BOOK V.

AGE. 1830-1849.

[Sidenote 1830]

Whatever Mr. Gallatin may have thought or said of his physical or

intellectual powers, he was from 1830 to 1840 in the prime of life.

Never had his mind been more clear, his judgment more keen, or his

experience and knowledge so valuable as when the United States

government dispensed with his further services at the close of the year

1829. Intellectually, the next fifteen years were the most fruitful of

his whole long and laborious career. His case was a singular

illustration of the intellectual movement of his time. Had he now been

entering instead of quitting the world, he would have found himself

drawn, both by temperament, by cast of mind, and by education, into

science or business or literature; for the United States of 1830 was no

longer the same country as the United States of 1790; it had found a

solution of its most serious political problems, and its more active

intellectual life was turning to the study of social and economical

principles, to purely scientific methods and objects, to practical

commerce and the means of obtaining wealth. Old though Mr. Gallatin

might think himself, it was to this new society that he and his mental

processes belonged, and he found it a pleasure rather than a pain to

turn away from that public life which no longer represented a single

great political conception, and to grapple with the ideas and methods of

the coming generation. In fact, the politics of the United States from

1830 to 1849 offered as melancholy a spectacle as satirists ever held up

to derision. Of all the parties that have existed in the United States,

the famous Whig party was the most feeble in ideas and the most

blundering in management; the Jacksonian Democracy was corrupt in its

methods; and both, as well as society itself, were deeply cankered with

two desperate sores: the enormous increase of easily acquired wealth,

and the terribly rapid growth of slavery and the slave power. In such a

spectacle there was to Mr. Gallatin no pleasure and deep pain. He did

not, like his old colleague J. Q. Adams, return into public life to

offer a violent protest against the degradation of the time, and he did

not, like Mr. Adams, pour out his contempt and indignation in the

bitterest and most savage comments on men and measures; but he felt

quite as strongly, and his thoughts were expressed, whenever they were

expressed at all, in language that meant as much. Few Americans can now

look back upon that time and remember how the whole country writhed with

pain and rage under the lash of Charles Dickens's satire, without

feeling that this satire was in the main deserved. Indeed, there can be

no philosophy of history that would not require some vast derangement of

the national health to account for the mortal convulsion with which that

health was at last in part restored.

Although Mr. Gallatin was no longer in office, he was still deeply

interested in public affairs. Members of the Cabinet, Senators, and

members of Congress, incessantly applied to him for information and

advice. Like Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Madison in their retirement, he was

consulted as an oracle. His replies were oracular neither in brevity nor

in doubtfulness of meaning. He never refused to assist persons, though

quite unknown to him, who asked for such counsel. For a considerable

time, so long as financial and economical legislation was especially

prominent, in the days of tariffs, nullification, national bank, and

sub-treasury, he was still a political power and made his influence

deeply felt.

[Sidenote 1830]

The first occasion for his active interference in politics under the new

régime was somewhat accidental. In the early part of General Jackson's

Administration the question of renewing the charter of the Bank of the

United States was not yet a prominent party issue; that the President

would make a bitter personal contest for the destruction of the bank was

not suspected, and the tendency of public opinion seemed to favor a

renewal of the charter. In April, 1830, soon after the argument on the

North-East boundary was disposed of, Mr. Gallatin received a letter

from Robert Walsh, Jr., editor of the American Quarterly Review in

Philadelphia, requesting an article on currency, in connection with Mr.

McDuffie's recent Congressional report on the Bank of the United States.

Mr. Gallatin replied that he would be disposed to comply if he thought

he could add anything to what had been done by others. He described

himself as an "ultra-bullionist," favoring the restriction of paper

issues to notes of $100, to be issued only by the Bank of the United

States, and a bi-metallic currency of gold and silver. This was

essentially the French system, and Mr. Gallatin had, during his

residence in France, become prepossessed in its favor. In reply to his

request for statistical information, Mr. Walsh put him in communication

with Nicholas Biddle, President of the United States Bank, and an

animated correspondence was carried on for some months between the two

gentlemen. Early in August, Mr. Gallatin was called upon for his paper,

and wrote to say that he was not ready. He excused his apparent

sluggishness by describing his method of work: "I can lay no claim to

either originality of thinking or felicity of expression. 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 work of

considerable labor; and though aiming at nothing more than perspicuity

and brevity, I am a very slow writer." This assertion must probably be

received with some qualifications; at least it is clear that much of Mr.

Gallatin's diplomatic work must have been done with rapidity and ease.

[Sidenote 1831]

In his correspondence with Mr. Biddle he gave the reasons which had

produced his strong faith in a bi-metallic currency, and since these

reasons are interesting as a part of his experience, they are worth

quoting here: "The most skilfully administered bank can only be prepared

to meet ordinary commercial fluctuations. But when a real and severe

crisis occurs, you are perfectly aware that moral causes may increase

the pressure to an extent which will baffle every calculation, for the

very reason that those causes are beyond the reach of calculation. On

the other hand, the example of France under the united pressure of a

double invasion, a failure of crops, large indemnities to foreign

countries, a vast portion of which was paid by the exportation of

specie, an unsettled government, and wild stock speculations, is

decisive to prove with what facility a crisis is met with an abundant

circulating metallic currency. We were, Mr. Baring and myself,

spectators of the crisis, of which I could only see the external

appearances and results, whilst he was behind the scenes and deeply

interested in the event. We conferred often on the subject, and came to

the same conclusions. He has ever since been an advocate in England of

the simultaneous use of the two metals for the sole purpose of enlarging

the basis of the metallic currency."

The "Considerations on the Currency and Banking System of the United

States" appeared in December, 1830, and was republished in a separate

form, with some further changes and tabular statements, in 1831.[166] As

a model for clearness of statement and thorough investigation it then

stood alone among American works, and even in Europe it might be

difficult to find anything much superior. Nearly half a century has

elapsed since this essay was written; finance has made great progress,

particularly in the United States, where, under peculiar circumstances,

a succession of violent convulsions ended in building up a completely

new system of currency and banking; yet even to-day Mr. Gallatin's essay

is indispensable to the American student of finance. There is no other

work which will guide him so surely through the intricacies of our early

financial history.

[Sidenote: 1831.]

The essay had, however, one effect which its author did not foresee. He

wrote as an economist and financier, whereas the bank charter was a

political question. As a matter of finance he argued, as every man who

was not a politician and who knew anything of finance then argued, in

favor of the bank. That he was perfectly right can hardly be made a

matter of question; the value of the bank as a financial instrument was

very great; the consequences of destroying it were disastrous in the

extreme, and were acutely felt during at least five-and-twenty years.

The popular fear of its hostility to our liberties was one of those

delusions which characterize ignorant stages of society, and which would

have had no importance unless politicians had found it a convenient

ally. The kindred theory of its unconstitutionality was even then

untenable, and is now ridiculous. The people of the United States have

learned since that time many lessons in regard to their Constitution,

and they have also learned that they hold all corporations at their

mercy, and that if there is any danger to liberty it is quite as likely

to be the liberties of corporations as those of the people which suffer.

All this was even then plain enough to a man like Mr. Gallatin, who had

in forty years of experience studied these subjects from every point of

view; but there was another question, the answer to which was not so

clear. Supposing the bank to be destroyed, was it worth while to attempt

its reconstruction? Setting aside the financial question, was it not

better to accept the pecuniary loss, even indefinitely, until some new

remedy should be found, rather than convulse all economical interests

with this perpetually recurring political contest? Most men would now

agree with Mr. Gallatin that, under those circumstances, it was better

to abandon the struggle and to seek new means for answering the same

ends; but this was not the opinion of the Whig party.

[Sidenote: 1832.]

Mr. Gallatin's pamphlet was circulated as a campaign document by the

bank. He became by this means its spokesman and one of its most

influential allies, subjected to suspicion and attack on its account,

although it need hardly be said that he not only received no

compensation from the bank, but declined the ordinary pay of

contributors to the Review. This attitude he was probably prepared to

maintain so long as the bank charter was undecided; but after President

Jackson had carried his point and the bank perished, after the

independent Treasury was organized, and the Whig party was setting

everything at stake upon success in effecting a counter-revolution and

restoring the bank, there was naturally some irritation against Mr.

Gallatin because he took very cautious ground and preferred to accept

the situation.

The bank charter was, however, a subordinate and comparatively

uninteresting question in the politics of 1831. Another and a more

serious political issue was threatening the existence of the Union and

entering into all the most earnest discussions of the Presidential

election of 1832. This was the protective system, the American system of

Mr. Clay, who, always true to his deep feeling for nationality, was

himself the best product of the war of 1812, in its character of

national self-assertion. All Mr. Gallatin's feelings and education were

opposed to protection; his voice had been, as he took pride in thinking,

the first in America to make a public assertion of free-trade

principles, and now, in 1831, his advocacy of tariff reduction was

stimulated by the threatening attitude of South Carolina. That political

theory which he had always made his cardinal principle, and which, in

its practical form, consisted simply in avoiding issues that were likely

to endanger the Union, led him now to urge timely concession. In

September, 1831, a convention of the friends of free trade was held in

Philadelphia, and delegated to a committee, of which Mr. Gallatin was

chairman, the task of preparing a memorial to be presented to both

Houses of Congress. This memorial forms a pamphlet of nearly ninety

pages, and was such a document as he might have sent to Congress had he

been still Secretary of the Treasury; it was, in fact, a Secretary's

report, and it probably had as much effect, for it became the text-book

of the free-traders of that day.

The memorial began by ascertaining the annual expenditure of the

government and the annual value of imports; from these data it concluded

that an average duty of 25 per cent. ad valorem on the taxed imports

would answer all requirements and should be assumed as the normal

standard of taxation; after an argument on the general theory of free

trade, the paper went on to examine and criticise the existing tariff

and to show the propriety of the proposed reform.

When the memorial was presented to Congress, it called down upon Mr.

Gallatin's head a storm of denunciation. For this he was of course

prepared, and he could not have expected to escape blows when, at a

time of intense excitement, he voluntarily placed himself in the

thickest of the mêlée. It was then, on the 2d February, 1832, that Mr.

Clay made a famous speech in the Senate in defence of his American

system, and into this carefully prepared oration he introduced the

following remarks upon Mr. Gallatin:

"The gentleman to whom I am about to allude, although long a resident of

this country, has no feelings, no attachments, no sympathies, no

principles in common with our people. Near fifty years ago Pennsylvania

took him to her bosom, and warmed and cherished and honored him; and how

does he manifest his gratitude? By aiming a vital blow at a system

endeared to her by a thorough conviction that it is indispensable to her

prosperity. He has filled, at home and abroad, some of the highest

offices under this government during thirty years, and he is still at

heart an alien. The authority of his name has been invoked, and the

labors of his pen, in the form of a memorial to Congress, have been

engaged, to overthrow the American system and to substitute the foreign.

Go home to your native Europe, and there inculcate upon her sovereigns

your Utopian doctrines of free trade, and when you have prevailed upon

them to unseal their ports and freely admit the produce of Pennsylvania

and other States, come back, and we shall be prepared to become converts

and to adopt your faith!"

Mr. Clay, in the course of his career, uttered a vast number of

rhetorical periods as defective as this in logic, taste, and judgment;

but he very rarely succeeded in accumulating so many blunders as in this

attack on Mr. Gallatin. The bad taste of vilifying an old associate, in

a place where he cannot reply; the bad logic of answering arguments on

the proper rates of impost duties by remarks on the birthplace of any

given individual; the bad temper of raising mean and bitter local

prejudices against an honorable and candid opponent, who had never,

under any provocation, condescended to use such weapons against others;

all these faults are excusable, or, at least, are so common among

orators and debaters as to pass almost unnoticed and unreproved. It is

not these rhetorical flourishes which raise a smile in reading Mr.

