March 27, 2025 • 10 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, our next story is told by Dennis C. Rasmussen, a professor of political science at Syracuse University and a Jack Miller Center Fellow. He’s also the author of The Constitution's Penman: Gouverneur Morris and the Creation of America's Basic Charter. Rasmussen tells the story of a Founding Father who wrote seven of the most famous words in American history: “We the People of the United States.”
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories. Our next story
is about a founding father who wrote the most famous
seven words in American history, We the people of the
United States, those words, of course, appearing in the preamble
of the US Constitution.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Dennis C.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Rasmussen is a professor of political science at Syracuse University.
He's also a Jack Miller Center Fellow. Dennis is also
the author of The Constitutions Penman, Governor Morris, and the
Creation of America's Basic Charter. Let's take a listen to
the story.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Governor Morris is relatively little known today, but he is
one of the most important and fascinating figures of the
American founding era. One scholar declared recently that Morris may
have been the most colorful individual in all of North
America at the time of the founding, and frankly, that
sounds about right. Morris was a peg legged ladies man
with a really wicked, sardonic sense of humor. He was,
without questioning, one of the funniest of the founders, although
(01:04):
granted that perhaps not a super high bar Morris also
led an immensely fall life. He was originally from New York.
He came from a wealthy family that owned most of
the southwest part of what was now the Bronx. As
a young man, he helped to push New York to
belatedly join the independence movement, and he's one of the
principal architects of the first New York State Constitution. I
mentioned that Morris had a wooden leg. He had his
(01:26):
leg amputated when he was twenty eight years old as
a result of a bad carriage accident, although there were
always rumors throughout his life that he did in fact
shattered the leg jumping out of bedroom window in order
to escape the wrath of an ill timed husband. In
seventeen seventy eight, Morris became a delegate to the Continental
Congress and spent that terrible winter at Valley Forge with
George Washington and his troops, where he was sent to
(01:47):
oversee the army's needs. He was also a signer of
the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first stab at a
national constitution, although he deemed the Confederation government to be
woefully inadequate from the get go. Morris served as a
Confederation Deputy Superintendent of Finance for several years, and in
that role he drew up a plan for a new
national currency, in which he proposed to use the word
(02:07):
dollar after the widely used Spanish dollar, and he invented
the word sent to denote one of the smaller coins.
So Americans used words chosen by Morris pretty much every day.
Is thanks to him that we have dollars and cents
for our currency. Morris was destined to be an important player,
and not just one, but two of the great revolutions
of the modern age, because in seventeen eighty nine he
(02:27):
went to Paris and eventually followed in the footsteps of
Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson by becoming the American Minister
to France. He was there at the convening of the
Estates General, and he was the only foreign diplomat from
any nation to remain in country all the way through
the Bloody Terror. After Morris's ministry ended, he traveled around
Europe for a few more years and then came back
to the US and served the second half of a
(02:49):
senatorial term during a critical period when Jefferson and the
Republicans came into power and the capital moved to Washington,
d c. This was from eighteen hundred to eighteen oh three.
In eighteen oh four, after the famous duel between Alexander
Hamilton and Aaron Burr, Morris was the one who sat
by Hamilton's side at his deathbed and then gave his
(03:11):
official eulogy at the request of Hamilton's widow, Eliza, who
told Morris that he was the best friend that Hamilton
had in the world, not that would be enough to
earn Morris even a bit role in the musical, which
is a real shame and a real missed opportunity if
you ask me. In any case, Late in life, Morris
undertook two more great projects, one helping to lead a
commission that planned the grid layout for the streets of
(03:31):
Manhattan and another that planned the Eerie Canal. On the
more personal side of things, At age fifty seven, Morris
finally became the last of the Founders to marry. He
married a woman named Nancy Randolph, who was the sort
of fallen aristocrat who was then serving as his housekeeper
and who had earlier been accused of conspiring to murder
(03:52):
her own newborn baby fathered by her brother in law.
That's a long story in itself, as you may imagine.
