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Gouverneur Morris
United States Senator from New York
In office April 3, 1800 – March 3, 1803
Preceded by	James Watson
Succeeded by	Theodorus Bailey
Personal details
Born	(1752-01-31)January 31, 1752 New York City, New York
Died	November 6, 1816(1816-11-06) (aged 64) New York City, New York
Political party	Federalist

Gouverneur Morris (January 31, 1752 – November 6, 1816) was an American statesman, a Founding Father of the United States, and a native of New York City who represented Pennsylvania in the Constitutional Convention of 1787. He was a signatory to the Articles of Confederation. Morris was also an author of large sections of the Constitution of the United States and one of its signers. He is widely credited as the author of the document's preamble, and has been called the "Penman of the Constitution." In an era when most Americans thought of themselves as citizens of their respective states, Morris advanced the idea of being a citizen of a single union of states.

A gifted scholar, Morris enrolled in 1764, at age 12, at King's College, now Columbia College of Columbia University in New York City. He graduated in 1768 and received a Master's degree in 1771.

Political career

On 8 May 1775, Morris was elected to represent his family estate in southern Westchester County (now Bronx County), in the New York Provincial Congress. As a member of the congress, he, along with most of his fellow delegates, concentrated on turning the colony into an independent state. However, his advocacy of independence brought him into conflict with his family, as well as with his mentor, William Smith, who had abandoned the patriot cause when it pressed toward independence. Morris was a member of the New York State Assembly in 1777-78.

After the Battle of Long Island in August 1776, the British seized New York City and his family's estate across the Harlem River from Manhattan. His mother, a loyalist, gave the estate to the British for military use.

Morris was appointed as a delegate to the Continental Congress, and took his seat in Congress on 28 January 1778. He was immediately selected to a committee in charge of coordinating reforms of the military with George Washington. After witnessing the army encamped at Valley Forge, he was so appalled by the conditions of the troops that he became the spokesman for the Continental Army in Congress, and subsequently helped enact substantial reforms in its training, methods, and financing. He also signed the Articles of Confederation in 1778.

In 1779, he was defeated for re-election to Congress, largely because his advocacy of a strong central government was at odds with the decentralist views prevalent in New York. Defeated in his home state, he moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to work as a lawyer and merchant.

In 1780, Morris's left leg was shattered and replaced with a wooden pegleg. Morris's public account for the loss of his leg was that it happened in a carriage accident, but there is evidence that this was a false story concocted to cover for a dalliance with a woman, during which he jumped from a window to escape a jealous husband. Morris was well-known throughout much of his life for having many affairs, with both married and unmarried women, and he recorded many of these adventures and misadventures in his diary. Despite an automatic exemption from military duty because of his handicap and his service in the legislature, he joined a special "briefs" club for the protection of New York City, a forerunner of the modern New York Guard.

In Philadelphia, he was appointed assistant superintendent of finance (1781–1785), and he was a Pennsylvania delegate to the Constitutional Convention in 1787. He resumed his residence in New York in 1788.

Before the Constitutional Convention, Morris lived in Philadelphia where he worked as a merchant for some time. After that, he began to become interested in financial affairs, so he started to work with Robert Morris (no relation). Robert Morris and George Washington then recommended him for the convention because of what he did.

During the Philadelphia Convention, he was a friend and ally of George Washington and others who favored a strong central government. Morris was elected to serve on a committee of five (chaired by William Samuel Johnson) who drafted the final language of the proposed constitution. Catherine Drinker Bowen, in Miracle at Philadelphia, called Morris the committee's "amanuensis," meaning that it was his pen that was responsible for most of the draft, as well as its final polished form.

"An aristocrat to the core," Morris believed that "there never was, nor ever will be a civilized Society without an Aristocracy". He also thought that common people were incapable of self-government because he feared that the poor would sell their votes to the rich. Consequently, he thought that voting should be restricted to property owners. Morris also opposed admitting new western states on an equal basis with the existing eastern states, fearing that the interior wilderness could not furnish "enlightened" statesmen to the country.

At the convention he gave more speeches than any other delegate, a total of 173. As a matter of principle, he often vigorously defended the right of anyone to practice his chosen religion without interference, and he argued to include such language in the Constitution.