Clay's remarks, nor even the adjuration to "Go home to your native

Europe," although this has a startling resemblance to the rhetoric which

Charles Dickens, at about this time, attributed to Elijah Pogram. All

these are faults, but this paragraph on Mr. Gallatin was worse than a

fault: it contained two gross political blunders. One was the pledge

that if Europe would adopt free trade America would be prepared to

imitate her; a pledge which no sound or well-informed protectionist

could, even by inadvertence, have let slip. The other was still more

fatal. One principal motive that influenced Mr. Gallatin in pressing at

this time his proposition of reducing duties below a maximum of 25 per

cent. ad valorem, was the hope that by such a compromise the disunionist

propaganda of South Carolina might be paralyzed and the national

government might escape with dignity from its embarrassments, without

really sacrificing Northern industry. The policy was wise and

statesmanlike; in fact, the only solid ground, short of armed

compulsion, which could claim logical coherence. Mr. Clay, however,

characterized it in terms that cut him entirely away from all consistent

recourse to it; yet within twelve months Mr. Clay actually assumed this

same ground and went beyond Mr. Gallatin in his abandonment of the

protective system. In fact, the difficulty with Gallatin's scheme was

that it did not go far enough to please South Carolina, as appears very

clearly in a letter written by Gallatin on the 7th April, 1832, to

William Drayton, one of the South Carolina representatives, in reply to

his request for the sketch of a bill which should reduce the duties to

an average of 10 per cent.[167] Mr. Clay's compromise conceded

everything, and that too in a worse form and with deplorable

consequences. His reputation suffered, and deservedly suffered, in

proportion to his previous dogmatism.

Meanwhile, Mr. Gallatin had at last fairly adopted a new career. Certain

persons had obtained from the New York Legislature in April, 1829, the

charter for a new bank, and finding themselves, after three successive

attempts, unable to induce capitalists to subscribe for the stock, they

applied to Mr. J. J. Astor for assistance, and Mr. Astor agreed to

furnish the necessary capital on condition that Mr. Gallatin should be

president of the bank. Thus the National (afterwards the Gallatin) Bank

came into existence; a small corporation with a capital of only

$750,000, and certainly not an institution calculated to inspire or

gratify any ambitious thoughts or hopes. Mr. Gallatin drew from it the

very modest compensation of $2000 a year, that being the sum which he

considered necessary, in addition to his own income, to enable him to

live in New York. He never wanted wealth, and was, to his dying day,

perfectly consistent on this point with his early declarations. Indeed,

his views were far more ambitious when he was surveying the Ohio

wilderness with Savary than when he returned to America after nearly

fifteen years passed at the most magnificent capitals and courts of the

world. What he aimed at and enjoyed was the respect and consideration of

his fellow-citizens. In this he was fully gratified. His acquaintance

was sought by almost every person of any prominence who visited the

city. He was exempted more and more from hostile attack and criticism,

and his occupations were such as to keep him always agreeably employed

and to bring him in contact with numbers of intelligent and educated

men. One by one his old associates passed from the stage,--Jefferson,

Monroe, Madison, La Fayette, Badollet,--but a younger generation had

already supplied their places. His conversation was, perhaps, freer than

when he was forced to weigh his words. His domestic relations were

peculiarly happy, and in this respect his good fortune lasted till his

death.

Under these pleasant conditions, Mr. Gallatin's active mind turned to

those scientific pursuits for which it was so well fitted and in which

it took most delight. Perhaps one might not wander very far from the

truth if one added that these pursuits were, on the whole, his most

permanent claim to distinction. The first debater and parliamentarian of

his day, his fame as a leader of Congress has long since ceased to give

an echo, and his most brilliant speeches are hardly known even by name

to the orators of the present generation. The first of all American

financiers, his theories, his methods, and his achievements as Secretary

of the Treasury are as completely forgotten by politicians as his

speeches in Congress. First among the diplomatists of his time, his

reputation as a diplomate has passed out of men's minds. First as a

writer and an authority on political economy in America, very few

economists can now remember the titles of his writings or the

consequences of his action. But he was the father of American ethnology,

and there has been no time since his death when the little band of his

followers have forgotten him; there never can come a time when students

of that subject can venture to discard his work.

The reason of this steadiness in the estimate of his scientific

reputation is simply that his method was sound and his execution

accurate; having set to himself the task of constructing a large system

of American ethnology, he laid its foundations broadly and firmly in an

adequate study of comparative philology. Abstaining with his usual

caution from all hazardous speculation and unripe theorizing, he devoted

immense labor and many years of life to the routine work of collecting

and sifting vocabularies, studying the grammatical structure of

languages, and classifying the groups and families of our American

Indians on the principles thus worked out. Thus it was he who first

established the linguistic groups of the North American Indians on a

large scale, and made the first ethnographical map of North America

which had real merit.

[Sidenote: 1833.]

Geography was always one of his favorite studies; but the influence

which decided the bent of his mind towards ethnological investigation

seems to have come chiefly from Alexander von Humboldt, at whose request

he made, in 1823, a first attempt in the shape of an essay, which was

not printed, but was quoted with praise in the Introduction to the

"Atlas Ethnographique" of M. Balbi. Following up the line of inquiry, he

set himself actively to work in the winter of 1825-26 to obtain Indian

vocabularies, and the presence of a numerous delegation of Southern

Indians at Washington in the course of that winter enabled him to make

rapid progress. He was further aided by the War Department, which

circulated, at his request, printed forms of a vocabulary containing six

hundred words. He then published a table of all the existing tribes in

the United States. In 1835, at the request of the American Antiquarian

Society of Worcester, Massachusetts, he prepared an essay, which was

printed the following year in the second volume of the Society's

Transactions, under the title, "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 paper was accompanied by an

ethnological map and numerous vocabularies. It was successful in its

main object of giving a solid structure to the science, and it was

received with applause by American and European ethnologists. Mr.

Gallatin was encouraged to go on, and under his influence the American

Ethnological Society of New York was organized, which held its first

meeting on the 19th November, 1842, and in 1845 published its first

volume of Transactions, three hundred pages of which are devoted to Mr.

Gallatin's "Notes on the Semi-Civilized Nations of Mexico, Yucatan, and

Central America." The second volume appeared in 1848, and contained

another essay by Mr. Gallatin on the geography, philology, and

civilization of the Indians, printed as an Introduction to a

republication of Hale's "Indians of Northwest America."

These three essays, with their vocabularies and maps, may be said to

have created the science of American ethnology, which had until that

time existed only in a fragmentary shape. So far as they were

philological they still form the groundwork of whatever progress is made

in the study, and the men who have rendered and are now rendering the

highest services in this science are, of all Americans, those who have

the keenest sense and speak in the warmest terms of Gallatin's

greatness. So far as the papers were general and descriptive, although

forty years of investigation have greatly increased our knowledge and

modified our opinions, they are still held in high esteem, and show in

numerous places the touch of careful and discreet investigation.

GALLATIN TO JOHN BADOLLET.

NEW YORK, February 7, 1833.

I am deeply and most sadly affected by your letter of 20th ult. It has

indeed, my dearest friend, been a source of constant regret and the

embittering circumstance of my life that not only we should have been

separated during the greater part of our existence, but that your lot

should have been cast in the comparatively unhealthy climate to which

your repeated bilious attacks and their sad consequences must be

ascribed. But what else could be done? The necessity of bringing up a

family and of an independent existence is imposed upon us. And although

I should have been contented to live and die amongst the Monongahela

hills, it must be acknowledged that, beyond the invaluable advantage of

health, they afforded either to you or me but few intellectual or

physical resources. Indeed, I must say that I do not know in the United

States any spot which afforded less means to earn a bare subsistence for

those who could not live by manual labor than the sequestered corner in

which accident had first placed us. We can but resign ourselves to what

was unavoidable. And yet I have often thought that we boasted too much

of the immense extent of our territory, which, if it makes us more

powerful as a nation and offers so large a field for enterprise, carries

within itself the seeds of dissolution, by expanding weakens the bonds

of union and the devotedness of genuine patriotism, and in the mean

while destroys the charm of local attachment, separates friends and

disperses to most distant quarters the members of the same family. In

your remote situation, thrown at the age of forty-five amongst entire

strangers, and amidst the afflictions by which you have been visited,

two great comforts have still been left to you,--the excellent wife with

which you have been blessed, that bosom friend for whom there are no

secrets, that faithful partner of all your joys and sorrows, that being

who had your and gave you her undivided affections with tender feelings,

without the least affectation, gentle and prudent, such, indeed, as

seems to have been a special gift of Heaven intended for you. Add to

this the consciousness not only of a life of integrity, but of a pure

life, of one which either as private or public should satisfy you and

has gained you general consideration and the respect of all that have

simply known you. And as to those who have been more intimately

acquainted with you, who has been more generally beloved and could

always count more sincere friends than yourself?

My dear friend, you judge yourself with too much severity. For want of

greater offences you seek for specks, and your extreme susceptibility

magnifies them into unpardonable errors. I tell you the truth, Badollet,

when I assure you that in the course of a life which has brought me in

contact with men of all ranks and of many nations, I have not known a

more virtuous and pure man than yourself. Your education, that of a

student, and your simplicity and your unsuspecting integrity, unfitted

you for that active life of enterprise which is the characteristic of

this nation, and made you unable to cope with the shrewdness of those by

whom you were surrounded. Still, you have to the last resisted every

temptation and struggled for existence by honorable means. Yet it is

true that both you and I, during the years of youthful hopes and those

which succeeded of arduous labors, identified with our new country and

surrounded by new and dearest objects of domestic affection, it is true

that we both neglected to correspond with the friends of our youth and

to preserve ties which could not be replaced. The penalty for that

offence we have paid, and have been the greatest sufferers. I have been

far more to blame in that respect; and yet please to God that I had

nothing worse to reproach myself with.

We all went to Greenfield, Connecticut, during the cholera and escaped

that calamity; but during our absence we lost Mrs. Nicholson, who died

in August of old age (88). It was principally on her account that Mrs.

Gallatin wished, on our return from England, to settle here. I found

after a while that my income was not sufficient for this conspicuous and

expensive city, and this induced me to accept the place of president of

a new bank (the National Bank of New York), which I have now filled for

near two years, with a salary of 2000 dollars. I might now give it up so

far as concerns myself, as the additional income derived from my wife's

property is sufficient for us; but whilst my health permits I may remain

in it, as it gives me opportunities of introducing my sons in business.

Although I neither suffer pain or can complain of serious illness, I

grow gradually weaker, thinner, and more and more liable to severe colds

and derangement of the bowels. My faculties, memory of recent events or

reading excepted, are wonderfully preserved, and my two last essays on

Currency and on the Tariff have received the approbation of the best

judges here and in Europe. I had another favorite object in view, in

which I have failed. My wish was to devote what may remain of life to

the establishment, in this immense and fast-growing city, of a general

system of rational and practical education fitted for all and

gratuitously opened to all. For it appeared to me impossible to preserve

our democratic institutions and the right of universal suffrage unless

we could raise the standard of _general_ education and the mind of the

laboring classes nearer to a level with those born under more favorable

circumstances. I became accordingly the president of the council of a

new university, originally established on the most liberal principles.

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 present aspect of our national politics is extremely discouraging;

yet, having heretofore always seen the good sense of this nation

ultimately prevailing against the excesses of party spirit and the still

more dangerous efforts of disappointed ambition, I do not despair. But

although I hope the dangers which threaten us may for the present be

averted, the discussions and the acts which have already taken place

have revealed the secret of our vulnerable points, dissolved the charm

which made our Constitution and our Union a sacred object, and will

render the preservation of both much more difficult than heretofore. I

have always thought that the dangerous questions arising from the

conflicting and, in our complex, half-consolidated, half-federative form

of government, doubtful rights of individual States and United States

should, if possible, be avoided; that the bond of union, if made too

tight, would snap; and that great moderation in the exercise even of its

most legitimate powers was, in our extensive country, with all its

diversified and often opposite interests, absolutely necessary on the

part of the general government.

[Sidenote: 1834.]

