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GOUVERNEUR MORRIS BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT

CHAPTER4

IN  THE  CONTINENTAL  CONGRESS

at the end of 1777, while still but twenty-five years old, Morris was elected to the Continental Congress, and took his seat in that body at York-town in the following January.
He was immediately appointed as one of a committee of five members to go to Washington's headquarters at Valley Forge and examine into the condition of the Continental troops.

The dreadful suffering of the American army in this winter camp was such that its memory has literally eaten its way into the hearts of our people, and it comes before our minds with a vividness that dims the remembrance of any other disaster. Washington's gaunt, half-starved Continentals, shoeless and ragged, shivered in their crazy huts, worn out by want and illness, and by the bitter cold ; while the members of the Continental Congress not only failed to support them in the present, but even grudged them the poor gift of a promise of half-pay in the future. Some of the delegates, headed by Samuel Adams, were actually caballing against the great chief himself, the one hope of America. Meanwhile the States looked askance at each other, and each sunk into supine indifference when its own borders were for the moment left unthreatened by the foe. Throughout the Revolutionary war our people hardly once pulled with a will together ; although almost every locality in turn, on some one occasion, varied its lethargy by a spasm of terrible energy. Yet, again, it must be remembered that we were never more to be dreaded than when our last hope seemed gone ; and if the people were unwilling to show the wisdom and self-sacrifice that would have insured success, they were equally determined under no circumstances whatever to acknowledge final defeat.

To Jay, with whom he was always intimate, Morris wrote in strong terms from Valley Forge, painting things as they were, but without a shadow of doubt or distrust; for he by this time saw clearly enough that in American warfare the darkest hour was often followed close indeed by dawn. " The skeleton of an army presents itself to our eyes in a naked, starving condition, out of health, out of spirits. But I have seen Fort George in 1777." The last sentence refers to what he saw of Schuyler's forces, when affairs in New York State were at the blackest, just before the tide began to turn against Burgoyne. He then went on to beseech Jay to exert himself to the utmost on the great question of taxation, the most vital of all. Morris himself was so good a financier that Revolutionary financial economics drove him almost wild. The Continental Congress, of which he had just become a member, he did not esteem very highly, and dismissed it, as well as the currency, as having "both depreciated." The State of Penn-sylvania, he remarked, was " sick unto death; " and added that " Sir William [the British general] would prove a most damnable physician."

Most wisely, in examining and reporting, he paid heed almost exclusively to Washington's recommendations, and the plan he and his colleagues produced was little more than an enlargement of the general's suggestions as to filling out the regiments, regulating rank, modeling the various departments, etc. In fact, Morris now devoted himself to securing the approval of Congress for Washington's various plans.

In urging one of the most important of these he encountered very determined opposition. Washington was particularly desirous of securing a permanent provision for the officers by the establishment of a system of half-pay, stating that without some such arrangement he saw no hope whatever for the salvation of the cause; for as things then were the officers were leaving day by day ; and of those who went home on furlough to the Eastern and Southern States, many, instead of returning, went into some lucrative employment. This fact, by the way, while showing the difficulties with which Washington had to deal, and therefore his greatness, since he successfully dealt with them, at the same time puts the officers of the Revolution in no very favorable light as compared with their descendants at the time of the great rebellion; and the Continental Congress makes a still worse showing.

When Morris tried to push through a measure providing for half-pay for life, he was fought, tooth and nail, by many of his colleagues, including, to their lasting discredit be it said, every delegate from New England. The folly of these ultra-democratic delegates almost passes belief. They seemed incapable of learning how the fight for liberty should be made. Their leaders, like Samuel Adams and John Hancock, did admirable service in exciting the Americans to make the struggle ; but once it was begun, their function ended, and from thence onward they hampered almost as much as they helped the patriot cause. New England, too, had passed through the period when its patriotic fervor was at white heat. It still remained as resolute as ever ; and if the danger had been once more brought home to its very door-sill, then it would have risen again as it had risen before; but without the spur of an immediate necessity it moved but sluggishly.

The New Englanders were joined by the South Carolina delegates. Morris was backed by the members from New York, Virginia, and the other States, and he won the victory, but not without being obliged to accept amendments that took away some of the good of the measure. Half-pay was granted, but it was only to last for seven years after the close of the war; and the paltry bounty of eighty dollars was to be given to every soldier who served out his time to the end.

