[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 135 (Wednesday, October 25, 2000)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1915-E1916]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    RECOGNIZING THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF AMERICAN PATRIOT ROBERT MORRIS

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. MARK FOLEY

                               of florida

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, October 25, 2000

  Mr. FOLEY. Mr. Speaker, I would like to recognize for the 
Congressional Record an American patriot who has gone largely unnoticed 
in our reflections of history but whose contributions to the founding 
of our great country were singularly significant and decisive.
  The patriot was Robert Morris, and I am fortunate enough to have as 
constituents in my Florida district some of his descendants--notably 
Gladys Hungling of Sebring, a U.S. Army veteran of the Korean War.
  Morris was a financier--but not just any financier. The 1962 
``Dictionary of American Biography'' calls him the ``financier of the 
American Revolution,'' and for good reason. Without his considerable 
skills, it is all but certain that our founders would not have had the 
financial ability to fight and win the Revolutionary War.

[[Page E1916]]

  Robert Morris was born in 1734 in England. He came to live in 
Maryland as a child, at age 13, but soon became involved with a 
Philadelphia import-export business, in which he stayed involved for 
nearly 40 years. It was in this business that he honed his skills for 
finance, eventually becoming a leading member of trade--and arguably 
the wealthiest--in both Philadelphia and the colonies. Because of his 
prominence and skills, he became part of the center core of people who 
eventually shaped our land.
  A close friend of George Washington, Mom's was a Pennsylvania 
delegate to the Continental Congress. More significantly, he was also 
one of only two colonials who signed all three of our founding 
documents: the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of 
Confederation and the Constitution.
  And, as superintendent of finance under the Articles of 
Confederation, he was the forerunner to our first American secretary of 
the treasury. It was Robert Morris who knew the ``art magick''--as 
George Washington called Morris'' skills in high finance--and he used 
those skills to secure funds for the war, often using his own credit 
and money to back it up. He also founded the first government-
incorporated bank in the country, the Bank of North America, in order 
to finance Washington's Yorktown campaign in 1781. He did so, according 
to records in the National Archives, by obtaining a sizable loan from 
France and by using his own credit and funds.
  Robert Morris' legacy to the founding of our country was not without 
controversy: During his own day, he was criticized for the way his 
personal finances were tied to the finances of his young country. But 
the fate of the two were very different. The war effort he made 
possible through his ``art magick'' succeeded. The Declaration, the 
Articles and the Constitution he signed gave birth to a great nation. 
Robert Morris himself ended up in debtors' prison, dying amid poverty 
and obscurity.
  Yet it is to this American patriot that we ourselves are the debtors, 
Mr. Speaker. Because without his financial wherewithal, the ability to 
successfully wage the Revolutionary War--and become the great country 
we are--would have been lost.

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