#10 The Penman of The Constitution
IDENTITY POLITICS | Mark Boonstra: Gouverneur Morris was a remarkable figure in American history, and his life was filled with intriguing twists and turns.
Certainly! Gouverneur Morris was a remarkable figure in American history, and his life was filled with intriguing twists and turns. Here are some lesser-known facts about this unconventional Founding Father.
Gouverneur Morris was born in 1752 to Lewis Morris Sr. and Sarah Gouverneur. His political and religious roots trace back to his Welsh great-grandfather, Richard Morris, a distinguished officer under Oliver Cromwell’s command during the English Civil War of 1648. Cromwell, a member of Parliament who had become commander of the parliamentary army, was an outspoken critic of royal policies and, as a Puritan convert, of the established Anglican church. Following the civil war, he established the Protectorate, effectively a monarchy by another name, with himself as Lord Protector. His reign was marked by stringent religious and social laws, along strict Protestant lines. Following Cromwell’s death in 1658, and the unsuccessful effort of his son to succeed him, Parliament offered the monarchy back to King Charles II, in return for promises of religious toleration and general amnesty. But the restoration of the monarchy saw Cromwell’s body exhumed in 1661, hung, decapitated, and his head displayed for the next twenty years outside Westminster Hall.
With Charles II back on the throne following the Restoration, Richard Morris departed England for Barbados. There, he met Sarah Pole, and they were married in 1669 at St. Michael’s (Episcopal) Church in Bridgetown, Barbados. In 1670, the couple emigrated to New York, where Richard and his brother, Colonel Lewis Morris, purchased from Jonas Broncks a large parcel of land in what is now the South Bronx area of New York City. By 1673, both Richard and Sarah had died, leaving their infant son, Lewis Morris—Morris’s grandfather—in the care of his uncle, Colonel Morris.
Although orphaned at an early age, Lewis Morris—Morris’s grandfather—was a man of great promise and accomplishment. Largely self-educated, having objected to his uncle’s choice of a pious Quaker as his tutor, he learned to read Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, and German; he also demonstrated wide-ranging interests in politics, law, history, science, and religion.
He made his way first to Bermuda, then to Jamaica, and finally back to New York, where he ultimately prevailed in inheriting the family estate, which by then numbered several thousand acres. In 1697, he acquired from Royal Governor Benjamin Fletcher of provincial New York a patent for the estate that then became known as the Manor of Morrisania. Grandfather Lewis, the first lord of the manor, went on to become the chief justice of New York and, having successfully advocated with the British crown for the separation of New Jersey from New York, the first governor of New Jersey.
Grandfather Lewis was also a devout Christian and an active churchman; upon the granting of a charter for Trinity (Episcopal) Church in New York in 1697, and in order to further the Lord’s work, he secured the largest and best logs that he could and donated the timber for the building of the church. So pleased were church leaders with the generous gift that they granted to the Morris family—which came to include eight children—the highest compliment that the social code of the day allowed: a square pew in the church. Grandfather Lewis also served from 1697 to 1700 as a vestryman of Trinity Church and encouraged the missionary efforts of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.
Upon grandfather Lewis’s death in 1746, his son Lewis—Morris’s father—inherited the Manor of Morrisania. This Lewis served as a judge of the Vice-Admiralty Court of New York for many years, and married Tryntje Staats, whose Dutch-immigrant grandfather, Dr. Major Abraham Staats, was a prominent member of Albany society and an officer and member of the Albany Dutch Church. Tryntje Staats Morris bore several children—including Morris’s brother Lewis, a signer of the Declaration of Independence—before her death in 1730.
Morris’s father later married his niece, Sarah Gouverneur (whose mother, Sarah, was Tryntje’s sister); she bore him additional children, including Gouvernor. Sarah hailed from the French Huguenot family of Governeurs who fled religious persecution in France in the 1590s, initially settling in The Netherlands and then immigrating to New York in 1663.
Showing educational promise at an early age, Gouvernor Morris was educated by private tutors and enrolled in a boarding school run by Rev. Pierre Stouppe in New Rochelle, some eighteen miles from home. New Rochelle had been founded by French Huguenots, and Rev. Stouppe was pastor of New Rochelle’s Trinity Church; during Rev. Stouppe’s pastorship, it formally came to adopt the Episcopalian traditions. Rev. Stouppe was the son (or other close relative) of Rev. M. Stouppe, pastor of the French Protestant church in London; he was sent into service in Geneva, Switzerland by the same Oliver Cromwell under whom Richard Morris had served. In New Rochelle, Morris was schooled in the classics and learned to speak French, as it was then regularly spoken at New Rochelle’s Trinity Church.
