GALLATIN, ABRAHAM ALBERT ALPHONSE, financier and statesman, was b. at Gen eva in 1701. His parents died while he was young, but nevertheless he received a good education at the university of Geneva, where he graduated in 1779. In 1780, he went to the United States, then struggling for independence, and eagerly embraced their cause. He offered his services to caps- John Allen, and so distinguished himself, that he was speedily appointed commandant of Passamaquoddy fort. When peace was restored in 1783, he became teacher of French in Harvard college, but receiving his paternal inheritance, soon after, purchased land, first in Virginia, and then in Pennsylvania, where he occupied himself with agricultural pursuits. He entered political life again in 1789, when he a member of the convention for revising the state con stitution of Pennsylvania. In 1793, he was elected a member of the senate of the United States, and in 1795, entered congress. In 1801, Jefferson appointed him secretary of the treasury, in which post he was of signal service to his adopted country, and showed himself to be an exceedingly able financier. In 1809, he became minister of finance.
He took an important part in the negotiations for peace with England in 1814. and signed the treaty of Ghent. From 1815 to 1823. lie was United States minister at Paris, and in 1826 lie was sent to London as ambassador extraordinary. On hisretu•n in 1827 lie settled at New York, and devoted himself to literature, being chiefly occupied in his torical and ethnological researches. From 1831 to 1839, he was president of the national bank; and from 1843 to his death, he was president of the New York historical society. He was one of the founders and the first president of the ethnological society of America. He died Aug. 12,1849. He was the author of numerous publications on finance, politics, and ethnology. Among these are—jfeinoir of the -Vora-eastern Bound ary (1843); .Notes on the Semi-cirilized Nations of Mexico, Yucatan, and Central America (1845), etc.