Description

A member of one of New York's great landowning families, Gouverneur Morris represented Pennsylvania-where he had set up his law practice-at the Constitutional Convention of 1787. As chairman of the committee on style, Morris saw to it that the "whole of the Constitution" was "expressed in the plain, common language of mankind."Morris had a deep-rooted distrust of the masses and a tenacious regard for the rights of private property, yet he was well ahead of most of his contemporaries in calling for absolute religious liberty and the abolition of slavery. "In adopting a republican form of government," Morris reflected in 1802, "I not only took it as a man does his wife, for better or worse, but what few men do with their wives, I took it knowing all its bad qualities."

Record Contributed By

National Portrait Gallery

Record Harvested From

Smithsonian Institution