At the age of twelve, Morris entered King’s College, an Anglican institution now known as Columbia University. Said to have favored Latin and mathematics in his studies, Morris graduated at the age of sixteen; he then commenced the study of law with the esteemed William Smith, author of The History of the Province of New-York. Later the chief justice of New York, Smith introduced Morris to such patriots as John Jay and Alexander Hamilton. Morris was admitted to the bar in 1771, at the age of twenty-one, and also received a master’s degree from King’s College. By 1775, politics was beckoning, and he was elected to New York’s Provincial Congress.
The following year, as his brother Lewis was signing the Declaration of Independence—on instructions from the Provincial Congress on which Morris served—Morris joined the militia; he did so notwithstanding a disfiguring injury he had suffered when, at the age of fourteen, scalding water was spilled on his right arm and side. He also helped draft the first constitution of New York, advocating for its protection of religious freedoms.
In 1777, Morris was elected to the New York state legislature and served on the New York Council of Safety; the following year, at the youthful age of twenty-six, he took the place of his brother Lewis in the Continental Congress, where he signed the Articles of Confederation as a representative from New York. He wrote to future-Chief Justice John Jay during this time:
The Continental Congress & Currency have both depreciated but in the Hands of the almighty Architect of Empires the Stone which the Builders have rejected may easily become Head of the Corner.
To his mother, he confided:
Whenever the present Storm subsides I shall rush with Eagerness into the Bosom of private Life but while it continues and while my Country calls for the Exertion of that little Share of Abilities which it hath pleased God to bestow on me I hold it my indispensible Duty to give myself to her.
And as the war for independence raged, he wrote to General George Washington:
Had our Saviour addressed a chapter to the rulers of mankind, as he did many to the subjects, I am persuaded his good sense would have dictated this text; Be not wise overmuch.
and to General Anthony Wayne:
Your good Morals in the Army give me sincere Pleasure as it hath long been my fixed Opinion that Virtue and Religion are the great sources of human Happiness. More especially is it necessary in your Profession firmly to rely upon the God of Battles, for his Guardianship and Protection in the dreadful Hour of Trial.
The war split the Morris family. While Morris and his brother Lewis sided with the patriots, and Morris himself spent the winter of 1777-1778 with General Washington at Valley Forge, another halfbrother, Staats Morris, served as a general in the British army. Morris’s mother also remained a loyalist, and his loyalist sister, Catherine, took refuge in England. Another sister, Isabella, and her loyalist husband, Isaac Wilkins, departed for England and Nova Scotia; they later returned, and Wilkins was ordained an Anglican minister, serving as rector of St. Peter’s (Episcopal) Church in the Bronx for thirty years.
In 1779, with Morrisania under the control of the British, Morris relocated to Philadelphia; he resumed the practice of law, and then served as the principal assistant to another (although unrelated) Morris, Robert Morris, the superintendent of finance for the United States. In that capacity, Morris introduced the concept of decimal coinage and conceived the word, “cent.” During that time, Morris is said to have been thrown from a carriage, suffering his second debilitating injury—this time to his leg, requiring its amputation. Morris thereafter wore a wooden leg.
In 1787, Morris represented his adopted state of Pennsylvania at the Constitutional Convention. He was among the leaders of the convention, speaking more times (one hundred seventy-three) than any other delegate. He spoke openly against the institution of slavery. He was named the chair of the Committee of Style and Arrangement, and is the principal author of the United States Constitution. In particular, he is credited with drafting the nationally unifying language of the Preamble: “We the People of the United States”—rather than of the separately-identified, individual states. Although clearly a supporter of the Constitution he did so much to author, Morris declined Alexander Hamilton’s request to help write The Federalist Papers (which were designed to secure its ratification by the states). Morris then returned to New York, having acquired the family’s Morrisania estate.
While visiting Virginia in 1788, Morris met a much younger Anne (“Nancy”) Cary Randolph, whom he would later wed. Said to be a direct descendent of Pocahantas, Anne was close friends as a child with her third cousin, Martha Jefferson. Martha was Thomas Jefferson’s daughter, and she would later marry Anne’s brother, Thomas Randolph.
But Morris’s and Anne’s romance did not kindle at that time, as Morris embarked on a business trip to Europe with Robert Morris in 1789. There, he witnessed the beginnings of the French Revolution, which, despite his earlier advocacy of a strong national government, led him to fear both the excesses of governmental power and the loss of religion. On April 17, 1789, Morris penned an entry in his diary:
It would indeed be ridiculous for those to believe in man who affect not to believe in God.
