FOOTNOTES:

In 1846 Mr. Gallatin rendered his last diplomatic service by the publication of a pamphlet on the Oregon question, which was then as threatening as that of the northeastern boundary had been. This admirable exposition, which put before the people as well as the negotiators the precise merits of the controversy, powerfully contributed to the ultimate peaceful settlement.

Still once more Mr. Gallatin threw his authoritative words into the scale of justice. His last appearance in public had been when he presided on April 24, 1844, at a meeting in New York city to protest against the annexation of Texas. He then held that the resolution of the House declaring the treaty of annexation between the United States of America and the Republic of Texas to be the fundamental law of union between them, without and against the consent of the Senate, was a direct and undisguised usurpation of power and a violation of the Constitution. In the storm of opposition he lifted his feeble voice in condemnation of the violation of treaties, and the disregard of the sacred obligations of mankind. “I am highly gratified,” were his final words, "I am highly gratified that the last public act of a long life should have been that of bearing testimony against this outrageous attempt. It is indeed a consolation that my almost extinguished voice has been on this occasion raised in defense of liberty,of justice, and of our country." Of the war with Mexico, he was wont to say, “that it was the only blot upon the escutcheon of the United States.” Aged as he was, he would not rest until he had made his last appeal for peace with Mexico. He also prepared supplementary essays on war expenses: the first of these was published in 1847, the second in 1848. For months all his faculties, all his feelings were absorbed in this one subject. These pamphlets were widely circulated by the friends of peace. The venerable sage had the comfort of knowing that his words were not in vain. Peace with Mexico was signed on February 2, 1848.

Mr. Gallatin was no believer in the doctrine of 'manifest destiny,'—the policy of bringing all North America into the occupation of a race speaking the same language, and under a single government. On February 16, 1848, before news of the signature of the treaty at Guadalupe Hidalgo, by Mr. Trist, the American negotiator, was known in New York, Mr. Gallatin condemned this idea in a remarkable passage, in a letter to Garrett Davis:—

“What shall be said of the notion of an empire extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from the North Pole to the Equator? Of the destiny of the Anglo-Saxon race, of its universal monarchy over the whole of North America? Now, I will ask, which is the portion of the globe that has attained the highestdegree of civilization and even of power—Asia, with its vast empires of Turkey, India, and China, or Europe divided into near twenty independent sovereignties? Other powerful causes have undoubtedly largely contributed to that result; but this, the great division into ten or twelve distinct languages, must not be neglected. But all these allegations of superiority of race and destiny neither require nor deserve any answer. They are but pretences under which to disguise ambition, cupidity, or silly vanity.”

The justice of these reflections was assuredly borne out by the experience of history, but manifest destiny takes no account of past lessons.

Before these lines of Mr. Gallatin were penned, on January 19, 1848, gold was discovered in California. The announcement startled the world and opened a new era, not only to Europe, but to mankind. Extending the metallic basis, which no man better than Mr. Gallatin recognized and held to be the true solvent of money transactions, it postponed for a half century the inevitable conflict between capital and labor, the first outbreaks of which in Europe had been with difficulty suppressed, when the news of good tidings gave promise of unexpected relief. Credit revived, new enterprises of colossal magnitude were undertaken, and the demand for labor quickly exceeded the supply. Emigration to America rose to incredible proportions. Had Mr. Gallatin lived, he would have found new elements to be weighed in his nice balance of probabilities. He would no longer, asin 1839, have been compelled to say that “specie is a foreign product,” but would have given to us inestimable advice as to the proper use to be made of the vast sums taken out from our own soil. He would have been also brought to face the ethnologic problem of a continent inhabited by a single race, not Anglo-Saxon, nor Teutonic, nor yet Latin, but a composite race in which all these will be merged and blended; a new American race which, springing from a broader surface, shall rise to higher summits of intellectual power and, with a greater variety of natural qualities, achieve excellence in more numerous ways. This vision was denied to Mr. Gallatin. He died at the threshold of the new era—of the golden age. A half century has not passed since his death, and the United States has taken from her soil a value of over three thousand millions of dollars, in gold and silver (gold two thousand millions, silver one thousand millions), more than two thirds of the total amount estimated by Mr. Gallatin as the store of Europe in 1839; and has also added to her population, by immigration alone, ten millions of people, of whom but a small proportion are of the Anglo-Saxon race.

FOOTNOTES:[19]Life of Albert Gallatin, p. 546.[20]The frigate Chesapeake was captured by the British man-of-war Leopard in June, 1807.[21]A translation of this work,Economie Politique, was published under Jefferson's supervision in 1818.

[19]Life of Albert Gallatin, p. 546.

[20]The frigate Chesapeake was captured by the British man-of-war Leopard in June, 1807.

[21]A translation of this work,Economie Politique, was published under Jefferson's supervision in 1818.

