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Notes for THOMAS WISE MORRIS:
"As a young man Thomas grew increasingly wild but his half brother , Robert Morris Jr., refused to abandon him. The older brother had done everything he could for the younger. As soon, Robert said, as "I fixed myself in the world...I took charge of this brother. I gave him the best education that could be obtained in Philadelphia, and...I took him into my counting house." There Tom remained for about three years, but Robert was forced to send him to Spain to break his connections with worthless companions. Eventually Tom returned to America, and, Robert reported, he briefly "had great satisfaction in him." But Tom's former associates sought him out and once again were leading him astray.
Once again Robert sent Tom traveling in Europe and this time entrusted him with some business for Willing & Morris. No sooner had Tom arrived than Silas Deane reported that "the company he dipp'd at once into was so dissolute and expensive that it very essentially injured the reputation of your house, of which he was considered as being a member." Tom's escapades soon would cause Morris major embarrassment."
The carreer of Robert's half brother, Tom, was increasingly causing shame, not pride. In January 1777, Robert expressed concern about Tom - and attempted to defend him - in a letter to Silas Deane:
"He had been Frolicksome & Foolish many times as a Boy, but as I never knew him to depart from Principles of honor & Integrity
in his wildest days, I never entertained a doubt of his becoming an excellent Character in the progress of his Manhood; these
considerations, and the good acounts given of him by all my Friends in Spain and Italy, induced me not only to commit to his
care my own private Business in which he is a Partner, but to recommend him to the Superintendency of the Public business, as
you will have seen heretofore, and I know also that he has good Mercantile Abilitys, if he will but exercise them properly . . . it
will make me most unhappy if the Public business should have suffered by this Appointment."
By the end of June public letters from the commissioners fully had exposed Tom's misconduct. Robert wrote angrily to Deane:
These letters arrived long before I had a scrip of a Pen from you on the subject. It occured to me instantly that I had unbosomed
myself to you respecting him; that I had Sollicited your Friendship in his favour, and asked you to inform me fully and freely of
his Conduct; that to all this I never had a word in answer, and found your name at the bottom of Letters blasting his character in the most Public manner, and exposing me to feelings the most Poignant I ever knew."
Deane, Franklin, and Lee were not alone in their censure of Tom Morris. A friend wrote John Adams that Tom was "Drunk at least Twentytwo Hours of every Twentyfour . . . He neglects all business because he has rendered himself incapable of any. In short, I never saw a man in a more deplorable situation."
Morris was having little luck interceding for his wastrel half brother. Late in September, 1777, Silas Deane wrote from Paris:
Your brother's conduct cannot at this time be a secret in America . . . The friends of America in France, as well as the Americans
themselves, are so surprised to find him still continued in the most important, as well as the most delicate trust, and of being at
the head as it were of the American commerce at this critical period, and at the same time are grieved to see the effects this confidence has on him. You may suppose that this occasions much speculation, not among the Americans only, but among the merchants of Europe, to whom the management of our affairs in the commercial department is no secret . . .I fear the part you have taken for your brother in this affair, though you have doubtless acted from the most natural as well as generous and good principles, may produce consequences which none but your as well as my enemies wish for . . .
Less than two weeks later Deane reported a disgraceful incident. Toward the end of September, Tom, bearing a worn, dirty letter from Robert, had called on Deane and insisted that Deane accompany him to Benjamin Franklin's residence. There Tom berated the two commissioners, accused them of vilifying him to Congress, insisted that Congress supported him, and swore that he would ever afterwards despise them and treat them with the utmost contempt.
According to Deane, Dr. Franklin replied, "It gives me great pleasure to be respected by men who are themselves respectable, but I am indifferent to the sentiments of those of a different character, and I only wish that your future conduct may be such as to entitle you to the approbation of your honorable constituents."
Robert could no longer overlook - or attempt to defend - the behavior of his half brother. The day after Christmas, 1777, he wrote a lengthy letter to Henry Laurens, President of Congress, to be read aloud before the delegates, a letter in which he explained his attempts to redeem Tom, attempts which repeatedly failed. Robert now requested that Tom be dismissed from his position of trust, a trust he had betrayed. In closing, Robert remarked, "My distress is more than I can describe; to think that in the midst of the most ardent exertions I was capable of making to promote the interest and welfare of my country, I should be the means of introducing a worthless wretch to disgrace and discredit it is too much to bear."
Tom Morris was not to prove a disgrace to his country and to his half brother much longer. Taken ill in Nantes, he died at five o'clock in the morning of January 31, 1778. Among those attending his funeral was Captain John Paul Jones, who was refitting the Ranger at Nantes, just prior to his notable exploits in April in the Irish Sea and at Whitehaven, England, where he spiked the guns of the fort and set fire to a ship at anchor. Somewhat ironically, during the funeral the Ranger fired a salute of thirteen minute-guns in honor of Tom Morris, the "worthless Wretch."
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