Morris, Robert (1734-1806)

American Eras

Robert Morris (1734-1806)

Merchant, financier, and statesman

Sources

Early Career. Robert Morris was born in Liverpool, England. His father, also called Robert, was engaged in exporting tobacco, and at the age of thirteen young Robert left England to join his father in Maryland. After a brief period in a Philadelphia school the boy started work for the Willings, a firm of substantial shipping merchants. At the age of fifteen Morris inherited a modest estate when his father was accidentally killed. Four years later the young man entered into partnership with his former employer’s son, Thomas. Morris kept an interest in the firm of Willing and Morris for thirty-nine years and was an active director for much of that time. In 1769 he married Mary White of Maryland, a sister of William White, who became bishop in the American Episcopal Church. They had five sons and two daughters.

Revolutionary Career. Robert Morris served the Revolution in many financial, administrative, and political capacities. After the Stamp Act of 1765 he participated in Philadelphia’s nonimportation agreement even though his firm did substantial business with British traders. He joined a committee of citizens that forced the city’s stamp tax collector to cease performing his duties. Morris was not fully committed to the patriot cause when the First Continental Congress met in 1774 but became fully so after the Battle of Lexington in April 1775. From 1775 to 1778 Morris was a delegate to the Continental Congress, where he served on several important committees including the Committee of Secret Correspondence (later called the Foreign Affairs Committee and then the Committee of Commerce). He was also in charge of procuring munitions and frequently acted as a banker of Congress, both of which he accomplished to his advantage primarily through his firm, Willing and Morris. Although his mercantile activities were widely known, many members of Congress admired his financial and administrative abilities and overlooked the conflict of interest. “He has vast designs in the mercantile way,” John Adams wrote of him, “And no doubt pursues mercantile ends, which are always gain; but he is an excellent Member of our Body.” In 1776 Morris initially voted against the Declaration of Independence because he still hoped for a reconciliation with Great Britain, but he signed it a month later. When Congress fled Philadelphia for Baltimore in December of that year, Morris stayed behind to carry on his committee work. Despite grave difficulties, he managed to buy supplies for the army and sent funds borrowed in his own name to George Washington. Morris retired from Congress in 1778 but remained active in the Pennsylvania assembly. His frequent mixing of private gain and public duty angered some of his congressional colleagues and members of the public. In January 1779 Thomas Paine publicly criticized him, and later that year Henry Laurens, the former president of the Congress, charged Willing and Morris with conducting fraudulent transactions. A congressional committee investigated Morris and cleared him of all charges. In May 1779 a mass meeting in Philadelphia appointed a committee to investigate his conduct; again he was cleared of all charges. Although he lost some of his former popularity, Morris was reelected to the Pennsylvania assembly in November 1780 and served until June 1781.

Financier of Congress. With the collapse of the currency, military defeats in the South, and Congress’s inability to raise adequate supplies for the army, many delegates began to feel that the Articles of Confederation (adopted in 1777) were inadequate. Something had to be done to make Congress more effective. In September 1780 Alexander Hamilton suggested that all of the committees charged with handling the country’s finances be consolidated and that Morris be appointed the superintendent of finance. Congress reorganized its committees in early 1781 and appointed Morris to the new and uniquely powerful position. Before agreeing to fill the post, Morris stipulated that Congress recognize his right to continue operating as a private trader and to have primary control over his personnel. Congress hesitated but eventually approved Morris’s request. Once in office, Morris used his considerable commercial reputation to save that of the bankrupt Congress. In January 1782 he declared that his “personal Credit, which thank Heaven I have preserved throughout all the tempests of the War, has been substituted for that which the Country lost ... if I can regain for the United States the Confidence of Individuals so as that they will trust their property and exertions in the hands of Government, our Independence and Success are certain but without that Confidence we are nothing.”