During the twelve years that Mr. Gallatin was in the Treasury he was continually looking for some man who could take his place in that office, and aid in the direction of national politics; to use his own words, “who could replace Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Madison, and himself.” Breckenridge of Kentucky only appeared and died. The eccentricities of John Randolph unfitted him for leadership. William H. Crawford of Georgia, Monroe's secretary of the treasury, alone filled Gallatin's expectations. To a powerful mind Crawford “united a most correct judgment and an inflexible integrity. Unfortunately he was neither indulgent nor civil, and, consequently, was unpopular.” Andrew Jackson, Gallatin said, “was an honest man, and the idol of the worshipers of military glory, but from incapacity, military habits, and habitual disregard of laws and constitutional provisions, entirely unfit for the office of president.” John C. Calhoun he looked upon as “a smart fellow, one of the first amongst second-rate men, but of lax political principles and an inordinate ambition, not over-delicate in the means of satisfying itself.”Clay he considered to be a man of splendid talents and a generous mind; John Quincy Adams to be 'wanting to a deplorable degree in that most essential quality, a sound and correct judgment.'

The contest lay between Adams and Crawford. Crawford was the choice of Jefferson and Madison as well as of Gallatin. The principles of the Republican party had so changed that Nathaniel Macon could say in 1824, in reply to a request from Mr. Gallatin to take part in a caucus for the purpose of forwarding Mr. Crawford's nomination, that there were “not five members of Congress who entertained the opinions which those did who brought Mr. Jefferson into power.” But Macon was of the Brutus stamp of politicians; of that stern cast of mind which does not 'alter when it alteration finds or bend with the remover to remove,' and held yielding to the compulsion of circumstances to be an abandonment of principle.

Jefferson still held the consolidation of power to be the chief danger of the country, and the barrier of state rights, great and small, to be its only protection even against the Supreme Court. Gallatin took broader ground, and found encouragement in the excellent working of universal suffrage in the choice of representatives to legislative bodies. But he was opposed to the extension of the principle to municipal officers having the application of the proceeds of taxes, forgetting that universal suffrage is the lever by which capital is moved to educate labor and relieve it from theburdens of injury, disease, and physical incapacity at the expense of the whole. Without stopping to argue these debatable questions, Mr. Gallatin, with practical statesmanship, determined to maintain in power the only agency by which he could at all shape the political future, and he threw himself into the canvass with zeal.

Crawford had unfortunately been stricken with paralysis, and the choice of a vice-president became a matter of grave concern. Mr. Gallatin was selected to take this place on the ticket. To this tender he replied that he did not want the office, but would dislike to be proposed and not elected, and he honestly felt that as a foreigner and a residuary legatee of Federal hatred his name could not be of much service to the cause. Still, he followed the only course by which any party can be held together, and surrendered his prejudices and fears to the wishes of his friends. The Republican caucus met on February 14, 1824, in the chamber of the House of Representatives. Of the 216 members of the party only 66 attended. Martin Van Buren, then senator from New York, managed this, the last congressional caucus for the selection of candidates.

The solemnity given to the congressional nominations, and the publicity of the answers of candidates, Mr. Gallatin held to be political blunders. In fact the plan was adroitly denounced as an attempt to dictate to the people.

Crawford was nominated for president by 64votes, Gallatin for vice-president by 57. This nomination Mr. Gallatin accepted in a note to Mr. Ruggles, United States senator, on May 10, 1824. But there were elements of which party leaders of the old school had not taken sufficient account. Macon was right when he said that “every generation, like a single person, has opinions of its own, as much so in politics as anything else,” and that 'the opinions of Jefferson and those who were with him were forgotten.' And Jefferson himself, in his complacent reflection that even the name of Federalist was “extinguished by the battle of New Orleans,” did not see that the Republican party of the old school had been snuffed out by the same event. The new democracy, whose claims to rule were based, not on the policy of peace or restricted powers, but on the seductive glitter of military glory, was in the ascendant, and General Jackson was the favorite of the hour. New combinations became necessary, and Mr. Gallatin was requested to withdraw from the ticket, and make room for Mr. Clay, whose great western influence it was hoped would save it from defeat. This he gladly did in a declaration of October 2, addressed to Martin Van Buren, dated at his Fayette home, and published in the “National Intelligencer.” The result of the election was singular. Calhoun was elected vice-president by the people. The presidential contest was decided in the House, Adams being chosen over Jackson and Crawford, by the influence of Clay. Mr. Gallatinquickly discerned in the failure of the people to elect a president the collapse of the Republican party. He considered it as “fairly defunct.”

