From Thomas Jefferson to Albert Gallatin, 1 May 1802
To Albert Gallatin
Washington May 1. 1802
Dear Sir
Decide according to your own & mrs Gallatin’s inclinations on the time and extent of your absence from hence. I sincerely sympathize with you on the circumstances which produce the necessity. I leave this myself on Thursday, and shall stay at home one fortnight. mr Madison goes about the 11th. as I learn and will return a little after me. I wish to write finally to mr Page on the subject of the Petersburg collection. can you now say to what it has been reduced, so that I may inform him? have you thought of an Additional auditor, & does not the law give us a fortunate occasion of enlisting Clay in our service? I must have a conference with you on the subject of defending ourselves regularly in the newspapers, on the case of Steele of Missisipi &c but I shall probably be at the Capitol a good part of to-day, if not to-night, if that will facilitate the rising of Congress to-day. accept assurances of my cordial esteem & respect
Th: Jefferson
RC (NHi: Gallatin Papers); addressed: “The Secretary of the Treasury”; endorsed by Gallatin on address sheet: “oath of allegiance.” PrC (DLC); endorsed by TJ in ink on verso.
SYMPATHIZE WITH YOU: all of the Gallatin children had been “sick with the measles & hooping cough.” Catherine Gallatin, born the previous August, died on 24 Apr. ( , 7:75; Vol. 35:170n). TJ wrote John Page about the collectorship on 7 May.
In March 1802, Gallatin proposed to eliminate the offices of the accountants in the war and navy departments and replace them with a second AUDITOR of the Treasury. A bill was introduced in the House of Representatives on 2 Apr. 1802 to carry out the Treasury secretary’s recommendations, but on 30 Apr. further action on the measure was postponed until the next session of Congress. A second auditor in the Treasury Department was not appointed until 1817. In August 1801, Gallatin and TJ had considered possible positions for Joseph clay, a Philadelphia Republican who served as a clerk at the Bank of North America ( , 106–7; , 4:229; Charles Lanman, Biographical Annals of the Civil Government of the United States, During its First Century [Washington, D.C., 1876], 509; Vol. 35:23, 100–1, 102n, 107, 118, 125). For Gallatin’s evaluation of Clay for a Treasury position, see Gallatin to TJ, 19 Oct. 1802.