Robert Morris (financier) - Legacy

Legacy

• Morris's work, "On Public Credit" submitted during the Revolution, to the Continental Congress in 1781, supplied the basis for Hamilton's economic plan submitted in 1790 under the title First Report on the Public Credit. Morris laid out a national funding plan but its reliance on direct taxation, including a head tax on slaves, prevented his gaining support for it. Hamilton added to the plan as Secretary of Treasury. Along with Alexander Hamilton and Albert Gallatin, Morris is considered one of the key founders of the financial system in the United States.
• Morris' portrait appeared on US $1000 notes from 1862 to 1863 and on the $10 Silver Certificates from 1878 to 1880.
• Morris and Roger Sherman were the only two people to sign all three significant founding documents of the United States, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the U.S. Constitution.
• Morris's is the only signer of the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, or the Articles of Confederation (and he signed all three) whose house is the site of a national memorial in a National Park, but it whose life and work is not interpreted at the location.
• The dollar sign ("$") was in common use among private merchants during the middle of the 18th century. It referred to the two columns draped with scrolls on the Spanish milled dollar, which predated the US Dollar. Morris was the first to use that symbol in official documents and in official communications with Oliver Pollock. The US dollar was based on the Spanish milled dollar when, in the Coinage Act of 1792, the first Mint Act, its value was "fixed" (per the U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8, clause 1 power of the United States Congress "To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures") as being "of the value of a Spanish milled dollar as the same is now current, and to contain three hundred and seventy-one grains and four sixteenth parts of a grain of pure, or four hundred and sixteen grains of standard silver."

Institutions named in honor of Morris include:

• Robert Morris University, Pennsylvania
• Robert Morris University (Illinois)
• Robert Morris Elementary School, Batavia, New York.
• Robert Morris Elementary School #27, Scranton, Pennsylvania
• Robert Morris Elementary, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• Robert Morris School South Bound Brook, New Jersey

• Mount Morris, New York, location of a large flood control dam on the Genesee River, was named in his honor.

• A number of ships in the United States Navy and the United States Coast Guard have been named USS Morris or USRC Morris for him.

• A small town, Morrisville, Pennsylvania, was named in his honor. A statue of him is in the town square.