Jackson had already announced the startling doctrine that no regard was to be had to party in the selection of the great officers of government, which Mr. Gallatin considered as tantamount to a declaration that principles and opinions were of no importance in its administration. To lose sight of this principle was to substitute men for measures. Jackson's idea of party, however, was personal fealty. He engrafted thepouvoir personnelon the Democratic party as thoroughly as Napoleon could have done in his place. Moreover, Gallatin considered Jackson's assumption of power in his collisions with the judiciary at New Orleans and Pensacola, and his orders to take St. Augustine without the authority of Congress, as dangerous assaults upon the Constitution of the country and the liberties of the people, and he dreaded the substitution of the worship of a military chieftain for the maintenance of that liberty, the last hope of man. Ten years later he uttered the same opinion in a conversation with Miss Martineau, and he expressed a preference for an annual president, a cipher, so that all would be done by the ministry. But in the impossibility of this plan, he would have preferred a four years' term without renewal or an extension of six years; an idea adopted by Davis in his plan of disintegration by secession. The presidency, Mr. Gallatin thought, was “too much power for one man; therefore it fills all men's thoughts to the detriment of better things.”

When Mr. Gallatin visited Washington in 1829, he found a state of society, political and social, widely at variance with his own experience. The ways of Federalist and Republican cabinets were traditions of an irrevocable past. Jackson was political dictator, and took counsel only from his prejudices. The old simplicity had given way to elegance and luxury of adornment. The east room of the presidential mansion was covered with Brussels carpeting. There were silk curtains at the windows, French mirrors of unusual size, and three splendid English crystal chandeliers. In the dining-room were a hundred candles and lamps, and silver plate of every description, and presiding over this magnificence the strange successors of Washington and his stately dame, of Madison and his no less elegant wife,—the Tennessee backwoodsman and Peggy O'Neil.

When, it is not too soon to ask, in the general reform of civil service, shall the possibility of such anomalies be entirely removed by restricting the executive mansion to an executive bureau, and entirely separating social ceremony from official state, to the final suppression of back stairs influence and kitchen cabinets?

Mr. Gallatin's land speculations were not profitable. His plan of Swiss colonization did not result in any pecuniary advantage to himself. His little patrimony, received in 1786, he invested in a plantation of about five hundred acres on the Monongahela. Twelve years later, in 1798, he was neither richer nor poorer than at the time of his investment. The entire amount of claims which he held with Savary he sold in 1794, without warranty of title, to Robert Morris, then the great speculator in western lands, for four thousand dollars, Pennsylvania currency. This sum, his little farm, and five or six hundred pounds cash were then his entire fortune. In 1794, the revolution in Switzerland having driven out numbers of his compatriots, he formed a plan of association consisting of one hundred and fifty shares of eight hundred dollars each, of which the Genevans in Philadelphia, Odier, Fazzi, the two Cazenove, Cheriot, Bourdillon, Duby, Couronne, Badollet, and himself took twenty-five each. Twenty-five were offered to Americans, which were nearly all taken up, and one hundred were sent to Geneva,Switzerland, to D'Yvernois and his friends. The project was to purchase land, and Mr. Gallatin had decided upon a location in the northeast part of Pennsylvania, or in New York, on the border. In the summer Gallatin made a journey through New York to examine lands with the idea of occupation. In July, 1795, he made a settlement with Mr. Morris, taking his notes for three thousand five hundred dollars. Balancing his accounts, Mr. Gallatin then found himself worth seven thousand dollars, in addition to which he had about twenty-five thousand acres of waste lands and the notes of Mr. Morris. In 1798 Mr. Morris failed, and, under the harsh operations of the old law, was sent to jail. Mr. Gallatin never recovered the three thousand dollars owed to him in the final balance of his real estate operations.

After Mr. Gallatin left the Treasury he located patents for seventeen hundred acres of Virginia military lands in the State of Ohio, on warrants purchased in 1784. In 1815 he valued his entire estate, exclusive of his farm on the Monongahela, at less than twelve thousand dollars. Forty years later he complained of his investment as a troublesome and unproductive property, which had plagued him all his life. Besides the purchase of lands, Mr. Gallatin invested part of his little capital in building houses on his farm, and in the country store which Badollet managed. The one yielded no return, and the sum put in the other was lost through the incompetency of his honestbut inexperienced friend. His wife brought him a small property, but at no time in his life was he possessed of more than a modest competency. But he had never any discontent with his fortune nor any desire to be rich.

