Albert Gallatin
became at once the centre of interest. The club met at the houses of
members in the winter evenings. There was always a supper, but the rule
was absolute that there should be only one hot dish served, a regulation
which the ladies endeavored to evade when the turn of their husbands
arrived to supply the feast. Among the later members were Professor
Anderson, John A. Stevens, Mr. Gallatin's countryman De Rham, John
Wells, Samuel Ward, Gulian C. Verplanck, and Charles King. No literary
symposium in America was ever more delightful, more instructive, than
these meetings. On these occasions Mr. Gallatin led the conversation,
which usually covered a wide field. His memory was marvelous, and his
personal acquaintance with the great men who were developed by the
French Revolution, emperors and princes, heroes, statesmen, and men of
science, gave to the easy flow of his speech the zest of anecdote and
the spice of epigram. Once heard he was never forgotten. And this rare
faculty he preserved undiminished to the close of his life. Washington
Irving, himself the most genial of men, and the most graceful of
talkers, wrote of him, after meeting him at dinner, in 1841: "Mr.
Gallatin was in fine spirits and full of conversation. He is upwards of
eighty, yet has all the activity and clearness of mind and gayety of
spirits of a young man. How delightful it is to see such intellectual
and joyous old age: to see life running out clear and sparkling to the
last drop! With such a blessed temperament one would be content to
linger and spin out the last thread of existence."
At the close of the year 1829 Mr. Gallatin attempted to carry out his
old and favorite plan of the "establishment of a general system of
rational and practical education fitted for all, and gratuitously open
to all." The want of an institution for education, combining the
advantages of a European university with the recent improvements in
instruction, was seriously felt. New York, already a great city, and
rapidly growing, offered the most promising field for the national
university on a broad and liberal foundation correspondent to the spirit
of the age. The difficulty of obtaining competent teachers of even the
lower branches of knowledge in the public schools, the system of which
was in its infancy, was great. Persons could be found with learning
enough, but they were generally deficient in the art of teaching.
Governor Throop noticed this deficiency in his message of January, 1830,
without, however, the recommendation of any remedy by legislation. The
existing colleges could not supply the want. At this period religious
prejudice controlled the actions of men in every walk of life; for the
old colonial jealousies of Episcopalian and Presbyterian survived the
Revolution. The religious distrust of scientific investigation was also
at its height. Columbia College, the successor of old King's College,
was governed in the Episcopalian interest. Private zeal could alone be
relied upon to establish the new enterprise on a foundation free from
the influence of clergy; an indispensable condition of success. These
were the views of Mr. Jefferson in 1807. These were the views of Mr.
Gallatin. In response to his request abundant subscriptions in money and
material were at once forthcoming.
The project of a national university at New York was received by the
literary institutions of the United States with great enthusiasm. In
October, 1830, a convention of more than a hundred literary and
scientific gentlemen, delegates from different parts of the country, and
of the highest distinction, was held in the common-council chamber. The
outcome of their deliberations was the foundation of the New York
University. Mr. Gallatin was the president of the first council, but
his connection with the institution was of short continuance. The
reasons for his withdrawal were set forth in a letter to his old friend,
John Badollet, written February 7, 1833. Beginning with an expression of
his desire to devote what remained of his life "to the establishment in
this immense and growing city (New York) of a general system of rational
and practical education fitted for all and gratuitously opened to all,"
he said, "but finding that the object was no longer the same, that a
certain portion of the clergy had obtained the control, and that their
object, though laudable, was special and quite distinct from mine, I
resigned at the end of one year rather than to struggle, probably in
vain for what was nearly unattainable." The history of the university
through its precarious existence of half a century amply justifies Mr.
Gallatin's previsions and retirement. Instead of an American Sorbonne,
of which he dreamed, it has never been more than a local institution,
struggling to hold a place in a crowded field.
Mr. Gallatin followed the evolutions of French politics with interest.
His friend Lafayette, who, during the Empire, lived in almost enforced
retirement at his estate of La Grange, was a voluntary exile from the
court of Charles X., whose autocratic principles and aggressive course
were rapidly driving France into fresh revolution. In July, 1830, the
crisis was precipitated by the royal decrees published in the
"Moniteur." Lafayette, who was on his estate, hurried instantly to
Paris, where he became a rallying point, and himself signed the note to
the king, announcing that he had ceased to reign. In September following
it fell to him to write to Mr. Gallatin on the occasion of the marriage
of Gallatin's daughter. In this union Lafayette had a triple interest.
Besides his personal attachment for Mr. Gallatin, each of the young
couple was descended from one of his old companions-in-arms. The groom,
Mr. Byam Kerby Stevens, was a son of Colonel Ebenezer Stevens, of the
continental service, who was Lafayette's chief of artillery in his
expedition against Arnold in Virginia, in the spring of 1781; the bride,
Frances Gallatin, was, on the mother's side, the granddaughter of
Commodore James Nicholson, who commanded the gunboats which, improvised
by Colonel Stevens, drove out the British vessels from Annapolis Bay and
opened the route to the blockaded American flotilla.[22]
"PARIS, _September_ 8, 1830.
