Signing Their Rights Away Page 7

  His three terms as governor were marred, however, by accusations of bad personal behavior. Claiming to be sick, Mifflin often skipped important meetings. Oliver Wolcott, a son of a signer of the Declaration of Independence and the nation’s new secretary of the Treasury, confided to a friend, “The governor is an habitual drunkard. Every day, and not infrequently in the forenoon, he is unable to articulate distinctly.” (Ah, no wonder Mifflin was always described as having a “hearty claret color or rather ruddy complexion.”) This sad truth might have been easier to live down had it not been accompanied by more charges of embezzlement. Apparently, Mifflin had dipped into public funds, withdrawing money from a Pennsylvania bank for his personal use, only to repay the funds when the truth was uncovered.

  In 1799, Mifflin closed out his last term in the new seat of the state government—Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He accepted duties in the state house but didn’t live long to perform them. He was dead within a month, at the age of fifty-six. A lavish spender who dodged creditors toward the end of his life, he left behind an estate so squandered that he had to be buried at public expense.

  The Signer Who Went to Debtors’ Prison

  BORN: January 31, 1734

  DIED: May 8, 1806

  AGE AT SIGNING: 53

  PROFESSION: Merchant, banker, land speculator

  BURIED: Christ Church, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

  Known to history as the “Financier of the Revolution,” Robert Morris was a tremendously successful merchant, banker, broker, and fund-raiser. But for all his efforts to keep the fledgling United States and its army from going broke, he wasn’t able to manage the same for himself.

  One of the few immigrant signers, Morris was born in Liverpool, England. He came to America with his father and quickly established himself as a merchant, prospering as a partner in his own firm in Philadelphia called Willing and Morris. He married Mary White, and together they had five children. Being a wealthy merchant and banker with one of the biggest shipping firms in the colonies made Morris an unlikely candidate to aid the revolutionary cause. There was money to be made, after all. He may have been frustrated with the Stamp Act of 1765, for example, but he wasn’t so upset that he wanted to revolt. He did, however, sign nonimportation agreements, promising his fellow patriots that he would not trade in British goods, a gutsy stance for anyone who traded with the Crown.

  As he became more involved with the patriot cause, Morris’s firm began importing arms and ammunition for Congress. Sent to the Continental Congress in 1776, he was relied upon for his financial prowess and connections. He worked on the Secret Committee of Commerce, which acquired foreign goods for the military, paying for them with in-kind shipments of goods from the colonies. Soon after entering Congress, however, the pesky issue of whether to declare independence from Britain arose. Morris thought the timing was all wrong. He was not alone.

  Pennsylvania was divided. Although Morris did not want to vote for independence, he also didn’t want to prevent the motion from passing. So, on the day of the big vote, he simply played hooky. After the resolution passed, he signed the Declaration of Independence, becoming the only Pennsylvania signer who could have voted for independence but chose not to. Later, Morris explained why he continued to serve his nation even though he disagreed with its choice to become independent: “I think that an individual who declines the service of his country because its councils are not comfortable to his ideas, makes but a bad subject; a good one will follow if he cannot lead.” The next year, he even apologized for not supporting independence.

  To finance the American Revolution, Morris wheeled, dealed, begged, borrowed, and then some. Most historians agree that without the three-pronged team of Franklin wooing the French, Washington fighting the war, and Moneybags Morris securing the cash, the Union Jack would still be flying high over the states. Larger-than-life Morris was socially skilled and had a talent for charming folks out of their money. He had connections in the financial world that Congress lacked, and copious personal credit to boot. When times were desperate, he even dipped into his personal savings.

  When the troops needed food, ammunition, and dry boots, when Congress didn’t have any real credit to speak of, Morris was the man. Washington wrote to Morris directly when he was banked on the Delaware waiting to cross, with precious few supplies on hand. Morris brought out the checkbook, and Washington took the Hessians to the cleaners. Later, Morris secured funding for Washington’s Yorktown campaign, which helped end the war. The two men would be friends for life.

  The resilience of Morris’s fortunes, even in wartime, was regarded as impressive by some, suspicious by others. In 1779, he was accused of war profiteering, but a congressional hearing cleared his name. Despite the setback, he was appointed by Congress as the nation’s superintendent of finance in 1781, and he got to work revamping the nation’s money system. Assisted by cosigner and friend Gouverneur Morris (no relation), Morris set the withering finances of the colonies back on track, established new procedures for supplying the military, and founded America’s first government-incorporated bank, the Bank of North America, considered to be the model for Alexander Hamilton’s later creation, the Bank of the United States. Morris resigned his post in 1784 to focus on business, returning to Pennsylvania politics in time for the Constitutional Convention.

  Morris, like Washington, was a strong nationalist and thought the Articles of Confederation should be revamped or replaced. But his behavior at the convention was surprisingly discreet. On the first day, he officially nominated Washington to be convention president but then kept mum for the rest of the proceedings. It may have been that he preferred back-room politics. Ever the socialite, Morris hosted Washington at his home in Philadelphia, and they would receive other delegates after hours. There were dinner parties, invitations to Morris’s estate outside town, and, of course, frequent trips to the pub. Perhaps Morris was more interested in discussing his views over pints rather than on public record.

