Mor-Mye: Morel through Myers

See below for annotated biographies of American abolitionists and anti-slavery activists. Source: Scribner’s Dictionary of American Biography.


MOREL, Junius C., c. 1806, African American, former slave, educator, reformer, civil rights activist, editor.  Wrote numerous articles for African American papers.  Served as an agent for Frederick Douglass’s Northern Star.  Member of Young Men’s Anti-Slavery Society.

(Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Vol. 8, p. 271)


MORGAN, Edwin Dennison, 1811-1883, merchant, soldier, statesman.  Member of the Whig Party, Anti-Slavery Faction.  Republican U.S. Senator from New York.  Chairman of the Republican National Committee, 1856-1864.  Governor of New York, 1858-1862.  Commissioned Major General of Volunteers, he raised 223,000 troops for the Union Army.  U.S. Senator, 1863-1869.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. IV, p. 398; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 7, Pt. 1, p. 168; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 15, p. 825; Congressional Globe). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 7, Pt. 1, pp. 168-169;

MORGAN, EDWIN DENISON (February 8, 1811-February 14) 1883), governor of New York, United States senator, was a descendant of James Morgan, a Welshman, who came to Massachusetts about 1636 and about 1650 settled in New London, where he married Margery Hill. Edwin, the son of Jasper and Catherine (Copp) Avery Morgan and a first cousin of Edwin Barber Morgan [q.v.], was born in Washington, Berkshire County, Massachusetts, but in 1822 removed with his parents to Windsor, Connecticut. During his boyhood he worked on his father's farm in summer and attended the village school in winter. In 1826 he entered Bacon Academy, Colchester, Connecticut, but two years later became a clerk in his uncle's grocery store at Hartford, Connecticut. At twenty, he became his uncle's partner. In 1832  he was elected a member of the Hartford city council. Desiring a wider sphere of activity, he removed to New York in 1836, and here, in partnership with Morris Earle and A. D. Pomeroy, established the wholesale grocery firm of Morgan & Earle. Upon its dissolution at the end of 1837, he began business on his own account. His enterprise and sagacity placed him in a few years among New York's leading merchants. On January 1, 1842, he associated with himself his cousin, George D. Morgan, and the latter's partner, Frederick Avery, who retired one year later, his place being taken by one of Morgan's clerks, J. T. Terry. In 1854 Solon Humphreys joined the firm, and banking and brokerage were added to the wholesale grocery business. Largely. through Humphreys, who had spent several years in Missouri, E. D. Morgan & Company in the two years 1855-60 handled over $30,000,000 in securities issued by that state and by the city of St. Louis.

Meanwhile, in 1849 Morgan had been elected a member of the New York City Board of Assistant Aldermen, which acknowledged his ability by electing him its president. His valiant service during a cholera epidemic which swept over the city that year strengthened him in the public eye, and upon the expiration of his term as assistant alderman he was sent to the state Senate. Two years later he was reelected after a severe contest with the Democratic Locofoco candidate. During both his terms he was president pro tempore of the Senate and chairman of, its finance committee. He introduced and carried through the legislature the bill establishing Central Park in New York City. When in 1855 he declined to run for a third term he was appointed one of the state commissioners of emigration, a much coveted position which he held until 1858. Although up to 1855 he had been an assiduous Whig, and was an earnest opponent of slavery, he had not identified himself with the abolitionists because he did not believe in the wisdom of their methods. He was vice-president of the conference which made plans for the first Republican National Convention and was chairman of the Republican National Committee which conducted the Fremont campaign. This chairmanship he continued to hold until 1864.

In 1858 he was chosen by Thurlow Weed as Republican candidate for governor of New York. The odds were against him, but his fine personal character, his spotless record, and his reputation as a successful business man, coupled with the energy with which he conducted his campaign, carried him into office in a four-cornered contest by a plurality of over 17,000 votes. Far from being a mere satellite of Weed, he displayed independence and statesmanlike qualities, both in his messages to the legislature and in his use of the veto power. In 1860 he was reelected by the largest majority which up to that time had ever been given to a gubernatorial candidate in the state. He succeeded during his first administration in improving the state's credit, strengthening its canal system, and making prisons, insurance companies, and charitable organizations more effective. His second administration was devoted to the success of the Union cause in the Civil War. Commissioned major-general of volunteers by Lincoln and placed in command of the military department of New York, he enrolled and equipped 223,000 soldiers. In 1862 he declined renomination for the governorship and upon the expiration of his term was commissioned under a legislative act to put New York harbor in a state of defense. He expended only $6,000 of the $1,000,000 appropriated for this purpose, returning the rest to the state treasury. In 1863 he was chosen United States senator to succeed Preston King. His career in the Senate was not characterized by oratorical display but by hard work both in the committee room and on the floor. In 1865 he declined appointment as secretary of the treasury. He voted with the minority on President Johnson's veto of the Freedman's Bureau Bill and for Johnson's conviction. In 1869 he was defeated for reelection after a bitter contest with Ex-Governor R. E. Fenton [q.v.]. From 1872 to 1876 he was again induced to head the Republican Committee, and in the latter year his name was mentioned in connection with the presidency. He stood for sound currency and civil service reform. In 1876 he was again nominated for governor, but the machine element of his party headed by Senator Conkling was dissatisfied with him, and he was defeated by Lucius Robinson. When Chester A. Arthur [q.v.], his old and ardent friend, succeeded to the presidency, he nominated Morgan for secretary of the treasury, but although the appointment was unanimously confirmed by the Senate, Morgan for a second time declined. During his last years he retired from all active participation in politics.

Morgan's fortune at the time of his death was estimated to be between eight and ten million dollars. His gifts during his lifetime totaled over a million dollars. Williams College, Union Theological Seminary, and the Women's, Presbyterian, and Eye and Ear hospitals in New York City especially benefited from his generosity. He was a patron of art well known both in America and on the continent of Europe, and a director of many business concerns. He was tall, well-proportioned, dignified, rather aristocratic in bearing. In 1833 he married his first cousin, Eliza Matilda Waterman, daughter of Capt. Henry and Lydia (Morgan) Waterman, of Hartford, Connecticut. Of their five children only one reached maturity, and he died in 1881, before his parents. The elder Morgan died at his home in New York City and was buried in Cedar Hill Cemetery, Hartford, Connecticut.

[Journals of the Senate and the Assembly of . . . New York, 1883; N. H. Morgan, Morgan Genealogy (1869); J. A. Morgan, A History of the Family of Morgan (1902); George Wilson, Portrait Gallery of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York (1890); C. Z. Lincoln, State of New York, Messages from the Governors (1909), volume V; Thurlow Weed Barnes, Memoir of Thurlow Weed (1884); D. S. Alexander, A Pol. History of the State of New York, volumes II, III (1906-09); S. D. Brummer, Political History of New York State during ... the Civil War (1911); Frederick Phisterer, New York in the War of the Rebellion (1912), volumes I, V; J. G. Wilson, The Memorial History of New York (1893), volumes III, IV; N. Y. Daily Tribune, February 14, 1883; New York Times, February 15, 1883.]

H.J.C.


MORGAN, Thomas Jefferson (August 17, 1839--July 13, 1902), soldier, Baptist clergyman, educator, and denominational leader. His grandfather had been a slaveholder, but his father was an anti-slavery advocate and a leader in religious, political, and educational matters.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 7, Pt. 1, pp. 187-188;

MORGAN, THOMAS JEFFERSON (August 17, 1839--July 13, 1902), soldier, Baptist clergyman, educator, and denominational leader, was sixth in descent from Nathan Morgan, the first of his line to emigrate to the New World. The son of Reverend Lewis Morgan and his third wife, Mary C. Causey (or Cansey), he was born in Franklin, Indiana. His grandfather had been a slaveholder, but his father was an anti-slavery advocate and a leader in religious, political, and educational matters. Thomas was fitted for college in the preparatory school of Franklin College and received the degree of A.B. from that institution in 1861, though he left in his senior year to enlist in the Union army. After three months' service, he took charge of public education at Atlanta, Illinois, but on August I, 1862, was appointed first lieutenant in the 70th Indiana Volunteer Infantry. His period of military service continued for over three years. Prominent in the enlistment of negro troops and eloquent in their defense, he became lieutenant-colonel of the 14th United States Colored Infantry on November I, 1863, and colonel on January 1, 1864. He commanded a division at the battle of Nashville and was brevetted brigadier-general, March 13, 1865. Throughout his life he maintained that war is sometimes justifiable, because the Old Testament teaches that it has been a means of accomplishing holy and gracious purposes of God toward mankind; because admittedly good consequences have issued from war; because historians reckon eras from great battles, such as Tours and Waterloo; because it is necessary to repel invasion, protect the innocent, punish national wrong-doing; and because it is right to engage in a struggle for national independence. He defended nationalism even while pleading for internationalism and dedicating his life to the defense of freedom of conscience.

After leaving the army he entered Rochester Theological Seminary, graduating in 1868. He was ordained a Baptist minister, at Rochester, New York, in 1869, but held only one brief pastorate at Brownville, Nebr., 1871-72. From 1872 to 1874 he was president of the Nebraska Normal School at Peru; from 1874 to 1881, he taught homiletics and ecclesiastical history in the Baptist Union Theological Seminary, Chicago, spending several months in Germany in 1879; from 1881 to 1883 he served as principal of the New York State Normal School at Potsdam, and from 1884 to 1889, as principal of the State Normal School at Providence, R. I. In the latter year, he was appointed commissioner of Indian Affairs by President Harrison. For four years he served with zeal, energy, and good judgment, insisting, in spite of much political and ecclesiastical opposition, that the principle of separation of church and state must be recognized in: the control of Indian schools, and that they must be placed upon the same basis as public schools.

In 1893 he renewed his denominational activity, accepting the position of corresponding secretary of the American Baptist Home Mission Society, in which position he served until his death almost a decade later. The clarity of his thought and his unswerving loyalty to his convictions, combined with rare ability wisely to choose and judge his coworkers, made him invaluable as an associate of Dr. Henry L. Morehouse [q.v.], field secretary of the society. Under. his skilful promotion, schools for thousands of negro men and women were established and equipped. He was editor of the Baptist Home Mission Monthly, 1893-1902, and author of Reminiscences of Service with Colored Troops in the Army of the Cumberland, 1863-65 (1885); Educational Mosaics (1887); Students' Hymnal (1888); Studies in Pedagogy (1889); Patriotic Citizen ship (1895); The Praise Hymnary (1898); The Negro in America and the Ideal American Republic (1898). In 1870 he married Caroline Starr. Their only -son died before his father.

[Who' s Who in America, 1901-02; F. B. Heitman, Historical Register and Directory U. S. Army (1903); Comfort Starr, A History of the Starr Family (1879); J. A. Morgan, A History of the Family of Morgan (1902?); Examiner, July 24, 1902; Baptist Commonwealth, July 24, 1902; N. Y. Times, July 14, 1902.]

C.H.M.


MORRIL, David Lawrence, 1772-1849, theologian, physician, statesman.  U.S. Congressman and U.S. Senator from New Hampshire.  U.S. Senator from December 1817-March 1823.   Opposed extending slavery into the new territories stated in debate in Congress in 1819: “The states now existing which have thought proper to admit slavery, may retain their slaves as long as they please; but, after the commencement of 1808, Congress may by law prohibit the importation of any more, and restrain those who are then in servitude to the territory or States where they may be found.” 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. IV, p. 408; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 7, Pt. 1, pp. 195-196; Dumond, 1961, p. 105; 16 Congress, 1 Session, 1819-1820, p. 139; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 15, p. 880).  

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 7, Pt. 1, pp. 195-196;

MORRIL, DAVID LAWRENCE (June 10, 1772-January 28, 1849), clergyman, physician, United States senator, and governor of New Hampshire, was born at Epping, New Hampshire, where his father, Samuel Morril, a Harvard graduate and a Congregational minister, had settled and married Anna, daughter of David Lawrence. He studied with his paternal grandfather, Isaac Morril, a Congregational minister at Wilmington, Massachusetts, and went to Exeter Academy. He then studied medicine and began to practise at Epsom, New Hampshire, when only twenty-one. Seven years later, as the result of a religious experience, he commenced to study for the ministry under the Reverend Jesse Remington, of Candia, and in 1802 he became pastor of a church at Goffstown, formed by a union of Presbyterians and Congregationalists. Owing partly to ill-health and partly to difficulties in the church, Morril ended his active ministry in November 1809, and his relations with the parish were formally severed in July 1811. During his years as a minister. he had not entirely given up medicine. He had also served as town moderator (1808-14), justice of the peace (1808, and frequently thereafter), and as representative in the state legislature (1808-17). After resigning his pastorate he continued the practice of medicine but became more and more active in politics. In 1816 he was chosen speaker of the state House of Representatives and in the same year was elected for a six-year term in the United States Senate. Here he proved himself a ready speaker, advocating measures for preventing the illegal African slave-trade, opposing the requirement of state enforcement of the federal fugitive-slave laws (though declaring he had "no disposition to deprive slave-holders of that species of property"), and vigorously disapproving the Missouri Compromise. He spoke eloquently, if somewhat sentimentally, in favor of pensions for Revolutionary officers, opposed reimbursing Matthew Lyon for the fine exacted under the Sedition Act, and moved to dismiss from the army and navy, officers who had engaged in dueling.

During his term at Washington Morril and William Hale were both nominated (1820) for governor of New Hampshire against Samuel Bell, but Governor Bell swept the state. When his term as senator expired, however, Morril was immediately elected to the Senate of New Hampshire and was chosen president of that body in June 1823. The next year he was nominated again for governor by the "Adams men," or "old guard" of the Democratic-Republicans, in opposition to the incumbent, Levi Woodbury, who had been elected the preceding year by the "insurgents." Neither candidate received a majority of votes cast, but Morril, having a plurality of more than 3,000, was chosen by the legislature. His reelection the following year was practically unanimous, 30,167 votes being cast for him out of a total of 30,770. In 1825 he had the honor of receiving Lafayette when the latter visited Concord. The following year he was elected governor for a third time, at the expiration of which tenure he retired to private life. He changed his residence in 1831 from Goffstown to Concord, where during his remaining years he was chiefly engaged in religious activities. He served as a vice-president of the American Bible Society, the Sunday-School Union, and the Horne Missionary Society, and for two years was editor of a religious paper, the New Hampshire Observer. Still active within ten days of his death, he died at Concord in his seventy-seventh year.

