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History of the Treasury
Secretaries of the Treasury
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Samuel Dexter (1801)
Educated at Harvard and trained as a lawyer, Samuel Dexter
(1761-1816) resigned his seat as Massachusetts Senator in June 1800 to accept
the position of Secretary of War in the cabinet of President John Adams.
Upon Secretary of the Treasury Oliver Wolcott's
resignation in December 1800, Adams appointed Dexter an interim Secretary to serve until the inauguration of Thomas Jefferson as President. Dexter
served less than a year in Adams's cabinet and has no great acts associated
with his name. It has been said that "his temperament and intellectual endowment
ill suited him for that minute diligence and attention to intricate details
which the departments of War and Finance imposed on the incumbents of office.''
Shortly before the termination of Adams's administration,
the President offered Dexter a foreign embassy, but Dexter declined, remaining
at the Treasury Department until Jefferson became President.
About the Artist
Born in Manitoc, Wisconsin in 1861, Charles Harold
L. Macdonald traveled as a young man to Paris to study painting with Gustave
Boulanger and Jules Lefebre. He moved to Washington, D.C. in 1890 and
began a portrait business, filling many commissions for the federal government.
In addition to painting Samuel Dexter, Macdonald painted the Treasury
collection portraits of secretaries Windham, Gresham, Gage, and Cortelyou.
His portrait of Dexter, painted in 1893, is a copy of an early nineteenth
century portrait from life by Gilbert Stuart.
Office of the Curator
All rights reserved. 2001
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