INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.

"HONOR to whom honor is due." The pioneers of freedom are worthy to be honored and immortalized in history. The unalterable friends of freedom, they lay the first offerings upon its altar, and devote, at the peril of their own political standing, and of life itself, their energies to its defense and progress. History presents noble testimonials of the struggles, and achievments of these proto-martyrs to freedom and the rights of man. Political confiscation, banishment from political parties, and blood flowing from the block, attest the faith, and the self-sacrificing devotion of these patriots. Such men ought not to die from the memory, or the history of their country. They do not die. "In this world they will have their judgment day, and their names which went down, temporarily, like a gallant banner, trodden in the dust, shall rise again, all glorious in the sight of the nation."

Emmet, the patriot, and martyr for the freedom of Ireland, said, "Let not my history be written during the present generation. The future will rectify the judgment of public opinion, and remove present prejudices; then posterity will do me justice, and vindicate my memory." Truth is certain of an ultimate triumph; and when that triumph shall come, their names and memories will live in grateful remembrance;

and before the world, "their age shall be clearer than the noon-day; they shall shine forth, they shall be as the morning."

The present is a fitting time to present to the lovers of liberty, the life and services of one of the first co-laborers in the cause of human freedom, in its contest with the aggressions of American slavery. THOMAS MORRIS, of Ohio, in the councils of his country, State and National, was ever the honest, earnest, out-spoken, and fearless friend of freedom. In him Constitutional liberty, the rights of man, the cause of universal emancipation, and resistance to the slave power of the country, found a faithful sentinel, and an able advocate. He was among the first political martyrs in the great struggle between freedom and slavery. Having fresh Senatorial honors proffered by the Democratic party that honored him with a seat in the Senate of the United States, if he would be an apostate to conscience and freedom, he rejected them, as unworthy of such a sacrifice; and the party that had for nearly forty years honored him with political trusts and preferments, decreed his political crucifixion. He paid the penalty on the 4th of March, 1839, and retired from his seat as Senator in Congress, with the proud consciousness of political rectitude, and of unfaltering faithfulness to freedom and the true principles of the Constitution.

Seventeen years have passed away since his voice for freedom was heard in the halls of the National Congress, and twelve years since the grave held all that was mortal of Thomas Morris. The man dies, but his services and memory live. And the valuable services he rendered to freedom, when but few voices were heard in its defense, either in the country, or in Congress, will now be appreciated, approved, and gratefully remembered. His warnings and prophecies, uttered with a fearless independence, in reference to the

purposes and aggressions of the slave power, seeking perpetual expansion and supremacy, have been fearfully fulfilled. The present avowed purpose of the slave power, to hold, if possible, the balance of political power in its own hands, and to give indefinite extension to the system of slavery, is but the true fulfillment of the predictions of Thomas Morris, uttered from high places of public trust. He foresaw the evil, and gave the alarm to the country.

A distinguished and early co-laborer in the cause of liberty, Salmon P. Chase, who for six years filled with distinguished ability the seat in the Senate of the United States, once occupied by Thomas Morris, and is now the able and accomplished Governor of Ohio, says of him: "I knew him well, and honored him greatly. He was far beyond the time he lived in. He first led me to see the character of the slave power, as an aristocracy, naturally in league with the money power; and the need of an earnest and consistent Democratic organization to counteract its pretensions. Few anti-slavery men of to-day, with all the light thrown on the subject, saw this matter as clearly as did he. His memory should be kept freshly living among the lovers of liberty and progress."

His life, services, and some of his speeches in the Senate of the United States, and in the Legislature of Ohio, together with various papers on the subject of American slavery, are now presented to the public. The work is undertaken and published from motives of filial affection, and patriotism; and from a desire to perpetuate the services of an honored ancestor, who was a friend to the oppressed, an able champion of freedom, an incorruptible patriot, an honest politician, and a moral hero. In its prominent features the work is anti-slavery; presenting the historical facts of the rise and progress of the sentiment of freedom, now so happily prevalent, to the ascendancy of which Thomas Morris

gave no unimportant impulse. It is also a brief historical record of the early settlement, and legislation of Ohio, with which Mr. Morris was prominently and intimately identified.

The volume is dedicated to the Citizens of Ohio and the Freemen of the United States; in the humble hope that it will add an additional momentum to the resistless power of a growing public sentiment, that will overthrow the system of American slavery, and give freedom a complete and perpetual triumph over the American continent. In that triumph the name and services of Thomas Morris will not be forgotten, who declared, "against this foe of God and man, we have waged a perpetual war; and we will teach our children to lay their hands upon the altar of their country's liberty, and swear eternal enmity to slavery."

CHAPTER II.

THE Morris Name-Ancestors of Thomas Morris-His Birth-Removal to Western Virginia-Their Character-Home Education-Library— Learned to Read at his Mother's knees-Anti-Slavery Incident of the Parents.

THE name of Morris is prominent in English history, and is redolent with patriotism and piety. Some fell among the martyrs in the reign of "bloody Mary," and others have a place in the history of the Parliamentary struggles with Charles the First, and in the campaigns of Cromwell. Uniformly they were found on the side of freedom, and the name is extant with numerous and honorable representatives in England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland and America. In 1637, the first representative of the name came from England and settled in Massachusetts, from whom numerous and honorable descendants sprang; and the head of that first family bore the name of Thomas, the same as he whose life and services are presented in this volume.

The ancestral family from whom the subject of this memoir was descended, was from Wales. Isaac, the father of Thomas Morris, was born in 1740, in Berks county, Pennsylvania, and his mother, Ruth Henton, in 1750, and was the daughter of a Virginia planter. Nine sons and three daughters were the fruits of their marriage. Thomas was the fifth child, and was born on the 3d of January, 1776, the memorable year of American Independence. Soon after the birth of Thomas, his parents moved to the wilds of Western Virginia, and settled in Harrison county, near Clarksburgh. They were