The history of New York University begins in the early 19th century. A group of prominent New York City residents from the city's landed class of merchants, bankers, and traders established NYU on April 18, 1831. These New Yorkers believed the city needed a university designed for young men who would be admitted based on merit, not birthright or social class. Albert Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury under Thomas Jefferson, described his motivation in a letter to a friend: "It appeared to me impossible to preserve our democratic institutions and the right of universal suffrage unless we could raise the standard of general education and the mind of the laboring classes nearer to a level with those born under more favorable circumstances." To the school's founders, the classical curriculum