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A Note on the Texts
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xix A Note on the Texts In thinking about the selections for this collection, I considered what writings of Morris were already available, and what would be most useful. His diaries have been published twice, first in a heavily edited form by his granddaughter in 1888, and in a somewhat less censored form by his greatgranddaughter in 1939. Many of his more interesting letters are quoted, sometimes (but not always) in their entirety, in Sparks’s biography or in the 1888 edition of the Diary and Letters. His public writings—speeches, newspaper articles, and reports—were often difficult to find, however. In these writings, Morris develops his arguments more fully than is often the case in his letters, and so they help us attain a more complete view of his political and economic thinking. This selection includes published writings as well as several unpublished essays and speeches. They are presented chronologically for the sake of simplicity and to provide a minimum of editorial intrusion. In the 1830s Morris’s widow, Anne, turned over the full collection of his manuscripts to Jared Sparks, but since that time they have been scattered. Some have disappeared.Those published in Morris’s lifetime were available in various newspapers or pamphlets but sometimes not identified or misidentified . Many are available in the American Antiquarian Society’s useful collections of Early American Imprints and American Historical Newspapers . Even so, only someone with access to both the manuscript collection and printed sources could identify, with any confidence, writings that had been published anonymously or under pseudonyms. Even with the restriction to writings for the public, I have had to be selective. Not included in this collection are his two graduation orations from 1768 and 1771, “Wit and Beauty” and “Love,” respectively. Both of these are available in the manuscript collection at Columbia University, together with an 1805 “Oration on Music,” also not included here. Among printed documents, I have omitted the “Observations on the American Revolution,” written for Congress in 1778, because it is primarily composed of quotations from other documents. It, along with Morris’s speech in the xx notE on thE tExtS 1. Although these essays use Morris’s pseudonyms, in some cases I am not entirely certain that they are his, although the probability is high. The essays in the Evening Post are: three essays on the naval operations in the Mediterranean, October 25 and November 21 and 28, 1804; three on American-British relations, February 13, 15, and 22, 1812; two on the Jeffersonians’ public policies, January 7 and 8, 1813; one on the War of 1812, September 22, 1814. There are also several essays signed “An American” in the (Philadelphia) U.S. Gazette: three essays on the “Dispute with Spain,” October 5, 8, and 11, 1804; and three very short pieces, October 20, 1804; August 23, 1806; and August 22, 1807. Two essays signed “An Observer” in the Evening Post, February 11, 1815, and August 13, 1816, also may be Morris’s. Finally, Allan Nevins (in The Evening Post: A Century of Journalism, [New York: Boni and Liveright, 1922]) and Howard Swiggett have attributed three anonymous essays on the Peace of Amiens to Morris. They were published in the Evening Post November 30 and December 2 and 7, 1801. Senate on the Ross Resolutions, his eulogy of George Clinton, and the joint Morris/Robert Fulton pamphlet “Advantages of the Proposed [Erie] Canal,” are available in microform or electronically through the American Antiquarian Society’s Early American Imprints series. Several newspaper essays have also been omitted, most of them published in the New-York Evening Post under Morris’s pseudonym “An American.”1 All manuscript material is from the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. The material published in Morris’s lifetime has long since become part of the public domain, but it is scattered widely, and I am grateful to the libraries and institutions that have allowed me access to their collections. I have included information on the holding institution with the documents. Where no holding institution is indicated, the material is from the microform collection in Pattee Library of Penn State University. I have tried to track down all of Morris’s quotations, as well as key references in the documents, although a few left me stumped. In several places I have silently corrected typographical errors in the published material. The transcriptions and all of the shorter translations are mine. I have used Sparks’s translation of the French portions...