Levi Morton

Background

His father, the Rev. Daniel Oliver Morton, was pastor at Shoreham, Vt. , when Levi was born.

The name, Levi Parsons, was contributed by a missionary brother of his mother, Lucretia (Parsons) Morton.

Education

The young man gained much of his early business experience as store-keeper and forwarder at Hanover, N. H. , where he lived in the household of a professor at Dartmouth College, but he had neither time nor means for a collegiate career.

Career

He was successful, however, in the two ensuing elections of 1878 and 1880.

With abundant wealth, they entertained lavishly and acquired a fondness for European residence.

Morton's diplomatic responsibilities were not heavy, involving nothing more than matters of nationality and citizenship, the ceremonies surrounding the gift of the Bartholdi Statue of Liberty, and interminable correspondence regarding the status of the American hog in France.

He came home vainly aspiring to the Senate, in 1885 and again in 1887, but willing to accept the vice-presidency, which he gained in 1889.

He was chagrined, but dignified, when accident deprived him of the barren honor of a renomination in 1892.

In 1895 he became governor of New York, after twelve years of Democratic rule, succeeding his neighbor Roswell P. Flower who had in 1881 taken his place as congressman.

He became governor with the support of Senator Thomas C. Platt, now boss of the state, but he was in no sense a cog in Platt's machine; and in the many moments in which he showed a determination to be a real governor, Platt tried in vain to discipline him by threats of withholding support for the presidential nomination of 1896.

As a banker, he strongly supported the gold standard.

He finally received the support of Senator Platt and became a favorite son in 1896, but the support was only for bargaining purposes since before the Republican convention met Hanna and McKinley were already in control of its destiny.

In 1899 he rearranged his affairs, launching at the age of seventy-five the Morton Trust Company, which increased in wealth and influence until it was amalgamated with the Guaranty Trust Company in 1909.

After this amalgamation, he retired from active business to spend much of his time in travel and in contemplation of his various benefactions, among which were generous contributions to the cathedral of St. John the Divine.

Three of his daughters survived him.

[Morton outlived his prominence and received less obituary notice than might have been expected, although there is a good article in the N. Y. Times, May 17, 1920.

The campaign biography of 1888, by George Alfred Townsend [Gath], was printed in Lew Wallace, Life of Gen. Ben Harrison (1888), but is unimportant.

There is a somewhat unusual collection of eulogistic speeches by the senators of the Fifty-second Congress in Testimonial to Vice-President Levi P. Morton (1893).

Lib.

For genealogical details, see J. G. Leach, Memoranda Relating to the Ancestry and Family of Hon. Levi Parsons Morton, Vice-President of the U. S. , 1889-93 (1894). ]

Religion

Morton had by this time set up a great country estate, "Ellerslie, " near Rhinecliff-on-Hudson, and now as vice-president he bought a house on Scott Circle and established his family in Washington society.

Politics

Morton, Levi Parsons, , Vermont 1824 1920 Male Diplomat Governor (State) veepp minister to France, vice-president of the United States, and governor of New York, was primarily a banker whose prominence in New York business extended from the Civil War until after the panic of 1907.

He was nominated for Congress by the Republican party of the eleventh New York district (a residential district on upper Fifth Avenue), in 1876, and was defeated after cutting down the normal Democratic majority.

Interests

• Music & Bands

  As presiding officer over the Senate he was his own master, unyielding to party pressure; yet he was a faithful servant of the Senate rules, showing none of the ambition to command that Reed exhibited in the House and none of the zeal to reform that his next banker-successor, Dawes, displayed in 1925.

Connections

He came of old New-England stock, a descendant of George Morton [q. v. ], and with perhaps no ancestor who arrived in America after 1650.

His first wife having died in 1871, he was married on Feb. 12, 1873, to Anna Livingston Read Street.

After the death of his wife in 1918 he lived in almost complete retirement until he followed her on his ninety-sixth birthday, in 1920.

married:

Lucy

He met in Hanover his first wife, Lucy Young Kimball, of Long Island, whom he married on Oct. 15, 1856.

Wife:

Lucy

He met in Hanover his first wife, Lucy Young Kimball, of Long Island, whom he married on Oct. 15, 1856.

Partner:

John

Morton's English partner, Sir John Rose, was go-between in the conversations that preceded the Joint High Commission of 1871, and both Rose and Morton were in frequent communication with President Grant and Secretary Fish during the critical moments of the Geneva arbitration.