County namesake
Albert Gallatin ran
treasury prudently
By Anne Millbrooke
The Gallatin, Madison and Jefferson rivers join to form the headwaters of the Missouri River on the western edge of Gallatin County.
The three forks bear the names of three national figures during the formative stages of our nation’s history. None of these men ever visited Montana, but their names here reflect their influence far beyond Washington and the early 1800s.
Albert Gallatin was the topic at Saturday’s monthly meeting of the Albert Gallatin Society for Great Books. His namesakes include not only the book club and the river, but also the county in which live, a mountain range and dozens of other local items, from streets and roads to businesses.
In 1780, at the age of 18, Gallatin immigrated to the United States from Geneva, Switzerland. After pursuing business opportunities in Maine, Massachusetts and Virginia, he became a resident of Pennsylvania. He served in the Pennsylvania State Assembly, and won election to the U.S. Senate only to be denied a seat due to a technicality about the length of his residency, and party politics.
Whether or not Gallatin’s active support of the Whiskey Rebellion constituted treason is one of the issues discussed by the book club.
Gallatin lived on the frontier west of the Allegheny Mountains, where crops were distilled into whiskey for easier transport to markets east of the mountains and where whiskey was used as currency in the absence of cash. When the national government imposed a tax on whiskey, the tax to be paid in cash, the Westerners rebelled.
President George Washington provided 13,000 militiamen who suppressed the armed rebellion. He pardoned the rebels who were arrested, and later President John Adams pardoned the men who fled into exile.
Gallatin avoided arrest and exile. He later called his participation in the Whiskey Rebellion his “one political sin,” because the tax, albeit unequal in its effect, was legal under the Constitution.
Under presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, Gallatin served as the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury from 1801 to 1814. All three men were leaders of the new Democratic Republican Party, in opposition to the Federalist Party.
Together Jefferson, Madison, and Gallatin defined and refined the principles of the Democratic Republican Party: political development of the United States independent of other nations, non-interference in foreign affairs and conflicts, small peacetime military and avoidance of wars, anti-colonialism and fiscal responsibility in the form of a balanced budget.
Gallatin opposed debt as immoral and corrupting, but the new national government had already accepted the revolutionary war debts of the various states. Those had to be paid, yet Gallatin retired the internal taxes begun under the Federalist Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton.
The largest single government expense of Gallatin’s term of service was the 1803 purchase of the Louisiana Territory: $15 million dollars, yet the national government imposed no internal taxes for ten years. Tariffs on international trade — that trade was stimulated by immigration to the United States — provided sufficient revenue during those years.
The new territory was explored by Lewis & Clark on their expedition to the Pacific Ocean in 1804–1806. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark commemorated the support of the administration by naming three rivers after Gallatin, Jefferson and Madison.
Gallatin also supported internal improvements, like roads and canals, as an appropriate function of the national government.
For decades, Gallatin worked to contain the British in North America. He negotiated a joint occupation of the Oregon Country, the land between the Continental Divide and the Pacific Ocean. And he worked toward the partition of Oregon at the 49th Parallel, rather than at the Columbia River, which the British wanted as the border.
Gallatin wanted the Oregon Country to become a new republic in time, once settlers had adequately populated it, and thus Butte would have been in a foreign country. The book club members kidded Neil Lynch, formerly of Butte, about that.
Novels about a parallel Gallatin Universe, like “The Gallatin Divergence,” celebrate the fictional assassination of George Washington and the equally fictional founding a North American Confederacy by Albert Gallatin. These books are fiction, but not historical fiction. They promote Libertarianism. They are classed as fantasy because their imaginary tales of time travel, space travel, and conspiracies are fantastical.
In contrast, Gallatin supported liberal values, government economy and the rule of law as represented by the Constitution. As treasurer and diplomat, he was known for moderation. Gallatin, Jefferson and Madison defined the basic principles of Democratic politics. Together they formed the headwaters of the modern Democratic Party.
Lynch leads the Albert Gallatin Philosophical Society and its two book clubs. The Albert Gallatin Society for Great Books meets at 10:15 a.m., the third Saturday of each month at the Bozeman Public Library. The Great Books Reading and Discussion Group meets at 4:00 p.m., the fourth Tuesday of each month at Borders bookstore.
(Published in the Belgrade News, October 23, 2009)