This is a general observation, and more applicable to futurity than to

the present. The acts of South Carolina are outrageous and

unjustifiable. The difficult part for our government is how to nullify

nullification and yet to avoid a civil war. A difficult task, but, in my

humble opinion, not impossible to perform.

Do not write to me long letters which tire you; but now and then drop me

three or four lines. All my family unite in affectionate remembrance and

sympathy. Give my love to your wife and tell her that, whilst I live,

she has a friend to whom she may apply under any circumstances.

Farewell, my dear friend. May God throw comfort on your last years!

Ever your own faithful friend.

GALLATIN TO BADOLLET.

NEW YORK, 3d February, 1834.

MY DEAR FRIEND,--...I sympathized most truly and deeply with you in

the irreparable loss with which you have been afflicted. I had no

consolation to offer you, and felt so painfully, that very wrongfully

and shamefully I postponed and postponed writing to you. Even now what

can I say but what must renew and embitter your grief? For no one knew

more thoroughly, appreciated more highly than I did, the merits of your

beloved partner. She was the solace of your checkered and in many

respects troubled life, a singular blessing bestowed on you and long

preserved. With heartfelt thanks to Him who gave it, resignation to his

will is a duty, but this does not lessen the loss or the pain. May-be it

was best that of the two you should have been the survivor. Do you now

live with any of your children, and with which of them? I hardly dare

ask how your health stands.

I have no other infirmities but a derangement of the functions of the

stomach, which I manage without medicine, and an annually increasing

debility which none could cure. It is only within the last year that I

have discovered a sensible diminution in the facility of thinking and

committing thoughts to writing. But this and other symptoms advise me

that my active career is at an end, and that I cannot continue to

vegetate very long.... My daughter has already three children, who

engross the attention of my wife. Mine has for some time been turned,

and will be still more devoted, to the education of James's son, who has

tolerable talents and a most engaging disposition. He is the only young

male of my name, and I have hesitated whether, with a view to his

happiness, I had not better take him to live and die quietly at Geneva,

rather than to leave him to struggle in this most energetic country,

where the strong in mind and character overset everybody else, and where

consideration and respectability are not at all in proportion to virtue

and modest merit. Yet I am so identified with the country which I served

so long that I cannot detach myself from it. I find no one who suffers

in mind as I do at the corruption and degeneracy of our government. But

I do not despair, and cannot believe that we have lived under a

perpetual delusion, and that the people will not themselves ultimately

cure the evils under which we labor. There is something more wanted than

improved forms of government. There is something wrong in the social

state. Moral still more than intellectual education and habits are

wanted. Had I another life before me, my faculties would be turned

towards that object much rather than to political pursuits. But all this

is for our posterity. Farewell, my dear friend.

Ever most affectionately yours.

The only specimen of Mr. Gallatin's conversation which seems to claim a

place in his biography is that recorded by Miss Martineau in her

journal. Concise as it is, it has the merits of both the speaker and the

listener.

MISS MARTINEAU'S JOURNAL. 1834.

New York, 24th September.--Mr. Gallatin called. Old man. Began his

career in 1787. Has been three times in England. Twice as minister.

Found George IV. a cipher. Louis Philippe very different. Will manage

all himself and _keep_ what he has. William IV. silly as Duke of

Clarence. Gallatin would have the President a cipher too, if he

could,--_i.e._, would have him _annual_, so that all would be done by

the ministry. As this cannot yet be, he prefers four years' term without

renewal to the present plan, or to six years. The office was made for

the man,--Washington, who was _wanted_ (as well as fit) to reconcile all

parties. Bad office, but well filled till now. Too much power for one

man; therefore it fills all men's thoughts to the detriment of better

things. Jackson "a pugnacious animal." This the reason (in the absence

of interested motives) of his present bad conduct.

New Englanders the best people, perhaps, in the world. Prejudiced, but

able, honest and homogeneous. Compounds elsewhere. In Pennsylvania the

German settlers the most ignorant, but the best political economists.

Give any price for the best land and hold it all. Compound in New York.

Emigrants a sad drawback. Slaves and gentry in the South. In Gallatin's

recollection, Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana had not a white, except a

French station or two; now a million and a half of flourishing whites.

_Maize_ the cause of rapid accumulation, and makes a white a capitalist

between February and November, while the Indian remains _in statu quo_,

and when accumulation begins, government cannot reserve land. The people

are the government and will have all the lands. Drew up a plan for

selling lands. Would have sold at two dollars. Was soon brought down to

one dollar and a quarter with credit. Then, as it is bad for subjects to

be debtors to a democratic government, reduction supplied the place of

credit, and the price was brought down to one-quarter of a dollar.

All great changes have been effected by the Democratic party, from the

first up to the universal suffrage which practically exists.

Aristocracy must arise. Traders rise. Some few fail, but most retain

with pains their elevation. Bad trait here, fraudulent bankruptcies,

though dealing is generally fair. Reason, that enterprise must be

encouraged, must exist to such a degree as to be liable to be carried

too far.

[Sidenote: 1836.]

Would have no United States Bank. Would have free banking as soon as

practicable. It cannot be yet. Thinks Jackson all wrong about the bank,

but has changed his opinion as to its powers. It has no political

powers, but prodigious commercial. If the bank be not necessary, better

avoid allowing this power. Bank has not overpapered the country.

Gallatin is tall, bald, toothless, speaks with burr, looks venerable and

courteous. Opened out and apologized for his full communication. Kissed

my hand.

GALLATIN TO BADOLLET.

NEW YORK, 3d September, 1836.

MY DEAR FRIEND,--Your grandson Gillem arrived here safely, and with

great propriety remained but two days and proceeded at once to West

Point.... I had intended to go myself to West Point, but chronical

infirmities, always aggravated by travelling, have kept me the whole

summer in the city.

It is not that I have any right to complain, ... feeling sensibly the

gradual and lately rapid decay of strength both of body and mind. The

last affects me most; memory is greatly impaired, and that great

facility of labor with which I was blessed has disappeared. It takes me

a day to write a letter of any length, and unfortunately the excessive

increase of expenses in this city and a heavy loss by last winter's fire

(in fire insurance stock) compel me, for the sake of the salary, to

continue the irksome and mechanical labors of president of a bank....

Neither I nor my children have the talent of making money any more than

yourself, though the Genevese are rather celebrated for it. Mrs.

Gallatin enjoys excellent health, and so does the family generally. Your

grandson gave me a more favorable account of yours than I had hoped to

hear. And I was also much gratified by the appointment of your son as

your successor in the land office.

[Sidenote: 1836.]

My last work, written in 1835, at the request of the Antiquarian Society

of Massachusetts, is a synopsis of the Indian tribes of the United

States east of the Rocky Mountains and of those of British and Russian

America north of the United States. It will contain, besides an

explanatory map, about two hundred pages of text and three hundred of

comparative vocabularies and grammatical notices. I had expected to have

sent you a copy before now, but the printing has been unaccountably

delayed by the publisher employed by the society. I have materials for

supplementary considerations on banking and currency, but I have not

courage to reduce them to order, and, though they might perhaps be of

some use, the bank-paper mania has extended itself so widely that I

despair of its being corrected otherwise than by a catastrophe. The

energy of this nation is not to be controlled; it is at present

exclusively applied to the acquisition of wealth and to improvements of

stupendous magnitude. Whatever has that tendency, and of course an

immoderate expansion of credit, receives favor. The apparent prosperity

and the progress of cultivation, population, commerce, and improvement

are beyond expectation. But it seems to me as if general demoralization

was the consequence; I doubt whether general happiness is increased; and

I would have preferred a gradual, slower, and more secure progress. I

am, however, an old man, and the young generation has a right to govern

itself....

I had expected to write only a few lines, and have fallen into

digressions of little personal interest to you. The fact is that as I

grow less capable of thinking, I have become quite garrulous. I only

wish I could enjoy once more the pleasure of practising in that respect

with my old friend, as talking is not at all and writing is quite a

labor to me. Fare you well, and, whether silent or writing, believe me,

ever, whilst I still breathe,

Your old and faithful friend.

... I was rather astonished to hear that Harrison had a majority in

Indiana. In the Presidential election I will take no part....

GALLATIN TO MADAME DE BUDÉ, NÉE ROLAZ.

NEW YORK, 1st May, 1845.

[Sidenote: 1835.]

... Rappelez-moi au souvenir de vos fils et de votre frère.... J'espère

qu'il laisse faire les gouvernements et qu'il ne se mêle plus de

politique; ce qui est, comme je le sais, fort inutile lorsqu'on n'a

point d'influence. Et je puis ajouter que mes quatorze dernières années,

c'est-à-dire depuis que j'ai été étranger aux affaires publiques, out

été, à tout prendre, les plus heureuses de ma vie. Mes plus belles

années avaient été dévouées, je puis dire, exclusivement au service de

ma patrie d'adoption; celles-ci l'ont été à mes enfants et aux

affections domestiques. De plus, n'étant plus sur la route de personne,

l'envie a disparu. On ne m'écoute pas du tout, mais on me considère et

personne ne dit du mal de moi....

* * * * *

His opinions on the practical working of our government, especially with

reference to taxation, were given at considerable length in a letter

written to La Fayette in the year 1833. One portion of this letter is

worth quoting, coming as it does from an original Republican of the

Jeffersonian school:

"The local taxes in the country, at least where I am acquainted, amount

to at least one-sixth of the income, and that on houses here [in New

York City] to not more than one-twelfth part. This, merely for local

disbursements, is certainly a heavy charge, particularly in the country,

and arises partly from local wants, which for some objects, such as

roads, are very great in proportion to our wealth. But it is also due in

a great degree to our democratic institutions; and the burden, which was

extremely light, especially in the country, fifty years ago, has been

gradually and is still increasing. The reason appears to me obvious

enough. Government is in the hands of the people at large. They are an

excellent check against high salaries, extravagant establishments, and

every species of expenditure which they do not see or in which they do

not participate. But they receive an immediate benefit from the money

expended amongst themselves, either as being employed in opening roads,

the erection of buildings, &c., or as being more interested in the

application of public money to schools, the payment of jurors and other

petty offices, and even prospectively in the provision for the poor.

They, in fact, pay little or no portion of the direct tax (occasionally

enough in towns, but indirectly, by the increase of rents), and receive

the greater part of its proceeds. You perceive that I do not disguise

what I think to be the defects, and I know no other of any importance,

in our system of taxation. I do not know any remedy for it here but in

the exertions to obtain the best men we can for our municipal officers.

But where institutions are yet to be formed, I may say that I have not

discovered any evil to arise from universal suffrage in the choice of

representatives to our legislative bodies; but that for municipal

officers, who have no power over persons, but only that of applying the

proceeds of taxes, those who contribute to such payment ought alone to

have the privilege of being electors."

The threatened rupture with France in 1835, when President Jackson

nearly brought on a war on account of the failure of the French Chambers

to appropriate money in pursuance of a treaty for the settlement of our

claims, disturbed Mr. Gallatin greatly, and at the request of Edward

Everett, then a member of Congress, he wrote two very elaborate letters

for the use of the Committee of Foreign Relations.[168] The following

acknowledgment has a certain characteristic interest:

JOHN C. CALHOUN TO GALLATIN.

WASHINGTON, 23d February, 1835.

DEAR SIR,--I am obliged to you for putting me in possession of your

views on a French war. They are such as I entertain. I know of no

greater calamity that could befall the country at this time than a

French war. I do not believe the Union would survive it. My course is

taken. So long as France abstains from force I shall be opposed to war,

and I am of the impression that such will prove to be the sentiment of

the entire South....

* * * * *

The time was now coming for one more great effort on the part of Mr.

Gallatin to control the course of public events, an effort which,

considering all the circumstances, was as remarkable as any struggle of

his life. It was his last prolonged attempt, and singularly

characteristic.

[Sidenote: 1836.]

