thing pathetic in this
estrangement, if independence and self-reliance had not dominated the
youngest son as well as the older heirs of this noble family. Lewis,
the eldest, served in the Continental Congress and became a signer of
the Declaration of Independence, while Staats Long, the second son,
wandered to England, married the Countess of Gordon, became a general
in the British army, and a member of Parliament in the days of Lord
North and Charles James Fox. It was a strange coincidence, one brother
resisting Parliament in Congress, the other resisting Congress in
Parliament.

[Footnote 78: There was a slight vein of eccentricity running through
the Morris family, with its occasional outcroppings accentuated in the
presence of death. The grandfather, distinguished as chief justice of
New York and governor of New Jersey, forbade in his will the payment
of any one for preaching his funeral sermon, but if a person
volunteered, he said, commending or blaming his conduct in life, his
words would be acceptable. Gouverneur's father desired no notice of
his dissolution in the newspapers, not even a simple announcement of
his death. "My actions," he wrote, "have been so inconsiderable in the
world, that the most durable monument will not perpetuate my folly
while it lasts." It is evident that Gouverneur did not inherit from
him the almost bumptious self-confidence which was to mar more than
help him. That inherent defect came from his mother, who gave him,
also, a brilliancy and versatility that other members of the family
did not share, making him more conspicuously active in high places
during the exciting days of the Revolution. Gouverneur Morris was a
national character; Richard and Lewis belonged exclusively to New
York.]

The influences surrounding Gouverneur's youth were decidedly Tory. His
mother warmly adhered to George the Third; his professors at King's
taught loyalty to the Crown; his distinguished tutor in the law,
William Smith, New York's Tory historian, magnified the work and the
strength of Parliament; while his associates, always his mother's
welcomed guests at Morrisania, were British officers, who talked of
Wolfe and his glorious struggles for England. But there never was a
moment from the time Gouverneur Morris entered the Provincial Congress
of New York on May 22, 1775, at the age of twenty-three, that he was
not conspicuously and brilliantly active in the cause of America.
Whenever or wherever a Rev