Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA)

October 25, 1990
Page: B01
Edition: SUBURBAN

Section: LOCAL

FALLEN PATRIOT'S PLEA FROM JAIL NOW FOR SALE 
Michael E. Ruane, Inquirer Staff Writer 

There had been a time, years before, when the ample Robert Morris had strode confidently past Philadelphia's Walnut Street jail serenaded by the prayers and curses of the inmates. 

In that summer of 1787, he and other delegates to the Constitutional Convention were en route to Independence Hall, across the street. And Morris - patriot and tycoon - was a man with standing to match his bulk. But 12 years had passed. And now, in the summer of 1799, it was Morris, 65, who was inside the jail's debtors prison, fearful of a yellow fever epidemic and pleading with the state Supreme Court for his freedom. 

Morris and his fellow inmates believed that the court - under these dire circumstances - had the power to release them: "Inasmuch as this City is at present afflicted with an infectious or a contagious fever," they wrote, ''. . . we entreat that you may be pleased to do so." 

But for Morris, a financier of the American Revolution and the signer of the Articles of Confederation, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, the answer was no. 
Next month the sad chapter in the life of one of colonial America's best- known figures will be revisited when Morris' original petition from the ''debtors apartment" at Sixth and Walnut Streets is put up for auction in New York City. 
It is expected to fetch several thousand dollars, said Wilmer S. Roberts, a Philadelphia consultant for the R.M. Smythe auction house in New York. 

He declined to say who now owns the petition or why it is being sold. But he said the document is an important shard of Philadelphia history and a lesson in the harshness - and impartiality - of 18th-century law. 
Robert Morris was imprisoned for debt on Feb. 16, 1798, the same year that another signer of the Constitution, James Wilson, died in North Carolina, a fugitive from his creditors. 

"Debt in those days was serious business," David C. G. Dutcher, chief historian of Independence National Historical Park, said yesterday. "You could be put to death in England for debt." Part of the reason may have been that debt flew "in the face of the Protestant work ethic," Dutcher said, "the old ethic of work hard and pay your debts and be honest." Not that Morris was lazy or dishonest. He had always been a money man, and a patriotic one. Born in England, he had come to America and prospered with a Philadelphia mercantile firm. During the Revolution he helped buy arms and supplies for the American Army. 

He served for a time as the young nation's chief finance minister and helped found the country's first government incorporated bank. He was a friend of George Washington's, and during the Constitutional Convention, Washington stayed in Morris' grand home at Sixth and Market Streets, where guests were entertained with lemonade and harpsichord music. Washington later considered, but rejected, making the house the first presidential mansion. But after the Revolutionary War, Morris became involved in land speculation. 

"Morris and a number of others believed very strongly in the growth of the new nation, and expected that with the end of the war there was going to be a large tide of new immigration," Dutcher said.  "So a lot of them rushed in and purchased huge tracts of land, and then . . . (the boom) didn't happen," Dutcher said. "There was a recession and a slowdown." Some were ruined.  Morris - who at one point headed a company that held six million acres in six states - was imprisoned with at least one of his business associates, John Nicholson. Morris had been in prison for more than five months when the petition was written. He and the others were no doubt terrified about the return of Yellow Fever, which had ravaged the city in 1793. 
Their petition to the court is in Nicholson's handwriting with Morris' name topping the list of signers. It was a pathetic document, compared with others he had signed. But the request was rejected. Morris was held in jail for two more years. He was released, under a new bankruptcy law, on Aug. 26, 1801. He died five years later, broken in spirit and fortune, and was buried in the yard of Christ Church. 

But his story and signature survive on some of the most exalted and on one of the most lowly documents in American history. 
"In terms of ephemera it's a real choice piece of Americana," Dutcher said of the petition. "But it's sort of a sad thing. Your reflex is sort of that it ought to be draped in black. It's a sad ending for one of America's great leaders." 

Copyright 1990- PHILADELPHIA NEWSPAPERS INC.
May not be reprinted without permission.