Time had at length brought the realization of his most ardent hopes as

Secretary of the Treasury, and the national debt was paid; all the

advantages of that millennium were attained, whatever they might be, and

Mr. Gallatin could esteem himself happy that he had lived to see his

vision made fact. It was not to be denied that the establishment of

republicanism, and even of democracy, had been long antecedent to the

discharge of the debt; had proved to be noways dependent on the debt;

had, indeed, been most rapid and most irresistible under the influence

of a war which his own party had made, and under the burden of a heavy

additional debt which he had himself helped to accumulate. This,

however, was of little consequence; the results were gained, and the

time had long passed when Mr. Gallatin would have been inclined to claim

exclusive credit for them.

[Sidenote: 1837.]

Unfortunately, the fact became immediately obvious that, whatever were

the ultimate and permanent advantages gained by the extinction of the

debt, the immediate consequences were disastrous and alarming in the

extreme. Nullification and imminent civil war were at the head of the

list, but were neither the most serious nor the most corrupting. Perhaps

a worse result than civil war was the rapid decline in public economy

and morality; the shameless scramble for public money; the wild mania

for speculation; the outburst of every one of the least creditable

passions of American character. At this revelation of the consequences

of his own favorite political dogma, Mr. Gallatin stood positively

appalled. "I find no one who suffers in mind as I do at the corruption

and degeneracy of our government. But I do not despair, and cannot

believe that we have lived under a perpetual delusion." So he wrote to

his oldest friend. To his alarm he found that extinction of the national

debt was a signal for an astonishing increase in the indebtedness of the

community at large, one significant sign of which was that the

individual States contracted, between 1830 and 1838, new debts to the

amount of nearly one hundred and fifty millions, that is to say, very

nearly as much as had been discharged by the national government since

1789. Under any circumstances this tendency to extravagance would have

been dangerous, but when the President seized this moment for his attack

upon the bank, he immensely aggravated the evil. From 1830 to 1837, in

anticipation of the failure to renew the bank charter, three hundred new

banks were created, with a capital of one hundred and forty-five

millions of dollars, precisely doubling the banking capital of the

country. Meanwhile, after the discharge of the last instalment of

national debt, an alarming surplus rapidly accumulated in the hands of

the Treasury officials, until forty millions had been deposited by them

in State banks and had become the means of an excessive expansion of

credit, acting as a violent stimulus to the wild extravagance of the

time.

All these causes produced five or six years of intoxication, during

which the public morality was permanently lowered and the seeds of

future defalcations, public and private, rapidly matured. Then the tide

turned; England stopped lending money and called for payment; the

President and Congress attacked the resources and credit of the State

banks as earnestly as they had previously helped to create and extend

both; the New York banks stopped discounting; a terrible crisis came on;

and on the 10th May, 1837, the New York banks suspended specie payments.

The universal suspension of all banks throughout the country instantly

followed.

Mr. Gallatin's bank suspended with the rest, not because it was obliged

to do so, for it might perhaps have held out, but this would have

answered no special object and would have produced considerable

inconvenience. Mr. Gallatin himself, therefore, was personally involved

in, and partially responsible for, an act of bankruptcy which was to him

the substance of everything most galling and reproachful. He could not

but remember how, in 1815, he had urged on the government the necessity

of specie payments after the war, and how there had arisen almost a

coldness between him and his friend Dallas, then Secretary of the

Treasury, on the subject; how he had remonstrated against waiting for

the restoration of the bank, and had pressed the Treasury to resume at

once, by funding the excess of Treasury notes, and rejecting the notes

of suspended banks when offered in payments to the government. That he

should himself now belie his old teachings and become in practice if not

in theory an advocate and supporter of an irredeemable paper currency,

was intolerable. He had made every effort to prevent the necessity of

suspension. He was now called upon by every feeling of self-respect to

bring about resumption.

The State law required that a suspended bank, which did not resume its

payments before the expiration of one year from the date of suspension,

should be deemed to have surrendered its rights, and should be adjudged

to be dissolved. This was the principal lever with which Mr. Gallatin

could work. He represented an institution which of itself had very

little weight; but, although his only means of interfering at all was in

the character of president of a new and unimportant bank, his real

authority was wholly personal, and it was fortunate for him that the

want of capital behind him was supplied by the active and able

co-operation of other bank officers, especially by Mr. George Newbold,

of the Bank of America, and by Mr. Cornelius W. Lawrence, of the Bank of

the State of New York.

On the 15th August a general meeting was held by the officers of the

city banks. A resolution was adopted appointing a committee to

correspond with the leading State banks throughout the Union, for the

purpose of agreeing on the time and the measures for resumption. This

committee consisted of Mr. Gallatin, Mr. Newbold, and Mr. Lawrence, and

proceeded almost immediately to carry out its instructions. Three days

afterwards, on August 18, a circular-letter was despatched, inviting the

other banks to a conference, and laying down in very energetic language

the rules which should guide their action: "By accepting their charters

the banks contracted the obligation of redeeming their issues at all

times and under any circumstances whatever; they have not been able to

perform that engagement; and a depreciated paper, differing in value at

different places and subject to daily fluctuations in the same place,

has thus been substituted for the currency, equivalent to gold or

silver, which, and no other, they were authorized and had the exclusive

right to issue. Such a state of things cannot and ought not to be

tolerated any longer than an absolute necessity requires it.... As

relates to the banks of this city, we are of opinion that, provided the

co-operation of the other banks is obtained, they may and ought to, we

should perhaps say that they must, resume specie payments before next

spring."

This circular had one immediate effect: it developed the force and

character of the opposition; it brought out the fact that the real point

of resistance was to be in Pennsylvania, and that of this resistance the

old Bank of the United States was to be the main stay; it showed that

politics had been dragged into alliance with the less solvent banking

institutions, and that the party opposed to President Van Buren's

Administration had hopes of forcing the re-establishment of a national

bank by making this the condition of resumption. Mr. Gallatin had no

great sympathy with the Administration and no favors to ask from it, but

he was not at all disposed to allow his ideas of public duty to be

subordinated to the political purposes of the opposition.

On the expiration of the bank charter in March, 1836, the old Bank of

the United States had accepted a new charter from the State of

Pennsylvania, and had attempted to carry on its business. Bad

management, want of confidence, and the universal financial pressure

soon reduced it to such a condition that the general suspension of

specie payments alone concealed its insolvency; yet its controlling

influence over the other Pennsylvania banks was such that they still

followed its lead, and all united in replying to Mr. Gallatin's

circular, that they deemed it inexpedient to appoint delegates to the

proposed meeting of bank officers, for the reason that general

resumption depended mainly, if not exclusively, on the action of

Congress; thereby implying that no permanent resumption was possible

without the adoption of their policy of renewing the charter of the

United States Bank. The Baltimore banks followed their example, and

those of Boston returned no positive answer.

Unsatisfactory as this result was, the New York banks, with Mr. Gallatin

at their head, resolutely pursued their object. On the 20th October the

committee issued another circular, in pursuance of a resolution passed

at a general meeting on the 10th, and formally invited the other State

banks over the whole Union to meet in convention at New York on November

27. This step compelled both Philadelphia and Boston to accede, for fear

of the consequences in case New York should act alone. The convention

met, and Mr. Gallatin acted in it the prominent part which naturally

fell to his share as chairman of the New York committee. His opponents

did not, however, press the political argument, but rested their case

principally on the injury that would be caused by a premature

resumption. Mr. Gallatin met this objection with that direct assertion

of moral obligation always so fatal as an argument, raising disputes, as

it does, above the ordinary level of expediency, and throwing opposition

into an apologetic defensive. He said it was monstrous to suppose that,

if the banks were able to resume and to sustain specie payments, they

should have any discretionary right to discuss the question whether a

more or less protracted suspension was consistent with their views of

"the condition and circumstances of the country." There would be no

limit to such supposed discretion. The evidence was irresistible that

the banks were able to resume. Exchange was favorable. No known cause

existed which could prevent a general resumption. The arguments and

objections of the United States Bank of Pennsylvania were neither more

nor less than excuses for an intended protracted suspension for an

indefinite period of time, which was shown by the fact that this bank

had actually put in circulation, since the suspension, a large amount of

the notes of the dead and irresponsible Bank of the United States.

[Sidenote: 1838.]

The situation was thus narrowed down to a local contest between the New

York banks, represented by Mr. Gallatin, and the United States Bank of

Pennsylvania, directed by Mr. Biddle. The influence of party sympathy

led the Boston banks to sustain Mr. Biddle to the last against Mr.

Gallatin; Baltimore followed the same course; outside of New York Mr.

Gallatin found support only in the North-West and South. Yet, although

the convention was nearly equally divided and nothing more than general

professions could be obtained from it, the contest was really unequal,

and there could be no question that Mr. Gallatin was master of the

situation. The New York banks, actively supported by the comptroller and

the State government, proceeded to take such measures as would enable

them to resume at almost any moment, but they waited still some length

of time in the hope of obtaining co-operation. The convention had

adjourned to meet again on the 11th April, 1838. Mr. Gallatin and his

colleagues, who represented the New York banks in the convention, made a

report on the 15th December, 1837, representing in strong language the

evils of the situation and pressing for combined action. On the 28th

February the same gentlemen made another report on measures, "in

contemplation of the resumption of specie payments by the banks of the

city of New York, on or before the 10th day of May next." Nothing was

omitted that could tend to secure the banks from accident or designed

attack, and even the popular feeling was enlisted on their side.

When the adjourned convention met on the 11th April, a letter was

presented from the Philadelphia banks declining to attend, on the ground

that the banks and citizens of New York had already acted independently

in announcing their intention to resume on the 10th May, and that the

banks of Philadelphia "do not wish to give any advice in regard to the

course which the banks of the city of New York have resolved to pursue;

they do not wish to receive any from those banks touching their own

course." One might have supposed that after this defection of

Pennsylvania there would have been no difficulty in controlling the

action of the adjourned convention when it met on the 11th April; but

this proved no easier matter than before. Mr. Gallatin's object was to

fix the earliest possible day for general resumption, since New York

placed herself in a very critical position so long as she stood alone.

But the convention could not even be persuaded to fix the first Monday

in October for the day. The utmost that could be got from New England

was to name the 1st January, 1839.

[Sidenote: 1839.]

Left thus isolated, Mr. Gallatin and his associates went directly on

their course alone. The New York banks resumed specie payments on the

10th May, as they had pledged themselves to do. They resumed in good

faith and in full; the resumption was effected without the slightest

difficulty; and it is but just to add that the other banks made no

attempt to impede it. Then came the inevitable struggle between the

solvent and the insolvent institutions. Boston acted better than she

talked, and all New England resumed in July. Public opinion, operating

first on the Governor of Pennsylvania, compelled the United States Bank

to resume in the course of the same month. The South and West followed

the example. For something more than a year the insolvent banks managed

to crawl on, and then at last, in October, 1839, the United States Bank

went to pieces in one tremendous ruin, and carried the South and West

with it to the ground. A long and miserable period of liquidation

generally followed, but New England and New York maintained payments,

and Mr. Gallatin had once more, almost by the sheer force of his own

will and character, guided the country back to safe and solid ground.

In the year following, on June 7, 1839, he at length resigned his post

as president of the National Bank of New York, and retired from all

forms of business. His last considerable effort as a financier and

economist was the publication of a pamphlet supplementary to his

"Considerations on Currency." This essay of one hundred pages, entitled

"Suggestions on the Banks and Currency of the several United States,"

was printed in 1841. Its value is principally that of continuing the

history of our financial condition, more particularly as respects

currency and banks; and, taken in connection with the earlier essay, it

forms a hand-book of American finance down to the year 1840.[169]

Doubtless the students of to-day, who turn their attention to these

papers upon which the reputation of Mr. Gallatin, as an author and

theorist in finance, principally rests, will find that the point of view

has considerably changed, and that a wider treatment of the subject has

become necessary. Not less the circumstances than the thought of that

generation naturally tended to attribute peculiar and intrinsic powers

to currency; a tendency quite as prominent among the English as among

the American economists. Mr. Gallatin's writings dealt mainly and

avowedly with the currency, because he believed that the condition of

the currency was the responsible cause of much if not most of the moral

degradation of his time, and that a return to a sound metallic medium of

exchange was a means of purifying society. The later school of

economists would perhaps lay somewhat less stress upon currency as in

itself an active cause, and they would rather treat it as a symptom, an

instrument operating mechanically and incapable in itself of producing

either all the evil or all the good then attributed to it. The following

letter, at all events, shows Mr. Gallatin's opinions on the subject:

[Sidenote: 1841.]

