Robert Morris

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(1734–1806), signer of the Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, and U.S. Constitution; “financier of the Revolution.”

Born in Liverpool, Morris came to America in 1747. As active partner of the trading firm of Willing, Morris & Co. of Philadelphia, Morris integrated his European and West Indian commercial network into the Revolutionary War effort in 1775.

A shrewd entrepreneur and energetic administrator, Morris became vice president of Pennsylvania's revolutionary governing body, the Council of Safety, in 1775, and organized the state's defenses. After election to the Second Continental Congress in November 1775, he became chairman of the Secret Committee of Trade and managed international procurement and naval affairs. He also participated in supply contracts and often disguised public ventures as private ones to facilitate secrecy and economy. The potential conflict of interest produced much controversy.

Morris retired from Congress in 1778, becoming an agent for supplying French forces in the United States and greatly augmenting his wealth and credit. When Congress was faced with financial and military collapse in 1781, it turned to Morris, by now the most prominent merchant in America, for help. As superintendent of finance, from February 1781 to November 1784, he raised money and supplies for the Yorktown campaign, then struggled to reestablish public credit by measures that included controlling the budget, founding the nation's first bank, settling the public debt, advocating a funding plan and mint, administering foreign loans, and replacing staff departments with military contracts. His administrative and financial skills are considered to have been indispensable to military success in the Revolutionary War.

[See also Revolutionary War: Domestic Course.]

Bibliography

• Clarence L. Ver Steeg, Robert Morris, Revolutionary Financier, 1954; repr. 1972.
• E. James Ferguson, et al., eds., The Papers of Robert Morris, 1781–1784, 9 vols., 1973–99

An American merchant, financial expert, land speculator, and banker, Robert Morris (1734-1806) performed a valuable service for the new republic as superintendent of finance for the Continental Congress.

Robert Morris was born on Jan. 31, 1734, in Liverpool, England. At the age of 13 he was taken to America by his father, a tobacco agent who settled in Maryland. Several years later Morris was sent to Philadelphia as an apprentice to the merchant Charles Willing. Morris proved adept, and eventually he became a full partner in Willing and Morris, a firm with important connections abroad. With Thomas Willing, Morris invested in ships and land on a large scale and conducted far-flung operations that began to yield high profits. His magnificent Philadelphia town house was a social center run by his wife, Mary White, whom he had married in 1769.

Entry into Politics

Essentially a political conservative, Morris crept toward an open break with England while more headstrong Americans were running. On the Pennsylvania delegation to the Continental Congress, Morris opposed independence but later signed the Declaration of Independence. He served in Congress from 1775 to 1778 and sat intermittently in the Pennsylvania Assembly from 1775 to 1781. His capacity for work, attention to detail, and commitment to the American cause were impressive.

At the same time, Morris used his political power for personal gain. As chairman of the secret congressional Committee of Trade, he diverted large sums for his own firm's use, and at least $80,000 was never accounted for. His agents transported private cargoes in naval vessels and traded on their own account for profits while their zeal for public business often lagged.

Morris's attitude in these ventures was explained in a letter to one partner, Silas Deane: "I shall continue to discharge my duty faithfully to the Public and pursue my Private Fortune by all such honorable and fair means as the time will admit of." Public criticism of these activities led to a congressional investigation in 1779. Morris's integrity was upheld by the committee's report.

Morris therefore suffered little inconvenience from the war. His abilities so impressed other congressmen that in May 1781 they despairingly dumped the chaotic and penniless Treasury Office in Morris's lap. His firmness and bold measures as superintendent of finance restored confidence, and aided mainly by foreign loans and the American victory at Yorktown, Va., Morris was able to effect much-needed reforms in the tottering bureaucratic structure. His improved system encompassed naval supplies, public credit, military contracts, and army garrisons. Morris founded the Bank of North America, partly with public money, and issued bank notes to maintain cash payments on government business.

Unquestionably, Morris managed public finances superbly and under the most trying conditions. When he left office in 1784, the Treasury had $20,000. Morris was convinced that the new nation could survive only with a centralized financial system. He urged the sound-money faction to press for a Federal revenue program and a consolidated national debt that would undergird the total economy. Assumption of the wartime debt by the national government was a key part of his program.

Return to Business

Morris returned to the business world, signed a tobacco-supply contract with the French monopoly, ventured into the growing China trade, and began reckless purchases of land. He was elected a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, where he apparently never entered the debates but probably spoke out in private sessions. He must have supported plans to build a strong navy and create a powerful central government. After ratification of the Constitution, Morris was elected a senator from Pennsylvania. He worked with Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton on details of the first revenue act and the bill for assumption of state debts.

Morris retired from the Senate in 1795, but his enemies sniped away at his failure to settle wartime accounts with the government. In 1796 Morris gave bonds for $93,312 to clear his ledger of these debts. At that time he was widely regarded as the richest American alive. Behind the facade of immense land holdings, however, there was a dwindling supply of cash.

Imprudently, Morris joined with James Greenleaf and John Nicholson in grandiose schemes for developing the newly designated capital at Washington, buying over 7,000 lots. They also acquired millions of acres beyond the Ohio River, in western New York, and in several southern states. With his partners, Morris combined all his holdings so that more than 6 million acres of land seemed sufficient collateral for all his ventures. But rumors of his impending ruin grew, and after a London bank failure Morris was drained of £124,000. He was never able to recover his financial equilibrium. A joint-stock company scheme failed; Morris was land-rich but headed for bankruptcy. Hounded by bill collectors and process servers, he retreated to a country home.

In February 1798 Morris was taken to a Philadelphia debtors' prison and jailed until a reform bankruptcy act permitted his release in August 1801. Court records showed that he owed $3 million. A thoroughly humbled man, Morris lived thereafter on the charity of friends and died on May 8, 1806.

