A Tennessee town and counties in Kentucky and Montana are named after him. His statue graces one of the entrances to the U.S. Treasury building in Washington, D.C. One of the three rivers that converge to form the Missouri River carries his name. So do a mountain range and a national forest in Montana.
Though these namesakes are notable, the man himself deserves so much more. His name was Albert Gallatin. One of his biographers, Nicholas Dungan, writes that Gallatin “came to America in his youth and, in a lifetime of public service to his adopted country, contributed to the welfare and independence of the United States as fully as any other statesman of his age.”
Though he is, in the words of another biographer Frank Ewing, “America’s Forgotten Statesman,” it would be challenging to find anyone else of his day with a more impressive résumé.
Born in the Republic of Geneva in present-day Switzerland in 1761, Albert Gallatin was orphaned at an early age. Homeschooled by a distant relative for 7 years, he then entered a private boarding school. He left for America in 1780 at age 19, at a time when America was at war with its mother country.
Though he hoped to make his fortune in buying and selling land, his first real job here was teaching French at Harvard University. He then settled in the mountains of Southwestern Pennsylvania, where the home he built (which he dubbed “Friendship Hill”) stands today as a national historic site.
Amazingly, Gallatin found himself named a U.S. Senator by his colleagues in the Pennsylvania legislature in 1793. He never sought the seat and even publicly declared himself ineligible because he had not yet been a U.S. citizen for the nine years the Constitution required to be chosen for the job. Nonetheless, he held the office for about two months (December 1793 to February 1794) until the Senate determined that he was right, in that he hadn’t yet fulfilled the citizenship rule.
Frank Ewing, in his 1959 biography titled “America’s Forgotten Statesman: Albert Gallatin,” wrote:
“[T]his young man by sheer ability and industry had so captivated his colleagues that even Federalists joined with his own party members to give him the greatest office in their power to give. Never before or since in American political history has there been, without fanfare of oratory or partisan emotion, such a recognition of simple merit and ability in the conduct of public affairs.”
Gallatin strongly opposed the Washington administration’s whiskey tax but opposed violence against it among his fellow Western Pennsylvanians. Later as a key player in Thomas Jefferson’s cabinet, he got rid of it, as well as nearly every other federal excise tax.
Months after leaving the Senate, and on the very same day in October 1794, Gallatin secured election to both the Pennsylvania General Assembly again and the federal Congress. He kept the two jobs simultaneously—a rare venture then, and unheard of today.
He was subsequently elected to the U.S. House of Representatives for two more consecutive terms, serving there until President Thomas Jefferson tapped him for the post of Treasury Secretary. By that time, writes Nicholas Dungan, “he achieved recognition as an expert in economics and government finance unequaled in his party and perhaps in America.”
To this day, Gallatin remains the longest-serving Secretary of the Treasury in U.S. history (12 years, 9 months), holding the office for the entirety of Jefferson’s two terms as president and then for most of the tenure of the subsequent president, James Madison.
Gallatin cut federal spending, adopted checks and balances for government expenditures, and financed the Louisiana Purchase. Despite issuing nearly $15 million in bonds for the Louisiana Purchase, he still managed to slash the national debt by half in little more than a decade.
America’s nascent military took a big hit. Jefferson and Gallatin slashed the Army to just 3,000 soldiers and shrunk the Navy to a mere six frigates. They probably overdid it, leaving the country vulnerable to the hostilities that broke out with Britain again in 1812. The United States of the Jefferson-Gallatin years maintained foreign embassies in only three countries: Spain, France, and Britain.
Nobody could credibly accuse the United States of “empire building” while Jefferson and Gallatin were at the helm.
After his long tenure at Treasury, Gallatin’s next big assignment was negotiating an end to the War of 1812 between Britain and America. Many historians regard the result as his greatest achievement. Gallatin was easily the principal figure in securing the Treaty of Ghent that concluded hostilities. He proved himself to be a master diplomat.
It would seem natural for the next step in the life of Albert Gallatin to be an ambassadorship. Indeed, he went on to serve as America’s minister first to France for seven years, and then to Britain for one year.
Returning from Europe at age 66, Gallatin resolved to retire from public office. But in the 22 years of life he still had in him, he still managed to become a bank president, founder of New York University, founder of the American Ethnological Society, and a renowned authority in Native American languages. In his “spare” time, he spoke out against slavery and in favor of fiscal responsibility, free trade, and individual liberty. Most people never accomplish a tenth of what Gallatin did in his 88 years. Writes historian Greg May:
“The Jefferson administration’s enduring achievement was to contain the federal government by restraining its fiscal power. That was Gallatin’s work. He abolished internal revenue taxes in peacetime, slashed federal spending, and repaid half of the national debt. Heavy spending during the War of 1812 severely tested Gallatin’s system, but his basic reforms created a culture of fiscal restraint that survived.”
Given the man’s role in the Louisiana Purchase alone, it is fitting that a river, a mountain range, a national forest, and a county in Montana are named for him. But considering the full sweep of his massive contributions to America, perhaps a state should be named for him as well. Thank you, Albert Gallatin!