At the same period Morris was engaged on numerous other committees, dealing chiefly with the finances, or with the remedy of abuses that had crept into the administration of the army. In one of his reports he exposed thoroughly the frightful waste in the purchase and distribution of supplies, and, what was much worse, the accompanying frauds. These frauds had become a most serious evil; Jay, in one of his letters to Morris, had already urgently requested him to turn his attention especially to stopping the officers, in particular those of the staff, from themselves engaging in trade, on account of the jobbing and swindling that it produced. The shoddy contractors of the civil war had plenty of predecessors in the Revolution.

When these events occurred, in the spring of 1778, it was already three years after the fight at Lexington ; certainly, the Continental armies of that time do not compare favorably, even taking all difficulties into account, with the Confederate forces which in 1864, three years after the fall of Sumter, fronted Grant and Sherman. The men of the Revolution failed to show the capacity to organize for fighting purposes, and the ability to bend all energies towards the attainment of a given end, which their great-grandsons of the civil war, both at the North and the South, possessed. Yet, after all, their very follies sprang from their virtues, from their inborn love of freedom, and their impatience of the control of outsiders. So fierce had they been in their opposition to the rule of foreigners that they were now hardly willing to submit to being ruled by themselves ; they had seen power so abused that they feared its very use; they were anxious to assert their independence of all mankind, even of each other. Stubborn, honest, and fearless, they were taught with difficulty, and only by the grinding logic of an imperious necessity, that it was no surrender of their freedom to submit to rulers chosen by themselves, through whom alone that freedom could be won. They had not yet learned that right could be enforced only by might, that union was to the full as important as liberty, because it was the prerequisite condition for the establishment and preservation of liberty.

But if the Americans of the Revolution were not perfect, how their faults dwindle when we stand them side by side with their European compeers! What European nation then brought forth rulers as wise and pure as our statesmen, or masses as free and self-respecting as our people ? There was far more swindling, jobbing, cheating, and stealing in the English army than in ours ; the British king and his ministers need no criticism; and the outcome of the war proves that their nation as a whole was less resolute than our own. As for the other European powers, the faults of our leaders sink out of sight when matched against the ferocious frivolity of the French noblesse, or the ignoble, sordid, b^7oody baseness of those swinish German kinglets who let out their subjects to do hired murder, and battened on the blood and sweat of the wretched beings under them, until the whirlwind of the French Revolution swept their carcasses from off the world they cumbered.

We must needs give all honor to the men who founded our Commonwealth ; only in so doing let us remember that they brought into being a government under which their children were to grow better and not worse.
Washington at once recognized in Morris a man whom he could trust in every way, and on whose help he could rely in other matters besides getting his officers half-pay. The young New Yorker was one of the great Virginian's warmest supporters in Congress, and took the lead in championing his cause at every turn. He was the leader in putting down intrigues like that of the French-Irish adventurer Conway, his ready tongue and knowledge of parliamentary tactics, no less than his ability, rendering him the especial dread and dislike of the anti-Washington faction.

Washington wrote to Morris very freely, and in one of his letters complained of the conduct of some of the officers who wished to resign when affairs looked dark, and to be reinstated as soon as they brightened a little. Morris replied with one of his bright caustic letters, sparing his associates very little, their pompous tediousness and hesitation being peculiarly galling to a man so far-seeing and so prompt to make up his mind. He wrote : " We are going on with the regimental arrangements as fast as possible, and I think the day begins to appear with respect to that business. Had our Saviour addressed a chapter to the rulers of mankind, as he did many to the subjects, I am persuaded his good sense would have dictated this text: Be not wise overmuch. Had the several members who compose our multifarious body been only wise enough, our business would long since have been completed. But our superior abilities, or the desire of appearing to possess them, lead us to such exquisite tediousness of debate that the most precious moments pass unheeded away. . . . As to what you mention of the extraordinary demeanor of some gentlemen, I cannot but agree with you that such conduct is not the most honorable. But, on the other hand, you must allow that it is the most safe, and certainly you are not to learn that, however ignorant of that happy art in your own person, the bulk of us bipeds know well how to balance solid pudding against empty praise. There are other things, my dear sir, beside virtue, which are their own reward."

