death_date birth_date signature term_end country death_place imagesize title profession order term_start spouse image name resting_place predecessor birth_place president party state district minister_from successor article_title
12 august 1849 29 january 1761 albert gallatin signature.svg february 4 , 1801 may 16 , 1823 october 4 , 8 1827 , 1814 february 28 , 1794 march france the united kingdom astoria , new york , u.s. 245px united from pennsylvania states secretary of the treasury united states senator politician , ethnologist , professor 4th may 4 , 1795 july 16 , 1816 september 1 , 14 1826 , 1801 december 2 , 1793 march sophia gallatin -lrb- died 1790 -rrb- hannah gallatin albertgallatin.jpeg albert gallatin trinity churchyard , new york city samuel rufus king dexter william maclay william findley william h. crawford geneva , republic of geneva thomas jefferson james madison democratic-republican pennsylvania 12th united states united states george james barbour w. campbell james ross william hoge james brown albert gallatin

albert gallatin

abraham alfonse albert gallatin -lrb- january 29 , 1761 -- august 12 , 1849 -rrb- was a swiss-american politician , diplomat , ethnologist and linguist .
he served as a congressman , senator , united states ambassador and was the longest-serving united states secretary of the treasury .
in 1831 , he founded the university of the city of new york , now new york university .
born in geneva in present-day switzerland , gallatin immigrated to america in the 1780s , ultimately settling in pennsylvania .
he was politically active against the federalist party program , and was elected to the united states senate in 1793 .
however , he was removed from office by a 14 -- 12 party-line vote after a protest raised by his opponents suggested he did not meet the required nine years of citizenship .
two years later , he was elected to the house of representatives and served in the fourth through sixth congresses .
he was an important member of the new democratic-republican party , its chief spokesman on financial matters , and led opposition to many of the policy proposals of treasury secretary alexander hamilton .
he also helped found the house committee on finance -lrb- later the ways and means committee -rrb- and often engineered withholding of finances by the house as a method of overriding executive actions to which he objected .
gallatin 's mastery of public finance , an ability rare among members of the jeffersonian party , led to his automatic choice as secretary of the treasury by thomas jefferson despite federalist attacks that he was a `` foreigner '' with a french accent .
he was secretary from 1801 until february 1814 under presidents thomas jefferson and james madison , the longest tenure of this office in american history .
declining another term at the treasury , from 1816 to 1823 gallatin served as united states minister to france , struggling with scant success to improve relations with the government during the bourbon restoration .
gallatin returned to america and in the election of 1824 was nominated for vice president by the democratic-republican congressional caucus that had chosen william h. crawford as its presidential candidate .
gallatin never wanted the role and was humiliated when he was forced to withdraw from the race because he lacked popular support .
in 1826 and 1827 , he served as united states minister to great britain and negotiated several useful agreements , such as a ten-year extension of the joint occupation of oregon .
gallatin then settled in new york city , where he helped found new york university in 1831 , in order to offer university education to the working and merchant classes as well as the wealthy .
he became president of the national bank in new york city from 1831 until 1839 .
his last great endeavor was founding the american ethnological society in 1842 and serving as its president until 1848 .
with his studies of the languages of native americans , he has been called `` the father of american ethnology . ''
at his death in 1849 , gallatin was the last surviving member of the jefferson cabinet and the last surviving senator from the 18th century .