He also authored, in 1791, his Notes on a Form of a Constitution for France, in which he stressed the important role of religion in education:
Religion is the only solid basis of good morals; therefore education should teach the precepts of religion, and the duties of man towards God. These duties are, internally, love and adoration; externally, devotion and obedience; therefore provision should be made for maintaining divine worship as well as education. But each one has a right to entire liberty as to religious opinions, for religion is the relation between God and man; therefore it is not within the reach of human authority.
In 1792, Morris wrote to Lord George Gordon—the imprisoned, former British Member of Parliament who had been convicted of defaming then-Queen (of France) Marie Antoinette:
I believe that Religion is the only solid Base of Morals and that Morals are the only possible Support of free governments.
To Thomas Pinckney of South Carolina, he observed:
I have seen the worship of many idols, and but little of the true God; I have seen many of those idols broken, and some of them beaten to dust. I have seen the late Constitution, in one short year, admired as a stupendous monument of human wisdom and ridiculed as an egregious production of folly and vice. I wish much, very much, the happiness of this inconstant people. I love them. I feel grateful for their efforts in our cause, and I consider the establishment of a good constitution here as a principal means, under Divine Providence, of extending the blessings of freedom to the many millions of my fellow-men who groan in bondage on the Continent of Europe. But I do not greatly indulge the flattering illusions of hope, because I do not yet perceive that reformation of morals without which liberty is but an empty sound. My heart has many sinister bodings, and reason would strive in vain to dispel the gloom which always thickens where she exerts her sway.
Morris remained in Europe, by appointment of President George Washington, first as Minister to England, and then as Minister to France, succeeding Jefferson. After returning to the United States in 1799, Morris was elected to the United States Senate, but he left the Senate in 1803 after losing his re-election bid. He then returned to Morrisania. In 1804, he delivered a eulogy for Alexander Hamilton at New York’s Trinity Church. To his niece, Helena Rutherfurd, he also wrote (upon the death of her daughter):
Religion offers higher and better Motives for Resignation to the Will of our Almighty Father. Infinite Wisdom can alone determine What is best to give What to leave and What to take away. . . .
Grief . . . turns our Affections from the World to fix them more steadily and strongly on the proper Objects and bends our Will to the Will of God.
In April 1809, Morris hired a housekeeper for his Morrisania estate—none other than the Anne Cary Randolph he had met more than twenty years earlier in Virginia. On Christmas day of that year, Morris shed his bachelor lifestyle at the age of fifty-seven, as he and Anne were married. In 1813, Anne would bear him a son, Gouverneur Morris Jr., although Morris would only live to see him reach the age of three.
In 1816, Morris delivered an address, entitled An Inaugural Discourse, to the New York Historical Society (which he had helped found and which he served as its president), stressing the importance of religion:
The reflection and experience of many years have led me to consider the holy writings, not only as a most authentic and instructive in themselves, but as the clue to all other history. They tell us what man is, and they, alone, tell us why he is what he is: a contradictory creature that, seeing and approving what is good, pursues and performs what is evil. . . . But experience teaches that profligates may gain all the enticements of life, and criminals escape punishment, by the perpetration of new and more atrocious crimes.
Something more, then, is required to encourage virtue, suppress vice, preserve public peace, and secure national independence. There must be something more to hope than pleasure, wealth, and power. Something more to fear than poverty and pain. Something after death more terrible than death.
There must be religion. When that ligament is torn, society is disjointed, and its members perish. . . . But the most important of all lessons is, the denunciation of ruin to every state that rejects the precepts of religion. Those nations are doomed to death who bury, in the corruption of criminal desire, the awful sense of an existing God, cast off the consoling hope of immortality, and seek refuge from despair in the dreariness of annihilation. Let mankind enjoy at last the consolatory spectacle of thy throne, built by industry on the basis of peace and sheltered under the wings of justice. May it be secured by a pious obedience to that divine will, which prescribes the moral orbit of empire with the same precision that his wisdom and power have displayed, in whirling millions of planets round millions of suns through the vastness of infinite space.
Two short months later, Morris passed away from an infection. On his deathbed, in the same room at Morrisania in which he was born, he offered the following:
Sixty-five years ago it pleased the Almighty to call me into existence here, on this spot, in this very room; and how shall I complain that He is pleased to call me hence?
Anne would live until 1837, and both she and Morris were interred at Morrisania at the St. Ann’s (Episcopal) Church that Gouverneur Jr. built there in her honor in 1741.
Now, knowing what you now know about the Penman of the Constitution, what do you think Gouverneur Morris would think of America today?
* Portions of this essay are derived from Judge Boonstra’s 3-volume work: In Their Own Words: Today’s God-less America . . . What Would Our Founding Fathers Think?
Next Up: “The Penman of the Constitution”
-Mark | Mark’s Substack | Visit Mark’s Website