Levi P. Morton, VIP of Rhinecliff
by Cynthia Owen Philip

Levi P. Morton, the international banker who bought the great Rhinecliff estate of Ellerslie in 1887 shortly before becoming vice-president of the United States, was a self-made multi-millionaire. Strange as it may seem in that Gilded Age era of grasping monopolies and corrupting greed, he was a man of uncompromising integrity, focused energy and affectionate generosity. A forthright New England conscience lay behind these characteristics; he also possessed great puritan reticence. When questioned about his long successful life, all he could muster up was that he was surprised at how well he had done in business with so little schooling, and that he was astonished that, when he retired as vice-president of the United States, he was given a dinner by the entire senate, even though the government was highly partisan.

Small Town, Old Family Origins
Levi Parsons Morton was born in 1824 in Shoreham, Vermont, a village four miles from Lake Champlain, where his father, Daniel Oliver Morton, was the minister of a struggling Congregational parish. His mother, Lucretia Parsons, had been a school teacher. Together they provided Levi with two Mayflower ancestors and at least 80 kin who had arrived in America before 1650. Morton was always conscious of the heritage that formed him, but he wore it, as he had been brought up to do, like a simple homespun garment. His Calvinist indoctrination was also a private matter. Although family life was in no way lacking in merriment and real affection, the orderliness and regularity instilled by its religious underpinnings was always one of his greatest strengths.

Levi received a decent grammar school education and hoped to attend college as his older sister and brother had done, but when his turn came there was no money. He was barely a teenager when he took his first job, ringing the bell for church services "for a consideration." His second job at age 14 took him away from home to a general store in Enfield, New Hampshire, for a salary of $50 a year. After two years, he quit. While looking around for another opportunity, he taught school, for which he quickly realized he was ill suited.

Fortune struck, as it would again and again. He was offered a clerkship at a general store in Estabrook, near Concord, New Hampshire. The salary: $200 a year. Although he was only 19, his employer sent him to Hanover to open a branch store. Socially and intellectually he could not have landed in a more perfect place. Boarding with Dartmouth College's Latin professor who was also Daniel Webster's brother-in-law, he received the intellectual stimulation that had been slighted. From a business point of view, it was productive as well. When his employer's store failed, his was drawn into the bankruptcy. This brought the principal creditor, James Beebe, head of the largest, most profitable importing house in Boston, to Hanover to see what he could salvage. He found Morton's record keeping so meticulous that he not only engaged him to continue managing the store, but became his mentor. (Like so many other prosperous men he, too, had started out in a country store.) Always a business innovator, Morton increased his profits by advertising his wares broadly; he even went so far as to pay Vermonters' bridge tolls to entice them to cross the Connecticut River to shop with him. Soon he was able to buy Beebe out. Still Beebe kept an eye on him and in 1849, asked him to join his firm in Boston. Morton sold his store for a handsome profit of between $12,000 and $13,000 and rushed off to Boston, then the Mecca for all ambitious New Englanders.

Morton's career continued its dizzying upward spiral. Beebe took him abroad to investigate the European market, then, in 1851, made him a junior partner at the same time as Junius Spencer Morgan, the father of J.P. Morgan, joined the firm as a senior partner. The Morgans' friendship would be of great use to Morton. Soon afterwards, Beebe sent Morton to New York to set up a branch of the firm. Almost immediately, however, Morton was asked to head up another trading company. He accepted without hesitation. There is no clue as to what Beebe thought about the defection; it is entirely possible he had a hand in it. Morton's Parsons grandfather was not so sure. "I hear Levi is prospering in this world's goods," he wrote Morton's mother, "I fear lest it be at the cost of his soul."

Up to this time Morton had kept to his grindstone. He made many warm friends, but most were in some way connected with his business. In 1856, however, he at last felt secure enough to marry. Now 32, he wed 20-year old Lucy Kimball, whom he had first met as a little girl in Hanover. The Kimballs were not wealthy, but they too were old family. Moreover, Lucy, having visited her uncle who was the United States Minister to Portugal, had led a far more sophisticated life than most American girls. They were ideally suited. With the marriage, Morton changed his church attendance to Episcopalian. The couples' sole abiding sorrow was the death of their daughter in infancy. She was their only child.

For the next five years Morton dealt successfully in southern cotton, though when the Civil War came and his company went bankrupt, Morton was a staunch supporter of Abraham Lincoln. Morton, making a radical career change, went into international banking. Nevertheless, like every business enterprise Morton turned his hand to, it was immediately successful. Junius Morgan, who had set up a bank in London, sent him clients, and Morton had such a strong reputation for fair dealing that others flocked to him. To his great credit, one of the first things he did with his profits was pay in full the men who had suffered losses from his bankruptcy. He also bought a fine "cottage" called "Fairlawn" in Newport, Rhode Island. There the Mortons entertained delightfully, if comparatively simply. Among their guests was President Ulysses S. Grant, Morton's friend and hero, to whose campaign he liberally contributed. In 1871, tragedy struck: Lucy Morton died.