They had a son together on the Morris die before
he even turned fur. Even Morris's death was colorful, if
rather grizzly. He seems to have frequently suffered from painful
blockages in his urinary tract, perhaps the result of venereal disease,
and when he was sixty four, he tried using a
(04:13):
whalebone to remove the blockage, and he died from the
resulting lacerations. My sincere apologies for getting bat image stuck
in your mind. In the summer of seventeen eighty seven,
Morris played an absolute pivotal role at the Philadelphia Convention
that formulated the US Constitution. Morris spoke more often at
the convention than any other delegate. He proposed more motions
than any other delegate, and he had more of his
(04:35):
motions accepted than any other delegate. His interventions were often
extremely blunt and provocative, so they all but jump off
the page at you when you read through James Madison's
notes of the debates. He also served on a number
of the committees that did so much of the hard
work in actually crafting the Constitution that summer, and most
importantly of all, Morris was the one who wrote the
constitution itself. At the end of the summer, the delegates
(04:58):
formed what was called the Committee of Style to compose
the final draft of the Constitution, and the Committee, in
turn simply handed the test to Morris. It is absolutely
remarkable that so few people know this. Everyone knows most
American school children can tell you that Thomas Jefferson wrote
the Declaration of Independence, and yet very few people know
that Morris wrote the Constitution. Even among folks with PhDs
(05:21):
in political science, It's probably a pretty small fraction who
could tell you that I have done any kind of
formal poll. But I've asked many many people this question
over the past couple of years, and most assumed that
it must have been James Madison, the called Father of
the Constitution, who wrote it, or that it was just
a collective effort. Now, in some senses, of course, the
Constitution was a collective effort. His provisions had been laboriously
(05:45):
debated and voted on over the course of the summer
before Morris took up his pen, and so his LEEWI
in choosing the structure and powers of the proposed government
was minimal. But Morris single handedly and rather radically reorganized
the draft constitution that had been produced by the Medey
of detail. Midway through the summer, he consolidated twenty three
sprawling articles down to neat seven, and he changed or
(06:07):
chose a great deal of the wording on his own initiative,
oftentimes in consequential ways. So when constitutional lawyers and scholars
pore over the fine details of the Constitution looking for
clues regarding its meaning, they have Morris to thank or
to blame for many of those details. Anne Morris wrote
the famous preamble, the Constitution's ringing Statement of Purpose, basically
(06:29):
from scratch. All the stuff about forming a more perfect Union,
establishing justice, ensuring domestic tranquility, and the like that was
all Morris. The preambles become one of the most celebrated
sentences in the annals of democracy. So something of an
irony that it was written by a man of somewhat
elitist inclinations who's all but forgotten today. But perhaps Morris's
(06:50):
finest hour at the Convention from today's perspective, came in
the debates over slavery. No one spoke more passionately or eloquently,
or at greater length about the evils of slavery than
Morris did. He described it as a nefarious institution and
the curse of heaven on the states where it prevailed.
A long speech that Morris delivered on August eighth has
been called the first abolitionists speech in American public life,
(07:13):
which may be a bit of an exaggeration, but does
have at least a grain of truth to it. And
it's all the more remarkable when you remember the audience
that probably a couple dozen people sitting there in the
room listening to him were themselves slaveholders. So Morris gave
this speech in opposition to the notorious three fifths clause,
that is, to counting three fifths of the enslaved population
toward representation in the House of Representatives and hence also
(07:37):
at least eventually the electoral college that would choose the president.
And his basic point was that there was no good
reason why enslave people should count at all according to any ratio.
