Who was Albert Gallatin?
As Secretary of the Treasury, Albert Gallatin found the resources to buy the Louisiana Purchase and for its exploration, and to build the roads and canals to help a young nation survive and thrive. Before and after this, he was intimately involved in such things as the Whiskey Rebellion and the Treaty of Ghent. Albert Gallatin was an immigrant from Geneva, Switzerland. He lived for a brief time in Boston and Virginia before making his home on the Pennsylvania frontier. During the days of the Whiskey Rebellion, the first great test of the power of the Federal Government, Gallatin played a leading role, though he was much more moderate than many, and advocated against breaking with the government. Gallatin served briefly as a Senator and a Representative from Pennsylvania, where he showed great insight into the financial problems of the new nation. When elected President, Jefferson appointed him Secretary of the Treasury, where he served for 13 years under Presidents Jefferson and Madiso
Albert Gallatin is best remembered for his thirteen year tenure as Secretary of the Treasury during the Jefferson and Madison administrations. In that time he reduced the national debt, purchased the Louisiana Territory and funded the Lewis & Clark exploration. Gallatin’s accomplishments and contributions are highlighted at Friendship Hill, his restored country estate.
e was born in Geneva, Switzerland, into a cultured and aristocratic family led by physicians, statesmen and soldiers, one of whom commanded a battalion at the battle of Yorktown. He emigrated to the United States in 1780, at the age of 19, and under the terms of the Articles of Confederation of 1781, gained legal citizenship after nine years of residency, meanwhile teaching French at Harvard University. In the tradition of his august family background, Albert was drawn to public life, soon transcending politics to become one of the most influential statesmen in American history. Consistent with his station and the spirit of his time, he was a savant a diplomat, financier, peacemaker, scientist, geographer, lover of nature, and above all a visionary with unswerving faith in the ultimate wisdom of a people wielding the instruments of democracy. Throughout his sixty-year-long career he worked sedulously in behalf of free public education, universal suffrage, and the abolition of slavery.
As well known as Gallatin was to the people of the Jeffersonian Era he is all but forgotten today. This notable statesman, diplomat, financier, historian, ethnologist, industrialist and farmer is remembered today at Friendship Hill National Historic Site, his frontier home in western Pennsylvania.
