Albert Gallatin...

Signature of Albert Gallatin Click for list of Illustrations...

The Home of Albert Gallatin...

Every generation demands that history shall be rewritten. This is not alone because it requires that the work should be adapted to its own point of view, but because it is instinctively seeking those lines which connect the problems and lessons of the past with its own questions and circumstances. If it were not for the existence of lines of this kind, history might be entertaining, but would have little real value. The more numerous they are between the present and any earlier period, the more

Of all European-born citizens who have risen to fame in the political service of the United States, Albert Gallatin is the most distinguished. His merit in legislation, administration, and diplomacy is generally recognized, and he is venerated by men of science on both continents. Not, however, until the publication of his writings was the extent of his influence upon the political life and growth of the country other than a vague tradition. Independence and nationality were achieved by the Revo

Political revolutions are the opportunity of youth. In England, Pitt and Fox; in America, Hamilton and Gouverneur Morris; in Europe, Napoleon and Pozzo di Borgo, before they reached their thirtieth year, helped to shape the political destiny of nations. The early maturity of Gallatin was no less remarkable. In his voluminous correspondence there is no trace of youth. At nineteen his habits of thought were already formed, and his moral and intellectual tendencies were clearly marked in his charac

The death of the grandfather of Mr. Gallatin, and soon after of his aunt, strongly tempted him to make a journey to Geneva in the summer of 1793. The political condition of Europe at that time was of thrilling interest. On January 21 the head of Louis XVI. fell under the guillotine, to which Marie Antoinette soon followed him. The armies of the coalition were closing in upon France. Of the political necessity for these state executions there has always been and will always be different judgments

Mr. Gallatin was now out of public life. For eighteen months since he came up to the legislature with his friends of the Pittsburgh convention, he had not returned to Fayette. His private concerns were suffering in his absence. Neither his barn, his meadow, nor his house was finished at the close of 1793. In May, 1794, he took his wife to his country home. Their hopes of a summer of recreation and domestic comfort in the wild beauties of the Monongahela were not to be realized. Before the end of

The first session of the fourth Congress began at Philadelphia on Monday, December 7, 1795. Washington was president, John Adams vice-president. No one of Washington's original constitutional advisers remained in his cabinet. Jefferson retired from the State Department at the beginning of the first session of the third Congress. Edmund Randolph, appointed in his place, resigned in a cloud of obloquy on August 19, 1795, and the portfolio was temporarily in charge of Timothy Pickering, secretary o

The material comfort of every people depends more immediately upon the correct management of its finances than upon any other branch of government. Haute finance , to use a French expression for which there is no English equivalent, demands in its application the faculties of organization and administration in their highest degree. The relations of money to currency and credit, and their relations to industry and agriculture, or in modern phrase of capital to labor, fall within its scope. The hi

L'État c'est moi was the autocratic maxim of Louis Quatorze. An adherence to it cost the Bourbons their throne. Burke was more philosophical when he said, “The revenue of the State is the State.” Its imposition, its collection, and its application involve all the principles and all the powers of government, constitutional or extraordinary. It is the sole foundation of public credit, the sole support of the body politic, its life-blood in peace, its nerve in war. The “purse and the sword” are res

While Mr. Gallatin differed from his early Republican associates in many of their theories of administration, he was a firm believer in the best of their principles, namely, the wisdom of giving free scope to the development of national resources with the least possible interference on the part of government. One of his purposes in his persistent desire for economy in expenditure was to reduce the tariff upon foreign importations to the lowest practicable limit. He was the earliest public advoca

To arrive at a correct estimate of Mr. Gallatin's administration of the Treasury Department, a cursory review of the establishment as he received it from the hands of Mr. Wolcott is necessary. This review is confined to administration in its limited sense, namely, the direction of its clerical management under the provisions of statute law. The organization of the department as originated by Hamilton and established by the act of September 2, 1789, provided for a secretary of the treasury as hea

There is no more instructive chapter in the history of finance than that upon the banking system of the United States. It has its distinct eras of radical change, each of which presents a series of tentative experiments. The outcome, by a process of development, in which political expediency has been as effective an agency as financial necessity, is the present national banking system. Though the term “government,” or “national,” bank is constantly used in reference to the great banking institut

The general principles which Mr. Jefferson proposed to apply in his conduct of the government were not principles of organization but of administration. The establishments devised by Hamilton, in accordance with or in development of the provisions of the Constitution, were organic. The new policy was essentially restrictive and economic. The military and naval establishments were to be kept at their lowest possible limit. The Treasury Department was to be conducted on strictly business principle

On May 9, 1813, the ship Neptune sailed from New Castle on the Delaware, having on board Albert Gallatin and James A. Bayard, ministers of the United States, with their four secretaries, of whom were Mr. Gallatin's son James, and George M. Dallas, son of his old Pennsylvania friend. They were accompanied to sea by a revenue cutter. Off Cape Henlopen they were overhauled by the British frigate on the station, and their passport was countersigned by the English captain. On June 20 they reached the

Strange as it appears, there is no doubt that Mr. Gallatin was at this time heartily weary of political life, and seriously contemplated a permanent retirement to the banks of the Monongahela. He naturally enough declined a nomination to Congress, which was tendered him by the Philadelphia district. His tastes were not for the violence and turbulence of the popular house. Madison left him full time to decide whether he could arrange his private affairs so as to accept the mission to Paris. In No

In the spring of 1826 Mr. Rufus King, who had taken the place of Mr. Rush at London, that gentleman having been called to the Treasury by President Adams, fell ill, and requested the assistance of an extraordinary envoy. Mr. Gallatin accepted the mission. Before his nomination reached the Senate Mr. King's resignation was received and accepted. President Adams wishing to intrust Mr. Gallatin alone with the pending negotiations, and unwilling to make the two nominations of minister and envoy, pro

During the twelve years that Mr. Gallatin was in the Treasury he was continually looking for some man who could take his place in that office, and aid in the direction of national politics; to use his own words, “who could replace Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Madison, and himself.” Breckenridge of Kentucky only appeared and died. The eccentricities of John Randolph unfitted him for leadership. William H. Crawford of Georgia, Monroe's secretary of the treasury, alone filled Gallatin's expectations. To a po

Mr. Gallatin's land speculations were not profitable. His plan of Swiss colonization did not result in any pecuniary advantage to himself. His little patrimony, received in 1786, he invested in a plantation of about five hundred acres on the Monongahela. Twelve years later, in 1798, he was neither richer nor poorer than at the time of his investment. The entire amount of claims which he held with Savary he sold in 1794, without warranty of title, to Robert Morris, then the great speculator in we