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Updated: June 16, 2025
Long before the War of 1812, Jefferson, Gallatin, Clay, and other statesmen had conceived of a great highway, or series of highways, connecting the seaboard with the interior as the surest and best means of promoting national unity and strength; and, in the act of Congress of 1802 admitting the State of Ohio, a promising beginning had been made by setting aside five per cent of the money received from the sale of public lands in the State for the building of roads extending eastward to the navigable waters of Atlantic streams.
But the names they gave have passed into as deep oblivion as the forgotten great man, Rush, whose pills they publish to the world as a sovereign specific in bilious fevers. Of all the names on their map only those of the three forks of the Missouri, from President Jefferson and his Secretaries Madison and Gallatin, remain.
A bill to recharter the national bank, which Gallatin regarded as an indispensable fiscal agent, was defeated; and a bill providing for a general increase of duties on imports to meet the deficit was laid aside. Congress would authorize a loan of five million dollars but no new taxes.
We drank tea with Mr. and Mrs. Gallatin by invitation. Nobody asked us to eat. The markets are bad, I hear. We live very well, however, and, if you have not engaged lodgings, I advise to apply here also. To-morrow takes us to Dumfries, and the next day beyond Fredericksburgh. Le pere is at Bowling Green. I bear travelling remarkably well.
Gallatin, who was then in London, had informed the President that the fleet was to be reinforced for that very purpose; but neither he nor Congress took any effective measures to meet a danger so imminent.
Its leaders, with the exception of Gallatin, were cheap and talkative persons of little worth, and the cause itself was neither noble, romantic, nor inspiriting. Nevertheless, it was a dangerous and formidable business, for it was the first direct challenge to the new government.
It was midsummer when the Neptune dropped anchor in the harbor of Kronstadt. There Gallatin and Bayard were joined by John Quincy Adams, Minister to Russia, who had been appointed the third member of the commission. Here was a pureblooded American by all the accepted canons.
The drive through the forest right there is usually delightful, and although we knew that the water was high in the Gallatin by Fort Ellis, we were wholly unprepared for the scene that confronted us when we reached the valley. Not one inch of ground could be seen nothing but the trees surrounded; by yellow, muddy water that showed quite a current.
Adams was a doctor of laws who was expected perhaps to assist negotiations by his legal lore. Gallatin described them not unfairly as "men who have not made any mark, puppets of Lords Castlereagh and Liverpool."
The Honorable SECRETARY OF STATE: His Excellency the Viscount de Chateaubriand, in announcing to me that Mr. Gallatin was about to leave France, expresses his regret at his departure in such terms that I should do him injustice were I not to use his own expressions.
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