Continental Congress Remarks on Robert Morris, [5 March 1783]
Continental Congress
Remarks on Robert Morris
[Philadelphia, March 5, 1783]
This motion1 produced … lengthy & warm debates. Mr. Lee2 & Mr. Bland on one side disparaging the Administration of Mr. Morris, and throwing oblique censure on his character.… On the other side Mr. Wilson & Mr. Hamilton went into a copious defence & Panegyric of Mr. Morris, the ruin in which his resignation if it sd. take effect wd. involve public credit and all the operations dependent on it; and the decency altho’ firmness of his letters.
“Notes of Debates in the Continental Congress,” MS, James Madison Papers, Library of Congress.
1. A motion had been made by Theodorick Bland that a “committee be appointed to devise the most proper means of arranging the Department of Finance” (, XXIV, 165).
On January 24, 1783, Robert Morris wrote to Congress that unless adequate measures for securing revenue were adopted before the end of May, he would resign the office of Superintendent of Finance. Congress, disturbed by the possible repercussions of Morris’s resignation, ordered his letter kept secret. On February 26, Morris asked that the injunction of secrecy be removed; when Congress complied, he published his letter (, XXIV, 92, note 1; and 151).
On March 5, a committee which had been appointed to consider his resignation reported that no immediate action was necessary. Bland’s motion was occasioned by the committee report (, XXIV, 165).
2. Arthur Lee of Virginia.