Morril was an unusual combination of the student and active man of affairs. Medicine, theology, and politics all interested him, and he continued his studies and activities in all three till almost the end of his life. He was strongly Calvinistic in religion, and a stanch, but not violent, anti-Federalist in politics. His intelligence, ability as a speaker, and knowledge of public affairs drew him naturally into political life and made him a popular candidate for office. He seems to have spent his last years in comparative leisure and retirement. He married first, September 25, 1794, Jane Wallace of Epsom, who died December 14, 1823, without children. On August 3, 1824, he married Lydia Poore, of Goffstown, by whom he had four sons, three of whom survived him.

[See Nathaniel Bouton, History of Concord (1856); E. S. Stackpole, History of New Hampshire (1916), volume III; G. P. Hadley, History of the Town of Goffstown, I733-I920 (2 volumes, 1922-24); and A. M. Smith, Morrill Kindred in America (2 volumes, 1914-31). Hadley reproduces a portrait of Morril which is in the State House at Concord. The New-Eng. Historical and Genealogy Registry, April 1849, gives a sketch of his life based on the best contemporary newspaper account, in the Concord Democrat and Freeman, February 1, 1849. There is a brief account of him in the Biographical Directory American Congress (1928) and in N. F. Carter, The Native Ministry of New Hampshire (1906).]

E.V.M.


MORRILL, Anson Peaslee, 1803-1887, anti-slavery governor of Maine, U.S. Congressman, 1861-1863.  Brother of abolitionist Lot Myrick Morrill.  Supported by Whigs and the Free-Soil-Party. Early founding member of the Republican Party in 1856. 

(American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 15, p. 884; Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. IV, p. 408; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 7, Pt. 1, pp. 196-197; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe).

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

MORRILL, Anson Peaslee, statesman, born in Belgrade, Kennebec county, Maine, 10 June, 1803; died  in Augusta, Maine, 4 July, 1887. He received a common-school education and devoted himself to mercantile pursuits in his native town. He soon bought an interest in a woollen-mill, and subsequently became connected with several extensive manufactories. In 1833 he was elected as a Democrat to the legislature, in 1839 he was made sheriff of Somerset county, and in 1850 he became land-agent. In 1853, when the Democratic convention decided to oppose prohibition, he cut loose from that party, and was a candidate for governor on the Free-soil and Prohibition tickets, but was defeated. The following year he was again a candidate, and, although there was no choice by the people, he was elected by the legislature, being the first Republican governor of Maine. He was an unsuccessful candidate for re-election, being defeated in the legislature through a coalition between the Whigs and Democrats. The party that Gov. Morrill had formed served as the nucleus for the movement in 1856 when the National Republican party first took the field, and he was a delegate to the convention that nominated John C. Frémont for president. He was elected to congress in 1860, and served from 4 July, 1861, till 3 March, 1863. Declining a re-election, he became largely interested in railroads in his native state, and remained out of politics until 1881, when he was sent to the legislature. He removed to Augusta in 1876.  Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. IV.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 7, Pt. 1, pp. 196-197

MORRILL, ANSON PEASLEE (June 10, 1803-July 4, 1887), governor of Maine and congressman, the son of Peaslee and Nancy (Macomber) Morrill and the descendant of John Morrill who was living at Kittery, Maine, as early as 1668, was born in Belgrade, Kennebec County, Maine. He had the advantages only of a common- school education, working during his spare time in a mill where corn was ground, wood sawed, and wool carded. At one time he taught school at Miramichi, New Brunswick, Canada. In early manhood he became the postmaster at Dearborn in Kennebec County, keeping at the same time a general store. Still a store-keeper, he was later postmaster at North Belgrade, and he lived for some time at Madison. In 1827 he was married to Rowena M. Richardson, who died in 1882. His great business opportunity came in 1844 when he was asked to take charge of a woolen-mill in Readfield, then on the verge of bankruptcy. Here his exceptional talents became evident. Putting the mill on a paying basis, he eventually became the owner of the factory and laid the foundations of a comfortable fortune. His political career began in 1834, when he served a term in the state legislature. He was sheriff of Somerset County in 1839 but lost this office in 1840, when Maine elected the Whig state and national ticket. In 1841 he refused reappointment from the newly elected Democratic governor. From 1850 to 1853 he was land agent of the state.

When the two questions, temperance and slavery, broke the unity of the Democrats in Maine, with considerable courage he led a bolting faction of the Democrats in 1853 on the temperance issue. His supporters were known as "Morrill Democrats," and as an independent candidate for the governorship he ran third. The following year, 1854, the Whigs and the Free soilers joined the temperance forces to give him a vote of about 44,000 against 28,000 for his opponent, Albion K. Parris. Since, however, there were four candidates he did not have a majority of the votes cast and the legislature chose him when it met the next January. The fusion party that elected him governor to ok the name Republican for the fir st time in Maine on August 7, 1854 (see W. F. P. Fogg, The Republican Party . .. with the History of its Formation in Maine, 1884). In the election of 1855 he again had a popular plurality, but the same Senate that elected his brother, Lot Myrick Morrill [q.v.], its president, appointed his Democratic opponent, Samuel Wells, governor. He was a delegate to the Republican National Convention of 1856. Elected to Congress in 1860, he served from 1861 to 1863 but declined reelection, preferring to make way for the election of James G. Blaine. With the exception of one more term in the state legislature, 1881-82, this ended his political service. His independence and impetuosity frequently offended many friends. His own acts and words often impeded his political progress. Others, however, were attracted by his ruggedness, honesty, and integrity. His superior business ability was re cognized when the railroad interests that had bought largely of the. stock of the Maine Central elect ed him president of the road. During the year he occupied this position he took a special interest in improving the efficiency of operation. From Readfield he moved to Augusta in 1879, where he died after a short illness, leaving two children.

[L. C. Hatch, Maine (1919) volume II; Reminiscences of Neal Dow (1898), pp. 482-95, 503-21; A. M. Smith, Morrill Kindred in America, volume II (1931); Harper's Weekly, July 16, 1887; Daily Eastern Argus (Portland), July 6, 1887.]

R. E. M.


MORRILL, Edmund Needham (February 12, 1834-March 14, 1909), congressman from Kansas and governor.  On October 5, 1857, he was elected to the free-state territorial legislature.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 7, Pt. 1, pp. 197-198;

MORRILL, EDMUND NEEDHAM (February 12, 1834-March 14, 1909), congressman from Kansas and governor, the son of Rufus and Mary (Webb) Morrill, was born at Westbrook, Cumberland County, Maine, and received his education at Westbrook Seminary. He removed to Brown County, Kansas, where he arrived on March 12, 1857, and set up a sawmill, which he operated until 1860. On October 5, 1857, he was elected to the free-state territorial legislature. On October 5, 1861, he enlisted in the 7th Kansas Cavalry and through the influence of Vice-President Hamlin of Maine was appointed, in August 1862, to be commissary of subsistence. He was mustered out with the rank of major, by brevet, in October 1865. On November 27, 1862, he had married Elizabeth A. Brettun, the daughter of William H. Brettun of Leavenworth, Kansas, who died in September 1868. On December 25, of the next year, he married Caroline J. Nash of Roxbury, Massachusetts, who bore him three children.

His life after the war was divided between business and politics. Although in political life almost continuously, he was not a professional politician in the usual sense. He was active in promoting the building of two railroads across the county in which he lived. He entered the banking business in 1871 at Hiawatha, later became interested in banks at Leavenworth and Kansas City, a s well as in a loan company at Atchison, and acquired extensive land holdings. Toward the end of his life he was rated as one of th e wealthiest men in the state. After his retirement from the governorship he developed one ·of the largest single apple orchards in the state, an orchard of 880 acres. He was active in promoting the educational and cultural interest of his community, established a public library in 1882, and assisted financially in establishing and maintaining the Hiawatha academy. He was a conservative in his general point of view on life and on public questions his attitude was further conditioned to a marked degree by his service as a Union soldier and by his interests as a banker.

From 1866 to 1872 he held county offices. In the latter year he was elected to the state Senate on the Republican ticket and was reelected in 1876. In that body he became chairman of the committee on ways and means and president pro tempore. From 1883 to 1891 he was a member of the federal Congress, where he received an assignment on the committee on invalid pensions. The eight years spent in the House of Representatives was devoted almost exclusively to pension legislation. He declined to stand for reelection in 1890. In 1894 he was brought forward against the Populists who then dominated Kansas, and was elected governor in spite of the charge that in his speculations in land with clouded titles he had defrauded large numbers of farmers of their homesteads and thereby built up a large part of his fortune (Ottawa Journal, September 20, 27, October 4, 1894, for excellent summary of charges; Atchison Daily Champion, October 30, 1894, for defense). His administration was embarrassed in carrying out a program by a Populist Senate. Among the leading problems of his term as governor were those arising from drought and destitution in the western part of the state, from the mortgage laws and rates of interest, and from the prohibition law which he upheld in a conservative although sincere fashion. His conception of his office was that the governor should execute laws and not attempt to make them (Morrill to C. J. Hammonds, January 30, 1895, correspondence of the governors of Kansas, Letter- press Books, volume III, p. 294). His theory of government was expressed in his statement that "when the government has protected the individual in his life and property ... he ought to hustle for himself to get bread" (Morrill to William A. Porter, January 19, 1895, correspondence of the governors of Kansas, Letter-press Books, volume III, p. 23). In 1896 he was renominated and in the bitterly fought campaign the opposing party, a Populist, Democratic, Free Silver combination brought up again the charge of 1894. He was defeated, although he ran ahead of the state ticket and the McKinley electors, and retired to Brown County to devote himself to his varied interests. He died in San Antonio, Texas.

[Private papers in the hands of his family; correspondence as governor of Kansas in State Historical Society Library, Topeka; F. W. Blackmar, Kansas (copyright 1912), volume II; A. T. Andreas, History of the State of Kan. (1883); Kansas State Historical Society Trans., volume X (1908); Kansas State Historical Society Collections, volume XII (1912); Who's Who in America, 1908-09; G. W. Harrington, Annals of Brown County, Kansas (1903); D. W. Wilder, The Annals of Kansas, new ed. (1886); World (Hiawatha, Kansas), esp. March 15-20, 1909.]

J.C. M.


MORRILL, Justin Smith, 1810-1898, abolitionist.  Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Vermont.  Served as Congressman December 1855-March 1867.  U.S. Senator 1873-1891.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. In 1854 he was elected as an Anti-Slavery Whig to the House of Representatives, commencing an unbroken service of twelve years in the House and almost thirty-two years in the Senate, to which he was elected in 1866.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. IV, p. 409; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 7, Pt. 1, pp. 198-199; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 15, p. 882; Congressional Globe).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 7, Pt. 1, pp. 198-199;

MORRILL, JUSTIN SMITH (April 14, 1810- December 28, 1898), representative and senator from Vermont, was the eldest of the ten children of Nathaniel and Mary (Hunt) Morrill. Of humble, sturdy, English stock, he was the descendant of Abraham Morrill who landed in Boston in 1632 and settled in Salisbury, Massachusetts. The Morrills settled in Strafford, Vermont, in 1795, where the boy was born and where his grandfather and father combined farming with the blacksmith's trade. He attended the village school and neighboring academies until the age of fifteen, when he became a clerk in the village store. He was in Portland, Maine, from 1828 to 1831 learning merchandising and then returned to Strafford and became a partner of his friend, Jedediah H. Harris, in the village store, which as a center of news and a forum of discussion was an excellent training-school for politicians. As a merchant he prospered, and in 1848 he was able to retire to a quiet life of reading and farming. On September 17, 1851, he was married to Ruth Barrell Swan of Easton, Massachusetts. They had two sons. As an amateur politician he had served on county and state committees, and in 1852 he was chosen to represent the Whigs at their national convention. The dissension of the Whig party at this convention influenced him throughout his life to labor to preserve harmony in the Republican party, in the Vermont organization of which he had played a prominent part in 1855.

In 1854 he was elected as an Anti-Slavery Whig to the House of Representatives, commencing an unbroken service of twelve years in the House and almost thirty-two years in the Senate, to which he was elected in 1866 and was returned at each election with virtual unanimity. This service in the House and Senate constituted the longest period of continuous service in the United States Congress so far recorded. In the House he became an important member of the committee on ways and means, of which he was chairman from 1865 to 1867; and in the Senate he served effectively as a member of the committee on finance, of which he was chairman from 1877 to 1879, 1881 to 1893, and 1895 to 1898. After an experimental period in the House, in which though a stanch abolitionist he sounded a temperate and conciliatory note on the great question of slavery, he found his real work in problems of tariff and finance. As a member of the committee on ways and means he wrote a bill providing for the payment of outstanding treasury notes, authorizing a loan, and revising the tariff. This act, known as the Morrill Tariff Act, was intended to be a revenue as well as a protective measure, but amendments made it more strongly protectionist than he had desired. Although causing bitter resentment in the South, the bill was passed early in 1861. His tariff views were somewhat colored by a traditional distrust of Great Britain, and he never thoroughly mastered the principles of international trade, but as a conscientious and not uncompromising protectionist he remained throughout his career influential in tariff legislation, especially in the bill of 1883. In the field of finance lay his greatest talents. With an attack upon the legal tender bill, which, however, was passed in 1862, he began a long fight against inconvertible money and financial inflation. During the Civil War he prepared a series of internal revenue bills and became the champion of economy in the House. After the war he was a leader in the financial reconstruction and an inflexible advocate of a speedy return to specie payments. He was offered a position in the cabinet of President Hayes as secretary of the treasury but declined. In the Cleveland administration he attacked the free-silver heresy.

