Sold – Robert Morris Laments the Vagaries of Life and Death, and Mourns Fellow-Signer James Wilson

Although Morris was reelected to the Pennsylvania legislature for 1785-86, his private ventures consumed most of his time. In the latter year, he attended the Annapolis Convention, and the following year the Constitutional Convention. In 1789, declining Washington’s offer of appointment as the first Secretary of the Treasury, he took instead a U.S. Senate seat (1789-95).

During the later years of his public life, Morris and his partners in his North American Land Company  speculated wildly, often on overextended credit, in lands in the West and at the site of Washington, DC. They owned six million acres of land in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Kentucky, and purchased newly created lots in the nation’s capital in the hope of selling them at auction. John Nicholson and Thomas Ruston were two of Morris’ partners in North American.

Arrested at the behest of creditors in February 1798, Morris was thrown into the Philadelphia debtor’s prison, where he remained until released in 1802 under a federal bankruptcy law. However, his property and fortune had vanished, his health had deteriorated, and his spirit had been broken.

James Wilson was a fellow signer of the Declaration of Independence, a major force in the drafting of the nation’s Constitution, and one of the six original justices appointed by George Washington to the Supreme Court of the United States. His final years were also marked by failure. He assumed heavy debts investing in land and was briefly imprisoned for debt in Burlington, New Jersey. His son paid the debt, but Wilson went to North Carolina to escape other creditors. He was again briefly imprisoned, but nevertheless became a circuit judge there. In 1798, he suffered a bout of malaria, then died of a stroke on August 21, 1798.

Autograph Letter Signed, debtor’s prison in Philadelphia, September 12, 1798, to John Nicholson lamenting the vagaries of life and the death of his friend Wilson. “I was glad to find by your letter of last night that you were still in the land of the living, these are perilous times a man may be well today and dead tomorrow.  Our friend judge Wilson is good poor fellow and there is an end to his troubles in this world.  Bache the Printer also, his day has I think been cut too short.  You did not enclose Boone’s letter as you intended and as to Tommy Ruston. I leave him to you, for it is contrary to the Rules of this House to dun for debts contracted out of it. God preserve you many years.” Bache was Benjamin Franklin Bache, grandson of Benjamin Franklin, who was the editor of the openly Jeffersonian newspaper, the Aurora. He died of yellow fever on September 10, 1798, at age 29. The Boone mentioned was likely noted Philadelphia merchant Jeremiah Boone.