Gouverneur Morris, Theistic Rationalist
Gouverneur Morris deserves as much remembrance and recognition as any “forgotten
founder.” From 1775 to 1777, he was first an influential member of New York’s Provincial
Congress and later its constitutional convention. He became a delegate to the Continental
Congress in 1778 and became a signer of the Articles of Confederation that same year. In the
1790s, Morris served as America’s ambassador to France and was the only foreign minister to
stay in France during the Reign of Terror, giving America a signal foreign policy advantage. At
the turn of the century, he served in the United States Senate for three years. It is Morris’s work
on the United States Constitution which is arguably his most important contribution, however –
and that for which he should surely be remembered.
Morris spoke more often than anyone at the Constitutional Convention and was an
influential member of the critically important Committee of Style. In fact, Morris wrote the
Preamble to the Constitution, which “provides, as does the Declaration, a set of dynamic
principles by which citizens could measure the actions of their government.”
Madison, known as the “Father of the Constitution,” testified, Morris’s contribution to the
writing of the Constitution did not end with the Preamble:
The finish given to the style and arrangement of the Constitution fairly belongs to the pen
of Mr. Morris …. A better choice could not have been made, as the performance of the
task proved. … [T]here was sufficient room for the talents and taste stamped by the
author on the face of it. The alterations made by the Committee are not recollected. They
were not such, as to impair the merit of the composition.
1
John E. Semonche, Keeping the Faith: A Cultural History of the U.S. Supreme Court (New York: Rowman &
Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1998), 27.
2
April 8, 1831 letter to Jared Sparks in Max
Farrand, ed., The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787. (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), III:499.
2
Convention