Perhaps his greatest accomplishment was his Land-Grant College Act, which led to the development of the important system of state educational institutions aided by the federal government. In 1857 he introduced a bill "donating public lands to the several States and Territories which may provide colleges for the benefit of agriculture and the mechanic arts" (Congressional Globe, 35 Congress  I Session, p. 32). This was vetoed by Buchanan in 1859, but a similar bill was signed by Lincoln in 1862. In 1890 he introduced in the Senate the so-called Second Morrill Act, under which $25,000 is given annually by the federal government to each of the land-grant colleges. As chairman of the Senate committee on building and grounds he rendered valuable service. He was largely responsible for the plan and execution of the terraces, fountains, and gardens of the Capitol and the completion of the Washington Monument. To his original proposal and persevering legislation is also chiefly due the Library of Congress. His artistic and literary interests found further outlet in his numerous contributions to current periodicals, among them being his book, Self-Consciousness of Noted Persons (1882), his Forum series of "Notable Letters from my Political Friends" (October-December 1897), and other articles in the Forum from time to time (August 1896, January, July 1889, October 1898).

As a politician he was noted for sound reasoning, clear apprehension and statement, faithful labor, and temperate, courteous attitude. He was an exceptionally skilful legislator. In appearance he was imposing, being tall and angular and having stern Roman features and side whiskers. As a man he was characterized by urbanity and charm of manner, modesty, culture, and great love of country. He was a genial host at his home on Thomas Circle in Washington, and his birthday parties were among the important social events of the Capitol. In his later days in the Senate his prestige was great, and he was often referred to as "The Nestor of the Senate," "The grand old man of the Republican Party," and "The Gladstone of America." He died in Washington, survived by one of his two sons.

[Papers and letters are in Library of Congress; published material includes W. B. Parker, The Life and Public Services of Justin Smith Morrill (1924); G. W. Atherton, The Legislative Career of Justin Smith Morrill (1900 ?); I. M. Tarbell, "The Tariff in Our Times," American Magazine, December 1906, pp. II6-32; Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of Justin Smith Morrill; (1879); Justin Smith Morrill: Centenary Exercises (1910); A. M. Smith, Morrill Kindred in America, volume II (1931); Evening Star (Washington), December 27, 28, 1898. A discussion of the credit due to Jonathan Baldwin Turner [q. v.] for the Land-Grant College Act is in Parker, ante, pp. 278-84; the claim is set forth in some detail in E. J. James, "The Origin of the Land Grant Act of 1862," University of Illinois Studies, volume IV, no. 1 (1910); a brief consideration and decision against the Turner claim in I. L. Kandel, "Federal Aid for Vocational Education," The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching Bulletin, no. 10 (1917), p. 79.]

C. M. F.

A.R.B.


MORRILL, Lot Myrick, 1813-1883, lawyer, temperance advocate, opposed slavery, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, 1876, two-term Republican Governor of Maine, U.S. Senator, 1861-1869.  Joined the Republican Party due to his position against slavery and its expansion into the new territories.  Supported the bill in Congress that emancipated slaves in Washington, DC.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. After the war, he supported higher education for African Americans.  In 1866, he supported voting rights for African Americans in Washington, DC. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. IV, pp. 408-409; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 7, Pt. 1, pp. 199-200; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 15, p. 884; Congressional Globe; Biographical Directory of the United States Congress) 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 7, Pt. 1, pp. 199-200;

MORRILL, LOT MYRICK (May 3, 1812-January 10, 1883), governor of Maine, United States senator, secretary of the treasury, one of the fourteen children of Peaslee and Nancy (Macomber) Morrill, was born in Belgrade, Me. After attending the common-school and the local academy he taught in order to obtain money to attend Waterville (now Colby) College, which he entered at the age of eighteen. He remained there but a short time, however. For a year he was principal of a private school in western New York. Returning to Maine, he began the study of law under Judge Fuller of Readfield. Admitted to the bar in 1839, he built up a considerable law practice chiefly among Democratic friends. Being much in demanc1 as a speaker on temperance and political subjects, he won some local fame so that when he moved to the state capital, Augusta, in 1841, he was frequently employed before legislative committees. This was his school of politics. His law partners in Augusta were James W. Bradbury and Richard D. Rice. Becoming chairman of the state Democratic committee in 1849, he held that office until 1856, when he refused to attend the meetings of the state committee, writing, "The candidate [Buchanan] is a good one, but the platform is a flagrant outrage upon the country and an insult to the North" (Talbot, post, p. 232). The breach with his party, thus made complete, began in 1855 when he opposed pledging the Democratic party to further concessions to the slave states. The same step had already been take n by his brother, Anson Peaslee Morrill, and his friend, Hannibal Hamlin [qq.v.]. He was a member of the state House of Representatives in 1854 and of the Senate in 1856. His immediate election to the presidency of the Senate by the Democratic majority, from whom he had already shown divergence of principles, has been explained on the ground that his ability on the floor was more feared than his prestige as president. His Republicanism became definite in 1856 and, although his nomination to the governorship was opposed by some because of his late conversion, he was elected and twice ree1ected governor, serving in 1858, 1859, and 1860. Both in the legislature and as governor he was a strong opponent of the repeal of Maine's prohibition law, against which there ha d been a reaction.

When Hannibal Hamlin resigned from the Senate to accept the vice-presidency under Lincoln, the state legislature, in January 1861, elected Morrill as his successor. Reelected, he served to March 4, 1869, being succeeded by Hannibal Hamlin, who defeated him by one vote J in the Maine Senate. In the so-called peace convention of February 1861 he opposed with conspicuous ability the arguments of Crittenden (L. E. Chittenden, A Report of the Debates and Proceedings ... of the Conference Convention, 1864, pp. 144-50), and he maintained the same position when the Crittenden Resolutions were presented to Congress in March. In March 1862 he spoke in favor of a bill to confiscate the property and to emancipate the slaves of "rebels," seeing clearly that the question was not one of law but one of placing in the hands of the military authorities a weapon to help them win the war (Speech ... Delivered in the Senate ... March 5, 1862, 1862, also in Congressional Globe, 37 Congress, 2 Session, pp. rn74-78). In April 1862 he led the debate which resulted in the act emancipating slaves in the District of Columbia (Ibid., p. 1516). Later, in June 1866, he was a prominent advocate of the act th at conferred suffrage on the colored citizens of the District (Ibid., 39 Congress, I Session, pp. 3432-34). He was a strong adherent of congressional Reconstruction (Reconstruction. Speech in the Senate ... February 5, 1868, 1868; also in Congressional Globe, 40 Congress, 2 Session, app. pp. 110-17), and voted for the impeachment of President Johnson, although his colleague from Maine, William P. Fessenden [q.v.], voted for acquittal. On the death of Fessenden in September 1869 he was appointed to fill out the unexpired term. He was reelected by the state legislature in 1871.

Although he had previously refused to accept appointment as secretary of war, resigning from the Senate on July 7, 1876, he accepted Grant's appointment as secretary of the treasury to succeed Benjamin H. Bristow [q.v. ]. His studies as chairman of the Senate committee on appropriations had fitted him for the duties of this office and he was a worthy successor to Bristow. When he left the treasury on March 8, 1877, President Hayes offered him the ministry to Great Britain. Enfeebled health, following on a severe illness of 1870 and another attack of 1877, influenced him to accept the lucrative post of collector at Portland rather than a more important and responsible position. He held the collectorship at the time of his death in Portland. His wife, Charlotte Holland Vance, whom he had married in 1845, and four daughters survived him.

[G. F. Talbot, "Lot M. Morrill," Maine Historical Society Collections, 2 series, volume V (1894); J. W. North, The History of Augusta (1870); Biographical Encyclopedia of Maine (1885); C. E. Hamlin, The Life and Times of Hannibal Hamlin (1899); A. M. Smith, Morrill Kindred m America, volume II (1931); Advertiser (Portland), January 10, 1883; Daily Eastern Argus, January 11, 1883; date of birth from his daughter, Anne Morrill Hamlin.]

R. E. M.


MORRIS, Anthony (August 23, 1654-October 23, 1721), Quaker leader of early Pennsylvania,

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 7, Pt. 1, pp. 200-201;

MORRIS, ANTHONY (August 23, 1654-October 23, 1721), Quaker leader of early Pennsylvania, son of Anthony and Elizabeth (Senior) Morris, was born in Old Gravel Lane, Stepney, London. In his youth he joined the Society of Friends " by convincement," and was married to Mary Jones, March 30, 1676, in the Friends' Savoy Meeting House, in the Strand, London. Early in 1683 he removed to Burlington, West Jersey, and about three years later took up residence in Philadelphia, where he served on numerous committees, and held for some time the position of clerk (presiding officer) of the Monthly Meeting. In 1687 he was clerk of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and as such signed an "Advice" to all Monthly Meetings against the sale of rum to the Indians. In 1688 he sat in the Quarterly Meeting of Philadelphia that considered the famous petition against slavery presented by the German Friends of Germantown, and signed on behalf of the meeting the Minute passing the matter on to the Yearly Meeting. When past middle life he began to speak in meetings for worship. Later he traveled in the ministry to New England and other parts of America, and to Great Britain.

He seems to have prospered financially, judging by the ample properties he owned in Burlington and Philadelphia. His business, in part at least, was brewing, in a day when no odium was attached thereto. He retired from active business, however, when he became engaged in the ministry. His interest in education is indicated by the fact that he signed, in 1697 / 98, the petition to the governor and council for the charter of a public school (the present 'William Penn Charter School) and was appointed by the charter as a member of the first board of overseers. As early as 1691 he was serving as a justice of the peace in Philadelphia, and he served in that capacity for some years. In 1693 he became presiding justice of the Court of Common Plea s for the city and county of Philadelphia and held that position for about five years. In August 1694 he was commissioned associate justice of the provincial supreme court, a position which he held, with his other judicial offices, until 1698. In the charter of 1691 incorporating the city of Philadelphia he was named one of six aldermen; in the city charter of 1701 he was named again to the same office. For one year, 1703-04, he served as mayor of Philadelphia and in that capacity signed an interesting protest to the deputy governor in defense of the rights of the city (Minutes of the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania, II, 1852, p. 161). He was twice elected, in 1695 and 1696, a member of the provincial council and was a member of the Assembly from 1698 to 1704. Morris was married four times: in 1689 to his second wife, Agnes, widow of Cornelius Born, in Philadelphia; in 1693/94 to Mary, widow of Thomas Coddington, at Newport, R. I.; and in 1700 to Elizabeth Watson, in Philadelphia. He had fifteen children.

[Sources include: R. C. Moon, The Morris Family of Philadelphia (5 volumes, 1898-1909), esp. volume I; J. W. Jordan, ed., Encyclopedia of Pennsylvania Biography, volume X (1918); G. P. Donehoo, ed., Pennsylvania: A History (1926), volume IX; F. B. Lee, ed., Genealogy and Memorial History of the State of New Jersey (1910), volume III; J. H. Martin, Martin's Bench and Bar of Philadelphia (1883); Bull. of Friends' Historical Society of Philadelphia, May 1919; the Friend, July 21, 1855; John Smith, "The Lives of the Ministers of the Gospel among the People Called Quakers" (1770), a manuscript in the library of Haverford College; and manuscript records of the Friends preserved at 304 Arch Street, Philadelphia. A few manuscripts written or signed by Anthony Morris are in the library of the Pennsylvania History ]

R.W.K. 


MORRIS, Anthony (February 10: 1766-November 3, 1860), merchant,  opposed slavery.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 7, Pt. 1, p. 201;

MORRIS, ANTHONY (February 10: 1766-November 3, 1860), merchant, was born at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Samuel and Rebecca (Wistar) Morris and a descendant of Anthony Morris, 1654-1721 [q.v.]. His father was a merchant and captain of the 1st Troop, Philadelphia City Cavalry, during the Revolution. He studied with private tutors, then attended the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in 1783. After studying law he was admitted to the Philadelphia bar on July 27, 1787, but he practised little for he was more interested in business and carried on an extensive trade with the East Indies. He was speaker of the Pennsylvania Senate, 1793-94, and from 1800 to 1806 was a director of the Bank of North America. From May 1810, after the American charge at Madrid, George W. Erving, had been forced to leave the country because of the chaotic conditions of factional and civil war, Morris, together with Thomas L. Brent and Thomas Gough, was an unofficial representative of the United States in Spain. He was accused by his companions of seeking to obtain the appointment as minister to Spain and there is no doubt that he was a party to a rather discreditable intrigue, in which certain Spanish officials were involved, to make himself minister by discrediting Erving with the Spanish government. In 1814 when diplomatic relations were resumed Erving was renamed as minister to Spain and Morris returned to America. During his sojourn at Madrid he suggested to the United States that East and West Florida could be purchased for a reasonable sum. Though this suggestion received no attention at the time, it was eventually realized in the Treaty of 1819 by which Spain ceded East and West Florida and the adjacent islands to the United States. He seems, however, to have taken no part in the negotiations. About 1830-31 he founded an agricultural school at Bolton Farms in Bristol Township, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, but this venture was not successful. He served as a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania from 1806 to 1817. His wife was Mary Pemberton whom he had married on May 13, 1790. They had four children. During the latter part of his life he resided with his daughter at "The Highlands," near Georgetown, D. C., where he died.

[J. L. Chamberlain, ed., Universities and Their Sons: University of Pennsylvania, volume II (1902); R. C. Moon, The Morris Family of Phila., volumes I and II (1898); H. B. Fuller, The Purchase of Florida (1906); J. L. M. Curry, "Diplomatic Services of Geo. Wm. Erving," Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, 2 series V (1890).]

J.H.F. 


