Morris was appointed to the Continental Congress in January 1778. He missed adding his name to the Declaration by a year and a half but was the youngest signer of the Articles of Confederation. After visiting Valley Forge during the winter of 1777 to 1778, he functionally became the Continental Army’s spokesperson in Congress. As Morris reported in a letter, liberty and independence rested on the shoulders of a “skeleton of an army … in a naked, starving condition, out of health, out of spirits.” Without greater financial support and additional training for American troops, the patriot cause would be lost.
He believed, however, that replacing General George Washington with Horatio Gates, the commanding officer in the American victory at Saratoga, was not the answer. When a military junta sought to do just that, Morris wrote that “a set of scoundrels [were] very busy in an attempt to ruin” Washington’s good name. Morris, who knew more about the state of the army than most of his colleagues in Congress, defended the general. He even cast the tie-breaking vote to save Washington from a declaration of no confidence. New York did not re-elect Morris to Congress in 1779.
Gouverneur Morris, state builder
In 1781, Morris accepted an appointed position in Congress as assistant to Robert Morris (no relation), the newly installed superintendent of finance. Known as the financier of the Revolution, the older, richer Robert drew heavily from his personal fortune to restore America’s trade credibility and found the Bank of North America. Morris, meanwhile, took the lead in crafting policies regarding long-term economic growth. He drew up a plan for a national currency that used the words “dollars” and “cents.” No matter how much the pair tinkered, however, they realized that America’s decentralized financial system wasn’t sustainable. Significant reforms were needed.
The Pennsylvania legislature agreed, sending Morris, a native New Yorker who was then living in Philadelphia, to represent the state at the 1787 Constitutional Convention. In addition to advocating for a strong executive and helping to design the Electoral College when his calls for direct elections sparked hostility, Morris was one of the group’s most outspoken critics of human bondage. Born into a slaveholding family, he believed slavery was “a nefarious institution … the curse of heaven on the states where it prevailed.” On at least one occasion, however, Morris purchased two enslaved people, whom he manumitted immediately, then bound to indentures for a set period of time.
Despite Morris’ objections, the convention ultimately enshrined the institution of slavery in the Constitution, albeit with the caveat that the trans-Atlantic slave trade could be outlawed at the federal level starting in 1808. Given that he was forced to compromise on executive power, direct elections, slavery and countless other aspects of the new government, Morris accepted the Constitution as the best possible document for the moment, but he thought it was by no means perfect.