texts:
<mask> (born June 6, 1955) is an American actress. She first gained attention in the late 1970s with her stand-up comedy, where she often critiqued celebrity culture and political figures. She is perhaps best known for portraying Nancy Barlett Thomas on the ABC sitcom Roseanne from the fourth season (1991) to the end of the show in 1997. She played Nurse Judy Kubrak in the FX drama series Pose. She is number 96 on Comedy Central's list of the 100 greatest stand-ups of all time. Early life
<mask> was born June 6, 1955 in Flint, Michigan, the daughter of Jeanette (née LaZebnik) and proctologist <mask>. Her parents raised her as a Conservative Jew.She has three older brothers: Dan, David and Mark. Her family moved to Arizona when she was 10. She attended Saguaro High School in Scottsdale, graduating in 1973. Career
<mask> became a staple at The Comedy Store. As her popularity as a comedian grew, she was cast as a supporting player on The Richard Pryor Show in 1977. Guest appearances on evening talk shows followed. Her big break came in 1983 when she was cast by Martin Scorsese to star as stalker/kidnapper Masha in the film The King of Comedy, for which she won the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress.She was a frequent guest on David Letterman's NBC program Late Night with David Letterman, making 28 appearances starting in 1983. She began performing her first one-woman show, I'm Your Woman, in 1985, and an album version was released. She appeared in a variety of small television roles throughout the 1980s while crafting her stand-up routine into a more performance art-oriented show. She launched an off-Broadway one-woman show called Without You, I'm Nothing, With You, I'm Not Much Better in 1988, which played at the Orpheum Theatre. In 1990 it was turned into a film and a double album of the same title. The film was mostly

masks:
Sandra Bernhard
Bernhard
Jerome Bernhard
Bernhard


type: original

texts: shot on location in 1989 in the Coconut Grove at the Ambassador Hotel. It was during the run of Without You, I'm Nothing, With You, I'm Not Much Better that <mask> appeared with her then good friend (and rumored lover) Madonna on a 1988 episode of Late Night with David Letterman.The two alluded to their romantic relationship and staged a sexy confrontation; the appearance received much publicity. They continued to be friends for several years, with <mask> making an appearance in Madonna's film Truth or Dare. In 1991, <mask> began playing Nancy Bartlett on the hit sitcom Roseanne. She appeared in 33 episodes between 1991 and 1997, and was one of the first actresses to portray an openly bisexual recurring character on American television. In September 1992, <mask> did a nude pictorial for Playboy. She hosted the USA Network's Reel Wild Cinema for two seasons beginning in 1995. She continued acting in mostly independent films, TV guest roles, and forays into mainstream films such as Hudson Hawk and Dallas Doll.In 1991 she released her first studio album, Excuses for Bad Behavior (Part One). In 1995, she briefly appeared as a guest in the "Jerk" episode of the animated talk show Space Ghost Coast to Coast. In 1996, she guest-starred on an episode of Highlander: The Series called "Dramatic License", where she played a romance novelist writing about the life of the main character. She appeared as herself on Will & Grace, in an episode where the title characters spuriously bid on <mask>'s Manhattan apartment in an attempt to become friendly with her. When their ruse is exposed, <mask> rants at them, with the sounds of a blender (she was having a smoothie made) blotting out supposed obscenities. She briefly returned as herself two years later. <mask> returned to Broadway in 1998 with the show I'm Still Here...Damn It!, recorded for a live comedy album. She

masks: Bernhard Bernhard Bernhard Bernhard Bernhard Bernhard Bernhard


texts:
 was pregnant at the time, and gave birth to daughter Cicely Yasin <mask> on July 4, 1998. She returned to New York in 2006 with the Off-Broadway show Everything Bad & Beautiful. The CD of the show, released by indie label Breaking Records, was lauded as one of her best. That year she also hosted the first season of the reality competition show The Search for the Funniest Mom in America on Nick at Nite. 2007 saw the debut of her one-woman show Plan B from Outer Space, and the inclusion of her Hanukkah-themed song "Miracle of Lights", which she co-wrote with Mitchell Kaplan, in the Breaking Records compilation album Breaking For the Holidays. She toured Plan B through 2008 and performed "Miracle of Lights" on some morning shows in New York.<mask> was a featured guest singer with children's artist Dan Zanes on the Family Dance album's "Thrift Shop". In an interview with Howard Stern, she revealed that she was originally offered the role of Miranda Hobbes on the TV show Sex and the City, but opted out owing to the "terrible" original script and small paycheck. In 2013, it was announced that she would join the cast of ABC Family's Switched at Birth with Glees Max Adler, where she would play an art professor on the Season 3 opener in January 2014. In 2015, she began hosting a radio show, Sandyland, on Sirius XM's Radio Andy. In 2015, she made her first appearance as the recurring character of Joedth ("Joe") in season 4 of 2 Broke Girls. She is currently playing Nurse Judy on FX's POSE, a show based on queer and trans ball culture in Manhattan inspired by the documentary Paris is Burning. Public controversies
In August 2006, <mask> served as the spokesperson in a commercial for Make-up Art Cosmetics (MAC).In the commercial, promoting PlushGlass lipgloss, she referred to someone who might not approve of her outspokenness as a "little freaked out,

masks: Bernhard Bernhard Bernhard


texts:
 intimidated, frightened, right-wing Republican thin-lipped bitch". MAC edited the line from the commercial to avoid unintentionally offending some of its customers. On Sept. 19, 2008, she warned vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin that she would be gang-raped by her "big black brothers" if she visited Manhattan. Palin had a campaign stop planned in New York City at the time. In November 2020, during an interview with Mariah Carey, Naomi Campbell called out <mask> for her comments about Carey and Black men in her 1998 comedy show I'm Still Here… Damn It! In the show, <mask> disparaged Carey's Black ancestry, saying "She's trying to backtrack on our asses by acting real nigger-ish there at the Royalton Hotel suite with Puff Daddy and all the greasy, chain-wearing Black men." Personal life
<mask> is bisexual and a strong supporter of LGBT rights.On July 4, 1998, she gave birth to a daughter, whom she raised with Sara Switzer, her partner of over 20 years. Music
<mask> performs classic pop music, jazz, and blues tunes. She has released several albums (combinations of music and comedy). Albums
 I'm Your Woman
 Without You I'm Nothing
 Excuses for Bad Behavior (Part One)
 I'm Still Here... Damn It! The Love Machine
 Hero Worship
 Excuses for Bad Behavior (Part Two)
 The Love Machine Remastered (entirely different from The Love Machine)
 Giving Til It Hurts
 Live and Beautiful (Promotional album sold at website sandrabernhard.com)
 Gems of Mystery
 Everything Bad & Beautiful
 Whatever It Takes
 I Love Being Me, Don't you? - featuring Carla Patullo

Singles
 "Everybody's Young"
 "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)" ( U.S.Billboard Hot Dance Club Play)
 "Manic Superstar"
 "Phone Sex (Do You Want Me Tonight?)" "On the Runway" ( U.S. Billboard Hot Dance Club Play)
 "Perfection"
 "Miracle of Lights"
 "All Around"

Compilations
 Stormy Weather; song "Is That All

masks: Bernhard Bernhard Bernhard Bernhard


texts:
<mask> (30 November 1866 – 15 July 1947) was an English stage and film actor. Early life
Born in London, England, <mask> studied philology in his youth and began performing in theater in the 1880s. Before he began acting professionally, <mask> served seven years in the English army, including five years with the King's Dragoon Guards in India. Career
He worked in Broadway shows from 1900 until his entry into motion pictures. His most notable stage appearance was Two Women in 1910, costarring Mrs. Leslie Carter and Robert Warwick. He was nearly fifty before his film debut in Via Wireless (1915) as Edward Pinckney. He appeared in 129 other films.He became well known in the 1920s for portraying the antagonist and anti-heroes. Those roles include Sir George Carewe in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920), Judge Frollo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923), Alexei Karenin opposite Greta Garbo in Love (1927), and Barkilphedro in The Man Who Laughs (1928). His roles in sound films during the 1920s and 1930s were often small. One of his more important roles was the sinister Merlin the Magician in Fox's A Connecticut Yankee (1931). <mask> worked as an actor until his death, his last film was Two Guys from Texas (1948). Filmography

 Via Wireless (1915) - Edward Pinckney (film debut)
 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920) - Sir George Carewe
 A Dark Lantern (1920) - Colonel Dereham
 The World's Applause (1923) - James Crane
 Legally Dead (1923) - Dr. Gelzer
 The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) - Claude Frollo
 The Thief of Bagdad (1924) - The Caliph
 Cytherea (1924) - Daniel Randon
 One Night in Rome (1924) - Count Beetholde
 The Silent Watcher (1924) - Herrold, the reporter
 He Who Gets Slapped (1924) - Clown (uncredited)
 The Lover of Camille (1924) - Bertrand
 The Lady (1925) - St. Aubyns Sr
 Lightnin' (1925) -

masks:
Brandon Hurst
Hurst
Hurst
Hurst


texts:
 Everett Hammond
 The Enchanted Hill (1926) - Jasper Doak
 Made for Love (1926) - Pharaoh
 The Grand Duchess and the Waiter (1926) - Matard - Hotel Manager
 Secret Orders (1926) - Butler
 Paris at Midnight (1926) - Count Tarrefer
 The Shamrock Handicap (1926) - The Procurer of Taxes (uncredited)
 The Rainmaker (1926) - Doyle
 Volcano! (1926) - André de Chauvalons
 The Amateur Gentleman (1926) - Peterby
 The Lady of the Harem (1926) - Beggar
 The King of Kings (1927) (uncredited)
 7th Heaven (1927) - Uncle George (uncredited)
 Annie Laurie (1927) - The Campbell Chieftain
 The High School Hero (1927) - Mr. Golden
 Love (1927) - Karenin
 The Man Who Laughs (1928) - Barkilphedro
 News Parade (1928) - A.K.Wellington
 Interference (1928) - Inspector Haynes
 The Voice of the Storm (1929) - Dr. Isaacs
 The Wolf of Wall Street (1929) - Sturgess
 The Greene Murder Case (1929) - Sproot
 Her Private Life (1929) - Sir Emmett Wildering
 High Society Blues (1930) - Jowles
 The Eyes of the World (1930) - Mr. Taine
 The Right of Way (1931) - Crown Attorney
 A Connecticut Yankee (1931) - Merlin/Doctor in Mansion
 Young as You Feel (1931) - Robbins
 Murder at Midnight (1931) - Lawrence
 Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932) - Prefect of Police
 Scarface (1932) - Citizens Committee Member (uncredited)
 The Midnight Lady (1932) - District Attorney
 White Zombie (1932) - Silver
 Down to Earth (1932) - Jeffrey, the Butler
 Sherlock Holmes (1932) - Secretary to Erskine (uncredited)
 Rasputin and the Empress (1932) - Staff General (uncredited)
 Cavalcade (1933) - Gilbert & Sullivan Actor (uncredited)
 I Love That Man (1933) - Banker Burkhart (uncredited)
 Bombay Mail (1934) - Pundit Garnath Chundra
 The Lost Patrol (1934) - Bell
 The House of Rothschild (1934) - Stock Trader
 House of Mystery (1934) - Hindu Priest
 Viva


