with the scalpel), his precision, his exhaustiveness, and his freedom
from bias. are his essentially modern or scientific qualities; his
scholarship and high consideration for classical and foreign work,
his sense of practical ends (or his common sense), and the breadth
of his intellectual horizon prove him to have lived before medical
science had become largely technical or mechanical. His treatise
was the commencement of the era of steady or cumulative progress
in pathology and in practical medicine. Symptoms from that, time
ceased to be made up into more or less conventional groups, each
of which was a disease; on the other hand, they began to be viewed
as “the cry of the suffering organs,” and it became possible to
develop Thomas Sydenham’s grand conception of a natural history
of disease in a catholic or scientific spirit.
A biography of Morgagni by Mosca was published at Naples in 1768. His life may also be read in A. Fabroni’s Vitae illustr. Italor., and a convenient abridgment of Fabroni’s memoir will be found prefixed to Tissot’s edition of the De sedibus, &c. A collected edition of his works was published at Venice in 5 vols. folio, in 1765. (C. C.)
MORGAN, DANIEL (1736–1802), American soldier, was born
in Hunterdon county, New Jersey, in the winter of 1736, of
Welsh ancestry. In 1753 he removed to Virginia. In June
1775, soon after the outbreak of the War of Independence,
he was commissioned a captain of Virginia riflemen, and he
marched his company to Boston in 21 days. In the winter
of 1775 he accompanied General Benedict Arnold to Canada,
and in the assault on Quebec (Dec. 31) he and his riflemen
penetrated well into the city, where he was hemmed in and
was forced to surrender. On the 7th of August 1776 he was
discharged on parole; on the 12th of November he was commissioned
colonel of the 11th Virginia; and soon afterwards
he was released from his parole. In the summer of 1777 he was
engaged in minor skirmishes in New Jersey, and early in September
joined General Horatio Gates, then engaged in the campaign
against General Burgoyne. At the first battle of Saratoga
(Sept. 19) he was, until Arnold’s arrival late in the day, the
ranking officer on the field; and in the second battle (Oct. 7)
also took a prominent part. Morgan rejoined Washington in
November near Philadelphia. In March 1779 he was commissioned
by Congress colonel of the 7th Virginia; but in July,
suffering from poor health and dissatisfied because Congress did
not advance him further in rank, he resigned from the army
and retired to Virginia. After the battle of Camden, however,
he joined Gates (then in command in the South) at Hillsborough,
North Carolina, and on the 1st of October took command of
a corps. On the 13th of the same month Congress tardily
raised him to the rank of brigadier-general. In January 1781
Cornwallis and Tarleton attempted to entrap him, but at the
Cowpens (Jan. 17) he defeated Tarleton and then escaped from
Cornwallis into North Carolina. Apparently Morgan suggested
to Greene (who had superseded Gates) that general’s
plan of battle at Guilford Court House on the 15th of March.
In December 1793 he was commissioned major-general of
Virginia militia, 'and in November 1794 commanded troops sent
to suppress the Whisky Insurrection in western Pennsylvania.
He was a Federalist representative in Congress in 1797–1799,
and died in Winchester, Virginia, on the 6th of July 1802.
See James Graham, The Life of General Daniel Morgan of the Virginia Line (New York, 1856); and Rebecca McConkey, The Hero of Cowpens (rev. ed., New York, 1885).
MORGAN, EDWIN DENNISON (1811–1883), American merchant
and philanthropist, one of the “war governors” of New
York state, was born in Washington, Berkshire county, Massachusetts,
on the 8th of February 1811. He was first a clerk
and then a partner in his uncle’s store at Hartford, Connecticut,
and became head of the New York firm of E. D. Morgan & Co.
