Levi Parsons Morton

We realize the stretch of history which a single life may span when we are reminded that Levi Parsons Morton was born a year before John Quincy Adams was inaugurated President, that he was six years old when Webster replied to Hayne, that he was senior partner in a New York dry goods house when the Crimean War broke out, that it was under his auspices as banker that the Alabama Award was paid to the United States by England, and that he gave efficient personal help to the Resumption of Specie Payments. When one adds the facts in his personal history of nearly a century’s duration that, as a man past middle life he served in Congress during 1879, as Minister to France in 1881, as Vice-President of the United States in 1889, and as Governor of New York in 1895 (Greater New York being created by legislative decree during his term at Albany), a career is outlined as full of public distinction as of years.

Alexander Dana Noyes
1921 Century Association Yearbook