author
Albert Gallatin
1761–1849
A Swiss-born statesman who became one of the sharpest financial minds of the early United States, he helped steady the young republic's finances and played a major role in diplomacy after the War of 1812. He was also a serious scholar whose later work on Native American languages and cultures gave him an important place in early American ethnology.
2 Audiobooks
The Oregon Question
by Albert Gallatin
Peace with Mexico
by Albert Gallatin
About the author
Born in Geneva in 1761, Albert Gallatin came to America as a young man and built an unusually wide-ranging career in public life. He served in Congress, became the fourth U.S. secretary of the Treasury under Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, and held that office longer than anyone else in American history.
Gallatin became known for careful, disciplined management of public money. He worked to reduce the national debt, supported internal improvements such as roads and canals, and later helped negotiate the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812. He also served as U.S. minister to France and to Britain.
In his later years, Gallatin turned more deeply toward scholarship. He wrote on Native American peoples, languages, and migration, and he is remembered as an early and influential figure in American ethnology as well as in politics and diplomacy.