Gallatin

America's Swiss Founding Father

Nicholas Dungan

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780814721124
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Biographies
• Index: History

You won't find his portrait on our currency anymore and his signature isn't penned on the Constitution, but former statesman Albert Gallatin (1761-1849) contributed immeasurably to the formation of America. Gallatin was the first president of the council of New York University and his name lives on at NYU's Gallatin School of Individualized Study, so it is with pride that New York University Press and the Swiss Confederation publish this new biography of Gallatin.

Gallatin's story is the opposite of the classic American immigrant tale. Born in Geneva, the product of an old and noble family and highly educated in the European tradition, Gallatin made contributions to America throughout his career that far outweighed any benefit he procured for himself. He got his first taste of politics as a Pennsylvania state representative and went on to serve in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. Gallatin became the Secretary of Treasury in Jefferson's administration and, despite being of the opposite political party to Alexander Hamilton, Gallatin fully respected his predecessor's fiscal politics. Gallatin undertook a special diplomatic mission for President Madison, which ended the War of 1812 with the signing of the Treaty of Ghent and gave the United States its genuine independence. Gallatin continued in diplomacy as minister to France and to Great Britain, where he skillfully combined his American experience and European background. In the early 1830s, at the age of seventy, he retired from politics and commenced a new career in New York City as a banker, public figure, and intellectual. He helped establish New York University and the American Ethnological Society, became an expert in Native American ethnology and linguistics, and served as president of the New-York Historical Society. Gallatin died at age 88 and is buried in Trinity churchyard at Broadway and Wall Street.

In our own day, as we look at reforming our financial system and seek to enhance America's global image, it is well worth resurrecting Albert Gallatin's timeless contributions to the United States, at home and abroad. Nicholas Dungan's compelling biography reinserts this forgotten Founding Father into the historical canon and reveals the transatlantic dimensions of early American history.

Co-published with the Swiss Confederation, Federal Department of Foreign Affairs.

[ 1 ]
A SON OF GENEVA, 1761–1780

ALBERT GALLATIN came from an old and noble family. As far back as 1258 AD, fully five hundred years before Albert Gallatin was born, the family’s aristocratic status was recorded in a document preserved until this day. In it, the abbess of the convent of Bella Comba, located in that region of northern Italy and southern France called Savoy, acknowledged receipt of a bequest from “Lord Fulcherius Gallatini, Knight.”¹ In 1319, Guillaume Gallatini, knight, and his son Humbert bore witness to a princely contract. In 1334, Humbert’s son, Noble Jean Gallatini of Arlod, pledged his fealty to the local lord and in his will of 1360 provided for his tomb in the local church. In 1402, Noble Henri Gallatini, grandson of Humbert, settled at Granges, in Savoy, about halfway between Geneva and Lyons. Henri’s son, Noble Jean Gallatini of Granges, received the distinction, in an attestation from 1455 signed by Louis, Duke of Savoy, of the appellation “dilectum scutiferum nostrum” (our beloved equerry),² one of the duke’s principal courtiers.

A son of that same Jean Gallatini—also named Jean—not only served as an equerry to Philibert, Duke of Savoy, but acceded in 1498 to a position as one of the duke’s private secretaries, with the title of Viscount. Later, Pope Leo X appointed him an apostolic judge. In the year 1510, this Jean Gallatin was accepted and registered as a “citizen of Geneva.” Only the patrician inhabitants of Geneva enjoyed the right of citizenship, and such citizenship constituted in Geneva the only patrician status.

GENEVA: A PROUD CITY BOTH SWISS AND INDEPENDENT

Geneva could claim as proud a past as the Gallatins themselves. The earliest inhabitants settled in Geneva in about 4500 BC. Geneva’s first mention in literature came in the opening lines of Julius Caesar’s Gallic Wars: writing of the Helvetians—the Swiss—Caesar identified the western end of their territory as the Lake of Geneva where it emptied into the River Rhone. Geneva was both a bridge and bulwark, a crossroads and a fortified city. Geneva’s earliest cathedral—the seat of a Christian bishop—was built around 350 AD, and in 443 the city became the first capital of the Burgundians. Annexed to the kingdom of the Franks in 534, it returned to Burgundy in 888 and joined the Holy Roman Empire in 1034. Throughout the Middle Ages, Geneva was an important center of medieval fairs and markets. The Medicis of Florence began banking in Geneva in 1425.

