Background
Morgan, Daniel, , New Jersey 1736 1802 Male Soldier Revolutionary soldier, son of James and Eleanora Morgan, was of Welsh ancestry and born probably in Hunterdon County, N. J. , though some authorities say just across the Delaware River in Bucks County, Pa. , where his father was ironmaster at the Durham Iron Works.
The meager records of his youth tell us that, after quarreling with his father, he made his way to the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, where he worked as farm laborer and teamster until he had saved sufficient money to become an independent wagoner, in which capacity he accompanied Braddock's ill-fated expedition.
Career
Later, he transported supplies to the frontier posts of Virginia.
Within ten days he enlisted his company and twenty-one days later reached Boston from Winchester, Va. , his company intact.
After a short period of comparative inactivity, he volunteered for Arnold's arduous expedition through the Maine wilderness to Quebec, and accompanied Arnold's column in the assault, Dec. 31.
Upon rejoining Washington, the following April, he organized, under the latter's order, a corps of five hundred sharpshooters, and participated in various movements in New Jersey until ordered north in August to assist Gates in opposing Burgoyne's advance.
Here his troops rendered such signal service at the battles of Freeman's Farm and Bemis Heights that Gates, replying to Washington's request for their return, declared that he could not spare "the corps the army of General Burgoyne are most afraid of" (Sparks, post, II, 437).
Morgan's indignant refusal to participate in the intrigues against Washington led to an estrangement between him and Gates, though the latter had warmly welcomed him upon his arrival.
After Burgoyne's surrender, Washington recalled him to assist in the campaign around Philadelphia in the fall and winter of 1777.
Though not actually engaged at the battle of Monmouth, he effectively pursued the British after that engagement.
Recalled to active service in 1780, he joined Gates, with whom he had become reconciled, shortly after the latter's disastrous defeat at Camden.
Failing to obtain Greene's consent to his plan of creating a diversion by advancing into Georgia, Morgan gradually retired northward before the advancing British under Tarleton until he reached the Cowpens, a few miles south of the North Carolina boundary.
Here, with the Broad River in his rear, he determined to make a stand with his small force of somewhat over eight hundred.
Fearing a union of Tarleton's shattered troops with the main army under Cornwallis and an effort to cut him off, he retreated rapidly northward, effecting a junction early in February with Greene's troops at Guilford Court House.
This act led for a time to the charge, which he bitterly resented, even to the point of personal encounter, that he was speculating in his soldiers' necessities.
Retiring to "Saratoga, " he devoted himself with such success to the restoration of his shattered fortune that by 1796 he owned more than 250, 000 acres on the Monongahela and Ohio Rivers (Graham, post, p. 413).
In 1794, in command of the Virginia militia, he assisted in suppressing the Whiskey Insurrection in western Pennsylvania and, after the withdrawal of the main army, remained in control of the district, where he successfully pursued a policy of conciliation.
Defeated for Congress in 1795, he was successful in 1797, serving one term.
Indicative of his intense partisanship is his comment in a letter of 1798 regarding the Democrats: "They at this time look like a parsell of Egg sucking Dogs that have been caut Breaking up Hens Nests" (letter to Presley Neville, in New York Public Library).
Morgan was stout and active, six feet in height, "exactly fitted for the toils and pomp of war. "
His two daughters, Nancy and Betty, became the wives of Presley Neville and James Heard, respectively.
[James Graham, Life of Daniel Morgan (1856), and the Cowpens Papers (1881) reprint many documents from the Morgan papers in the New York Public Library; see also Henry Lee, Memoirs of the War in the Southern Department (2 vols. , 1812), esp.
I, 386 ff. ; J. F. Folsom, in Proc.
N. J. Hist.
Soc. , July 1929; J. H. Brandow, in Proc.
N. Y. Hist.
Asso. , vol.
XII (1913); J. H. Smith, Arnold's March from Cambridge to Quebec (1903) and Our Struggle for the Fourteenth Colony (2 vols. , 1907); E. A. Duyckinck, Nat.
Portrait Gallery of Eminent Americans (1862); Jared Sparks, Correspondence of the Am.
Rev. (1853); Virginia Argus (Richmond), July 21, 1802. ]
Religion
Wild in his youth, in later years he became a devout member of the Presbyterian Church.