Mrs. Gallatin, who had always until her marriage lived in cities, was entirely unfit for frontier life. In these days of railroads it is not easy to measure the isolation of their country home. Pittsburgh was nearly five days' journey from Philadelphia, and the crossing of the Alleghanies took a day and a half more. Before his marriage Mr. Gallatin had seen very little of society. Though in early manhood he felt no embarrassment among men, he said 'that he never yet was able to divest himself of an anti-Chesterfieldian awkwardness in mixed companies.' He did not take advantage of his residence in Philadelphia to accustom himself to the ways of the world. There he lived in lodgings and met the leading public characters of both parties. But when he took his seat in the cabinet, he found it necessary to enter upon housekeeping and to take a prominent part in society, for which his wife was admirably suited, both by temperament and education. Washington Irving wrote of her in November, 1812, that she was 'the most stylish woman in the drawing-room that session, and that she dressed with more splendor than any other of the noblesse;' and again the same year compared her with the wife of the President, whose courtly manners and consummate tactand grace are a tradition of the republican court. “Tell your good lady,” mother Irving wrote to James Renwick, “that Mrs. Madison has been much indisposed, and at last Wednesday's evening drawing-room Mrs. Gallatin presided in her place. I was not present, but those who were assure me that she filled Mrs. Madison's chair to a miracle.” This is in the sense of dignity, for Mrs. Gallatin was of small stature.

Mr. Gallatin's house shared the fate of the public buildings and was burned by the British when Washington was captured in 1814. He was then abroad on the peace mission. On his return from France Mr. Gallatin made one more attempt to realize his early idea of a country home, and with his family went in the summer of 1823 to Friendship Hill. Here an Irish carpenter built for him a house which he humorously described as being in the 'Hyberno-teutonic style,—the outside, with its port-hole-looking windows, having the appearance of Irish barracks, while the inside ornaments were similar to those of a Dutch tavern, and in singular contrast to the French marble chimney-pieces, paper, mirrors, and billiard-table.' In the summer Friendship Hill was an agreeable residence, but Mr. Gallatin found it in winter too isolated even for his taste.

One exciting circumstance enlivened the spring of 1825. This was the passage of Lafayette, the guest of the nation, through western Pennsylvania on his famous tour. Mr. Gallatin welcomed himin an address before the court-house of Uniontown, the capital of Fayette County, on May 26. In his speech Mr. Gallatin reviewed the condition of the liberal cause in Europe, and the emancipation of Greece, then agitating both continents. In this all scholars as well as all liberals were of one mind and heart. After the proceedings Lafayette drove with Mr. Gallatin to Friendship Hill, where he passed the night; crowds of people pouring down the valley from the mountain roads to see the adopted son of the United States, the friend of Washington, the liberator of France. The intimacy between these two great men, who had alike devoted the flower of their youth to the interests of civilization and the foundation of the new republic, was never broken.

Mr. Gallatin passed only one winter at New Geneva. On his return from his last mission to England he settled permanently in New York, and in 1828 took a house at No. 113 Bleecker Street, then in the suburbs of the city. He wrote to Badollet in March, 1829, that "it was an ill-contrived plan to think that the banks of the Monongahela, where he was perfectly satisfied to live and die in retirement, could be borne by the female part of his family, or by children brought up at Washington and Paris." The population of New York has always been migratory, and Mr. Gallatin was no exception to the rule. In the ten years which followed his first location he changed his residence on four May days, finally settling atNo. 57 Bleecker Street, nearly opposite to Crosby Street. His life in New York is a complete period in his intellectual as in his physical existence, and the most interesting of his career. His last twenty years were in great measure devoted to scientific studies.

The National Bank, over which he presided for the first ten years, took but a small part of his time. The remainder was given up to study and conversation, an art in which he had no superior in this country and probably none abroad. Soon after his arrival in New York, Mr. Gallatin was chosen a member of “The Club,” an association famous in its day. As no correct account of this social organization has ever appeared, the letter of invitation to Mr. Gallatin is of some interest. It was written by Dr. John Augustine Smith, on November 2, 1829. An extract gives the origin of the club.

“Nearly two years ago some of the literary gentlemen of the city, feeling severely the almost total want of intercourse among themselves, determined to establish an association which should bring them more frequently into contact. Accordingly they founded the 'Club' as it is commonly called, and which I believe I mentioned to you when I had the pleasure of seeing you in Bond Street. Into this 'Club' twelve persons only are admitted, and there are at present three gentlemen of the Bar, Chancellor Kent, Messrs. Johnston and Jay, three professors of Columbia College, Messrs. McVickar, Moore, and Renwick, the Rev. Drs. Wainwright and Mathews, the former of the Episcopal Church, the latter of the Presbyterian Church, two merchants, Messrs. Brevoort and Goodhue, and I have the honor to represent the medical faculty. Our twelfth associate was Mr. Morse, of the National Academy of Design, of which he was president, and his departure for Europe has caused a vacancy. For agreeableness of conversation there is nothing in New York at all comparable to our institution. We meet once a week; no officers, no formalities; invitations, when in case of intelligent and distinguished strangers, and after a plain and light repast, retire about eleven o'clock.”

