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Abraham Alfonse Albert Gallatin (January 29, 1761 – August 12, 1849) 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 helped found the University of the City of New York, now New York University. Born in Geneva in present-day Switzerland (it formally joined only in 1815), Gallatin immigrated to America in the 1780s and was naturalized in Morgantown, Virginia. He ultimately settled 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 (later the Ways and Means Committee) 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 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, Gallatin served as United States Minister to France from 1816 to 1823, 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 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 to 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. ==Early life== Gallatin was born in Geneva, Switzerland, to wealthy Jean Gallatin and his wife, Sophie Albertine Rollaz. Gallatin's family had great influence in Switzerland, and many family members held distinguished positions in the magistracy, military, and in Swiss delegations in foreign armies. Gallatin's father, a prosperous merchant, died in 1765, followed by his mother in April 1770. Now orphaned, Gallatin was taken into the care of Mademoiselle Pictet, a family friend and distant relative of Gallatin's father. In January 1773, Gallatin was sent to boarding school.〔Stevens (1888), p2.〕 As a student at the elite Academy of Geneva, Gallatin read deeply in philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire, along with the French Physiocrats; he became dissatisfied with the traditionalism of Geneva. A student of the Enlightenment, he believed in human nature and that when free from social restrictions, it would display noble qualities and greater results, in both the physical and the moral world. The democratic spirit of the United States attracted him and he decided to emigrate.〔Henry Adams, ''Life of Albert Gallatin'' (1879) p. 16〕 In April 1780, he secretly left Geneva with his classmate Henri Serre. Carrying letters of recommendation from eminent Colonials (including Benjamin Franklin) that the Gallatin family procured, the young men left France in May, sailing on an American ship, "the Kattie". They reached Cape Ann on July 14 and arrived in Boston the next day, traveling the intervening thirty miles by horseback.〔Stevens (1888), pp. 11–12.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Albert Gallatin」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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