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Robert Morris Biography

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MORRIS, Robert (1734-1806). An eminent American financier and one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. He was born at Liverpool, England, Jan. 31, 1734. At the age of 14 he was sent to America and placed in the counting house of Charles Willing, a rich Philadelphia merchant, whose partner he became in 1754, continuing as such until 1793. The firm of Willing & Morris became one of the leading mercantile establishments in America, and by the outbreak of the Revolutionary War Morris had already acquired a large fortune. Although naturally averse to a rupture with Great Britain, he sacrificed his personal interests, signed the nonimportation agreement of 1765, and served as a member of the citizens' committee that compelled the stamp distributor for Philadelphia practically to relinquish his office. In June, 1775, he became a member of the Pennsylvania Committee of Safety; in October of the same year he was elected to a seat in the Legislature of Pennsylvania (to which he was reëlected in 1776), and in November he was appointed by that body a delegate to the Continental Congress. All three of these offices were held by him at the same time. As a member of Congress he served on several important committees and signed the Declaration of Independence, although he had opposed Lee's resolution of June 7 and absented himself from the congressional hall on July 4, when the final vote was taken. At the expiration of his term in Congress, in 1778, he was elected again to the State Legislature, but on' account of miscellaneous charges against him in connection with his mercantile operations, he failed of reëlection in the following year. In October, 1780,. however, he was returned to the Legislature for the fourth time. It was at this time that the fortunes of the Colonial army reached their lowest ebb. Charleston had fallen; Gates had been defeated by Cornwallis; Arnold's treachery cast gloom on the country. Munitions and supplies were sadly wanting, and Continental currency had depreciated until it was worth but little more than the paper on which it was printed. In this almost desperate situation, Congress resolved to supersede the old treasury board by a superintendent of finance. Morris was chosen to the position Feb. 20, 1781, at a salary of $6000 a year, and received large powers over the finances of the Confederation. His chief programme was to relieve the situation by import duties, loans and subsidies from France, and to inaugurate a policy of retrenchment. He was unable, however, to carry out the first part of his scheme on account of the refusal of the States to confer the necessary power upon Congress for the laying of import duties. On several occasions he succeeded in borrowing large sums on his personal credit, without which some of the important campaigns of the war would have been impossible. Thus the means which enabled Washington and Greene to carry out the campaign of 1781 were raised mainly by his exertions. In 1781, with the approval of Congress, he founded the Bank of North America and became a large stockholder in it. This institution became of great service to the American cause and was, to a certain extent, under the control of Morris. He continued to hold the difficult and vexatious office of Superintendent of Finance until November, 1784, when he resigned it with a sense of relief. In the same year the Pennsylvania Legislature had annulled the charter of the bank, and in order to obtain its reëstablishment Morris secured an election to the Legislature in 1785 and succeeded in having the charter renewed in 1786. In the latter year he was again elected to the Legislature, and in 1787 became a member of the Constitutional Convention at Philadelphia. He had the honor to nominate Washington for the presidency of the Convention, but did not take a prominent part in the proceedings of that body. Upon the organization of the new government, President Washington offered him the position of Secretary of the Treasury. He declined the offer and recommended Alexander Hamilton, who was appointed. At the same time, however, he accepted a seat in the United States Senate, where he served without special distinction until 1795. Unfortunate business speculations proved disastrous, and on Feb. 16, 1798, he entered a debtor's prison in Philadelphia, where he was confined until Aug. 26, 1801. He died May 8, 1806. Consult: A. S. Bolles, The Financial Administration of Robert Morris (New York, 1878); W. G. Sumner, The Financier and the Finances of the American Revolution (ib., 1891); id., Robert Morris (ib., 1802). The best biography is E. P. Oberholtzer, Robert Morris, Patriot and Financier (New York, 1903), which is based upon the Robert Morris papers in the Library of Congress.