At this club Mr. Gallatin, with his wonderful conversational powers, became at once the centre of interest. The club met at the houses of members in the winter evenings. There was always a supper, but the rule was absolute that there should be only one hot dish served, a regulation which the ladies endeavored to evade when the turn of their husbands arrived to supply the feast. Among the later members were Professor Anderson, John A. Stevens, Mr. Gallatin's countryman De Rham, John Wells, Samuel Ward, Gulian C. Verplanck, and Charles King. No literary symposium in America was ever more delightful, more instructive, than these meetings. On these occasions Mr. Gallatin led the conversation, which usually covered a wide field. His memory was marvelous, and his personal acquaintance with the great men who were developed by the French Revolution, emperors and princes, heroes, statesmen, and men of science, gave to the easy flow of his speech the zest of anecdote and the spice of epigram. Once heard he was never forgotten. And this rare faculty he preserved undiminished to the close of his life. Washington Irving, himself the most genial of men, and the most graceful of talkers, wrote of him, after meeting him at dinner, in 1841: “Mr. Gallatin was in fine spirits and full of conversation. He is upwards of eighty, yet has all the activity and clearness of mind and gayety of spirits of a young man. How delightful it is to see such intellectual and joyous old age: to see life running out clear and sparkling to the last drop! With such a blessed temperament one would be content to linger and spin out the last thread of existence.”

At the close of the year 1829 Mr. Gallatin attempted to carry out his old and favorite plan of the “establishment of a general system of rational and practical education fitted for all, and gratuitously open to all.” The want of an institution for education, combining the advantages of a European university with the recent improvements in instruction, was seriously felt. New York, already a great city, and rapidly growing, offered the most promising field for the national university on a broad and liberal foundation correspondent to the spirit of the age. The difficulty of obtaining competent teachers of even the lower branches of knowledge in the public schools, the system of which was in its infancy, was great. Personscould be found with learning enough, but they were generally deficient in the art of teaching. Governor Throop noticed this deficiency in his message of January, 1830, without, however, the recommendation of any remedy by legislation. The existing colleges could not supply the want. At this period religious prejudice controlled the actions of men in every walk of life; for the old colonial jealousies of Episcopalian and Presbyterian survived the Revolution. The religious distrust of scientific investigation was also at its height. Columbia College, the successor of old King's College, was governed in the Episcopalian interest. Private zeal could alone be relied upon to establish the new enterprise on a foundation free from the influence of clergy; an indispensable condition of success. These were the views of Mr. Jefferson in 1807. These were the views of Mr. Gallatin. In response to his request abundant subscriptions in money and material were at once forthcoming.

The project of a national university at New York was received by the literary institutions of the United States with great enthusiasm. In October, 1830, a convention of more than a hundred literary and scientific gentlemen, delegates from different parts of the country, and of the highest distinction, was held in the common-council chamber. The outcome of their deliberations was the foundation of the New York University. Mr. Gallatin was the president of the first council, buthis connection with the institution was of short continuance. The reasons for his withdrawal were set forth in a letter to his old friend, John Badollet, written February 7, 1833. Beginning with an expression of his desire to devote what remained of his life “to the establishment in this immense and growing city (New York) of a general system of rational and practical education fitted for all and gratuitously opened to all,” he said, “but finding that the object was no longer the same, that a certain portion of the clergy had obtained the control, and that their object, though laudable, was special and quite distinct from mine, I resigned at the end of one year rather than to struggle, probably in vain for what was nearly unattainable.” The history of the university through its precarious existence of half a century amply justifies Mr. Gallatin's previsions and retirement. Instead of an American Sorbonne, of which he dreamed, it has never been more than a local institution, struggling to hold a place in a crowded field.

Mr. Gallatin followed the evolutions of French politics with interest. His friend Lafayette, who, during the Empire, lived in almost enforced retirement at his estate of La Grange, was a voluntary exile from the court of Charles X., whose autocratic principles and aggressive course were rapidly driving France into fresh revolution. In July, 1830, the crisis was precipitated by the royal decrees published in the “Moniteur.” Lafayette,who was on his estate, hurried instantly to Paris, where he became a rallying point, and himself signed the note to the king, announcing that he had ceased to reign. In September following it fell to him to write to Mr. Gallatin on the occasion of the marriage of Gallatin's daughter. In this union Lafayette had a triple interest. Besides his personal attachment for Mr. Gallatin, each of the young couple was descended from one of his old companions-in-arms. The groom, Mr. Byam Kerby Stevens, was a son of Colonel Ebenezer Stevens, of the continental service, who was Lafayette's chief of artillery in his expedition against Arnold in Virginia, in the spring of 1781; the bride, Frances Gallatin, was, on the mother's side, the granddaughter of Commodore James Nicholson, who commanded the gunboats which, improvised by Colonel Stevens, drove out the British vessels from Annapolis Bay and opened the route to the blockaded American flotilla.[22]

“Paris,September8, 1830.“My Dear Friend:—A long time has elapsed since I had the pleasure to hear from you. I need not, I hope, add, that my affectionate feelings have been continually with you, especially in what related to my young friend whose change of name has more deeply interested every member, and in a very particular manner, the younger part of the family. Let me hear of you all, and receive my tender regards and wishes, with those of my children and grandchildren.Lafayette.”

