Thomas Morris (Ohio politician)

Morris was born in Berks County, Pennsylvania, and enlisted as a Ranger to fight the Indians in 1793. He settled in western Ohio two years later. Morris began practicing law in Bethel, Ohio in 1804.

On May 12, 1806, shortly after the beginning of the 1806–1807 term of the Ohio House of Representatives, Morris contested the election of David C. Bryan and was awarded the seat from Clermont County.{{cite book | last=Taylor | first=William A. | title=Ohio Statesmen and Annals of Progress, from the Year 1788 to the Year 1900 | url=https://archive.org/details/ohiostatesmenan00taylgoog | publisher=Westbote | year=1899 | location=Columbus, Ohio | pages=v. 1, p. 50}}

Morris served in the Ohio State House of Representatives for Clermont County in 1806–1807, 1808–1809, 1810–1811, and 1820–1821.{{cite book | last=Gilkey | first=Elliot Howard | title=The Ohio Hundred Year Book | url=https://archive.org/details/ohiohundredyear00assegoog | publisher=Fred J. Heer | year=1901 | location=Columbus, Ohio | pages=[https://archive.org/details/ohiohundredyear00assegoog/page/n202 186]–192}} He served as Justice of the Ohio State Supreme Court in 1809. He was then a member of the Ohio State Senate for Clermont County in 1813–1815, 1821–1823, 1825–1829 and 1831–1833.

He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1833, and served a single term.{{cite web|url=http://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/thomas_morris/407957|title=Sen. Thomas Morris

|publisher= Civic Impulse, LLC|access-date=August 24, 2012}} He did not seek re-election. He was nominated to the Vice Presidency by the Liberty Party in 1844 under James G. Birney. The ticket came in third after Democratic candidate James Knox Polk and Whig Party candidate Henry Clay.

Morris was the father of Isaac Newton Morris and Jonathan David Morris.{{cite web|url=http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=M000989|title=Tolleson, Arizona |publisher= Biographical Directory of the United States Congress

|access-date=August 24, 2012}}

He died December 7, 1844.

Author and prominent American Civil War historian Eric Foner argues in his seminal book Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men that Sen. Morris is one of the most significant figures in the anti-slavery movement and the "first political martyr of the anti-slavery cause when he was denied re-election to the Senate because of his abolitionist convictions."{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/freesoilfreelabo00eric|title=Free soil, free labor, free men: the ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War.|last1=Foner|first1=Eric|last2=Frank and Virginia Williams Collection of Lincolniana (Mississippi State University. Libraries)|date=1970|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=9780195013528|location=New York|language=en|oclc=67628|url-access=registration}} He also argues that Morris "awakened (Salmon Chase) to the character of the Slave Power and to the need for political organization to combat its influences," leading the way for the term Slave Power to enter the American political jargon and paving the way for the creation of the Republican Party.

• [https://archive.org/stream/3830012#page/n3/mode/2up Benjamin Franklin Morris, The Life of Thomas Morris: Pioneer and Long a Legislator of Ohio, and U. S. Senator from 1833 to 1839 (Cincinnati, Ohio: Moore, Wilstach, Keys & Overend, 1956).]

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{{CongBio|M000989}}

• {{Find a Grave|8081921}}
• [https://archive.org/stream/3830012#page/n3/mode/2up Benjamin Franklin Morris, The Life of Thomas Morris: Pioneer and Long a Legislator of Ohio, and U. S. Senator from 1833 to 1839 (Cincinnati, Ohio: Moore, Wilstach, Keys & Overend, 1856).]

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Category:1776 births

Category:1844 deaths

Category:Politicians from Berks County, Pennsylvania

Category:Ohio Democratic-Republicans

Category:Ohio Jacksonians

Category:Jacksonian United States senators from Ohio

Category:Democratic Party United States senators from Ohio

Category:Ohio Libertyites

Category:Liberty Party (United States, 1840) vice presidential nominees

Category:1844 United States vice-presidential candidates

Category:Democratic Party members of the Ohio House of Representatives

Category:Democratic Party Ohio state senators

Category:Justices of the Supreme Court of Ohio

Category:People from Bethel, Ohio

Category:19th-century United States senators

Category:19th-century members of the Ohio General Assembly