MORRIS, Edmund (August 28, 1804-May 4, 1874), editor, writer on agriculture and other subjects, he was an ardent opponent of slavery and was active in support of the Union cause. One of his friends was Horace Greeley, for whom he frequently wrote editorials. During and after the Civil War he was a regular contributor to the New York Tribune, the Newark Daily Advertiser, and the Philadelphia Press.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 7, Pt. 1, pp. 204-205;

MORRIS, EDMUND (August 28, 1804-May 4, 1874), editor, writer on agriculture and other subjects, was born in Burlington, New Jersey, a descendant of Anthony Morris, 1654-1721 [q.v.]. His father was Richard Hill Morris and his mother was Mary, daughter of Richard S. Smith of Moorestown, New Jersey. He was married on December 27, 1827, to Mary P. Jenks, daughter of

William Jenks of Bridgetown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. They had a son and three daughters. Morris spent his school days in Philadelphia and subsequently learned the printing trade in the office of the Freeman's Journal. In 1824, when he was nineteen years of age, he formed a partnership with S. R. Kramer of Philadelphia and bought the Pennsylvania Correspondent, published at Doylestown, the name of which was changed to Bucks County Patriot and Farmers' Advertiser. The partnership was dissolved in February 1827 and Morris conducted the paper alone until October of the same year, when he sold it. Subsequently he was associated with several Philadelphia publications including the Ariel, a literary weekly. He returned to his native town, and in 1846 became the editor of the Burlington Gazette with which he remained for two years. In 1854 he assumed the editorship of the Daily State Gazette, published at Trenton, New Jersey, resigning his post in 1856 when he returned to Burlington to remain until his death.

Throughout his life Morris was interested in rural pursuits and wrote on agriculture and other general subjects. He took up farm land in the neighborhood of Burlington and wrote several pamphlets embodying his experience. One of these, Ten Acres Enough for Intensive Gardening (1844), had a wide sale and was translated into several languages. This gave him a reputation and brought him into contact with those interested in agriculture and thus led him into the business of selling farms in the vicinity of Burlington. The town of Beverly on the Delaware River below Burlington owes its foundation to his efforts. He also became interested in silk culture and impoverished himself in experimenting with mulberry plants. He was an ardent opponent of slavery and was active with his pen in support of the Union cause. One of his friends was Horace Greeley, for whom he frequently wrote editorials. During and after the Civil War he was a regular contributor to the New York Tribune, the Newark Daily Advertiser, and the Philadelphia Press. He experimented with mechanical inventions, and it is claimed that he was one of the first persons in the United States to print in two colors. His published writings include How to Get a Farm and Where to Find One (1864) and Farming for Boys (1868). He edited Derrick and Drill (1865), a compilation of information regarding the oil fields of Pennsylvania.

[W. E. Schermerhorn, The History of Burlington, N. J. (1927); W.W. H. Davis, History of Doylestown, Old and New (1903); Mary Morris Ferguson, The Family of Edmund Morris (1899); Report of the State Librarian of Pennsylvania, 1900 (1901); Daily State Gazette (Trenton), May 6, 1874.].

H. S.


MORRIS, Edward Dafydd (October 31, 1825-November 21, 1915), Presbyterian clergyman, educator, he made political speeches in support of the Free-Soil party.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 7, Pt. 1, pp. 205-206;

MORRIS, EDWARD DAFYDD (October 31, 1825-November 21, 1915), Presbyterian clergyman, educator, was born at Utica, New York. His father, Dafydd Edward Morris, was a native of Wales who came to the United States in his youth; his mother, Anne (Lewis), was of Welsh descent. The father, a man of strong religious principles, was a shoemaker, later conducting a small grocery business. The son enjoyed speaking and preaching in the Welsh language during his public life. He attended private schools in Utica and prepared for college at Whitestown Seminary, New York. Entering the sophomore class at Yale in 1846, he ranked high in scholarship while earning his living. He made political speeches for the Free-Soil party and his writing attracted attention. He graduated at Yale in 1849, a classmate of Timothy Dwight [q.v.].

Graduating in 1852 at Auburn Theological Seminary, where he studied theology under Laurens P. Hickok [q. v.], Morris was ordained, by the Cayuga Presbytery, pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church of Auburn, New York. In 1855 he went to the Second Presbyterian Church of Columbus, Ohio. From this scholarly and productive ministry he was called in 1867 to the professorship of church history in Lane Theological Seminary, Cincinnati, and in 1874 was transferred to the chair of systematic theology, which he held until 1897 when he resign ed and was made professor emeritus. Thereafter, he made his home at Columbus, for a time still lecturing at Lane besides speaking in various places and writing for publication. He was in responsible relation to Lane Seminary for thirty-four year, having become one of its trustees in 1863 and serving on the board until he became one of its faculty. He was a gain elected a trustee in 1870 in order to serve in a n emergency as treasurer and superintendent of the Seminary, a t ask for which his business abilities specially fitted him. During the closing years of his professorship he won the gratitude of the trustees by his strenuous and successful efforts to assist the Seminary through a period of stress and peril.

Morris was moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in 1875. He was a member of the Church's committee on the revision of the creed, to which he gave active service. He was an earnest upholder of the theological standards of his Church, which he interpreted in a liberal spirit that accorded with his training and the temper of his mind. He was a vigorous exponent of the "New School" theology. His students were impress ed with the lucidity, catholic range, and deeply evangelical spirit of his instruction, and appreciated his constant personal interest in them. His courtly bearing, brilliant dark eyes, and ruddy complex ion gave him an appearance of vigor and distinction, enhanced in his later years by abundant white hair and beard. He was twice married: on July 29, 1852, to Frances Elizabeth, daughter of Dan and Fanny (Rowe) Parmelee of F air Have n, Connecticut, who died in 1866; and on March 26, 1867, to Mary Bryan Treat of Tallmadge, Ohio, who di ed in 1893. Four children were born of the fir st marri age; two, of the second. He died in Columbus three weeks after hi  ninetieth birthday, having maintained his menta l activity to the end. His published works include: Outlines of Theology (1880), Ecclesiology (1885), Scripture Readings (l887), Is there Salvation after Death? (1887), Thirty Years in Lane (1897), Theology of the Westminster Symbols (1900), The Presbyterian Church, New School (1905).

[Ohio State Journal (Columbus), May 6, 1 895, and November 22, 1915; Herald-Dispatch (Utica), November 22, 1915; The Continent (New York), August 3, 1911, and December 2, 1915; Herald and Presbyter (Cincinnati), November 24 and December 1, 1915; General Biographical Catalog Auburn Theol. Sem. (1918); Obit. Record Graduates Yale University, 1916; personal characteristics described in letters from Rev. Dr. Arthur Judson Brown, New York, and others.]

E.D.E.


MORRIS, Edward Joy (July 16, 1815- December 31, 1881), legislator, diplomat, and author. He took a leading part in the movement for the organization of the Republican party and was elected to the Thirty-fifth, Thirty-sixth and Thirty-seventh congresses and served from March 4, 1857, to June 8, 1861, when he resigned.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 7, Pt. 1, p. 206;

MORRIS, EDWARD JOY (July 16, 1815- December 31, 1881), legislator, diplomat, and author, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He matriculated at the University of Pennsylvania in the class of 1835, left in his freshman year, and was graduated from Harvard College in 1836. He studied law in Philadelphia, and was admitted to the bar in 1842, meanwhile being elected to the state Assembly in which he served during the years 1841-43. He was then elected as a Whig representative to the Twenty-eighth Congress for one term, 1843-45. He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection. On Jan. 10, 1850, he was appointed charge d'affaires to the Two Sicilies and was stationed at Naples until August 26, 1853. On his return from Naples he became a member of the board of directors of Girard College, Philadelphia, and was a member of the state House of Representatives in 1856. He took a leading part in the movement for the organization of the Republican party and was elected to the Thirty-fifth, Thirty-sixth and Thirty-seventh congresses and served from March 4, 1857, to June 8, 1861, when he resigned. On the latter date President Lincoln appointed him minister to Turkey, where he served with zeal and fidelity until October 25, 1870. While at Constantinople he negotiated a commercial treaty which was approved by the United States Senate in 1862.

Morris was a fine linguist, speaking French, Italian, and German fluently, was able to converse in Greek, and knew Turkish and Arabic. In manner he was said to be most agreeable and conciliating. He was a frequent contributor to American magazines and newspapers for many years and was also the author of several works. His Notes of a Tour through Turkey, Greece, Egypt, Arabia Petrea to the Holy Land (2 volumes, 1842) is sometimes referred to as "Morris' Travels." He published in 1854 The Turkish Empire: Its Historical, Statistical and Religious Condition, translated from the German of Alfred de Besse, giving an idea of the "past and present condition of the Ottoman people and empire." In it Morris incorporated excerpts from French writers and a "considerable amount of original matter suggested by his own travels." In 1854 he also published from the original of Theodor Mugge, Afraja, a Norwegian and Lapland Tale, or Life and Love in Norway, which Bayard Taylor called "one of the most remarkable romances of the generation." Another translation was his Corsica, Picturesque, Historical and Social (1855), from the German of Ferdinand Gregorovius, which contained a sketch of the early life of Napoleon.

Morris left Turkey in 1870 and returned to the United States. He had married, July 15, 1847, Elizabeth Gatliff Ella, daughter of John Ella, of Philadelphia. His wife having died sometime prior to 1870, he married Susan Leighton, in Philadelphia, in October 1876. By his first marriage he had two daughters, one of whom survived him. He died in Philadelphia and was buried in Laurel Hill Cemetery.

[Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); S. A. Allibone, A Critical Directory of English Literature and British and American Authors, volume II (1870); Pub. Ledger (Philadelphia), January 2, 1882; Probate Court records, Philadelphia; records of the U. S. Dept. of State. ]

A. E. I. K.


MORRIS, Gouverneur, 1752-1816, Pennsylvania, statesman, diplomat, founding father, opponent of slavery.  He called slavery a “nefarious institution… the curse of Heaven on the state where it prevailed…a defiance of the most sacred laws of humanity.” Working with John Jay, Morris tried to abolish slavery in the State of New York. 

(Bruns, 1977, pp. 520-521; Dumond, 1961, pp. 28, 38, 40-41; Zilversmit, 1967, pp. 139-140; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 7, Pt. 1, p. 209-212; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 15, p. 896). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 7, Pt. 1, p. 209-212;

MORRIS, GOUVERNEUR (January 31, 1752- November6, 1816), statesman, diplomat, was born in the manor house at Morrisania, New York, the son of Lewis Morris, second lord of the manor, by his second wife, Sarah Gouverneur. From his grandfather, Lewis Morris [q.v.], the first lord of the manor, and from his father, both of whom had served on the bench and in the assembly of New York, defending the rights of the colonists against the royal governors, he inherited traditions of public service and political autonomy. His mother was a descendant of a Huguenot family driven from France by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685; and it was doubtless the French strain in Morris' blood that lent to his conversation and his writings the charming combination of graceful manner, pervasive humor, and cynical philosophical detachment which contrasts so noticeably with the rather ponderous and prosaic rectitude of most of his revolutionary associates.

While he was at school in the Huguenot settlement of New Rochelle where he had frequent opportunity to hear his mother's language spoken, the French power was driven from America and the quarrel between the mother country and the English colonies drew rapidly to its crisis. In the year of the Stamp Act Morris entered King's College, New York, from which he graduated in 1768 at the age of sixteen, just as the British government was dispatching regiments of redcoats to Boston to enforce the provisions of the Townshend legislation. But if the atmosphere of that "provincial Oxford" under its Loyalist president affected the young man with either devotion or repugnance to King George and his friends in Parliament, there is nothing in Morris' record to show it. His bachelor's and master 's essays were pretty conceits of rhetoric, the one on "Wit and Beauty" and the other on "Love." After a period of study in the office of William Smith, the historian and late r the chief justice of the province, Morris was admitted to the bar at the age of nineteen and soon built up a practice which, had it not been constantly interrupted by his political and diplomatic activities, would have put him in the foremost rank of the lawyers of his day. But family influence, a brilliant intellect, unfailing self-assurance, and a remarkable social aptitude combined to make a political career inevitable for Gouverneur Morris. Before he had reached his majority he arrested the attention of the politicians by a vigorous attack upon a bill proposed by the provincial assembly providing for the emission of paper money to liquidate the debt incurred by the French and Indian War.

Until the clash of arms at Lexington made the breach with Great Britain inevitable, Morris was a conservative. As a member of the landed aristocracy he dreaded the social upheaval which he believe d would follow in the train of a "democratic" revolution. "I see, and I see it with fear and trembling," he wrote in 1774, "that if the disputes with Britain continue, we shall be under the worst of all possible dominions ... the domination of a riotous mob .. . . It is the interest of all men, therefore,' to seek for reunion with the parent state" (Sparks, Life, I, 25). Yet when the breach came, Morris adhered unreservedly to the American cause, at no small cost to his family and social connections. Though his half-brothers Lewis and Richard [qq.v.], were active patriots, his half-brother Staats Long Morris became a major-general in the British army and married the Duchess of Gordon; and for writing even a filial letter to his Loyalist mother, Gouverneur Morris fell for a time under suspicion.

The last colonial legislature in New York under the royal governor adjourned in April 1775, and on May 22 a provincial congress of some eighty delegates met at New York City to assume the responsibility of governing the colony. Morris took his seat in this revolutionary body as a representative from Westchester County, and from the first took a leading part, holding the balance between the radical agitators who wished to inaugurate a reign of t error against the Loyalists and the strong Loyalist element who hope d that the British warships in the harbor would make short work of the revolutionary congress. Realizing that the colonists must present a united front if they were to win their rights from Great Britain either by remonstrance or by force, Morris was a strong defender of the dignity and power of the Continental Congress at Philadelphia. To that body, he insisted, should be entrusted the whole re sponsibility of the negotiations for reconciliation with England, as well as the control of the issue of paper money by the colonies. He was a nationalist before the birth of the nation.

