Albert Gallatin
principles and opinions were of no importance in its administration. To
lose sight of this principle was to substitute men for measures.
Jackson's idea of party, however, was personal fealty. He engrafted the
_pouvoir personnel_ on the Democratic party as thoroughly as Napoleon
could have done in his place. Moreover, Gallatin considered Jackson's
assumption of power in his collisions with the judiciary at New Orleans
and Pensacola, and his orders to take St. Augustine without the
authority of Congress, as dangerous assaults upon the Constitution of
the country and the liberties of the people, and he dreaded the
substitution of the worship of a military chieftain for the maintenance
of that liberty, the last hope of man. Ten years later he uttered the
same opinion in a conversation with Miss Martineau, and he expressed a
preference for an annual president, a cipher, so that all would be done
by the ministry. But in the impossibility of this plan, he would have
preferred a four years' term without renewal or an extension of six
years; an idea adopted by Davis in his plan of disintegration by
secession. The presidency, Mr. Gallatin thought, was "too much power
for one man; therefore it fills all men's thoughts to the detriment of
better things."
When Mr. Gallatin visited Washington in 1829, he found a state of
society, political and social, widely at variance with his own
experience. The ways of Federalist and Republican cabinets were
traditions of an irrevocable past. Jackson was political dictator, and
took counsel only from his prejudices. The old simplicity had given way
to elegance and luxury of adornment. The east room of the presidential
mansion was covered with Brussels carpeting. There were silk curtains at
the windows, French mirrors of unusual size, and three splendid English
crystal chandeliers. In the dining-room were a hundred candles and
lamps, and silver plate of every description, and presiding over this
magnificence the strange successors of Washington and his stately dame,
of Madison and his no less elegant wife,--the Tennessee backwoodsman and
Peggy O'Neil.
When, it is not too soon to ask, in the general reform of civil service,
shall the possibility of such anomalies be entirely removed by
restricting the executive mansion to an executive bureau, and entirely
separating social ceremony from official state, to the final suppression
of back stairs influence and kitchen cabinets?
CHAPTER X
SOCIETY--LITERATURE--SCIENCE
Mr. Gallatin's land speculations were not profitable. His plan of Swiss
colonization did not result in any pecuniary advantage to himself. His
little patrimony, received in 1786, he invested in a plantation of about
five hundred acres on the Monongahela. Twelve years later, in 1798, he
was neither richer nor poorer than at the time of his investment. The
entire amount of claims which he held with Savary he sold in 1794,
without warranty of title, to Robert Morris, then the great speculator
in western lands, for four thousand dollars, Pennsylvania currency. This
sum, his little farm, and five or six hundred pounds cash were then his
entire fortune. In 1794, the revolution in Switzerland having driven out
numbers of his compatriots, he formed a plan of association consisting
of one hundred and fifty shares of eight hundred dollars each, of which
the Genevans in Philadelphia, Odier, Fazzi, the two Cazenove, Cheriot,
Bourdillon, Duby, Couronne, Badollet, and himself took twenty-five each.
Twenty-five were offered to Americans, which were nearly all taken up,
and one hundred were sent to Geneva, Switzerland, to D'Yvernois and his
friends. The project was to purchase land, and Mr. Gallatin had decided
upon a location in the northeast part of Pennsylvania, or in New York,
on the border. In the summer Gallatin made a journey through New York to
examine lands with the idea of occupation. In July, 1795, he made a
settlement with Mr. Morris, taking his notes for three thousand five
hundred dollars. Balancing his accounts, Mr. Gallatin then found himself
worth seven thousand dollars, in addition to which he had about
twenty-five thousand acres of waste lands and the notes of Mr. Morris.
In 1798 Mr. Morris failed, and, under the harsh operations of the old
law, was sent to jail. Mr. Gallatin never recovered the three thousand
dollars owed to him in the final balance of his real estate operations.
After Mr. Gallatin left the Treasury he located patents for seventeen
hundred acres of Virginia military lands in the State of Ohio, on
warrants purchased in 1784. In 1815 he valued his entire estate,
exclusive of his farm on the Monongahela, at less than twelve thousand
dollars. Forty years later he complained of his investment as a
troublesome and unproductive property, which had plagued him all his
life. Besides the purchase of lands, Mr. Gallatin invested part of his
little capital in building houses on his farm, and in the country store
which Badollet managed. The one yielded no return, and the sum put in
the other was lost through the incompetency of his honest but
inexperienced friend. His wife brought him a small property, but at no
time in his life was he possessed of more than a modest competency. But
he had never any discontent with his fortune nor any desire to be rich.
