Robert Morris

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After leaving office, Morris once again devoted himself to business, but state and federal politics remained a factor in his life. After the Pennsylvania legislature stripped the Bank of North America of its charter, Morris won election to the state legislature and helped restore the bank's charter. Meanwhile, the United States suffered a sustained recession after the end of the Revolutionary War, caused by the lingering debt burden and new restrictions on trade imposed by the European powers. Some members of Congress, including those on the Board of Treasury, continued to favor amendments to the Articles of Confederation, but the states still refused to authorize major changes to the Articles.

In 1786, Morris was one of five Pennsylvania delegates selected to attend the Annapolis Convention, where delegates discussed ways to reform the Articles of Confederation. Though Morris ultimately declined to attend the convention, the delegates convinced Congress to authorize a convention in Philadelphia in May 1787 to amend the Articles. The Pennsylvania state legislature sent a delegation consisting of Morris, James Wilson, Gouverneur Morris, George Clymer, Thomas Mifflin, Jared Ingersoll, and Ben Franklin to the Philadelphia Convention. With the exception of Franklin (who avoided aligning with either political faction in Pennsylvania), all of the Pennsylvania delegates were closely aligned with Morris's Republican faction, a reflection of Republican strength in the state legislature. Many of Morris's Nationalist allies from other states, including Hamilton, James Madison, John Dickinson, and Washington, would also attend the convention.

With Franklin ill, Morris opened the proceedings of the Philadelphia Convention on May 25. His motion to nominate Washington as chairman of the convention was backed by a unanimous vote. Morris consistently attended the meeting of the convention, but rarely spoke after the first day, instead allowing lawyers and others more experienced with the law to debate various issues. His primary goals, including a provision ensuring the federal government had the power to lay tariffs and taxes, were shared by the vast majority of delegates at the convention. On September 17, Morris signed the final document produced by the convention which, rather than amending the Articles, was intended to supplant the Articles as the new Constitution of the United States. Morris was one of just six individuals to sign both the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution.

Rather than seeking to block the new constitution, Congress simply forwarded it to each state to debate ratification. Morris's Republican faction, along with Federalist groups in other states, sought the ratification of the new federal Constitution. The Constitutionalists, who saw the new federal constitution as a threat to state sovereignty, joined with Anti-Federalists in other states in seeking to prevent the ratification of the Constitution. In elections held in October and November 1787, Morris's Federalist allies retained control of the state legislature and won a majority of the elections held to select delegates for the convention held to debate ratification of the Constitution. Due to a dispute with a business partner, Morris did not attend the ratification convention, which voted to ratify the Constitution in December 1787. By the end of 1788, the Constitution had been ratified by enough states to take effect. In September 1788, the Pennsylvania legislature elected Robert Morris and William Maclay, both of whom were aligned with the Federalists, as the state's first representatives in the United States Senate.

In the country's first presidential election, Washington was elected as the President of the United States. Washington offered the position of Secretary of the Treasury to Morris, but Morris declined the offer, instead suggesting Alexander Hamilton for the position. In the Senate, Morris pressed for many of the same policies he had sought as Superintendent of Finance: a federal tariff, a national bank, a federal mint, and the funding of the national debt. Congress agreed to implement the Tariff of 1789, which created a uniform impost on goods carried by foreign ships into American ports, but many other issues lingered into 1790. Among those issues were the site of the national capital and the fate of state debts. Morris sought the return of the nation's capital to Philadelphia and the federal assumption of state debts. Morris defeated Maclay's proposal to establish the capital in Pennsylvania at a site on the Susquehanna River located several miles west of Philadelphia, but James Madison defeated Morris's attempt to establish the capital just outside of Philadelphia.

Morris's 1781 "Report On Public Credit" supplied the basis for Hamilton's First Report on the Public Credit, which Hamilton submitted in 1790. Hamilton proposed to fully fund all federal debts and assume all state debts, and to pay for those debts by issuing new federal bonds. Hamilton argued that these measures would restore confidence in public credit and help to revitalize the economy, but opponents attacked his proposals as unfairly beneficial to the speculators who had purchased many of the government's debt certificates. Morris supported Hamilton's economic proposals, but the two differed on the site of the federal capital, as Hamilton wanted to keep it in New York. In June 1790, Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson convinced Morris, Hamilton, and Madison to agree to a compromise in which the federal government assumed state debts, while a new federal capital would be established on the Potomac River; until construction of that capital was completed, Philadelphia would serve as the nation's temporary capital. With the backing of all four leaders, the Compromise of 1790, as it became known, was approved by Congress. That same year, Morris and Maclay helped secure Pennsylvania's control of the Erie Triangle, which provided the state with access to the Great Lakes.