"MY DEAR FRIEND:--A long time has elapsed since I had the pleasure
to hear from you. I need not, I hope, add, that my affectionate
feelings have been continually with you, especially in what related
to my young friend whose change of name has more deeply interested
every member, and in a very particular manner, the younger part of
the family. Let me hear of you all, and receive my tender regards
and wishes, with those of my children and grandchildren.
LAFAYETTE."
Both of the young people had the honor of Lafayette's acquaintance,--Mr.
Stevens during a visit to Paris, and Miss Gallatin during her father's
residence there as minister, when she was much admired, and was, in the
words of Madame Bonaparte (Miss Patterson), 'a beauty.' In this letter
Lafayette gives a picturesque account of the three days' fighting at the
barricades, and of the departure of the ex-king and the royal army,
accompanied by "some twenty thousand Parisians, in coaches, hacks, and
omnibus.... The royal party, after returning the jewels of the crown,
went slowly to Cherbourg with their own escort, under the protection of
three commissioners, and were there permitted quietly to embark for
England."
In 1834 Mr. Gallatin's sympathies were greatly excited by the arrival at
New York of a number of Poles, many of them educated men, and among them
Etsko, a nephew of Kosciusko. A public committee was raised, called the
Polish committee, of which Mr. Gallatin was chosen chairman. Besides
superintending the collection of funds, he arranged and carried out in
the minutest details a plan to quarter the exiles upon the inhabitants.
A list of names ending in _ski_ still remains among his papers; to each
was assigned a number, and they were allotted by streets and
numbers,--number 182, one Szelesegynski, was taken by Mr. Gallatin
himself, to look after horses. These unfortunate men were then
distributed through the country, as occupations could be found. In
October Mr. Gallatin's notes show that all had been provided for except
fourteen boys, for whom a subscription was taken up. A tract of land in
Illinois was assigned by Congress to these political exiles.
Mr. Gallatin's first acquaintance with the American Indian was made at
Machias. In the neighborhood of this frontier town, across the Canadian
border, there were still remnants of the Abenaki and Etchemin tribes.
They were French in sympathy, and all converts to the Roman Catholic
faith. Mr. Lesdernier, with whom Gallatin lodged, had influence over
them from the trade he established with them in furs, and as their
religious purveyor. He had paid a visit to Boston at the time the French
fleet was there in 1781, and brought home a Capuchin priest for their
service. To the young Genevan, brought up in the restrictions of
European civilization, the history of the savage was a favorite study.
In the winter evenings, in the quiet of the log hut, with the aid of one
familiar with the customs and traditions of the race, the foundations
were laid of a permanent interest in this almost untrodden branch of
human science. The Canadian Indians, however, hemmed in by French and
English settlements, were semi-civilized. The Miamis and Shawnees, who
ranged the valley of the Ohio, were the tribes nearest to Gallatin's
home on the Monongahela. These, though for a long time under the
influence of the French, retained their original wildness, and were,
during the first years of his residence, the dread of the frontier.
The interest aroused in the mind of Mr. Gallatin by personal observation
was quickened by his intimacy with Jefferson, whose "Notes on Virginia,"
published in 1801, contained the first attempt at a classification and
enumeration of American tribes. The earlier work of Colden was confined
to the Five Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy. The arrangement of the
Louisiana territory, ceded by France, brought Mr. Gallatin into contact
with Pierre Louis Chouteau, and an intimacy formed with John Jacob
Astor, who was largely concerned in the fur trade of the Northwest,
widened the field of interest, which included the geography of the
interior and the customs of its inhabitants. Mr. Gallatin's examination
of the subject was general, however, and did not take a practical
scientific turn until the year 1823, when, at the request of Baron
Alexander von Humboldt, he set forth the results of his studies in the
form of a Synopsis of the Indian tribes. This essay, communicated by
Humboldt to the Italian geographer Balbi, then engaged upon his "Atlas
Ethnographique du Globe,"--a classification by languages of ancient and
modern peoples,--was quoted by him in his volume introductory to that
remarkable work published in 1826, in a manner to attract the attention
of the scientific world. Vater, in his "Mithridates," first attempted a
classification of the languages of the globe, but the work of Mr.
Gallatin, though confined in subject, was original in its conception and
treatment. In the winter of 1825-26 a large gathering of southern
Indians at Washington enabled him to obtain good vocabularies of several
of the tribes. Uniting these to those already acquired, he published a
table of all the existing tribes, and at the same time, at his instance,
the War Department circulated through its posts a vocabulary containing
six hundred words of verbal forms and of selected sentences, and a
series of grammatical queries, to which answers were invited. He also
opened an elaborate correspondence with such persons as were best