Gouverneur Morris

Gouverneur Morris (1752-1816), American federalist leader, one of the formulators of the U.S. Constitution.

Half brother of the American Statesman Lewis Morris, he was born in Morrisania (now part of the Bronx, New York), on January 31, 1752, and was educated at King's College (now Columbia University). After the outbreak of the American Revolution, he became a leading proponent of independence. He served in the New York Provincial Congress from 1775 to 1777 and signed (1775) the Articles of Confederation. He helped draft the first constitution of New York State and in 1777 was elected to the Continental Congress. From 1781 to 1784 he was the assistant to the federal superintendent of finance, Robert Morris.

Gouverneur Morris, as a member of the Constitutional Convention, supported the creation of a strong, central government controlled by the rich. He also assisted in preparing the final version of the Constitution. Morris spent most of the next ten years in Europe. He witnessed many of the major events of the French Revolution and described them in a diary, which was published in 1939 as Diary of the French Revolution. From 1792 to 1794 he was the U.S. minister to France, but his open avowal of Royalist sympathies incurred the anger of the Republican government, and he was recalled. Morris returned home in 1798 and filled an unexpired term in the U.S. Senate from 1800 to 1803. As chairman of the Erie Canal Commission from 1810 to 1813, he supervised the planning of the canal, which linked the Hudson River with Lake Erie. Morris died in Morrisania on November 6, 1816. His writings include Observations on the American Revolution (1779).