In the early 1790s, the country became increasingly polarized between the Democratic-Republican Party, led by Jefferson and Madison, and the Federalist Party, led by Hamilton. Though Morris was less focused on politics after the Compromise of 1790, he supported most of Hamilton's policies and aligned with the Federalist Party. Morris especially supported Hamilton's proposal for the establishment of a national bank. Despite the opposition of Madison and other Southern leaders, Congress approved the establishment of the First Bank of the United States in 1791. While Morris served in Congress, a new political elite emerged in Philadelphia. These new leaders generally respected Morris, but most did not look to him for leadership. With Morris playing little active role, they called a convention that revised the state constitution that included many of the alterations that Morris had long favored, including a bicameral legislature, a state governor with the power to veto bills, and a judiciary with life tenure.

Later business career

Morris refocused on his trading concerns after leaving office as Superintendent of Finance, seeking especially to expand his role in the tobacco trade. He began suffering from financial problems in the late 1780s after a business partner mistakenly refused to honor bills issued by Morris, causing him to default on a loan. In 1784 Morris was part of a syndicate that backed the sailing of the Empress of China (1783) for the China trade. As part of the effort to repay France for loans that financed the war, Morris contracted to supply 20,000 hogsheads of tobacco annually to France beginning in 1785. Shortly after these contracts were signed, Ambassador Thomas Jefferson took it upon himself to interfere with these arrangements and that brought about the collapse of the tobacco market.

In 1787, Morris was sued in Virginia by Carter Braxton for £28,257; the lawsuit continued for eight years before commissioners were appointed, then Morris appealed. Finally Virginia's Court of Appeals led by Edmund Pendleton decided mostly in favor of Braxton before Morris was forced into bankruptcy by his own continued land speculations (although Morris as late as 1800 believed he should have won £20,000). Morris became increasingly fixated on land speculation, reaching his first major real estate deal in 1790 when he acquired much of the Phelps and Gorham Purchase in western New York. He realized a substantial profit the following year when he sold the land to The Pulteney Association, a group of British land speculators led by Sir William Johnstone Pulteney. Morris used the money from this sale to purchase the remainder of the Phelps and Gorham Purchase, then turned around and sold much of that land to the Holland Land Company, a group of Dutch land speculators. These early successes encouraged Morris to pursue greater profits through increasingly large and risky land acquisitions.

On March 7, 1791, Morris obtained title to a lot from John Dickinson and wife; on March 9, 1793, the site was surveyed; it wasn't until 1794 he began construction of a mansion on Chestnut Street in Philadelphia designed by architect of Washington, D.C., Pierre Charles L'Enfant; it was to occupy an entire block between Chestnut Street and Walnut Street on the western edge of Philadelphia. The structure was of red brick and marble lining. Besides Land Speculation, Morris founded several canal companies: [Similar to the Potomac Company], two Pennsylvania canal companies were set up to try to link the produce of the western lands with the eastern markets; they were the Schuylkill and Susquehanna Navigation Company chartered September 29, 1791, and the Delaware and Schuylkill Canal Company chartered April 10, 1792. Morris was president of both companies; he was also involved with a steam engine company, and launched a hot air balloon from his garden on Market Street. He had the first iron rolling mill in America. His icehouse was the model for one Washington installed at Mount Vernon. He backed the new Chestnut Street Theater, and had a greenhouse where his staff cultivated lemon trees. In early 1793, Morris purchased shares in a land company led by John Nicholson, the comptroller general of Pennsylvania, beginning a deep business partnership between Nicholson and Morris.

