At the close of the war he taught French at Harvard University, where he remained until 1784, when he received his patrimonial estate. He invested it in land in West Virginia and Western Pennsylvania, and, in 1786, he settled on land on the banks of the Monongahela River, in Fayette County, Pennsylvania. Here he lived and became naturalized.
The town was named New Geneva from his native place in Switzerland. Here he built a log house, which subsequently gave place to a stone structure yet standing. He was a partner in establishing the first glass house in that section of the State. He became one of the foremost citizens of America.
He served in the General Assembly of Pennsylvania for several terms and in 1793 was chosen a United States Senator for Pennsylvania, but was declared ineligible on the ground that he had not been a citizen of the United States the required nine years.
During the Whisky Insurrection in Western Pennsylvania, 1794, Albert Gallatin played a conspicuous role.
In the meeting of the malcontents, August 14, 1794, at Parkinson’s Ferry, where 260 delegates, elected by the several counties, organized and adopted some intemperate resolutions, Colonel Edward Cook was appointed chairman, and Albert Gallatin, secretary. The organic force of the insurrection was condensed into a committee of sixty and that committee was again represented by a Standing Committee of twelve.
Gallatin was energetic in working with his friends to gain time and restore quietness. He presented with great force the folly of resistance and the ruinous consequences to the country of the continuance of the insurrection. He urged that the Government was bound to vindicate the laws and that it would surely send an overwhelming force against them. He placed the subject in a new light and showed the insurrection to be a much more serious affair than it had before appeared.
After the Pennsylvania commissioners had reached Pittsburgh and met with those of the National Government and the committee appointed at the meeting at Parkinson’s Ferry, a conference of the committee of sixty was held at Redstone Old Fort, now Brownsville.
This meeting was opened by a long, sensible and eloquent speech by Albert Gallatin in favor of law and order. Backed by Judge Hugh H. Brackenridge, Gallatin won the day, and the insurrection was happily ended before the army was called into action.
Gallatin was censured for the part he had taken, but no man stood higher in the opinion, not only of President Washington, but of the Pennsylvania authorities. In the General Assembly December, 1794, in an able speech Gallatin admitted his “political sin” in the course he had taken in the insurrectionary movement.
He was elected to Congress in 1795, and in a debate on Jay’s Treaty in 1796 he charged Washington and Jay with having pusillanimously surrendered the honor of their country. This, from the lips of a young foreigner, exasperated the Federalists. He was a leader of the Democrats and directed his attention particularly to financial matters.