Orange

MORRILL, Justin Smith

Men of Vermont: Illustrated Biographical History of Vermonters & Sons of 
Vermont. Ullery. Brattleboro: Transcript Publishing Company, 1894, pp 279-281

Justin Smith MORRILL, of Strafford [Vermont], was born 14 April 1810 at 
Strafford [Orange County, Vermont], son of Nathaniel and Mary (HUNT) MORRILL, 
and now resides there. He received his early education in the public schools 
of his native town, and at Thetford and Randolph academies, beginning 
business life at the age of fifteen, entering a local store as clerk, 
afterward going, in 1828, to Portland [Cumberland County], Maine, where he 
was also employed as a clerk with a merchant engaged in the West Indies 
shipping trade, and then with a wholesale and retail dry goods establishment. In 1831 he returned to Strafford, and 
became the partner of the late Judge 
Jedediah HARRIS, the leading merchant in Strafford, but this business 
connection was terminated by the death of Judge [Jedediah] HARRIS in 1855. 
For many years he was one of the directors of the Orange County Bank, of 
Chelsea. Mr. MORRILL ceased to give his personal attention to mercantile 
business in 1848, and devoted himself chiefly to agricultural and 
horticultural pursuits.

From his boyhood Mr. MORRILL had given his unoccupied working hours to 
careful and diligent perusal of standard and classical authors; while a clerk 
he had read such works as "Blackstone's Commentaries." He was thus storing a 
retentive memory with facts and fitting himself consciously or unconsciously 
for public life and national usefulness. Until he was forty-four years 
old, however, he never sought nor held any office higher than that of justice 
of the peace, although in the circle of his numerous acquaintances he had 
become known as a man of much more than ordinary intellectual ability, 
remarkable balance of judgment, marked business capacity, uniform courtesy, 
and pleasing personal address. Suddenly he stepped to the front.

In 1854 the late Andrew TRACY, of Woodstock [Windsor County, Vermont], 
representative of the second congressional district in Congress, after a 
single term declined to be a candidate for re-election. Mr. MORRILL was 
suggested by some discerning friends as a fit man to succeed him; he received 
the nomination of the Whig party convention of the district; was elected by a 
small majority, as there were then three political parties in the state, and 
took his seat in the Thirty-fourth Congress on 03 December 1855. He had been 
elected as an anti-slavery Whig, but the Whig party was then in the throes of 
dissolution, and when he appeared in Washington it was as a representative of 
the new Republican party, in the organization of which Vermont had taken 
part, and of whose principles he became an earnest advocate.

He soon made his mark as an intelligent legislator. He opposed the tariff of 
1857 in a speech which attracted wide attention; he carried through the House 
the first bill against Mormon polygamy. Conscious that a college education 
would have been of great service to him in public life, he resolved to do 
what he could through national legislation to promote liberal and scientific 
education for youth. He introduced the first bill to grant public lands for 
agricultural, scientific and industrial colleges, and advocated it in an able 
speech. It was vetoed by President BUCHANAN, but was again introduced by Mr. 
MORRILL in 1862, and through his able management became a law. Under this 
act forty-seven or more land-grant colleges have been successfully 
established in various states, with five hundred professors and over five 
thousand students. The national bounty has called out state aid in large 
amounts, and the act supplemented by the recent act (also carried through by 
Mr. MORRILL) increasing the fund at the disposal of these institutions, has 
given an immense impulse to liberal, scientific and industrial education, and 
will confer incalculable benefits upon the rising generations of our land.

Mr. MORRILL was five times re-elected to the House by majorities ranging from 
seven thousand to nine thousand, and grew steadily in standing and influence 
in the lower branch of Congress, until in the Thirty-ninth Congress he held 
the leading position of chairman of the committee of ways and means; and it 
was said of him, with truth, that his influence in the House was greater than 
that of any other member with the exception of Thaddeus STEVENS. Among the 
important speeches made by him during the critical period before the Civil 
War was one in support of a report, also made by him, in opposition to the 
admission of Kansas with a pro-slavery constitution. During the war he had 
charge of all tariff and tax bills in the House, a herculean task, and made 
arguments thereon, and the "Morrill tariff" of 1861, a monument of industry 
and practical wisdom, and the internal revenue tax system of 1862 connect his 
name indissoluble with the financial history of the time.

In 1866, after twelve years of honorable service in the House, Mr. MORRILL 
was transferred by the Legislature to the U. S. Senate. He took his seat 
with an established national reputation as a statesman. Subsequently as 
chairman of the committee on finance in the Senate, he held a most important 
position of power and influence, and his service as chairman of the committee 
of public buildings and grounds, and as a member of the committee on 
education and labor, has been of the most laborious and useful character. He 
is authority in Washington on questions relating to finance and taxation, and 
his opinion on any subject carries much weight in Congress.

Mr. MORRILL's period of service in the national Legislature is as remarkable 
for its duration as it is distinguished for its usefulness. His fifth 
election to the Senate, at the age of eighty, was an event without precedent, 
and will probably remain without a parallel. If he survives to the end of 
his present term it will complete forty-two years of service. The longest 
previous continuous term of service in Congress was that of Nathaniel MACON 
of North Carolina, which was thirty-seven years, or twenty-four in the House 
and thirteen in the Senate. Mr. MORRILL already looks back upon nearly 
thirty-nine years of congressional life, and he is now younger in mind and 
body than most men of sixty. It is the crowning glory of such a career that 
it is absolutely spotless. No act of dishonor or word of discourtesy was 
ever charged to him. He has uniformly held the highest respect and esteem of 
his brother legislators of all parties, as well as the citizens of Vermont. 
He has been too busy in affairs of state to give much time to literary labor, 
though making some contributions to the "Forum," and to the "North American 
Review," but a volume entitled "Self-Consciousness of Noted Persons," being a 
collection of expressions of self-appreciation on the part of many famous men 
and women, gathered by him in course of his wide reading, was published in 
1882, and a second edition in 1886.

Mr. MORRILL has been for twenty-six years a member of the board of trustees 
of the University of Vermont and State Agricultural College; for many years 
one of the regents of the Smithsonian Institution; the degree of M. A. has 
been conferred upon him by Dartmouth College; that of LL. D. by the 
Pennsylvania University, and also by the Vermont University, and the State 
Agricultural Society. Of Senator MORRILL's speech on the tariff, made in the 
Senate 13 December 1893, George Alfred TOWNSHEND, the veteran and up-to-date 
correspondent, says: "I fell to wondering whether Daniel WEBSTER ever made a 
speech in better literary form or with more sense of proportion." 
Characterizing the senator himself, the Nestor of the Senate, TOWNSHEND uses 
not unfitly the words, "Our Gladstonian friend." In 1851 Mr. [Justin Smith] 
MORRILL was married to Ruth, daughter of Dr. Caleb and Ruth (BARRILL) SWAN, 
of Easton [Bristol County], Massachusetts. Of this union there is one son 
living, James S.

Submitted by Cathy Kubly