After all, he suggested, if enslaved people were human beings,
then they should be made citizens and allowed to vote,
But if they were mere property, as some of the
Southern delegates contended, then they shouldn't have been included in
the population counts at all. Given that no other property
(08:00):
was included. The three faces clause was just a way
of augmenting the political power of the slave holding South,
and moreover, one that would encourage them to imphorse still
more enslave people, so that their political cloud would be
still further increased. Let me read the climax of Morris's
speech in opposition to this clause. The admission of slaves
into the representation would fairly explained. Comes to this that
(08:22):
the inhabitant of Georgia or South Carolina, who goes to
the coast of Africa, and in defiance of the most
sacred laws of humanity, tears away as fellow creatures from
their dearest connections and damns them to the most cruel bondage,
shall have more votes and a government instituted for the
protection of the rights of mankind than the citizen of
Pennsylvania and New Jersey views with laudable horror so nefarious
(08:45):
a practice. Morris goes on to say that giving the
South extra representation on behalf of the people whom they'd
enslaved would require a sacrifice of every principle of right,
of every impulse of humanity. This was an as courageous
and far sighted as any speech that was delivered that summer.
Of course, for all of his moral clarity and passion
(09:08):
and eloquence, Morris failed to make much headway against slavery.
The Three Fists clause, as well as the clause protecting
the overseas slave trade until eighteen oh eight and the
Fugitive Slave Clause were all included in the Constitution over
his fierce objections. On that note, there's a sense in
which Morris's speech against slavery not only makes him look
pretty good, but also makes many of the other founders
(09:30):
look worse by comparison. After all, Morris was one of them,
and he knew better, and he told them so.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Greg Hangler, and a special thanks to
Dennis C. Rasmussen, who's a professor of political science at
Syracuse University and the author of the Constitution's Penman Governor Marris,
and the creation of America's Basic Charter. Dennis is also
a Jack Miller Center Fellow, and the Jack Miller Center
(09:58):
is a nationwide network of scholars and teachers dedicated educating
the next generation about America's founding principles and history. To
learn more, visit Jackmillercenter dot org. It's a terrific organization
worthy of your support. And my goodness, what a story
he told here. We all know that Thomas Jefferson was
given the assignment of writing the Declaration of Independence, but
(10:21):
I didn't know until recently. Most people don't know who
Governor Marris is, the role he played in the framing
and formation of the Constitution, and the fact that he
and he alone wrote the document to preamble and indeed
all of it, and his arguments against slavery, A man
ahead of his time. The story of Governor Morris, one
(10:42):
of the most important founding fathers and one of the
least well known here on our American Stories
And we continue with our American stories. Our next story
is about a founding father who wrote the most famous
seven words in American history, We the people of the
United States, those words, of course, appearing in the preamble
of the US Constitution.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Dennis C.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Rasmussen is a professor of political science at Syracuse University.
He's also a Jack Miller Center Fellow. Dennis is also
the author of The Constitutions Penman, Governor Morris, and the
Creation of America's Basic Charter. Let's take a listen to
the story.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Governor Morris is relatively little known today, but he is
one of the most important and fascinating figures of the
American founding era. One scholar declared recently that Morris may
have been the most colorful individual in all of North
America at the time of the founding, and frankly, that
sounds about right. Morris was a peg legged ladies man
with a really wicked, sardonic sense of humor. He was,
without questioning, one of the funniest of the founders, although
(01:04):
granted that perhaps not a super high bar Morris also
led an immensely fall life. He was originally from New York.
He came from a wealthy family that owned most of
the southwest part of what was now the Bronx. As
a young man, he helped to push New York to
belatedly join the independence movement, and he's one of the
principal architects of the first New York State Constitution. I
mentioned that Morris had a wooden leg. He had his
(01:26):
leg amputated when he was twenty eight years old as
a result of a bad carriage accident, although there were
always rumors throughout his life that he did in fact
shattered the leg jumping out of bedroom window in order
to escape the wrath of an ill timed husband. In
seventeen seventy eight, Morris became a delegate to the Continental
Congress and spent that terrible winter at Valley Forge with
George Washington and his troops, where he was sent to
(01:47):
oversee the army's needs. He was also a signer of
the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first stab at a
national constitution, although he deemed the Confederation government to be
woefully inadequate from the get go. Morris served as a
Confederation Deputy Superintendent of Finance for several years, and in
that role he drew up a plan for a new
national currency, in which he proposed to use the word
(02:07):
dollar after the widely used Spanish dollar, and he invented
the word sent to denote one of the smaller coins.
