America's Secret Aristocracy (16 page)

What, then, is the explanation for the decline of the Randolphs? How could a family that was able to rise so spectacularly in the eighteenth century manage to subside so ignominiously by the end of the nineteenth? Weak blood, of course, is one way to account for this. But it is also possible that William Randolph made his first mistake when he decided to create a huge plantation for each of his seven sons. Each son became an instant landed gentleman, and all were peers. The first Robert Livingston had a different philosophy, encouraging his sons to become rivals and competitors. It may not have made for a happy family, but it
did
make the boys work harder. In the South, the elegant Randolphs, cosseted and spoiled by slaves, could spend their days riding to the hounds, sipping whiskey, going to parties and balls, and doing really not much else at all. By the third and fourth Randolph generations, the whole idea of work seems to have become quite alien to them. When the Livingstons married their cousins and other close relatives, each new family became a kind of warring tribal unit, battling with each other for more money and more power. But when the Randolphs did the same thing, they simply settled more deeply into a life of affluence, indolence, and ease.

Unequal inheritances have always created bad blood within families. But perhaps equal inheritances can do even more damage to a family in the long run, and Robert Livingston seems to have had the notion that a blood feud or two was a good thing for the circulation and might make good blood pump harder.

11

Morrises and More Morrises

At least the Livingstons today have retained bits and pieces of what were once their great manorial lands. Considering the family feuds, and considering the ways the land might have been divided up among the many heirs, lost through folly, or sold off to pay debts, it is remarkable—even though a million and more acres have shrunk to only a few hundred acres scattered about the Hudson River valley—that there is still Livingston acreage more than three hundred years later. As a family, the Livingstons have shown a certain sagacity and shrewdness when it comes to real estate and hanging on to it, and real estate, after all, is what a landed gentry is all about.

The Morrises of Morrisania have been less fortunate than either the Livingstons or the Randolphs. Perhaps this is because the earliest American Morrises were not men of the land, like the Livingstons, but were men of the sea.

The first Lewis Morris, of the venerable New York and New Jersey Morris clan, was, in essence, a pirate, though there was a more polite name for it at the time. He was called a freebooter. He had been given a “letter of marque” from the British monarch, giving him the right to prey on any ships not flying the British flag. In return, of course, he was expected to split his booty with the Crown, and there is every evidence that he kept up his end of the bargain.

His nephew, another Lewis Morris, was in a somewhat more suitable trade. He acquired sugar plantations in Barbados and made a tidy fortune in rum. For this he was rewarded by being made first lord of the manor of Morrisania and was granted large tracts of lands on the mainland northeast of
Manhattan and also along the coastal plains of New Jersey, where he became the colony's first governor under English rule. The Morris presence in New Jersey is today memorialized in the names of Morris County, as well as the towns of Morristown and Morris Plains, and in the Morrisania section of the East Bronx. Though the Morrises had been loyal Tories, they supported the Revolution, and Lewis Morris's grandson—yet another Lewis Morris, the third and last lord of Morrisania—was one of two Morrises to sign the Declaration of Independence, albeit somewhat reluctantly, knowing that it would lead to the eventual breakup of the manorial system and the end of the great manor house where he had been born. This Lewis Morris, known in the family as Morris the Signer, would also go on a special mission to the western frontier to win the Indians over from the British to the American side, and served in the Revolutionary Army as a brigadier general of militia. Later, he served two terms in the New York State Senate.

Yet none of the Morrises considered himself a man of the people, and most were outspokenly aristocratic in their views. “As New England, excepting some Families,” the first lord once wrote, “was ye scum of ye old, so the greatest part of the English in the Province [New York] was ye scum of ye New.” Even more aristocratic in outlook, if possible, was another of his grandsons, Gouverneur Morris, half brother of Morris the Signer.
*
Initially, Gouverneur Morris distrusted the whole idea of the Revolution, fearing that it represented an uprising of the proletariat and would result in the “domination of a riotous mob.” But he greatly admired George Washington, whom he saw as a gentleman like himself, and served in the Continental Congress. In 1792, President Washington rewarded him by appointing him U.S. minister to France, and Gouverneur Morris became the only representative of a foreign country who would remain steadfastly at his post throughout the Reign of Terror. But Morris's distaste for the French Revolution was so ill concealed that he was not always a popular figure in Paris. At one point, during a revolutionary riot, his carriage was attacked by a howling mob with cries of “Aristocrat!” Morris, who was missing a leg, then thrust the stump of his leg out the carriage window
and shouted back, “An aristocrat! Yes—who lost his limb in the cause of American liberty!” Thereupon, so it is said, he was roundly cheered by the crowd and allowed to drive on unharmed. He did not add that he had not lost his leg as a result of a battle injury but in a civilian carriage accident.

