Albert Gallatin Part 15

CHAPTER IX

CANDIDATE FOR THE VICE-PRESIDENCY

During the twelve years that Mr. Gallatin was in the Treasury he was continually looking for some man who could take his place in that office, and aid in the direction of national politics; to use his own words, "who could replace Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Madison, and himself."

Breckenridge of Kentucky only appeared and died. The eccentricities of John Randolph unfitted him for leaders.h.i.+p. William H. Crawford of Georgia, Monroe's secretary of the treasury, alone filled Gallatin's expectations. To a powerful mind Crawford "united a most correct judgment and an inflexible integrity. Unfortunately he was neither indulgent nor civil, and, consequently, was unpopular." Andrew Jackson, Gallatin said, "was an honest man, and the idol of the wors.h.i.+pers of military glory, but from incapacity, military habits, and habitual disregard of laws and const.i.tutional provisions, entirely unfit for the office of president." John C. Calhoun he looked upon as "a smart fellow, one of the first amongst second-rate men, but of lax political principles and an inordinate ambition, not over-delicate in the means of satisfying itself." Clay he considered to be a man of splendid talents and a generous mind; John Quincy Adams to be 'wanting to a deplorable degree in that most essential quality, a sound and correct judgment.'

The contest lay between Adams and Crawford. Crawford was the choice of Jefferson and Madison as well as of Gallatin. The principles of the Republican party had so changed that Nathaniel Macon could say in 1824, in reply to a request from Mr. Gallatin to take part in a caucus for the purpose of forwarding Mr. Crawford's nomination, that there were "not five members of Congress who entertained the opinions which those did who brought Mr. Jefferson into power." But Macon was of the Brutus stamp of politicians; of that stern cast of mind which does not 'alter when it alteration finds or bend with the remover to remove,' and held yielding to the compulsion of circ.u.mstances to be an abandonment of principle.

Jefferson still held the consolidation of power to be the chief danger of the country, and the barrier of state rights, great and small, to be its only protection even against the Supreme Court. Gallatin took broader ground, and found encouragement in the excellent working of universal suffrage in the choice of representatives to legislative bodies. But he was opposed to the extension of the principle to munic.i.p.al officers having the application of the proceeds of taxes, forgetting that universal suffrage is the lever by which capital is moved to educate labor and relieve it from the burdens of injury, disease, and physical incapacity at the expense of the whole. Without stopping to argue these debatable questions, Mr. Gallatin, with practical statesmans.h.i.+p, determined to maintain in power the only agency by which he could at all shape the political future, and he threw himself into the canva.s.s with zeal.

Crawford had unfortunately been stricken with paralysis, and the choice of a vice-president became a matter of grave concern. Mr. Gallatin was selected to take this place on the ticket. To this tender he replied that he did not want the office, but would dislike to be proposed and not elected, and he honestly felt that as a foreigner and a residuary legatee of Federal hatred his name could not be of much service to the cause. Still, he followed the only course by which any party can be held together, and surrendered his prejudices and fears to the wishes of his friends. The Republican caucus met on February 14, 1824, in the chamber of the House of Representatives. Of the 216 members of the party only 66 attended. Martin Van Buren, then senator from New York, managed this, the last congressional caucus for the selection of candidates.

The solemnity given to the congressional nominations, and the publicity of the answers of candidates, Mr. Gallatin held to be political blunders. In fact the plan was adroitly denounced as an attempt to dictate to the people.

Crawford was nominated for president by 64 votes, Gallatin for vice-president by 57. This nomination Mr. Gallatin accepted in a note to Mr. Ruggles, United States senator, on May 10, 1824. But there were elements of which party leaders of the old school had not taken sufficient account. Macon was right when he said that "every generation, like a single person, has opinions of its own, as much so in politics as anything else," and that 'the opinions of Jefferson and those who were with him were forgotten.' And Jefferson himself, in his complacent reflection that even the name of Federalist was "extinguished by the battle of New Orleans," did not see that the Republican party of the old school had been snuffed out by the same event. The new democracy, whose claims to rule were based, not on the policy of peace or restricted powers, but on the seductive glitter of military glory, was in the ascendant, and General Jackson was the favorite of the hour. New combinations became necessary, and Mr. Gallatin was requested to withdraw from the ticket, and make room for Mr. Clay, whose great western influence it was hoped would save it from defeat. This he gladly did in a declaration of October 2, addressed to Martin Van Buren, dated at his Fayette home, and published in the "National Intelligencer." The result of the election was singular. Calhoun was elected vice-president by the people. The presidential contest was decided in the House, Adams being chosen over Jackson and Crawford, by the influence of Clay. Mr.

