07/02/2026
Lewis Morris – NY signer of the Declaration of Independence.
"Damn the consequences. Give me the pen."
Lewis Morris’ dad was a colonial American judge, politician and landowner who served as speaker of the New York General Assembly under the Crown. The family had both wealth and power in the new world. His father died when he was 36 (in 1762) and the family estate, “Morrisania manor” in the Bronx, passed to him.
Taking after his father, in 1769, he was elected to the New York General Assembly but as tensions grew between the Crown and the colonies, there came a time to choose sides and he choose our cause. Not everybody in New York City did; including some of his own kin.
Morris was sent to the Continental Congress in 1775 and while in Congress, he was an active supporter of independence and signed the Declaration. When his brother Staats Morris (yup, General Staats Morris. Yes, British Army General Staats Morris) warned Lewis of the consequences that would follow his signing of the rebellious document, Morris stated, "Damn the consequences. Give me the pen." To his own brother.
Lewis’ 3 eldest sons fought in Washington’s Army, not Uncle Staats'.
Following British victory at the Battle of Long Island in August 1776, Redcoats advanced northward and occupied the New York area. They targeted Morrisania as direct retribution against its owner. During the occupation, British soldiers looted the estate, burned the manor house and trees, slaughtered or stole the livestock, and drove away the tenants and slaves. His family fled to Connecticut.
He, and his boys, survived the war and after the revolution, he worked to rebuild the estate, experimenting in crossbreeding cattle, different crop rotations, and even raising hogs. He continued in service, both as a judge in Westchester County and served as a state senator from 1777 to 1781 and again from 1784 to 1788. When the New York convention met in 1788 to ratify the Constitution, Morris was one of the delegates voting for a new frame of government.
And in 1790, he offered his land, now part of the South Bronx neighborhood of Morrisania, as the site of the U.S. capital. It ended up in D.C. Morris died in 1798 at the age of 71.
He put his pen to the Declaration of Independence under this closing line:
"…and for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."
You can’t excuse the ownership of other humans as an ugly part of the time or his character. But you also can’t discard the commitment to honoring his pledge when he signed that declaration. The least we can do 250 years later, is remember him for it.