(formed in 1847). He engaged in politics, first as a Whig and
then as a Republican. In 1849 he was elected president of the
Board of Assistant Aldermen of New York City; he was a
member of the state senate in 1850–1853 and procured the
passage of the bill providing for the establishment of Central
Park in New York City; in 1855–1858 he was state commissioner
of immigration; from 1859 to 1863 he was governor of New
York, being the first Republican executive of the state; in
1863–1869 he was United States senator from New York. He
died in New York City on the 14th of February 1883. Morgan
was one of the founders of the Republican party, and was
chairman of the National Republican Committee in 1856–1864
and in 1872. He was one of the most efficient and able of the
war governors; even before the outbreak of the Civil War he
did much to prepare the state government for it, and from
September 1861 to January 1863; he was in command of the
military department of New York, with the rank of major-general
of volunteers. He was a liberal donor to Union Theological
Seminary, Williams College and other institutions. His
collection of paintings and sculpture, much of which had long
been loaned to the Metropolitan Museum, was sold in January
1886.
MORGAN, SIR HENRY (c. 1635–1688), Welsh buccaneer, and
lieutenant-governor of Jamaica, was the eldest son of Robert
Morgan of Llanrhymny in Glamorganshire. He is said to have
been kidnapped as a boy at Bristol and sold as a slave at
Barbadoes, thence making his way to Jamaica, and is possibly
to be identified with the Captain Morgan who accompanied the
expedition of John Morris and Jackman when Vildemos, Trujillo
and Granada were taken. In 1666 he commanded a ship in
Edward Mansfield’s expedition which seized the island of Providence
or Santa Catalina, and when Mansfield was captured and
killed by the Spaniards shortly afterwards Morgan was chosen
by the buccaneers as their “admiral.” In 1668 he was commissioned
by Sir Thomas Modyford, the governor of Jamaica,
to capture some Spanish prisoners, in order to discover details
of the threatened attack on Jamaica; and collecting ten ships
with 500 men, south of Cuba, he landed and marched to Puerto
Principe, which he took and pillaged; and afterwards accomplished
the extraordinary feat of taking by storm the fortified
and well-garrisoned town of Porto Bello on the mainland. The
governor of Panama, astonished at this daring adventure, in
vain attempted to drive out the invaders, and finally Morgan
consented to evacuate the place on the payment of a large
ransom. These exploits had considerably exceeded the terms
of Morgan’s commission and had been accompanied by frightful
cruelties and excesses; but the governor endeavoured to cover
the whole under the necessity of allowing the English a free hand
to attack the Spaniards whenever possible. Morgan was almost
immediately entrusted with another expedition by Modyford
against the Spaniards, and proceeded to ravage the coast of
Cuba. In January 1669 the largest of his ships was blown up
accidentally in the course of a carousal on board, Morgan and
his officers narrowly escaping destruction. In March he sacked
Maracaibo, and afterwards Gibraltar. Returning to Maracaibo,
he found three Spanish ships waiting to intercept him; but
these he destroyed or captured, recovered a considerable amount
of treasure from one which had sunk, exacted a heavy ransom
as the price of his evacuating the place, and finally by an
ingenious stratagem eluded the enemy’s guns altogether and
escaped in safety. On his return to Jamaica he was again
reproved, but not punished by Modyford. The Spaniards on
their side were moreover acting in the same way, and a new
commission was given to Morgan, as commander-in-chief of all
the ships of war in Jamaica, to levy war on the Spaniards and
destroy their ships and stores, the booty gained in the expedition
being the only pay. Accordingly, after ravaging the coast of
Cuba and the mainland, Morgan determined on an expedition
to Panama. He recaptured the island of Santa Catalina on
the 15th of December 1670, and on the 27th gained possession
of the castle of Chagres, killing 300 of the garrison. Then with
1400 men he ascended the Chagres river, and after overcoming
perils and obstacles of all kinds he appeared before Panama on
the 18th of January 1671, defeated a much larger force than
his own, and took the city. The fame of this brilliant exploit
was, however, again obscured by abominable scenes of cruelty
and debauchery, during which a galleon containing a considerable
part of the booty escaped. Moreover, on returning to
Chagres the members of the expedition found themselves cheated
of their fair share of the spoil,[1] while Morgan escaped with a
- ↑ Cal. of St Pap. America & West Indies 1669–1674, Nos. 580 and 798; Exquemelin (ed. 1898), 237.
