At Law & Liberty, Robert M.S. McDonald (U.S. Military Academy — History) reviews Gregory May's Jefferson’s Treasure: How Albert Gallatin Saved the New Nation from Debt (Regnery 2018). From the introduction:
Those who have never heard his name can be forgiven. Gallatin has long been eclipsed by Alexander Hamilton, his swashbuckling predecessor as Secretary of the Treasury, who in the 1790s made the national government’s assumption of the states’ Revolutionary War debts the basis of the Federalists’ controversial financial program. After Hamilton took on this debt, it was Gallatin who put plans in motion to pay it off.
Gallatin served as Treasury secretary under both Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. He’d be notable solely for his unsurpassed longevity in that office. Yet even more significant is that, between Jefferson’s inauguration in 1801 and 1812, the year of Madison’s reelection, the national debt fell from $83 million to $45 million—little more than half of where it stood when Gallatin took charge of America’s finances.
The War of 1812 pushed the debt back up, but afterwards paying it down returned as the nation’s budgetary priority. Gallatin’s basic policy remained in place until, under President Andrew Jackson, the national debt reached zero.
With Gregory May’s Jefferson’s Treasure: How Albert Gallatin Saved the New Nation from Debt, Gallatin has a biography worthy of his accomplishments. May’s account exemplifies Gallatin’s energy, good humor, precision, and importance. While not the first modern treatment of the fourth Treasury secretary’s contributions, it is the fullest, most exhaustively researched, and best at balancing his public and personal lives with the times he helped shape.
And here is the book description from Amazon:
George Washington had Alexander Hamilton. Thomas Jefferson had Albert Gallatin.
From internationally known tax expert and former Supreme Court law clerk Gregory May comes this long overdue biography of the remarkable immigrant who launched the fiscal policies that shaped the early Republic and the future of American politics. Not Alexander Hamilton—Albert Gallatin. To this day, the fight over fiscal policy lies at the center of American politics. Jefferson's champion in that fight was Albert Gallatin—a Swiss immigrant who served as Treasury Secretary for twelve years because he was the only man in Jefferson's party who understood finance well enough to reform Alexander Hamilton's system. A look at Gallatin's work—repealing internal taxes, restraining government spending, and repaying public debt—puts our current federal fiscal problems in perspective. The Jefferson Administration's enduring achievement was to contain the federal government by restraining its fiscal power. This was Gallatin's work. It set the pattern for federal finance until the Civil War, and it created a culture of fiscal responsibility that survived well into the twentieth century.
Posted at 6:11 AM