In 1836 Mr. Gallatin's original paper, contributed to Balbi, amplified by subsequent acquisitions, was published by the American Antiquarian Society of Worcester, in the first volume of its Transactions. It was entitled “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 elaborate inquiry, the foundation of the science in America, was intended originally to embrace all the tribes north of the Mexican semi-civilized nations. From the want of material, however, it was confined at the southward to the territory of the United States, and eastward of the Rocky Mountains. It included eighty-one tribes, divided into twenty-eight families, and was accompanied by a colored map, with tribal indications. The result of the investigation Mr. Gallatin held to be proof that all the languages, not only of our own Indian tribes, but of the nations inhabiting America from the Arctic Ocean to Cape Horn, have a distinct character common to all. This paper attracted great attention in Europe. It was reviewed by the Count de Circourt, whose interest in the subject was heightened by personal acquaintance with the author. John C. Calhoun, acknowledging receipt of a copy of the Synopsis, said in striking phrase 'that he had long thought that the analogy of languages is destined to recover much of the lost history of nations just as geology has of the globe we inhabit.'
In 1838, Congress having accepted the trust of John Smithson of £100,000, and pledged the faith of the United States for its purposes, Mr. Forsyth, the secretary of state, addressed Mr. Gallatin, at the request of the President, requesting his views as to its proper employment; but Mr. Gallatin does not appear to have answered the communication. The programme of the Smithsonian Institution, inclosed to the board of regents in its first report, stated its object to be the increase and diffusion of knowledge, and bears marks of the general views which Mr. Gallatin had for many years urged on public attention. The first of the Smithsonian “Contributions to Knowledge” was the memoir of Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, by Squier and Davis. Before its publication was undertaken, however, it was submitted to the Ethnological Society. Mr. Gallatin returned it, with the approval of the society, and some words of commendation of his own addressed to Professor Henry, the learned superintendent of the Smithsonian Institution.
The period of temporary political repose, which followed the peace of Vienna and the establishment of the balance of power by the allied sovereigns, was an era in human knowledge. Science made rapid progress, and in its turn showed the broad and liberal influence of the great revolution. In 1842 societies were founded in Paris and London to promote the study of ethnology. Mr. Gallatin would not be behindhand in this important work for which America offered a virgin field. Drawing about him a number of gentlemen of similar tastes with his own, he founded in New York, in 1842, the American Ethnological Society. Among his associates were Dr. Robinson, the famous explorer of Palestine, Schoolcraft, Bartlett, and Professor Turner, noted for their researches in the history and languages of the Indian races. Messrs. Atwater, Bradford, Hawks, Gibbs, Mayer, Dr. Morton, Pickering, Stephens, Ewbank, and Squier were also, either in the beginning or soon after, members of this select and learned institution, of which Mr. Gallatin was the central figure. One of its members said in 1871, 'Mr. Gallatin's house was the true seat of the society, and Mr. Gallatin himself its controlling spirit. His name gave it character, and from his purse mainly was defrayed the cost of the two volumes of the “Transactions” which constitute about the only claim the society possesses to the respect of the scientific world.' To the first of these volumes, published in 1845, Mr. Gallatin contributed an “Essay on the semi-civilized nations of Mexico and Central America, embracing elaborate notes on their languages, numeration, calendars, history, and chronology, and an inquiry into the probable origin of their semi-civilization.” In this he included all existing certain knowledge of the languages, history, astronomy, and progress in art of these peoples. A copy of this work he sent to General Scott, then in the city of Mexico after his triumphant campaign, inclosing a memorandum which he urged the general to hand to civilians attached to the army. This was a request to purchase books, copies of documents, printed grammars, and vocabularies of the Mexican languages, and he authorized the general to spend four hundred dollars in this purpose on his account. In the second volume, published in 1848, he printed the result of his continued investigations on the subject which first interested him, as an introduction to a republication of a work by Mr. Hale on the “Indians of Northwest America.” This consisted of geographical notices, an account of Indian means of subsistence, the ancient semi-civilization of the Northwest, Indian philology, and analogic comparisons with the Chinese and Polynesian languages. These papers Mr. Gallatin modestly described to Chevalier as the 'fruits of his leisure,' and to Sismondi he wrote that he had not the requisite talent for success in literature or science. They nevertheless entitle him to the honorable name of the Father of American Ethnography.
