Gallatin, Albert

Gallatin, Albert (1761–1849), secretary of the treasury and leading Republican financier.Born in Geneva, Switzerland, Gallatin came to America in 1780 and settled in western Pennsylvania, where his political career began. Elected to the state legislature in 1790, he ran successfully for the U.S. Senate as a Jeffersonian Republican three years later, only to be unseated in February 1794 by Federalist party opponents on the grounds that he had not been a citizen for nine years, the Constitutional requirement for election to the Senate. Later that year, in 1794, Gallatin won election to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served as minority leader. When Thomas Jefferson assumed the presidency in 1801, he appointed Gallatin secretary of the treasury.

In this post, Gallatin stressed the Jeffersonian ideals of agricultural development and grassroots democracy. Believing that government is best when it governs least, he helped reduce the public debt from $80 million in 1801 to $45 million by 1804. But a series of foreign and domestic crises, including the War of 1812, drove the debt up to $123 million, requiring the introduction of internal taxes.

After leaving the Treasury Department, Gallatin served as a diplomat for Presidents James Madison and James Monroe. He headed the commission that concluded the Treaty of Ghent in 1814, and he spent the next decade as U.S. ambassador first to France and then to England. Ending his public career in 1827, Gallatin settled in New York City, where he worked as a banker and founded the New York Historical Society. Symbolically, a statue of Gallatin faces the U.S. Treasury Building in Washington, D.C.
See also Early Republic, Era of the; Federal Government, Legislative Branch: House of Representatives; Federal Government, Executive Branch: Department of the Treasury; Foreign Relations: U.S. Relations with Europe; Taxation.

Bibliography

Henry Adams , The Life of Albert Gallatin, 1879, reissued 1943.
Raymond Walters , Albert Gallatin: Jeffersonian Financier and Diplomat, 1957.
Alexander Balinky , Albert Gallatin: Fiscal Theories and Policies, 1958.

Alexander Balinky