Albert Gallatin. John Austin Stevens
brought him into close relations with the secretary, and the foundation was laid of a lasting political friendship and social intimacy. In the recess of the legislature, Mr. Gallatin joined Mr. Dallas and his wife in an excursion to the northward. Mr. Gallatin's health had suffered from close confinement and too strict attention to business, and he needed recreation and diversion. In the course of the journey the party was joined by some ladies, friends of Mrs. Dallas, among whom was Miss Hannah Nicholson. The excursion lasted nearly four weeks. The result was that Mr. Gallatin returned to Philadelphia the accepted suitor of this young lady. He describes her in a letter to Badollet as “a girl about twenty-five years old, who is neither handsome nor rich, but sensible, well-informed, good-natured, and belonging to a respectable and very amiable family.” Nor was he mistaken in his choice—a more charming nature, a more perfect, well-rounded character than hers is rarely found. They were married on November 11, 1793. She was his faithful companion throughout his long and honorable career, and death separated them but by a few months. This alliance greatly widened his political connection.
Commodore James Nicholson, his wife's father, famous in the naval annals of the United States as the captain of the Trumbull, the first of American frigates, at the time resided in New York, and was one of the acknowledged leaders of the Republican party in the city. His two brothers—Samuel and John—were captains in the naval service. His two elder daughters were married to influential gentlemen;—Catharine to Colonel Few, senator from Georgia; Frances, to Joshua Seney, member of Congress from Maryland; Maria later (1809) married John Montgomery, who had been member of Congress from Maryland, and was afterwards mayor of Baltimore. A son, James Witter Nicholson, then a youth of twenty-one, was, in 1795, associated with Mr. Gallatin in his Western Company, and, removing to Fayette, made his home in what was later and is now known as New Geneva. Here, in connection with Mr. Gallatin and the brothers Kramer, Germans, he established extensive glass works, which proved profitable.
Mr. Gallatin's election to the United States Senate did not disqualify him for his unfinished legislative term, and, on his return to Philadelphia, he was again plunged in his manifold duties. The few days which intervened between his marriage and the meeting of Congress—a short honeymoon—were spent under the roof of Commodore Nicholson in New York.
On February 28, 1793, the Vice-President laid before the Senate a certificate from the legislature of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to the election of Albert Gallatin as senator of the United States. Mr. Gallatin took his seat December 2, 1793. The business of the session was opened by the presentation of a petition signed by nineteen individuals of Yorktown, Pennsylvania, stating that Mr. Gallatin had not been nine years a citizen of the United States. This petition had been handed to Robert Morris, Mr. Gallatin's colleague for Pennsylvania, by a member of the legislature for the county of York, but he had declined to present it, and declared to Mr. Gallatin his intention to be perfectly neutral on the occasion—at least so Mr. Gallatin wrote to his wife the next day; but Morris did not hold fast to this resolution, as the votes in the sequel show. The petition was ordered to lie upon the table. On December 11 Messrs. Rutherford, Cabot, Ellsworth, Livermore, and Mitchell were appointed a committee to consider the petition. These gentlemen, Gallatin wrote, were undoubtedly “the worst for him that could have been chosen, and did not seem to him to be favorably disposed.” He himself considered the legal point involved as a nice and difficult one, and likely to be decided by a party vote. The fourth article of the Constitution of the first Confederation of the United States reads as follows:—
“The better to secure and perpetuate mutual friendship and intercourse among the people of the different States in this Union, the free inhabitants of each of these States, paupers, vagabonds, and fugitives from justice excepted, shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of free citizens in the several States.”
Article 1, section 3, of the new Constitution declares:—
“No person shall be a senator who shall not have attained to the age of thirty years, and been nine years a citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen.”
Mr. Gallatin landed in Massachusetts in July, 1780, while still a minor. His residence, therefore, which had been uninterrupted, extended over thirteen years. He took the oath of citizenship and allegiance to Virginia in October, 1785, since which, until his election in 1793, nine years, the period called for by the United States Constitution, had not elapsed. On the one hand, his actual residence exceeded the required period of citizenship; on the other, his legal and technical residence as a citizen was insufficient. In point of fact, his intention to become a citizen dated from the summer of 1783.
To take from the case the air of party proscription, which it was beginning to assume, the Senate discharged its special committee, and raised a general committee on elections to consider this and other cases. On February 10, 1794, the report of this committee was submitted, and a day was set for a hearing by the Senate, with open doors. On that day Mr. Gallatin exhibited a written statement of facts, agreed to between himself and the petitioners, and the case was left to the Senate on its merits. On the 28th a test vote was taken upon a motion to the effect that “Albert Gallatin, returned to this House as a member for the State of Pennsylvania, is duly qualified for and elected to a seat in the Senate of the United States,” and it was decided in the negative—yeas, 12; nays, 14.[2]
Motion being made that the election of Albert Gallatin to be a senator of the United States was void—he not having been a citizen of the United States for the term of years required as a qualification to be a senator of the United States—it was further moved to divide the question at the word “void;” and the question being then taken on the first paragraph, it passed in the affirmative—yeas, 14; nays, 12. The yeas and nays were required, and the Senate divided as before. The resolution was then put and adopted by the same vote. Thus Mr. Gallatin, thirteen years a resident of the country, a large land-holder in Virginia, and for several terms a member of the Pennsylvania legislature, was excluded from a seat in the Senate of the United States.
Mr. Gallatin conducted his case with great dignity. On being asked whether he had any testimony to produce, he replied, in writing, that there was not sufficient matter charged in the petition and proved by the testimony to vacate his seat, and declined to go to the expense of collecting evidence until that preliminary question was settled.
Short as the period was during which Mr. Gallatin held his seat, it was long enough for him seriously to annoy the Federal leaders. Indeed, it is questionable whether, if he had delayed his embarrassing motion, a majority of the Senate could have been secured against him. Certain it is that the Committee on Elections, appointed on December 11, did not send in its report until the day after Mr. Gallatin moved his resolution, calling upon the secretary of the treasury for an elaborate statement of the debt on January 1, 1794, under distinct heads, including the balances to creditor States, a statement of loans, domestic and foreign, contracted from the beginning of the government, statements of exports and imports; finally for a summary statement of the receipts and expenditures to the last day of December, 1790, distinguishing the moneys received under each branch of the revenue and the moneys expended under each of the appropriations, and stating the balances of each branch of the revenue remaining unexpended on that day, and also calling for similar and separate statements for the years 1791, 1792, 1793. This resolution, introduced on January 8, was laid over. On the 20th it was adopted. It was not until February 10 that a reply from the secretary of the treasury was received by the Senate, and on the 11th submitted to Gallatin, Ellsworth, and Taylor for consideration and report. In this letter (February 6, 1794) Hamilton stated the difficulty of supplying the precise information called for, with the clerical forces of the department, the interruption it would cause in the daily routine of the service, and deprecated the practice of such unexpected demands.
With this response of the secretary the inquiry fell to the ground, but it was neither forgotten nor forgiven by his adherents, and Mr. Gallatin paid the penalty on at least one occasion. This was years later, when he himself was secretary of the treasury. On March 2, 1803, the day before the adjournment of Congress, Mr. Griswold, Federalist from Connecticut, attacked the correctness of the accounts of the sinking fund, and demanded an answer to a