Further Reading

A project to gather and publish Morris's papers is under way, guided by E. James Ferguson. The standard biographies are William Graham Sumner, The Financier and the Finances of the American Revolution (1891), and Ellis P. Oberholtzer, Robert Morris, Patriot and Financier (1903). Clarence L. Ver Steeg, Robert Morris (1954), and E. James Ferguson, The Power of the Purse: A History of American Public Finance, 1776-1790 (1961), are analytical works of unusual merit. The sketch of Morris in Howard Swiggett, The Forgotten Leaders of the Revolution (1955), challenges some past assumptions.

Additional Sources

Chernow, Barbara Ann, Robert Morris, land speculator, 1790-1801, New York: Arno Press, 1978, 1974.

Wagner, Frederick, Robert Morris, audacious patriot, New York: Dodd, Mead, c 1976.

(1734-1806), merchant, member of the Continental Congress, and superintendent of finance. Brought to America in 1747 from his birthplace in Liverpool, England, Morris was orphaned by age sixteen. But his father, a tobacco agent, left him enough money to provide him with a substantial stake. Following an apprenticeship with the firm of Charles Willing, a Philadelphia merchant, Morris formed a partnership with Thomas Willing, his son, in 1754. The firm prospered, and both men became prominent members of the Philadelphia commercial community.

Although Morris supported American protests against British policies toward the colonies, his active political career began only with his election to the Continental Congress in 1775. Like other moderates from the Middle Colonies, Morris resisted the movement toward independence until he became convinced that the British government was committed to a policy of suppression. Whatever his doubts about the wisdom and costs of independence, Morris threw himself into organizing resistance to Britain and especially securing munitions and other vital supplies from overseas sources. A man whose stout girth mirrored his commercial ambitions, Morris used his far-flung connections for both public good and private profit--something that loose eighteenth-century notions of conflict of interest allowed. Although he regarded much of the business of Congress as "damn'd trash," even his detractors appreciated his efficiency and administrative skills.

Morris left Congress in November 1778 to concentrate on his private business. He returned to national politics in the spring of 1781 as the superintendent of finance, a position Congress had created in response to the near bankruptcy of the Treasury. In this capacity, Morris played a crucial role in sustaining the war effort in the climactic months leading to the decisive victory at Yorktown in October 1781. Simultaneously he began to develop an ambitious program to place the credit of the national government on a secure and durable foundation. In 1782 Morris recommended that Congress seek amendments to the Articles of Confederation that would allow it to collect customs duties and land and poll taxes. His heavy-handed efforts to manipulate public creditors and the army to support his program backfired, however, and Congress instead adopted a compromise revenue plan that fell well short of what Morris sought. Morris resigned his office in 1784, and Congress abolished the post. His many critics continued to regard him as overreaching and unscrupulous. Nevertheless, his financial program substantially anticipated many of the policies that Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton would pursue a decade later.

In 1787 Morris served as a member of the Pennsylvania delegation to the Federal Convention, but true to character, he did not participate actively in the debates. As a senator in the First Congress (1789-1791), he devoted his energies to efforts to make Philadelphia the national capital.

Morris remained in the Senate until 1795, but he increasingly engaged in massive land speculations in western New York, Pennsylvania, the projected District of Columbia, and elsewhere. These turned out disastrously, and by the mid-1790s he was near financial ruin. Confined to debtors' prison in 1798, he was released in 1801, and his former assistant, Gouverneur Morris (no relation), supported him until his death.

Bibliography:

Clarence L. Ver Steeg, Robert Morris: Revolutionary Financier (1954).

Author:

Jack N. Rakove

See also Continental Congresses; Revolution.

Morris, Robert, 1734-1806, American merchant, known as the "financier of the American Revolution," and signer of the Declaration of Independence, b. Liverpool, England. Morris emigrated to America in 1747 and was soon apprenticed to the merchant Charles Willing in Philadelphia. He showed an unusual aptitude for business and by 1754 became a partner in the firm with the son, Thomas Willing, after the elder Willing's death. He opposed British restrictions prior to the Revolution and served (1775-78) as a member of the Continental Congress. Morris voted against the original motion for independence in July, 1776, as premature, but signed the declaration in August. A member of various committees in Congress, Morris was particularly important in obtaining munitions and other supplies and in borrowing money to finance George Washington's army. Although Morris's vast mercantile interests profited greatly from his congressional activities, both he and his firm were acquitted by Congress of charges of fraud. After leaving Congress, Morris expanded his mercantile and investment operations independently of Willing and by 1781 was almost universally acknowledged as the most prominent merchant in America. The collapse of public credit led to his being appointed superintendent of finance (1781-84) by Congress. Morris labored hard and well in this office; he pressed the states for contributions, retrenched expenditures, took steps toward the establishment of a national mint, guided the organization of a national bank, and extensively used his personal credit to raise funds for the government. He framed, but failed to get Congress to approve, a fiscal program including funding at par of the national debt and the assumption of state debts; it paralleled Alexander Hamilton's program of 1790. Morris was later a member of the U.S. Constitutional Convention (1787) and served (1789-95) as U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania. His private business, continued in his terms of office, ultimately ended in bankruptcy as a result of the collapse of extensive land speculation. Morris was in debtors' prison from 1798 to 1801 and never recovered his fortune.

Bibliography

See biographies by E. P. Oberholtzer (1903, repr. 1968) and C. Rappleye (2010); W. G. Sumner, The Financier and the Finances of the American Revolution (1891, repr. 1968); C. L. Ver Steeg, Robert Morris, Revolutionary Financier (1954, repr. 1972).