Robert Morris was born to Robert Morris, Sr. and Elizabeth Murphet in Liverpool, Lancashire, England, on January 20, 1734.

At the age of thirteen, Morris had immigrated to Oxford, Maryland, to live with his father, who was a tobacco factor.

As a youth, Morris was provided a tutor and was a quick learner.

His father sent him to Philadelphia to study where he stayed with Charles Greenway, a family friend.
Greenway arranged for young Robert to become an apprentice at the shipping and banking firm of the Philadelphia merchant (and then mayor) Charles Willing.

A year later, Robert's father died after being wounded in an accident when hit by the wadding of a ship's gun that was fired in his honor.

When Charles Willing died in 1754, his son Thomas Willing made Morris his partner at the age twenty-four.

They established the prominent shipping-banking firm of Willing, Morris & Co. on May 1, 1757.

Their partnership is a merchant firm with interests in shipping, real estate, and other lines of business.

The partnership had been forged just after the Seven Years' War began (1754–1763), which had hindered attracting the usual supply of new indentured servants to the colony.

Potential immigrants are conscripted in England to fight in Europe, and the contracts for those already in the colonies in America are expiring.

Indentured servants can legally break their contracts to join the British forces to fight against the French and their native allies.

At the same time, the British Crown had wanted to encourage the slave trade which was profitable for the King's political allies in the African Company of Merchants.

While Morris was a junior partner and Willing was pursuing a political career, the company Willing, Morris & Co. had co-signed a petition calling for the repeal of Pennsylvania's tariff on imported slaves. (About two hundred slaves had been imported into Philadelphia in 1762, the height of the trade; most of whom were brought in by the Rhode Islanders Aaron Lopez and Jacob Rivera.)

Willing, Morris & Co had funded its own slave-trading voyage.

The ship had not carried enough to be profitable and, during a second trip, had been captured by French privateers.

The firm had handled two slave auctions for other importers, offering a total of twenty-three slaves.

In 1762 the firm had advertised an agency sale in Wilmington, Delaware for over one hundred Gold Coast slaves.

The ship had docked in Wilmington to avoid the tariff.

In 1765 on their last reported agency deal (out of a total of eight), the firm advertises seventy slaves who are brought in from Africa on the ship Marquis de Granby.

The slaves are not sold in Philadelphia, as the owner takes the ship and all the slaves to Jamaica.

Both partners in Willing, Morris and Co. support the non-importation agreements that mark the end of all trade with Britain, including the importation of slaves.

They have become advocates for free trade, which will end the kind of trade restrictions that gave rise to the business.

As a government official, Morris tries to tax the domestic slave trade, and to lay a head tax on the slaves payable by the owner.

His efforts are resisted by the Southerners who fight all his measures.

Pennsylvania passes a law for gradual abolition of slavery in 1780 at his lead.

Philadelphia County at this time has no slave registrations making it impossible to determine who in Philadelphia owns slaves in 1780.

Western farmers petitions the Assembly for relief from the abolition law, but Morris' allies in the state government resist these attempts.

Morris comments that slave trade is not profitable and would prefer blankets and the speed of trips to England over slave trade to Africa and virtually eliminates the slave trade to the northern colonies.

Morris' efforts lead to the virtual end of slavery in the north before the end of the revolutionary war.

John Nixon, the son of a Philadelphia shipping merchant, had signed the non-importation agreement against the Stamp Act, became active in opposing the encroachments of the English government upon American liberties, and was a member of the first committee of correspondence in Pennsylvania.

Becoming lieutenant-colonel of the third battalion of the Philadelphia Associators, a militia unit, in April 1775, he was also a member of the Committee of Safety.

From May to July 1776, he was in command of the defenses of the Delaware River at Fort Island, after which he was put in charge of the defenses of Philadelphia.

On July 8, 1776, Nixon had delivered the first public proclamation of the Declaration of Independence from the steps of the Pennsylvania State House.

Promoted colonel the same year, Nixon later served under George Washington at the Battle of Princeton, became a member of the Navy Board, and two years later was with Washington again at Valley Forge.

Robert Morris and his allies, including Fitzsimons and Nixon, supply the majority of war materials to the troops when the state fails to act.

Thomas Fitzsimons had in 1761 established with his brother-in-law George Meade a firm specializing in the West Indies trade, which had been hit by the new revenue measures created to help support the finances of the British Empire, including the much reviled Stamp Act of 1765.

Concerned with these ideas, Fitzsimons had become active in the Irish merchant community in Philadelphia, elected the head of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick in 1771 and later, in 1774, a steering committee organized to protest the Coercive Acts.

When Pennsylvania began mobilizing and organizing a militia to fight the British, Fitzsimons was soon involved, serving as captain of a company of home guards, which he raised, under the command of Colonel John Caldwalader.

Initially his company served as part of the soldiers who manned posts along the New Jersey coast to defend against British actions.

His unit later served as part of the reserve at the Battle of Trenton in 1776.

Later in the war, Pennsylvania's government asked him to head a board to oversee the newly formed Pennsylvania Navy.

Under this role, he has helped organize the strategic resources of Pennsylvania, and later provided supplies, ships, and money in support of Pennsylvanian and French forces.

Pennsylvania goes bankrupt in 1780 due to Constitutionalist policies which mandate state-controlled markets and self-imposed embargoes.

Ultimately, the state calls on Morris to restore the economy.

He does so by opening the ports to trade, and allowing the market to set the value of goods and the currency.

Robert Morris subscribes 10,000 pounds sterling to fund the Bank of Pennsylvania, established on July 17, 1780 by Philadelphia merchants.

Modeled after the (also privately held) Bank of England, it is not a bank in the ordinary sense but an organization formed for the purpose of financing supplies for the Continental Army.

Morris’s longtime business partner Thomas Willing becomes its first director; he precedes John Nixon in this position.

The United States, in 1780, has two interest-bearing banks.

Morris persuades Congress to charter the Bank of North America, the first private commercial bank in the United States.

The original charter of May 26, 1781, calls for the disbursement of 1,000 shares priced at $400 each.

Benjamin Franklin purchases one share for 0.1% ownership as a sign of good faith to Federalists and the new bank and Hamilton make public endorsement of the establishment under his pseudonym.

William Bingham's first daughter, Ann Louisa Baring, was born the day before the bank opened, and her father purchases 9.5% of the shares for himself.

She is also the granddaughter of Thomas Willing, a primary shareholder and the original President of the bank offices at Philadelphia.

Robert Morris, using a gift/loan from France, purchases 63.3% of the original shares for the government.

Morris deposits large quantities of gold and silver coin and bills of exchange obtained through loans from the Netherlands and France.

He then issues new paper currency backed by this supply.

Ships of Willing, Morris and Company trade with India, the Levant, the West Indies, Spanish Cuba, Spain, and Italy.

The firm's business of import, export, and general agency makes it one of the most prosperous in Pennsylvania.

In 1784 Morris, with other investors, underwrites the voyage of the ship Empress of China, the first American vessel to visit the Chinese mainland.

Among the investors are Samuel Miles, who has built a sugar refinery in Philadelphia; John Holker, French Agent; and Daniel Parker, merchant.

The ship embarks from New York harbor for China on Washington's birthday, February 22, 1784.

The Bank of North America, although able to operate nationwide, primarily operates in three states, and in 1785 it loses its central bank status in Pennsylvania due to objections of "alarming foreign influence and fictitious credit", favoritism to foreigners and unfair competition against less corrupt state banks issuing their own bills of credit, such that Pennsylvania's legislature repeals its state charter on September 13, 1785.