After Morton established a fund to build a community house for Grace Church in memory of his wife, he plunged back into business by starting a new bank. Probably the most important work he accomplished through this bank was promoting the peaceful arbitration of United States' claims against the British for breaking their neutrality during the Civil War. (The warships the U.K. sent to the Confederacy destroyed some 100,000 tons of northern cargoes.) The United States received a $15 million award, of which Morton got a percentage.

Somehow Morton found time during the negotiations to court and marry Miss Anna Street, a woman 22 years his junior. Born in Poughkeepsie, with Livingston antecedents, her family were part of New York's Knickerbocker society. The new Mrs. Morton was described as "bringing to their common problems sanity, generosity, and wisdom, and assisting him in the spacious hospitalities of Newport, Paris and Washington." She also gave him the special joy of five daughters.

Political Zig-Zag
Having reached the pinnacle in business, Morton decided it would be fitting to round out his life with a political career. In this he was far less successful. Although it is hard to believe he was unaware of the rampant wheeling and dealing of the era, he seems to have entered the arena with the innocence of a lamb. In addition to his political naivete, his natural reticence was a stumbling block. Still, having splendidly performed as the Republican Party's national financial chairman, he felt confident enough to run for the congressional seat in the 11th District, then as now, New York City's "silk stocking" district. He failed, his opponent casting him as "a tool of Wall Street." Nevertheless, two years later he ran again and won by a landslide.

Cartoon by Joseph Keppler from Puck Magazine showing Benjamin Harrison on the Republican Party's "High Tarrif Platform." Levi Morton is being hoisted onto it by his "cronies" (the platform is held up by money bags sporting the initials "L.P.M.").

In Congress, Morton spoke for the gold standard and for repaying foreign debt at full value. He was also a strong protectionist. A reporter described him as "Six feet tall, straight-limbed, and erect, the whole tone of his character . . . toward tranquility." In Washington, he and his family lived on stylish Lafayette Square, adjacent to the White House. Their home became noted for hospitality and urbanity.

This genality did him little good, however. New York State politics, to which he was inextricably bound, was in an awful state of flux. He had allied himself with the Conkling machine, and it was besieged by rivals. If it cared anything for Morton, it was only for his money. In 1880, Morton had a fluttering hope of being his friend James Garfield's choice for vice president; instead it went to Conkling's nominee, Chester A. Arthur. He then agreed to head up the finance campaign, expecting to be rewarded with the Treasury Department. Garfield won, but Morton was not even considered for the Treasury. Instead, he was appointed Minister to France, a position open only to men who had the fortune to pay their way.

In France, Morton's innate civility made him many friends. However, his obligations were mild. The main focus of his tenure was France's gift of the Statue of Liberty to the United States; among his many duties in this connection was hammering the first rivet into her left toe. When the Democrat Grover Cleveland was elected president, Morton returned home. In 1885 he appealed to the New York State legislature to appoint him United States senator (senators were not yet elected by popular vote). It did not. In 1887, he tried again, but was forced to withdraw his name in the interests of party unity.

A Quiet Rural Setting?
At this juncture, Morton's wife persuaded him to sell his Newport mansion and to buy a large deteriorating gentleman's farm called Ellerslie in the hamlet of Rhinecliff not far from her birthplace in Poughkeepsie. Perhaps with a brood of teenage girls she thought a quiet rural setting along the Hudson River more appropriate than the dazzling social life in the country's most fashionable seaside resort. She may also have been trying to divert her husband's energies from fruitless political striving. Whatever the case, Morton readily acquiesced.

To be near at hand during the re-construction of Ellerslie, the Mortons rented a house not far from the Beekman Arms. Thus it was at Rhinebeck that Morton received the glorious news that he had been nominated as the vice-presidential running mate of General Benjamin Harrison in the 1888 campaign for the United States presidency.

The ticket was either complementary or a mismatch, depending on your point of view. Harrison, from Indiana, was as much of a dark horse as Morton; the two had been put together for regional balance and because New York offered a hefty 36 electoral votes. Both were devout Christians in an election where adherence to religious values was crucial. Harrison was a compelling public speaker, but as cold as ice in private. In contrast, Morton was impressive in small groups but could not—and did not—give rousing speeches. The campaign was peppered with cutting, witty cartoons and doggerel. Those featuring Morton not only presented him as a "tool of Wall Street" but ribbed him as the professed puritan who owned Washington D.C.'s Shoreham Hotel (named after his birthplace), at whose bar congressmen refreshed themselves liberally while cutting deals. The dominant issue was the tariff, before the income tax the federal government's main source of revenue. Democrats favored free trade; Republicans protectionism.

The popular vote was a near cliffhanger. The Democrats won by only 96,000 votes. The Republicans' clever ticket-balancing, however, had tipped the electoral vote in favor of Harrison and Morton, 233 to 168. Levi P. Morton was well pleased. Rhinebeck was ecstatic to have such a great celebrity in its midst. As it turned out, the residency of the Mortons would be a far greater boon, especially to the hamlet, than anyone in the neighborhood had anticipated.

To be continued in the next issue.