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Gouverneur Morris
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Gouverneur Morris (January 31, 1752 November 6, 1816) was an American statesman who represented Pennsylvania in the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and was an author of large sections of the Constitution of the United States. He is widely credited as the author of the document's Preamble: "We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union...".
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Gouverneur Morris (January 31, 1752 November 6, 1816) was an American statesman who represented Pennsylvania in the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and was an author of large sections of the Constitution of the United States. He is widely credited as the author of the document's Preamble: "We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union...". In an era when most Americans thought of themselves as citizens of their respective states, Morris expounded the idea of being a citizen of a single union of states..
Morris enrolled at King's College (now Columbia University) at age 12. He graduated in 1768 and received a master's degree in 1771.
Political career
On May 8, 1775, Morris was elected to represent his family estate in the New York Provincial Congress, an extralegal assembly dedicated to achieving independence. His advocacy of independence brought him into conflict with his family, as well as his mentor William Smith, who had abandoned the patriot cause when it moved towards independence.
Morris had a wooden leg. According to research, he liked to dance and managed to dance well on his wooden leg. He lost his leg in an accident.
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.
As a member of the New York Provincial Congress, he concentrated on turning the colony into an independent state. He was largely responsible for the 1777 constitution of the new state of New York.
After the Battle of Long Island in August 1776, the British seized New York City and his family's estate. His mother, a Loyalist, gave the estate over to the British for military use. Because his estate was now in the possession of the enemy, he was no longer eligible for election to the New York state legislature and was instead appointed as a delegate to the Continental Congress.
He took his seat in Congress on January 28, 1778 and was immediately selected to a committee in charge of coordinating reforms in the military with General Washington. On a trip to Valley Forge, he was so appalled by the conditions of the troops that he became the spokesman for the Continental Army in Congress and pushed for substantial reforms in the training and methods of the army. 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 in New York. Defeated in his home state, he moved to Philadelphia to work as a lawyer and merchant.
In Philadelphia, he was appointed assistant superintendent of finance (1781-1785), and was a Pennsylvania delegate to the Constitutional Convention in 1787, before returning to live in New York in 1788.
During the convention, he was a friend and ally of George Washington and others who favored a stronger central government. Morris was elected to serve on a committee of five (chaired by William Samuel Johnson) that would draft 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.
"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 and feared that the poor would sell their votes to rich people, and consequently 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. At the Convention he gave more speeches than any other delegate, totaling 173.
He went to Europe on business in 1789 and served as Minister Plenipotentiary to France from 1792-1794. His diaries written during that time have become an invaluable chronicle of the French Revolution, capturing much of the turbulence and violence of that era. He returned to the United States in 1798 and was elected in 1800 as a Federalist to the United States Senate to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of James Watson, serving from April 3, 1800, to March 3, 1803. He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1802. After leaving the Senate, he served as chairman of the Erie Canal Commission, 1810-1813.
Family and legacy
At the age of 57, he married Anne Cary ("Nancy") Randolph, who was the sister to Thomas Mann Randolph, Jr., husband of Thomas Jefferson's daughter Martha Jefferson Randolph. He died at the family estate of Morrisania and is buried at in the Bronx borough of New York City. They had a son, Gouverneur Jr., who grew up to be a railroad executive.
Morris also became an important landowner in northern New York, where the Town of Gouverneur and Village of Gouverneur in St. Lawrence County are named after him.
Morris's 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's 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.
In 1943, a United States Liberty ship named the SS Gouverneur Morris was launched. She was scrapped in 1974.
Sources
- (A biography of Morris's wife.)* 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.
External links
- Mintz, Max, , Virginia Quarterly Review, Autumn 2003.
- New-York Historical Society
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