GALLATIN, ALBERT (1761-1849). One of the most distinguished of American public finan ciers. He was born in Geneva, Switzerland, Jan uary 29, 1761, and graduated at the Academy of Geneva in 1779. In 1780 he and a friend, Henri Serre, came to the United States, and spent a year at Machias, Me., in trade pur suits, with little success. Gallatin then moved to Boston, where he supported himself by teach ing French, and in July, 1782, received per mission to give instruction at Harvard. College. In the following year he explored, and invested in, lands on the western frontier, and in 1784 established a country store in Fayette County, Pa., near the Virginian boundary. He was in 1789 a delegate to the State Constitutional Con vention, and in 1790, as also in the two following years, he was sent to the Legislature by Fayette County, where he was conspicuously active in opposition to the Federal excise law, and where, also, the basis of his reputation was made by his report of the Committee of Ways and Means in the session of 1790-91. In February, 1793, he was elected to the United States Senate. and took his seat on December 2d; but in the following Febru ary the Senate decided, by a party vote of 14 to 12, that he did not'possess the proper qualifications as to citizenship, it having been less than nine years, the time prescribed by the Constitution, since he had taken the oath of citizenship and al legiance to the State of Virginia. Gallatin was active at the time of the Whisky Insurrection (q.v.), and although he urged submission to law and the refraining from all improper and illegal acts, nevertheless he went so far in his relations with the insurrectionists as to give him self, both then and later, considerable political em barrassment. He was, at the end of the trouble, elected to the Pennsylvania Assembly, and from 1795 to 1801 was a member of Congress, where he allied himself with those Republicans who, under the leadership of Madison, were opposing the administration of the Federalists. "In his first term." says his biographer, Stevens. "he asserted his point and took his place in the coun cils of the party. In his second, he became its acknowledged chief. In the third, be led its forces to final victory." He served on important committees, and stead fastly opposed the administration, especially in the matter of the Jay Treaty, the increase of the army and navy, and the relations with France. Particularly did he attack the adminis tration of the finances, a field with which his pamphlets showed him to be familiar, and his services and abilities in this direction were rec ognized by Jefferson, who in 1801 made him Secretary of the Treasury, a post which he held until 1813. During these years a marked re duction was effected in the national debt, the practice as to appropriations was made more systematic, the sinking-fund system was im proved, and the preparations were made which rendered a war and an increase of the national debt possible without a disorganization of the public financial system. Gallatin also rendered
important service in the negotiations which were concluded by the Treaty of Ghent (q.v.). Of his services in this connection, one of his biog raphers, Henry Adams, has said: "Far more than contemporaries ever supposed or than is now imagined, the Treaty of Ghent was the es pecial work and the peculiar triumph of Mr. Gal latin." Thereafter, declining both a nomination to Congress and an opportunity to resume charge of the Treasury Department, he became Minister to France, filling the post from 1816 to 1823. Three years later he went to London as Minister, remaining one year, and concluding two impor tant conventions. He had been nominated for the Vice-Presidency by the Crawford Republicans in May, 1824, but withdrew in October to make room for Clay, and in 1843 he declined to enter Tyler's Cabinet as Secretary of the Treasury.
After the conclusion of his diplomatic service he removed to New York (in 1828), and that city remained his permanent residence until his death. He was president of the National Bank there for some years; but the duties were light, and he had ample time for study and public ser vice. He was much interested in the problems of public education and of finance; and took an active part in the movement which resulted in the founding of New York University; but his chief interest appears to have been in the study of ethnology, especially of American ethnology. He founded the American Ethnological Society in 1842, which for a brief period was a very serviceable agency for the promotion of such studies, and he wrote several valuable essays and monographs on ethnological subjects. He did not lose his interest in finance and in history, however, and in every way gave an example of scholarship and of public spirit rarely surpassed by any one in this country.
He was twice married, first, in 1789, to Sophie Allegre, who died within a few months, and then, in 1793, to Hannah Nicholson, daughter of Commodore James Nicholson, whose death short ly preceded his own. He died August 12, 1849, at Astoria, L. I. He published in 1796 a Sketch of the Finances of the United States, and in 1843 memoirs on the American Rights to the North eastern Frontier, and many minor essays on finance, history, and ethnology, his Synopsis of the Indian Tribes Within the United States, East of the Rocky Mountains, and in the British and Russian Possessions in North America (1836), and his Notes on the Semi-Civilized Nations of Mexico, Yucatan, and Central Ameri ca, with Conjectures on the Origin of Semi Civilization in America (1845), being especially noteworthy. His Writings, which are of great value in the study of the political history of the United States in the first part of the nineteenth century, have been edited by Henry Adams (3 vols., Philadelphia, 1879). Consult: Adams, Life of Albert Gallatin (Philadelphia, 1879), and Stevens, Albert Gallatin, "American Statesmen Series" (Boston, 1884).