Washington chose Morris as his confidential friend and agent to bring privately before Congress a matter in reference to which he did not consider it politic to write publicly. He was at that time annoyed beyond measure by the shoals of foreign officers who were seeking employment in the army, and he wished Congress to stop giving them admission to the service. These foreign officers were sometimes honorable men, but more often adventurers; with two or three striking exceptions, they failed to do as well as officers of native birth ; and, as later in the civil war, so in the Revolution, it appeared that Americans could be best commanded by Americans. Washington had the greatest dislike for these adventurers, stigmatizing them as " men who in the first instance tell you that they wish for nothing more than the honor of serving in so glorious a cause as volunteers, the next day solicit rank without pay, the day following want money advanced to them, and in the course of a week want further promotion, and are not satisfied with anything you can do for them." He ended by writing: " I do most devoutly wish that we had not a single foreigner among us, except the Marquis de Lafayette, who acts upon very different principles from those which govern the rest." To Lafayette, indeed, America owes as much as to any of her own children, for his devotion to us was as disinterested and sincere as it was effective ; and it is a pleasant thing to remember that we, in our turn, not only repaid him materially, but, what he valued far more, that our whole people yielded him all his life long the most loving homage a man could receive. No man ever kept pleasanter relations with a people he had helped than Lafayette did with us.

Morris replied to Washington that he would do all in his power to aid him. Meanwhile he had also contracted a very warm friendship for Greene, then newly appointed quartermaster-general of the army, and proved a most useful ally, both in and out of Congress, in helping the general to get his department in good running order, and in extricating it from the frightful confusion in which it had previously been plunged.

He also specially devoted himself at this time to an investigation of the finances, which were in a dreadful condition; and by the ability with which he performed his very varied duties he acquired such prominence that he was given the chairmanship of the most important of all the congressional committees. This was the committee to which was confided the task of conferring with the British commissioners, who had been sent over, in the spring of 1778, to treat with the Americans, in accordance with the terms of what were known as Lord North's conciliatory bills. These bills were two in number, the first giving up the right of taxation, about which the quarrel had originally arisen, and the second authorizing the commissioners to treat with the revolted colonies on all questions in dispute. They were introduced in Parliament on account of the little headway made by the British in subduing their former subjects, and were pressed hastily through because of the fear of an American alliance with France, which Was then, indeed, almost concluded.

Three years before, these bills would have achieved their end; but now they came by just that much time too late. The embittered warfare had lasted long enough entirely to destroy the old friendly feelings ; and the Americans having once tasted the " perilous pleasure " of freedom, having once stretched out their arms and stood before the world's eyes as their own masters, it was certain that they would never forego their liberty, no matter with what danger it was fraught, no matter how light the yoke, or how kindly the bondage, by which it was to be replaced.

Two days after the bills were received, Morris drew up and presented his report, which was unanimously adopted by Congress. Its tenor can be gathered from its summing up, which declared that the indispensable preliminaries to any treaty would have to be the withdrawal of all the British fleets and armies, and the acknowledgment of the independence of the United States ; and it closed by calling on the several States to furnish without delay their quotas of troops for the coming campaign.

This decisive stand was taken when America was still without allies in the contest; but ten days afterwards messengers came to Congress bearing copies of the treaty with France. It was ratified forthwith, and again Morris was appointed chairman of a committee, this time to issue an address on the subject to the American people at large. He penned this address himself, explaining fully the character of the crisis, and going briefly over the events that had led to it; and shortly afterwards lie drew up, on behalf of Congress, a sketch of all the proceedings in reference to the British commissioners, under the title of " Observations on the American Revolution," giving therein a masterly outline not only of the doings of Congress in the particular matter under consideration, but also an account of the causes of the war, of the efforts of the Americans to maintain peace, and of the chief events that had taken place, as well as a comparison between the contrasting motives and aims of the contestants.

