to have remained faithful. The absence of letters from Ruth made him extremely anxious. Knowing that her health had not always been the best, he often assumed the worst. His devotion is also evident from the dozens of letters he wrote Ruth during his first year and a half abroad. Though most of them have been lost, the twenty-nine that survive bear witness to his continuing need for her approval and affection. This need would lead him to urge her to do what he was reluctant to undertake himself. Toward the end of 1789 he suggested she cross the ocean to join him.³⁶

Barlow assumed that the meeting of the Estates-General would result in France’s peaceful evolution from a centralized monarchy checked only by public opinion to a monarchy limited by a constitution. He was confident that the major strides toward liberty he expected France to make would improve the human race. Barlow accepted uncritically France’s claim to be the leading civilized nation of the world, and he continued to dismiss as lies—motivated either by British envy or aristocratic intransigence—any reports of violence. Two weeks after the storming of the Bastille, he wrote Ruth that “it is really no small gratification to me to have seen two complete revolutions in favor of liberty” at first hand. Barlow remained confident that France would settle its affairs upon a “rational & lasting foundation.”³⁷

Gouverneur Morris, by contrast, was struck by the savagery of the Paris mob. Some of its ferocity can be attributed to a bread shortage that persisted throughout much of 1789. Barlow’s experience during the American Revolution made such privations seem routine, and, with regular access to the dinner tables of others, he ran little risk of experiencing hunger himself. Nor did he construe the continued signs of financial disarray as an indication that the Revolution was in trouble. Such an inference would have been equivalent to concluding that the collapse of the continental currency would derail the American Revolution.

Revolutions in their initial stages attract a wide range of adventurers, often men of considerable talent though not necessarily with characters to match. It was Barlow’s fate to encounter one such individual during this period. William Playfair (1759–1823) was the son of a Scotch parson without social or political connections. Playfair had apprenticed as an industrial metal worker and worked afterward for the inventor James Watt, preparing drawings of some of his steam engines. In 1786 Playfair invented the line series graph for displaying statistical information, but this innovation, as well as his subsequent development of bar and pie charts, was greeted with indifference, and his early writings on economic subjects were similarly ignored. A sense that his ingenuity was being discounted—and his chronic need for money—led Playfair into questionable business practices. In 1787 he moved to Paris where he hoped to make his fortune transferring Britain’s new industrial technology to France. He seemed on the verge of winning the king’s patronage until the financial crisis of 1788 doomed his prospects.

Sometime in late 1788 or early 1789, Barlow and Playfair met through Col. Samuel Blackden, a Massachusetts native who had come to Paris to sell his Kentucky lands. Barlow and Playfair turned out to have a lot in common. In addition to resenting their exclusion from the best opportunities, they both wanted to profit from the Revolution that was unfolding before their eyes. Barlow was especially impressed by Playfair’s knowledge of French and France. In 1789 Playfair published a tract about his statistical innovations under the title of Tableaux d’arithmétique linéaire and sent Jefferson a copy. Two pamphlets in French about paper money would follow in 1790. Playfair looked as though he knew what he was doing and was capable of influencing events.

During the summer of 1789, Barlow and Playfair joined forces to save the Scioto enterprise by finding new ways to raise the large capital due Congress.³⁸ Their partnership would gradually transform the Scioto Company from an enterprise trying to sell its preemptive right to large investors to one that sold lands directly to individuals. From Barlow’s perspective, there may not have seemed to be that much difference between the two ventures so long as the capital needed to purchase the preemptive right from Congress could be assembled. It is not clear whether Barlow or Playfair first conceived of changing Barlow’s Scioto agency into a colonizing venture. Barlow later said the scheme had begun taking shape in April 1789. As the French Revolution took a more violent, uncertain turn, both realized that a rupture of such magnitude would lead people of substance to seek refuge from the upheaval engulfing France. What better refuge was there than North America?

