his period. Historians of science rate him as surpassed only by Jefferson
among American ethnologists of the early nineteenth century. Outside
scholarly circles, however, few Americans today recognize his name, and
fewer still comprehend what it stands for. In the present century the man
and his work have received just one token of public recognition--a
statue, a poor likeness, by James Earle Fraser, that stands outside the
Treasury Building in Washington surveying the traffic of Pennsylvania
Avenue.

There are, of course, a variety of reasons for Gallatin's present ob-
scurity. To begin with, he made the mistake of being born abroad! That
circumstance blocked him from higher office, perhaps even the Presi-
dency. Had he been, like Pulaski or Steuben or Columbus, the native son
of a land that was later to furnish sizable immigrations, he quite prob-
ably would have achieved belated recognition as a folk hero. But tiny
Switzerland has provided few immigrants to the United States.

Gallatin's reputation has also been handicapped by his exemplary char-
acter. Never, David Saville Muzzey has observed, did he make a parade
of his patriotism, which was sincere and abiding; he made no cheap bid
by act or word for popularity, but appealed to man's reason and intellect;
never was he deflected from his conscientious course by the attractions of
wealth, power, and fame. If his character had been scarred by a tragic
flaw, if he had engaged in a few peccadilloes, legends might have clus-
tered about his name and he might have become the subject of dramas
and stories, like Alexander Hamilton or Aaron Burr.

The vicissitudes of modern politics have likewise helped to trick him
out of the fame that is his due. Democratic party orators might point
with pride to so estimable a party founder if for the past quarter of a
century they had not preferred to avoid reference to the one administra-
tive practice of Gallatin that school textbooks always mention--his in-
sistence on governmental economy and adherence to a balanced budget.

Throughout his lifetime Gallatin was the friend and inspiration of
men of letters, philosophers, scientists, and scholars. But he left no neat
corpus of writing that would make his contributions readily available to
latter-day historians of ideas. The consequence is that lesser intellectuals
have been more celebrated in our time than he.

Certainly a major factor in Gallatin's relative obscurity today is the
manner in which his papers were collected and made available to pos-
terity. Gallatin had a strong sense of history and carefully collected some
twenty thousand personal and family papers and documents, some of
which dated from the thirteenth century. In 1877, a quarter of a century
after his death, his descendants engaged a former Harvard teacher who

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