Gouverneur Morris was one of the few delegates at the Philadelphia Convention who spoke openly against domestic slavery. According to James Madison who took notes at the Convention, Morris spoke openly against slavery on August 8, 1787:

He never would concur in upholding domestic slavery. It was a nefarious institution. It was the curse of heaven on the states where it prevailed. Compare the free regions of the Middle States, where a rich & noble cultivation marks the prosperity & happiness of the people, with the misery & poverty which overspread the barren wastes of Va. Maryd. & the other States having slaves.... Proceed southwardly, and every step you take, through the great regions of slaves, presents a desert increasing with the increasing proportion of these wretched beings.

Upon what principle is it that the slaves shall be computed in the representation? Are they men? Then make them citizens, and let them vote. Are the property? Why, then, is no other property included? The Houses in this city are worth more than all the wretched slaves which cover the rice swamps of South Carolina.

The admission of slaves into the Representation when fairly explained comes to this: that the inhabitant of Georgia and S. C. who goes to the Coast of Africa, and in defiance of the most sacred laws of humanity tears away his fellow creatures from their dearest connections & damns them to the most cruel bondages, shall have more votes in a Govt. instituted for protection of the rights of mankind, than the Citizen of Pa. or N. Jersey who views with a laudable horror, so nefarious a practice.

He went to France on business in 1789 and served as Minister Plenipotentiary to France from 1792 to 1794. His diaries during that time have become a valuable chronicle of the French Revolution, capturing much of the turbulence and violence of that era, as well as documenting his affairs with women there. Unlike Thomas Jefferson, Morris was far more critical of the French Revolution and considerably more sympathetic to the deposed queen consort, Marie Antoinette.

He returned to the United States in 1798, and he was elected in April 1800, as a Federalist, to the United States Senate, filling the vacancy caused by the resignation of James Watson. He served from May 3, 1800, to March 3, 1803, but was defeated for re-election in February 1803.

After leaving the U.S. Senate, he served as Chairman of the Erie Canal Commission from 1810 to 1813. The Erie Canal helped to transform New York City into a financial capital, the possibilities of which were apparent to Morris when he said "the proudest empire in Europe is but a bubble compared to what America will be, must be, in the course of two centuries, perhaps of one." There have been publishers who have described Morris' religious affiliation as deism.

Family

At the age of 57, he married Anne Cary ("Nancy") Randolph, who was the sister of Thomas Mann Randolph, Jr., husband of Thomas Jefferson's daughter, Martha Jefferson Randolph. Morris and his wife had a son, Gouverneur Morris Jr., who eventually became a railroad executive.

Morris' half-brother, Lewis Morris (1726–1798), was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Another half-brother, Staats Long Morris, was a loyalist and major-general in the British army during the American Revolution. His nephew, Lewis Richard Morris, served in the Vermont legislature and in the United States Congress. His grandnephew was William M. Meredith, United States Secretary of the Treasury under Zachary Taylor. Morris' great-grandson, also named Gouverneur (1876–1953), was an author of pulp novels and short stories during the early-twentieth century. (Several of his works were adapted into films, including the famous Lon Chaney, Sr. film, The Penalty.)

Death and legacy

In 1816, Morris died after sticking a piece of whale bone through his urinary tract to relieve a blockage. He died at the family estate, Morrisania, and was buried at St. Ann's Church in the The Bronx.

Morris also established himself as an important landowner in northern New York, where the Town of Gouverneur and Village of Gouverneur in St. Lawrence County are named for him.

In 1943, a United States liberty ship named the SS Gouverneur Morris was launched. She was scrapped in 1974.

References

1. Documents from the Constitutional Convention and the Continental Congress at the Library of Congress
2. Wright, Jr., Robert K (1987). "Gouverneur Morris". Soldier-Statesmen of the Constitution. United States Army Center of Military History. CMH Pub 71-25. Retrieved 2009-06-02. {{cite book}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)
3. ANB "Gouverneur Morris"
4. "Gouverneur Morris, Theistic Rationalist, by Gregg Frazer. Page 26". Allacademic.com. Retrieved 2010-03-19.
5. Bowen, Catherine Drinker. Miracle at Philadelphia. 1986 edition. p. 236.
6. "Toward An American Revolution". Cyberjournal.org. Retrieved 2010-03-19.
7. Bowen. p. 178.
8. James Madison (1787). "James Madison, The Debates in the Several State Conventions of the Adoption of the Federal Constitution vol. 5 [1827]". Retrieved 2009-07-29.
9. Antonia Fraser, Marie Antoinette: The Journey, (2002), p. 476; Vincent Cronin, Louis and Antoinette, (1974), p. 295.
10. Will Wilkinson from the July 2004 issue. "The Fun-Loving Founding Father. Gouverneur Morris, the first modern American. Will Wilkinson, Reason Magazine, July 2004". Reason.com. Retrieved 2010-03-19.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
11. Deism and Social Ethics: The Role of Religion in the Third Millennium - Page 67, Robert Corfe - 2007
12. Elizabeth Spencer-Ralph and Gloria McDarrah (October 1979). "National Register of Historic Places Registration: St. Ann's Church Complex". New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation. Retrieved 2011-01-12.
13. "Browse By Author: M - Project Gutenberg". Gutenberg.org. 1916-07-01. Retrieved 2010-03-19.
14. "Gouverneur Morris". Imdb.com. 2009-05-01. Retrieved 2010-03-19.
15. Adams, William Howard (2003). Gouverneur Morris: an independent life. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-09980-0.
16. Kirschke, James J. (2005). Gouverneur Morris: author, statesman, and man of the world. Macmillan. ISBN 0-312-24195-X.