In July 1789, probably shortly after the storming of the Bastille, Barlow gave Playfair a one-thirtieth interest in the Scioto Company in exchange for “rendering such services as might be in his power.”³⁹ Playfair successfully recruited a group of French investors to form a company to buy the preemption right from the Scioto associates. On August 3 this group signed an Acte de Formation before a notary of the Crown, constituting itself into the Compagnie du Scioto. The Acte de Formation stated that the company was issuing eight thousand shares of stock each priced at one thousand livres. In this manner, the company hoped to raise the 8 million livres, or roughly $1.5 million, either from their own resources or by selling shares to third parties. Since the sum was not large enough to pay for all of the preemption right to the Scioto associates’ 3.5 million acres of Ohio lands, it seems probable that all the parties involved saw this as a trial balloon. If successful, the Compagnie du Scioto could issue another eight thousand shares. If unsuccessful, it would transform itself into a colonizing venture.⁴⁰ It also seems probable from Barlow’s repeated and bitter complaints about Duer’s failure to communicate that Barlow had written home proposing the new direction that was eventually taken, but such a letter has not survived.

Playfair had succeeded in recruiting French investors who looked as though they had the wherewithal to make the Compagnie du Scioto a success. Leading the list both officially and socially was Louis Marthe, the marquis of Guoy D’Arsy, who was High Bailiff of the Sword, a lieutenant general, and a member of the Constituent Assembly, which had recently evolved out of the Estates-General. The group also included the comptroller of the pay office of the domain of the king, Jean François Noël Maheas; Guillaume Louis Joseph, the chevalier de Coquelin; and the Parisian merchant, Antoine St. Didier. At the end of August, Barlow wrote Winthrop Sargent that he expected a contract with the Compagnie du Scioto to be consummated within ten days time and that the deal would enable the Scioto associates in America to honor their Congressional contract.⁴¹

Playfair’s recruits turned out to be disappointments. None were from the front rank of the nobility with whom Gouverneur Morris routinely associated, and before the end of the year the most prominent of the eight, Maheas, had been forced to flee France. A less prominent associate absconded with fifty shares of the new company and a power to sell the company’s lands. These misfortunes only partially explain why the new company was no more able to raise the capital required to pay for the preemption than Barlow had been. More important was France’s deepening political crisis. In early October, a Parisian crowd marched to Versailles, led by an angry mob of women, and their success in bringing both the king and the National Assembly back to Paris, pointed strongly towards events taking a more radical course. Money went into hiding, making it increasingly difficult for the new company’s members to borrow on their own accounts.⁴²

Barlow undoubtedly hoped to keep the Compagnie du Scioto from abandoning its identity as an enterprise that recruited capital from French men of substance, at least until his American associates agreed to a change of plan. But as land came to be regarded as the only safe investment, it wasn’t long before the members insisted on selling Scioto lands and recruiting settlers. They did so even though neither the Compagnie du Scioto nor the Scioto associates would legally own the land until all of it had been paid for. They simply assumed that once a beachhead of settlers was established, a land rush to America would ensue. They gambled on assembling one-quarter of the funds needed to complete the Scioto associates’ contract with Congress before the first settlers arrived and assumed that demonstrating the potential of the course they had adopted would be sufficient to persuade Congress to confer title. Having yoked himself to a group of Frenchmen and to Playfair, all of whom had other priorities, Barlow proved unable to resist his partners’ insistence that direct sales and settlement was the only route to success.⁴³

Barlow remained troubled, since neither the Compagnie du Scioto nor the Scioto associates had title to the lands involved. At the beginning of November, he attempted to relieve the Scioto associates of responsibility for selling what they did not own by transferring the full preemption right to the Compagnie du Scioto. For six livres per acre, Barlow—acting as agent for Cutler, Sargent, and Duer—promised to deed over to the Compagnie du Scioto the entire 3 million acres of land. The sale price of 18 million livres would be payable in eight installments in cash or in American securities at 90 percent of their face value. The first payment of 1.5 million livres was to be made in December 1789, followed by additional payments at the end of April and December for three years. Beginning in April 1792, the payments would rise to 3 million livres annually through 1794, when the purchase would be completed. In return Barlow bound himself to deliver title to the lands as the Scioto Company received payment for them. Playfair, Barlow, and the Parisian attorney, Jean Chais Soisson, were to act as agents for the Compagnie du Scioto in selling the land at the best price that could be obtained.⁴⁴ As the Scioto associates received payments, they would redeem the preemption from Congress and issue valid title to the lands that had been purchased. The principal problem that this contract failed to address was that the Compagnie’s schedule of payments was not in synch with those the Scioto Company was obliged to make to the U.S. Treasury.