“Paris,September8, 1830.

“My Dear Friend:—A long time has elapsed since I had the pleasure to hear from you. I need not, I hope, add, that my affectionate feelings have been continually with you, especially in what related to my young friend whose change of name has more deeply interested every member, and in a very particular manner, the younger part of the family. Let me hear of you all, and receive my tender regards and wishes, with those of my children and grandchildren.Lafayette.”

Both of the young people had the honor of Lafayette's acquaintance,—Mr. Stevens during a visit to Paris, and Miss Gallatin during her father's residence there as minister, when she was much admired, and was, in the words of Madame Bonaparte (Miss Patterson), 'a beauty.' In this letter Lafayette gives a picturesque account of the three days' fighting at the barricades, and of the departure of the ex-king and the royal army, accompanied by “some twenty thousand Parisians, in coaches, hacks, and omnibus.... The royal party, after returning the jewels of the crown, went slowly to Cherbourg with their own escort, under the protection of three commissioners, and were there permitted quietly to embark for England.”

In 1834 Mr. Gallatin's sympathies were greatly excited by the arrival at New York of a number of Poles, many of them educated men, and among them Etsko, a nephew of Kosciusko. A public committee was raised, called the Polish committee, of which Mr. Gallatin was chosen chairman. Besides superintending the collection of funds, he arranged and carried out in the minutest details a plan to quarter the exiles upon the inhabitants. A list of names ending inskistill remains among his papers; to each was assigned a number, and they were allotted by streets and numbers,—number 182, one Szelesegynski, was taken by Mr. Gallatin himself, to look after horses. These unfortunate men were then distributed through thecountry, as occupations could be found. In October Mr. Gallatin's notes show that all had been provided for except fourteen boys, for whom a subscription was taken up. A tract of land in Illinois was assigned by Congress to these political exiles.

Mr. Gallatin's first acquaintance with the American Indian was made at Machias. In the neighborhood of this frontier town, across the Canadian border, there were still remnants of the Abenaki and Etchemin tribes. They were French in sympathy, and all converts to the Roman Catholic faith. Mr. Lesdernier, with whom Gallatin lodged, had influence over them from the trade he established with them in furs, and as their religious purveyor. He had paid a visit to Boston at the time the French fleet was there in 1781, and brought home a Capuchin priest for their service. To the young Genevan, brought up in the restrictions of European civilization, the history of the savage was a favorite study. In the winter evenings, in the quiet of the log hut, with the aid of one familiar with the customs and traditions of the race, the foundations were laid of a permanent interest in this almost untrodden branch of human science. The Canadian Indians, however, hemmed in by French and English settlements, were semi-civilized. The Miamis and Shawnees, who ranged the valley of the Ohio, were the tribes nearest to Gallatin's home on the Monongahela. These, though for a long time under the influence of theFrench, retained their original wildness, and were, during the first years of his residence, the dread of the frontier.

The interest aroused in the mind of Mr. Gallatin by personal observation was quickened by his intimacy with Jefferson, whose “Notes on Virginia,” published in 1801, contained the first attempt at a classification and enumeration of American tribes. The earlier work of Colden was confined to the Five Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy. The arrangement of the Louisiana territory, ceded by France, brought Mr. Gallatin into contact with Pierre Louis Chouteau, and an intimacy formed with John Jacob Astor, who was largely concerned in the fur trade of the Northwest, widened the field of interest, which included the geography of the interior and the customs of its inhabitants. Mr. Gallatin's examination of the subject was general, however, and did not take a practical scientific turn until the year 1823, when, at the request of Baron Alexander von Humboldt, he set forth the results of his studies in the form of a Synopsis of the Indian tribes. This essay, communicated by Humboldt to the Italian geographer Balbi, then engaged upon his "Atlas Ethnographique du Globe,"—a classification by languages of ancient and modern peoples,—was quoted by him in his volume introductory to that remarkable work published in 1826, in a manner to attract the attention of the scientific world. Vater, in his “Mithridates,” first attempted a classification of the languages of the globe, but the work of Mr. Gallatin, though confined in subject, was original in its conception and treatment. In the winter of 1825-26 a large gathering of southern Indians at Washington enabled him to obtain good vocabularies of several of the tribes. Uniting these to those already acquired, he published a table of all the existing tribes, and at the same time, at his instance, the War Department circulated through its posts a vocabulary containing six hundred words of verbal forms and of selected sentences, and a series of grammatical queries, to which answers were invited. He also opened an elaborate correspondence with such persons as were best acquainted with the Indian tribes in different sections of the country.[23]The repliesto these various queries were few in number, but the practical plan, adhered to in substance, has resulted in the collection by the Smithsonian Institution of a very large number of Indian vocabularies.[24]