texts: <mask>, Jr. (January 20, 1734 – May 8, 1806) was an English-born merchant and a Founding Father of the United States. He served as a member of the Pennsylvania legislature, the Second Continental Congress, and the United States Senate, and he was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the United States Constitution. From 1781 to 1784, he served as the Superintendent of Finance of the United States, becoming known as the "Financier of the Revolution." Along with Alexander Hamilton and Albert Gallatin, he is widely regarded as one of the founders of the financial system of the United States. Born in Liverpool, <mask> migrated to the United States in his teens, quickly becoming a partner in a successful shipping firm based in Philadelphia. In the aftermath of the French and Indian War, <mask> joined with other merchants in opposing British tax policies such as the 1765 Stamp Act. By 1775 he was the richest man in America.After the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War, he helped procure arms and ammunition for the revolutionary cause, and in late 1775 he was chosen as a delegate to the Second Continental Congress. As a member of Congress, he served on the Secret Committee of Trade, which handled the procurement of supplies, the Committee of Correspondence, which handled foreign affairs, and the Marine Committee, which oversaw the Continental Navy. <mask> was a leading member of Congress until he resigned in 1778. Out of office, <mask> refocused on his merchant career and won election to the Pennsylvania Assembly, where he became a leader of the "Republican" faction that sought alterations to the Pennsylvania Constitution. Facing a difficult financial situation in the ongoing Revolutionary War, in 1781 Congress

masks:
Robert Morris
Morris
Morris
Morris
Morris


texts: established the position of Superintendent of Finance to oversee financial matters. <mask> accepted appointment as Superintendent of Finance and also served as Agent of Marine, from which he controlled the Continental Navy. He helped provide supplies to the Continental Army under General George Washington, enabling, with the help of frequent collaborator Haym Salomon, Washington's decisive victory in the Battle of Yorktown.<mask> also reformed government contracting and established the Bank of North America, the first Congressionally chartered national bank to operate in the United States. <mask> believed that the national government would be unable to achieve financial stability without the power to levy taxes and tariffs, but he was unable to convince all thirteen states to agree to an amendment to the Articles of Confederation. In May 1783 the young John Brown was commissioned by <mask> to visit Luis de Unzaga 'le Conciliateur', who served him as an intermediary in his secret mission to free the trade with the United States thanks to bills of exchange from the bankers Le Couteulx; in fact Brown's secret mission was a success and thus the Continental Army could be paid, avoiding a rebellion in its ranks that would endanger the peace of the nascent United States of America with England. Frustrated by the weakness of the national government, <mask> resigned as Superintendent of Finance in 1784. <mask> was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1786. In 1787, <mask> was selected as a delegate to the Philadelphia Convention, which wrote and proposed a new constitution for the United States. <mask> rarely spoke during the convention, but the constitution produced by the convention reflected many of his ideas.<mask> and his allies helped ensure that

masks: Morris Morris Morris Morris Morris Morris Morris Morris Morris


texts:
 Pennsylvania ratified the new constitution, and the document was ratified by the requisite number of states by the end of 1788. The Pennsylvania legislature subsequently elected <mask> as one of its two inaugural representatives in the United States Senate. <mask> declined Washington's offer to serve as the nation's first Treasury Secretary, instead suggesting Alexander Hamilton for the position. In the Senate, <mask> supported Hamilton's economic program and aligned with the Federalist Party. During and after his service in the Senate, <mask> went deeply into debt speculating on land leading into the Panic of 1796–1797. Unable to pay his creditors, he was confined in the Prune Street debtors' apartment adjacent to Walnut Street Prison from 1798 to 1801. After being released from prison, he lived a quiet, private life in a modest home in Philadelphia until his death in 1806.Early life

Youth

<mask> was born in Liverpool, England, on January 20, 1734. His parents were <mask>, Sr., an agent for a shipping firm, and Elizabeth Murphet; biographer Charles Rappleye concludes that <mask> was probably born out of wedlock. Until he reached the age of thirteen, <mask> was raised by his maternal grandmother in England. In 1747, <mask> immigrated to Oxford, Maryland, where his father had prospered in the tobacco trade. Two years later, <mask>'s father sent him to Philadelphia, then the most populous city in British North America, where <mask> lived under the care of his father's friend, Charles Greenway. Merchant career

Greenway arranged for <mask> to become an apprentice at the shipping and banking firm of Philadelphia merchant Charles Willing. In 1750, <mask>, Sr. died from an infected wound, leaving much of his substantial estate to his son.<mask> impressed Willing

masks:
Morris
Morris
Morris
Morris
Morris
Robert Morris
Morris
Morris
Morris
Morris
Morris
Morris
Robert Morris
Morris


texts:
 and rose from a teenage trainee to become a key agent in Willing's firm. <mask> traveled to Caribbean ports to expand the firm's business, and he gained a knowledge of trading and the various currencies used to exchange goods. He also befriended Thomas Willing, the oldest son of Charles Willing who was two years older than <mask> and who, like <mask>, had split his life between England and British North America. Charles Willing died in 1754, and in 1757 Thomas made <mask> a full partner in the newly renamed firm of Willing Morris & Company. Morris's shipping firm was just one of many such firms operating in Philadelphia, but Willing Morris & Company pursued several innovative strategies. The firm pooled with other shipping firms to insure vessels, aggressively expanded trade with India, and underwrote government projects through bonds and promissory notes. Ships of the firm traded with India, the Levant, the West Indies, Spanish Cuba, Spain, and Italy.The firm's business of import, export, and general agency made it one of the most prosperous in Pennsylvania. In 1784, <mask>, with other investors, underwrote the voyage of the ship Empress of China, the first American vessel to visit the Chinese mainland. Slavery

Morris's partnership with Willing was forged just after the beginning of the Seven Years' War, which hindered attracting the usual supply of new indentured servants to the colony. Potential immigrants were conscripted in England to fight in Europe, and the contracts for those already in the colonies in America were expiring. At the same time, the British Crown wanted to encourage the slave trade which was profitable for the king's political allies in the African Company of Merchants. While <mask> was a junior partner and Willing was pursuing a

masks: Morris Morris Morris Morris Morris Morris


texts:
 political career, the company Willing, Morris & Co. co-signed a petition calling for the repeal of Pennsylvania's tariff on imported slaves. (About 200 slaves were imported into Philadelphia in 1762, the height of the trade; most were brought in by the Rhode Islanders D'Wolf, Aaron Lopez, and Jacob Rivera.)Willing, Morris & Co funded its own slave-trading voyage. The ship did not carry enough to be profitable and, during a second trip, was captured by French privateers. The firm handled two slave auctions for other importers, offering a total of 23 slaves. In 1762, the firm advertised an agency sale in Wilmington, Delaware, for over 100 Gold Coast slaves. The ship had docked in Wilmington to avoid the tariff. In 1765, on their last reported agency deal related to slavery (out of a total of eight), the firm advertised 17 slaves who were brought in from Africa on the ship Marquis de Granby. The slaves were not sold in Philadelphia, as the owner took the ship and all the slaves to Jamaica.Personal and family life

In early 1769, at age 35, <mask> married 20-year-old Mary White, the daughter of a wealthy and prestigious lawyer and landholder. Mary gave birth to the couple's first of seven children in December 1769. <mask> and his family lived on Front Street in Philadelphia and maintained a second home, known as "The Hills," on the Schuylkill River to the northwest of the city. He later purchased another rural manor, which he named Morrisville, that was located across the Delaware River from Trenton, New Jersey. The <mask>es worshiped at the Anglican Christ Church, which was also attended by Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Willing, and other leading citizens of Philadelphia. The <mask> household employed several domestic workers and retained several slaves. In addition

masks: Morris Morris Morris Morris


texts:
 to the children he sired with Mary White, <mask> fathered a daughter, Polly, who was born out of wedlock around 1763.<mask> supported Polly financially and remained in contact with her throughout her adult life. <mask> also supported a younger half-brother, Thomas, whom <mask>'s father had sired out of wedlock shortly before his own death. Thomas eventually became a partner in <mask>'s shipping firm. Mary's brother, William White, was ordained as an Episcopal priest and served as the Senate chaplain. In 1781, <mask> purchased a home on Market Street that was two blocks north of Independence Hall, the seat of the Second Continental Congress. He gained clear title to the estate in 1785 and made it his primary residence. In 1790, President George Washington accepted <mask>'s offer to make the house his primary residence; <mask> and his family subsequently moved to a smaller, neighboring property.By the 1790s, <mask> had become close friends with Washington, and he and his wife were regular fixtures at state events thrown by the president. The President's House, as it became known, served as the residence of the president until 1800, when President John Adams moved to the White House in Washington, D.C.

