JOEL ROBERTS POINSETT
This is another quotation illustrating that the notion of the armed American, skilled with firearms, ready to fight for the country, was a romantic myth. Few Americans, except those in danger from Indians on the frontier, wanted guns; fewer still knew how to use or care for them; very few could afford them.
Joel Roberts Poinsett was an American physician and diplomat. He was the first U.S. agent in South America, a member of the South Carolina legislature and the United States House of Representatives, the first United States Minister to Mexico, a Unionist leader in South Carolina during the Nullification Crisis, Secretary of War under Martin Van Buren, and a co-founder of the National Institute for the Promotion of Science and the Useful Arts (a predecessor of the Smithsonian Institution).