This class of investigation, in its ample scope for original research and the ascertainment of principles by analysis and analogic expression, was peculiarly agreeable to Mr. Gallatin. His friend, du Ponceau,[25]who served in the American war as the secretary of Steuben, and was nowestablished in Philadelphia, was likewise deeply engaged in philologic studies; in 1819 he had published a memoir of the construction of the languages of the North American Indians, which he followed later with other papers of a similar nature, among which were a “Grammar of the Languages of the Lenni Lenape or Delaware Indians,” and a memoir on the grammatical system of the languages of the Indian tribes of North America, a learned and highly instructive paper, which took the Volney prize at Paris.

In 1836 Mr. Gallatin's original paper, contributed to Balbi, amplified by subsequent acquisitions, was published by the American Antiquarian Society of Worcester, in the first volume of its Transactions. It was entitled “A Synopsis of the Indian Tribes, within the United States east of the Rocky Mountains, and in the British and Russian Possessions in North America.” This elaborate inquiry, the foundation of the science in America, was intended originally to embrace all the tribes north of the Mexican semi-civilized nations. From the want of material, however, it was confined at the southward to the territory of the United States, and eastward of the Rocky Mountains. It included eighty-one tribes, divided into twenty-eight families, and was accompanied by a colored map, with tribal indications. The result of the investigation Mr. Gallatin held to be proof that all the languages, not only of our own Indian tribes, but of the nations inhabiting America from the ArcticOcean to Cape Horn, have a distinct character common to all. This paper attracted great attention in Europe. It was reviewed by the Count de Circourt, whose interest in the subject was heightened by personal acquaintance with the author. John C. Calhoun, acknowledging receipt of a copy of the Synopsis, said in striking phrase 'that he had long thought that the analogy of languages is destined to recover much of the lost history of nations just as geology has of the globe we inhabit.'

In 1838, Congress having accepted the trust of John Smithson of £100,000, and pledged the faith of the United States for its purposes, Mr. Forsyth, the secretary of state, addressed Mr. Gallatin, at the request of the President, requesting his views as to its proper employment; but Mr. Gallatin does not appear to have answered the communication. The programme of the Smithsonian Institution, inclosed to the board of regents in its first report, stated its object to be the increase and diffusion of knowledge, and bears marks of the general views which Mr. Gallatin had for many years urged on public attention. The first of the Smithsonian “Contributions to Knowledge” was the memoir of Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, by Squier and Davis. Before its publication was undertaken, however, it was submitted to the Ethnological Society. Mr. Gallatin returned it, with the approval of the society, and some words of commendation of his own addressedto Professor Henry, the learned superintendent of the Smithsonian Institution.

The period of temporary political repose, which followed the peace of Vienna and the establishment of the balance of power by the allied sovereigns, was an era in human knowledge. Science made rapid progress, and in its turn showed the broad and liberal influence of the great revolution. In 1842 societies were founded in Paris and London to promote the study of ethnology. Mr. Gallatin would not be behindhand in this important work for which America offered a virgin field. Drawing about him a number of gentlemen of similar tastes with his own, he founded in New York, in 1842, the American Ethnological Society. Among his associates were Dr. Robinson, the famous explorer of Palestine, Schoolcraft, Bartlett, and Professor Turner, noted for their researches in the history and languages of the Indian races. Messrs. Atwater, Bradford, Hawks, Gibbs, Mayer, Dr. Morton, Pickering, Stephens, Ewbank, and Squier were also, either in the beginning or soon after, members of this select and learned institution, of which Mr. Gallatin was the central figure. One of its members said in 1871, 'Mr. Gallatin's house was the true seat of the society, and Mr. Gallatin himself its controlling spirit. His name gave it character, and from his purse mainly was defrayed the cost of the two volumes of the “Transactions” which constitute about the only claim the society possesses to the respect of the scientific world.'To the first of these volumes, published in 1845, Mr. Gallatin contributed an “Essay on the semi-civilized nations of Mexico and Central America, embracing elaborate notes on their languages, numeration, calendars, history, and chronology, and an inquiry into the probable origin of their semi-civilization.” In this he included all existing certain knowledge of the languages, history, astronomy, and progress in art of these peoples. A copy of this work he sent to General Scott, then in the city of Mexico after his triumphant campaign, inclosing a memorandum which he urged the general to hand to civilians attached to the army. This was a request to purchase books, copies of documents, printed grammars, and vocabularies of the Mexican languages, and he authorized the general to spend four hundred dollars in this purpose on his account. In the second volume, published in 1848, he printed the result of his continued investigations on the subject which first interested him, as an introduction to a republication of a work by Mr. Hale on the “Indians of Northwest America.” This consisted of geographical notices, an account of Indian means of subsistence, the ancient semi-civilization of the Northwest, Indian philology, and analogic comparisons with the Chinese and Polynesian languages. These papers Mr. Gallatin modestly described to Chevalier as the 'fruits of his leisure,' and to Sismondi he wrote that he had not the requisite talent for success in literature or science. They nevertheless entitle him to the honorable name of the Father of American Ethnography.

