years vetoed bills of the General Assembly appropriating a small sum of money to pay for a suitable monument in his honor. The humble and fast decaying sandstone monument over his remains in an abandoned graveyard at Greensburg, erected by the Masonic Fraternity, bears this stinging inscription: "The earthly remains of Major General Arthur St. Clair are deposited beneath this humble monument, which is erected to supply the place of a nobler one due from his country." The remains of the general's wife lie beside him in a wholly neglected grave. She died on September 18, 1818, surviving her husband only nineteen days. Westmoreland county is not wholly free from blame for neglecting to do what the State and the whole country should have done.

When the citizens of Bloody Run, in Bedford county, properly thought that the name of their town should be changed they looked not to the history of Pennsylvania for a new name but to Massachusetts, and they now live in. Everett. When it seemed to be necessary to change the one-hundred-year-old name of Nineveh, in Westmoreland county, some person or persons having authority turned to New York for a name and called the little town Seward. When the Pennsylvania Railroad was built through Westmoreland county there was a modest hamlet on the line of the road called St. Clair, so named in honor of General St. Clair, whose home had been not many miles away. But the name of this town has been erased from the map and dropped from the railroad time table.

CHAPTER XXX.

ALBERT GALLATIN, STATESMAN.

ALBERT GALLATIN, who was born in Geneva, Switzerland, on January 29, 1761, and died at Astoria, Long Island, on August 12, 1849, ranks foremost among all the statesmen of Western Pennsylvania in the length and variety of his public services and in the honors that were conferred upon him. Coming to our country in 1780 he settled in 1784 on George's creek, Fayette county, where he met Washington in September of that year. In 1786 he bought a farm of 400 acres at Friendship Hill, near New Geneva, on the Monongahela, in the same county, on which he resided, when not absent on official duties, for about forty-two years, until 1828.

Soon after coming to Pennsylvania Gallatin became an active participant in the political movements of the time, identifying himself with the party of Thomas Jefferson, of which he soon became a leader. He was a delegate from Fayette county to the Constitutional Convention of 1790. This convention was composed of very able men and Gallatin took a prominent part in its deliberations. He successfully opposed the insertion of the word "white" as a prefix to "freeman" in defining the elective franchise. In 1790, 1791, and 1792 he was elected a member of the General Assembly. In 1793, when not thirty-three years old, he was elected a member of the United States Senate, in which he served from December 2, 1793, to February 28, 1794, when he was declared ineligible because he had not been a citizen of the United States for the period of nine years as was required by the Constitution. He was succeeded in the Senatorship by James Ross, of Pittsburgh, a Federalist. Gallatin actively opposed the Whisky Insurrection of 1794, although at first sympathizing with the peaceable opposition to the excise tax on whisky. In that year he was again chosen a member of the General Assembly from Fayette county. In December, 1795, he took

his seat as a member of the House of Representatives of the Fourth Congress, having been elected by a most complimentary vote in 1794 from the district of Allegheny and Washington, in which he did not reside. This was a great honor. In the House he at once took high rank. He was three times re-elected a Representative in Congress, in 1796, 1798, and 1800, from the same district as that above mentioned, Greene county having been added to Allegheny and Washington in 1796. He became the leader of his party in the House.

From 1801 to 1814 Mr. Gallatin was Secretary of the Treasury under Jefferson and Madison, holding this position, with honor to himself and credit to the country, for a longer period than any other person has held it from the foundation of the Government. While Secretary of the Treasury he was the ardent and influential friend of the National Road, from Cumberland to the West. He was, indeed, the author of the scheme for building the road. In a speech in the House on January 27, 1829, Andrew Stewart said: "Mr. Gallatin was the very first man that ever suggested the plan for making the Cumberland Road." In a letter which Gallatin himself wrote to David Acheson, of Washington, Pennsylvania, on September 1, 1808, he said that he had "with much difficulty obtained the creation of a fund for opening a great western road and the act pointing out its general direction." In 1809 President Madison offered Gallatin the portfolio of the State Department, which he declined, preferring to remain at the head of the Treasury Department.