Reforms. Morris attempted both short-term fixes and longer-term reforms. He imposed thrift on the executive departments by abolishing the system of commissaries and buying supplies for the army himself. In order to keep the government running he issued $1.4 million of “Morris notes” backed by his own credit and borrowed substantial amounts from his business acquaintances. He took great financial risks in order to fund the Yorktown campaign that ended in Gen. Charles Cornwallis’s defeat. Just as important, Morris set about reorganizing the country’s finances by proposing a series of permanent reforms. He sought to fund the country’s outstanding debt by issuing bonds to investors. Morris proposed levying taxes on the states to be paid in specie that would in turn be used to pay interest on the debt. He also tried to have the articles amended so that the Confederation could levy a 5-percent duty on imports. Thanks to a loan from France, Morris was able to accomplish one of his goals, the formation of the Bank of North America, which began operations in January 1782. Morris reasoned that once Congress’s finances were on a secure footing, it would have less trouble borrowing money and would attract investors to its bonds. But except for the bank Morris’s ambitious program for strengthening the national government failed. Despite his efforts to convince them, the states did not contribute their share and would not agree to his funding plan for Congress. In 1783 Morris was still unable to pay off Congress’s debts. Discouraged, he offered his resignation, but Congress ordered it to be kept secret until January 1784. Although Morris assured the public that he would be personally responsible for all liabilities assumed during his administration, he was severely criticized in the press for resigning. Morris stayed on because no one else could fill his role. A loan from the Netherlands negotiated by Adams carried the government through until Morris finally left in November 1784.

Political Legacy. Morris had a talent for serving both his country and himself and was frequently criticized for mixing his public duties with private interests. Nevertheless Morris succeeded in leaving a distinctive mark on the American political system. He and Roger Sherman of Connecticut were the only men to sign all three revolutionary documents: the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution. Along with the first two secretaries of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton and Albert Gallatin, Morris helped to lay the financial and political foundations of the United States. Throughout his administration he tried to strengthen the powers of the national government and to tie the interests of business people more closely to it. Unlike men such as Thomas Jefferson, Morris did not subscribe to the prevailing republican belief that there was an inherent conflict between public and private interest and between business and government. Instead he sought to tie these interests together through deal making and by appealing to people’s monetary self-interest. Although Morris’s nationalizing program failed to accomplish the constitutional reform he wanted, his policies helped to galvanize a coalition of leaders who agreed with his political and commercial vision. In 1786 Morris was a delegate to the Annapolis convention that met to discuss interstate trade regulations. The following year he sat in the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Morris was offered but declined the position of secretary of the treasury. Instead he recommended Alexander Hamilton, who shared and successfully implemented many of Morris’s political ideas. Morris was elected one of Pennsylvania’s first two senators, and he served in the new Congress from 1789 to 1795. During that time he supported most of Hamilton’s financial programs. In 1790 Morris helped to broker the political deal wherein Virginia voted for the federal resumption of state debts in exchange for locating the permanent national capital on the Potomac River, the site of present-day Washington, D.C.

Later Mercantile Career. On his retirement from the Continental Congress in 1784, Morris continued to take large business risks. He engaged in trade with the East Indies and China, sending the first American ship to the port of Canton. Morris also continued to expand the French and Dutch ties he had established during the war. In 1785 he negotiated a contract with the French Farmers-General that gave him the monopoly of the American tobacco trade with France. The move aroused considerable antagonism among Virginia tobacco traders, and Morris suffered large financial losses when the Marquis de Lafayette and Jefferson, the minister to France, intervened to nullify the contract. Morris also speculated on great tracts of land in western New York and elsewhere, including (with a partner) a large portion of present-day Washington, D.C. He was building a mansion designed by Pierre L’Enfant, the architect of the new capital, when the market collapsed. Morris could not meet interest payments and taxes, and in February 1798 a small creditor had him arrested. He was incarcerated in Prune Street, Philadelphia’s debtors prison, for three-and-one-half years. In 1801 he was released following the passage of a federal bankruptcy law. For the remaining five years of his life he lived on a small pension that his cousin, Gouverneur Morris, had arranged for his wife, Mary. The financier of the Revolution ended his days in a small house in Philadelphia, where he died at age seventy-three.

Sources

E. James Ferguson, The Power of the Purse (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1961);

Clarence L. Ver Steeg, Robert Morris, Revolutionary Financier (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1954).

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