Albert Gallatin Quotes

Abraham Alfonse Albert Gallatin was a Swiss-American ethnologist, linguist, politician, diplomat, congressman, and the longest-serving United States Secretary of the Treasury. In 1831, he founded the University of the City of New York. Renamed New York University in 1896, it is one of the largest private, non-profit universities in the United States. He was politically active against the Federalist Party program, and was elected to the United States Senate in 1793. He also helped found the House Committee on Finance and often engineered withholding of finances by the House as a method of overriding executive actions to which he objected. While Treasury Secretary, his services to his country were honored in 1805 when Meriwether Lewis named one of the three headwaters of the Missouri River after Gallatin.