So Americans used words chosen by Morris pretty much every day.
Is thanks to him that we have dollars and cents
for our currency. Morris was destined to be an important player,
and not just one, but two of the great revolutions
of the modern age, because in seventeen eighty nine he
(02:27):
went to Paris and eventually followed in the footsteps of
Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson by becoming the American Minister
to France. He was there at the convening of the
Estates General, and he was the only foreign diplomat from
any nation to remain in country all the way through
the Bloody Terror. After Morris's ministry ended, he traveled around
Europe for a few more years and then came back
to the US and served the second half of a
(02:49):
senatorial term during a critical period when Jefferson and the
Republicans came into power and the capital moved to Washington,
d c. This was from eighteen hundred to eighteen oh three.
In eighteen oh four, after the famous duel between Alexander
Hamilton and Aaron Burr, Morris was the one who sat
by Hamilton's side at his deathbed and then gave his
(03:11):
official eulogy at the request of Hamilton's widow, Eliza, who
told Morris that he was the best friend that Hamilton
had in the world, not that would be enough to
earn Morris even a bit role in the musical, which
is a real shame and a real missed opportunity if
you ask me. In any case, Late in life, Morris
undertook two more great projects, one helping to lead a
commission that planned the grid layout for the streets of
(03:31):
Manhattan and another that planned the Eerie Canal. On the
more personal side of things, At age fifty seven, Morris
finally became the last of the Founders to marry. He
married a woman named Nancy Randolph, who was the sort
of fallen aristocrat who was then serving as his housekeeper
and who had earlier been accused of conspiring to murder
(03:52):
her own newborn baby fathered by her brother in law.
That's a long story in itself, as you may imagine.
They had a son together on the Morris die before
he even turned fur. Even Morris's death was colorful, if
rather grizzly. He seems to have frequently suffered from painful
blockages in his urinary tract, perhaps the result of venereal disease,
and when he was sixty four, he tried using a
(04:13):
whalebone to remove the blockage, and he died from the
resulting lacerations. My sincere apologies for getting bat image stuck
in your mind. In the summer of seventeen eighty seven,
Morris played an absolute pivotal role at the Philadelphia Convention
that formulated the US Constitution. Morris spoke more often at
the convention than any other delegate. He proposed more motions
than any other delegate, and he had more of his
(04:35):
motions accepted than any other delegate. His interventions were often
extremely blunt and provocative, so they all but jump off
the page at you when you read through James Madison's
notes of the debates. He also served on a number
of the committees that did so much of the hard
work in actually crafting the Constitution that summer, and most
importantly of all, Morris was the one who wrote the
constitution itself. At the end of the summer, the delegates
(04:58):
formed what was called the Committee of Style to compose
the final draft of the Constitution, and the Committee, in
turn simply handed the test to Morris. It is absolutely
remarkable that so few people know this. Everyone knows most
American school children can tell you that Thomas Jefferson wrote
the Declaration of Independence, and yet very few people know
that Morris wrote the Constitution. Even among folks with PhDs
(05:21):
in political science, It's probably a pretty small fraction who
could tell you that I have done any kind of
formal poll. But I've asked many many people this question
over the past couple of years, and most assumed that
it must have been James Madison, the called Father of
the Constitution, who wrote it, or that it was just
a collective effort. Now, in some senses, of course, the
Constitution was a collective effort. His provisions had been laboriously
(05:45):
debated and voted on over the course of the summer
before Morris took up his pen, and so his LEEWI
in choosing the structure and powers of the proposed government
was minimal. But Morris single handedly and rather radically reorganized
the draft constitution that had been produced by the Medey
of detail. Midway through the summer, he consolidated twenty three
sprawling articles down to neat seven, and he changed or
(06:07):
chose a great deal of the wording on his own initiative,
oftentimes in consequential ways. So when constitutional lawyers and scholars
pore over the fine details of the Constitution looking for
clues regarding its meaning, they have Morris to thank or
to blame for many of those details. Anne Morris wrote
the famous preamble, the Constitution's ringing Statement of Purpose, basically
(06:29):
from scratch. All the stuff about forming a more perfect Union,
establishing justice, ensuring domestic tranquility, and the like that was
all Morris. The preambles become one of the most celebrated
sentences in the annals of democracy. So something of an
irony that it was written by a man of somewhat
elitist inclinations who's all but forgotten today. But perhaps Morris's
(06:50):
finest hour at the Convention from today's perspective, came in
the debates over slavery. No one spoke more passionately or eloquently,
or at greater length about the evils of slavery than
Morris did. He described it as a nefarious institution and
the curse of heaven on the states where it prevailed.