When Washington arrived in New York with the Continental Army, after the British evacuation of Boston, the courage of the patriots in the congress and the colony was fortified; and when, three months later, Washington read the Declaration of Independence to his soldiers in Bowling Green, New York was ready to accept the responsibility of an independent state. Morris sat in the constitutional convention which met in July 1776, and with John Jay and Robert R. Livingston drafted the frame of government, adopted the following year, under which the state was to live for n early half a century. His plea for religious tole ration was successful; in spite of Jay's proposal to impose a special oath of loyalty on Roman Catholics, but the combined efforts of Morris and Jay failed to move the convention to abolish slavery in the state. Morris also labored hard for the creation of a strong executive, with powers of suspensive veto and of appointment, subject to the ratification of the legislature. He secured the provision for a single governor instead of an executive board, but the fear of executive tyranny was still strong enough to hamper the governor by the cumbrous faction-ridden councils of revision and appointment which vexed the politics of the state for more than four decades. When the work of the convention was done Morris was appointed on committees, fir st to organize the new government, then to act as a council of safety until the new governor, George Clinton [q.v.], and the legislature were elected. As a member of th e Council of Safety Morris visited the northern army which was resisting the advance of Burgoyne toward Albany. He was an ardent supporter of General Schuyler [q.v.], and with Jay went to Philadelphia on a belated mission to prevent Schuyler from being superseded by Horatio Gates.

Morris' versatility of talent and soundness of judgment were never more in evidence than during the two years 1778-79, when, as a young man in his middle twenties, he sat in the Continental Congress. Financial, military, and diplomatic matters engaged his chief attention. He was chairman of several leading committees and his facile pen was requisitioned for the draft of many an important document, such as the report on Lord North's conciliation offer of 1778 (reprinted in Morris' Observations on the American Revolution, 1779), a public paper on the significance of the treaty with France (Address of the Congress to the Inhabitants of the United States, 1778), the draft of instructions to Benjamin Franklin, first minister of the United States to the Court of Louis XVI, and a comprehensive letter of instructions for the envoy to be sent to Europe to negotiate a treaty of peace and commerce with Great Britain. These instructions, approved in August 1779, six weeks before John A dams was appointed to carry them out, formed the basis of important provisions in the final treaty of peace four years later. On an official visit of inspection to the army at Valley Forge, early in 1778, Morris came into close contact with Washington, to whom he remained devoted for life, and of whose military policies he became perhaps the most able and ardent defender in Congress. Because he refused to enlist the support of Congress for Governor Clinton and his New Yorkers in their claims to Vermont, Morris was defeated for reelection to the Continental Congress in the autumn of 1779. He thereupon transferred his citizenship to Pennsylvania and resumed the practice of law and the cultivation of polite society in the gay city of Philadelphia. He could not remain long out of public life, however. A series of brilliant articles on the Continental finances which he contributed under the signature "An American" to the Pennsylvania Packet, February-April 1780, brought him a year later the invitation from Robert Morris [q.v.], newly created superintendent of finance, to serve as his assistant. This position the younger Morris (who was not a relative of the Superintendent) held from 178r to 1785, his most notable service being a plan for a decimal system of coinage (Sparks, Diplomatic Correspondence, XII, Sr) which was later simplified and perfected by Jefferson and Hamilton.

Morris was elected to the Pennsylvania delegation to the Constitutional Convention of 1787, and took part in the debates of that body more frequently than any other member on the floor, not even excepting James Madison. He favored a strong, centralized government in the hands of the rich and the well-born. He would have a president elected for life, with power to appoint a Senate of life members. The suffrage for presidential and congressional electors should be limited to freeholders: "Give the votes to the people who have no property," he argued, "and they will sell them to the rich" (Farrand, post, II, 203). The federal government should have "compleat and compulsive operation" (Ibid., I, 34) throughout the country. Considering that "State attachments, and State importance" had been the "bane of this Country," Morris was willing to see "all the Charters & Constitutions of the States . . . thrown into the fire" (Ibid., I, 531, 553). He strenuously opposed the equal representation of the states in the Senate, and the concessions to slavery in the three-fifths rule and the extension of the slave trade for twenty years. Yet when he was defeated in this extreme program he loyally accepted the bundle of compromises which compose the Constitution, and used his incomparable skill in putting the document into its final literary form.

None of the framers of the Constitution had better claims to high office under it than Gouverneur Morris. But his frankly cynical contempt for "democracy" was a poor asset for the solicitation of votes, and the large interests which he had acquired in various commercial ventures some of them in association with Robert Morris -tempted him to forsake public life for business. He had purchased the family mansion at Morrisania from his elder brother and after the Convention he returned to his native state to live, but was hardly settled on the old manor when business took him to France as agent for Robert Morris to press a claim against the Farmers General rising out of a tobacco contract (Sparks, Life, I, 265, 308). Business, diplomatic duties, and recreational travel kept him in Europe for nearly a decade. He arrived in Paris in February 1789, in time to see the curtain rise on the great drama of the French Revolution. His fame as one of the founders of the American Republic had preceded him. Wealth, affability, family connections, a perfect command of the language, and that sprightly intellectual versatility which is so dear to the heart of the cultured French 'people opened all doors to him, even the doors of the Court.

After Jefferson's return to the United States at the close of 1789, Morris was the most influential American in Paris. He was engaged in plans for opening the tobacco trade on better terms for Americans, for supplying American wheat to the French market, getting the American debt to France transferred to private hands (his own and those of his associates), and selling American lands. These enterprises brought him often before French ministers and committees to urge the modification of the French customs system for the benefit of American trade. His wide range of friendships brought him into contact with leaders of all shades of political opinion, and his immunity from diplomatic responsibility during the first three years of the Revolution allowed him to dispense criticism and counsel freely. The voluminous diary which he kept during these years, supplemented by a diligent correspondence with Washington, Jay, Hamilton, Livingston, King, and other friends at home, furnishes a mine of information and shrewd comment on the men and measures of the Revolution. "You are constantly making remarkable prophecies which turn out to be true," said the French minister to Great Britain to him in July 1790 (Diary and Letters, I, 336). The historian Taine, who drew heavily on Morris in his volumes on the French Revolution, ranked him with Arthur Young, Mallet du Pan, and Mounier in value as a source (Derniers Essais de Critique et d' Histoire, 1894; 6th ed., 1923, p. 307). Morris believed in a constitutional monarchy for France; but he had little confidence in the capacity of a people without political training to make a workable constitution, and still less in the capacity 0£ Louis XVI and his courtiers to provide the authority, order, and justice necessary for the maintenance of the monarchy. Nevertheless, if the monarchy were to be saved in France, Louis XVI must be saved: and Morris even went so far as to draft and urge the carrying out of a plan for the rescue of the king from his virtual imprisonment in the Tuileries.

Early in 1792 President Washington named Morris as minister to France. The nomination was bitterly fought in the Senate, partly because of Morris' aristocratic views and his unconciliatory manners, partly because of the disappointing results of his special mission to London in 1790--91, when he attempted to settle the controversies over debts, trading-posts, impressments, and commercial privileges left over from the peace treaty of 1783 (see S. F. Bemis, Jay's Treaty, 1923). Had the senators known that at the very moment of their deliberations Morris was deeply engaged in the plot to get the king out of Paris, they would certainly not have ratified his nomination-even by the narrow margin of 16 to 11 votes. Still, no one could have represented the United States at Paris better than Morris did in the stormy years 1792-94. Morris was the only foreign minister who refused to leave Paris when the reign of terror converted the city into a shambles. He stayed in the face of repeated insults and perils to vindicate with dignity and courage the full rights of his countrymen, and to offer the asylum of his house to many a refugee in danger of the guillotine. He was recalled at the · request of the French government in the late summer of 1794, as a quid pro quo for the dismissal of "Citizen" Genet [q.v.] by President Washington. Morris did not return to America for another four years, however; he spent the intervening time traveling in various countries, from Scotland to Austria, attending to his manifold business interests, studying the confused European political scene, and writing letters to the British Foreign Office reporting his observations (S. F. Bemis, The American Secretaries of State, volume II, 1927, p. 21; Sparks, Life; I, 424, III, 83-87, 89, 93).

Though he was but forty-two years old when he quitted his ministerial post at Paris, Morris was practically done with politics. To be sure, he had what he called in his diary "the misfortune" to be elected in April 1800 to fill an unexpired term in the United States Senate; but soon after he took his seat as a pronounced Federalist the Democratic-Republicans, under the leadership of Aaron Burr, got control of the New York legislature, and Morris was defeated for reelection in the autumn of 1802, despite the fact that he had supported Jefferson's Louisiana policy. On the expiration of his term the following March, he retired to the new mansion which he had built at Morrisania and spent the remaining thirteen years of his life in cultivating his estate and his friends. On Christmas day, 1809, he married Anne Carey Randolph of Virginia, sister of Thomas Mann Randolph [q.v.]. One son was born of this union.

Morris was active in forwarding the plans for the Erie Canal, and for many years was chairman of the canal commission. His disgust with the rule of the Republicans at Washington drove him to unfortunate extremes in his opposition to the policies of the national government. He denounced the Embargo, condemned the War of 1812, approved the Hartford Convention, and even advocated repudiating the national debt incurred by the war. "In his hatred of the opposite party," says one of his biographers, "he lost all loyalty to the nation" (Roosevelt, post, p. 352). Perhaps this judgment is too harsh, yet it is distressing to see a man whose faith in the American Republic was so robust in the days of the Constitutional Convention and the mission to France writing to Timothy Pickering in 1814 that he would be "glad to meet with some one who could tell ... what has become of the union, in what it consists, and to what useful purpose it endures" (Sparks, III, 312). He rejoiced in the restoration of the Bourbons in 1814, but died two years later with his faith in the future of his own country unrevived.

[Jared Sparks, The Life of Gouverneur Morris, with Selections from his Correspondence (3 volumes, 1832); Anne Carey Morris (his grand-daughter), The Diary and Letters of Governeur Morris (2 volumes, 1888); Theodore Roosevelt, Gouverneur Morris (1888), in the American Statesmen series; H. C. Lodge, "Gouverneur Morris," in the Atlantic Monthly, April 1886, reproduced in his Historical and Pol. Essays (1892); Adhemar Esmein, Gouverneur Morris, un Temoin americain de la Revolution Francaise (Paris, 1906); Daniel Walther, Gouverneur Morris, Temoin de deux Revolutions (1932), with extensive bibliography and list of manuscript sources; Jared Sparks, The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Review (12 volumes, 1829-30')'; American State Papers, Foreign Relations, volume I (1832); Max Farrand, The Records of the Federal Convention (3 volumes,1911);W.W. Spooner, Historical Families of America (copyright 1907); MSS. in Washington Papers, Jefferson Papers, and William Short Papers, Library of Congress]

D.S.M.


MORRIS, Thomas, 1776-1844, Virginia, first abolitionist Senator, vice president of the Liberty Party, abolitionist, Ohio lawmaker 1806-1830, Chief Justice of the State of Ohio 1830-1833, U.S. Senator 1833-183?.  Executive Committee, American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (A&FASS). As an abolitionist he actively opposed the extension of slavery. He believed slavery was a moral evil, a national calamity, the greatest national sin. He also fought for right to petition Congress against slavery. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. IV, p. 418; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 7, Pt. 1, pp. 226-227; Dumond, 1961, pp. 92, 135, 243, 244, 286, 300; Mitchell, 2007, pp. 11, 18, 23-24, 27; Rodriguez, 2007, p. 48; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 15, p. 916).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 7, Pt. 1, pp. 226-227;

MORRIS, THOMAS (January 3, 1776-December 7, 1844), senator from Ohio, was the fifth child in the family of twelve children of a Baptist preacher of Welsh descent, Isaac Morris, and of Ruth (Henton) Morris and his wife. He was the descendant of Thomas Morris who emigrated from England to Massachusetts in 1637. Soon after his birth in Berks County, Pennsylvania, his parents settled near Clarksburg, now in West Virginia. With the exception of three months in a common-school he was educated by himself and by his abolitionist mother and father who had a library composed of three Bibles, four New Testaments, a work on elocution, and a few other books. In 1795 he moved to Columbia, now part of Cincinnati, Ohio, where he studied and worked as clerk in a s tore for the Reverend John Smith, one of the first two United States senators from Ohio. He married Rachael Davis of Welsh descent on November 19, 1797, and moved to Bethel, Ohio, in 1804, where he established his permanent home. He became the father of three daughters and eight sons, one of whom preached at his funeral in the Bethel cemetery and two of whom were elected later to Congress as Democrats. While leading the hard life of a frontier brick-maker he read Blackstone at night by the light of his log-cabin fireplace.

He entered politics after his admission to the bar in 1804 and was elected to the state legislature, where in 1806 he began fifteen terms of service as a state legislator, in the House of Representatives for the fifth, seventh, ninth, tenth, and nineteenth sessions from 1806 to 1821, and in the Senate for the twelfth, thirteenth, twentieth, twenty-first, twenty-fourth to twenty-seventh, thirtieth, and thirty-first sessions from 1813 to 1833. He was chosen judge of the state supreme court in 1809, but later legislation prevented his qualifying. In 1828, with Samuel Medary [q. v. ], he established the Ohio Sun to support Andrew Jackson for president. After his defeat for Congress in 1832 the Ohio legislature elected him United States senator to serve a full term, 1833-39. He was an able speaker in spite of his diffidence. He wielded great power over juries with speeches fill ed with Biblical quotations. He was a stanch partisan but not of the pro-slavery wing of the Democracy. True Democracy meant to him the supremacy of the Bible in a society wherein men harmonized their lives with the laws of nature. His political doctrine s were determined by his legalistic and moralistic temperament. He opposed lotteries, chartered monopolies, and imprisonment for debt, and he advocated temperance, the prohibition of alcohol, freedom of conscience in religion, education at state expense, and the recall of judges. As a Unionist he denounced nullification and secession as revolutionary and destructive of American liberty; as an expansionist and abolitionist he boldly opposed the extension of slavery. He believed slavery was a moral evil, a national calamity, the greatest national sin. At a time when it was political suicide in Ohio to be an aggressive radical he incurred the condemnation of the South and lost the support of tactful politicians in his own state by his introduction of petitions in the United States Senate to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. Probably his greatest speech was a defense of the abolitionists that he made in the Senate on February 9, 1839, in answer to a severe condemnation of their principles and tactics by Henry Clay (Congressional Globe, 25 Congress, 3 Session, 180-88, app., 167-75). In 1840 he went home ostracized, contemned, and martyred to his cause. The threats of mobs and riotous disturbances did not deter him in his anti-slavery crusade from 1841 to 1844. He was active in the campaign and election of 1844 as the nominee for the vice-presidency of the Liberty party and died of apoplexy soon afterward. His greatest contributions were made as chairman of judiciary committees on which he served for many years and as the abolitionist example and preceptor of the Ohio trio, Salmon P. Chase, Joshua R. Giddings, and Benjamin Wade.

