Gouverneur Morris: An Independent Life

by William Howard Adams

A plainspoken, racy patrician who distrusted democracy but opposed slavery and championed freedom for all minorities, an important player in the American Revolution, later an astute critic of the French Revolution, Gouverneur Morris remains an enigma among the founding generation. This comprehensive, engrossing biography tells his robust story, including his celebrated love affairs during his long stay in Europe. Morris's public record is astonishing. One of the leading figures of the Constitutional Convention, he put the Constitution in its final version, including its opening Preamble. As Washington's first minister to Paris, he became America's most effective representative in France. A successful, international entrepreneur, he understood the dynamics of commerce in the modern world. Frankly cosmopolitan, he embraced city life as a creative center of civilization and had a central role in the building of the Erie Canal and in laying out the urban grid plan of Manhattan. William Howard Adams describes Morris's many contributions, talents, sophistication, and wit, as well as his romantic liaisons, free habits, and free speech. He brings to life a fascinating man of great stature, a founding father who receives his due at last.

Genres: Biography, History, American Revolution, American History, American Revolutionary War, Politics, Nonfiction

368 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2003

Reviews

[Seaby Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

Adams has written a very sympathetic book yet does not flinch from telling us that Morris was having affairs with multiple women in his life. Well, at least Morris wasn't a hypocrite, having married a woman that had had an affair when she was young and had fallen on very hard times because of it.

Adams also portrays Thomas Jefferson more honestly than most historians, letting us know that he had had sex with Sally Hemmings when she was only 13 years old, unable to say no because he legally owned her as his slave property. Adams tells us that Jefferson misused his position as Ambassador to France to deliberately ruin Robert Morris's business interests there. (Note, Robert Morris and Gouverneur Morris worked together during the War For Independence, were biz partners, and close friends... but were NOT related). Adams sees the same underlying prejudices for Jefferson that I had recognized from my other readings of the history of the time. Jefferson HATED business people. He HATED import/export businesses. He HATED city folk. He HATED tradesman living in cities who were working to industrialize America. But he especially HATED finance experts like Gouverneur Morris, Robert Morris and Alexander Hamilton. Jefferson worked to deliberately damage their reputations and livelihoods. He also worked to ensure that the US would remain a slave holding nation, not seeing black people as "men" worthy of "inalienable rights". Jefferson, and his party of southern plantation / slave owners, hating the growing prosperity of the Eastern States also pushed through legislation, when he was president, that disproportionally hurt the trade and industrial interests of New York and Boston, even as it caused an economic depression. Jefferson was at heart a feudal lord of the manor... or as he called himself and his slave owing plantation colleagues, the "natural aristocracy". His "Revolution of 1800" was more like a counter-revolution that derailed American freedom and true democracy until their vision of a feudal, privileged class system was demolished by the Civil War.

Strangely though, Adams also disses Hamilton in a rather unseemly fashion, making sure his readers knew that he was "illegitamate" where it was completely besides the historical point he was making. He also repeats the Jeffersonian party calumny that Hamilton was all for creating an American Monarchy rather than a republic as though it were true, and not just partisan political smears.

Morris, we see in this book, was according to Adams, the best of all men. The most far seeing, the most pragmatic, etc. Although I too admire Morris for many of his estimable qualities, I see him in the same circle of such heros as Franklin and Hamilton for their anti-slavery activism and pro-industrial policies.

[Zachary Hadsell · Rating 3 out of 5]

I saw Gouverneur Morris’ name littered throughout my reading of other founding fathers and figured I should read a biography on him. He had a fascinating life! His presence was ubiquitous throughout the revolution. From drafting the New York constitution with John Jay and Robert R. Livingston, to advising General Washington at Valley Forge, to helping Robert Morris finance the war, to being the penman of the U.S. constitution, to being a minister in Paris and watching the gory revolution unfold there, to designing the grid network of roads in Manhattan island, he was surely an important figure of his time.

He had a sharp mind and was often able to see things for what they were. He had a nuanced vision of liberty and understood that France could not hope to achieve the same system of government as the U.S. without first taking baby steps to get there, and the result would be devastating. He was also quite the rascal, ever willing to put up a fight and engage in scandalous affairs with French women.

The writing of the book itself is just okay. Not all that compelling and often non-linear in its telling, it was still a good read on this often forgot about founding father. I gave it 3 stars.

[Dan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is marred by slapdash editing (e.g. '1976' instead of '1776', more than one sentence fragment) and flowery assertions not backed up by historical evidence, otherwise known as filler. Morris is a minor founding father. I chose him as the subject of a middle school essay because he had the weirdest name. (According to his descendants, it's pronounced "governor.") He wrote the preamble of the U.S. Constitution, made famous by a catchy School House rock song. But he was most often at the periphery of the action. The section where he's in France during the revolution, having affairs and watching the world burn down, is the most interesting. Perhaps I would be more impressed with his life in the hands of a more skilled writer and historian.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gouverneur Morris: An Independent Life / William Howard Adams. An excellent, engrossing, intimate biography of a very engaging “founding father.” Adams is owed credit for his research, his organizational skills, and his fine judgement, as well as his historical scholarship. Morris is to be honored for his fascinating and important life and for recording it in his letters and journals so honestly and extensively. This book makes him out to be a man for all time.

[Ken · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great bio of an important founder, although the author seems to have an attitude that only Washington and Morris had a clue.

[bup · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you're a fan of history circa the time of the United States' establishment, Gouverneur Morris is a great, often overlooked subject worth reading about. He had caustic wit, was prescient about the futures of the United States (optimistic) and France (not), wrote the crystalline words of the Constitution, and bedded lots of eighteenth century babes - all on one leg!

Adams' book, while more academic than the more widely read Gentleman Revolutionary - Gouverneur Morris, the Rake Who Wrote the Constitution, is nevertheless perfectly readable by the amateur pleasure reader of history. His overall portrait strikes me as more nuanced and accurate, too - he wasn't just the guy who came up with 'We the People' and partied a lot. He was an intelligent defender of the importance of an executive branch not directly elected by the populace, he was a guy with little inheritance who made his way in the world, and he was a guy who spoke the truth consistently and had George Washington's most attentive ear.

Having said that, this book could have used more editing - several typos, occasional grammar errors, and even unacknowledged jumps back and forth in dates and repetitions of quotes as though they hadn't been quoted before. Still, if you want a good idea of Morris, this makes an invaluable counter-balance to the Brookhiser book.

[RYD · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was surprised that with Gouverneur Morris, I found his years in Paris during the French Revolution more interesting and compelling than those in America during the war of independence and the Constitutional Convention. Part of it may be that Morris kept a detailed and revealing diary while in France, which gave the author a lot more to work with.

[Chris Deaton · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thorough and easily read biography of one of America's most (undeservedly) overlooked Founding Fathers. A staunch abolitionist, prominent diplomat, and brilliant stylist, Morris is one of the few early American leaders whose political morality was unimpeachable.

[Daniel]

I didn't read it. I just didn't feel like reading a second biography on Morris.