FOUNDING FATHERS
Gouverneur Morris, Philosopher-Poet
The constitution's rewrite man.
The holy documents of American history serve different functions. The Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address are public performances--glorious verbal gestures designed to persuade and define. The Constitution is more practical. Used and abused by lawmakers, lawyers and judges, it is the SUV of America, sturdily ferrying the nation about its business for over 200 years.
Most of us are familiar with the debates and compromises in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 that made the Constitution possible. Yet the document itself, as a piece of prose, has its own artistry. The language is remarkably free of legalese; in the 52-word opening sentence of the Preamble, it achieves the poetry and wisdom of Jefferson and Lincoln.
The Constitutional Convention opened on May 25, 1787. Two months later, it adjourned for 10 days so that a Committee of Detail could prepare a draft of all the resolutions approved so far. Throughout the month of August, the convention put this draft through the wringer one more time. By Sept. 8, it turned the draft over to a Committee of Style. This was a strong group. James Madison, the learned young politician, and Alexander Hamilton, the flashy colonel, were members. But these heavy hitters gave the job of rewriting to the brilliant and quirky Gouverneur Morris.
Morris had lost his left leg seven years earlier in a carriage accident; he consoled himself in the arms of intelligent women, many of them married. He had done good service in the Revolution, helping to write the New York state Constitution, and trying to manage the nation's debts at the Office of Finance. But his sharp tongue and seigneurial manners tended to alienate those who did not love him. He had performed well at the convention, however, speaking more often than any other delegate, and often to the point. He produced a final draft in four days.
Morris's work on the meat of the Constitution, its seven articles, is a superb job of smoothing, organizing and clipping unruly verbal vines. Anyone who has graded term papers or edited copy will appreciate his labor. One small simplification can stand for all the rest. An article in the Committee of Detail's draft said: "The Government shall consist of supreme legislative, executive, and judicial powers." Morris struck this out, beginning his first three articles by announcing that "all legislative powers," "the executive power" and "the judicial power" shall be vested in a Congress, a president and the courts. Morris's alteration pruned a needless statement. The accumulation of such changes over the entire Constitution makes for a document that is light and limber. As an old man, James Madison declared that "the finish given to the style and arrangement of the Constitution fairly belongs to the pen of Mr. Morris. . . . A better choice could not have been made, as the performance of the task proved."
The most finished sentence Morris wrote is the Preamble. He did not have much to guide him. The closest thing to a statement of purpose in the Articles of Confederation, the first, failed constitution that the convention was replacing, says that the states will enter "a league of friendship . . . for their common defence, the security of their Liberties, and their mutual and general welfare." Madison had come to the convention with a plan of his own, which defined the objects of government as "common defence, security of liberty and general welfare." The draft of the Committee of Detail opened with a bald announcement: "We The People of the States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts" and so on, through Georgia, "do ordain, declare, and establish the following Constitution for the Government of Ourselves and our Posterity."
Morris preserved pieces of these forerunners in his Preamble--yet he transformed them. "We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
The first thing that leaps out is the parade of strong verbs--no bland "to be" forms, no passive voices. Two verbs alliterate--provide, promote. Two rhyme--insure, secure. The repetition of "establish" links the Constitution itself with the idea of justice. Such verbal echoes make prose readable, and memorable. In their absence State of the Union messages sag like wet tarps, supported only by mindless ovations.
But Morris wrote like a philosopher as well as a poet. He lists six purposes of government. His last three come from the Articles of Confederation and from Madison, but by changing their order he makes "Liberty" open out to the future; he further sweetens it by speaking of its "blessings."
Where did his other purposes of government come from? "Domestic tranquility" had a personal meaning for him. Morris spent the beginning of the Revolution in his native New York, where the war was particularly ugly. The British invaded the state four times; loyalists and patriots fought each other in a virtual civil war. Morris's own family was split down the middle: his mother and sisters were loyalists; one half-brother signed the Declaration of Independence, while another was a general in the British army. Morris knew well the importance of a peaceful country, and a peaceful home.
Establishing justice was also a goal shaped by his own experience. Morris was the son and grandson of colonial judges. Of the three branches of government, the judiciary was the stepchild, receiving the least discussion at the convention and immediately afterwards. Morris did not make this mistake. "In some parts of this Union," he warned a fellow founder, "justice cannot readily be obtained in the state courts."
Morris's greatest contribution came at the very beginning, when he shrank the list of the states in the Committee of Detail's draft to "We the People of the United States." There was a practical reason for his terseness: Some states were unlikely to ratify any time soon (Rhode Island had sent no delegates to the convention). But Morris was moved by conviction as well. He was one of the doughtiest nationalists at the convention. "Among the many provisions which had been urged," he complained at one point, he had seen none "for supporting the dignity and splendor of the American empire." By speaking in the name of the people of the nation, Morris subtly but momentously changed the focus of government. The keenest critics of the Constitution saw what he was doing: Patrick Henry would pounce on "that poor little thing--the expression, 'We the people.' " Abraham Lincoln would embrace it; the Gettysburg Address begins by recalling the Declaration, "four score and seven years ago," but its concluding invocation of "government of the people, by the people, and for the people" echoes the Preamble.
American history after the Constitutional Convention would be filled with many strange detours--none stranger than Morris's decision, 25 years later, to repudiate his handiwork. As a northern Federalist during the War of 1812, he thought the government was in the grip of wicked bumblers, and he wanted the country split up and the Constitution scrapped. But literary critics know that authors are not the best judges of what they write. The Constitution has outlived the doubts of its draftsman--sturdy, simple, and, at moments, beautiful.
Mr. Brookhiser is a senior editor of National Review and author of "Gentleman Revolutionary: Gouverneur Morris, the Rake Who Wrote the Constitution" (Free Press, 2003), which you can buy at the OpinionJournal bookstore.
