Jefferson's Financier
WOLFE, ANN F.
Jefferson's Financier Albert Gallatin. By Raymond Walters Jr. Macmillan. 461 pp. $7.00. Reviewed by Ann F Wolfe Contributor, N. Y. "Times Book Review", "Saturday Review" It is American...
...Considerable new light is shed on heroes, villains and rogues who furthered or hindered Gallatin's objectives...
...Pioneering in Pennsylvania, he was early recognized as a Western spokesman and elected to the state legislature...
...Some ten years back, Raymond Walters Jr., book review editor of the Saturday Review, set out to fill the biographical gap...
...In addition, a mountain range, a national forest, a city and three counties bear his name...
...It is a disturbing question...
...Theirs were critical times in which the young republic, rent by disunity, had to resist—sometimes with arms—the encroachment of England, France and Spain...
...Physically unimpressive, sartorially indifferent, lacking , in eloquence and notably frugal, he never lost his heavy Gallic accent, i His homely characteristics added up to no popular legend, as was the case, say, with his colleagues Clay and Jackson...
...The three books that have been written about him, none adequate, were all published over seven decades ago...
...having brought his man out of the shadows of obscurity, does the biographer not owe us a study of Gallatin's influence on American social and political thought...
...And now...
...Studiously availing himself of the mass of Gallatin papers in this country and voluminous documents abroad, he has produced a work that not only bodies forth the mind and heart of a dedicated public servant but brings wider illumination to his era...
...Walters conveys the feel and flavor of the times, the surge of frontier expansion, the elegance of Philadelphia's salons, the monastic boredom of Washington's boarding houses...
...During more than half a century of public service—in fact, until his death at 88—this first of our great naturalized citizens bore himself as a frontier democrat with unique national vision...
...Reviewed by Ann F Wolfe Contributor, N. Y. "Times Book Review", "Saturday Review" It is American geography, rather than American history, that has kept alive the memory of the Swiss-born statesman who served as Secretary of the Treasury under Jefferson and Madison and negotiator of the Peace of Ghent...
...Yet the fame of this pioneer democrat, who but for his foreign birth might conceivably have become President, has all but lapsed into oblivion...
...First American to use comparative research, he resumed his pioneer studies on the ethnology of the American Indian...
...Gallatin was, above all else, a patriot...
...Here he worked for general education, improved transport and cheap land for the poor, while opposing the Hamilton excise tax that sparked the Whiskey Rebellion...
...That safety and the honor of the nation were the Secretary's prime motivations...
...He was not head of the mission, but it was his leadership that brought off American victory...
...In the end they : capitulated to his resourcefulness and i infinite patience...
...What, one wonders, would Jefferson and Madison have done without the sagacious man from Geneva...
...Albert Gallatin (17611849) had a river named after him by Lewis and Clark, whose expedition he helped promote...
...His fiscal experience in the Assembly stood him in good stead in Congress, where scurrilous Federalist attacks failed to blunt the courageous frontiersman's zeal for sound monetary and credit policies...
...Resigning his bank presidency, the philosophical elder statesman helped found New York University and, in other ways, fostered the advancement of learning...
...Facing the untried American negotiator, Castlereagh and Canning were devious and arrogant...
...Gallatin's administrative and political counsel were as important to Jefferson and Madison as his rejection of the sinking fund and other fiscal measures...
...Although the young Swiss immigrant soon made a place for himself in the intellectual circles of the settled East, he was drawn by the adventurous spirit of the open frontier...
...Jefferson called Gallatin an "arc of our safety...
...Like a quiet theme in a stormy concerto, the story of Gallatin's family life threads the momentous events of American history...
...Into the bargain, his financial acumen saw the hard-pressed Treasury through the naval operations against the Barbary pirates, the Louisiana Purchase and the first year of "Mr...
...And, consistently, the man who from youth had been intrigued by the romance of American expansion helped preserve our northern boundary and paved the way for our possession of the Oregon Territory...
...His allegiance, unlike that of his American-born colleagues, was to the "Union" and not a particular state...
...During his seventies and eighties, Gallatin became a moving spirit in the cultural life of New York...
...The 19-year-old romantic who in 1780 left his native Geneva i with a headful of Rousseauesque dreams was something less than a colorful figure...
...A model of historical scholarship, it should hold its own as the definitive biography...
...Many vexing international problems were settled under his judicious guidance...
...I Throughout his twelve years as Secretary of the Treasury, a record tenure for the post, he applied to Government finances the Genevan morality of his personal economics, according to whose canon debt was a sin...
...At 84, he refused the Treasury portfolio offered by President Tyler...
...The harassed public servant was a devoted husband and father...
...Madison's war...
...In an age dominated by out-i standing personalities, this modest s man attracted by his integrity, loyalty, unselfishness, liveliness of intellect and extraordinary capacity for friendship...
...It is not without irony and a certain historic justice that Gallatin, who suffered frustration and public abuse because of foreign birth, should have won at Ghent a significant victory for his often ungrateful country...
...That he has made of this "noble adopted son" a completely absorbing story is a tribute to the author's narrative skill...
...Subsequently, though it strained his limited means, he served as Minister to France and, later, to England...
...I Gallatin's solid qualities were to i serve well the land of his adoption...
...He ranks as the father of systematic philology in this field and his interpretations have stood the test of time...
...There are provocative and unhackneyed close-ups of Washington, John Jacob Astor, untrustworthy Daniel Webster and scores of their contemporaries...
...The three men, in truth, were co-architects of the Jeffersonian revolution that set the democratic course of our nationalism...
Vol. 40 • October 1957 • No. 43