American Revolution

Rising tensions with Britain

In 1765, the Parliament of Great Britain imposed the Stamp Act, a tax on transactions involving paper that proved widely unpopular in British North America. In one of his first major political acts, <mask> joined with several other merchants in pressuring British agent John Hughes to refrain from collecting the new tax. Facing colonial resistance, Parliament repealed the tax, but it later implemented other policies designed to generate tax revenue from the colonies. During the decade after the imposition of the

masks: Morris Morris Morris Morris Morris Morris Morris Morris Morris Morris


texts:
 Stamp Act, <mask> would frequently join with other merchants in protesting many of Parliament's taxation policies. Writing to a friend about his objections to British tax policies, <mask> stated that "I am a native of England but from principle am American in this dispute." While his partner, Thomas Willing, served in various governmental positions, <mask> declined to serve in any public office other than that of port warden (a position he shared with six other individuals), and he generally let Willing act as the public face of the firm.In early 1774, in response to the Intolerable Acts, many colonists in British North America began calling for a boycott of British goods. In Philadelphia, Willing, Charles Thomson, and John Dickinson took the lead in calling for a congress of all the colonies to coordinate a response to British tax policies. <mask> was not elected to the First Continental Congress, which convened in Philadelphia in August 1774, but he frequently met with the congressional delegates and befriended colonial leaders such as George Washington and John Jay. <mask> generally sympathized with the position of the delegates who favored the reform of British policies but were unwilling to fully break with Britain. In September 1774, the First Continental Congress voted to create the Continental Association, an agreement to enforce a boycott against British goods beginning in December; it also advised each colony to establish committees to enforce the boycott. <mask> was elected to the Philadelphia committee charged with enforcing the boycott. Continental Congress

Early war, 1775–August 1776

In April 1775, the American Revolutionary War broke out following the Battles of Lexington and Concord.Shortly thereafter, the Second Continental Congress began


texts: meeting in Philadelphia, and Congress appointed Washington to command the Continental Army. The Pennsylvania Provincial Assembly established the twenty-five member Committee of Safety to supervise defenses, and <mask> was appointed to the committee. <mask> became part of the core group of members that directed the committee, and served as the committee's chairman when Benjamin Franklin was absent. Charged with obtaining gunpowder, <mask> arranged a large-scale smuggling operation to avoid British laws designed to prevent arms and ammunition from being imported into the colonies. Due to his success at smuggling gunpowder for Pennsylvania, <mask> also became the chief supplier of gunpowder to the Continental Army. <mask> became increasingly focused on political affairs rather than business, and in October 1775 he won election to the Pennsylvania Provincial Assembly. Later in the year, the Provincial Assembly elected <mask> as a delegate to Congress.In Congress, <mask> aligned with the less radical faction of delegates that protested British policies but continued to favor reconciliation with Britain. He was appointed to the Secret Committee of Trade, which supervised the procurement of arms and ammunition. As the revolutionary government lacked an executive branch or a civil service, the committees of Congress handled all government business. Biographer Charles Rappleye writes that the committee "handled its contracts in a clubby, often incestuous manner" that may have unfairly benefited politically connected merchants, including <mask>. However, Rappleye also notes that the dangerous and secretive nature of a committee charged with obtaining contraband goods made it difficult for the committee to establish competitive bidding procedures for procurement

masks: Morris Morris Morris Morris Morris Morris Morris Morris


texts: contracts. In addition to his service on the Secret Committee of Trade, <mask> was also appointed to the Marine Committee, which oversaw the Continental Navy, and the Committee of Secret Correspondence, which oversaw efforts to establish relations with foreign powers. From his position on the latter committee, <mask> helped arrange for the appointment of Silas Deane as Congress's representative to France; Deane was charged with procuring supplies and securing a formal alliance with France.Throughout 1776, <mask> would emerge as a key figure on the Marine Committee; Rappleye describes him as the "de facto commander" of the Continental Navy. <mask> favored a naval strategy of attacking Britain's "defenseless places" in an effort to divide Britain's numerically superior fleet. Along with Franklin, Dickinson, and John Adams, <mask> helped draft the Model Treaty, which was designed to serve as a template for relations with foreign countries. Unlike Britain's mercantile trade policies, the Model Treaty emphasized the importance of free trade. In March 1776, after the death of Samuel Ward, <mask> was named as the chairman of the Secret Committee of Trade. He established a network of agents, based in both the colonies and various foreign ports, charged with procuring supplies for the Continental war effort. In late February 1776, Americans learned that the British Parliament had passed the Prohibitory Act, which declared that all American shipping was subject to seizure by British ships.Unlike many other congressional leaders, <mask> continued to hope for reconciliation with Britain, since he believed that all-out war still lacked the strong support of a majority of Americans and would prove financially ruinous. In June 1776, due largely to frustration with the

masks: Morris Morris Morris Morris Morris Morris Morris


texts:
 moderate faction of Pennsylvania leaders that included <mask>, a convention of delegates from across Pennsylvania began meeting to draft a new constitution and establish a new state government. At the same time, Congress was debating whether to formally declare independence from Britain. By early July 1776, Pennsylvania's delegation was the lone congressional delegation opposed to declaring independence. <mask> refused to vote for independence, but he and another Pennsylvania delegate agreed to excuse themselves from the vote on independence, thereby giving the pro-independence movement a majority in the Pennsylvania delegation. With <mask> absent, all congressional delegations voted to pass a resolution declaring independence on July 2, and the United States formally declared independence on July 4, 1776. Despite his opposition to independence, and much to <mask>'s surprise, the Pennsylvania constitutional convention voted to keep <mask> in Congress; he was the lone anti-independence delegate from Pennsylvania to retain his position.In August, <mask> signed the Declaration of Independence despite having abstained. In explaining his decision, he stated, "I am not one of those politicians that run testy when my own plans are not adopted. I think it is the duty of a good citizen to follow when he cannot lead." He also stated, "while I do not wish to see my countrymen die on the field of battle nor do I wish to see them live in tyranny". Continued war, August 1776–1778

After the Declaration of Independence was issued, <mask> continued to supervise and coordinate efforts to secure arms and ammunition and export American goods. His strategy focused on using ships from New England to export tobacco and other goods from the Southern states to Europe and the islands


texts: of the Caribbean, then using the capital obtained from those exports to purchase military supplies from Europe. British spies and warships often frustrated his plans, and many American ships were captured in the midst of trading operations.In response, <mask> authorized American envoys in Europe to commission privateers to attack British shipping, and he arranged for an agent, William Bingham, to pay for repairs to American privateers on the French island of Martinique. Due to the lucrative nature of privateering, <mask> also started outfitting his own privateers. Another agent of <mask>'s, his half-brother <mask>, proved a disastrous choice for managing American privateers in Europe, as Thomas engaged in binge drinking and mismanaged funds. In October 1776, at the urging of <mask> and Benjamin Franklin, Congress authorized the appointment of two envoys charged with seeking a formal treaty of alliance with France; ultimately, Benjamin Franklin and Arthur Lee were appointed as those envoys. Along with Silas Deane, Franklin would help to greatly expand arms shipments from France and Spain, but Lee proved to be completely incompetent in his efforts to gain support from Prussia and the Habsburg Monarchy. In early December 1776, Washington's army was forced to retreat across the Delaware River and into Pennsylvania, and most members of Congress temporarily left Philadelphia. <mask> was one of few delegates to remain in the city, and Congress appointed <mask> and two other delegates to "execute Continental business" in its absence.<mask> frequently corresponded with Washington, and he provided supplies that helped enable the Continental victory at the Battle of Trenton. After the Continental Army was defeated in the September 1777 Battle of Brandywine, Congress fled

masks:
Morris
Morris
Morris
Thomas Morris
Morris
Morris
Morris
Morris


texts:
 west from Philadelphia; <mask> and his family went to live at the estate they had recently purchased in Manheim, Pennsylvania. <mask> obtained a leave of absence in late 1777, but he spent much of his time defending himself against attacks regarding alleged mismanagement and financial improprieties levied by the pro-slavery allies of Henry Laurens, the president of the Continental Congress. Due to his leave of absence, <mask> did not play a large role in drafting the Articles of Confederation, which would be the first constitution of the United States, but he signed the document in March 1778. As some states objected to the Articles, it would not enter into force until 1781. <mask> returned to Congress in May 1778 to vote for a measure to provide pensions to Continental Army officers. He formed a close working relationship with Gouverneur <mask> (no relation), a young New York congressman who shared many of <mask>'s views.The following month, <mask> returned with Congress to Philadelphia, which had been evacuated by the British. <mask> did not resume his wide array of duties in Congress, seeking instead to wind down his projects so that he could focus on business. In late 1778, <mask> won election to the state assembly as part of a slate of candidates that favored reforming the Pennsylvania constitution; he resigned from Congress to take up his seat. After <mask> left Congress, slave trader, Henry Laurens, Thomas Paine, and some other members of Congress continued their false attacks on him for allegedly using his position in Congress for his own financial benefit, but in early 1779 a congressional committee cleared <mask> of all charges. Out of Congress, 1779–1781

With their plans to call a new state constitutional convention frustrated by Joseph Reed and

masks:
Morris
Morris
Morris
Morris
Morris
Robert Morris
Morris
Morris
Morris
Morris
Morris


texts: others, <mask> and James Wilson founded the Republican Society, a political club devoted to implementing a new state constitution. The Republican Society favored a bicameral legislature, a state executive with veto power, an independent judiciary, and an end to loyalty oaths to the state government. Other prominent Pennsylvanians, including Wilson, Benjamin Rush, Thomas Mifflin, and Charles Thomson, supported the Republican Society's goals, but <mask> became the de facto leader of the faction that became known as the Republicans.Meanwhile, those who favored maintaining the state constitution became known as the Constitutionalists. Due to rising inflation, in mid-1779 the Constitutionalists established a committee to implement price controls; numerous Philadelphia merchants were arrested for allegedly violating the committee's orders, but <mask> avoided imprisonment and emerged as a leading opponent of the committee. The price control committee proved ineffective and disbanded in September, but the following month a mob rioted and seized several Republican leaders. <mask> and other Republicans sheltered at James Wilson's house, where they were rescued by Reed and a detachment of the Continental Army. Wilson fled the city after the riot, and popular anger at merchants resulted in <mask>'s defeat in his campaign for re-election to the state legislature. Out of public office for the first time since the start of the American Revolution, <mask> focused on expanding his shipping business. He partnered with several out-of-state businessmen, including Jonathan Hudson of Maryland and Carter Braxton and Benjamin Harrison of Virginia, to form what biographer Charles Rappleye calls "the first national conglomerate."In these trading ventures, <mask> often provided


texts:
 financing and oversight but left the details to his partners. With national finances in tatters, <mask> led a group of merchants in creating the Bank of Pennsylvania, which provided funding for the purchase of supplies by the Continental Army. The bank did not engage in the full range of modern banking activities, but it did accept deposits and provide a potential model for monetary reforms at the national level. The success of the bank provided a boost to <mask>'s popularity, and in October 1780, he won election to the state legislature. Superintendent of Finance

First months

In the midst of the American Revolutionary War, U.S. government finances fell into a poor state as Congress lacked the power to raise revenue and the states largely refused to furnish funding. Without a mechanism for raising revenue, Congress repeatedly issued paper money, leading to rampant inflation. By 1781, the U.S. faced an unremitting financial crisis, which was underscored by the January 1781 Pennsylvania Line Mutiny, in which ten poorly fed, unpaid Continental Army regiments demanded better conditions from Congress.Though the mutiny was put down, it convinced Congress to implement reforms that created the departments of war, marine, finance, and foreign affairs, each of which would be led by a departmental executive. By a unanimous vote, Congress selected <mask> as the Superintendent of Finance. <mask> accepted appointment as the Superintendent of Finance in May 1781, and he appointed Gouverneur <mask> as his deputy. <mask> soon emerged as the key economic official in the country and became a leader of the Nationalist faction, an informal group of American leaders who favored a stronger national government. He also had effective control over foreign affairs until <mask>.

