The Life of Albert Gallatin

by Henry Adams

1833.

Geography was always one of his favorite studies; but the influence which decided the bent of his mind towards ethnological investigation seems to have come chiefly from Alexander von Humboldt, at whose request he made, in 1823, a first attempt in the shape of an essay, which was not printed, but was quoted with praise in the Introduction to the “Atlas Ethnographique” of M. Balbi. Following up the line of inquiry, he set himself actively to work in the winter of 1825-26 to obtain Indian vocabularies, and the presence of a numerous delegation of Southern Indians at Washington in the course of that winter enabled him to make rapid progress. He was further aided by the War Department, which circulated, at his request, printed forms of a vocabulary containing six hundred words. He then published a table of all the existing tribes in the United States. In 1835, at the request of the American Antiquarian Society of Worcester, Massachusetts, he prepared an essay, which was printed the following year in the second volume of the Society’s Transactions, under the title, “A Synopsis of the Indian Tribes within the United States east of the Rocky Mountains and in the British and Russian Possessions in North America.” This paper was accompanied by an ethnological map and numerous vocabularies. It was successful in its main object of giving a solid structure to the science, and it was received with applause by American and European ethnologists. Mr. Gallatin was encouraged to go on, and under his influence the American Ethnological Society of New York was organized, which held its first meeting on the 19th November, 1842, and in 1845 published its first volume of Transactions, three hundred pages of which are devoted to Mr. Gallatin’s “Notes on the Semi-Civilized Nations of Mexico, Yucatan, and Central America.” The second volume appeared in 1848, and contained another essay by Mr. Gallatin on the geography, philology, and civilization of the Indians, printed as an Introduction to a republication of Hale’s “Indians of Northwest America.”

These three essays, with their vocabularies and maps, may be said to have created the science of American ethnology, which had until that time existed only in a fragmentary shape. So far as they were philological they still form the groundwork of whatever progress is made in the study, and the men who have rendered and are now rendering the highest services in this science are, of all Americans, those who have the keenest sense and speak in the warmest terms of Gallatin’s greatness. So far as the papers were general and descriptive, although forty years of investigation have greatly increased our knowledge and modified our opinions, they are still held in high esteem, and show in numerous places the touch of careful and discreet investigation.

GALLATIN TO JOHN BADOLLET.

New York, February 7, 1833.

I am deeply and most sadly affected by your letter of 20th ult. It has indeed, my dearest friend, been a source of constant regret and the embittering circumstance of my life that not only we should have been separated during the greater part of our existence, but that your lot should have been cast in the comparatively unhealthy climate to which your repeated bilious attacks and their sad consequences must be ascribed. But what else could be done? The necessity of bringing up a family and of an independent existence is imposed upon us. And although I should have been contented to live and die amongst the Monongahela hills, it must be acknowledged that, beyond the invaluable advantage of health, they afforded either to you or me but few intellectual or physical resources. Indeed, I must say that I do not know in the United States any spot which afforded less means to earn a bare subsistence for those who could not live by manual labor than the sequestered corner in which accident had first placed us. We can but resign ourselves to what was unavoidable. And yet I have often thought that we boasted too much of the immense extent of our territory, which, if it makes us more powerful as a nation and offers so large a field for enterprise, carries within itself the seeds of dissolution, by expanding weakens the bonds of union and the devotedness of genuine patriotism, and in the mean while destroys the charm of local attachment, separates friends and disperses to most distant quarters the members of the same family. In your remote situation, thrown at the age of forty-five amongst entire strangers, and amidst the afflictions by which you have been visited, two great comforts have still been left to you,—the excellent wife with which you have been blessed, that bosom friend for whom there are no secrets, that faithful partner of all your joys and sorrows, that being who had your and gave you her undivided affections with tender feelings, without the least affectation, gentle and prudent, such, indeed, as seems to have been a special gift of Heaven intended for you. Add to this the consciousness not only of a life of integrity, but of a pure life, of one which either as private or public should satisfy you and has gained you general consideration and the respect of all that have simply known you. And as to those who have been more intimately acquainted with you, who has been more generally beloved and could always count more sincere friends than yourself?

My dear friend, you judge yourself with too much severity. For want of greater offences you seek for specks, and your extreme susceptibility magnifies them into unpardonable errors. I tell you the truth, Badollet, when I assure you that in the course of a life which has brought me in contact with men of all ranks and of many nations, I have not known a more virtuous and pure man than yourself. Your education, that of a student, and your simplicity and your unsuspecting integrity, unfitted you for that active life of enterprise which is the characteristic of this nation, and made you unable to cope with the shrewdness of those by whom you were surrounded. Still, you have to the last resisted every temptation and struggled for existence by honorable means. Yet it is true that both you and I, during the years of youthful hopes and those which succeeded of arduous labors, identified with our new country and surrounded by new and dearest objects of domestic affection, it is true that we both neglected to correspond with the friends of our youth and to preserve ties which could not be replaced. The penalty for that offence we have paid, and have been the greatest sufferers. I have been far more to blame in that respect; and yet please to God that I had nothing worse to reproach myself with.

We all went to Greenfield, Connecticut, during the cholera and escaped that calamity; but during our absence we lost Mrs. Nicholson, who died in August of old age (88). It was principally on her account that Mrs. Gallatin wished, on our return from England, to settle here. I found after a while that my income was not sufficient for this conspicuous and expensive city, and this induced me to accept the place of president of a new bank (the National Bank of New York), which I have now filled for near two years, with a salary of 2000 dollars. I might now give it up so far as concerns myself, as the additional income derived from my wife’s property is sufficient for us; but whilst my health permits I may remain in it, as it gives me opportunities of introducing my sons in business. Although I neither suffer pain or can complain of serious illness, I grow gradually weaker, thinner, and more and more liable to severe colds and derangement of the bowels. My faculties, memory of recent events or reading excepted, are wonderfully preserved, and my two last essays on Currency and on the Tariff have received the approbation of the best judges here and in Europe. I had another favorite object in view, in which I have failed. My wish was to devote what may remain of life to the establishment, in this immense and fast-growing city, of a general system of rational and practical education fitted for all and gratuitously opened to all. For it appeared to me impossible to preserve our democratic institutions and the right of universal suffrage unless we could raise the standard of general education and the mind of the laboring classes nearer to a level with those born under more favorable circumstances. I became accordingly the president of the council of a new university, originally established on the most liberal principles. But finding that the object was no longer the same, that a certain portion of the clergy had obtained the control, and that their object, though laudable, was special and quite distinct from mine, I resigned at the end of one year rather than to struggle, probably in vain, for what was nearly unattainable.

The present aspect of our national politics is extremely discouraging; yet, having heretofore always seen the good sense of this nation ultimately prevailing against the excesses of party spirit and the still more dangerous efforts of disappointed ambition, I do not despair. But although I hope the dangers which threaten us may for the present be averted, the discussions and the acts which have already taken place have revealed the secret of our vulnerable points, dissolved the charm which made our Constitution and our Union a sacred object, and will render the preservation of both much more difficult than heretofore. I have always thought that the dangerous questions arising from the conflicting and, in our complex, half-consolidated, half-federative form of government, doubtful rights of individual States and United States should, if possible, be avoided; that the bond of union, if made too tight, would snap; and that great moderation in the exercise even of its most legitimate powers was, in our extensive country, with all its diversified and often opposite interests, absolutely necessary on the part of the general government.

1834.