Vice President Levi P. Morton Autographs, Memorabilia & Collectibles

Levi Parsons Morton (1824-1920) was Benjamin Harrison's Vice President from 1889-1893 and Governor of New York from 1895-1897. He was elected to the House of Representatives in 1879, but resigned when President James Garfield appointed him Minister to France from 1881 to 1885. While Minister to France, he drove the ceremonial first rivet into the Statue of Liberty in 1881, the 100th anniversary of General Lord Cornwallis' surrender at Yorktown, which ended the Revolutionary War. Morton accepted the statue on July 4, 1884 and, on that day, became the first American to climb the statue to the top. He was a staunch defender of the gold standard, a major plank in Republican platforms of that era.