From the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries, the bishop of the diocese of Geneva was also the lord of the town and a prince of the Holy Roman Empire. But the Dukes of Savoy coveted Geneva and increasingly achieved political and ecclesiastical control. The Genevans, to assert their independence, signed a treaty with the Swiss cantons of Bern and Fribourg in 1477. A new and stronger union with Fribourg in 1519 was overturned by the Duke of Savoy. In December 1525, the duke convened the General Council of the citizens of Geneva at weapon-point. The meeting became known as the “Council of the Halberds,” to identify its having been held under duress. The duke compelled the council to vote against closer ties with the Swiss cantons and in favor of the authority of the Catholic bishop. The duke also insisted on receiving veto power over the appointment of lord mayors. Following the Council of the Halberds, those Genevans who deprecated fealty to Savoy and instead advocated closer confederation with the Swiss, known as Confederates, decided to resist. They first convinced the ruling councils of Bern and Fribourg to enter into a new pact of confederation and mutual assistance with Geneva. With the assurance of that double Swiss alliance in hand, the Confederates then persuaded their fellow Genevans to opt for a treaty with their Swiss allies rather than accept submission to the Duke of Savoy. The General Council of Geneva ratified that treaty in February 1526. The Duchy of Savoy, distracted at the time by other priorities in Italy, failed to oppose the decision with any force. At a stroke, therefore, Geneva provided for its military defense through the alliance with the Swiss cantons and achieved significant political autonomy in its external affairs. Geneva thus acquired a sense of itself as both Swiss and independent—a sentiment set to last for centuries thereafter.

The Confederates, having secured freedom for Geneva from external interference, then turned their attention to the reform of its internal government. During the years from 1527 to 1534, the Confederates introduced institutional changes that served to tighten their hold on power, consolidate the control of the city in the hands of a chosen few, and eliminate the authority of the bishop who represented the interests of Savoy and regulated religion in Geneva. Rather than deferring to the General Council of all citizens of Geneva, the Confederates created a Council of the Two Hundred and a more selective Council of the Sixty and provided for cross-membership between the two. In 1528, the Confederates abolished the electoral college established earlier by the Duke of Savoy, and they stipulated that candidates for lord mayor, limited to eight in total, would thereafter be selected by the Council of the Two Hundred. In 1530, the Confederates empowered the Council of the Two Hundred, rather than lord mayors, to name members of the government, known as the Small Council. In this way the Small Council and the Council of the Two Hundred became ever more interlocked: members of the Council of the Two Hundred chose the Small Council, which itself chose members of the Council of the Two Hundred. The Confederates may not have set out to create a tightly knit Genevan governing aristocracy over the coming centuries, but that is what this system ultimately produced.

During this period, the Confederates also reformed the justice system, instituted new courts, and created new judicial officers. The government increased its involvement in religious matters, which led to growing confrontation with the bishop. The civil authorities finally stripped the bishop of his supreme element of power, the right to pardon crimes. In retaliation, the bishop excommunicated the city of Geneva and removed his episcopal seat from the town. The Genevans asked the Catholic Church to appoint new ecclesiastical representatives, but the Church failed to respond. On October 1, 1534, the Council of the Two Hundred, of which Jean Gallatin was a member, together with the lord mayors, declared the bishop’s seat vacant, took over the bishop’s powers, and thus secured Geneva’s internal independence from the dominance of Savoy. Soon thereafter, Geneva issued its own coinage and began styling itself a republic.

GENEVA FROM THE REFORMATION TO THE ENLIGHTENMENT

In those years of rapid change, Geneva did not merely recast its civil institutions; it also altered its religion. The German Reformation had begun in October 1517 when Martin Luther’s ninety-five theses were nailed to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. Luther wished to see the extravagances of the Catholic Church give way to a more direct relationship between humanity and God. The first area beyond Germany to which the Reformation spread was Switzerland. Under the impulsion of Ulrich Zwingli, the Reformist pastor of the Grossmünster in Zurich, that canton adopted Protestantism in 1525, followed by Bern in 1528. Geneva, under the influence of its Bernese ally, gradually converted, as members of the Council of the Two Hundred and the population at large turned their back on Catholicism. In August 1535, the celebration of Mass was suspended. Geneva formally adopted the Reformation in May 1536.

It is often thought that John Calvin brought the Reformation to Geneva, but in fact Geneva had prepared the way for Calvin’s reforms. Before Calvin became the patriarch of the Reformed tradition, he was a French humanist, born in the somewhat harsh and forbidding province of Picardy, north of Paris. He had trained as a lawyer but broke from the Catholic Church around 1530. He fled to Basle, in Swiss territory, and there he published the first edition of his Institutes of the Christian Religion in 1536. In August of the same year, shortly after fleeing France, Calvin was traveling from Basle to Strasbourg when he was forced to take a detour in order to circumnavigate a battle. This detour led Calvin to Geneva, where he met Guillaume Farel, a zealous evangelical French reformer who had already converted Neuchâtel to Protestantism. Farel directly threatened Calvin with divine imprecation if he refused to stay and lead the Reform in Geneva. Convinced both by Farel’s plea for assistance and the curse that would befall him if he declined to remain, Calvin acquiesced. Given Farel’s insistence, one might presume that Geneva was ripe for their reforms. As it turned out, the Genevans, who had just won independence from Savoy and strengthened control over their own internal affairs, refused to accept the independent ecclesiastical ordinances that Calvin and Farel sought to impose. Consequently, the Genevan civil leaders expelled them both from the city in 1538. Farel moved to Neuchâtel, and Calvin spent the next three years in Strasbourg.