GALLATIN TO JONATHAN ROBERTS.

NEW YORK, 3d June, 1841.

RESPECTED FRIEND,--I received your welcome letter of the 27th May, and

return in answer my essay on currency.

I sometimes flatter myself that we old men labor under the disease

incident to our age, and that we think that the world has grown worse

than it was in former days, because, when young, the vices of the times

had become familiar to us, and that we are shocked by those of new

growth. Thus, for instance, though you and I were temperate, we were

less severe towards drunkards than the present generation.

Yet so far at least as respects political corruption, it is impossible

that we should be mistaken. I was twelve years a member either of the

Legislature of Pennsylvania or of Congress, the greater part of those in

hot party times and conflicts. And I may safely affirm that, without

distinction of party, a purer assemblage, in both bodies, of men honest,

honorable, and inaccessible to corruption could not be found. I never

was tempted; for during my forty years of public life a corrupt offer

never approached me.

Now, although I am not so happy as Mr. Calhoun in always finding a cause

for every effect, I will venture to assign two reasons for the

deterioration we lament.

The American Independence was an event of immense magnitude, and, though

not altogether irreproachable in that respect, yet comparatively

unsullied by those convulsions, excesses, and crimes which have almost

always attended similar revolutions. The greater part of the men

employed in the public service during the thirty following years had

taken an active part in that event. The objects to which our faculties

are applied have a necessary influence over our minds. How diminutive,

nay, pitiful, those appear which now engross public attention and for

which parties contend, when compared with those for which the founders

of the republic staked their fortunes and their lives!--the creation of

a great independent nation and the organization of a national yet

restricted government. I do believe that the minds, the moral feeling of

those thus engaged, were raised above the ordinary standard and

elevated to one somewhat proportionate to the magnitude of the objects

which they did accomplish.

And those men had been educated at a time when the American people,

blessed with an abundant supply of all the necessaries of life, were

still frugal and had preserved a great simplicity of manners. Here is

the other cause which may be assigned for the present depraved state of

public opinion and feeling. We have rioted in liberty and revel in

luxury. As we have increased in wealth and power the sense of integrity

and justice has been weakened. The love of power, for the sake of its

petty present enjoyments, has been substituted for that of country and

of permanent fame, and the thirst of gold for the honest endeavors to

acquire by industry and frugality a modest independence.

Where is the remedy? We cannot and ought not to restrain by legislative

enactments the marvellous energy of this nation and the natural course

of things; but we ought not to administer an artificial stimulus. This

stimulus is the paper currency; and you will perceive by my letter of

1830 to Mr. Walsh, which I have published for that purpose in the

Appendix, that my ultimate object has been, as [it] still is, to

annihilate almost altogether that dangerous instrument. I admit its

utility and convenience when used with great sobriety. But its

irresistible tendency to degenerate into a depreciated and irredeemable

currency, and the lamentable effect this produces, not as a mere matter

of dollars and cents, but on the moral feeling and habits of the whole

community, are such that I am quite convinced that it is far preferable

to do without it.

But we must take men and things as they are; a sudden transition would

cause great injury and is impracticable. And without ever losing sight

of the ultimate object, I formerly proposed, and now suggest, that only

such measures [be adopted] as may, it seems to me, be easily carried

into effect; as would greatly lessen present evils; and as have a

tendency to improve and elevate public opinion, and may assist in

gradually preparing a better state of things. With that explanation you

will understand more clearly the object of my essay.

In the mean while, as individuals and each in our sphere, we have only

to perform our appropriate duties and sustain our precepts by our

example. You may be annoyed in your new office;[170] but there is this

advantage in an executive office: that it imposes certain specific and

clearly-defined duties, to be performed day after day, with unremitted

industry and constant respect for law and justice; and this honestly

done affords the consciousness of being a useful member of society.

We would indeed be much gratified by your contemplated visit to New

York. Left almost alone of my contemporaries, the meeting with an old

friend is highly refreshing to me. And you may see, by the general tenor

of this letter, that I consider you as one, and one of those I most

respect. Mrs. G. requests to be kindly remembered to you, and I pray you

to rely on my constant attachment I am altogether unacquainted with our

new President. He has made some sad appointments in this city. That of

marshal is too bad.

Respectfully, your friend and servant.

GALLATIN TO JOHN M. BOTTS, M.C.

NEW YORK, 14th June, 1841.

SIR,--I had duly received the letter you addressed to me last winter,

and had hoped that my declining to answer it would satisfy you that I

had an insurmountable objection to any use whatever being made of any

conversation that may have taken place between Mr. Jefferson and myself

on the subject of the Bank of the United States. I will only say that

the report which reached you was imperfect and incorrect, and that he

lived and died a decided enemy to our banking system generally, and

specially to a bank of the United States.

[Sidenote: 1843.]

My last essay, the receipt of which you do me the honor to acknowledge,

was written without reference not only to parties, but even to any

general political views, other than the restoration and maintenance of a

sound currency. Except in its character of fiscal agent of the general

government, I attach much less importance to a national bank than

several of those who are in favor of it; and perhaps on that account it

is a matter of regret to me that it should continue to be, as it has

been since General Jackson's accession to the Presidency and not before,

a subject of warm contention and the pivot on which the politics of the

country are to turn. I am quite sure that if this take place and the

issue before the people be bank or no bank, those who shall have

succeeded in establishing that institution will be crushed. I do not

doubt your sincerity and bravery, but the cause is really not worth

dying for. Did I believe that a bank of the United States would

effectually secure us a sound currency, I would think it a duty at all

hazards to promote the object. As the question now stands, I would at

least wait till the wishes of the people were better ascertained. So far

as I know, the opponents are most active, virulent, and extremely

desirous that the great contest should turn on that point: the friends,

speculators and bankrupts excepted, are disinterested and not

over-zealous.

I have the honor, &c.

Before dismissing the subject of finance, the following curious

correspondence may properly find a place here. Albert Davy was United

States consul at Leeds, England, and happened to be now in Washington

obtaining a renewal of his commission:

ALBERT DAVY TO JAMES GALLATIN.

Very _confidential_.

WASHINGTON, 25th December, 1843.

MY DEAR SIR,--I am induced to write you a few lines this evening very

confidentially to state that Mr. Robert Tyler has just called on me to

ask if I thought Mr. Gallatin would accept the Secretaryship of the

Treasury for the remaining Presidential term, or, rather, whether his

health would permit him to change his residence. He told me the

President mentioned Mr. Gallatin's name the first to fill that important

post, which, I dare say, would be made very easy to him. This movement

is of course in anticipation of Mr. Spencer's leaving. As no one as yet

is aware of it out of the President's immediate circle but myself, I am

sure you will see the necessity of not communicating this to any one but

to Mr. Gallatin....

[Sidenote: 1844.]

GALLATIN TO ALBERT DAVY.

NEW YORK, 28th December, 1843.

DEAR SIR,--My son James has shown to me your letter to him of 25th of

this month, received yesterday. It seems hardly necessary to make a

serious answer to it. Yet, as silence might be misconstrued, I have only

to say that I want no office, and that to accept at my age that of

Secretary of the Treasury would be an act of insanity. I cannot indeed

believe that this has been seriously contemplated by anybody: you must

have misunderstood the person who spoke to you. I might give conclusive

reasons why, even if I was young and able, I would not at this time be

fit for the office, nor the office at all suit me; but this is not

called for.

I remain, with great regard, dear sir,

Your obedient servant.

JOHN BARNEY TO ALBERT GALLATIN.

WASHINGTON, January 24, 1844.

MY DEAR SIR,--I have been applied to by one of the President's family to

know if you would accept the Treasury Department. If you would, I am

assured that it will be tendered to you so soon as vacated by the

confirmation of Mr. Spencer.

* * * * *

This last letter is tersely endorsed by Mr. Gallatin: "Folly, of which

no notice taken."

[Sidenote: 1842.]

Finance was, however, only one of the numerous subjects in which Mr.

Gallatin took an active interest. Diplomacy was another. Our relations

with Great Britain, though in some respects better, were in others worse

than before; the postponed questions of boundary became serious, and

especially that of the North-Eastern or Maine boundary assumed a very

threatening aspect. The arbitration of the King of the Netherlands had

proved a failure, owing perhaps to the fact that our government failed

to take proper measures for supporting its case diplomatically. Had Mr.

Gallatin been on the spot he would probably have brought about a

different result; but Mr. Van Buren's diplomacy was not so successful

in Europe as in the United States, and he had more need of it in

Washington than elsewhere. The question between England and America was

thus kept open until both countries became seriously anxious. In 1840,

Mr. Gallatin revised and reprinted his statement of the North-Eastern

boundary argument as laid before the King of the Netherlands in 1830. In

1842 the British ministry sent Lord Ashburton to negotiate a treaty at

Washington, and thus Alexander Baring came again to interpose his

ever-friendly and ever-generous temper between the fretful jarring of

the two great nations. The time had been when the British government and

people treated Mr. Baring's warning advice with such contempt as only

George Canning could fully embody and express; but that time was now

long passed. They had learned to lean upon him, and the American

government readily met him in the same spirit

LORD ASHBURTON TO ALBERT GALLATIN.

WASHINGTON, 12th April, 1842.

DEAR MR. GALLATIN,--My first destination was to approach America through

New York, but the winds decided otherwise, and I was landed at

Annapolis. In one respect only this was a disappointment, and a serious

one. I should have much wished to seek you out in your retreat to renew

an old and highly-valued acquaintance and, I believe and hope I may add,

friendship; to talk over with you the Old and the New World, their

follies and their wisdom, their present and by-gone actors, all which

nobody understands so well as you do, and, what is more rare, nobody

that has crossed my passage in life has appeared to me to judge with the

same candid impartiality. This pleasure of meeting you is, I trust, only

deferred. I shall, if I live to accomplish my work here, certainly not

leave the country without an attempt to find you out and to draw a

little wisdom from the best well, though it may be too late for my use

in the work I have in hand and very much at heart.

You will probably be surprised at my undertaking this task at my period

of life, and when I am left to my own thoughts I am sometimes surprised

myself at my rashness. People here stare when I tell them that I

listened to the debates in Congress on Mr. Jay's treaty in 1795, and

seem to think that some antediluvian has come among them out of his

grave. The truth is that I was tempted by my great anxiety in the cause,

and the extreme importance which I have always attached to the

maintenance of peace between our countries. The latter circumstance

induced my political friends to press this appointment upon me, and with

much hesitation, founded solely upon my health and age, I yielded. In

short, here I am. My reception has been everything I could expect or

wish; but your experience will tell you that little can be inferred from

this until real business is entered upon. I can only say that it shall

not be my fault if we do not continue to live on better terms than we

have lately done, and, if I do not misunderstand the present very

anomalous state of parties here, or misinterpret public opinion

generally, there appears to be no class of politicians of any

respectable character indisposed to peace with us on reasonable terms. I

expect and desire to obtain no other, and my present character of a

diplomatist is so new to me that I know no other course but candor and

plain-dealing. The most inexpert protocolist would beat me hollow at

such work. I rely on your good wishes, my dear sir, though I can have

nothing else, and that you will believe me unfeignedly yours.

GALLATIN TO LORD ASHBURTON.

NEW YORK, 20th April, 1842.