Morris was one of the committee appointed to receive the French minister, M. Gerard. Immediately afterwards he was also selected by Congress to draft the instructions which were to be sent to Franklin, the American minister at the court of Versailles. As a token of the closeness of our relations with France, he was requested to show these instructions to M. Gerard, which he accordingly did; and some interesting features of the conversation between the two men have been preserved for us in the dispatches of Gerard to the French court. The Americans were always anxious to undertake the conquest of Canada, although Washington did not believe the scheme feasible; and the French strongly, although secretly, opposed it, as it was their policy from the beginning that Canada should remain English. Naturally the French did not wish to see America transformed into a conquering power, a menace to themselves and to the Spaniards as well as to the English; nor can they be criticised for feeling in this way, or taunted with acting only from motives of self-interest. It is doubtless true that their purposes in going into the war were mixed; they unquestionably wished to benefit themselves, and to hurt their old and successful rival; but it is equally unquestionable that they were also moved by a generous spirit of sympathy and admiration for the struggling colonists. It would, however, have been folly to let this sympathy blind them to the consequences that might ensue to all Europeans having possessions in America, if the Americans should become not only independent, but also aggressive; and it was too much to expect them to be so far-sighted as to see that, once independent, it was against the very nature of things that the Americans should not be aggressive, and impossible that they should be aught but powerful and positive instruments, both in their own persons and by their example, in freeing the whole western continent from European control.

Accordingly M. Gerard endeavored, though without success, to prevail on Morris not to mention the question of an invasion of Canada in the instructions to Franklin. He also warned the American of the danger of alarming Spain by manifesting a wish to encroach on its territory in the Mississippi valley, mentioning and condemning the attitude taken by several members of Congress to the effect that the navigation of the Mississippi should belong equally to the English and Americans.

Morris's reply showed how little even the most intelligent American of that time — especially if he came from the Northern or Eastern States — could appreciate the destiny of his country. He stated that his colleagues favored restricting the growth of our country to the south and west, and believed that the navigation of the Mississippi, from the Ohio down, should belong exclusively to the Spaniards, as otherwise the western settlements springing up in the valley of the Ohio, and on the shores of the Great Lakes, would not only domineer over Spain, but also over the United States, and would certainly render themselves independent in the end. He further said that some at least of those who were anxious to secure the navigation of the Mississippi were so from interested motives, having money ventures in the establishments along the river. However, if he at this time failed fully to grasp his country's future, he was, later on, one of the first in the Northern States to recognize it; and once he did see it he promptly changed, and became the strongest advocate of our territorial expansion.

Accompanying his instructions to Franklin, Morris sent a pamphlet entitled " Observations on the Finances of America," to be laid before the French ministry. Practically, all that the pamphlet amounted to was a most urgent begging letter, showing that our own people could not, or would not, either pay taxes or take up a domestic loan, so that we stood in dire need of a subsidy from abroad. The drawing up of such a document could hardly have been satisfactory employment for a high-spirited man who wished to be proud of his country.

All through our negotiations with France and England, Morris's views coincided with those of Washington, Hamilton, Jay, and the others who afterwards became leaders of the Federalist party. Their opinions were well expressed by Jay in a letter to Morris written about this time, which ran: " I view a return to the domination of Britain with horror, and would risk all for independence; but that point ceded, . . . the destruction of Old England would hurt me; I wish it well; it afforded my ancestors an asylum from persecution." The rabid American adherents of France could not understand such sentiments, and the more mean-spirited among them always tried to injure Morris on account of his loyalist relatives, although so many families were divided in this same way, Franklin's only son being himself a prominent Tory. So bitter was this feeling that when, later on, Morris's mother, who was within the British lines, became very ill, he actually had to give up his intended visit to her, because of the furious clamor that was raised against it. He refers bitterly, in one of his letters to Jay, to the " malevolence of individuals," as something he had to expect, but which he announced that he would conquer by so living as to command the respect of those whose respect was worth having.

When, however, his foes were of sufficient importance to warrant his paying attention to them individually, Morris proved abundantly able to take care of himself, and to deal heavier blows than he received. This was shown in the controversy which convulsed Congress over the conduct of Silas Deane, the original American envoy to France. Deane did not behave very well, but at first he was certainly much more sinned against than sinning, and Morris took up his cause warmly. Thomas Paine, the famous author of " Common Sense," who was secretary of the Committee of Foreign Affairs, attacked Deane and his defenders, as well as the court of France, with peculiar venom, using as weapons the secrets he became acquainted with through his official position, and which he was in honor bound not to divulge. For this Morris had him removed from his secretaryship, and in the debate handled him extremely roughly, characterizing him with contemptuous severity as " a mere adventurer from England . . . ignorant even of grammar," and ridiculing his pretensions to importance. Paine was an adept in the art of invective ; but he came out second best in this encounter, and never forgot or forgave his antagonist.