Following Geneva’s conversion to Protestantism, it lost its Catholic ally Fribourg, so Bern was its sole source of Swiss support. Geneva, having rejected the reforms of Calvin and Farel, therefore chose to adopt the Bernese model of Reformation. Yet after Calvin’s departure and without his leadership, the Reform in Geneva lost momentum, and factions within the city began to militate for the return of the Catholic bishop. Consequently, the Genevan Reformers called Calvin back in September 1541 and agreed to accept his ecclesiastical ordinances and submit to the religious authority of Calvin and his fellow pastors. Calvin thereupon returned to Geneva and remained until his death in 1564.

Calvin brought both his legal training and his religious zeal to bear on Geneva. With the formal adoption of his Ecclesiastical Ordinances in the autumn of 1541 he reorganized the church and established four types of church officers: pastors, doctors, elders, and deacons. The Ordinances were approved by the Small Council and adopted by the General Council of Geneva’s citizens. Calvin established a consistory, which included both ministers and elders, to monitor both the doctrine of the church and the discipline of the people. He emphasized preaching, discipline, education, and charity. He provided a new catechism and liturgy. Religious reform required the enforcement mechanism of the civil government. Not only were prostitution, debauchery, drunkenness, and bawdiness disallowed; there was also a prohibition on singing, dancing, games, and the wearing of jewelry, gold, or silver, as well as limitation of funeral expenditures and imposition of the requirement that Genevans walk on the streets rather than ride in carriages. Debts of bankrupts were passed on to their children, who could not occupy a public office until those debts were repaid. Most saints’ days and other holy days were abolished.

Jean Gallatin died in 1536, the year Calvin first came to Geneva. Later in the sixteenth century, his grandson Claude continued the family tradition by serving as a lord mayor and secretary of state of the Republic of Geneva.

After Calvin’s death, the House of Savoy returned to trouble Geneva’s independence. Once more, Geneva responded by reinforcing its Swiss alliances, especially with the two most powerful cantons, Zurich and Bern. Savoy countered by intermittent siege and warfare. In December 1602, on one of the longest nights of the year, Savoy mounted an invasion of Geneva by sending soldiers to scale the city walls and charge the city gates. Roused from their beds, the citizens of Geneva dropped the portcullis at the New Gate, repulsed the invaders, and earned fame throughout Europe for their grit and glory in thwarting the Escalade. Louis Gallatin, a member of another branch of the family, gave his life for his city at the Escalade.

Yet the seventeenth century did not stay so happy: Geneva lost nearly a quarter of its population to the plague, smallpox, and famine. Then, in October 1685, Louis XIV, the Sun King, revoked the Edict of Nantes, which had allowed French Protestants, the Huguenots, full religious and civic rights. A wave of Huguenots migrated to Geneva, adding thousands to the population and bringing new industries: leatherworking, gold and silver smithery, and, above all, watchmaking. Thereafter, Geneva enjoyed exceptional peace and prosperity well into the eighteenth century. The city distinguished itself in watchmaking, calico cloths, and a new industry, banking, fueled by the borrowing needs of the French kings.

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, four Gallatins became lord mayor, one of them first lord mayor on five occasions. By this time, four branches of the Gallatin family lived in Geneva. One family member, François Gallatin, in his will in 1699, established the Gallatin Trust to provide for members of the family in need of financial help. The Gallatin family was now equal to any and had married well with others: Sarasins, Navilles, Pictets. Both the Gallatin family and Geneva had reached their zenith.

ALBERT GALLATIN’S FAMILY AND EDUCATION IN GENEVA

Into this family and in this city Albert Gallatin was born on January 29, 1761. He came into the world in his parents’ house in the Old Town, number 7 rue des Granges, where it intersected with the rue du Cheval Blanc. The impressive four-story stone structure boasted wide windows and broad façades in each street. Albert’s father, Jean, was engaged in the commerce of watches. His mother, Sophie Albertine Rolaz, came from Rolle, about halfway along the north shore of Lake Geneva toward Lausanne. Jean and Sophie had their first child in 1756, a daughter named Susanne, but she suffered from an incurable nervous disability. Five years later the couple had a second child, this time a boy. He was baptized on February 7, 1761, nine days after birth, in the medieval Church of Saint-Germain, less than a minute’s walk from his parents’ house, and given the Christian names Abraham Alfonse Albert.