In 1813, while still Secretary of the Treasury, Gallatin was appointed by Madison one of three commissioners to Russia, the Emperor Alexander having offered his services in promoting the restoration of peace between Great Britain and the United States. Negotiations to this end failing, Gallatin was appointed in the following year one of five commissioners to treat directly with Great Britain, and these commissioners signed the Treaty of Ghent in December, 1814. It is claimed by his biographers that his was the master hand in the preparation of the treaty. In February, 1814, Gallatin ceased to be Secretary of the

Treasury. In 1815 he was appointed United States Minister to France, and this position he held until 1823, when he returned to the United States and to Friendship Hill. In 1824 William H. Crawford, Secretary of the Treasury under Monroe, was nominated for the Presidency by many members of the Republican party of that day and Gallatin was their choice for the Vice Presidency. After some hesitation, in a letter written from his home in Fayette county, he finally declined to be a candidate. In May, 1825, Governor Shulze offered Gallatin the position of canal commissioner, which he declined. In the same month he received La Fayette in an address of welcome at Uniontown, and a day or two afterwards escorted him to Friendship Hill, where La Fayette remained over night.

In May, 1826, President Adams appointed Mr. Gallatin United States Minister to Great Britain, and this position he accepted. His special mission to Great Britain having been accomplished he returned to this country in November, 1827, although the President earnestly desired him to remain. In 1828 he removed his residence to New York City, where he continued to reside until his death. With this removal his active connection with public affairs virtually ended, although in 1828 and 1829, at the instance of President Adams, he devoted much time and his great ability to an exhaustive study of our troubles with Great Britain concerning the Northeastern boundary, and this subject he again carefully investigated in 1840, when he published "an elaborate dissertation upon it, in which he treated it historically, geographically, argumentatively, and diplomatically," his work contributing materially to the final adjustment of the controversy in the celebrated Webster and Ashburton treaty of 1842. Subsequently he published a pamphlet on the "Oregon Question" which commanded public attention.

In 1831 Gallatin was chosen president of the National Bank, of New York, and this position he retained until 1839, passing with great credit through the most trying financial crisis in our history. He was succeeded in the presidency by his son, James Gallatin. During the remainder of his life Gallatin was active in many fields of

usefulness. In 1842 he founded the American Ethnological Society. In 1843 he was chosen president of the New York Historical Society. In 1844 he presided at a mass meeting in New York to protest against the annexation of Texas as slave territory, and in 1847 he discussed the whole subject of the annexation of Texas in a pamphlet entitled "Peace with Mexico." He had always held "the pen of a ready writer." In the early years of his life, as also in the closing part of his career, he made valuable contributions to the discussion of financial and scientific questions. When he died in 1849 he was far advanced in his 89th year.

Gallatin early showed commendable enterprise in encouraging the establishment of manufacturing industries at his new home in Western Pennsylvania. In 1796 or 1797 he established at New Geneva one of the first works west of the Alleghenies, if not the first, for the manufacture of window glass. The Geneva works continued in operation for many years. In 1799 or 1800 Gallatin established at New Geneva, in company with Melchor Baker, a practical gunsmith, a factory for making muskets, broadswords, etc., which also continued in operation for several years, and which at one time employed between fifty and one hundred workmen. After these works had been in operation for about two years Gallatin withdrew from the partnership, his duties as Secretary of the Treasury not permitting him to give the enterprise further attention.

Nearly all the public services of Gallatin were rendered to his adopted country while he was a citizen of Western Pennsylvania, and these services were of an exalted character. Western Pennsylvania soon recognized his great ability, and the distinction it conferred upon him brought him the nation's recognition. The whole State of Pennsylvania may well be proud of his achievements and of his unswerving devotion to the best interests of his country. He was not always right, as in his opposition to our protective tariff policy, but even in this opposition we are told by Judge Veech that, although "his free trade proclivities were fixed, yet he did not obtrude them in his State papers." He believed in a revenue tariff.