DEAR LORD ASHBURTON,--Your not landing here was as great disappointment

to me as to you. I have survived all my early friends, all my political

associates; and out of my own family no one remains for whom I have a

higher regard or feel a more sincere attachment than yourself. If you

cannot come here, I will make an effort and see you at Washington. Your

mission is in every respect a most auspicious event. To all those who

know you it affords a decisive proof of the sincere wish on the part of

your government to attempt a settlement of our differences as far as

practicable; at all events, to prevent an unnatural, and on both sides

absurd and disgraceful, war. There are but few intrinsic difficulties

of any magnitude in the way. Incautious commitments, pride, prejudices,

selfish or party feelings present more serious obstacles. You have one

of a peculiar kind to encounter. Our President is supported by neither

of the two great political parties of the country, and is hated by that

which elected him, and which has gained a temporary ascendency. He must,

in fact, negotiate with the Senate before he can agree with you on any

subject. It is the first time that we have been in that situation, which

is somewhat similar to that of France; witness your late treaty, which

the French Administration concluded and dared not ratify. It may be that

under those circumstances our government may think it more eligible to

make separate conventions for each of the subjects on which you may

agree than to blend them in one instrument.

The greatest difficulties may be found in settling the two questions in

which both parties have in my humble opinion the least personal or

separate interest, viz., the right of visitation on the African seas for

the purpose only of ascertaining the nationality of the vessel; and the

North-Western boundary. I have no reason, however, to believe that the

Administration, left to itself, will be intractable on any subject

whatever; I hope that higher motives will prevail over too sensitive or

local feelings, and I place the greatest reliance on your sound

judgment, thorough knowledge of the subject, straightforwardness, and

ardent desire to preserve peace and cement friendship between the two

kindred nations. You cannot apply your faculties to a more useful or

nobler purpose. I am now in my 82d year, and on taking a retrospective

view of my long career I derive the greatest consolation for my many

faults and errors from the consciousness that I ever was a minister of

peace, from the fact that the twenty last years of my political life

were almost exclusively employed in preventing the war as long as I

could, in assisting in a speedy restoration of peace, and in settling

subsequently as many of the points of difference as was at the time

practicable. May God prosper your efforts and enable you to consummate

the holy work!

* * * * *

After successfully negotiating his treaty, Lord Ashburton came to New

York, and the two men met once more.

There remained the question of the North-Western boundary to fester into

a sore. This did not fail to happen, and in 1846 the two nations again

stood on the verge of war. On this subject, too, Mr. Gallatin published

a pamphlet which took a characteristic view of the dispute.[171] He did

not hesitate to concede that the American title to the contested

territory was defective; that neither nation could show an indisputable

right in the premises; but that America had all the chances in her

favor, and that, in any possible event, war was the least effective

policy; "the certain consequence, independent of all the direct

calamities and miseries of war, will be a mutual increase of debt and

taxation, and the ultimate fate of Oregon will be the same as if the war

had not taken place." This thoroughly common-sense view was so obvious

that neither government could long resist it. The Oregon question, too,

was in the end peaceably settled.

There was, however, one political difficulty of far deeper consequence

than currency or boundary, and offering a problem to which no such

simple reasoning applied; this was the growth of slavery and the slave

power. Here two great principles clashed. The practical rule of politics

which had guided Mr. Gallatin through life, to avoid all issues which

might endanger the Union, was here more directly applicable than

elsewhere, for Mr. Gallatin knew better than most men the dangers

involved in this issue. He had found even the liberal mind of Mr.

Jefferson impervious to argument on the consequences of extending the

slave power. Not only was he no sympathizer with slavery; he was in

principle an abolitionist; he never changed that opinion, which he had

incorporated so early as 1793 in a draft of an act, declaring that

"slavery was inconsistent with every principle of humanity, justice, and

right." In 1843, when Maria Chapman urged him to write for her

anti-slavery Annual, he declined. "I would not for any consideration say

anything that might injure the holy cause in which you are engaged, and

yet I must tell the truth, or what appears to me to be the truth."

Determined to respect the constitutional compact, he carefully abstained

from taking any part in the slavery agitation. Nevertheless the time

came when he could no longer be silent. On the 24th April, 1844, a

popular meeting was held in New York to protest against the annexation

of Texas; Mr. Gallatin was asked to preside, and one of the most

courageous acts of his life was to take the chair and address this great

and turbulent assembly:

SPEECH ON THE ANNEXATION OF TEXAS.

At my advanced age and period of life, withdrawn as I am from the

politics of the day, desirous of quiet, nothing could have induced me to

attend this meeting but the magnitude of the subject I will simply

indicate the points involved in the question which has called us

together, leaving to others abler than myself to discuss them at length.

Till this day the United States have preserved the highest reputation

amongst the nations of the earth for the fidelity with which they have

fulfilled all their engagements and generally carried on all their

relations with foreign nations. They have never engaged in a war for the

sake of conquest, never but in self-defence and for the purpose of

repelling aggression against their most sacred rights. They have never

acquired any territory by conquest or violence, nor in any other way but

by fair treaties, fairly negotiated, with the consent of all the parties

that might have any claim to the territory in question. What now is the

nature of the question which has been proclaimed lately,--the annexation

of Texas? By the most solemn treaties between us and foreign nations

Texas has been adjudged as being within the limits of Mexico. If there

was any claim on the part of the United States to that country, it was

expressly renounced by these treaties. It is perfectly clear then that

the attempt now made is a direct and positive violation of treaty

stipulations. I have heard it stated that there was danger that it would

also lead us into war. I think this but a very partial and erroneous

view of the subject. I do assert, without fear of contradiction, that

the annexation of Texas under existing circumstances is a positive

declaration of war against Mexico. I will say that even if the

independence of Texas had been acknowledged by Mexico, it would be still

war, for Texas is at war with Mexico, and in such a state of things to

annex it to this country is to make us a party to that war. But in

existing circumstances and while Texas continues at war with Mexico and

her independence is not acknowledged by the latter power, I will say

that, according to the universally acknowledged laws of nations and

universal usage of all Christian nations, to annex Texas is war; and in

that assertion I will be sustained by every publicist and jurist in the

Christian world. This war would be a war founded on injustice, and a war

of conquest I will not stop to inquire what Mexico may do or ought to do

in such circumstances. It is enough that the war would be unjust. I know

nothing of the ability or desire of Mexico to injure us. It is enough to

say that an unjust war, founded upon the violation of solemn treaty

stipulations, would disgrace the national character, which till this day

has been unsullied.

There is another view of this subject, more complex, more delicate, but

I do think it is both better and fairer to meet it in the face. I allude

to the effect that this measure would have on the question of slavery.

The Constitution of the United States was from the beginning founded

upon mutual concessions and compromise. When that Constitution was

passed it appears that the Southern States, alarmed by the difference of

their social state and institutions from ours in the North, required

some guarantees. They may have been granted with reluctance, but they

are consecrated by the Constitution. The surrender of fugitive slaves

and the non-equal principle of representation have been granted, and,

however repugnant to our feelings or principles, we must carry out the

provisions into effect faithfully and inviolate. But it ought to be

observed that these provisions applied only to the territory then within

the limits of the United States, and to none other. In the course of

events we acquired Louisiana and Florida, and, without making any

observations on these precedents, it so happened that, in the course of

events, three new States have been added out of territories not, when

the Constitution was adopted, within the limits of the United States;

and more, eventually Florida was added to the slave-holding States. Thus

it has happened that additional security and additional guarantee have

been given to the South. With those I think they ought to be satisfied.

Nothing is more true than that if we wish to preserve the Union, it must

be by mutual respect to the feelings of others, but these concessions

must be altogether mutual and not all on one side. If it be asked what

we do require from the South, I will answer,--nothing whatever. We do

not require from the South any new measure that should be repugnant

either to their opinions or feelings. Nor do we interfere with the

question of slavery in Texas. We have taken no measures, we do not mean

to take any measures, either to prevent or induce them to admit slavery.

It is a free, independent State, and we wish them to do precisely what

they please. All we ask is to preserve the present state of things. All

we ask is that no such plan as shall again agitate that question shall

be attempted to be carried into effect. It is too much to ask from us

that we should take an active part in permitting the accession of a

foreign state, and a foreign slave-holding state, to the Union; and that

we should consent that new States should again be added to those upon an

equal basis of representation. This is all we ask. The discussion of

these questions does not originate with us. It originates with those who

have fostered this plan. We wish every discussion of this question to be

avoided. But if it be forced upon us we will be forced to meet it.

There are other considerations and most momentous questions which depend

upon this. In the first place, does the treaty-making power imply a

power to annul existing treaties? Does that power embrace the right of

declaring war? Can the President or Senate, in making a treaty with

another power, disregard the stipulations of a treaty with a third

party? Again, can a foreign state be admitted in the Union without the

unanimous consent of all the parties to the compact? I know that the

precedents of Louisiana and Florida may be adduced; but let us see how

far they go. Their validity depends solely on the fact that there was

universal acquiescence. Not one State in the Union protested against the

proceeding, and if upon this occasion the same should occur, I will say

that without adverting to forms we might consider it proper to admit

that there is a right. But the precedent goes no farther. It does not go

to the point that the power does or does not exist.

These, I have said, are momentous questions, such as would necessarily

shake the Union to its very centre, and such as I wish to see forever

avoided. Another point. This measure will bring indelible disgrace upon

our democratic institutions; it will bring them into discredit; it will

excite the hopes of their enemies; it will check the hopes of the

friends of mankind. We had hoped that, when the people of the United

States had resumed their rights and the government was in their hands,

there would be a gradual amelioration of legislation, of the social

state, of the intercourse between men. All this is checked by a measure

on which treaties are violated and an unjust war undertaken.

Still, I do not despair. My confidence is in the people. But we must

give them time to make, to form, and to express their opinions; and

therefore it is that I do strongly reprobate the secret, the insidious

manner in which that plot has been conducted, so as to debar the people

of the Union from the right of expressing an opinion on the subject.

Gentlemen, I have done. I thank you for the indulgence with which you

have been pleased to listen to me. 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 defence of

liberty, of justice, and of our country.

* * * * *

Repeatedly interrupted; at moments absolutely stopped by uproar and

rioting; able to make his feeble voice heard only by those immediately

around him, he still resolutely maintained his ground and persisted to

the end. Mr. Gallatin was at that time in his eighty-fourth year;

nothing but the most conscientious sense of duly could possibly have

induced him to appear again in public, especially on an occasion when it

was well known that the worst passions of the worst populace in the city

of New York would be aroused against him. Not even when he risked his

life before the rifles of the backwoodsmen at Redstone Old Fort had he

given so striking proof of his moral courage.

Perhaps it was this final proof that gave point to a short speech of

Mr. J. Q. Adams, which has been already alluded to. In the month of

November following the annexation meeting, the New York Historical

Society, of which Mr. Gallatin was now president, held a celebration,

followed by a dinner, given in his honor. Mr. J. Q. Adams was one of the

invited guests, and took the occasion to make the following remarks.

Readers of his Diary will appreciate how much his concluding words meant

to him; honesty, as both Mr. Gallatin and himself had found, was not

only the highest, but one of the rarest, public virtues:

"To the letter," said Mr. Adams, "which was sent me, your honorable

president added a line, saying, 'I shall be glad to shake hands with you

once more in this world.' Sir, if nothing else could have induced me,

these words would have compelled my attendance here, and I can conceive

of nothing that would have prevented me. I have lived long, sir, in this

world, and I have been connected with all sorts of men, of all sects and

descriptions. I have been in the public service for a great part of my

life, and filled various offices of trust in conjunction with that

venerable gentleman, Albert Gallatin. I have known him half a century.

In many things we differed; on many questions of public interest and

policy we were divided, and in the history of parties in this country

there is no man from whom I have so widely differed as from him. But on

other things we have harmonized; and now there is no man with whom I

more thoroughly agree on all points than I do with him. But one word

more. Let me say, before I leave you and him,--birds of passage as we

are, bound to a warmer and more congenial clime,--that among all the

public men with whom I have been associated in the course of my

political life, whether agreeing or differing in opinion with him, I

have always found him to be an honest and honorable man."

