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History of the Treasury
Secretaries of the Treasury
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Richard Rush
(1825 - 1829)
Richard Rush (1780-1859) held several public offices
in the administrations of presidents Madison and Monroe, including Comptroller
at the Treasury Department, before being appointed Secretary of the Treasury
by President  John Quincy Adams in 1825. The Second Bank
of the United States, chartered in 1816, still faced widespread opposition
when Rush became Secretary. Rush defended the Bank and stated that in addition
to being a secure depository for government funds, it afforded the necessary
facilities for transferring the public moneys from place to place.
Concerning trade, Rush was a protectionist. He advocated
restrictive tariffs that would serve to increase the productivity of American
manufacturers. He initiated improvements in the collection and publishing
of commercial statistics in order to study the relation of tariff duties
to trade. Rush resigned in 1829 at the conclusion of Adams's presidency.
About the Artist
Cornelia Adele Fassett was born in Owasco, New York
in 1831, moving later to New York City to study watercolor painting with
J.B. Wandesforde, an English artist. She then spent three years in Paris
and Rome studying under Giusseppe Castiglione, Henri Fantin La Tour, and
Lambert Joseph Matthew. In 1875 she moved to Washington, D.C. where her
husband, Samuel Montague Fassett, had accepted the position of photographer
to the Supervising Architect of the Treasury. Perhaps her most famous
painting is The Electoral Commission of 1877 which features more than
two hundred portraits of Washington political figures and hangs in the
U.S. Capitol. Fassett's portrait of Richard Rush, painted in 1880, is
a copy of a Chester Harding painting executed from life sometime around
1825. The document in the painting is a commercial treaty with England
negotiated in 1818 by Rush, then minister to England, and Albert Gallatin,
at that time Minister to France.
Office of the Curator
All rights reserved. 2001
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