You Are In: USINFO > Topics > U.S. Life, Culture and History > Holidays

Meet the Author of U.S. Constitution's Preamble

The words to the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution are displayed on a presidential inagural parade float in Lanham, Maryland, January 11, 2005. (© AP Images)

Best known for writing the preamble of the U.S. Constitution, Gouverneur Morris used his legendary wit, eloquence and insight to make many other contributions to liberty.

Thomase Eddlem profiles Gouverneur Morris, a witty and brilliant New York statesman who wrote the preamble to the U.S. Constitution. Morris supported the abolition of slavery and was an ardent patriot in favor of establishing the United States as a beacon of freedom for all.

Author of the preamble

By Thomas R. Eddlem

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Every schoolchild is familiar with the preamble of the United States Constitution, but few are acquainted with its author, New York's brilliant and witty statesman Gouverneur Morris. Americans interested in learning more about our national heritage of liberty would do well to study the life of the man of whom President Theodore Roosevelt said, "there are few men of his generation to whom the country owes more than to Gouverneur Morris."

Divided Family

Gouverneur Morris was born on January 31, 1752 to wealthy New York landowner Lewis Morris. The first child of Lewis' second wife (the first wife had died), Gouverneur was given all the educational privileges of the wealthier New York class. He studied under a French tutor in New Rochelle, probably at the urging of his French Huguenot mother. He later enrolled at King's College (today, Columbia University) in New York City. Obtaining his bachelor's degree at the age of 16, Gouverneur went on to study law. Obtaining his law degree in 1771, Morris immediately plunged into public discussion of the state of British oppression, becoming a pamphleteer and a popular, humorous public speaker. Morris' older half-brother Lewis Morris was also an active patriot at the time, signing the Declaration of Independence for New York.

Throughout the war, Morris was separated from his dying mother. His frequent letters to his loyalist relatives in New York behind the British lines occasionally made Morris' patriotism suspect, but his letters evoked the emotion of both a loving family member and an ardent patriot. "I would like," he wrote to his loyalist mother, "to be able to console you in your old age; the duty toward a dear mother commands it; but a task of a higher order binds me to the service of my fellowmen."

Morris was elected to the New York Convention in the spring of 1775, a revolutionary assembly that served as a de facto legislature for the state until a constitution could be adopted. Morris also actively participated in the convention to draw up a constitution for New York state, a convention that ran from August 1776 through May 1777. The 25-year-old Morris became a key founding father of New York's constitution, along with John Jay and Robert Livingston. Morris quickly allied himself with Jay, who became his lifelong friend. He and Jay aggressively pushed for the state constitution to include a measure abolishing slavery. "Every human being," Morris proclaimed, "who breathes the air of this state should enjoy the privileges of a free man." Though the measure failed, the issue had been persuasively argued in public -- preparing the way for abolition at a later time when Jay occupied the governor's seat.

An 1856 painting by Junius Brutus Stearns, depicting "George Washington Addressing the Constitutional Convention" (© AP/WWP)

Defending His Friend Washington Upon his election to the Continental Congress in October 1777, Morris established his residence in Philadelphia. Within months of arriving in Philadelphia, he was appointed to a committee to "inquire" about possible mismanagement of the army by Commander-in-Chief Washington at Valley Forge. The inquiry was an attempt to sabotage Washington's command by lesser men, and the key troublemaker (though not the top intriguer) of the conspiracy to remove Washington was General Thomas Conway. An Irish soldier of fortune who had served for many years in the French Army, Conway managed to get himself promoted to inspector-general, at the rank of major general, and independent of the commander-in-chief's chain of command. From this vantage point, he increasingly undercut confidence in Washington's command.

Relying on information from Nathanael Greene, Morris immediately took the lead in defending Washington's command in the committee. Though the sincerity and quality of Washington himself had the greatest impact on the committee, Morris' persuasive ardor and the influential weight of the late-arriving Charles Carroll of Maryland eventually won over the entire committee. Morris carried back to Congress Washington's plan for reorganizing the army and defended it to the utmost of his considerable ability. Conway was quickly removed from his position, eliminating him as a threat to Washington's command. "It is the pride of my life to consider that man as my friend," Morris later wrote of Washington, "and I hope long to be honored with that title."

Gouverneur Morris later served as deputy to his friend Robert Morris (no relation), the chief financial officer for the United States. Gouverneur first proposed a decimal-based monetary system to the Congress of the United States, a proposal that heavily impacted the final American currency.

Constitutional Convention

Pennsylvania selected Gouverneur Morris as a delegate to the 1787 Constitutional Convention, where Madison's notes document him as the most active speaker. James Madison wrote to his biographer Jared Sparks on April 8, 1831 that Gouverneur Morris was "an able, an eloquent, and an active member" of the Constitutional Convention: "The finish given to the style and arrangement of the Constitution fairly belongs to the pen of Mr. Morris; the task having been probably handed over to him by the Chairman of the Committee, himself a highly respectable member, with the ready concurrence of the others. A better choice could not have been made, as the performance of the task proved." As the key member of the Committee on Style at the Philadelphia Convention, the entire text of the preamble and most of the stylistic improvements to the Constitution came from Morris' pen.