As a rule, however, Morris was kept too busily at work to spare time for altercations. He was chairman of three important standing committees, those on the commissary, quartermaster's, and medical departments, and did the whole business for each. He also had more than his share of special committee work, besides playing his full part in the debates and consultations of the Congress itself. Moreover, his salary was so small that he had to eke it out by the occasional practice of his profession. He devoted himself especially to the consideration of our finances and of our foreign relations; and, as he grew constantly to possess more and more weight and influence in Congress, he was appointed, early in 1779, as chairman of a very important committee, which was to receive communications from our ministers abroad, as well as from the French envoy. He drew out its report, together with the draft of instructions to our foreign ministers, which it recommended. Congress accepted the first, and adopted the last, without change, whereby it became the basis of the treaty by which we finally won peace. In his draft he had been careful not to bind down our representatives on minor points, and to leave them as large liberty of action as was possible; but the main issues, such as the boundaries, the navigation of the Mississippi, and the fisheries, were discussed at length and in order.

At the time this draft of instructions for a treaty was sent out, there was much demand among certain members in Congress that we should do all in our power to make foreign alliances, and to procure recognitions of our independence in every possible quarter. To this Morris was heartily opposed, deeming that this " rage for treaties," as he called it, was not very dignified on our part. He held rightly that our true course was to go our own gait, without seeking outside favor, until we had shown ourselves able to keep our own place among nations, when the recognitions would come without asking. Whether European nations recognized us as a free people, or not, was of little moment so long as we ourselves knew that we had become one in law and in fact, through the right of battle and the final arbitrament of the sword.

Besides these questions of national policy, Morris also had to deal with an irritating matter affecting mainly New York. This was the dispute of that State with the people of Vermont, who wished to form a separate commonwealth of their own, while New York claimed that their lands came within its borders. Even the fear of their common foe, the British, against whom they needed to employ their utmost strength, was barely sufficient to prevent the two communities from indulging in a small civil war of their own; and they persisted in pressing their rival claims upon the attention of Congress, and clamoring for a decision from that harassed and overburdened body. Clinton, who was much more of a politician than a statesman, led the popular party in this foolish business, the majority of the New Yorkers being apparently nearly as enthusiastic in asserting their sovereignty over Vermont as they were in declaring their independence of Britain. Morris, however, was very half-hearted in pushing the affair before Congress. He doubted if Congress had the power, and he knew it lacked the will, to move in the matter at all; and besides he did not sympathize with the position taken by his State. He was wise enough to see that the Vermonters had much of the right on their side in addition to the great fact of possession ; and that New York would be probably unable to employ force enough to conquer them. Clinton was a true type of the separatist or states'-rights politician of that day: he cared little how the national weal was affected by the quarrel; and he was far more anxious to bluster than to fight over the matter, to which end he kept besieging the delegates in Congress with useless petitions. In a letter to him, Morris put the case with his usual plainness, telling him that it was perfectly idle to keep worrying Congress to take action, for it would certainly not do so, and, if it did render a decision, the Vermonters would no more respect it than they would the Pope's Bull. He went on to show his characteristic contempt for half measures, and capacity for striking straight at the root of things : " Either let these people alone, or conquer them. I prefer the latter; but I doubt the means. If we have the means let them be used, and let Congress deliberate and decide, or deliberate without deciding, — it is of no consequence. Success will sanctify every operation. ... If we have not the means of conquering these people we must let them alone. We must continue our impotent threats, or we must make a treaty. . „ . If we continue our threats they will either hate or despise us, and perhaps both. . . . On the whole, then, my conclusion is here, as on most other human affairs, act decisively, fight or submit,— conquer or treat." Morris was right; the treaty was finally made, and Vermont became an independent State.

But the small politicians of New York would not forgive him for the wisdom and the broad feeling of nationality he showed on this and so many other questions; and they defeated him when he was a candidate for reelection to Congress at the end of 1779. The charge they urged against him was that he devoted his time wholly to the service of the nation at large, and not to that of New York in particular; his very devotion to the public business, which had kept him from returning to the State, being brought forward to harm him. Arguments of this kind are common enough even at the present day, and effective too, among that numerous class of men with narrow minda and selfish hearts. Many an able and upright Congressman since Morris has been sacrificed because his constituents found he was fitted to do the exact work needed; because he showed himself capable of serving the whole nation, and did not devote his time to advancing the interests of only a portion thereof.