Finally, however, the hostility toward Morris in revolutionary France was so great that when Washington asked for the recall of the French Ambassador Edmond Genêt, Paris retaliated by asking for the recall of Morris. But, being a man of independent nature as well as independent means, Gouverneur Morris didn't just turn tail and go home. Instead, he spent the next four years touring the capitals of Europe and generally enjoying himself. He finally returned to New York in 1798, where he resumed his law practice and took up other matters. Among these were helping to design the Erie Canal system and marrying Nancy Randolph, the accused murderess and popular star of the Great Randolph Scandal.

Today, Mr. Benjamin P. Morris, Jr., a retired banker from Long Branch, New Jersey (whose father was mayor of that city for a number of years), recalls tales his grandfather Jacob Wolcott Morris used to tell about his elderly cousin Gouverneur in his later years. He enjoyed taking friends and family members on jaunts to Washington, where, mispronouncing his first name slightly, he would present himself as “Governor Morris.” This provided instant entrée for the group to the highest levels of Washington society. Everybody assumed he was governor of some state or other and saved him from having to say he was a Morris of Morrisania and from explaining what that meant and what Morrisania had once been.

Actually, there have been three Morris families that have played important roles in American history, and as far as is known, none of these Morrises is remotely related to either of the other two. The second Morris family would include the descendants of Robert Morris, the other Morris who signed the Declaration of Independence, and who might be known as the Mystery Morris. Absolutely nothing is known about Robert Morris's background or parentage. He got his start when he was taken into the Philadelphia countinghouse owned by Thomas Willing, of the eminent Philadelphia Willing family, and was made a junior partner in 1757. Soon the firm was renamed Willing & Morris, and their bank has been called the economic father of the Revolution. Certainly Willing & Morris were the leading financiers of the Revolution, and Thomas
Willing was rewarded for his patriotic efforts by being placed in charge of the nation's first financial system as president of the Bank of North America and later of the Bank of the United States. From 1781 to 1784, Robert Morris served as U.S. superintendent of finance, and none other than Gouverneur Morris served as his able assistant. During this same period, Robert Morris was also “agent of marine,” meaning that he headed the Navy Department. He was offered, and declined, the position of secretary of the treasury in George Washington's cabinet.

Robert Morris lived grandly in two stately houses, one in Philadelphia and one in the country. He entertained lavishly, and among his most frequent guests were President Washington and the first lady. But by the late 1790s, Robert Morris seemed to have begun to believe in his myth as the man who footed the bill for the Revolution and in his reputation as a financial genius. He began to divest himself of his banking interests and to spend more and more time and money in western land speculations of the sort that would not begin to pay off for anyone until years later, after the Civil War. Presently, he was bankrupt, and for more than three of the last ten years of his life he was behind bars in debtors' prison. By the time he emerged in 1801, nearly everybody in Philadelphia had forgotten who he was, and those who remembered—to whom he still owed money—didn't want to be reminded. He died in Philadelphia in 1806. By then, two of his five sons had predeceased him, and the chance to found a great American family was past.

The third Morris family is also from Philadelphia, and these Morrises occasionally refer to themselves as “the
real
Philadelphia Morrises,” leaving the impression that any descendants of Robert Morris are unreal, if not nonexistent. The real Philadelphia Morrises descend from Anthony Morris, who was born in London in 1654. Before coming to America in 1682, he had already converted to Quakerism, married, and fathered four children. Landing in Burlington, New Jersey, Anthony Morris purchased two hundred acres of land there, but within a few years he and his family moved on to Philadelphia, perhaps because another Morris family was already entrenched in New Jersey and Anthony Morris wanted to establish his dynasty elsewhere. This he certainly did. Anthony Morris had seven children by his first wife, who died in 1688. He then had three children by his second wife,
who had had three previous husbands, and five more children by his third wife, who was the widow of Governor William Coddington of Rhode Island. Subsequent generations have been almost as prolific.