masks:
Morris
Morris
Morris
Morris
Morris
Morris
Robert R


texts: Livingston was appointed as Secretary of Foreign Affairs later in the year. In September 1781, <mask> reluctantly agreed to serve as the Agent of Marine, giving him civilian leadership of the Continental Navy. Congress filled the last of the executive positions in November, when Benjamin Lincoln accepted appointment as Secretary of War.Along with General Washington and Continental Congress secretary Charles Thomson, the three executives served as the leaders of the de facto first national executive branch in U.S. history; <mask> assumed an unofficial role as the leading department secretary. All three executives, as well as Washington, aligned with the Nationalist faction, and they all cooperated to enhance the power of the national government. In mid-1782, Congress established standing committees to provide oversight to the executive departments; <mask> supported the congressional reorganization, but to his dismay, his longtime foe Arthur Lee became the chairman of the committee overseeing the finance department. <mask> pursued an array of reforms designed to boost the economy; many of the reforms were inspired by the laissez-faire economic ideas of Adam Smith. Shortly after taking office, he convinced Congress to establish the Bank of North America, the first bank to operate in the United States. Such a bank had been discussed in the months prior to <mask>'s appointment, but the bank itself was organized along lines laid out by <mask> and Gouverneur <mask>. It was established as a private institution governed by its investors, but was subject to inspection by the Superintendent of Finance.The bank would take the national government's deposits, provide loans to Congress, and issue banknotes. <mask> hoped that the bank would help finance the war, stabilize the

masks:
Morris
Morris
Morris
Morris
Morris
Robert Morris
Morris
Morris


texts:
 nation's currency, and bring the country together under one unified monetary policy. As the bank would take some time to begin functioning, in 1781 <mask> presided over the issuing of a new currency, referred to as "<mask> notes," backed by <mask>'s own funds. <mask> also convinced Congress to allow him to purchase all supplies for the Continental Army, and Congress required states to furnish funding rather than supplying goods like flour or meat. By 1781, the Revolutionary War had become a stalemate between Britain and the United States. The British had concentrated their military operations in the Southern theater of the war, while leaving a large force garrisoned at New York City. In August 1781, <mask> met with General Washington and the comte de Rochambeau, who were planning a joint Franco-American operation against the British forces.<mask> redirected government funds to purchase supplies for Washington's march against British forces in Virginia, and he pleaded with state governments and the French government for further funding, with the final $20,000 needed coming from <mask>'s longtime collaborator, Haym Salomon. At the October 1781 Battle of Yorktown, Washington forced the surrender of the British army under the command of General Cornwallis. After the Battle of Yorktown, Britain essentially abandoned its campaign on land, but the naval war continued as Britain sought to cut the United States off from its sources of trade. After Yorktown

Months after the Battle of Yorktown, <mask> issued the "Report on Public Credit," an ambitious economic plan calling for the full payment of the country's war debt through new revenue measures. It included a head tax on slaves in the various states, but above all, he pushed for a federal tariff of five percent on


texts: all imported goods, which would require an amendment to the recently approved Articles of Confederation. Such an amendment would greatly strengthen the power of the national government, but the amendment process required the consent of each state, and many states were reluctant to alter the balance of power between the states and the national government. The Articles gave Congress the sole power to conduct foreign policy, but the states retained all power over funding; Congress had no independent power to raise funds, and lacked any mechanism to force states provide the funds that they owed to Congress.Writing to the state governors, <mask> argued that it was "high time to reliever ourselves from the infamy we have already sustained, and to rescue and restore the national credit. This can only be done by solid revenue." By late 1782, all of the states but Rhode Island had agreed to back an amendment allowing the tariff, but that was enough to block the amendment. Though he was frustrated in the tariff battle, <mask> continued to implement and propose other economic reforms. In January 1782, after receiving its charter from Congress, the Bank of North America commenced operations, and the bank's currency soon achieved wide circulation. <mask> sought the establishment of a national mint to provide for a single coinage throughout the United States, and proposed the first decimal currency, but Congress was unwilling to back this project. He appointed several receivers, including Alexander Hamilton, to help circulate banknotes, report on the prices of goods, and perform other functions in places throughout the United States.He also reformed government procurement of supplies, saving money by placing the onus for the storage and transport of supplies on government

masks: Morris Morris Morris


texts: contractors. Even after implementing several financial reforms, <mask> was unable to pay the soldiers of the Continental Army. The chief issue, aside from the unwillingness of the states to amend the Articles of Confederation, was the unwillingness of the states to supply adequate funding; many states refused to furnish any funds at all. The Bank of North America provided some loans, but eventually refused to furnish more funds until previous loans were paid off. <mask>'s efforts were further complicated by France's reluctance to extend more loans, as well as a drop-off in American trade, caused in part by British naval operations. In December 1782, shortly after the apparent defeat of the proposed amendment to allow the national government to levy a tariff, General Alexander McDougall led a delegation that presented a petition for immediate payment on behalf of the Continental Army. While <mask> helped temporarily defuse the crisis by offering the soldiers one month's pay, the petition reflected widespread unhappiness in the Continental Army at the continued lack of pay.Some Nationalists, including Gouverneur <mask>, believed that only the discontent of the army could force the adoption of the amendment authorizing Congress to impose a tariff. In March, Colonel Walter Stewart delivered the "Newburgh Address," in which he urged members of the Continental Army to rise up against Congress and demand payment. Washington prevented a mutiny by assuring the soldiers that they would eventually be paid. In the aftermath of the near-mutiny, <mask> denied that he had played any role in fomenting insurrection. Nonetheless, some misguided historians believe that <mask> was part of the "Newburgh Conspiracy." The facts, however reveal the material was written by Major John


texts:
 Armstrong, who was rewarded with the position of Secretary of the Executive Council in Pennsylvania upon his return from New York. Frustrated by his defeat in the tariff battle and the failure of states to provide adequate funding, <mask> thought he was being forced to run up debts that the states were unwilling to pay.Writing that he would not be the "Minister of Injustice", he submitted his resignation in early 1783, but Hamilton and other Nationalists convinced him to stay in office. As of January 1, 1783 the public debt was $42 million of which 18.77 percent was foreign debt and 81.23 percent was owned at home.In a report to the President of Congress <mask> wrote:

Domestic Debt...$35,327,769
of which
Loan Certificates...$11,463,802 [with two years interest loan due $877,828]
Army Debt...$635,618.00
The rest being unliquidated debts, etc., interest. At roughly the same time, <mask> and others in Philadelphia learned that the United States and Britain had signed a preliminary peace agreement, bringing an unofficial end to the Revolutionary War. Congress approved a furlough of the Continental Army soldiers, subject to recall in case hostilities broke out once again. <mask> distributed "Morris notes" to the remaining soldiers, but many soldiers departed for their homes rather than waiting for the notes. After a mutiny over pay broke out in Pennsylvania, Congress voted to leave Philadelphia and establish a provincial capital in Princeton, New Jersey; the mutiny dissipated shortly thereafter. Nationalists were devastated by this turn of events, and Hamilton resigned from Congress in mid-1783 after his proposal for convention to revise the Articles of Confederation was ignored.In November 1784, <mask> resigned from his government positions. Rather than finding a

masks: Morris Morris Morris Morris Morris


texts:
 successor for <mask>, Congress established the three-member Board of Treasury, consisting of Arthur Lee, William Livingston, and Samuel Osgood. In 1778–1779 <mask> had attempted to strengthen out the accounts of the old Commercial Committee but had to give it up; he stated in answer to Paine "..the accounts of Willing and <mask> with the committee had been partially settled, but were still partially open, because the transactions could not be closed up." The Treasury Board elected in 1794-1795 those old accounts were brought to a settlement—a June 1796 entry in the Treasury debt against <mask> for $93,312.63. <mask> would explain in 1800 in debtors' prison that in fact the debt was due not just to himself but also his partners John Ross and Thomas Willing. Later political career

Constitutional convention

After leaving office, <mask> once again devoted himself to business, but state and federal politics remained a factor in his life. After the Pennsylvania legislature stripped the Bank of North America of its charter, <mask> won election to the state legislature and helped restore the bank's charter.Meanwhile, the United States suffered a sustained recession after the end of the Revolutionary War, caused by the lingering debt burden and new restrictions on trade imposed by the European powers. Some members of Congress, including those on the Board of Treasury, continued to favor amendments to the Articles of Confederation, but the states still refused to authorize major changes to the Articles. In 1786, <mask> was one of five Pennsylvania delegates selected to attend the Annapolis Convention, where delegates discussed ways to reform the Articles of Confederation. Though <mask> ultimately declined to attend the convention, the delegates convinced Congress to


texts: authorize a convention in Philadelphia in May 1787 to amend the Articles. The Pennsylvania state legislature sent a delegation consisting of <mask>, James Wilson, Gouverneur <mask>, George Clymer, Thomas Mifflin, Jared Ingersoll, and Ben Franklin to the Philadelphia Convention. With the exception of Franklin (who avoided aligning with either political faction in Pennsylvania), all of the Pennsylvania delegates were closely aligned with <mask>'s Republican faction, a reflection of Republican strength in the state legislature. Many of <mask>'s Nationalist allies from other states, including Hamilton, James Madison, John Dickinson, and Washington, would also attend the convention.With Franklin ill, <mask> opened the proceedings of the Philadelphia Convention on May 25. His motion to nominate Washington as chairman of the convention was backed by a unanimous vote. <mask> consistently attended the meeting of the convention, but rarely spoke after the first day, instead allowing lawyers and others more experienced with the law to debate various issues. His primary goals, including a provision ensuring the federal government had the power to lay tariffs and taxes, were shared by the vast majority of delegates at the convention. On September 17, <mask> signed the final document produced by the convention which, rather than amending the Articles, was intended to supplant the Articles as the new Constitution of the United States. <mask> was one of just six individuals to sign both the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution. Rather than seeking to block the new constitution, Congress simply forwarded it to each state to debate ratification.<mask>'s Republican faction, along with Federalist groups in other states, sought the ratification of the new


texts:
 federal Constitution. The Constitutionalists, who saw the new federal constitution as a threat to state sovereignty, joined with Anti-Federalists in other states in seeking to prevent the ratification of the Constitution. In elections held in October and November 1787, <mask>'s Federalist allies retained control of the state legislature and won a majority of the elections held to select delegates for the convention held to debate ratification of the Constitution. Due to a dispute with a business partner, <mask> did not attend the ratification convention, which voted to ratify the Constitution in December 1787. By the end of 1788, the Constitution had been ratified by enough states to take effect. In September 1788, the Pennsylvania legislature elected <mask> and William Maclay, both of whom were aligned with the Federalists, as the state's first representatives in the United States Senate. U.S.Senator