Mrs. Gallatin, who had always until her marriage lived in cities, was
entirely unfit for frontier life. In these days of railroads it is not
easy to measure the isolation of their country home. Pittsburgh was
nearly five days' journey from Philadelphia, and the crossing of the
Alleghanies took a day and a half more. Before his marriage Mr. Gallatin
had seen very little of society. Though in early manhood he felt no
embarrassment among men, he said 'that he never yet was able to divest
himself of an anti-Chesterfieldian awkwardness in mixed companies.' He
did not take advantage of his residence in Philadelphia to accustom
himself to the ways of the world. There he lived in lodgings and met the
leading public characters of both parties. But when he took his seat in
the cabinet, he found it necessary to enter upon housekeeping and to
take a prominent part in society, for which his wife was admirably
suited, both by temperament and education. Washington Irving wrote of
her in November, 1812, that she was 'the most stylish woman in the
drawing-room that session, and that she dressed with more splendor than
any other of the noblesse;' and again the same year compared her with
the wife of the President, whose courtly manners and consummate tact
and grace are a tradition of the republican court. "Tell your good
lady," mother Irving wrote to James Renwick, "that Mrs. Madison has been
much indisposed, and at last Wednesday's evening drawing-room Mrs.
Gallatin presided in her place. I was not present, but those who were
assure me that she filled Mrs. Madison's chair to a miracle." This is in
the sense of dignity, for Mrs. Gallatin was of small stature.
Mr. Gallatin's house shared the fate of the public buildings and was
burned by the British when Washington was captured in 1814. He was then
abroad on the peace mission. On his return from France Mr. Gallatin made
one more attempt to realize his early idea of a country home, and with
his family went in the summer of 1823 to Friendship Hill. Here an Irish
carpenter built for him a house which he humorously described as being
in the 'Hyberno-teutonic style,--the outside, with its port-hole-looking
windows, having the appearance of Irish barracks, while the inside
ornaments were similar to those of a Dutch tavern, and in singular
contrast to the French marble chimney-pieces, paper, mirrors, and
billiard-table.' In the summer Friendship Hill was an agreeable
residence, but Mr. Gallatin found it in winter too isolated even for his
taste.
One exciting circumstance enlivened the spring of 1825. This was the
passage of Lafayette, the guest of the nation, through western
Pennsylvania on his famous tour. Mr. Gallatin welcomed him in an
address before the court-house of Uniontown, the capital of Fayette
County, on May 26. In his speech Mr. Gallatin reviewed the condition of
the liberal cause in Europe, and the emancipation of Greece, then
agitating both continents. In this all scholars as well as all liberals
were of one mind and heart. After the proceedings Lafayette drove with
Mr. Gallatin to Friendship Hill, where he passed the night; crowds of
people pouring down the valley from the mountain roads to see the
adopted son of the United States, the friend of Washington, the
liberator of France. The intimacy between these two great men, who had
alike devoted the flower of their youth to the interests of civilization
and the foundation of the new republic, was never broken.
Mr. Gallatin passed only one winter at New Geneva. On his return from
his last mission to England he settled permanently in New York, and in
1828 took a house at No. 113 Bleecker Street, then in the suburbs of the
city. He wrote to Badollet in March, 1829, that "it was an ill-contrived
plan to think that the banks of the Monongahela, where he was perfectly
satisfied to live and die in retirement, could be borne by the female
part of his family, or by children brought up at Washington and Paris."
The population of New York has always been migratory, and Mr. Gallatin
was no exception to the rule. In the ten years which followed his first
location he changed his residence on four May days, finally settling at
No. 57 Bleecker Street, nearly opposite to Crosby Street. His life in
New York is a complete period in his intellectual as in his physical
existence, and the most interesting of his career. His last twenty years
were in great measure devoted to scientific studies.
The National Bank, over which he presided for the first ten years, took
but a small part of his time. The remainder was given up to study and
conversation, an art in which he had no superior in this country and
probably none abroad. Soon after his arrival in New York, Mr. Gallatin
was chosen a member of "The Club," an association famous in its day. As
no correct account of this social organization has ever appeared, the
letter of invitation to Mr. Gallatin is of some interest. It was written
by Dr. John Augustine Smith, on November 2, 1829. An extract gives the
origin of the club.
"Nearly two years ago some of the literary gentlemen of the city,
feeling severely the almost total want of intercourse among
themselves, determined to establish an association which should
bring them more frequently into contact. Accordingly they founded
the 'Club' as it is commonly called, and which I believe I
mentioned to you when I had the pleasure of seeing you in Bond
Street. Into this 'Club' twelve persons only are admitted, and
there are at present three gentlemen of the Bar, Chancellor Kent,
Messrs. Johnston and Jay, three professors of Columbia College,
Messrs. McVickar, Moore, and Renwick, the Rev. Drs. Wainwright and
Mathews, the former of the Episcopal Church, the latter of the
Presbyterian Church, two merchants, Messrs. Brevoort and Goodhue,
and I have the honor to represent the medical faculty. Our twelfth
associate was Mr. Morse, of the National Academy of Design, of
which he was president, and his departure for Europe has caused a
vacancy. For agreeableness of conversation there is nothing in New
York at all comparable to our institution. We meet once a week; no
officers, no formalities; invitations, when in case of intelligent
and distinguished strangers, and after a plain and light repast,
retire about eleven o'clock."
At this club Mr. Gallatin, with his wonderful conversational powers,