In 1837 Mr. Wheaton, the American minister at Berlin, requested Mr. Gallatin to put the Baron von Humboldt in possession of authentic data concerning the production of gold in the United States. Humboldt had visited the Oural and Siberian regions in 1829, at the request of the Emperor of Russia, to make investigations as to their production of the precious metals. Mr. Gallatin was the only authority in the United States on the subject. Later von Humboldt wrote to Mr. Gallatin of the interest felt abroad, and by himself, in the gold of the mountains of Virginia and Tennessee, a country which rivaled on a small scale the Dorado of Siberia. The treasures of the Pacific coast were not yet dreamed of.

Mr. Gallatin perfectly understood the range of his own powers. He said of himself:—

“If I have met with any success, either in public bodies, as an executive officer, or in foreign negotiations, it has been exclusively through a patient and most thorough investigation of all the attainable facts, and a cautious application of these to the questions under discussion.... Long habit has given me great facility in collating, digesting, and extracting complex documents, but I am not hasty in drawing inferences; the arrangement of the facts and arguments is always to me a considerable labor, and though aiming at nothing more than perspicuity and brevity, I am a very slow writer.”

Mr. Gallatin's manuscripts and drafts show longand minute labor in their well considered and abundant alterations. Referring on one occasion to his habit of reasoning, Mr. Gallatin remarked, that of all processes that of analogy is the most dangerous, yet that which he habitually used; that it required the greatest possible number of facts. This is the foundation of philology, and his understanding of its method and its dangers is the reason of his success in this branch of science.

The difficulty experienced in establishing any literary or scientific institutions in New York was very great. An effort made in 1830, which Mr. Gallatin favored, to establish a literary periodical failed, not on account of the pecuniary difficulties, but from the impossibility of uniting a sufficient number of able coöperators. But Mr. Gallatin's interest in literature was not as great as in science.[26]

In 1841 a national institution for the promotion of science was organized at Washington. The coöperation of Mr. Gallatin was invited, but the society had a short existence. In 1843 Mr. Gallatin was chosen president of the New York Historical Society. His inaugural address is an epitome of political wisdom. Pronounced at any crisis of our history, it would have become a text for the student. In this sketch he analyzed the causes which contributed to form our nationalcharacter and to establish a government founded on justice and on equal rights. He showed how, united by a common and imminent danger, the thirteen States succeeded in asserting and obtaining independence without the aid of a central and efficient government, and the difficulties which were encountered when a voluntary surrender of a part of their immense sovereignty became necessary as a condition of national existence. He said that the doctrine that all powers should emanate from the people is not a question of expediency.

In this address he summed up the reasons why Washington exercised such a beneficial influence upon the destinies of his country. In a confidential letter to his wife in 1797, he expressed an opinion that the father of his country was not a good-natured and amiable man, but time had mellowed these recollections and softened the asperity of this judgment. Washington had not, he said (in 1843), 'an extraordinary amount of acquired knowledge; he was neither a classical scholar nor a man of science, nor was he endowed with the powers of eloquence, nor with other qualities more strong than solid, which might be mentioned; but he had a profound and almost innate sense of justice, on all public occasions a perfect control of his strong passions,[27]above all a most completeand extraordinary self-abnegation. Personal consequences and considerations were not even thought of, they never crossed his mind, they were altogether obliterated.' Mr. Gallatin held that “the Americans had a right to be proud of Washington, because he was selected and maintained during his whole career by the people—never could he have been thus chosen and constantly supported had he not been the type and representative of the American people.”

The commemoration of the fortieth anniversary of the foundation of the New York Historical Society, November, 1844, was an occasion of unusual interest. John Romeyn Brodhead, who had just returned from the Hague with the treasures of New Netherland history gathered during his mission, was the orator of the day. The venerable John Quincy Adams, Mr. Gallatin's old associate at Ghent, was present. After the address, which was delivered at the Church of the Messiah on Broadway, the society and its guests crossed the street to the New York Hotel, where a banquet awaited them. Mr. Gallatin retired early, leaving the chair to the first vice-president, Mr. Wm. Beach Lawrence. After he had left the room, Mr. Adams, speaking to a toast to the archæologists of America, said: “Mr. Gallatin, in sending to me the invitations of the society, added the expression of his desire 'to shake hands with me once more in this world.'” Mr. Adams could not but respond to his request. In his remarks he said:

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