In the country's first presidential election, Washington was elected as the President of the United States. Washington offered the position of Secretary of the Treasury to <mask>, but <mask> declined the offer, instead suggesting Alexander Hamilton for the position. In the Senate, <mask> pressed for many of the same policies he had sought as Superintendent of Finance: a federal tariff, a national bank, a federal mint, and the funding of the national debt. Congress agreed to implement the Tariff of 1789, which created a uniform impost on goods carried by foreign ships into American ports, but many other issues lingered into 1790. Among those issues were the site of the national capital and the fate of state debts. <mask> sought the return of the nation's capital to Philadelphia and the federal assumption of state debts. <mask> defeated Maclay's proposal to

masks:
Morris
Morris
Robert Morris
Morris
Morris
Morris
Morris
Morris


texts: establish the capital in Pennsylvania at a site on the Susquehanna River located several miles west of Philadelphia, but James Madison defeated <mask>'s attempt to establish the capital just outside of Philadelphia.<mask>'s 1781 "Report On Public Credit" supplied the basis for Hamilton's First Report on the Public Credit, which Hamilton submitted in 1790. Hamilton proposed to fully fund all federal debts and assume all state debts, and to pay for those debts by issuing new federal bonds. Hamilton argued that these measures would restore confidence in public credit and help to revitalize the economy, but opponents attacked his proposals as unfairly beneficial to the speculators who had purchased many of the government's debt certificates. <mask> supported Hamilton's economic proposals, but the two differed on the site of the federal capital, as Hamilton wanted to keep it in New York. In June 1790, Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson convinced <mask>, Hamilton, and Madison to agree to a compromise in which the federal government assumed state debts, while a new federal capital would be established on the Potomac River; until construction of that capital was completed, Philadelphia would serve as the nation's temporary capital. With the backing of all four leaders, the Compromise of 1790, as it became known, was approved by Congress. That same year, <mask> and Maclay helped secure Pennsylvania's control of the Erie Triangle, which provided the state with access to the Great Lakes.In the early 1790s, the country became increasingly polarized between the Democratic-Republican Party, led by Jefferson and Madison, and the Federalist Party, led by Hamilton. Though <mask> was less focused on politics after the Compromise of 1790, he supported most of Hamilton's


texts:
 policies and aligned with the Federalist Party. <mask> especially supported Hamilton's proposal for the establishment of a national bank. Despite the opposition of Madison and other Southern leaders, Congress approved the establishment of the First Bank of the United States in 1791. While <mask> served in Congress, a new political elite emerged in Philadelphia. These new leaders generally respected <mask>, but most did not look to him for leadership. With <mask> playing little active role, they called a convention that revised the state constitution that included many of the alterations that <mask> had long favored, including a bicameral legislature, a state governor with the power to veto bills, and a judiciary with life tenure.Later business career

<mask> refocused on his trading concerns after leaving office as Superintendent of Finance, seeking especially to expand his role in the tobacco trade. He began suffering from financial problems in the late 1780s after a business partner mistakenly refused to honor bills issued by <mask>, causing him to default on a loan. In 1784 <mask> was part of a syndicate that backed the sailing of the Empress of China (1783) for the China trade. As part of the effort to repay France for loans that financed the war, <mask> contracted to supply 20,000 hogsheads of tobacco annually to France beginning in 1785. Shortly after these contracts were signed, Ambassador Thomas Jefferson took it upon himself to interfere with these arrangements and that brought about the collapse of the tobacco market. In 1787, <mask> was sued in Virginia by Carter Braxton for £28,257; the lawsuit continued for eight years before commissioners were appointed, then <mask> appealed. Finally Virginia's Court of Appeals led by Edmund Pendleton decided

masks: Morris Morris Morris Morris Morris Morris Morris Morris Morris Morris Morris


texts: mostly in favor of Braxton before <mask> was forced into bankruptcy by his own continued land speculations (although <mask> as late as 1800 believed he should have won £20,000).<mask> became increasingly fixated on land speculation, reaching his first major real estate deal in 1790 when he acquired much of the Phelps and Gorham Purchase in western New York. He realized a substantial profit the following year when he sold the land to The Pulteney Association, a group of British land speculators led by Sir William Johnstone Pulteney. <mask> used the money from this sale to purchase the remainder of the Phelps and Gorham Purchase, then turned around and sold much of that land to the Holland Land Company, a group of Dutch land speculators. These early successes encouraged <mask> to pursue greater profits through increasingly large and risky land acquisitions. On March 7, 1791, <mask> obtained title to a lot from John Dickinson and wife; on March 9, 1793, the site was surveyed; it wasn't until 1794 he began construction of a mansion on Chestnut Street in Philadelphia designed by architect of Washington, D.C., Pierre Charles L'Enfant; it was to occupy an entire block between Chestnut Street and Walnut Street on the western edge of Philadelphia. The structure was of red brick and marble lining. Besides Land Speculation, <mask> founded several canal companies: [Similar to the Potomac Company], two Pennsylvania canal companies were set up to try to link the produce of the western lands with the eastern markets; they were the Schuylkill and Susquehanna Navigation Company chartered September 29, 1791 and the Delaware and Schuylkill Canal Company chartered April 10, 1792, <mask> was president of both companies; he was also involved with a steam engine company, and


texts: launched a hot air balloon from his garden on Market Street.He had the first iron rolling mill in America. His icehouse was the model for one Washington installed at Mount Vernon. He backed the new Chestnut Street Theater, and had a greenhouse where his staff cultivated lemon trees. In early 1793, <mask> purchased shares in a land company led by John Nicholson, the comptroller general of Pennsylvania, beginning a deep business partnership between Nicholson and <mask>. Later in 1793, <mask>, Nicholson, and James Greenleaf jointly purchased thousands of lots in the recently established District of Columbia. They subsequently purchased millions of acres in Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Virginia, Georgia, and the Carolinas; in each case, they went into debt to make the purchases, with the intent of quickly reselling the land to realize a profit. <mask> and his partners struggled to re-sell their lands, and Greenleaf dropped out from the partnership in 1795.<mask> realized a profit by selling his lots in the District of Columbia in 1796, but he and Nicholson still owed their creditors approximately $12 million (about $ in ). By Morris's own admission the beginning of his bankruptcy began with the failure of John Warder & Co. of Dublin and Donald and Burton of London in the spring of 1793. <mask> was deeply involved in land speculation, especially after the Revolutionary War; (See Phelps and Gorham Purchase of 1791 above); on April 22, 1794, <mask> entered into an association called the Asylum Company with John Nicholson, [who had served as Comptroller-General of the state of Pennsylvania from 1782 to 1794] to purchase 1,000,000 acres of Pennsylvania land besides land they already had title to in Luzerne County; Northumberland County and Northampton County. [This was not


texts: the first partnership Morris and Nicholson were involved in; in 1792, Nicholson had negotiated the purchase from the federal government of the  tract known as the Erie Triangle. Along with an agent of the Holland Land Company, Aaron Burr, Robert <mask>, and other individual and institutional investors, he formed the Pennsylvania Population Company. This front organization purchased all 390 parcels of land in the Erie Triangle. Nicholson was impeached in 1794 for his role in the company.]However, <mask> severely overextended himself financially. He had borrowed to speculate in real estate in the new national capital, District of Columbia, but signed a contract with a syndicate of Philadelphia investors to take over his obligations there. After that, he took the options to purchase over  in the rural south. Unfortunately for <mask>, that syndicate reneged on their commitment, leaving him once again liable, but this time with more exposure. In 1795, <mask> and two of his partners, Greenleaf and Nicholson, pooled their land and formed a land company called the North American Land Company. The purpose of this company was to raise money by selling stock secured by the real estate [i.e. to finance their land speculation business].According to one historian of American land speculation, the NALC was "largest land trust ever known in America". The three partners turned over to the company land throughout the United States totaling more than , most of it valued at about 50 cents an acre. In addition to land in the District of Columbia, there were  in Georgia,  in Kentucky,  in North Carolina,  in Pennsylvania,  in South Carolina, and  in Virginia. NALC was authorized to issue 30,000 shares, each worth $100. To encourage investors to purchase shares, the three partners


texts:
 guaranteed that a 6 percent dividend would be paid every year. To ensure that there was enough money to pay this divided, each partner agreed to put 3,000 of their own NALC shares in escrow. Greenleaf, <mask>, and Nicholson were entitled to receive a 2.5 percent commission on any land the company sold.Greenleaf was named secretary of the new company. Other land speculations that <mask> was involved in was the Illinois-Wabash Company and the Georgia Yazoo Land Company

1796 lack of capital and Panic of 1797 and bankruptcy
The Washington DC Lots were not the only land problems for <mask>; he began losing everything for nonpayment on interest on loans and taxes: In May 1796, John Barker Church accepted a mortgage on another 100,000 acres of the Morris Reserve in present-day Allegany County and Genesee County, against a debt owed to him by <mask>. After <mask> failed to pay the mortgage, Church foreclosed, and Church's son Philip Schuyler Church acquired the land in May 1800. Philip began the settlement of Allegany and Genesee counties by founding the village of Angelica, New York. In a letter of September 1797 to his partner Nicholson, <mask> begged to be able to find $500.00 to pay two years wages to his servant Mr. Richard; in a subsequent letter October 25, 1797 to Nicholson, <mask> moaned that 200,000 acres of North Carolina land which had cost him $27,000.00 had been sold for one year's taxes. In regard to <mask>'s Philadelphia mansion L'Enfant was paid $9,037.13 between December 1795 and January 1799. Despite the spent amount of £6138 5s 10d it was never completed.The bank of Pennsylvania brought suit against him and a judgement made against him for $20,997.40; an execution against his unfinished Chestnut Street "Morris Folly" mansion was issued in


texts: September 1797 to Philadelphia Sherriff Baker; Sherriff Penrose on December 11, 1797, made deed-poll to William Sansom for the building and the lot sold for $25,600 subject to a £7,000 in specie mortgage payable to Messrs Willink of Amsterdam. The last credit for the house was July 2, 1801 and the last charge for it was made July 9, 1801. The unfinished mansion became known as "<mask>'s folly", and the land eventually became Sansom Street. Marble from this house was purchased by Latrobe; he used it to adorn buildings and monuments from Rhode Island to Charlestown, South Carolina. The two canal companies had also failed as well: for example after its incorporation the Schuylkill and Susquehanna was subscribed for 40,000 shares—but only 1000 shares were sold; the Delaware and Schuylkill company was to have been 2000 shares at $200.00 a share. Operations were suspended because "..Either on account of errors in plans adopted, failure to procure the necessary means, financial convulsions, or a combination of all these difficulties, they were compelled to suspend their operations after an outlay of $440,000, which was an immense sum in those days..". When England and the Dutch declared war on Revolutionary France, an expected loan from Holland never materialized.The subsequent Napoleonic Wars ruined the market for American land and Morris's highly leveraged company collapsed. Lastly, the financial markets of England, the United States, and the Caribbean suffered from deflation related with the Panic of 1797. <mask> was left "land rich and cash poor". He owned more land than any other American at any time, but didn't have enough liquid capital to pay his creditors. Among his creditors was his son-in-law James Marshall for £20,000 sterling; likewise his brother-in-law