  He did regard the resulting document, with all its perceived flaws and controversy, as the work of “plain, honest men,” and he was happy to sign it. Washington offered him the job as first secretary of the Treasury, but Morris passed it up, choosing instead to serve as a senator to the first Congress. He supported Hamilton’s financial system, which drew inspiration from Morris’s term as superintendent of finance.

  Like many of his fellow delegates, Morris was swept up in the land speculation craze of the late 1780s. He—alone and with partners—bought and sold millions of acres of land throughout the colonies and the territories west of the established states. At one point, his land holdings were estimated to be worth roughly $2 million (yes, those are eighteenth-century dollars). But Morris let his ambitions get away from him. Much of what he bought was purchased with public securities, and when the values of those securities increased, Morris’s finances took a dive. Immigration dried up, and so did interest in frontier property. He was upside-down on his loans with no way to dig himself out and not a federal bailout in sight. The great financial mind of the Revolution was arrested and sent to Philadelphia’s Prune Street debtor’s prison. He left behind his family as well as an unfinished mansion on Chestnut Street that became known as Morris’s Folly. (It was later torn apart for scrap.)

  While Morris served his time, his old friend Washington stopped by to visit and even dined with him. His friend Gouverneur Morris secured an annuity for his wife, Mary, so that she could support herself; that same money helped the couple when Morris was later released. He spent the end of his remarkable life in obscurity, dying bankrupt and all but lost to history, although his contributions to the origins of the United States cannot be contested. In 1878, long after Morris was gone, the nation honored him by placing his portrait on the first $10 silver certificate.

  Morris’s other Philadelphia home, on Market Street, is also long gone, but the site—across from the Independence Visitor’s Center—is now preserved as an African American heritage site and i
s open to the public. When Philadelphia was the nation’s capital, Morris rented the home to George Washington, who is known to have kept nine slaves there while he was president. A statue of Morris stands just east of Independence Hall, and he is buried at nearby Christ Church.

  Despite his early misgivings, Morris lent his signature to all three of the most important documents of the time: the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution. Connecticut’s Roger Sherman is the only other man to have done so.

  The Signer Whose Home Was Destroyed by the British

  BORN: March 16, 1735

  DIED: January 24, 1813

  AGE AT SIGNING: 48

  PROFESSION: Merchant

  BURIED: Friends Meeting House Cemetery, Trenton, New Jersey

  George Clymer was a quiet, unassuming moneybags with no desire to serve in public office. But the new nation could not have survived were it not for men of his keen intelligence—and deep pockets—working behind the scenes.

  Clymer cut a handsome figure, with his aquiline nose, wispy hair, and fine features. The son of a sea captain, he was orphaned at an early age and raised by an aunt and uncle. Luckily for him, his uncle, a buddy of Benjamin Franklin, was a wealthy and cultured merchant. Clymer followed in his uncle’s footsteps, devouring every book in the man’s library and then raking in the cash from shrewd business deals in the import-export business.

  He gave people the impression of being a cool cucumber—some would even mistake him for being lazy—but his doctor and friend, Declaration of Independence signer Benjamin Rush, said that nothing could be further from the truth. Behind that polished exterior, Rush claimed, was a warm, open-hearted man who had great affection for the patriot cause. Clymer would even support the rights of people vastly different from him, specifically Native Americans and immigrants, on whose behalf he would later negotiate peace and rights settlements. As early as 1773, when Clymer was in his mid-thirties, he chaired the board that organized the Philadelphia Tea Party—virtually unknown to most Americans today—along with other smaller tea parties that took place around the same time; these events pressured merchants who were licensed to sell English tea to renounce their posts as royal consignees.

  Also in 1773, Clymer saw some service as captain in a corps of volunteer troops nicknamed the “Silk Stockings,” because so many members were from well-heeled, blueblood families. The group used its military might to force local merchants to stop selling British tea. Clymer further distinguished himself with another important wartime service to his new country: fund-raising. He raised money for military supplies of all types—corn, flour, gunpowder, and tenting materials. And he backed the Revolutionary War by exchanging some of his own gold and silver—the safest of commodities—for risky Continental currency that wouldn’t have been worth the paper it was printed on had the revolution ended in failure. He even served as Continental treasurer during the first year of the war.

  One of six signers of the Declaration of Independence who also signed the Constitution, Clymer, along with his family, suffered at the hands of the British during the war. When the Redcoats blitzed through Philadelphia in the fall of 1777, Congress fled, leaving Clymer (and fellow signer Robert Morris) to manage paperwork and keep the financial wheels of government turning. In September 1777, British troops destroyed Clymer’s country estate outside Philadelphia as Clymer’s wife, Elizabeth Meredith, and their children hid in nearby woods and watched the destruction. Thankfully, the damage did not inhibit Clymer’s ability to earn a living—or to lend others money. Twenty years after the Declaration was signed, he was back to his old bankrolling ways, bailing out the University of Pennsylvania from possible bankruptcy, creating banks, and establishing art academies, among other philanthropic ventures.

