Gallatin, Albert

Gallatin, (Abraham Alfonse) Albert

(1761–1849) financier, diplomat, political leader, ethnographer; born in Geneva, Switzerland. Of noble birth and inspired by Rousseauian idealism, he arrived in America at the age of 19. After teaching French at Harvard and working as a trader and land speculator, he settled on the Pennsylvania frontier and entered public life. He was elected to the U.S. Senate (1793–94) and served in the House of Representatives (Dem.-Rep., Penn.; 1795–1801). A leader among Jeffersonian Republicans and with rare mastery of public finance, he served Presidents Jefferson and Madison as secretary of the treasury (1801–14) and worked hard to retire the public debt. In 1814 his Treaty of Ghent laid the basis for permanent peace with England. He then served as minister to France (1816–23) and minister to England. He was an expert on American Indian and Indian languages, was author of important ethnographic works, was president of the National Bank of New York, and was a cofounder of New York University.

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.