[Sidenote: 1848.]

In spite of all the opposition of the North, the war with Mexico took

place. Every moral conviction and every lifelong hope of Mr. Gallatin

were outraged by this act of our government. The weight of national

immorality rested incessantly on his mind. He would not abandon his

faith in human nature; he determined to make an appeal to the moral

sense of the American public, and to scatter this appeal broadcast by

the hundred thousand copies over the country. With this view he wrote

his pamphlet on "Peace with Mexico,"[172] yet accompanying it with

another on "War Expenses," which invoked more worldly interests. His

object was to urge the conclusion of a peace on moral and equitable

principles, and, feeling that time was short, he pressed forward with

feverish haste. On the 15th February, 1848, he said, "I write with great

difficulty, and I become exhausted when I work more than four or five

hours a day. Ever since the end of October all my faculties, impaired as

they are, were absorbed in one subject; not only my faculties, but I may

say all my feelings. I thought of nothing else: Age quod agis! I

postponed everything else, even a volume of ethnography which was in the

press; even answering the letters which did not absolutely require

immediate attention."

The warnings to be quick came thick and fast. Only a week after he wrote

this letter, his old associate, J. Q. Adams, breathed his last on the

floor of Congress. A few weeks more brought the news that Alexander

Baring was dead. In Europe society itself seemed about to break in

pieces, and everything old was passing away with a rapidity that

recalled the days of the first French revolution. Mr. Gallatin might

well think it necessary to press his pace and to economize every instant

that remained; and yet in that eventful year the world moved more

rapidly still, and he had time--though not much--to spare. His pamphlets

were sent in great numbers over the North and East, and certainly had

their share in leading the government to accept the treaty of peace

which was negotiated by Mr. Trist, notwithstanding instructions to leave

Mexico, and signed by him at Guadalupe Hidalgo on the 2d of February.

[Sidenote: 1849.]

These pamphlets were his last intellectual effort. As the year advanced,

symptoms of decline became more and more evident. His memory began to

fail. When alone, he caught himself talking in French as when a boy. His

mind recurred much to his early youth, to Geneva, to his school, to

Mlle. Pictet, and undoubtedly to that self-reproach for his neglect of

her and of his family which seems to have weighed upon him throughout

life. The Presidential election of 1848 was a great satisfaction to him;

but he thought more frequently and naturally of his own past political

contests and of the Presidents whom he had helped to make. His mind

became more excitable as his strength declined. There was, however,

little to be done or desired by him in the way of preparation; his life

had left no traces to be erased, and his death would create no confusion

and required no long or laborious forethought. He had felt a certain

pride in his modest means; his avowed principle had been that a

Secretary of the Treasury should not acquire wealth. He had no enemies

to forgive. "'I cannot charge myself with malignity of temper,'" he

said; "'indeed, I have been regarded as mild and amiable. But now,

approaching the confines of the eternal world, I desire to examine

myself with the utmost rigor to see whether I am in charity with all

mankind. On this retrospect I cannot remember any adversary whom I have

not forgiven, or to whom I have failed to make known my forgiveness,

except one, and he is no longer living.' Here he named a late eminent

politician of Virginia"; doubtless William B. Giles.

During the last months of his life he turned with great earnestness to

the promises and hopes of religion. His clergyman, Dr. Alexander, kept

memoranda of his conversation on this subject. "I never was an infidel,"

he said; "though I have had my doubts, and the habit of my thinking has

been to push discoveries to their utmost consequences without fear.... I

have always leaned towards Arminianism; but the points are very

difficult. I am a bold speculator. Such has been the habit of my mind

all my life long."

He failed slowly as the winter of 1848-49 passed, and was for the most

part confined to his room and his bed. In the month of May, 1849, while

he thus lay helpless, his wife died in the adjoining room, leaving him

deeply overcome and shaken by agitation and grief. Nevertheless, he

survived to be taken, as the summer came on, to his daughter's house at

Astoria. There, on the 12th August, 1849, his life ended.

INDEX.

A.

Adams, John, 310, 372, 399, 411, 427, 460;

Vice-President of the United States, favors Gallatin's

claim to eligibility for the Senate, 120, 121;

elected President, 178;

suspects intrigue, 178;

his first speech to Congress, 183;

his second speech, 188;

declines invitation to birthday ball, 194;

nominates William Vans Murray to France, 220, 221;

remark on mediation, 223;

his third speech to Congress, 223;

ostensibly renominated for the Presidency, 241;

his conduct in 1801, 258, 265, 266;

calls the Senate, 260, 263.

Adams, Mrs. John, 185.

Adams, John Quincy, 429, 502, 634;

rejected by the Senate as minister to Russia, 389;

his account of the conduct of the Senate in 1809, 389-391;

his account of Duane and Binns, 442;

commissioner under the mediation, 479;

parallelism of his career with Gallatin's, 495-497;

his antagonism to Mr. Clay, 520, 522;

his account of his colleagues at Ghent, 523, 527, 528;

prepares articles, 540;

his struggle to secure the fisheries, 540-545;

minister to England, 548;

joined in negotiating commercial convention, 548;

his character, 552, 592, 599;

Secretary of State, 562, 566;

his negotiation with France in 1819-1822, 573-575, 579;

his character of Gallatin, 576, 626, 629, 676;

W. H. Crawford's comments on, 580, 584, 586, 588;

Gallatin's character of, 599;

chosen President, 602, 606;

his reasons for not offering the Treasury to Gallatin, 609;

on the distrust of Mr. Clay, 609;

on relations with England in 1827, 624, 625, 627, 628;

his comments on Mr. Canning, 624, 627, 628;

his comments on men and measures, 636;

his death, 677.

Adams, William, British commissioner at Ghent, 519, 543;

negotiator of the commercial convention, 552.

Addison, Alexander, 177, 223.

Aix-la-Chapelle, Congress of, 572.

Alexander, Emperor of Russia, invites diplomatic relations in 1808, 390;

offers mediation, 477, 498;

renews the offer, 498, 503;

causes misunderstanding, 503, 510, 511;

receives a note from Mr. Crawford, 511;

his conversation with La Fayette at the house of Madame de Staël, 512, 514;

his visit to London, 514;

his interview with Gallatin, 514, 515;

his influence on the negotiation, 516, 518, 537;

his friendliness, 553.

Alien laws, 202, 204, 206, 274, 320.

Algerine powers, war with, 300, 306, 307, 349.

Allegre, Sophia, Gallatin's first wife, her family, 69;

her engagement, 70;

her mother, 70, 71;

her marriage, 71, 72;

her death, 72, 75, 80, 83.

Allen, John, M.C. from Connecticut, on the sedition law, 207.

Alston, Joseph, reports of his character, 244, 245.

Ames, Fisher, 154;

his speech on Jay's treaty, 155, 165, 198;

his opinion on the use of the army in domestic politics, 170;

favors war with France, 184;

his political formulas, 199, 214.

Amory, scholar of Gallatin's at Harvard College, 43, 59.

Anderson, Joseph, Senator from Tennessee, 429, 484, 490.

Armstrong, John, 290, 389, 400;

appointed Secretary of War, 471;

his conduct, 481;

wishes to be commander-in-chief, 485;

his account of how he ceased to be Secretary of War, 530.

Assumption of State debts, 87, 168.

Astor, John Jacob, 455, 477, 488, 588;

on Gallatin's rejection by the Senate, 488, 489;

offers to take Gallatin into partnership, 555;

his account of American habits, 584;

establishes the National Bank for Gallatin, 642.

B.

Bache, Franklin, 15.

Bache, Richard, 554.

Bacon, Ezekiel, M.C. from Massachusetts, 450, 454.

Badollet, Jean, schoolmate of Gallatin's, 15, 16, 64, 120;

urged by Gallatin to come to America, 51, 53, 60;

comes to George's Creek, 63, 66;

settles at Greensburgh, on the Monongahela, 144;

his opinion of Judge Brackenridge, 133, 134;

appointed register of the land-office at Vincennes, 404, 405;

his struggle against the introduction of slavery in Indiana, 404, 406;

Gallatin's opinion of, 610, 646, 647;

death of his wife, 649.

Baer, George, M.C. from Maryland, 250, 262.

Bainbridge, Commodore, 462, 466.

Baldwin, Abraham, Senator from Georgia, 253, 302.

Bank of the United States, 157, 308, 309;

Mr. Jefferson's views regarding, 308, 321, 665;

its dissolution in 1811, 416, 417, 426-430;

rechartered in 1816, 429;

consequences of its dissolution, 451, 474, 475;

Gallatin declines Presidency of, 578, 583, 584;

question of recharter in 1830-1842, 636, 638, 639, 651;

its power, 651;

rechartered as U.S. Bank of Pennsylvania, 659;

opposes return to specie payments, 659, 660;

becomes bankrupt, 661;

Gallatin's views on rechartering, 639, 659, 665, 666.

Bank, National (Gallatin), of New York, 642, 643, 647, 658, 662.

Banking, Gallatin's writings on. (See _Currency_.)

Baring, Alexander (Lord Ashburton), 552, 564, 565;

his relations with Gallatin in the Louisiana purchase, 317, 318;

his letters to Gallatin on the Russian mediation, 499, 500, 502, 504;

his negotiation in 1842, 668-670;

his opinion of Gallatin, 668;

his death, 677.

Barlow, Joel, 424, 436, 461.

Bassano, Duke de, Napoleon's Minister of State, 421.

Bathurst, Lord, his notes and instructions to the British

commissioners at Ghent, 527;

his offer of the _uti possidetis_, 535;

his instructions regarding the fisheries, 543.

Bayard, James A., M.C. from Delaware, 154, 155, 156, 205, 316, 458, 459;

his course in the contested Presidential election of 1801,

250, 254, 260, 262;

sent as envoy to Russia, 479, 490, 493, 495;

goes with Gallatin to London, 506;

his influence in the negotiation, 522, 523;

conversation with Goulburn, 524, 525;

death, 549.

Baylies, Francis, M.C. from Massachusetts, 620, 624, 625.

Bentley, William, tutor at Harvard College, and clergyman at Salem, 43, 69.

Benton, Thomas H., his defence of Mr. Van Buren, 618.

Berkeley, Admiral, 358, 359.

Bibb, W. W., M.C. from Georgia, 480.

Biddle, Nicholas, 637, 660.

Binns, John, 439, 442.

Bledsoe, Jesse, Senator from Kentucky, 484.

Bonaparte, Napoleon, 381, 383, 399;

his Berlin, Milan, and Bayonne decrees, 374, 376, 567;

his apparent change of policy in 1810, 420, 421;

his secret Trianon decree, 421, 422, 425;

succeeds in leading the United States into war with England, 425;

anecdote of Count Romanzoff, 444;

returns from Elba, 547.

Boston, 55, 68;

description of, in 1780, 27, 28, 45;

Mr. Clay's opinion of, 509.

Boundary, North-Eastern, 521, 535, 536, 614, 621, 627,

628, 629, 630, 631, 667, 668;

North-Western, 569, 570, 614, 621, 627, 670, 671.

Bourdillon, 146, 209, 226.

Bourse Gallatin, 5.

Brackenridge, Judge H. H., his first meeting with Gallatin, 68;

his character, 128, 133, 134;

his conduct at the Mingo Creek meeting, 128;

at Braddock's Field, 129, 130;

at Parkinson's Ferry, 131, 132;

at Redstone Old Fort, 135-137;

his distinction between Quakers and Presbyterians, 150;

candidate for Congress, 141, 176, 210.

Braddock's Field, rendezvous at, 129, 130.

Bradford, David, 91, 92, 125;

a member of the State Legislature, 93;

a tenth-rate lawyer, 96;

an empty drum, 97;

his enmity to Gallatin, 98;

his course at the Mingo Creek meeting, 128;

causes the mail to be seized, 128;

summons the militia to Braddock's Field, 129;

his course there, 129;

at the Parkinson's Ferry meeting, 131-134;

at Redstone Old Fort, 135-137;

escapes to Louisiana, 138;

his party defeated, 141.