Barlow accepted the idea that once the Compagnie demonstrated its commercial viability, the Scioto associates in America would have little difficulty persuading Congress to adjust its contract. Such a painless way of reducing the Revolutionary War debt by $3 million—not to mention settling the western country—was unlikely to be rejected by a government that had yet to make any progress in either enterprise. If the government proved inflexible, Barlow assumed that his American associates could borrow the sums needed to get title because “the sacrifice is small, & the object infinite.” If all went well with his plan, the Scioto associates stood to make a profit that Barlow estimated would come to over $1 million.⁴⁵ Barlow thought he had not only saved the venture but made the fortunes of the participants, his own included. His calculations were based on a confluence of developments in the first part of November 1789, which led him to assume the Scioto lands would all be sold in a matter of months. He expected the intensifying revolutionary upheaval to initiate a mass migration of twenty thousand Frenchmen, many of substantial property.

As France was absorbing the implications of the autumn’s events, the Compagnie du Scioto issued a pamphlet under the title Prospectus pour l’establisement surles rivières d’Ohio et de Scioto en Amérique that provided a glowing description of the lands involved. It claimed that the Scioto River offered access to the Ohio River and Lake Erie and that the Ohio Company had managed to settle one thousand persons on neighboring lands in the previous year, leading to a 50 to 400 percent rise in land values. The Prospectus argued that the Compagnie du Scioto would keep in France the profits derived from settling the American wilderness. Once the enterprise was launched, American funds would be available to complete the purchase agreement that stretched out until 1794. The rising payment schedule was presented not as a weakness but as an indication of the increasing profits the Compagnie would reap as settlement progressed. Since the market price of the American debt was currently no higher than 70 percent of face value, the Compagnie’s offer to accept them at 90 percent of face value gave purchasers paying in such instruments a 20 percent discount. Finally, the Prospectus announced that purchasers would only be required to pay half the price up front. The other half was due within two years, payable in crops like tobacco and wheat, in livestock, or by the sale of a portion of the lands the settlers had improved.⁴⁶

Only the urgency of the Compagnie to come up with their first payment of 1.5 million livres by the end of December 1789 can explain the terms of purchase outlined by the Prospectus. Barlow can be excused from direct responsibility for most of its hyperboles for two reasons: his French still was not up to writing such a document, and the terms outlined were totally incompatible with a timely honoring of the Scioto contract in which he had a major stake. Nonetheless, he probably had a hand in two of the more realistic passages in the Prospectus. The first dealt with the difficulty American farmers experienced in establishing contact with distant markets; the second, an addenda entitled “Avis,” estimated the actual cost of moving from France to America and settling there to be between 1,320 and 3,120 livres. The “Avis” assumed that most of the French emigrants would be men of substance, while the Prospectus tried to reassure them that they would retain access to European markets.

Barlow went along with the claims made in the Prospectus because the Compagnie still seemed like the only way of saving the Scioto venture. At the same time, Gouverneur Morris began quietly discouraging any Frenchmen who enquired about the Compagnie. His opposition did little initially to diminish the enthusiasm for investing in American lands, and the rage to purchase the Scioto lands continued. During the last two months of 1789 and January 1790, more than seventy-five thousand acres were sold.⁴⁷ Barlow certainly was not prepared to take responsibility for puncturing the ballooning expectations of the French public. He was also aware of the effect his prolonged stay in Europe was having on expectations in America. On December 9, 1789, his Hartford friend John Trumbull had written Barlow’s Yale classmate Oliver Wolcott, expressing bewilderment at what had kept Barlow in Europe for eighteen months. “If he should not effect something soon, I would advise him to write ‘the Vision of Barlow’ as a sequel to those of Columbus & McFingal.”⁴⁸

Both considerations pushed Barlow into predicting that events in France would permit the United States to extinguish its entire Revolutionary War debt in the course of a few short years. Barlow wrote several letters to Alexander Hamilton drawing attention to this possibility, but Hamilton probably did not receive them until after he had committed himself to the policies outlined in his January 1790 Report on Public Credit. The letters have not survived. We only know about them because Abraham Baldwin mentioned that Hamilton had received them when Baldwin wrote Barlow during the spring of 1790.⁴⁹ Though Hamilton refused to commit himself, Barlow’s proposal still looked like a live option to Baldwin well into the summer of 1790 because of the difficulties the secretary of the treasury was encountering in getting Congress to agree to an assumption of the state debts.