REVOLUTIONARY REVELATIONS
Gouverneur Morris had experience writing constitutions. He had written almost the entire New York Constitution a decade earlier.
Morris had some bizarre ideas about what he wanted for the new U.S. government. He opted for a strong executive who could stay in office as long as he exhibited good behavior and an aristocratic Senate appointed by the president for life. He also tried to insert a clause that guaranteed in perpetuity the political supremacy of the states east of the Allegheny Mountains. Those measures failed.
On the other hand, he helped secure the executive veto and preserve the popular vote for president by defeating a proposal allowing the legislature to elect the president. After the debate over the Constitution ended, Morris wrote the final draft and then went back to New York.
From Pillar to Post
Morris left the United States on a business trip in 1789 and did not return for a decade.
While he was in Europe, he served as the American minister to France. But in a throwback to his reputation as an outspoken cynic back home, he openly showed contempt for the ongoing French Revolution. The French government asked the United States to recall him, which it did. He came home and picked up where he left off, resuming his law career and re-entering politics. He served three years in the United States Senate and took an interest in improving transportation from the eastern part of the country to the interior. He was active in a number of ventures, such as spearheading the project to build the Erie Canal, which contributed significantly to the western development of the United States.
Morris being Morris, he often aggravated other politicians. He was outspoken against the War of 1812 to the point where he promoted the creation of a northern confederacy of states to eliminate the rule of the “Virginia dynasty.” It was radical proposals like this that separated Morris from his contemporaries and the views of the Founding Fathers.
As critical as he could be sometimes, Morris never lost his love for a free and independent United States. That is what he had worked so hard for throughout his career. Some people had to have a strong constitution to stomach him at times but because of his efforts, that is what the United States ended up with: a strong constitution.
ROBERT MORRIS
Liverpool, England
January 20, 1734–May 8, 1806
America’s Financial Guru
Robert Morris was the Founding Fathers’ go-to person when they needed financial advice. He served at various times—and often simultaneously—during the Revolutionary era as the chairman of the Secret Committee of Trade and the Pennsylvania Committee on Safety, a member of the Committee on Correspondence, the superintendent of finance, and agent of marine. Morris was also a U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania; signer of the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the United States Constitution; a delegate to the Second Continental Congress … and that was just a start. Despite his accomplishments, he ended his business career in debtors’ prison, which was not the fate either he or the Founding Fathers anticipated. He was the only Founding Father to suffer that fate.
Financing a Revolution
When the Revolutionary War began, Morris was a business partner with Thomas Willing in Philadelphia. At the time, their mercantile venture, which included shipping and real estate operations, among others, was the largest business of its kind in the city. Morris had something that the revolution’s leaders needed: financial acumen. He also had the ability to produce the supplies and products the government needed to support the war effort. His politics were unpredictable at best.
FEDERAL FACTS
From 1775 to 1777, the federal government awarded nearly $500,000 in contracts to Willing and Morris, and another $290,000 to other partnerships in which Morris was involved. The government’s total purchases were $2 million.
Willing to Follow
The delegates to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia were not sure which way Morris would vote on independence as they debated the issue. He voted against the resolution of independence on July 1, 1776. The next day he did not vote at all. After Congress adopted the resolution on July 4, he signed it. From that point on he threw himself into the American cause, primarily as a financier.
Quotations to Live (and Die) By!
“I AM NOT ONE OF THOSE POLITICIANS THAT RUN TESTY WHEN MY OWN PLANS ARE NOT ADOPTED. I THINK IT IS THE DUTY OF A GOOD CITIZEN TO FOLLOW WHEN HE CANNOT LEAD.”
—ROBERT MORRIS, REGARDING THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
Washington Turns to Morris
By the end of 1776, the federal government was in dire financial straits. That was particularly stressful for George Washington, who needed the money to supply troops to fight the British. Congress thoughtfully ordered that $5 million worth of paper money be issued to help him. But few people outside the government were willing to use the currency.
Washington, who was not above putting Morris on the spot occasionally, appealed to him to raise enough hard money to back the government-issued currency. Even the normally confident Morris was not sure he could oblige.
Morris had a reputation for honesty and integrity among the people who knew him best. While he was trying to figure out a way to raise the hard currency Washington requested, he met a wealthy Quaker who was aware of the quandary. The gentleman asked Morris what security he provided for a loan. “My note and my honor,” Morris said. That was enough for the potential lender. The next day Morris forwarded $50,000 to General Washington.
Even though he doubted his own abilities at times, Morris continued tirelessly throughout the war to raise funds from various sources. He used his personal credit frequently. Morris and several Philadelphians established a bank in the city that sustained the army’s operations for most of 1780.