Later in 1793, Morris, Nicholson, and James Greenleaf jointly purchased thousands of lots in the recently established District of Columbia. They subsequently purchased millions of acres in Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Virginia, Georgia, and the Carolinas; in each case, they went into debt to make the purchases, with the intent of quickly reselling the land to realize a profit. Morris and his partners struggled to re-sell their lands, and Greenleaf dropped out from the partnership in 1795. Morris realized a profit by selling his lots in the District of Columbia in 1796, but he and Nicholson still owed their creditors approximately $12 million (about $192 million in 2021). By Morris's own admission the beginning of his bankruptcy began with the failure of John Warder & Co. of Dublin and Donald and Burton of London in the spring of 1793.

Morris was deeply involved in land speculation, especially after the Revolutionary War; (See Phelps and Gorham Purchase of 1791 above); on April 22, 1794, Morris entered into an association called the Asylum Company with John Nicholson, [who had served as Comptroller-General of the state of Pennsylvania from 1782 to 1794] to purchase 1,000,000 acres of Pennsylvania land besides land they already had title to in Luzerne County; Northumberland County and Northampton County. [This was not the first partnership Morris and Nicholson were involved in; in 1792, Nicholson had negotiated the purchase from the federal government of the 202,000-acre (820 km2) tract known as the Erie Triangle. Along with an agent of the Holland Land Company, Aaron Burr, Robert Morris, and other individual and institutional investors, he formed the Pennsylvania Population Company. This front organization purchased all 390 parcels of land in the Erie Triangle. Nicholson was impeached in 1794 for his role in the company.] However, Morris severely overextended himself financially. He had borrowed to speculate in real estate in the new national capital, District of Columbia, but signed a contract with a syndicate of Philadelphia investors to take over his obligations there. After that, he took the options to purchase over 6,000,000 acres (24,000 km2) in the rural south. Unfortunately for Morris, that syndicate reneged on their commitment, leaving him once again liable, but this time with more exposure.

In 1795, Morris and two of his partners, Greenleaf and Nicholson, pooled their land and formed a land company called the North American Land Company. The purpose of this company was to raise money by selling stock secured by the real estate [i.e. to finance their land speculation business]. According to one historian of American land speculation, the NALC was "largest land trust ever known in America". The three partners turned over to the company land throughout the United States totaling more than 6,000,000 acres (24,000 km2), most of it valued at about 50 cents an acre. In addition to land in the District of Columbia, there were 2,314,796 acres (9,367.65 km2) in Georgia, 431,043 acres (1,744.37 km2) in Kentucky, 717,249 acres (2,902.60 km2) in North Carolina, 647,076 acres (2,618.62 km2) in Pennsylvania, 957,238 acres (3,873.80 km2) in South Carolina, and 932,621 acres (3,774.18 km2) in Virginia. NALC was authorized to issue 30,000 shares, each worth $100. To encourage investors to purchase shares, the three partners guaranteed that a 6 percent dividend would be paid every year. To ensure that there was enough money to pay this divided, each partner agreed to put 3,000 of their own NALC shares in escrow. Greenleaf, Morris, and Nicholson were entitled to receive a 2.5 percent commission on any land the company sold. Greenleaf was named secretary of the new company. Other land speculations that Morris was involved in was the Illinois-Wabash Company and the Georgia Yazoo Land Company

The Washington DC Lots were not the only land problems for Morris; he began losing everything for nonpayment on interest on loans and taxes: In May 1796, John Barker Church accepted a mortgage on another 100,000 acres of the Morris Reserve in present-day Allegany County and Genesee County, against a debt owed to him by Morris. After Morris failed to pay the mortgage, Church foreclosed, and Church's son Philip Schuyler Church acquired the land in May 1800. Philip began the settlement of Allegany and Genesee counties by founding the village of Angelica, New York. In a letter of September 1797 to his partner Nicholson, Morris begged to be able to find $500.00 to pay two years wages to his servant Mr. Richard; in a subsequent letter October 25, 1797, to Nicholson, Morris moaned that 200,000 acres of North Carolina land which had cost him $27,000.00 had been sold for one year's taxes. In regard to Morris's Philadelphia mansion L'Enfant was paid $9,037.13 between December 1795 and January 1799. Despite the spent amount of £6138 5s 10d it was never completed. The bank of Pennsylvania brought suit against him and a judgement made against him for $20,997.40; an execution against his unfinished Chestnut Street "Morris Folly" mansion was issued in September 1797 to Philadelphia Sherriff Baker; Sherriff Penrose on December 11, 1797, made deed-poll to William Sansom for the building and the lot sold for $25,600 subject to a £7,000 in specie mortgage payable to Messrs Willink of Amsterdam. The last credit for the house was July 2, 1801, and the last charge for it was made July 9, 1801. The unfinished mansion became known as "Morris's folly", and the land eventually became Sansom Street. Marble from this house was purchased by Latrobe; he used it to adorn buildings and monuments from Rhode Island to Charlestown, South Carolina.

