member in five congresses; on Fisheries, a member in two congresses; on Inter-Oceanic Canals, chairman in three congresses; and on Coast and Insular Survey, a member in three congresses. He was appointed by President Harrison an arbitrator on the Bering Sea fisheries contention in 1892, and was named by President McKinley, after the passage of the Hawaiian annexation bill, a commissioner with Shelby M. Cullom, Robert R. Hitt, Sanford B. Dole, and Walter F. Frear, to organize a territorial government in the new possession, the commission reporting to congress early in 1899, and the territorial government as recommended becoming operative soon after.
He was a worker in politics from youth and an acceptable political orator in the successive presidential campaigns. When he came to the United States senate his leadership asserted itself, and the Democratic party looked to him as a champion of its party issues. He was prominent in the committee on Foreign Relations, maintaining the Democratic contention as voiced in the Monroe Doctrine, and he was a vigorous and persistent champion of the interocean canal across the isthmus by the Nicaragua route, and fought the advocates of the Panama route until overpowered by numbers, aided by an approving administration. Senator Morgan inherited from his father his characteristics of honesty, industry, piety, integrity and cheerfulness. His mother was his mentor, instructor and guide in all things, her first lessons affecting his intellectual, moral and spiritual life. He was lame from his birth, and his physical strength was impaired by sickness in early childhood. In his country home he studied nature, cultivated his intellect through reading good literature under direction of his mother, and became fond of music and art. He devotedly cherishes the memory of his mother, and of one teacher, Mr. Charles G. Samuel, who became his tutor when six years old and carried him through the then full academic course in Latin; and to the care of Mr. Samuel, with the help of his mother, he credits the mental training that proved of invaluable advantage in after life, as he was deprived of the training of a college course.
He became a Knight Templar in the Masonic order, but held no official position in the fraternity. He was always a Democrat and never changed his party allegiance or his political faith. He became a member of the Methodist Episcopal church, South, and his mother was desirous that he should be a minister of the gospel, but he "was afraid that he could scarcely be good enough," and became a lawyer.