masks: Morris Morris


texts: Bishop White was also a creditor to <mask> for $3,000. Gouvenor <mask> was owned $24,000 "..exclusive of what he paid in Europe on my account, the amount of which I do not know. "; Henry Lee III was a creditor for protested bills for $39,446 plus damages and interest; <mask>'s wife Mary had a sum of credit of $15,860.16 from the sale of two farms left to her by her father;his daughter <mask> had a credit of a few hundred pounds left to her by her grandmother received by <mask>; as <mask> had given her on her marriage nothing but clothes and old wine he assigned to her two quarter chests of tea which he sent to Alexandria, Virginia for sale although he feared this would not amount to principal and interest; his son <mask> Jr was a debtor for sums spent in Europe without his father's knowledge; his son Charles while under age had contracted bills without his father's knowledge for $144.94 for a tailor and $24.50 for a shoemaker.The NALC encountered financial difficulty almost immediately. Only  of land was turned over to the NALC, which meant it could issue only 22,365 shares. This meant only 7,455 shares were put into escrow (instead of the required 9,000). Rather than paying creditors with cash, the NALC paid them with shares (8,477 shares in 1795 and 1796). On May 15, 1795, the D.C. commissioners demanded their first payment from Greenleaf, <mask>, and Nicholson, for the 6,000 lots purchased in 1793. But Greenleaf had misappropriated some of the company's income to pay his own debts. Without the Dutch mortgage income and missing funds, there was no money to make the payment to the commissioners.Furthermore, Greenleaf had co-signed for loans taken out by <mask> and Nicholson. When these men defaulted, creditors sought out Greenleaf to make good on the

masks:
Morris
Morris
Morris
Esther Morris
Morris
Morris
Robert Morris
Morris
Morris


texts: debts—which he could not. Moris and his partners had failed to both pay the instalments on the Washington D.C. building lots and finished building twenty houses (they had contracted ten houses annually for seven years on said lots); On July 10, 1795, <mask> and Nicholson bought out Greenleaf's interest in the December 24, 1793, agreement. The commissioners began legal proceedings to regain title to the 6,000 lots owned by NALC and the 1,115.25 lots owned by Greenleaf personally. The worsening financial problems of Greenleaf, <mask>, and Nicholson led to increasingly poor personal relations among the three men. Nicholson, particularly bitter, began making public accusations against Greenleaf in print. <mask> attempted to mediate between the two men, but his efforts failed.In an attempt to resolve his financial problems, Greenleaf sold his shares in the NALC to Nicholson and Morris on May 28, 1796, for $1.5 million. Unfortunately, Morris and Nicholson funded their purchase by giving Greenleaf personal notes. Furthermore, they endorsed one another's notes. Morris and Nicholson, themselves nearly bankrupt, agreed to pay one-quarter of the purchase price every year for the next four years. Greenleaf's shares were not to be transferred to Morris and Nicholson until the fourth payment was received. On September 30, 1796, James Greenleaf put 7,455 of his NALC shares in a trust (known as the "391 trust" because it was recorded on page 391 of the firm's accounting book). The "391 trust" was created to generate income (from the 6 percent dividend) to pay a loan given to Greenleaf by Edward Fox.A trustee was assigned to hold on to the shares. The same day, Greenleaf put 2,545 shares into another trust (the "381 trust"), as a guarantee against nonpayment of the dividend by


texts: Morris and Nicholson. Morris and Nicholson's made the first payment to Greenleaf for the one-third interest in the NALC by turning over title to several hundred lots in Washington, D.C. On March 8, 1797, Greenleaf executed the 381 trust. When the NALC did not issue its 6 percent dividend, Greenleaf transferred one-third of the shares in the "391 trust" to the trustees. The total number of shares transferred to the "381 trust" trustees was now 6,119. On June 24, 1797, Morris, Greenleaf and Nicholson had conveyed their Washington D.C. Lots in trust to Henry Pratt and others in payments of their debts. Poor business practices were now dragging down NALC.For years, <mask> and Nicholson had acted as personal guarantors for one another's notes. Now many of these notes were coming due, and neither man could pay them. Creditors began selling the notes publicly, often at heavy discounts. By 1798, Morris and Nicholson's $10 million in personal notes were trading at one-eighth their face value. NALC also discovered that some of titles to the  of land it owned were not clear, and thus the land could not be used for security. In other cases, NALC found it had been swindled, and the rich land it thought it owned turned out to be barren and worthless. <mask> and Nicholson honestly believed that, if their cash flow problems were fixed, they could make payments on the property they owned and their shares would be returned to them.This proved incorrect. On October 23, 1807, all stock in the company was sold at 7 cents on the dollar to the accountants managing the Aggregate Fund. In 1856, the Trustees of the North American Land Company held $92,071.87. Morris and Nicholson's heirs sued to recover the stock and gain access to the income. The North American Land Company stayed in


texts: existence until 1872. An 1880 auditors report called the litigation "phenomenal ... the counsel for Morris and Nickerson pursued the fund for twenty-five years, seeking to obtain it from the trustees of the North American Company and the trusts which had been created from it, and also defending the money from the State in an attempt to sequestrate it. After all counsel fees and expenses, the amount available for division to the Morris interest was $9,692.49."In 1797 <mask> conveyed his household furniture to Thomas Fitzsimmons which was sold at public auction. What was left was lent to Mrs. <mask> by Fitzsimmons and <mask> son-in-law Marshall; all <mask> had left in his house was some bedding, clothing, part of a quarter cask of wine; part of a barrel of flour, some coffee, a little sugar and some bottled wine which was the remainder from a cask he had given to his daughter Maria. <mask> attempted to avoid creditors by staying outside the city at his country estate "The Hills", located on the Schuylkill River, but his creditors literally pursued him to his gate. <mask> was sued by a former partner, James Greenleaf, who had been imprisoned for fraud and was serving time in debtors' prison. Unable to dodge his creditors and their lawyers, <mask> was finally arrested. He was imprisoned for debt in Prune Street prison in Philadelphia from February 1798 to August 1801. <mask> property Summerseat (Morrisville, Pennsylvania) would be sold in a Sherriff's sale on June 9, 1798, to George Clymer and Thomas Fitzsimmons for $41,000.00.In January 1799 <mask> lamented to Nicholson of how a London firm had refused to accept his bill of lading £389 sterling "..because the money in the hands of the party upon whom the bill was drawn had been attached by the owner of a bond

masks: Morris Morris Morris Morris Morris Morris Morris Morris Morris


texts:
 given for payment of some lands in Georgia..". 43 of the 100 acres of <mask> estate "The Hills" was purchased in March 1799 by Henry Pratt for $14,654.00 for his country house Lemon Hill after the tearing down of <mask>'s old mansion; in turn the "Lemon Hill" estate became part of the foundation for Fairmount Park Philadelphia; one part of Morris property which had also been purchased in 1799 by William Cannard became part of the Sedgeley mansion-which in turn ironically became part of Fairmont Park. Of his partners Geenleaf was released after being declared bankrupt in 1798; Nicholson died in prison in 1800. Final years

<mask> was unable to pay his debts, and he remained in debtors' prison for three and a half years. <mask> was released from prison in August 1801 after Congress passed its first bankruptcy legislation, the Bankruptcy Act of 1800 in part to get <mask> out of prison. At the time of his release, three commissioners found that he had debts of $2,948,711.11; the proceedings were certified October 15, 1801 after 2/3 of his creditors agreed to the discharge of <mask>; on December 4, 1801, a certificate of bankruptcy was confirmed. but he remained financially destitute.Gouverneur <mask>, who served as <mask>'s representative to the Holland Land Company, was able to attach a provision to the sale of some land that gave <mask> a $1,500 () per year annuity; this annuity allowed Mary to rent a small house in Philadelphia far away from the city's center. Ironically one of the few assets <mask> had left to him was his father's old worn out gold watch which he had inherited at the start of his career; <mask> managed to leave this timepiece in his Will to his son <mask>. <mask> died on May 8, 1806, in Philadelphia. No public ceremonies marked his death. He

masks:
Morris
Morris
Morris
Morris
Morris
Morris
Morris
Robert Morris
Mary Morris
Morris
Morris
Robert Jr
Morris


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 was buried in the churchyard of Christ Church. Legacy

Historical reputation

Biographer Charles Rappleye writes that <mask> "was too rich to be a folk hero, and the ultimate failure of his personal fortune robbed him of any Midas-like mystique." Some historians have largely ignored <mask>'s role in founding the United States, while others regard him as the leader of a conservative, anti-democratic faction of the Founding Fathers. <mask>. Wright and David J. Cowen describe <mask> as a "fallen angel" who "almost single-handedly financed the final years" of the American Revolution before falling into "ignominy" for defaulting on his debts.Historian William Hogeland writes "given his seminal performance to victory in the Revolution, as well as to forming the nation, <mask> isn't as well known by Americans as he ought to be." Memorials

<mask>'s portrait appeared on US$1,000 notes from 1862 to 1863 and on the $10 silver certificate from 1878 to 1880. Institutions named in honor of <mask> include Robert Morris University and Robert Morris University Illinois. Mount Morris, New York, the location of a large flood control dam on the Genesee River, is named in his honor. A number of ships in the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Coast Guard have been named USS Morris or USRC Morris for him. Morrisville, Pennsylvania, was named in his honor. The Morris-Taney-class cutter was named for <mask> and Roger Taney.A statue of <mask> stands at Independence National Historical Park, and a monument to <mask>, Washington, and Haym Salomon stands at Heald Square in Chicago, Illinois. Summerseat, <mask>'s former estate in Morrisville, is listed as a National Historic Landmark. Lemon Hill, a Federal-style estate listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is located on a parcel of land

masks:
Morris
Morris
Robert E
Morris
Robert Morris
Morris
Morris
Morris
Morris
Morris
Morris


texts:
 formerly owned by <mask>. Part of the Liberty Bell Center is on land that was formerly part of the estate known as the President's House. <mask> holds the curious distinction as the only Founding Father whose house is a national memorial, but his life is not interpreted at the site. <mask> is included in the Washington, D.C. Memorial to the 56 Signers of the Declaration of Independence. See also
 List of richest Americans in history
 List of United States senators born outside the United States