  Clymer was not a lawyer and didn’t say much at the Constitutional Convention. His name appears in Madison’s records only a few times, motioning or voting on matters relating to taxation, slavery, and navigation. During a discussion of the three-fifths compromise, he objected, for instance, to the word slaves being used in the Constitution; the framers ended up changing the word to the euphemistic “all other persons,” as if to sweep the entire issue under the rug.

  Clymer did serve on important business committees during the summer of 1787. He was a man who believed that those sent to Congress should “think for and not with his constituents.” True to that dictum, he often ignored his own constituents’ wishes when they conflicted with what he thought was the smart course of action. That might sound hard-hearted, but most modern members of Congress, if they were honest, would probably agree. It’s impractical to ask voters for their opinion on every issue; they vote for the person who will do the best job of representing their interests. In general, Clymer voted at the convention like the man he was—a big shot from a big state.

  After the convention, Pennsylvania elected him a U.S. representative to the first Congress; he served out his term and didn’t seek reelection. He was, to his core, a behind-the-scenes man and was duly appointed by Washington to handle the management and collection of excise taxes for the new government. He knew goods, he knew business, he knew taxes. But the excise tax on whiskey turned out to be such an unpopular issue (especially in Pennsylvania, site of the Whiskey Rebellion) that Clymer sickened of the abuse his department received and stepped down. At Washington’s request, he negotiated peace treaties with Creek and Cherokee tribes in Georgia.

  Upon retiring at age fifty-seven, Clymer continued to stay active in social, charitable, and philanthropic works. In 1806, still smarting from the destruction of his prerevolutionary home, he bought another house, Summerseat, in Morrisville, Pennsylvania, which is still standing and open to the public. He died there in 1813, at the age of seventy-three. He is buried in a Quaker cemetery in Trenton, New Jersey, under a modest stone that hails him as a signer of the Constitution but does not mention that he also signed the Declaration of Independence.

  The Signer Who Loaned Away His Fortune (and Never Got It Back)

  BORN: 1741

  DIED: August 26, 1811

  AGE AT SIGNING: About 46

  PROFESSION: Merchant

  BURIED: St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Churchyard, Independence National Historical Park, Philadelphia

  Thomas FitzSimons had a lengthy and impressive resume in the world of finance, but this hard-won experience didn’t keep him from losing his entire fortune.

  One of seven signers born outside America, FitzSimons emigrated from Ireland to the bustling city of Philadelphia, where his father quickly established a business. FitzSimons wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps, so to learn the ropes he clerked in the mercantile business. His professional plans were helped considerably by his love life. After marrying Catherine Meade, who came from a fine family in town, FitzSimons partnered with his new brother-in-law George to become part of the “company” in George Meade and Co. The firm was successful at trading with the West Indies, and FitzSimons quickly established himself as a smart financier.

  He was active in the Irish Catholic community and, in 1771, became vice president of the fraternal organization of the Friendly Sons of Saint Patrick. In 1774, Parliament passed the Coercive Acts—legislation that punished American colonists for their role in the Boston Tea Party. One of these acts closed the port of Boston, which made an importer-exporter like FitzSimons shiver in his buckle-shoes. As anti-British sentiment heated up, he became involved with Philadelphia protests and the community began to perceive him as a leader.

  What makes FitzSimons’s ascent all the more remarkable is his religion: he was Catholic at a time when anti-Catholic sentiment pervaded the colonies. Most colonists viewed Catholics as agents of the papacy. In many parts of the colonies, they were prohibited from worshipping in public, holding office, practicing law, and voting. In fact, to keep Catholics out of public office, colonies would sometimes require new hires to take the so-called religious Test Oath. Doing so as a Catholic often meant denou
ncing several tenets of the faith (including the sacrament of Communion and adoration of saints).

  Yet somehow FitzSimons navigated around these prejudices to become what many believe was the first-ever Roman Catholic elected to a public office in the colonies. His patriotism, combined with his business savvy, earned him spots on Pennsylvania’s committee of correspondence (a letter-writing, intelligence-gathering ring established by patriots) as well as a seat on the provincial (or rebel) congress.

  FitzSimons helped organize his colony’s militia in 1775 and marched to New Jersey to support George Washington’s troops in 1776 and 1777. When his days as a captain ended, he continued contributing to the Revolution as a member of the new nation’s Navy board and the committee of safety, a military-governmental group of volunteers charged with defending the public. His business provided supplies for the troops and donated thousands of British pounds to the almost-always-broke Continental Army. Yet, despite the war, he kept the cash rolling in.

  In the years after the conflict, FitzSimons became concerned about the fiscal health of the colonies, worrying especially about inflation. Working with fellow Constitution signer Robert Morris, he organized the first Bank of North America and served on its board for more than twenty years.

  In 1782 and 1783, FitzSimons served in the Congress of the Confederation. He also served on the Pennsylvania Council of Censors, an organization that guarded against violations of the state’s constitution, as well as the state legislature. In 1786, he was sent to the Annapolis Convention, the meeting at which the delegates decided that the Articles of Confederation needed a good overhaul.