[B. F. Morris, The Life of Thomas Morris (1856); C. B. Galbreath, History of Ohio (1925), volume II; The Biographical Cyclopedia and Portrait Gallery … of the State of Ohio, volume I (1883); Henry Howe, Historical Collections of Ohio; centennial ed., volume I (1889); J. B. Swing, "Thomas Morris," Ohio Arch. and Historical Society Quart., January, 1902; Ibid., July 1922.]

W. E. S-h.


MORSE, Reverend Jedidiah, 1761-1826, geographer, Congregational clergyman, opposed and wrote of moral evils of slavery.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. IV, p. 424; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 7, Pt. 1, pp. 245-247; Locke, 1901, p. 91; Mason, 2006, pp. 26, 243n24, 254n30). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 7, Pt. 1, pp. 245-247;

MORSE, JEDIDIAH (August 23, 1761-June 9, 1826), Congregational clergyman, "father of American Geography," was born in Woodstock, Connecticut, the eighth child of Jedidiah and Sarah (Child) Morse. After a rather frail boyhood he entered Yale College with the class of 1783, in which "he had a very fair reputation as a scholar ... though he scarcely gave promise of the eminence which he finally attained" (Sprague, Annals, post, p. 251). As a student, he was a member of the Linonian Society and of Phi Beta Kappa. On the eve of graduation he decided to enter the Christian ministry, and with this end in view remained in New Haven for two more years studying theology and supporting himself by teaching and by writing a school textbook in geography. He was licensed to preach in 1785, and for a time taught school and preached in Norwich, Connecticut, returning to Yale as tutor in June 1786. Overwork, a desire to further his geographical studies by travel, and the attractions of an evangelical ministry led him, a few months later, to seek ordination (November 9, 1786) and take the vacant pulpit in Midway, Georgia, where he remained for five months. The following year he preached as candidate for settlement in the Collegiate Presbyterian Churches of New York and in the First Congregational Church of Charlestown, Massachusetts, finally accepting a call from Charlestown. Following his installation, April 30, 1789, he married, May 14, Elizabeth Ann Breese of Shrewsbury, New Jersey, the daughter of Judge Samuel Breese and the grand-daughter of Samuel Finley [q.v.], president of the College of New Jersey. Over the church in Charlestown Morse remained settled for thirty years. As a preacher he was unusually acceptable and popular. Of his sermons and occasional addresses, some twenty-four were published.

In his theological views Morse was a Calvinist and a stanch supporter of orthodoxy. With growing concern, therefore, he observed the inroads of ''Arminianism, blended with Unitarianism" in the Congregational churches of eastern Massachusetts. To combat the progress of these "liberal views" became one of the dominant purposes of his ministry, and it was early his hope to separate the Unitarians from the Orthodox and then draw the Orthodox of different shades into more cordial relations. As the champion of Orthodoxy, Morse stepped to the front following the election of Henry Ware [q.v.] as Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard in 1805. One of the board of overseers, he vigorously opposed this choice on the ground that ware's theological views were not the orthodox views of the donor, and that his election was a violation of the terms and spirit of the Hollis bequest. Furthermore, he made public the orthodox position in his True Reasons on which the Election of a Hollis Professor of Divinity in Harvard College was opposed at the Board of Overseers, 14 February, 1805 (1805), the appearance of which proved decisive in joining the issue between the liberal and the orthodox within the Congregational order in Massachusetts. Determined that the liberal clergy should not wholly carry the day, he launched the Panoplist in 1805 to uphold and unify the orthodox cause, and this periodical he edited for five years. Equally important in behalf of orthodoxy were his labors in the organization of the General Association of Massachusetts, and in the establishment of Andover Theological Seminary (1808), of which he was one of the most active founders. In Boston itself, he assisted in founding a bulwark of orthodoxy in the Park Street Church (1809), and finally, in publishing the pamphlet, American Unitarianism; -or a Brief History of "The Progress and Present State of the Unitarian Churches in America" (1815), extracted from Thomas Belsham's Memoirs of the Life of the Reverend Theophilus Lindsey (1812), he did more, perhaps, than any one man to force the Unitarian churches out from the Congregational fold. Morse's own church did not escape division, for a Unitarian defection took place in 1816, and continued friction led to his own request for dismissal in 1819.

Not all Morse's energies went into the Unitarian controversy, however. Quite as important, perhaps, were his efforts to further the progress of evangelical truth. He was among the first in America to see the value of tract distribution, and he helped found the New England Tract Society (1814). Equally active were his efforts in the distribution of the Bible, and in 1816 he aided in establishing the American Bible Society. In 1811 he was elected to the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, and served on the prudential committee of that board until 1819. As secretary of the Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Indians and others in North America, he took an active interest in the Indians, as well as in the poor whites on the Isles of Shoals. This interest lasted throughout his ministry, and upon leaving Charlestown in 1819 he was commissioned by the government to study the condition of the Indian nations and to render a report, which he published in 1822 (A Report to the Secretary of War . .. on Indian Affairs, Comprising a Narrative of a Tour Performed in the Summer of 1820).

In politics Morse was as conservative as in religion, and quite as outspoken. A strong Federalist, he was startled and dismayed in the 1790's by the rising tide of republicanism and by the prevalence of the "French influence," which seemed to him to threaten "orderly" government and religion in the United States. In 1798 he firmly believed that he had discovered the secret cause of these evils in the spread of Illuminism to this side of the Atlantic, and, giving wide publicity to this rather dubious discovery in three sensational published sermons, he contributed not a little to the wave of popular hysteria which followed the outbreak of the quasi-war with France. So vigorous was his defense of the existing political order that to some of his contemporaries he appeared as a "Pillar of Adamant in the Temple of Federalism." His political convictions led him in 1801 to assist in founding The Mercury and New England Palladian, a vigorous Federalist periodical.

Jedidiah Morse is best remembered, however, as the "father of American Geography." It was while teaching school in New Haven that his interest in geography developed. Dissatisfied with the treatment of America in the existing English texts, he prepared a series of geographical lectures, which were published in 1784 as Geography Made Easy, the first geography to be published in the United States. During the lifetime of its author this famous little text passed through twenty-five editions. So successful was this first effort that he at once projected a larger work which he published in 1789 as The American Geography, and in its later editions as The American Universal Geography. This work passed through seven American and almost as many European editions, and firmly established its author's reputation as "the American Geographer." Largely in recognition of his geographical services the University of Edinburgh honored him with its degree of S.T.D. in 1794. In 1795 he published Elements of Geography, for children, followed in 1797 by The American Gazetteer and in 1802 by A New Gazetteer of the Eastern. Continent, prepared in collaboration with Elijah Parish, all of which passed through several editions, a's did abridgments of these more basic works. During their author's lifetime the Morse geographies virtually monopolized their field in the United States. He was essentially a compiler, drawing his information from the best American and European sources available, as well as from letters and documents sent him from all parts of the country in response to widely published requests for geographical information. At the request of the publisher Morse wrote the article on America for the American edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (1790), which was also published separately. In collaboration with Elijah Parish he wrote A Compendious History of New England (1804), the appearance of which gave rise to a famous literary controversy with Hannah Adams [q.v.]. Almost his final literary effort was his Annals of the American Revolution (1824).

Following his removal from Charlestown Morse went to New Haven, where he devoted the closing years of his life to Indian affairs, writing, and occasional preaching. In personal appearance he was very prepossessing. "The tall, slender form, the well shaped head, a little bald, but covered thinly with fine silken powdered hair, falling gracefully into curls, gave him, when only middle-aged, a venerable aspect, while the benignant expression of his whole countenance and especially of his bright, speaking eye won for him at first sight respect and love" (S. E. Morse, quoted in Sprague, Life, post, p. 281). In dress and manners he was "a gentleman of the old school." Temperamentally he was inclined to be sanguine, impulsive, and rather sensitive, which tendencies made him, perhaps, over controversial at times; but his most marked characteristics were his tremendous industry and intellectual activity. To his friend Timothy Dwight, 1752-1817 [q. v. ], he was "as full of resources as an egg is of meat" (Prime, post, p. 4). Of the eleven children born to him and his wife, three survived infancy: Samuel Finley Breese Morse, Sidney Edwards Morse [qq.v.], and Richard Cary Morse.

[The chief source for the life of Morse is a manuscript life by his son, Richard Cary Morse, the property of the late Richard Cary Morse of New York. Published sources include W. B. Sprague, The Life of Jedidiah Morse (1874), and Annals American Pulpit, volume II (1857); F. B. Dexter, Biographical Sketches Graduates Yale College, volume IV (1907); S. I. Prime, The Life of Samuel F. B. Morse (1875); E. L. Morse, Samuel F. B. Morse; His Letters and Journals (2 volumes, 1914); Columbian Register (New Haven), June 10, 1826. For his part in the Illuminati episode see V. Stauffer, New England and the Bavarian Illuminati (1918). 

W.R.W.


MORTON, Marcus (February 19, 1784-February 6, 1864), jurist, governor of Massachusetts.  His life-long opposition to slavery led him to join the Free-Soil party, of which he was delegate to the state constitutional convention in 1853, and by which he was elected to the state legislature in 1858.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 7, Pt. 1, pp. 259-260;

MORTON, MARCUS (February 19, 1784-February 6, 1864), jurist, governor of Massachusetts, was born in Freetown, Massachusetts, the son of Nathaniel and Mary (Cary) Morton, and a descendant of George Morton [q.v.] who emigrated to America in 1623. His early education was received at home, and when he was fourteen years of age he was placed under the Reverend Calvin Chaddock, at Rochester, Massachusetts, for further instruction. In 1801 he entered Brown University with the sophomore class. Here he began to show much interest in the doctrines of Jefferson with their appeal to reason against custom and precedent and their emphasis on the rights of man. His Commencement oration argued for one of the principles he maintained throughout his life economy in public affairs, since extravagance leads to privilege and inequality. After graduation in 1804, he studied law for a year in the office of Judge Seth Padelford, at Taunton, and then entered Tapping Reeve's law school at Litchfield, Connecticut, where he was a schoolmate of John C. Calhoun.

Admitted to the Norfolk bar in 1807, he began to practise in Taunton, and on December 23 of the same year married Charlotte Hodges, daughter of James and Joanna (Tillinghast) Hodges, by whom he had twelve children, among them Marcus Morton [q.v.]. Almost at once he became active in politics, and after holding a number of minor offices was from 1817 to 1821 representative in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth congresses. He was lieutenant-governor of Massachusetts, 1824-25, and in the latter year became acting governor on the death of Gov. William Eustis [q.v.]. In 1825 Gov. Levi Lincoln [q.v.] appointed Morton to the Massachusetts supreme court, a position he held until his resignation in January 1840. His accomplishments as a judge were marked by his ready knowledge of legal principles, his sound judgment in applying them, his patience, courtesy, and strength of character. Morton's perennial candidacy for governor on the Democratic ticket was one of the most significant features of his life. From 1824 to 1848 the political forces in Massachusetts were fairly definitely aligned. The two major parties were the conservative element, consisting of the wealthy aristocrats, the shipowners, bankers, and manufacturers, largely concentrated in Boston; and the more liberal and progressive element comprising the farmers, workingmen, and recent immigrants. It was at the head of the latter group that Morton placed himself, and for sixteen successive years (1828-43) was its candidate for governor. Only twice during that period was he successful. In 1839 he defeated Edward Everett [q.v.] by the majority of a single vote, and in 1842 he was chosen over John Davis by the Senate, neither candidate having received a majority. As governor he advocated and secured retrenchment in public expenditures, reduced the number of supreme court justices from five to three, and abolished the right of appeal from the court of common plea s to the supreme court except on questions of law, this privilege having made the administration of justice slow, expensive, and uncertain.

In 1845 Morton was appointed collector of the port of Boston, which position he held for four years. In 1848 he refused to run for vice-president with Van Buren, for he could not bring himself to bolt his party. Later, however, his life-long opposition to slavery led him to join the Free-Soil party, of which he was delegate to the state constitutional convention in 1853, and by which he was elected to the state legislature in 1858. He was a man of unquestioned probity, whose poise, serenity, and character made him generally admired. In his championship of the lower classes, his distrust of overlarge corporations, and his advocacy of shorter hours for the working man he was ahead of his time, and perhaps partly for this reason a large measure of political success was denied him. He was for thirty-two years an overseer of Harvard. He died at Taunton.

[J. K. Allen, George Morton of Plymouth Colony and Some of His Descendants (1908); A History of Freetown, Massachusetts (1902); Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); U. S. Magazine and Democratic Review, October 1841; Collections of the Old Colony Historical Society, no. 7 (1909); Law Reporter, February 1840; A. B. Darling, Political Changes in Massachusetts, 1824-1848 (1925); "Necrology of Brown University, for the Year 1863-4," Providence Daily Journal, September 6, 1864; Boston Daily Courier, February 8, 1864; Morton's letter books in possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society; date of birth from Brown Historical Catalog: some sources give December 19.]

S.H. P.