Notes

References

Bibliography

 Ferguson, E. James.Business, Government, and Congressional Investigation in the Revolution, (1959), Via Jstor
 Ferguson, E. James. The Power of the Purse: A History of American Public Finance, 1776–1790 (1961)

 Perkins, Edwin J. American public finance and financial services, 1700–1815 (1994). pp. 85–105 on Revolution, pp. 106–36 on postwar. Complete text line free

 Smith, Ryan K. <mask>'s Folly: The Architectural and Financial Failures of an American Founder. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014.Ver Steeg, Clarence L. <mask>, Revolutionary Financier. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1954. Ver Steeg, Clarence L. "<mask>, <mask>" in American National Biography Online 2000. Primary sources
 Ferguson, E. James (editor): The Papers of Robert Morris 1781–1784 (9 volumes): University of Pittsburgh Press, 1978; (1995 reprint: ). External links

 Biography by Rev. Charles A. Goodrich, 1856
 The President's House

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1734 births
1806 deaths
Politicians from Liverpool
Businesspeople from Liverpool
British emigrants to the Thirteen Colonies
American people of English descent
American Episcopalians
Marshall family
Continental Congressmen from Pennsylvania
Signers of the United States Declaration of

masks:
Morris
Robert Morris
Morris
Robert Morris
Robert Morris
Morris
Robert


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 Independence
Signers of the Articles of Confederation
Signers of the United States Constitution
Pro-Administration Party United States senators from Pennsylvania
Members of the Pennsylvania Provincial Assembly
Members of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives
Politicians from Philadelphia
American bankers
American merchants
American slave traders
Central bankers
Colonial American merchants
Financiers of the American Revolution
History of banking
People imprisoned for debt
Burials at Christ Church, Philadelphia
Members of the American Philosophical


texts:
<mask> (born 24 April 1958) is an English serial killer, also known as the Suffolk Strangler and the Ipswich Ripper. He is serving life imprisonment for the murder of five prostitutes who worked in Ipswich, Suffolk. The killings took place during the final months of 2006, and <mask> was found guilty in February 2008. Early life
<mask> was born in the Norfolk village of Erpingham, the second of four children of military policeman Conrad and veterinary nurse Patricia, on 24 April 1958. He has an older brother and two younger sisters. While <mask>'s father was on military service, the family had lived in both Malta and Singapore. <mask>'s mother left the family in 1964 when he was aged 6; his father divorced his mother in 1978; both remarried.<mask> and his siblings lived with their father, who fathered a son and a daughter with his second wife, Valerie. <mask> left school at the age of 16 in 1974, and soon afterwards joined the Merchant Navy, becoming a chef on ferries sailing from Felixstowe, Suffolk. In 1978, at age 20, he married Angela O'Donovan in Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire, Wales. They had a son, Michael. The couple separated in 1987, and later divorced. <mask> became a steward on the ocean liner Queen Elizabeth 2, a lorry driver, a barman and, just prior to his arrest, a forklift truck driver. Former prostitute Lindi St Clair said that <mask> attacked her in the 1980s.His second marriage was to 32 year old Diane Cassell at Braintree, Essex, register office in August 1987. They divorced in July 1988 while he was a pub landlord in Norwich. It was during this time that <mask> also managed a pub in South London. He lost this post due to his gambling and heavy drinking. <mask> was convicted in 2001 of theft, having stolen £80 to pay off his debts. This was his only criminal conviction prior to the murders. <mask> accrued large gambling debts, and was declared

masks:
Steven Gerald James Wright
Wright
Steve Wright
Wright
Wright
Wright
Wright
Wright
Wright
Wright
Wright
Wright


texts:
 bankrupt in the late 1990s.He had twice tried to commit suicide, first by carbon monoxide poisoning in his car in 1994; secondly in 2000, by an overdose of pills. Suffolk murders

<mask> met <mask> (no relation) in 2001 in Felixstowe, and they moved to a house in Ipswich together in 2004. <mask> had always admitted that he patronized prostitutes, and had done so since he was in the Merchant Navy, and continually throughout his life. In Ipswich, he admitted he went to certain massage and sauna establishments that were actually brothels. During his trial, <mask> stated he had patronized professional prostitutes on many occasions, including three of the murder victims. <mask> began having sex with prostitutes again when his partner began working night shifts and their sex life became almost non-existent; he paid at least a dozen women for sex in the final three months of 2006. Local prostitutes nicknamed him "Mondeo Man" and "Silver-Backed Gorilla", because of his hair colour and stocky build.Between 30 October and 10 December 2006, <mask> murdered five prostitutes in Ipswich. Forensic evidence led to his arrest on 19 December; tiny flecks of blood were found on the back seats of <mask>'s Ford Mondeo, and partially matched the DNA profile of murder victim Paula Clennell. <mask> was found guilty of all five murders on 21 February 2008. At Ipswich Crown Court the following day, Mr Justice Gross sentenced <mask> to life imprisonment with a recommendation that he should never be released. On 19 March 2008, <mask> appealed his convictions, but on 2 February 2009, it was announced that <mask> had decided to drop his appeal. Possible links to other crimes
<mask> is still being investigated in connection with other unsolved murders and disappearances. Experts have highlighted how it is unlikely for any serial killer to start killing at such a late stage (<mask> was

masks:
Wright
Pamela Wright
Wright
Wright
Wright
Wright
Wright
Wright
Wright
Wright
Wright
Wright
Wright


texts: nearly in his 50s when the 2006 murders were committed), and that serial killers almost always start killing before their mid 30s.This indicates that <mask> likely killed before in his life, and psychologists told police after the murders that it was 'highly likely' that he had done so. <mask> is one of a number of high-profile murderers or sex offenders to have been identified as possible suspects in the Suzy Lamplugh murder case; he had worked with Lamplugh on Queen Elizabeth 2 during the early 1980s. Lamplugh went missing in London in July 1986, and was legally declared dead in 1994, but her body has never been found. However, the Metropolitan Police have stated that this is not a strong line of enquiry. In 2002, the police named John Cannan as the man they believed killed Lamplugh. Cleveland Police have not ruled out a link between <mask> and the murder of Vicky Glass, a heroin addict who vanished from Middlesbrough in September 2000, and whose naked body was later found in a brook on the North York Moors. In 2019, <mask> was linked by an ex-police officer to the murder of Jeanette Kempton in 1989.Kempton had vanished from Brixton, near where <mask> lived at the time, and was later found dead many miles away in a rural location in Suffolk. In July 2021 <mask> was arrested, at HM Prison Long Lartin, on suspicion of murdering Victoria Hall, a 17-year-old who was murdered on her way home from a Suffolk nightclub in 1999. Her body was found in a ditch five days after she was last seen alive in Felixstowe. Suffolk police reopened their investigation in 2019 after receiving fresh witness information. They announced that <mask> had been “released under investigation, pending further inquiries”. Only two months after this police announced a re-investigation by a historical crimes unit into Vicky Glass's murder in order to pursue "new lines of enquiry". Previous

masks: Wright Wright Wright Wright Wright Wright Wright


texts:
 East Anglia prostitute murders

<mask> has also been linked to the murders of other sex workers in Ipswich and nearby Norwich.When investigating the five murders committed by <mask> in Ipswich in late 2006, criminologist David Wilson, who was personally involved in the case, stated that he felt that the murders were far too practised for someone murdering for the first time. There was a cluster of sex worker murders in Norwich in the years before the 2006 murders, which have gone unsolved to this day. <mask> used to live and work in the city, and he frequently returned to the city in the years after he left, usually travelling from Ipswich to Norwich once a month. He ran a pub in the middle of the red light district of Norwich, similar to how he lived in the centre of the red light district of Ipswich at the time of the 2006 murders. <mask> has been linked to the unsolved murders of:
 Natalie Pearman, Norwich, November 1992 (link disproven by 2017)
 Amanda Duncan, Ipswich, July 1993
 Kellie Pratt, Norwich, June 2000
 Michelle Bettles, Norwich, March 2002

In June 2012, Wilson said that the killer of Norwich sex worker Michelle Bettles was likely <mask>. Bettles was strangled in March 2002, and her body was found three days later in woodland by a lane on the outskirts of the city. The police responded to the suggested links between Bettles's case and <mask> by saying that they had found no evidence linking <mask> to the crime.It was revealed in 2019 that police had already made an arrest in April 2003 of a man whose DNA matched samples from Bettles' body, and this man admitted having picked her up for sex on 26 March 2002, two days before she was last seen. The man claimed that he was at home with a migraine on the night she was killed, but phone records show him making a large amounts of calls that evening, although police failed to locate where the calls were


texts:
 made from. <mask> had also been linked by criminal experts to the unsolved murder of Norwich sex worker Natalie Pearman in November 1992. Pearman was last seen at night soliciting clients outside the Ferry Boat Inn pub – the pub that was owned and run by <mask> and that was located in the heart of the city's red light district. The police cross-referenced the DNA found on Pearman's body in 1992 to <mask>'s, but the results were "inconclusive". However, in 2017, police announced that they had a full DNA profile of the attacker and that solving the case was simply a matter of matching the DNA to an individual, meaning that <mask> could be ruled out of the murder. Ipswich sex worker Amanda Duncan vanished after talking to a man in a car on Portman Road in the town in 1993, a road that <mask> was known to acquire his prostitutes from, and from where some of his victims were known to have disappeared from in 2006.After <mask>'s murders in 2006, the police re-opened and re-examined these four cold cases to establish whether <mask> could be responsible, and questioned <mask> about them. Family members of the victims stated they believed he could be linked and called for the police to investigate this further and charge him for them. See also
List of serial killers by country
List of serial killers by number of victims
Alun Kyte (Midlands Ripper)

References

External links
Ipswich serial killer <mask>, ITV Local

1958 births
Living people
21st-century English criminals
British Merchant Navy personnel
British people convicted of theft
Criminals from Norfolk
English male criminals
English people convicted of murder
English prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment
English serial killers
Male serial killers
People convicted of murder by England and Wales
People from Ipswich
People from Erpingham
Prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment by England and Wales
Criminals from

masks:
Wright
Wright
Wright
Steve Wright
Wright
Wright
Wright
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Steve Wright