A long speech that Morris delivered on August eighth has
been called the first abolitionists speech in American public life,
(07:13):
which may be a bit of an exaggeration, but does
have at least a grain of truth to it. And
it's all the more remarkable when you remember the audience
that probably a couple dozen people sitting there in the
room listening to him were themselves slaveholders. So Morris gave
this speech in opposition to the notorious three fifths clause,
that is, to counting three fifths of the enslaved population
toward representation in the House of Representatives and hence also
(07:37):
at least eventually the electoral college that would choose the president.
And his basic point was that there was no good
reason why enslave people should count at all according to any ratio.
After all, he suggested, if enslaved people were human beings,
then they should be made citizens and allowed to vote,
But if they were mere property, as some of the
Southern delegates contended, then they shouldn't have been included in
the population counts at all. Given that no other property
(08:00):
was included. The three faces clause was just a way
of augmenting the political power of the slave holding South,
and moreover, one that would encourage them to imphorse still
more enslave people, so that their political cloud would be
still further increased. Let me read the climax of Morris's
speech in opposition to this clause. The admission of slaves
into the representation would fairly explained. Comes to this that
(08:22):
the inhabitant of Georgia or South Carolina, who goes to
the coast of Africa, and in defiance of the most
sacred laws of humanity, tears away as fellow creatures from
their dearest connections and damns them to the most cruel bondage,
shall have more votes and a government instituted for the
protection of the rights of mankind than the citizen of
Pennsylvania and New Jersey views with laudable horror so nefarious
(08:45):
a practice. Morris goes on to say that giving the
South extra representation on behalf of the people whom they'd
enslaved would require a sacrifice of every principle of right,
of every impulse of humanity. This was an as courageous
and far sighted as any speech that was delivered that summer.
Of course, for all of his moral clarity and passion
(09:08):
and eloquence, Morris failed to make much headway against slavery.
The Three Fists clause, as well as the clause protecting
the overseas slave trade until eighteen oh eight and the
Fugitive Slave Clause were all included in the Constitution over
his fierce objections. On that note, there's a sense in
which Morris's speech against slavery not only makes him look
pretty good, but also makes many of the other founders
(09:30):
look worse by comparison. After all, Morris was one of them,
and he knew better, and he told them so.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Greg Hangler, and a special thanks to
Dennis C. Rasmussen, who's a professor of political science at
Syracuse University and the author of the Constitution's Penman Governor Marris,
and the creation of America's Basic Charter. Dennis is also
a Jack Miller Center Fellow, and the Jack Miller Center
(09:58):
is a nationwide network of scholars and teachers dedicated educating
the next generation about America's founding principles and history. To
learn more, visit Jackmillercenter dot org. It's a terrific organization
worthy of your support. And my goodness, what a story
he told here. We all know that Thomas Jefferson was
given the assignment of writing the Declaration of Independence, but
(10:21):
I didn't know until recently. Most people don't know who
Governor Marris is, the role he played in the framing
and formation of the Constitution, and the fact that he
and he alone wrote the document to preamble and indeed
all of it, and his arguments against slavery, A man
ahead of his time. The story of Governor Morris, one
(10:42):
of the most important founding fathers and one of the
least well known here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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