MORTON, Oliver Perry, 1823-1877, statesman, lawyer, jurist, anti-slavery activist.  Member of the Republican Party.  U.S. Senator and Governor of Indiana, 1861. He was against the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, and when the Democratic state convention indorsed the Douglas measure he went over to the People's party, the forerunner of the Republican party in Indiana. He helped with the formation of the new party along national lines.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. IV, pp. 431-432; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 7, Pt. 1, pp. 262-264; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 15, p. 956). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 7, Pt. 1, pp. 262-264;

MORTON, OLIVER PERRY (August 4, 1823- November 1, 1877), governor of Indiana and senator, was born in the decaying frontier village of Salisbury, Wayne County, Indiana. His full name was Oliver Hazard Perry Throck Morton. Both his parents, James Throck and Sarah (Miller) Morton, were of New Jersey birth, and on the paternal side the ancestral line began with John Throckmorton who emigrated from England with Roger Williams in 1631 and later settled in Providence Plantations. Oliver's father was the first to write his surname as Morton. When the boy was less than three years old his mother died, and he was taken to the farm of his maternal grandparents near Springfield (now Springdale), Ohio, where two of his aunts gave him their solicitous care. Scotch Presbyterianism pervaded their home, and he seems to have received an overdose of it, for he never became a church member, and later he was credited, quite properly, with exceedingly unorthodox views on religion. One of his aunts taught a neighboring school, which he attended, but much of his early education came from a rather indiscriminate reading of all the books he could get. For one year he attended the Wayne County Seminary at Centerville, Indiana, to which his father had removed when the village of Salisbury sank into hopeless decline. On his grandfather's death in 1838 he went to work as became a frontier youth of fifteen years, at first as a drug clerk, and later, when he quarreled with his employer and lost his job, as an apprentice to his brother William, who was a hatter. He thoroughly disliked the hatter's trade and obtained his release from service six months before the four years for which he was bound had ended. Financed by a little money from his grandfather's estate, he entered Miami University, where he spent two years in study, excelling in mathematics, learning to write good English, and enjoying himself thoroughly in debate.

In 1845 he left college to read law in a Centerville office, and in spite of his dwindling financial resources he was married on May 15, 1845, to Lucinda M. Burbank, also of Centerville. Five children were born to them, of whom the three sons survived him. Faced with. the necessity of maintaining a home of his own, he speedily began the practice of law, gained some advertising through an unsuccessful race for prosecuting attorney in 1848 on the Democratic ticket, and when he was only twenty-nine years old served out the unfinished term of a circuit judge who had died in office. Doubtless his brief judicial career, less than eight months, convinced him that he needed further legal training, for, before resuming his practice at Centerville, he attended one term at the Law School of the Cincinnati College. After this his progress in his profession was rapid, and in a few years he became the leader of the Wayne County bar. Since he was an unusually effective pleader, his services were in great demand, especially by railway corporations, whose fees helped out his income materially. His formal entrance into politics coincided with the beginnings of the Republican party. Earlier he had no particular sentiment on the slavery question and had even opposed the Wilmot proviso as prejudicial to harmony within the Democratic ranks. By 1854, however, his views had changed. He revolted openly against the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, and when the Democratic state convention of that year indorsed the Douglas measure he went over to the People's party, the forerunner of the Republican party in Indiana. He helped with the formation of the new party along national lines, and in 1856 he was its unsuccessful candidate for governor of Indiana. For the next four years he divided his time between politics and his profitable law practice, doubtless expecting to be the Republican candidate again in 1860. But this was not to be. For reasons of expediency the party leaders gave the nomination to Henry S. Lane, who had been a Whig, consoling Morton, who had been a Democrat, with second place on the ticket and the promise that in case the Republicans won the legislature Lane should be speedily transferred to the United States Senate, and Morton should succeed to the governorship.

All fell out as planned, and thus it happened that he became Indiana's war-time governor, according to James Ford Rhodes, "the ablest and most energetic of the war governors of the Western States" (History of the United States, volume IV, p. 182). Believing that war was necessary and inevitable, he visited Washington soon after Lincoln's inauguration to use his influence in favor of a vigorous policy towards the South, and he did what he could to prepare his state for the impending struggle. When at last the president's call for troops came, Indiana responded loyally, offering more than twice the number of men asked. Morton expected the war to be a hard-fought contest, and he was det ermined that none of those who volunteered should be refused th e opportunity to serve. He therefore called the legislature into special session to provide ways and means for accepting into state service such men as the national government could not use at the moment. To this and to other requests of the governor, who believed that the war should be made "instant and terrible" (Foulke, post, I, u8), the legislature responded with alacrity. Throughout the struggle he put the full power of his office and of his personality behind every request of the administration for men. Thanks in no small part to his  efforts, there were over 150,000 enlistments from Indiana during the four years with only a negligible number of men drafted.

He was at his best in his repeated and notable triumphs over the discouraged and disloyal agitators who tried to weaken the state's effective support of the war. Indiana, like the rest of the Old Northwest, had a large Southern element in its population in which sympathy with the Southern cause and opposition to the war soon became rife. Orders like the Knights of the Golden Circle, the Order of American Knights, or the Sons of Liberty did their best to retard enlistments, encourage desertions, free Confederate prisoners, and even form a new and independent northwestern confederacy. When the election of 1862 was held, Union military reverses and the absence of thousands of voters at the front strengthened the forces of discontent so that the Democratic legislature and state officers elected in Indiana that year w ere of pacifist views. According to a provision of the Indiana constitution that gave the governor a four-year, term, he remained in office, providentially commissioned, he felt, to thwart all "Copperhead" plots. In order to accomplish this end heroic measures were required; for example, a scheme of the majority in the legislature to take his military power from him and to vest it in a board of its own choosing was frustrated only by the withdrawal of the Republican legislators and, ultimately, by the adjournment of the session for want of a quorum. Since the usual appropriation bills had not been passed, he faced the alternative of calling the obnoxious legislature together again or himself raising the money to keep the state government in operation. To the surprise and chagrin of the Democrats, he chose the latter course. He used some profits from the manufacture of munitions in an arsenal he had established, obtained advances from private citizens and from loyal county officials, and borrowed heavily from the governernment at Washington. The legislature was not recalled, the state government functioned normally except that the governor reigned as a sort of dictator, and the business of helping win the war went on without relaxation. In 1864 he was reelected governor, and a Republican legislature was chosen with him, which in the main supported him in what he had done.

The arduous labor of war time told on him physically, and during the summer of 1865 he was visited by a stroke of paralysis that left him a hopeless cripple but did not cloud his brain. A trip to France in search of medical aid was of no avail for that purpose, but he delivered a personal message from President Johnson to Napoleon III, which pointed out the wisdom of the removal of the French troops from Mexico without formal demand from the United States and which was doubtless of some consequence. Returning to the United States he refused, in spite of his infirmity, to retire from politics, and he attacked the Democrats in the campaign of 1866 with a ruthlessness and a ferocity that set the pace for Republican orators for many a year. In an age of extreme partisanship his partisanship was rank. He saw no good in the Democratic party, the war-time record of which he never forgave, and he viewed individual Democrats with grave suspicions. Any Democratic victory seemed to him a dire calamity.

In 1867 he was elected to the United States Senate, where he served until his death. Reconstruction was then the all-absorbing problem, and to it he devoted much thought. Immediately at the close of the war he had favored some such generous terms as were proposed by Lincoln and Johnson, but party necessities drew him irresistibly in the direction of the harsher policies advocated by the congressional leaders, and in the end he became one of the ablest and one of the least compromising of the supporters of "thorough" Reconstruction. Probably he did more than any other man to obtain the ratification of the negro suffrage amendment to the Constitution (Foulke, post, II, 117-18). His record on financial matters was as inconsistent as his record on reconstruction. In his earlier senatorial career he was quite free from soft-money heresies. Indeed, he formulated and introduced in 1868 a bill for the resumption of specie payments on January 1, 1872, that differed little from, the bill under which later on resumption was, actually accomplished, but hard times following the panic of 1873 seem to have changed his opinions on the money question. Familiar with the. problems of the western debtors, he saw clearly: their point of view, and he came to ridicule as fanaticism the same kind of insistence on a" return to specie payments of which, as he freely confessed, he had once been guilty himself. The hard times emergency, he thought, justified further, strictly limited, issues of paper (Foulke, post, II, 319-20).

He was a formidable contender for th e Republican nomination of 1876, but his physical condition, his soft-money tendencies, and his strict partisanship with its attendant lack of enthusiasm about civil reform, all told against him, while Hayes had no such liabilities. He took an active part in the dispute over the election of that year and was convinced that the Republicans had won. He opposed the plan embodied in th  electoral bill fo r settling the contest because of the chance it gave the Democrats to secure the presidency, but as a member of the electoral commission established when the bill became a law, he had a chance to do his full duty by his party. After the contest was over he went to Oregon to help investigate charges of bribery made against a newly elected senator from that state. He was unsparing of himself on the trip and perhaps on this account suffered, in August 1877, another stroke of paralysis. Returning at one to Indiana, he went first to the residence of his wife's mother in Richmond a d later to his own home in Indianapolis, where he died.

He was to a remarkable degree the typical politician of his period. He had, to be sure, a much higher sense of honor than some, and in money matters he was incorruptible. Yet his fanatical devotion to party, his glory in combat, his intolerance of opposition, his heated rhetoric were distinctly of his time. Powerful physically, of commanding voice and presence, he feared no man, nor did the affliction of his later years abate his courage. He was an able lawyer, but he preferred politics, and probably he was not greatly tempted by Grant's offer of the chief-justiceship on the death of Chase. To the end of his life he was a power to be reckoned with in American ·politics, loved and honored by his friends, cordially hated by his enemies, and almost never ignored. Like many another he coveted the presidency, but his failure to obtain it did not in the least embitter him.

[Wm. D. Foulke, Life of Oliver P. Morton (2 volumes, 1899); W. M. French, Life, Speeches, State Papers and Public Services of Gov. Oliver P. Morton (1864); Memorial Addresses on ... Oliver P. Morton . .. in the Senate and House of Representatives (1878); Oliver P. Morton  by direction of the Indiana Republican State Central Committee (1876); J. A. Woodburn, " Party Politics in Indiana during the Civil War" American Historical Assn. Report,  I902, volume I (1903); Logan Esary, A History of Indiana  (1918), volume II; Indianapolis Journal, November 2, 1877.]

J. D. H.


MOTT, James, 1778-1868, philanthropist, merchant, Society of Friends, Quaker, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Free Produce Society of Pennsylvania, Association for Advocating the Cause of the Slave, husband of Lucretia Mott.  In 1833 he and Lucrecia both were present at the Philadelphia convention that founded the American Anti-Slavery Society, and James Mott was a member. Both he and his wife were delegates to the world antislavery convention held in London in 1840, and on his return he published his experiences in a little book called Three Months in Great Britain (1841). After the passage of the fugitive-slave law of 1850, the Mott home in Philadelphia became a refuge for runaway negro bondmen.

(Drake, 1950, pp. 118, 140, 154; Mabee, 1970, pp. 9, 131, 305, 345, 406n13; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 387-388, 464; Yellin, 1994, pp. 69, 82, 276-278, 287, 294-295, 306, 313, 318-319, 333; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. IV, p. 441; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 7, Pt. 1, p. 288; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 16, p. 19). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 7, Pt. 1, p. 288;

MOTT, JAMES (June 20, 1788-January26, 1868), reformer, abolitionist, was born in North Hempstead, Long Island, New York, the son of Adam and Anne (Mott) Mott, through both of whom he inherited the blood of a seventeenth-century English emigrant, Adam Mott, and of a long 1ine of Quaker ancestors. His father was a farmer and miller. Both parents were worthy people, moderately strict in following the principles of their religion, but they appear to have influenced the intellectual and moral development of their son less than did his mother's father, also named James Mott, a man of unusual intelligence and culture, interested in the advancement of education and in the movements for temperance and abolition. The boy received his education chiefly in the Friends' boarding school at Nine Partners, about fifteen miles from Poughkeepsie, New York, where he was a student for ten years and assistant and teacher for two years. There he met Lucretia Coffin and on April 10, 18n, the two were married. In the spring of 1810 he had gone to Philadelphia, where he became a partner of Lucretia's father in the manufacture and sale of cut nails. When the hard times following the War of 1812 brought reverses he tried various business positions in an effort to make an adequate living for his family but met with little success. About 1822 he went into the commission business in Philadelphia, dealing especially in cotton.

He prospered in this enterprise but eight years later gave it up, for he had reached the decision that it was wrong to have even such an indirect part in slavery, since cotton was produced by slave labor. Though the step meant a serious financial loss at first, he was able to turn to the wool commission business, from which he retired in 1852 with a fair competence. In deciding that indirect participation in slavery was wrong he was influenced - by the teachings of Elias Hicks, the leader of the liberal movement in the Society of Friends, with whose theological views he  also sympathized. After the separation in the Society in 1827 the Motts aligned themselves with the Hicksite group of Friends. During these years of spiritual and moral upheaval they became very active against slavery, at the time defended by many Quakers, and for these activities as well as for the in religious heterodoxy were the objects of bitter attack. In 1833 both were present at the Philadelphia convention that founded the American Anti-Slavery Society, and James Mott was a member. Both he and his wife were delegates to the world antislavery convention held in London in 1840, and on his return he published his experiences in a little book called Three Months in Great Britain (1841). After the passage of the fugitive-slave law of 1850, the Mott home in Philadelphia became a refuge for runaway negro bondmen.

He took an advanced attitude, rare for the period, toward the position of women and early spoke in favor of giving them additional recognition in the Society of Friends. Fully appreciating his wife's superior abilities as a public speaker, he accompanied her on extensive preaching and lecturing tours, thus saving her from the criticism to which, as a woman, she would have been liable at that time. When, under the lead of Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and a few other women, the first woman's rights convention was held at Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, he presided over some of the sessions. His ability to express ideas in writing, his sympathy, and his judgment were potent factors in the development of his wife's reputation and usefulness. In 1857 the Motts gave up their large house in Philadelphia and moved to a little farm, called "Roadside," eight miles out of town on the old York road, but he continued his activity in the anti-slavery cause until emancipation was achieved. During the last few years of his life he worked insistently in the interest of better educational facilities for young people of the Society of Friends, and partly as a result of his efforts Swarthmore College was founded in 1864. Four years later, while visiting a daughter in Brooklyn, New York, he died from an attack of pneumonia.

[James and Lucretia Mott: Life and Letters, ed. by A. D. Hallowell (1884); Three Months in Great Britain, ante; T. C. Cornell, Adam and Anne Mott (1890); New York Tribune, Jan. 27, 1868.]