The two canal companies had also failed as well: for example after its incorporation the Schuylkill and Susquehanna was subscribed for 40,000 shares—but only 1000 shares were sold; the Delaware and Schuylkill company was to have been 2000 shares at $200.00 a share. Operations were suspended because "Either on account of errors in plans adopted, failure to procure the necessary means, financial convulsions, or a combination of all these difficulties, they were compelled to suspend their operations after an outlay of $440,000, which was an immense sum in those days". When England and the Dutch declared war on Revolutionary France, an expected loan from Holland never materialized.

The subsequent Napoleonic Wars ruined the market for American land and Morris's highly leveraged company collapsed. Lastly, the financial markets of England, the United States, and the Caribbean suffered from deflation related with the Panic of 1797. Morris was left "land rich and cash poor". He owned more land than any other American at any time, but didn't have enough liquid capital to pay his creditors. Among his creditors was his son-in-law James Marshall for £20,000 sterling; likewise his brother-in-law Bishop White was also a creditor to Morris for $3,000. Gouvenor Morris was owned $24,000 "exclusive of what he paid in Europe on my account, the amount of which I do not know."; Henry Lee III was a creditor for protested bills for $39,446 plus damages and interest; Morris's wife Mary had a sum of credit of $15,860.16 from the sale of two farms left to her by her father;his daughter Esther Morris had a credit of a few hundred pounds left to her by her grandmother received by Morris; as Morris had given her on her marriage nothing but clothes and old wine he assigned to her two quarter chests of tea which he sent to Alexandria, Virginia for sale although he feared this would not amount to principal and interest; his son Robert Morris Jr was a debtor for sums spent in Europe without his father's knowledge; his son Charles while under age had contracted bills without his father's knowledge for $144.94 for a tailor and $24.50 for a shoemaker. The NALC encountered financial difficulty almost immediately. Only 4,479,317 acres (18,127.15 km2) of land was turned over to the NALC, which meant it could issue only 22,365 shares. This meant only 7,455 shares were put into escrow (instead of the required 9,000). Rather than paying creditors with cash, the NALC paid them with shares (8,477 shares in 1795 and 1796). On May 15, 1795, the D.C. commissioners demanded their first payment from Greenleaf, Morris, and Nicholson, for the 6,000 lots purchased in 1793. But Greenleaf had misappropriated some of the company's income to pay his own debts. Without the Dutch mortgage income and missing funds, there was no money to make the payment to the commissioners. Furthermore, Greenleaf had co-signed for loans taken out by Morris and Nicholson. When these men defaulted, creditors sought out Greenleaf to make good on the debts—which he could not.

Moris and his partners had failed to both pay the instalments on the Washington D.C. building lots and finished building twenty houses (they had contracted ten houses annually for seven years on said lots); On July 10, 1795, Morris and Nicholson bought out Greenleaf's interest in the December 24, 1793, agreement. The commissioners began legal proceedings to regain title to the 6,000 lots owned by NALC and the 1,115.25 lots owned by Greenleaf personally. The worsening financial problems of Greenleaf, Morris, and Nicholson led to increasingly poor personal relations among the three men. Nicholson, particularly bitter, began making public accusations against Greenleaf in print. Morris attempted to mediate between the two men, but his efforts failed. In an attempt to resolve his financial problems, Greenleaf sold his shares in the NALC to Nicholson and Morris on May 28, 1796, for $1.5 million. Unfortunately, Morris and Nicholson funded their purchase by giving Greenleaf personal notes. Furthermore, they endorsed one another's notes. Morris and Nicholson, themselves nearly bankrupt, agreed to pay one-quarter of the purchase price every year for the next four years. Greenleaf's shares were not to be transferred to Morris and Nicholson until the fourth payment was received. On September 30, 1796, James Greenleaf put 7,455 of his NALC shares in a trust (known as the "391 trust" because it was recorded on page 391 of the firm's accounting book). The "391 trust" was created to generate income (from the 6 percent dividend) to pay a loan given to Greenleaf by Edward Fox. A trustee was assigned to hold on to the shares. The same day, Greenleaf put 2,545 shares into another trust (the "381 trust"), as a guarantee against nonpayment of the dividend by Morris and Nicholson. Morris and Nicholson's made the first payment to Greenleaf for the one-third interest in the NALC by turning over title to several hundred lots in Washington, D.C. On March 8, 1797, Greenleaf executed the 381 trust.

