Gouverneur Morris: The Penman of the U.S. Constitution

The gregarious, intelligent, and oft-controversial Gouverneur Morris wrote some of the best-remembered parts of the Constitution of the United States.

Gouverneur Morris is the man to thank for the U.S. Constitution's crisp, snappy Preamble to the Constitution. Sean Locke Photography/Shutterstock

Known as the funniest member of the Constitutional Congress, Gouverneur Morris used his gift of prose to help write much of the United States’s Constitution, including the Preamble. Morris went down in history as the youngest Founding Father to sign the Articles of Confederation before he was tasked to help draft the Constitution.

Among his many contributions, Morris is most famous for coining the phrase “We the people of the United States, in order to form a perfect union.”

Morris was born on Jan. 31, 1752 to a wealthy, landowning New York family in an area that is  now the Bronx. He was named after his mother, Sarah Gouverneur, a French Huguenot. Brilliant, Morris was given a scholarship to attend King’s College (now Columbia University) at the young age of 12. He graduated in 1768, then turned to studying law.

Morris passed the bar exam in 1771; he was just 19 years old when he started practicing. Soon after, he entered politics by representing Westchester County in the New York Provincial Congress.

A portrait of Gouverneur Morris (1752–1816), 1817. Ezra Ames-Avery Library, New York. (Public Domain) 

Taking Sides

Once the Revolutionary War broke out, Morris’s family, who were mostly Loyalists, exiled him for supporting the rebellion. Morris didn’t sign the Declaration of Independence, but he supported it.

In 1778, Morris was appointed as a New York Delegate to the Continental Congress. He visited Gen. George Washington’s winter camp at Valley Forge and witnessed the brutal conditions soldiers faced. As a result, he petitioned to improve their situations and enact reforms. He soon became good friends with Washington.

That same year, a group of delegates tried to remove Washington from his position. Morris cast the tie-breaking vote to retain Washington as the country’s Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army.

After signing the Articles of Confederation at the young age of 26, Morris was defeated in his bid for reelection to Congress in 1779. Morris chose to stay in Philadelphia, where he'd contributed to the Continental Congress. He then worked as a lawyer and a merchant. In 1787, Pennsylvania appointed Morris as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention that was called by Congress.

Morris was on the Committee of Style and Arrangement, in which he was tasked with coming up with the final language of the Constitution. He compressed the original 23 articles into seven, making the famous document simpler and more precise.

He is most famous for writing the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution. Before Morris, the Constitution started by stating “We the people of the states of” and then listed all of the states. Morris changed the wording to “We the people of the United States.” It was his way to define America as one nation instead of an association of independent states.

Opinionated and Proud of It

During the nine-month-long Constitutional Convention, Morris was very outspoken. In fact, he’s credited with giving 173 speeches, more than any other delegate. Morris spoke on his belief in universal freedom of religion. Additionally, this Founding Father was staunchly against slavery.

During the Convention, Morris spoke out several times against slavery declaring that it was inhumane. And, after he helped develop the Electoral College, Morris chimed in during discussions on whether slaves should be counted towards how many representatives a state got in congress.

Morris argued that since slaves couldn’t vote and were seen by Southerners as property, it wasn’t right that the South would have more representatives than the North if slaves were counted towards a state’s population.

In the end, the delegates passed the “Three-fifths Compromise” that stated that enslaved people would count as three-fifths of a person when it came to representation in Congress and tax purposes. It was intended to prevent the Southern states from having disproportionate governmental power.

"Foundation of the American Government," 1925, by John Henry Hintermeister. George Washington looks on from his seat as Gouverneur Morris signs the Constitution. Public Domain

An Eventful Later Life

After the Convention, Morris traveled to Europe, where he became the American minister to France. While there, he took a stance against the French Revolution and even tried to help the royal family escape.

During the Reign of Terror, a period of extreme violence during the French Revolution lasting from September 1793 to July 1794, Morris almost lost his life to violent mobs several times.

At one point Morris was carried away by a French mob bent on killing him. He removed his peg leg, waved it above his head, and yelled that he'd lost it while fighting for freedom (he had not). Morris was spared.

Morris returned to the United States in 1798. He was then elected to fill a vacant seat in the U.S. Senate in 1800. He lost his bid for reelection in 1803 and returned to his family home in New York City.

American Gen. George Washington (1732–1799) presides over the Constitutional Convention, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, May 25–Sept. 17, 1787. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)  

In 1810, Morris became the chair of the Erie Canal Commission. There, he played a key role in constructing the canal that transformed New York City into a commercial powerhouse. He also assisted with the Commissioner’s Plan of 1811 that created the Manhattan street grid system.

Morris passed away in 1816 in the same home he was born in. Nearly a century later, President Theodore Roosevelt memorialized Morris when he wrote a biography about him that was published in 1888.

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