Gallatin, Albert (1761-1849)

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Albert Gallatin (1761-1849)

Secretary of the treasury and diplomat

Democratic Heritage . Albert Gallatin was born on 29 January 1761 into an aristocratic French family with a history of over four hundred years of leadership in the area around Geneva in what is now Switzerland. Geneva was the birthplace of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the eighteenth-century democratic political philosopher, and as a young man Gallatin embraced Rousseau’s romantic ideas about returning to nature and celebrating the common man. These ideas inspired him to go to the United States in 1780, rejecting an offer to be an officer in the Hessian army sent by King George III to fight the American Patriots. Once in America, Gallatin took little part in the conflict, instead attempting to set up a trading business.

Western Politics . After the Revolution, Gallatin moved to the frontier area of western Pennsylvania, settling along the Monongahela River. He was not successful as a pioneer or a land speculator, although he became deeply identified with the interests of western settlers as he began a career in politics. First in state politics and then at the federal level, he advocated reforms sought by his western constituents which were at the heart of the policies of the Jeffersonian party of the 1790s. In Pennsylvania he urged changes to the penal code, the establishment of a public-school system, and the abolition of slavery. Gallatin played an important mediating role during the 1794 Whiskey Rebellion, an uprising of western Pennsylvanians angered by federal liquor taxes. Because he had supported them in the past, the crowd listened to Gallatin’s pleas for moderation, and he helped minimize the military conflict that followed.

Treasury Secretary. It was in public finance where he made his greatest contribution, however, ironically by promoting policies favored by the Federalists for both Pennsylvania and the nation. He supported the founding of a state bank, greater control over the currency, retirement of public debt, and greater accountability of the Treasury Department to the legislature. This last effort earned him Federalist enmity after Gallatin became a congressman in 1795, as Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton saw it as meddling in his job. Despite Federalist opposition, Gallatin succeeded in establishing a standing committee on finance (today the House Ways and Means Committee) to centralize legislative efforts to control the nation’s finances. After Jefferson’s election as president in 1800, Gallatin naturally became secretary of the treasury, a post he held into the administration of James Madison, resigning in 1814. Gallatin established a system of regular financial reports to Congress and worked hard to reduce the national debt in order to secure the nation’s independence. He also sought to fund internal improvements to open up the western territories, including plans for $20 million worth of canals and roads connecting eastern rivers with the Mississippi. The Embargo of 1807 and the War of 1812 ruined these plans as government revenues sank with the disruption of trade and expenses rose for waging war. In 1811 Congress refused to recharter the Bank of the United States, despite Gallatin’s objections, further undermining the currency. He resigned in the wake of intense Federalist opposition to the war and the financial policies needed to support it.

Statesman . Gallatin left for Europe in 1813 as part of a commission sent to negotiate with Britain to end the war. He was ultimately successful in framing the Treaty of Ghent of December 1814, which secured a number of economic advantages for the United States despite the nation’s poor military record in the war. Over later years Gallatin pursued a distinguished diplomatic career, with periods as minister to France and Britain. He succeeded in settling many boundary disputes and negotiating many commercial treaties that served the nation well. He retired to New York City in 1827, spending some years as head of John Jacob Astor’s National Bank and helping to end the financial crisis of the Panic of 1837. In his retirement he also pursued an interest in Native Americans, writing and sponsoring a number of ethnographic works about various tribes. Outliving many of his colleagues from the early days of the republic, he died on 12 August 1849.