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.”