American patriot, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, born at Morrisania, NY, in 1726; the son of Chief Justice Lewis Morris, of the admiralty court of New York; graduated at Yale (1746). He assumed a bold position toward the English authorities in New York City, and was sent by the patriots of his colony to Congress in 1775. The following winter he worked actively to detach the western Indians from their British allies. Returning to New York in 1776, he infused new energy into the civic resistance to English oppression. On the 4th of July he signed the Declaration of Independence, and was punished for it by the destruction of his extensive property on the Hudson. He relinquished his seat in favor of his half-brother, Gouverneur, in 1778, and returned to the care of his estate, where he died on the 22nd of January 1798.