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Dame <mask>,  (9 December 19153 August 2006) was a German-born Austro-British soprano. She was among the foremost singers of lieder, and is renowned for her performances of Viennese operetta, as well as the operas of Mozart, Wagner and Richard Strauss. After retiring from the stage, she was a voice teacher internationally. She is considered one of the greatest sopranos of the 20th century. Early life
<mask> was born on 9 December 1915 in Jarotschin in the Province of Posen in Prussia, Germany (now Poland) to <mask> and his wife, <mask> (). Schwarzkopf performed in her first opera in 1928, as Eurydice in a school production of Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice in Magdeburg, Germany. In 1934, Schwarzkopf began her musical studies at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik, where her singing tutor, Lula Mysz-Gmeiner, attempted to train her to be a mezzo-soprano.Schwarzkopf later trained under Maria Ivogün, and in 1938 joined the Deutsche Oper. Early career

In 1933, shortly after the Nazis came to power, <mask>'s father, a local school headmaster, was dismissed from his position by the new ruling authorities for having refused to allow a Nazi party meeting at his school. He was also banned from taking any new teaching post. Until <mask>'s dismissal, the probability was that the 17-year-old <mask> would have studied medicine after passing her Abitur; but now, as the daughter of a banned schoolteacher, she was not allowed to enter university and

masks: Olga Maria Elisabeth Friederike Schwarzkopf


texts: she commenced music studies at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik. Schwarzkopf made her professional debut at the Deutsche Oper Berlin (then called Deutsches Opernhaus) on 15 April 1938, as the Second Flower Maiden (First Group) in act 2 of Richard Wagner's Parsifal. In 1940 Schwarzkopf was awarded a full contract with the Deutsches Opernhaus, a condition of which was that she had to join the Nazi party. Since the theme was brought up in the dissertation of the Austrian historian Oliver Rathkolb in 1982, the question of Schwarzkopf's relationship with the Nazi Party has been discussed repeatedly in the media and in literature.There was criticism that Schwarzkopf, not only in the years immediately after the war but also in confrontation with revelations made in the 1980s and 1990s made contradictory statements, including in regard to her membership in the NSDAP (Member No. 7,548,960). At first, she denied this and then with varying explanations defended it. In one version, for example, she claimed that she joined the party only at the insistence of her father who, himself, had earlier lost his position as school principal after forbidding a Nazi program in the school. Further publications discussed her musical performances during the war before Nazi party conferences and for units of the Waffen-SS. Her defenders argue in favor of her claim that she always strictly separated art from politics and that she was a non-political


texts:
 person. In 1942, she was invited to sing with the Vienna State Opera, where her roles included Konstanze in Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Musetta and later Mimì in Puccini's La bohème and Violetta in Verdi's La traviata.Schwarzkopf starred in five feature films for Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, in which she acted, sang and played the piano. Post-war career

In 1945, Schwarzkopf was granted Austrian citizenship to enable her to sing in the Vienna State Opera (Wiener Staatsoper). In 1947 and 1948, Schwarzkopf appeared on tour with the Vienna State Opera at London's Royal Opera House at Covent Garden on 16 September 1947 as Donna Elvira in Mozart's Don Giovanni and at La Scala on 28 December 1948, as the Countess in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, which became one of her signature roles. Schwarzkopf later made her official debut at the Royal Opera House on 16 January 1948, as Pamina in Mozart's The Magic Flute, in performances sung in English, and at La Scala on 29 June 1950 singing Beethoven's Missa solemnis. Schwarzkopf's association with the Milanese house in the early 1950s gave her the opportunity to sing certain roles on stage for the only time in her career: Mélisande in Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, Iole in Handel's Hercules, Marguerite in Gounod's Faust, Elsa in Wagner's Lohengrin, as well as her first Marschallin in Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier and her first Fiordiligi in Mozart's


texts: Così fan tutte at the Piccola Scala. On 11 September 1951, she appeared as Anne Trulove in the world premiere of Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress. <mask> made her American concert debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on October 28 and 29, 1954, in Strauss's Four Last Songs and the closing scene from Capriccio with Fritz Reiner conducting; her Carnegie Hall debut was a Lieder recital on 25 November 1956; her American opera debut was with the San Francisco Opera on 20 September 1955 as the Marschallin, and her debut at the Metropolitan Opera on 13 October 1964, also as the Marschallin.In March 1946, <mask> was invited to audition for Walter Legge, an influential British classical record producer and a founder of the Philharmonia Orchestra. Legge asked her to sing Hugo Wolf's lied Wer rief dich denn? and, impressed, signed her to an exclusive contract with EMI. They began a close partnership and Legge subsequently became Schwarzkopf's manager and companion. They were married on 19 October 1953 in Epsom, Surrey; Schwarzkopf thus acquired British citizenship by marriage. <mask> would divide her time between lieder recitals and opera performances for the rest of her career. When invited in 1958 to select her eight favourite records on the BBC's Desert Island Discs, Schwarzkopf chose seven of her own recordings, and an eighth of Karajan conducting the Rosenkavalier prelude, as they evoked fond memories of the people she had

masks: Schwarzkopf Schwarzkopf Schwarzkopf


texts:
 worked with.In the 1960s, Schwarzkopf concentrated nearly exclusively on five operatic roles: Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni, Countess Almaviva in The Marriage of Figaro, Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte, Countess Madeleine in Strauss's Capriccio, and the Marschallin. She was also well received as Alice Ford in Verdi's Falstaff. However, on the EMI label she made several "champagne operetta" recordings like Franz Lehár's The Merry Widow and Johann Strauss II's The Gypsy Baron. Schwarzkopf's last operatic performance was as the Marschallin on 31 December 1971, in the theatre of La Monnaie in Brussels. For the next several years, she devoted herself exclusively to lieder recitals. On 17 March 1979, Walter Legge suffered a severe heart attack. He disregarded doctor's orders to rest and attended Schwarzkopf's final recital two days later in Zurich.Three days later, he died. Retirement and death

After retiring (almost immediately after her husband's death), Schwarzkopf taught and gave master classes around the world, notably at the Juilliard School in New York City. After living in Switzerland for many years, she took up residence in Austria. She was made a doctor of music by the University of Cambridge in 1976, and became a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 1992. <mask> died in her sleep during the night of 2–3 August 2006 at her home in Schruns, Vorarlberg, Austria, aged 90. Her ashes, and those of Walter


texts:
 Legge, were buried next to her parents in Zumikon near Zürich, where she had lived from 1982 to 2003. Legacy
Her discography is considerable both in quality and in quantity and is distinguished for her Mozart and Richard Strauss operatic portrayals, her two commercial recordings of Strauss's Four Last Songs and her recordings of lieder, especially those of Wolf.<mask> is generally considered to have been the greatest German lyric soprano of the twentieth century and one of the finest Mozart singers of all time with an "indescribably beautiful" voice. <mask>'s entry in The Grove Book of Opera Singers concludes: "Although she dismissed her [Nazi Party] membership as a professional necessity, her reputation has remained tarnished by what seems to have been an active party membership." Awards

 1950: Lilli Lehmann Medal, Mozarteum International Foundation, Salzburg
 1959: 1. "Orfeo d'Oro", Mantua (?) 1969: Orphée d'or recording award from the Académie du disque lyrique in Paris
 1961: Edison Award, Amsterdam
 1961: Awarded the title Deutsche Kammersängerin
 1964: Honorary member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music
 1967: Stockholm television award for best European soprano Stockholmer
 1971: Hugo-Wolf Medal
 1974: Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
 1982: Mozart Medal of the city of Frankfurt am Main
 1983: Honorary member of the Vienna State Opera and title of Kammersängerin
 1986: Commandeur

masks: Schwarzkopf Schwarzkopf


texts:
 de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
 1991: UNESCO Mozart Medal
 1992: Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to music
 2002:
 2012: Voted into Gramophone Hall of Fame

Quotations

 (After being asked about Peter Sellars) "There are names I do not want mentioned in my home. Do not say that name in my presence. I have seen what he has done, and it is criminal.As my husband used to say, so far no one has dared go into the Louvre Museum to spray graffiti on the Mona Lisa, but some opera directors are spraying graffiti over masterpieces." – Newsweek interview, 15 October 1990
 "Many composers today don't know what the human throat is. At Bloomington, Indiana, I was invited to listen to music written in quarter tones for four harps and voices. I had to go out to be sick." – Newsweek interview, 15 October 1990
 (Asked in 1995 if she would sing in the cultural climate of the 1990s if she were much younger) "It's a kind of prostitution now. There is nobody I envy. There's a disintegration of integrity in our profession."Recordings

Recital at Carnegie Hall (1956), EMI in "Great Performances of the Century", 1989

Bach
 St Matthew Passion (Klemperer), Philharmonia Orchestra (Warner Classics 1961)
Brahms
 A German Requiem (Klemperer), Philharmonia Orchestra (Warner Classics 1961)
Humperdinck
 Hänsel und Gretel (Karajan) (1953) Naxos 8.110897-98
Lehár
 Das Land des Lächelns (Ackermann) (1953) and excerpts from


texts:
 Lehár Operettas Naxos 8.111016-17
 Die lustige Witwe (Kunz, Gedda) (1953) Naxos 8.111007
Mozart
 Don Giovanni (Carlo Maria Giulini, Philharmonia Orchestra) (Warner Classics 1959) with Joan Sutherland as Donna Anna. Le nozze di Figaro (Carlo Maria Giulini, Philharmonia Orchestra) (Warner Classics 1959)
 Così fan tutte (Otto, Karajan) (1954) Naxos 8.111232-34
 Die Zauberflöte (Otto Klemperer) (1960) (EMI 5673852). She plays the First Lady. Die Entführung aus dem Serail (Rudolf Moralt) (1949) (Gala GL100.501)
Puccini
Turandot as Liù (Tullio Serafin, La Scala Orchestra; 1957 EMI Classics) Callas as Turandot
Johann Strauss II
 Die Fledermaus (Gedda, Karajan) (1955) Naxos 8.111036-37
Der Zigeunerbaron (Gedda, Prey, Kunz) (1954 Otto Ackermann, Philharmonia Orchestra & Chorus) EMI Classics 67535 ADD monaural 2CDs: 56:00, 44:11
Richard Strauss
 Der Rosenkavalier (Herbert von Karajan) (1956) (EMI 77357)  The Marschallin was considered her signature-role. Four Last Songs / Arabella (highlights) (Ackermann, Matacic) (1953, 1954) Naxos 8.111145
 Four Last Songs (Szell; 1965; Warner Classics "Great Recordings of the Century"; Cat: 0724356696020)
 Ariadne auf Naxos (Streich, Karajan) (1954) Naxos 8.111033-34
 Capriccio (Christa Ludwig, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Nicolai Gedda, Wolfgang Sawallisch) (1957) Warner Classics CDS 7 49014-8

Verdi
 Messa da Requiem (Di Stefano, De Sabata) (1954) Naxos 8.111049-50
Richard Wagner
 Die Meistersinger