M.W.W.


MOTT, Lucretia Coffin (Mrs. James Mott), 1793-1880, Society of Friends, Quaker, radical abolitionist, reformer, suffragist, co-founder and first president of the Philadelphia Female American Anti-Slavery Society, member of the Association of Friends for Advocating the Cause of the Slave, member of the Hicksite Anti-Slavery Association, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Wrote memoir, Life, 1884. 

(Bacon, 1999; Drake, 1950, pp. 140, 149, 154, 156, 157, 172, 176; Mabee, 1970, pp. 3, 13, 31, 68, 77, 94, 186, 188, 189, 201, 204, 224, 225, 226, 241, 289, 314, 326, 350, 374, 378; Palmer, 2001; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 42, 47, 157, 387-388, 416, 464, 519; Yellin, 1994, pp. 18, 26, 43, 74, 159-162, 175-176, 286-287, 301-302, 327-328; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. IV, p. 441; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 7, Pt. 1, pp. 288-290; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 595-597; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 16, p. 21; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. II. New York: James T. White, 1892, pp. 310-311; Cromwell, Otelia. Lucretia Mott. 1958.). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 7, Pt. 1, pp. 288-290;

MOTT, LUCRETIA COFFIN (January 3, 1793- November 11, 1880), reformer and preacher of the Society of Friends, was born on the island of Nantucket, the descendant of Tristram Coffin who emigrated from Devonshire, England, and became one of the original purchasers of the island. She was the second cousin of Isaac and John Coffin [qq.v.]. Her parents were Quakers, as were most of her forebears for some generations. Her mother, Anna Folger, a descendant of Peter Folger [q.v.], was an energetic, capable, conservative woman whose family had stood firmly on the British side during the Revolution. Thomas Coffin, her father, appears to have been of a milder, more democratic bent. During her early childhood he was a ship's captain who voyaged to China, but about 1803 he gave up the sea and took his wife and six children to Boston, where he engaged in business. This journey, when Lucretia was eleven years old, was her first trip to the "continent," as the islanders called the mainland. In Boston she was sent to the public school for a time because her father thought his children ought to acquire democratic sympathies, but at the age of thirteen she entered the Friends' boarding school at Nine Partners near Poughkeepsie, New York. There she spent almost two years in study and two more as assistant and teacher in the girls' section before she returned to her father's home, now removed to Philadelphia. Shortly afterward a fellow pupil and teacher at Nine Partners, James Mott [q.v.], joined her father in business and on April 10, 1811, she was married to him. They had six children, of whom five lived to adult life.

The death of an infant son in 1817 gave her thoughts a decidedly religious turn. The next year she began to speak in meeting and soon showed such marked gifts that she was made an "acknowledged minister" of the Society. But her views were so liberal as, before long, to excite some criticism. She sympathized with Elias Hicks, whose teachings brought about a controversy in the Society of Friends early in the 1820's, and after the separation and reorganization in the Society she, like her husband, aligned herself with the liberal or Hicksite group and remained thereafter a member of it. She became known as one of the most eloquent preachers in Philadelphia and traveled extensively to speak at Quaker meetings in different parts of the country. With William Penn she felt that "men are to be judged by their likeness to Christ, rather than by their notions of Christ" (Hallowell, post, p. 92) and consequently in her religious discourses she emphasized righteousness and ignored technical theology. Many of her sermons and addresses were concerned directly with reform subjects, especially temperance, peace, woman's rights, and antislavery.

Her most notable work was connected with, the question of woman's rights and antislavery. Her interest in woman's wrongs and woman's rights began at Nine Partners school, where, merely because of her sex, she was paid but half as much salary as were the men doing the same work. In the years that followed she occasionally spoke in public on the unjust status of women. Her interest in the subject was further roused by the refusal of the world anti-slavery convention held in London in 1840 officially to recognize herself and a number of other women who were delegates from the United States. One result of this rebuff was the first woman's rights convention,  held on July 19 and 20, 1848, in the Wesleyan Methodist Church at Seneca Falls, New York, at which was formally launched the woman's rights movement in the United States. The chief promoters of the gathering were herself and Elizabeth Cady Stanton [q.v.]. Her greatest interest, however, was the abolition of slavery, to the importance of which Elias Hicks fir s t roused her. When she first began to speak against it, slavery was defended by many Friends, and, consequently, her activities led to persistent but futile efforts to depose her from the ministry and to drop her from the Society. She attended the convention that met in Philadelphia in 1833 and organized the American Anti-Slavery Society. Immediately afterward she helped form the Philadelphia female anti-slavery society, of which she was president during most of its existence. At the anti-slavery gathering of 1840 in London she made her influence felt, in spite of her failure to be recognized as a delegate, and she was referred to as the lioness of the convention. Following the passage of the new fugitive-slave law, she and her husband gave much attention to the protection of runaway bondmen, to whom the Mott home was an asylum.

In 1857 the family moved from Philadelphia to a quiet farm place called "Roadside" near the city, but she kept up her interest in preaching and in various reform movements, especially in activities for improving the condition of the negro. Her last public address was made in May 1880 at the Philadelphia yearly meeting of the Society of Friends. She was sprightly, impulsive, cheerful, and energetic, and, though very fond of approbation, showed firmness and courage in what she believed to be right. In h er busy life she found time to be a good cook, was a careful housekeeper equal to the many emergencies incident to a growing family, and was able to manage a large and hospitable household with a grace to be envied by many women of lesser attainment in the world of affairs.

[James and Lucretia Mott: Life and Letters, ed. by A. D. Hallowell (1884); History of Woman Suffrage, ed. by E. C. Stanton (6 volumes, 1881-1922), esp. sketch in volume I; T. C. Cornell, Adam and Anne Mott (1890); New York Tribune, November 12, 1880.)

M. W. W.


MOTT, Abigale Lydia, Albany, New York, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Executive Committee, 1840-1841, Vice-President, 1858-1864.  Co-founded Rochester Anti-Slavery Society.  Sister of Lucretia Mott.


MUNRO, Peter Jay, 1767-1833, jurist, abolitionist, member of the New York Society for Promoting the Manumission of Slaves, founded 1785. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. IV, p. 461; Basker, 2005, pp. 223, 239n4, 5). 


MURPHY, William Walton (April 3, 1816-June 8, 1886), United States consul-general, his strong antislavery views impelled him to join the Free-Soil party in 1848. After the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill in May 1854, he supported Isaac P. Christiancy in his efforts to have the Free-Soil party withdraw its state nominations during the coming campaign and call a mass convention of all anti-slavery elements, which resulted in the convention at Jackson, July 6, 1854, the first Republican state convention ever held, at which Murphy was one of the vice-presidents.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 7, Pt. 1, p. 357;

MURPHY, WILLIAM WALTON (April 3, 1816-June 8, 1886), United States consul-general, was born at Ernestown, Canada, but was brought to Ovid, Seneca County, New York, at an early age. As a youth of nineteen he joined the pioneer emigration from New York State to Michigan and entered the United States land office at Monroe as a clerk in 1835, when the speculation in land was at its height. He remained in the land office for two years and studied law in his leisure hours. In 1837 he removed to the pioneer community of Jonesville and with William T. Howell opened the first law office in Hillsdale County, continuing in practice until 1861, the firm from 1848 being that of Murphy & Baxter. In addition to practising law, he conducted a land agency, founded a newspaper, the Jonesville Telegraph, and was a partner in the banking firm of E. O. Grosvenor & Company. He served one term as prosecutor of Hillsdale County and in 1844 was elected representative in the Michigan legislature. For many years he was an ardent Democrat, but his strong antislavery views impelled him to join the Free-Soil party in 1848. After the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill in May 1854, he supported Isaac P. Christiancy in his efforts to have the Free-Soil party withdraw its state nominations during the coming campaign and call a mass convention of all anti-slavery elements, which resulted in the convention at Jackson, July 6, 1854, the first Republican state convention ever held, at which Murphy was one of the vice-presidents. He was a member of the Michigan delegation which supported Seward at the Republican National Convention held at Chicago in May 1860. In July 1861 he was appointed by President Lincoln consul-general for the free city of Frankfort-on-the-Main, Germany.

On his arrival at Frankfort in November 1861, Murphy found that his predecessor, Samuel Ricker, was aiding the Confederate cause, and was remaining in Frankfort with the hope of establishing a consulateship there for the Confederate states. Murphy frustrated this hope by persuading Frankfort's Senate to permit him to place the flag of the United States on the consular premises, thus recognizing him as consul-general for the entire Union rather than for the Northern states alone. When Ricker negotiated with a banking firm to take up a Confederate cotton-loan, Murphy obtained a statement from the head of the banking house of M. A. von Rothschild, which influenced the more conservative houses against participating in the loan. Murphy also had published in the Neue Frankfurter Zeitung and other journals the latest annual reports of the Confederate secretary of the treasury, and Jefferson Davis' defense of repudiation of the bonds of the South. Gaining the friendship of the editor of L 'Europe, he was permitted to use its columns for articles written by himself and his friends in aid of the Union cause. Thus, when the English and French exchanges were closed to the sale of United States bonds issued to prosecute the War they found a ready market in Germany, and large sales were made in Frankfort. Murphy remained consul-general at Frankfort until 1869, after which he settled in Heidelberg as the financial agent of several American railway companies. He died on June 8, 1886. He had married, in 1849, Ellen Beaumont,

[History of Hillsdale County, Michigan (1879); S. D. Bingham, Michigan Biographies (2 volumes, 1924); Historical Collections ... Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society, volume XI (1888); H. M. Utley and B. M. Cutcheon, Michigan as a Province, Territory, and State (1906), volume III; 100 Years of the American Consulate General at Frankfort on the Main, I829-I929 (1929); Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White (1905), I, 97-99.]

J. L.R.


MURRAY, James Ormsbee (November 27, 1827-March 27, 1899), clergyman, first dean of Princeton University.  James Ormsbee Murray, son of James and Aurelia, was eight years old when his father, being opposed to slavery, emancipated some of his slaves, provided for the emancipation of the others,

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 7, Pt. 1, p. 359;

MURRAY, JAMES ORMSBEE (November 27, 1827-March 27, 1899), clergyman, first dean of Princeton University, was born at Camden, South Carolina. His grandfather, John Murray, whose parents came from Scotland, was a merchant in Philadelphia. John Murray's wife, Elizabeth, was a daughter of Philip Syng [q.v.], an original member of the American Philosophical Society and friend of Benjamin Franklin. Their son, James Syng Murray, removed to Camden, South Carolina, where he was engaged in business. He married Aurelia Pearce, of English descent, grand-daughter of William Blanding and Lydia Ormsbee, New Englanders. James Ormsbee Murray, son of James and Aurelia, was eight years old when his father, being opposed to slavery, emancipated some of his slaves, provided for the emancipation of the others, and removed with his family to Springfield, Ohio. Here the boy was prepared for college. He entered Brown University with the class of 1848, but was obliged by ill health to drop back two years, graduating as valedictorian in 1850. He spent the next year as instructor in Greek at Brown, then entered Andover Theological Seminary, where he graduated in 1854. From 1854 to 1861 he was pastor of the Congregational church at South Danvers, now Peabody, Massachusetts; from 1861 to 1865 pastor of the Prospect Street church in Cambridgeport, Massachusetts; and then became associate pastor with Dr. Gardiner Spring [q.v.] of the Brick Church (Presbyterian) in New York City. From 1873 to 1875 he was sole pastor of this church. During these years in the ministry he wrote many articles on literary subjects and gained a reputation for his wide acquaintance with English letters. In 1875 he was elected to the Holmes Professorship of Belles Lettres and English Language and Literature in the College of New Jersey (Princeton). His lectures at Princeton dealt principally with writers of the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries and were of a broad and human, rather than a narrowly scholastic kind. In the latter years of the administration of President James McCosh [q.v.] matters of internal administration fell more and more into Professor Murray's hands, and in 1883 he was appointed dean of the faculty. The office was at first a difficult one, for it included discipline and the enforcement of standards of scholarship; but Dean Murray soon obtained general good will without sacrificing just severity. He had an enthusiastic, impulsive, and affectionate disposition. In his teaching and his administrative methods he formed a link between the men of an older generation whose equipment consisted chiefly of general culture and the later generation of trained specialists. He was retained in the deanship by President Patton and died in office at the dean's house, March 27, 1899. On October 22, 1856, at Brookline, Massachusetts, he had married Julia Richards Haughton, who with four sons and a daughter survived him.

In collaboration with other editors, Murray compiled a hymnbook, The Sacrifice of Praise (1869). He edited Orations and Essays with Selected Parish Sermons by J. L. Diman (1882) and Selections from the Poetical Works of William Cowper (1898); and was the author of George I de Chace: A Memorial (1886), William Gammell: A Biographical Sketch (1890), Francis Wayland (1891).

[John DeWitt, James Ormsbee Murray: a Memorial Sermon, (1899); Princeton Bull., May 1899; Historical Catalog Brown University (1905); Daily True American (Trenton), March 28, 1899; communications from Murray's daughter, Mrs. A. C. Armstrong, Middletown, Connecticut; personal acquaintance.]

G. M. H.


MURRAY, Joseph T., 1834-1907, Massachusetts, abolitionist, inventor.  Worked with James N. Buffam, John Greenleaf Whittier and William Lloyd Garrison.


MYERS, Harriet, died 1865, African American, abolitionist, member of the Underground Railroad in Albany, New York, wife of abolitionist and newspaper publisher Stephen Myers.


MYERS, Leonard, Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery (Congressional Globe)


MYERS, Stephen, 1800-?, African American, newspaper editor and publisher, abolitionist, freed from slavery in his youth.  Chairman of the Vigilance Committee of Albany, New York, which aided fugitive slaves.  His home was a station on the Underground Railroad.  Worked with leading African American abolitionist, Frederick Douglass.  Community leader in Albany, New York.  Publisher of the newspaper, The Elevator.  Also published The Northern Star and Freeman’s Advocate.



Source: Dictionary of American Biography, Volumes I-X, Edited by Dumas Malone, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930.