During the convention itself, Morris ranted against the new government being shackled to a state confederation patterned on the Articles of Confederation. Some of his commentary justly horrified some of the other delegates, including exaggerated statements where Morris berated advocates of states' rights: "Is it possible they can so delude themselves? What if all the Charters and Constitutions of the States were thrown into the fire, and all their demagogues into the ocean -- what would it be to the happiness of America?"

Morris' contemporaries often misunderstood his oratory, and Morris' witty and polemical oratory style occasionally got him accused of being on both sides of an issue or of holding contradictory positions.

His wit was legendary. After a May 1780 accident with his horses and carriage required amputating one of his legs, sympathetic friends occasionally consoled Morris. Morris jovially retorted to one friend who commented that maybe it was for the best that he had his leg amputated: "My dear sir, you reason so convincingly and you show me so clearly the advantage of being without legs, that I am almost tempted to get rid of the other one."

Morris' wild language won him several enemies. "He is not a hypocrite," the dour Roger Sherman opined of Morris, "he never professed religious principles. He makes religion a subject for jokes and he is sacrilegious in his speech." While Morris had little use for religious rites, he did value faith. As his biographer Daniel Walther explained, "He had only sarcasms for hypocrites and fakers and was equally stern with those who do not believe in God and who wish to found a state without religion. " Morris had written that "there must be religion," and that the future "is still in the hands of that Supreme Intelligence which mocks the prudence of man, and his cunning which we presume to dignify with the name wisdom."

Using his eloquence, Morris played a major role in facilitating the compromise that resulted in allowing small states equal representation in the Senate and large states proportional representation by population in the House of Representatives. Madison noted of Morris, who arrived at the constitutional convention after proceedings had begun: "It is certain that the return of Mr. Morris to the Convention was at a critical stage of its proceedings. The knot felt as the Gordian one was the question between the larger and smaller States on the rule of voting in the Senatorial branch of the Legislature; the latter claiming, the former opposing, the rule of equality."

When Morris was later nominated as Ambassador to France, some of his exaggerated statements continued to haunt him. James Monroe opposed Senate confirmation, arguing "he is a monarchy man." Jefferson had likewise viewed Morris as "a high-flying monarchy man." George Mason claimed Morris had once said to him, "we must have a monarch, sooner or later." Morris might have said the words attributed to him by Mason, but they would have been words of warning rather than words of recommendation. Madison explained in his Convention notes that Morris "was as little a friend to monarchy as any gentleman. He concurred in the opinion that the way to keep out monarchical government was to establish such a Republican government as would make the people happy, and prevent a desire of change."

Though no royalist, Morris strongly favored an energetic executive branch for the national government, a branch virtually non-existent under the Articles of Confederation. He championed the independence of the presidency, opposing all measures to make the president elected by the Congress. He first opposed the idea of giving Congress the power to impeach the president, and later -- seeing the error of his ways -- actively sought inclusion of this congressional check on the president. Madison had noted that "to the brilliancy and fertility of his genius he added ... a readiness to aid in making the best of measures in which he had been overruled."

And Morris served as a key check on unbridled democracy, which was rejected completely by the Constitution that emerged. "History, the parent of political science," Morris wrote of the founders of the convention, "had told them that it was almost as vain to expect permanency from a democracy as to construct a palace on the surface of the sea." If Morris was in favor of too much power in the executive branch and favoring the national government over the states, his presence at the convention made for a fortuitous balance of interests.

Again in Philadelphia, he took up the cause to abolish slavery. "I never will concur in upholding domestic slavery," Morris exclaimed. "It is a nefarious institution. It is the curse of heaven on the states where it prevails." Though Morris failed in winning abolition of the "peculiar institution," he succeeded in getting measures adopted prefiguring the eventual demise of slavery in America.

Ambassador to France

Morris sailed for Paris to conduct business, arriving on February 23, 1789 -- just in time to witness the key events of the French Revolution first-hand. Morris quickly realized how the French Revolution differed from America's War for Independence. "France is on the high road to despotism," he wrote in 1792. "They have made the common mistake that to enjoy liberty it is necessary only to abolish authority." Morris' early opposition to the French Revolution earned him the enmity of Thomas Jefferson, who complained that Morris "has kept the President's mind constantly poisoned with his forebodings" about the revolution. Morris also had a falling out with the Marquis de Lafayette, for whom Morris had great respect. But Morris saw the destruction and devastation that barbaric revolution would wreak far in advance of his contemporaries.

Morris' warnings about the French Revolution earned him Washington's appointment as ambassador to France by 1792, though Jefferson -- as secretary of state managed to get him replaced within a few years. Morris traveled throughout Europe several more years after his ambassadorship and finally settled into Morrisania upon his return to New York. He had purchased Morrisania, his father's historic mansion in Bronx, New York, from his brother in 1786.

Gouverneur Morris supported his friends financially through his declining years. Specifically, he helped co-patriot Robert Morris when the latter went bankrupt. Gouverneur Morris remained active in New York politics for the rest of his life, and was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1800. But his important services to his country were already behind him. Today, the name of Gouverneur Morris is largely forgotten. But Americans acquainted with the preamble to the U.S. Constitution will always be familiar with his important work.

This article has been cleared for republication in English and in translation by U.S. Embassy Public Affairs and the press outside the United States. Credit should be given to the author and carry the notice “From The New American, December 30, 2002.”

Tell us what you think about this article.