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Thomas was given many opportunities to succeed by his half-brother Robert Jr., but was more of a gambler, drinker, and maker of shady deals. As a young man Thomas grew increasingly wild but his half brother , Robert Morris Jr.,refused to abandon him. The older brother had done everything he could for the younger. As soon, Robert said, as "I fixed myself in the world...I took charge of this brother. I gave him the best education that could be obtained in Philadelphia, and...I took him into my counting house." There Tom remained for about three years, but Robert was forced to send him to Spain to break his connections with worthless companions.Eventually Tom returned to America, and, Robert reported, he briefly "had great satisfaction in him." But Tom's former associates sought him out and once again were leading him astray. Once again Robert sent Tom traveling in Europe and this time entrusted him with some business for Willing & Morris.No sooner had Tom arrived than Silas Deane reported that "the company he dipp'd at once into was so dissolute and expensive that it very essentially injured the reputation of your house, of which he was considered as being a member." Tom's escapades soon would cause Morris major embarrassment." Robert could no longer overlook - or attempt to defend - the behavior of his half brother. The day after Christmas, 1777, he wrote a lengthy letter to Henry Laurens, President of Congress, to be read aloud before the delegates, a letter in which he explained his attempts to redeem Tom, attempts which repeatedly failed.Robert now requested that Tom be dismissed from his position of trust, a trust he had betrayed.In closing, Robert remarked, "My distress is more than I can describe; to think that in the midst of the most ardent exertions I was capable of making to promote the interest and welfare of my country, I should be the means of introducing a worthless wretch to disgrace and discredit it is too much to bear." Tom Morris was not to prove a disgrace to his country and to his half brother much longer.Taken ill in Nantes, he died at five o'clock in the morning of January 31, 1778.Among those attending his funeral was Captain John Paul Jones, who was refitting the Ranger at Nantes, just prior to his notable exploits in April in the Irish Sea and at Whitehaven, England, where he spiked the guns of the fort and set fire to a ship at anchor. Somewhat ironically, during the funeral the Ranger fired a salute of thirteen minute-guns in honor of Tom Morris, the "worthless Wretch."
William B.