Sources

• Brookhiser, Richard (2003). Gentleman Revolutionary: Gouverneur Morris, the Rake Who Wrote the Constitution. New York: Free Press. ISBN 0-7432-2379-9.
• Crawford, Alan Pell (2000). Unwise Passions: A True Story of a Remarkable Woman—and the First Great Scandal of Eighteenth-century America. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-684-83474-X. (A biography of Morris's wife.)
• Fresia, Jerry (1988). Toward an American Revolution: Exposing the Constitution & Other Illusions. Cambridge: South End Press.
• Miller, Melanie Randolph, Envoy to the Terror: Gouverneur Morris and the French Revolution (Potomac Books, 2005)
• The Diary and Letters of Gouverneur Morris, Minister of the United States to France; Member of the Constitutional Convention, ed. Anne Cary Morris (1888). 2 vols. online version
• Swiggert, Howard (1952). The Extraordinary Mr. Morris. New York: Doubleday & Co. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |loc= ignored (help)

External links

• Biography from the United States Army Center of Military History
• United States Congress. "Gouverneur Morris (id: M000976)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
• Mintz, Max, Gouverneur Morris, George Washington's War Hawk, Virginia Quarterly Review, Autumn 2003.
• Gouverneur Morris Letters
• Gouverneur Morris,Jr. Papers,1853-1879 New-York Historical Society

v t e United States senators from New York
Class 1	Schuyler Burr Schuyler Hobart North Watson Morris Bailey Armstrong Mitchill German Sanford Van Buren Dudley Tallmadge Dickinson Fish P. King Morgan Fenton Kernan Platt Miller Hiscock Murphy Depew O'Gorman Calder Copeland Mead Ives Keating Kennedy Goodell Buckley Moynihan H. Clinton Gillibrand
Class 3	R. King Laurance Armstrong D. Clinton Armstrong Smith R. King Sanford Marcy Wright Foster Dix Seward Harris Conkling Lapham Evarts Hill Platt Root Wadsworth Wagner Dulles Lehman Javits D'Amato Schumer

v t e United States ambassadors to France
Envoys to France (1776–1779)	Franklin, Lee & Deane/Adams
Ministers Plenipotentiary to France (1778–1815)	Franklin Jefferson Short Morris Monroe Pinckney Livingston Armstrong Russell (chargé d'affaires) Barlow Crawford
Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to France (1816–1893)	Gallatin Brown Rives Harris (chargé d'affaires) Livingston Barton (chargé d'affaires) Cass King Rush Rives Mason Faulkner Dayton Bigelow Dix Washburne Noyes Morton McLane Reid Coolidge
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to France (1893–present)	Eustis Porter McCormick White Bacon Herrick Sharp Wallace Herrick Edge Straus Bullitt Leahy Tuck (chargé d'affaires) Caffery Bruce Dunn Dillon Houghton Gavin Bohlen Shriver Watson Irwin Rush Hartman Galbraith Rodgers Curley Harriman Rohatyn Leach Stapleton Rivkin Hartley McCourt Bauer

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• 1752 births
• 1816 deaths
• Columbia University alumni
• Continental Congressmen from New York
• Erie Canal Commissioners
• Members of the New York Provincial Congress
• People from Westchester County, New York
• American deists
• Signers of the Articles of Confederation
• Signers of the United States Constitution
• Ambassadors of the United States to France
• United States Senators from New York
• New York Federalists
• Federalist Party United States Senators
• Members of the New York State Assembly
• American people of Huguenot descent
• Politicians with physical disabilities
• Accidental deaths in New York