When the NALC did not issue its 6 percent dividend, Greenleaf transferred one-third of the shares in the "391 trust" to the trustees. The total number of shares transferred to the "381 trust" trustees was now 6,119. On June 24, 1797, Morris, Greenleaf and Nicholson had conveyed their Washington D.C. Lots in trust to Henry Pratt and others in payments of their debts. Poor business practices were now dragging down NALC. For years, Morris and Nicholson had acted as personal guarantors for one another's notes. Now many of these notes were coming due, and neither man could pay them. Creditors began selling the notes publicly, often at heavy discounts. By 1798, Morris and Nicholson's $10 million in personal notes were trading at one-eighth their face value. NALC also discovered that some of titles to the 6,000,000 acres (24,000 km2) of land it owned were not clear, and thus the land could not be used for security. In other cases, NALC found it had been swindled, and the rich land it thought it owned turned out to be barren and worthless. Morris and Nicholson honestly believed that, if their cash flow problems were fixed, they could make payments on the property they owned and their shares would be returned to them. This proved incorrect. On October 23, 1807, all stock in the company was sold at 7 cents on the dollar to the accountants managing the Aggregate Fund. In 1856, the Trustees of the North American Land Company held $92,071.87. Morris and Nicholson's heirs sued to recover the stock and gain access to the income. The North American Land Company stayed in existence until 1872. An 1880 auditors report called the litigation "phenomenal ... the counsel for Morris and Nickerson pursued the fund for twenty-five years, seeking to obtain it from the trustees of the North American Company and the trusts which had been created from it, and also defending the money from the State in an attempt to sequestrate it. After all counsel fees and expenses, the amount available for division to the Morris interest was $9,692.49."

In 1797 Morris conveyed his household furniture to Thomas Fitzsimmons which was sold at public auction. What was left was lent to Mrs. Morris by Fitzsimmons and Morris son-in-law Marshall; all Morris had left in his house was some bedding, clothing, part of a quarter cask of wine; part of a barrel of flour, some coffee, a little sugar and some bottled wine which was the remainder from a cask he had given to his daughter Maria. Morris attempted to avoid creditors by staying outside the city at his country estate "The Hills", located on the Schuylkill River, but his creditors literally pursued him to his gate. Morris was sued by a former partner, James Greenleaf, who had been imprisoned for fraud and was serving time in debtors' prison. Unable to dodge his creditors and their lawyers, Morris was finally arrested. He was imprisoned for debt in Prune Street prison in Philadelphia from February 1798 to August 1801. Morris property Summerseat (Morrisville, Pennsylvania) would be sold in a Sherriff's sale on June 9, 1798, to George Clymer and Thomas Fitzsimmons for $41,000.00. In January 1799 Morris lamented to Nicholson of how a London firm had refused to accept his bill of lading £389 sterling "because the money in the hands of the party upon whom the bill was drawn had been attached by the owner of a bond given for payment of some lands in Georgia". 43 of the 100 acres of Morris estate "The Hills" was purchased in March 1799 by Henry Pratt for $14,654.00 for his country house Lemon Hill after the tearing down of Morris's old mansion; in turn the "Lemon Hill" estate became part of the foundation for Fairmount Park Philadelphia; one part of Morris property which had also been purchased in 1799 by William Cannard became part of the Sedgeley mansion-which in turn ironically became part of Fairmont Park. Of his partners Geenleaf was released after being declared bankrupt in 1798; Nicholson died in prison in 1800.

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