Gallatin quickly discerned in the failure of the people to elect a president the collapse of the Republican party. He considered it as "fairly defunct."

Jackson had already announced the startling doctrine that no regard was to be had to party in the selection of the great officers of government, which Mr. Gallatin considered as tantamount to a declaration that principles and opinions were of no importance in its administration. To lose sight of this principle was to subst.i.tute 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 a.s.sumption 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 a.s.saults upon the Const.i.tution of the country and the liberties of the people, and he dreaded the subst.i.tution of the wors.h.i.+p 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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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 t.i.tle, 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 a.s.sociation 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 embarra.s.sment 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. Was.h.i.+ngton 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 n.o.blesse;' 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 a.s.sure 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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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 Friends.h.i.+p 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 Friends.h.i.+p Hill was an agreeable residence, but Mr. Gallatin found it in winter too isolated even for his taste.

One exciting circ.u.mstance enlivened the spring of 1825. This was the pa.s.sage 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 emanc.i.p.ation 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 Friends.h.i.+p Hill, where he pa.s.sed 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 Was.h.i.+ngton, 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 pa.s.sed 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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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 a.s.sociation 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 a.s.sociation 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 a.s.sociate 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 inst.i.tution. 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, 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. Was.h.i.+ngton 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 inst.i.tution 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 inst.i.tutions 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 inst.i.tution 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 inst.i.tution, 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 a.s.signed 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 a.s.signed 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 cla.s.sification 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 cla.s.sification 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 cla.s.sification 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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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 acquainted with the Indian tribes in different sections of the country.[23] The replies to these various queries were few in number, but the practical plan, adhered to in substance, has resulted in the collection by the Smithsonian Inst.i.tution of a very large number of Indian vocabularies.[24]

This cla.s.s of investigation, in its ample scope for original research and the ascertainment of principles by a.n.a.lysis and a.n.a.logic expression, was peculiarly agreeable to Mr. Gallatin. His friend, du Ponceau,[25]

who served in the American war as the secretary of Steuben, and was now established in Philadelphia, was likewise deeply engaged in philologic studies; in 1819 he had published a memoir of the construction of the languages of the North American Indians, which he followed later with other papers of a similar nature, among which were a "Grammar of the Languages of the Lenni Lenape or Delaware Indians," and a memoir on the grammatical system of the languages of the Indian tribes of North America, a learned and highly instructive paper, which took the Volney prize at Paris.

In 1836 Mr. Gallatin's original paper, contributed to Balbi, amplified by subsequent acquisitions, was published by the American Antiquarian Society of Worcester, in the first volume of its Transactions. It was ent.i.tled "A Synopsis of the Indian Tribes, within the United States east of the Rocky Mountains, and in the British and Russian Possessions in North America." This elaborate inquiry, the foundation of the science in America, was intended originally to embrace all the tribes north of the Mexican semi-civilized nations. From the want of material, however, it was confined at the southward to the territory of the United States, and eastward of the Rocky Mountains. It included eighty-one tribes, divided into twenty-eight families, and was accompanied by a colored map, with tribal indications. The result of the investigation Mr. Gallatin held to be proof that all the languages, not only of our own Indian tribes, but of the nations inhabiting America from the Arctic Ocean to Cape Horn, have a distinct character common to all. This paper attracted great attention in Europe. It was reviewed by the Count de Circourt, whose interest in the subject was heightened by personal acquaintance with the author. John C. Calhoun, acknowledging receipt of a copy of the Synopsis, said in striking phrase 'that he had long thought that the a.n.a.logy of languages is destined to recover much of the lost history of nations just as geology has of the globe we inhabit.'

In 1838, Congress having accepted the trust of John Smithson of 100,000, and pledged the faith of the United States for its purposes, Mr. Forsyth, the secretary of state, addressed Mr. Gallatin, at the request of the President, requesting his views as to its proper employment; but Mr. Gallatin does not appear to have answered the communication. The programme of the Smithsonian Inst.i.tution, inclosed to the board of regents in its first report, stated its object to be the increase and diffusion of knowledge, and bears marks of the general views which Mr. Gallatin had for many years urged on public attention.

The first of the Smithsonian "Contributions to Knowledge" was the memoir of Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, by Squier and Davis.

Before its publication was undertaken, however, it was submitted to the Ethnological Society. Mr. Gallatin returned it, with the approval of the society, and some words of commendation of his own addressed to Professor Henry, the learned superintendent of the Smithsonian Inst.i.tution.