The Constitution’s Penman

Strikingly few Americans know who wrote the Constitution. Even fewer know that he was a peg-legged ladies’ man with a wicked sense of humor, a staunch opponent of slavery, and an unabashed elitist. Gouverneur Morris, who has been described as “the most colorful man in North America” at the time of the founding, was a dominant figure at the Philadelphia Convention of 1787. In fact, he spoke more often, proposed more motions, and had more motions adopted than any other delegate. He also put the Constitution into its final form, choosing the arrangement and much of the wording of its provisions, not to mention composing the famous preamble (“We the people of the United States . . .”) nearly from scratch. The Constitution’s Penman is the first book to explore the constitutional vision of this fascinating, neglected, and influential American.

As Dennis Rasmussen deftly shows, some aspects of Morris’s political thought were intriguingly idiosyncratic, such as his argument that the Senate should be an aristocratic body whose members would serve life terms without pay. Other aspects of his vision for America’s constitutional order, however, were astoundingly prescient. Morris saw as clearly as any of the framers the need for a powerful executive with a popular mandate, the central role that parties would play in American politics, and the unfathomable evils that slavery would visit on American life. Rasmussen demonstrates that it is impossible to fully understand the Constitution without appreciating the central role that Morris played in shaping it.

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Forgotten Yet Unforgettable

1. The Penman’s Story: A Brief Biography

2. A Most Splendid Part: Morris at the Convention

3. A Representative of America: Federalism

4. Checking America’s Aristocracy: The Senate

5. Property and the People’s Branch: The House of Representatives

6. A Reluctant Architect of the Electoral College: Presidential Selection

7. An Office Fit for Washington: The Presidency

8. That Fortress of the Constitution: The Judiciary

9. The Curse of Heaven: Slavery

10. A Declaration of Motives: The Preamble

Epilogue: From Constitution-Maker to Aspiring Constitution-Breaker

Appendix: Morris’s Great Convention Speeches

Notes

Index