Albert Gallatin

Stevens opens in Geneva, where a patrician family and a taste for republican ideas sent nineteen-year-old Albert Gallatin to America in 1780. The chapters follow him from a frontier settlement in western Pennsylvania to the state legislature, then to a Senate seat the chamber voided in 1794 because he had not been a citizen long enough. He argued for moderation during the Whiskey Insurrection, pressed the House into creating a standing Ways and Means Committee to watch the Treasury, and then ran that department under Jefferson and Madison for nearly thirteen years, still the longest any secretary has served. Diplomacy follows: the peace at Ghent, then ministries to France and Britain. A closing chapter turns to society, letters, and science. Stevens argues in his preface that Gallatin’s fame had thinned to mere tradition, and that the record deserved better.