Morton’s service to the Nation began in 1765, while he was a member of the Pennsylvania legislature. He and two colleagues represented the colony at the Stamp Act Congress in New York. His most dramatic act as Delegate to the Continental Congress (1774–77), in which he numbered among the moderates, was his sudden and crucial switch on July 1, 1776, to the side of his friend Benjamin Franklin and James Wilson in the vote for national independence. On the final vote the next day, these three ballots outweighed those of Thomas Willing and Charles Humphreys. Robert Morris and John Dickinson being purposely absent, Pennsylvania registered a “yea.” Less glamorously, Morton was a member of many committees, in 1777 chairing the committee of the whole on the adoption of the Articles of Confederation, finally ratified after his death.
Within a year of signing the Declaration, in the spring of 1777, Morton fell ill and died on his farm at the age of 51. A few months earlier, he had bequeathed his land and property, including a few slaves, to his wife and five daughters and three surviving sons. But he could not will them security; shortly after his demise they had to flee from their home in the face of an imminent British attack. Morton’s grave is located in Old St. Paul’s Cemetery in Chester, Pa.
Thomas Nelson, Jr.
VIRGINIA
Thomas Nelson, Jr., a rich planter-merchant who at one time owned more than 400 slaves, was one of the most active of the Virginia patriots. Mainly because of health problems, however, his career in Congress was brief and undistinguished, though he made great financial sacrifices during the war and won fame as a militia commander and State politician.
The eldest of five sons, Nelson was born at Yorktown, Va., in 1738. At the age of 14, he sailed to England to supplement his initial tutorial education. In 1761, after graduating from Hackney School and Cambridge University, he returned to Virginia to help his father manage his plantation and mercantile business. The next year, young Nelson married; he and his wife were to have 11 children.
In 1764 Nelson became a justice of the peace for York County and entered the House of Burgesses. He served in the house until May 1774, when Royal Governor Lord Dunmore, provoked at its protests over the Boston Port Act, dissolved it. That year and the next, Nelson attended three of the Virginia provincial assemblies, where he worked closely with Patrick Henry. The last assembly elected Nelson to the Continental Congress, at which time he resigned his colonelcy in the Virginia militia.
In Congress, Nelson was outspoken in his desire to sever the bonds with England. He journeyed to Virginia in the spring of 1776. At a convention held in Williamsburg in May, he introduced and won approval for a resolution recommending national independence, drafted by Edmund Pendleton. Nelson carried it to Philadelphia and presented it to Richard Henry Lee, who redrafted and condensed it into his June 7 resolution. Not long afterward, Nelson’s health began to decline. Subsequently, he divided his time between Philadelphia and Virginia, and in the spring of 1777 resigned from Congress.