In 1781, when Washington was having trouble raising funds to conduct his campaign to chase the British out of Virginia, Morris borrowed $20,000 from French navy commander Count François-Joseph de Grasse. He promised to repay it in October, although he had no idea where he would get the money. De Grasse provided the loan, which helped Washington drive General Charles Cornwallis and his British forces out of Virginia.
Luckily for Morris, Colonel Henry Laurens arrived in Boston on August 25 that year with $1 million that he had secured from the French government to support the American cause. Morris used part of that subsidy to repay de Grasse.
Morris continued to apply his financial wizardry through the rest of the war—but with a title. Congress named him the superintendent of finance in 1781. Having a title did not make his job any easier. Nevertheless, he continued to find ways to finance the war and get the government on sound footing afterwards, using his own and other people’s money, until he stepped down from his post in 1784.
FEDERAL FACTS
Morris took his responsibilities as superintendent of finance seriously: He cut government spending significantly by using competitive bidding for contracts, tightened accounting procedures, demanded that the states forward to the federal government their full shares of money and supplies, proposed a national bank, and conceived a plan to eliminate the federal government’s debt—which the states defeated.
Personal Profit
Morris was not entirely selfless in his efforts; he did profit personally from the war. He had his own fleet of privateers that seized British merchant vessels. Then he helped sell their cargoes when they arrived in port and pocketed part of the revenue. While he was superintendent of finance, he maintained silent partnerships in many of the companies that were doing business with the federal government.
His efforts to enrich himself notwithstanding, Morris worked diligently to earn the label “Financier of the Revolution.” Sadly, he was not as successful at financing his own dealings after the war ended.
Off to Prison
A series of financial setbacks after the war led to financial ruin for Morris. The Panic of 1797 affected his extensive land holdings adversely. He was imprisoned for d
ebt in February 1798 and remained incarcerated until August 1801.
The man who almost single-handedly kept the country afloat financially in its fledgling years died five years after he left prison. He was in poor health and practically penniless. But he still had his pride, a supportive wife of thirty-seven years, and a legacy as a founder of a country that had relied on him for its existence.
JEREMIAH O’BRIEN
Kittery, Maine
1744–October 5, 1818
A Man Without a Plan
Machias, Maine (at the time, Maine was part of Massachusetts) businessman Jeremiah O’Brien earned the title of “Father of the Navy” as the result of his attack on a British navy warship in June 1775. He was thrust into his role by default. Unlike the Founding Fathers, O’Brien did not have time to think about how to break away from Britain. Acting without congressional guidance or much of a plan, he set off the naval part of the Revolutionary War and left the Founding Fathers to pick up the pieces.
No Lumber for Boston
Jeremiah and his brothers Gideon, John, William, Dennis, and Joseph were ardent patriots and business owners in Massachusetts. They and their father, Morris, were in the lumber business in Machias.
The citizens of Machias were in dire need of supplies from Boston in the spring of 1775. Because of British naval activities along the New England coast, supplies were hard to come by via sea, which was the most expedient transportation route at the time. Conversely, it was difficult for local lumber producers to send their products to Boston.
That was the situation when Boston merchant Captain Ichabod Jones arrived in Machias on June 9, 1775, with two sloops, Unity and Polly, carrying badly needed provisions. A British navy schooner, Margaretta, commanded by James Moore, accompanied Jones’s ships to protect them.
Jones enraged the citizens of Machias by demanding that they sign a paper agreeing to trade their lumber to the British for the supplies he brought with him, and also guaranteeing to protect him and his property. Jones refused to distribute supplies to those who would not sign.
Then, Jones asked Moore to bring Margaretta close to the docks with guns ready to fire, presumably in an attempt to intimidate the citizens into agreeing to Jones’s terms. The intimidation attempt failed.
The patriots in Machias hatched a plot to capture Moore and his officers while they attended a church service, intending to prevent them from accompanying Jones back to Boston. The British caught wind of the plot, jumped out the windows of the church, boarded their ship, and escaped to the safety of the harbor. That was when the O’Briens and their friends entered the fray.
The O’Briens acted spontaneously, which was often the case among patriots at the beginning of the Revolutionary War.
The O’Briens Show “Unity”
The O’Briens secretly invited their friends from nearby Mispecka and Pleasant River to join them in their private revolution. Once the Margaretta reached the safety of the bay, O’Brien, his brothers, Joseph Wheaton, and several other patriots—about forty men in all—sprang into action. Armed with guns and the only three rounds of ammunition they had among them, swords, axes, pitchforks, and anything else they could get their hands on, the men jumped aboard the Unity and sailed toward the Margaretta. Another group, led by Captain Benjamin Foster, joined O’Brien in a smaller sloop.
