Gentleman Revolutionary: Gouverneur Morris, the Rake Who Wrote the Constitution

I've been reading biographies of the founders and histories of early America as a pet project for a couple of years. It's so funny -- most of my family knows I've been reading these biographies, so they'll ask me who I'm "doing" currently. Answering "Gouverneur Morris" has led to some vaguely nodded heads. It's ok -- I didn't know who the fellow was, either. I picked the book up because Brookhiser is dependably good. This biography is no exception. The charms of the book are: Brevity. Good use of quoted letters and diaries. Entertaining anecdotes. Good-humored and inspiring portraiture. Brookhiser calls a spade a spade -- he lauds Morris's strengths and deplores his weaknesses, showing the reader both without flinching. And the result is an honest and engaging portrait of a person that I would wish to know.

I enjoyed reading Richard Brookhiser's concise character studies of George Washington and Alexander Hamilton. Those two monumental founders have had huge numbers of biographies and studies of all kinds written about them. This attention is well deserved, but in many ways they have become frozen monuments to the founding. Not so Gouverneur Morris. He is almost completely unknown outside those quite steeped in the history of the Revolution. However, once you learn that it is his prose we read in our Constitution, that he played a vital role in financing the Revolution, and that he and his partner Robert Morris (no relation, but also a signer of the Declaration and the Constitution) actually and personally bailed out our country you will be shocked that he is so unknown to you (at least he was to me). He was at Alexander Hamilton's bedside when he passed, he was present at the French Revolution and helped draft their constitution. I could go on, but I will let you read the book and discover all he did and his influence in the early founding through the War of 1812. This book is a full, if concise, biography of this man who deserves to be better known. There is a real advantage to reading about a founder who has as yet escaped becoming a marbleized image in the Pantheon of our collective imagination. He kept a detailed journal and through it we learn much about his life, his thinking, his strengths, and very human weaknesses. Of course, all of the founders were real flesh and blood men and women, but most have been assumed into history as much more than human. It is good to read thoughts and words that are still quite mortal and enjoyably fallible. I think Brookhiser has done a fine job with this book. I do find the subtitle is a bit much, however. Calling Gouverneur Morris a rake is more about selling books about an unknown man than telling us something essential about the man. Yes, he did have affairs with married women who had indifferent or unfaithful husbands and did not marry until late in life. But we really would not know about these activities without his very honest journal. And judged by the way people live today (unfortunately), well, he was quite circumspect. You will enjoy this book. It does have a good index and a helpful bibliography.

To most people who read of the era of the founding fathers, Gouverneur Morris is at best a peripheral character, mentioned in passing while the spotlight featured the bigger names of Washington, Adams, Hamilton, et al. Brookhiser gives us the opportunity to learn about this man and his role in early U.S. history.Morris was generally a peripheral character in the Revolutionary Era, but he did play a significant role in the drafting of the Constitution. His writing skills put the Constitution into its essentially final form, and the Preamble is almost entirely his creation. Beyond this, however, he was a more minor political player.A lot of this was by Morris's own choice, since he wasn't all that interested in higher office. He was an interesting enough person, in many ways more human than the semi-immortals with whom he worked with. Relatively easy-going and with a good sense of humor, Morris was also - despite a maimed hand and a missing leg - quite the ladies' man, even having an affair with one French woman who was not only married, but already the mistress to another. When he finally married late in life, he successfully avoided social pressure by choosing a wife with a bit of a reputation.Brookhiser - a rather politically conservative writer - has a lot of sympathy for the Federalists such as Hamilton and Morris. He, nonetheless, has written a good, objective book, the best of the three of his I read (the other two were on Hamilton and the Adams family). While Morris is rightly accorded a lesser light in history, he does deserve some illumination and Brookhiser's book does the job well.

Does Richard Brookhiser plan to write a biography for every single Founding Father? Based on the three books of his I've read so far (on George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and now Gouverneur Morris), one can only hope so. Brookhiser's latest biography is of a somewhat neglected Founding Father, whose greatest accomplishment was his authorship/editorial work of much of the U.S. Constitution. Late in his life, Morris also played an invaluable, but often overlooked role in pushing the U.S. to create a system of canals linking New York State's Atlantic coast with the northern interior of North America. (These canals were, once created, as important for the young country's economic growth in the early nineteenth century as railroads would be for it in the late nineteenth century.)For a major public figure, Morris led a balanced life. His serious pursuits did not keep him from enjoying women, travel and outings, or a well-told joke. He was a good friend, especially towards those who he felt were unfairly treated by others. As Morris would drift in and out of public service throughout his life, much of the biography focuses on this personal side of the man.Brookhiser's skill as a biographer is to reveal aspects of his subject's character with just a well-written phrase or two. He does this in a straightforward way without the need for any conceptual baggage (such as Freudianism). Few biographers nowadays are willing to be so concise or risk interpreting their subjects in such a direct manner. But unlike with two of his previous and better-known subjects (Washington and Hamilton), Brookhiser is perhaps too brief in dealing with Morris's life. Whereas the basic outlines of both Washington and Hamilton's lives are fairly well-known to most readers, and therefore more amenable to Brookhiser's kind of abbreviation, Morris's life is not. As a result, the transitions in Morris's life covered in the book seem to rush by and background information is uneven. This is still a fine work, one I can easily recommend, but it is not as impressive as Brookhiser's earlier biographies.

With his well-written and highly entertaining biography, "Gentleman Revolutionary," author Richard Brookhiser has resurrected the memory of founding father Gouvernor Morris for the modern reader. Among his many accomplishments, as the book's subtitle points out, it was Morris who wrote the final version of the American Constitution, the single greatest document of governance in world history. For that accomplishment alone, his memory should not be allowed to fade in comparison to his contemporaries.Morris's career encompassed, among much else, two terms in the Continental Congress during the height of the American Revolution. His financial expertise was vital to keeping the war effort afloat until the victory at Yorktown secured American independence. He also served as America's Ambassador to France during the French Revolution, keeping a meticulous account of events as they unfolded. Much of the rest of his life was spent as a successful lawyer and financier, who occasionally enagaged in such acts of public service as championing the Erie Canal and laying out the streets of Manhattan.All of this Brookhiser captures with his lively narrative prose. The book is a relatively quick read at just over 200 pages of narrative, and Brookhiser concentrates his efforts on those periods of Morris's life that were devoted to public service. A generous helping of illustrations are also provided. Brookhiser also avoids being too overly fawning of his subject, pointing out those ideas of Morris's that were either dangerously flawed or just plain wrong.Overall, a fascinating biography that can be enjoyed by history buffs as well as general readers.