In 1837 Mr. Wheaton, the American minister at Berlin, requested Mr. Gallatin to put the Baron von Humboldt in possession of authentic data concerning the production of gold in the United States. Humboldt had visited the Oural and Siberian regions in 1829, at the request of the Emperor of Russia, to make investigations as to their production of the precious metals. Mr. Gallatin was the only authority in the United States on the subject. Later von Humboldt wrote to Mr. Gallatin of the interest felt abroad, and by himself, in the gold of the mountains of Virginia and Tennessee, a country which rivaled on a small scale the Dorado of Siberia. The treasures of the Pacific coast were not yet dreamed of.
Mr. Gallatin perfectly understood the range of his own powers. He said of himself:—
“If I have met with any success, either in public bodies, as an executive officer, or in foreign negotiations, it has been exclusively through a patient and most thorough investigation of all the attainable facts, and a cautious application of these to the questions under discussion.... Long habit has given me great facility in collating, digesting, and extracting complex documents, but I am not hasty in drawing inferences; the arrangement of the facts and arguments is always to me a considerable labor, and though aiming at nothing more than perspicuity and brevity, I am a very slow writer.”
Mr. Gallatin's manuscripts and drafts show long and minute labor in their well considered and abundant alterations. Referring on one occasion to his habit of reasoning, Mr. Gallatin remarked, that of all processes that of analogy is the most dangerous, yet that which he habitually used; that it required the greatest possible number of facts. This is the foundation of philology, and his understanding of its method and its dangers is the reason of his success in this branch of science.
The difficulty experienced in establishing any literary or scientific institutions in New York was very great. An effort made in 1830, which Mr. Gallatin favored, to establish a literary periodical failed, not on account of the pecuniary difficulties, but from the impossibility of uniting a sufficient number of able coöperators. But Mr. Gallatin's interest in literature was not as great as in science.[26]
In 1841 a national institution for the promotion of science was organized at Washington. The coöperation of Mr. Gallatin was invited, but the society had a short existence. In 1843 Mr. Gallatin was chosen president of the New York Historical Society. His inaugural address is an epitome of political wisdom. Pronounced at any crisis of our history, it would have become a text for the student. In this sketch he analyzed the causes which contributed to form our national character and to establish a government founded on justice and on equal rights. He showed how, united by a common and imminent danger, the thirteen States succeeded in asserting and obtaining independence without the aid of a central and efficient government, and the difficulties which were encountered when a voluntary surrender of a part of their immense sovereignty became necessary as a condition of national existence. He said that the doctrine that all powers should emanate from the people is not a question of expediency.
In this address he summed up the reasons why Washington exercised such a beneficial influence upon the destinies of his country. In a confidential letter to his wife in 1797, he expressed an opinion that the father of his country was not a good-natured and amiable man, but time had mellowed these recollections and softened the asperity of this judgment. Washington had not, he said (in 1843), 'an extraordinary amount of acquired knowledge; he was neither a classical scholar nor a man of science, nor was he endowed with the powers of eloquence, nor with other qualities more strong than solid, which might be mentioned; but he had a profound and almost innate sense of justice, on all public occasions a perfect control of his strong passions,[27] above all a most complete and extraordinary self-abnegation. Personal consequences and considerations were not even thought of, they never crossed his mind, they were altogether obliterated.' Mr. Gallatin held that “the Americans had a right to be proud of Washington, because he was selected and maintained during his whole career by the people—never could he have been thus chosen and constantly supported had he not been the type and representative of the American people.”