Jean, Albert’s father, was actually a partner of his own father, Abraham, in the trading of watches. Abraham lived in the countryside just across the mouth of the lake from Geneva, at Pregny, with his remarkable wife, Louise Susanne Vaudenet, a friend of the French philosopher Voltaire, whose estate lay only one town away in Ferney, and of Frederick II, the landgrave, or count, of Hesse-Cassel, whose Hessian mercenaries later fought alongside the British and the Tories, against the continental patriots and the French, in the American War of Independence. In 1764, Jean, Albert’s father, became a member of the Council of the Two Hundred, but he died prematurely the following year. Albert was only four years old. Albert’s mother, Sophie, attempted to carry on the watch trade, but with her invalid nine-year-old daughter and her very young son, she was soon overwhelmed. Susanne, the little girl, was sent to live at Montpellier, on the French Mediterranean coast, where she could receive full-time medical treatment. Sophie’s closest friend was an unmarried lady about forty years of age named Catherine Pictet. Miss Pictet was a cousin of the late Jean Gallatin, and after Jean died in the summer of 1765, Catherine Pictet persuaded Sophie Gallatin that she and her son would both be better off if Albert moved in with Miss Pictet, which he did in January 1766, around the time of his fifth birthday. He only saw his sister, Susanne, once after his father’s death. Susanne died in Montpellier by the time she was twenty. Sophie continued in the watch business, but whether from the strain of early widowhood or some other cause, she died in March 1770 and left Albert an orphan at the age of nine. By then he had been living with Miss Pictet for four years, and he always thereafter considered Catherine Pictet as if she had been his natural mother.

Between Miss Pictet, his grandparents at Pregny, and a close-knit extended family, Albert lived a perfectly happy childhood. Miss Pictet gave him all the love and attention she would have devoted to a son of her own—he was her only care or responsibility. She home-schooled Albert until it was time for him to leave for boarding school, and all the while the Gallatin Trust, because of François Gallatin’s foresight and generosity in 1699, provided for Miss Pictet’s expenses in raising Albert and, later, for the fees of his education at school.

Geneva had long valued the merits of education. A civic-minded citizen, François de Versonnex, founded the first educational establishment in Geneva more than a century before Calvin, in 1420, on the street now known as the rue du Vieux Collège. Calvin desired a new school, and on June 5, 1559, the Leges Academiae Genevensis, or By-Laws of the Academy of Geneva, were announced in the Cathedral of Saint Peter. A magnificent new Renaissance building was built around an open quadrangle between 1558 and 1562. More than two hundred years later, the Academy remained the principal educational institution in Geneva.

Albert left Miss Pictet’s in January 1773, when he was twelve years old, to become a boarding student at the Academy. The Academy was divided into a lower school, known as the College (in the French sense of a preparatory school), followed by an upper school, which was the Academy proper. Normally boys attended the lower school, the College, from age six to age fifteen. They learned to read and write French and Latin in the first three years, and thereafter virtually all teaching, from the age of nine, was in Latin. Albert Gallatin had the distinction, however, of having been schooled at home by Miss Pictet, so he had acquired a well-rounded education that his comrades in the College might have missed. When he became a boarder in January 1773, he entered the College only for the final year, as a kind of preparatory year for the Academy; he and his classmates then moved on together to the upper school, the Academy itself.

Gallatin followed the curriculum of the department of philosophy, which included humanities and science. He read Latin and Greek literature and took courses in geography, history, French composition, elocution, mathematics, and physics. Gallatin’s course outline of his physics class with Mr. Le Sage ran to five handwritten columns describing fourteen notebooks subdivided into about a hundred topics. Beyond students’ classroom work, they learned equitation and the use of weaponry.³

The eighteenth century was the Age of Enlightenment. Two leaders in Geneva served in particular to diminish the influence of strict Calvinism and advance philosophy and the natural sciences. Jean-Alphonse Turret-tini, a church minister and professor at the Academy, promoted the concept of tolerance and helped soften some longstanding doctrine in the earlier part of the century. Jean-Robert Chouet, a professor at the Academy and a lord mayor, advanced a series of reforms that revitalized the Academy, its curriculum, and its teaching staff. Both Turrettini and Chouet favored the philosophical questioning laid out in the Discourse on Method of René Descartes, as well as the experimental system of scientific examination. Geneva transitioned from a doctrinal and dictatorial Calvinism to a more liberal-minded humanism.

When Gallatin was at the Academy, a number of his professors, like other distinguished minds living and teaching in Geneva at the time, were figures ...