Though the New York–New Jersey Morrises' fortune was based on sugar and rum, the Anthony Morris fortune was based on a more plebeian beverage—beer. On the other hand, when he established one of the city's first breweries, Morris may have been making a shrewd move, considering the number of German immigrants who would eventually settle in the city. These Philadelphia Morrises produced no Declaration of Independence signers, nor did they ever have a manor granted to them (manorships existed only in New York and Maryland), but they accounted for themselves very well. For nearly three hundred years, the descendants of Anthony Morris have produced business, civic, and social leaders in Philadelphia, active in the arts, professions, sciences, and education. “On the whole, I'd say our family has held up better than the New York Morrises, over the long haul,” one of these Morrises commented not long ago. In a social sense, this is probably true. For generations, the Morris name has decorated the rosters of the most fashionable clubs and social institutions, and no board membership of a museum, symphony, opera, or charity ball is considered quite complete without a Morris on it. Morris men have been traditionally philanthropic, and Morris women have been some of the city's most energetic and popular hostesses. Among other things, the real Philadelphia Morrises are noted for that ineffable quality—charm.

But these Philadelphia Morrises are even prouder of another long family tradition, that of probity. In Philadelphia, it is important to remember, some things are more important than others. Even more significant than having ancestors who signed the Declaration of Independence is having ancestors who were on the board of directors of the Pennsylvania Railroad. From the very beginning, the Pennsylvania Railroad was run by Philadelphia's upper class. The Pennsy's presidents—Thomas A. Scott, George B. Roberts, Alexander J. Cassatt—were all picked out of the city's aristocracy. Furthermore, during its great heyday the Pennsy was the best-run and the best railroad in the United States. The great scandals and outrages committed by other railroad men of the time—William H. Vanderbilt (“The public be damned!”), E. H. Harriman (who brought strikers into line by hiring thugs armed with
machine guns), James J. Hill, and Jay Gould, not to mention the notorious California big four, Collis P. Huntington, Leland Stanford, Charles Crocker, and Mark Hopkins—that inevitably led to financial panics on Wall Street never touched the Pennsylvania. For years, the success of the Pennsy was proof that the upper class knew how to run things best.

Nor was the Pennsy's management ever stuffy or smug. On the contrary, the railroad was foresighted and ambitious. Until the presidency of A. J. Cassatt, for example, passengers from the West coming into New York had had to debark with their luggage on the Jersey shore and make the journey into Manhattan by ferry. Cassatt ordered two tunnels built under the Hudson River, four more under the East River, and the construction of that magnificent lost New York landmark, Pennsylvania Station. To be invited to join the Pennsy's board of directors was the most coveted honor in the city. Over the years, the board was composed of Biddies, Ingersolls, Cadwaladers, and Robertses—and nearly always several Morrises.

If the Philadelphia Morrises take a somewhat lofty view of their New York–New Jersey nonrelatives, the New York–New Jersey clan is perturbed not at all by this. “Our family was never interested in that city-society sort of thing,” says the aforementioned Benjamin P. Morris, Jr. “My grandfather used to call it ‘
Sass
-iety.' We were country people. Grandfather Morris had a big farm in New Jersey, where I grew up. He also ran a gristmill and was a lay judge. For years, too, he had the title of wreck master, which meant he was in charge of salvaging all the shipwrecks along the Jersey coast. They even paid him for it.” While the Philadelphia Morrises enjoy being featured prominently on corporate and philanthropic letterheads and in the society pages, the New York–New Jersey Morrises have tended to take up less flashy endeavors. Just as many of the early descendants of the first Lewis Morris were lawyers and country judges, so are many of the family lawyers today. Now an octogenarian, Benjamin P. Morris, Jr., is retired—unfashionably—in a small town near the Gulf Coast of Texas (these Morrises like to be near the sea) and in Iowa, where his son, Benjamin P. Morris III, is a lawyer.
His
son, Benjamin P. Morris IV, is in law school. And as far as is known, no New York–New Jersey Morris has ever married a Philadelphia Morris, real or unreal, or wanted to.