The battle was short and swift. O’Brien led a masterful attack on the Margaretta in that June 12 encounter. Captain Moore, realizing that he was outmanned and outmaneuvered, tried to escape. He failed—and paid with his life. In one hour the patriots killed Captain Moore, his helmsman, and two other crew members. They wounded five more. One American was killed during the battle; six were wounded, one of whom died later. (Conflicting reports suggest that there were ten British sailors and marines killed and ten wounded, compared to four Americans killed and nine wounded.)
O’Brien became an instant—and emboldened—hero. The battle that earned Machias the title of the “Lexington of the Sea” was the launch point for additional exploits by Captain O’Brien.
FEDERAL FACTS
According to the June 14, 1775, official report of the Machias Committee of Correspondence to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, O’Brien’s little navy captured “four double fortified three pounders and fourteen swivels and a number of small arms, which we took with the tender, besides a very small quantity of ammunition, etc.”
O’Brien Goes to Washington
Following his victory at Machias, O’Brien refitted Unity with Margaretta’s guns, renamed it Machias Liberty, and sailed off aboard his privateer to find more prizes. He and his crew captured two armed enemy schooners and their crews off the Bay of Fundy in Canada and took them to Cambridge. The ships O’Brien captured—the Diligence, a British coast-
survey vessel, and her tender—had been dispatched from Halifax to retake Margaretta.
He delivered the prisoners directly to General Washington. The general was impressed. He recommended to Massachusetts government officials that they appoint O’Brien to command of his prizes. They agreed, and awarded O’Brien the first captain’s commission in the Massachusetts State Navy.
O’Brien’s navy career was short, but adventurous. He maintained his command of Machias Liberty for two years. His brother William served as a lieutenant. Another brother, John, was a lieutenant aboard the captured Diligence.
FEDERAL FACTS
Even though the Continental Navy did not exist at this stage of the war, historians consider the naval battle at Machias to be the first time British colors were struck to those of the United States.
The provincial government assigned Machias Liberty and Diligence to intercept supplies for the British troops. They operated along the northeastern coast for a year and a half, taking several prizes. After that, Jeremiah took command of a privateer named Hannibal that his brother John and others had built at Newburyport, Massachusetts.
Two British frigates captured Hannibal off the New York coast in the late 1770s. The British confined O’Brien for six months on a guard ship, Jersey, then sent him to England and held him in the infamous Mill Prison. He escaped after a few months and made his way back to Maine.
Later, he received an appointment as the federal collector for the Port of Machias, which he held until his death. The navy he fathered lives on.
JAMES OTIS JR.
West Barnstable, Massachusetts
February 5, 1725–May 23, 1783
Hidden Father of a Nation
James Otis Jr., one of the more tragic figures of the revolutionary era, was among America’s most influential patriot leaders in the 1760s. But, in one of those freak events that alter history, his career was cut short by an irate Bostonian wielding a cane in a fit of bad temper. Had Otis not suffered bouts of insanity for fourteen years before he died, he, not Thomas Jefferson, might be hailed as the principal author of the Declaration of Independence.
Becoming a Patriot
James Otis Jr. was not anti-Britain early in his career, but he became that way. He graduated from Harvard in 1743, when he was eighteen. There he studied law under noted jurist Jeremiah Gridley. Five years later, he was admitted to the bar. Eventually, he became a public employee, but not for long.
In 1756, Otis accepted a position as the king’s advocate general to the vice-admiralty court of Boston. He did not like what he saw in his responsibilities as advocate general, part of which involved prosecuting smugglers.
The British were heavy-handed in their law enforcement policies regarding smuggling. They had passed a series of Acts of Trade and
Navigation between 1650 and 1767 that subordinated the colonists’ interests to their own. Those laws aggravated the Americans.
When the British passed a tax-laden Molasses Act in 1733 to
protect British West Indies planters from competition provided by
their non-British producers in
the French West Indies, it infuriated the colonists—especially the distillers who needed
the commodities to make their own spirits.
FEDERAL FACTS
The Molasses Act made the products from the British West Indies more expensive for American distillers and inhibited them from importing such goods. In what was to become a time-honored tradition among the Americans, they ignored the act, along with the Acts of Trade and Navigation. They figured it was more profitable to smuggle in rum and spirits, molasses, and sugar than pay the taxes on them.
Very few people in America took paying the tax seriously. That rankled the British and led to more austere taxes in 1764, when they replaced the Molasses Act with the Sugar Act. The colonists did not like the new tax any more than the one it replaced. That was one of the reasons they decided to split from the British.
Quotations to Live (and Die) By!
“IF WE ARE NOT REPRESENTED, WE ARE SLAVES.”
—JAMES OTIS JR., REGARDING THE SUGAR ACT OF 1764
The Teacher Teaches the Student a Lesson
Otis felt guilty about prosecuting smugglers, because the innovative British had introduced a new legal tactic called writs of assistance to help them find, try, and convict the violators. The writs did not assist anybody but the British.
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