Page:EB1911 - Volume 11.djvu/434

 In June 1823 he returned to the United States, where he found himself plunged at once into the bitter struggle then in progress for the presidency. His favourite candidate was his personal friend William H. Crawford, whom he regarded as the true heir and representative of the old Jeffersonian principles. With these feelings he consented in May 1824 to stand for the vice-presidency on the Crawford ticket. But Gallatin had come home to new scenes and new actors, and he did not fully appreciate the situation. The contest was bitter, personal, factious and full of intrigue. Martin Van Buren, then in the Crawford interest, came to the conclusion that the candidate for the second place, by his foreign origin, weakened the ticket, and in October Gallatin retired from the contest. The election, undecided by the popular vote, was thrown into the house, and resulted in the choice of John Quincy Adams, who in 1826 drew Gallatin from his retirement and sent him as minister to England to conduct another complicated and arduous negotiation. Gallatin worked at his new task with his usual industry, tact and patience, but the results were meagre, although an open breach on the delicate question of the north-east boundary of the United States was avoided by referring it to the arbitration of the king of the Netherlands. In November 1827 he once more returned to the United States and bade farewell to public life.

Taking up his residence in New York, he was in 1832–1839 president of the National Bank (afterwards the Gallatin Bank) of New York, but his duties were light, and he devoted himself chiefly to the congenial pursuits of science and literature. In both fields he displayed much talent, and by writing his Synopsis of the Indian Tribes within the United States East of the Rocky Mountains and in the British and Russian Possessions in North America (1836), and by founding the American Ethnological Society of New York in 1842, he earned the title of “Father of American Ethnology.” He continued, of course, to interest himself in public affairs, although no longer an active participant, and in all financial questions, especially in regard to the bank charter, the resumption of specie payments, and the panic of 1837, he exerted a powerful influence. The rise of the slavery question touched him nearly. Gallatin had always been a consistent opponent of slavery; he felt keenly, therefore, the attempts of the South to extend the slave power and confirm its existence, and the remnant of his strength was devoted in his last days to writing and distributing two able pamphlets against the war with Mexico. Almost his last public act was a speech, on the 24th of April 1844, in New York City, against the annexation of Texas; and in his eighty-fourth year he confronted a howling New York mob with the same cool, unflinching courage which he had displayed half a century before when he faced the armed frontiersmen of Redstone Old Fort. During the winter of 1848–1849 his health failed, and on the 12th of August 1849, at the home of his daughter in Astoria, Long Island, he passed peacefully away.

Gallatin was twice married. His second wife, whom he married in November 1793, was Miss Hannah Nicholson, of New York, the daughter of Com. James Nicholson (1737–1804), an American naval officer, commander-in-chief of the navy from 1777 until August 1781, when with his ship the “Virginia,” he was taken by the British “Iris” and “General Monk.” By her he had three children, two sons and a daughter, who all survived him. In personal appearance he was above middle height, with strongly-marked features, indicating great strength of intellect and character. He was reserved and very reticent, cold in manner and not sympathetic. There was, too, a certain Calvinistic austerity about him. But he was much beloved by his family. He was never a popular man, nor did he ever have a strong personal following or many attached friends. He stood, with Jefferson and Madison, at the head of his party, and won his place by force of character, courage, application and intellectual power. His eminent and manifold services to his adopted country, his great abilities and upright character, assure him a high position in the history of the United States.

GALLAUDET, THOMAS HOPKINS (1787–1851), American educator of the deaf and dumb, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, of French Huguenot ancestry, on the 10th of December 1787. He graduated at Yale in 1805, where he was a tutor from 1808 to 1810. Subsequently he studied theology at Andover, and was licensed to preach in 1814, but having determined to abandon the ministry and devote his life to the education of deaf mutes, he visited Europe in 1815–1816, and studied the methods of the abbé Sicard in Paris, and of Thomas Braidwood (1715–1806) and his successor Joseph Watson (1765–1829) in Great Britain. Returning to the United States in 1816, he established at Hartford, Connecticut, with the aid of Laurent Clerc (1785–1869), a deaf mute assistant of the abbé Sicard, a school for deaf mutes, in support of which Congress, largely through the influence of Henry Clay, made a land grant, and which Gallaudet presided over with great success until ill-health compelled him to retire in 1830. It was the first institution of the sort in the United States, and served as a model for institutions which were subsequently established. He died at Hartford, Connecticut, on the 5th of September 1851.

His son, (1822–1902), after graduating at Trinity College in 1842, entered the Protestant Episcopal ministry, settled in New York City, and there in 1852 organized St Anne’s Episcopal church, where he conducted services for deaf mutes. In 1872 he organized and became general manager of the Church mission to deaf mutes, and in 1885 founded the Gallaudet home for deaf mutes, particularly the aged, at Wappingers Falls, near Poughkeepsie, New York.

Another son, (b. 1837), was born at Hartford, Connecticut, on the 3rd of February 1837, and graduated at Trinity College in 1856. After teaching for a year in the institution for deaf mutes founded by his father at Hartford, he removed with his mother, Sophia Fowler Gallaudet (1798–1877), to Washington, D.C., where at the request of Amos Kendall (1789–1869), its founder, he organized and took charge of the Columbia Institution for the deaf and dumb, which received support from the government, and of which he became president. This institution was the first to furnish actual collegiate education for deaf mutes (in 1864 it acquired the right to grant degrees), and was successful from the start. The Gallaudet College (founded in 1864 as the National Deaf Mute College and renamed in 1893 in honour of Thomas H. Gallaudet) and the Kendall School are separate departments of this institution, under independent faculties (each headed by Gallaudet), but under the management of one board of directors.

GALLE, or, a town and port of Ceylon on the south-west coast. It was made a municipality in 1865, and divided into the five districts of the Fort, Callowelle, Galopiadde, Hirimbure and Cumbalwalla. The fort, which is more than a mile in circumference, overlooks the whole harbour, but is commanded by a range of hills. Within its enclosure are not only several government buildings, but an old church erected by the Dutch East India Company, a mosque, a Wesleyan chapel, a hospital, and a considerable number of houses occupied by Europeans. The old Dutch building known as the queen’s house, or governor’s residence, which dated from 1687, was in such a dilapidated state that it was sold by the governor, Sir William Gregory, in 1873. Elsewhere there are few buildings of individual note, but the general style of domestic architecture is pleasant and comfortable, though not pretentious. One of the most delightful features of the place is the profusion of trees, even within the town, and along the edge of the shore—suriyas, palms, coco-nut trees and bread-fruit trees. The ramparts towards the sea furnish fine promenades. In the harbour deep water is found close to the shore, and the outer roads are spacious; but the south-west