Bradford, William, 441;

his reforms in the penal code of Pennsylvania, 84.

Brasier, Philip, 235, 236.

Breckenridge, John, Attorney-General, 598.

Brent, Richard, M.C. from Virginia, 190, 317;

Senator, 435, 490.

Broglie, Duke de, 563, 564.

Brooks, David, H.C. from New York, 193.

Burr, Aaron, 101;

speech on Jay's treaty, 151;

distrusts the Virginians, 178, 242, 243, 247;

conducts the New York City election of May, 1800, 232, 233, 238;

his intrigue and management, 234, 239;

the most eligible character for Vice-President, 239;

the agent of a Supreme Power, 241;

nominated for Vice-President, 243;

the election, 244;

his daughter's marriage, 244, 245;

his conduct during the contest in the House of Representatives,

245, 246, 247, 254;

causes of his schism, 282, 288, 289;

urges M. L. Davis for office, 283, 284, 289;

his opinion of Gallatin, 289;

his schism, 311, 313, 389.

Burr, Theodosia, her marriage, 244.

C.

Cabell, Samuel J., M.C. from Virginia, 202.

Cabot, George, 112, 199.

Calhoun, John C., M.C. from South Carolina, 445, 473, 562;

on Gallatin's character, 576, 577;

W. H. Crawford's comments on, 580, 581;

Gallatin's opinion of, 599;

chosen Vice-President, 601, 602;

on war with France, 655.

Calvin, John, 2, 11.

Campbell, George W., M.C. from Tennessee, his report

on foreign relations in 1808, 378;

Secretary of the Treasury, 505.

Canning, George, 381, 383, 399;

his remarks on the naval battles of 1812, 171;

his treatment of Mr. Jefferson's diplomacy, 356;

his management of the affair of the Chesapeake, 364;

of the orders in council, 364, 365;

his success, 367, 368, 411;

his sarcasms, 374, 376;

his instructions to Erskine, 392, 393;

disavowal of Erskine's arrangement, 394;

thrown out of office, 411;

Foreign Secretary in 1826, 614;

his orders in council of 1826, in regard to the West India trade, 615-617;

his motives, 616, 618, 620, 624, 627;

Prime Minister, 626;

his opinion of the English constitution, 626;

his death, 626.

Castlereagh, Lord, 498, 499;

instructions to Lord Cathcart, 503;

offers direct negotiation, 504;

favorable to peace, 506, 507, 508, 516;

obliged to check Mr. Goulburn, 525;

favors delay, 531;

his influence in 1818, 569, 618;

his death, 614.

Cathcart, Lord, 503, 504.

Caucuses, party, 214, 595;

in 1824, 592, 594, 595, 596, 597.

Champagny, Duke de Cadore, his letter of August 5, 1810, 420, 421.

Chapman, Maria, 671.

Chase, Judge Samuel, his impeachment, 327;

his successor, 440.

Chateaubriand, Vicomte de, French Minister of Foreign Relations, 567.

Chesapeake, affair of, 357, 359, 360.

Cheves, Langdon, M.C. from South Carolina, 445, 472, 473, 475, 476;

President of the U.S. Bank, 582, 583.

Circular to collectors. (See _Civil Service_.)

Citizenship, Gallatin's, 48, 49, 62, 109, 111, 112;

statement of the question regarding, 119, 120;

adverse decision, 110, 121;

amendment of the Constitution concerning, 203, 211.

Civil service in 1801, 273;

Gallatin's circular to collectors, 278, 279.

Claiborne, W. C. C., Governor of Louisiana, 319, 325;

establishes a bank at New Orleans, 322.

Clare, Thomas, 55, 62, 71, 99, 120;

his death, 560.

Clark, John, Governor of Georgia, 581.

Clay, Henry, 154, 445, 577;

opposes the bank charter in 1811, 428, 429, 430;

supports the war policy, 449;

forces Mr. Madison to recommend a declaration, 456-459;

sent to negotiate treaty of peace, 505;

his views on the political situation and the New

England Federalists, 509, 546;

his antagonism to Mr. Adams, 520, 522, 544-546;

his criticisms, 523;

opposes offer to renew the treaty of 1783 in regard

to the fisheries and the Mississippi, 541;

carries a compromise, 541, 542;

continues his opposition, 544;

nettled by the result, 545;

joined with Gallatin and Adams in negotiating

commercial convention, 548-552;

opposes President Monroe, 562;

Gallatin's opinion of, 599, 623;

to be supported as Vice-President, 602;

causes the election of J. Q. Adams, 602;

distrust felt towards him, 608, 609;

offers Gallatin the post of envoy to the Panama Congress, 612;

his note on the colonial trade difficulty, 616, 623;

his attack on Gallatin in 1832, 641;

his compromise, 642.

Clinton, De Witt, 282, 471, 562, 577.

Clinton, George, consents to be candidate for the Assembly, 234, 237;

averse to accepting the Vice-Presidency in 1800, 239, 242;

recommends Burr, 242;

chosen Vice-President, 312;

throws casting vote against the bank charter, 429, 430;

annoys Administration, 471, 606.

Clopton, John, M.C. from Virginia, 202.

Coast Survey, 350.

Cobb, T. W., M.C. from Georgia, 593.

Coit, Joshua, M.C. from Connecticut, 202.

Collectors, circular to. (See _Civil Service_.)

Colonial trade, 151, 550, 551, 569, 570, 571;

British orders in council of 1826, 615-617;

failure of negotiations, 617, 621, 622, 623, 624, 625, 628.

Committee of Ways and Means, its origin, 157, 172.

Connecticut, 68;

manners, 191.

Constitution of 1787, 68, 76, 79, 648;

its provisions regarding eligibility to the Senate, 119, 120;

its grants of power: regarding a national bank, 157;

internal improvements, 157;

the making of treaties, 160, 161, 162, 163, 319, 674;

amendment proposed regarding citizenship, 203, 211, 224;

the acquisition of territory, 319-321, 674;

its great defect the monarchical principle, 606;

its guarantees to the slave power, 673.

Cooper, Dr. Samuel, 15;

obtains for Gallatin a position as instructor

in French at Harvard College, 38, 39, 42;

joins in giving him a certificate, 43, 44.

Copenhagen, 495.

Coxe, Tench, 228.

Craik, William, M.C. from Maryland, 262.

Cramer, Mr., 9, 11.

Crawford, William H., Senator from Georgia, 433, 435, 469;

supports the bank charter in 1811, 428;

sent as minister to France, 509, 510;

attempts to approach the Emperor Alexander, 611;

returns home with Bayard in 1815, 552;

Secretary of the Treasury under Monroe, 559, 562, 566;

his political plans, 578, 580;

his comments on J. C. Calhoun, 580, 581;

on J. Q. Adams, 579, 580;

on William Lowndes, 581;

on Henry Clay, 582;

his bitterness,

586;

candidate of the triumvirate for the Presidency, 589, 592, 599;

struck by paralysis, 590, 593, 594;

reproached with intrigue, 597;

offered the Treasury by J. Q. Adams, 607.

Cumberland Road. (See _Internal Improvements_.)

Currency, Gallatin's opinions on, 638, 664;

his essays on, 638, 647, 648, 662, 664, 665.

Curtius. (See _John Thompson_.)

D.

Dallas, Alexander J., 245, 259, 281, 312;

comes to America in 1783, 67;

Secretary of State for Pennsylvania, 86;

his intimacy with Gallatin, 99, 109, 113, 303;

his part in the whiskey campaign, 142, 143;

on Pennsylvania politics, 326, 328, 330, 333, 439;

on the impeachment of the judges, 327;

offered the chief-justiceship of Pennsylvania, 333;

on the last year of Mr. Jefferson's Presidency, 372;

recharters the U.S. Bank, 429;

on the succession to Justice Chase, 440-442;

imposes war taxes, 468;

on Gallatin's rejection by the Senate, 479;

retires from the Treasury, 557;

differs from Gallatin on returning to specie payments, 657.

Dallas, George M., 493;

sent to England, 502.

Dana, Samuel, M.C. from Connecticut, 154, 155, 156, 185, 205;

the most eloquent man in Congress, 188.

Davis, Matthew L., 228;

editor of the Time-Piece, 197;

Burr's most active friend, 232;

presses him for the Vice-Presidency, 239, 240;

candidate for the post of naval officer, 282, 283;

goes to Monticello, 284, 287;

his rejection a declaration of war on Burr, 288.

Davy, Albert, 666.

Dayton, Jonathan, M.C. from New Jersey, speech

on sequestering British debts, 121;

Speaker, 191, 192, 202.

Dearborn, Henry, Secretary of War, 265, 274, 303, 345, 373;

his character, 276;

general, 485.

Debt, public. (See _Finances_.)

Degen and Purviance, navy agents at Leghorn, 400-403.

Democracy, its dogmas in 1801, 270, 272, 655, 666.

Dennis, John, M.C. from Maryland, 262.

De Staël, Mme., 563;

La Fayette's interview with the Emperor at her house, 513;

on the negotiations at Ghent, 531, 532;

her death, 566.

Dexter, Samuel, Secretary of the Treasury, 258, 265, 277.

Drayton, William, M.C. from South Carolina, 642.

Duane, William, editor of the Aurora, Treasury books in his hands, 258;

urges removals from office, 277, 278, 281;

cause of his hostility to Gallatin, 281, 311, 331;

his schism, 311, 312, 326, 328, 329, 330, 331;

his war on Gallatin, 322, 329, 388, 400, 414,

417, 419, 427, 437, 439, 442, 558;

account of, by J. Q. Adams, 442;

his treatment by Jefferson and Madison, 443, 483.

Dumont, Etienne, schoolmate of Gallatin's, 16, 52, 289, 519.

D'Yvernois, 144, 145, 146.

E.

Edgar, James, 136, 176.

Education, 84, 90;

Mr. Jefferson's scheme for a national university, 350;

Gallatin's scheme for a popular university, 648.

Ellsworth, Oliver, 112, 228, 486.

Embargo decided upon, 366;

Gallatin's opinion on, 366, 370-372, 375, 622;

Jefferson's opinions on, 367, 368, 369;

adopted, 369;

amended, 369;

effects of, 370, 412;

Robert Smith's opinion on, 373;

Enforcement Act, 378, 379;

repeal of, 375, 380, 382, 383;

to give place to war, 383, 384, 385;

removed, 386.

England, her political condition in 1789, 71;

her conduct towards America in 1793, 104, 112;

Jay's treaty, 158-166;

the danger of war, 165, 169;

relations with, in 1798, 224;

in 1801, 255;

in 1805, 334;

revival of the rule of 1756, 348;

Monroe and Pinkney's treaty, 355, 356;

her change of policy in 1807, 356;

affair of the Chesapeake, 357-362, 364;

orders in council, 364, 365, 366, 367, 374, 376, 378, 393, 460, 472;

Rose's mission, 364, 367, 394, 397;

Erskine's arrangement, 392, 393;

disavowed, 394, 396;

Jackson's mission, 394, 396, 411;

proposed Navigation Act against, 413, 414;

Macon's Act, 416;

her refusal to withdraw the orders in council, 425, 444;

approach of war, 444, 460;

refuses Russian mediation, 497, 499, 500, 503;

offers direct negotiation, 504;

refuses concessions on impressment, 506;

her attempts to isolate the United States, 499, 511, 513, 514;

her position in Europe, 517, 518 (see _Ghent, Negotiations at_);

commercial convention of 1815, 551, 614, 626;

negotiations of 1818, 570-572 (see _Colonial Trade,

Fisheries, Mississippi, Impressments_);

negotiations of 1826-27, 612-629 (see _Colonial Trade, Boundary_);

disposition towards America, 508, 618, 620, 621, 622, 624, 625, 627, 628;

character of English diplomacy, 622.

Eppes, John W., M.C. from Virginia, 480.