Gouverneur Morris and American Founding Principles with Dennis Rasmussen | BRI Scholar Talks

0:06 For this episode of Scholar Talks, the guiding question is how did Gouverneur Morris shape American constitutional principles in the preamble? And as draftsmen of the Constitution? Our guest, Dennis Rasmussen, is a professor of political science at my alma mater, Syracuse University, and he’s the author of several books, including The Infidel and The Professor

0:29 David Hume, Adam Smith and the Friendship that Shaped Modern Thought, fears of a Setting Sun, The Disillusionment of America’s Founders, and Today’s topic, the constitutions Penman, Gouverneur Morris, and the Creation of America’s Basic Charter. I am Tony Williams, senior fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute, and I want to welcome you

0:51 to another episode of Scholar Talks in the America 250 series. Dennis, I want to thank you very much for joining me. Sure. Thanks for inviting me. Now, just a great series of books I’ve read. And just a great addition to the The Amazing American, American Political Thought series and the University of Kansas Press. So just an important book, kind of a figure

1:12 we should know more about, but we just don’t. The kind of a little lesser known figure. Yes absolutely. Is, unjustly, unjustly neglected. Great. Well, why don’t we go ahead and get started then? So I want to say, Gouverneur Morris, because I’ve been saying it that way for a long time. I think your book points out that probably pronounced Gouverneur , so I’ll go with that. So Gouverneur Morris is arguably America’s most colorful founder.

1:37 Can you please briefly provide us with some background about him to get started? I’d be happy to. And yes, he was very colorful. One scholar declared recently that he might have been the most colorful individual in all of North America at the time of the founding, which sounds not totally wrong to me. He was a peg legged ladies man with a really wicked, sardonic sense of humor.

1:59 He was, without question, one of the funniest founders. Now that, granted, not a super high bar. But the founders were an unusually serious lot on the whole. But he and Franklin, I think, had the best sense of humor. So I mentioned that he had a wooden leg. He lost his leg. He had his leg amputated when he was 28 as the result of a bad carriage accident. Although there were always rumors

2:20 following him throughout his life, they did in fact shattered the leg, jumping out a bedroom window to escape the wrath of an ill timed husband. So his peg leg does not seem to have dampened his appeal to women. He went on to have a long string of amorous adventures across two continents. So just give you a very brief recap of his life. He’s originally from New York. He came from a wealthy family

2:41 that owned most of the southwest part of what is now the Bronx. But his father died when he was ten. Most of the inheritance went to his older half siblings from his father’s first wife. So he’s left a he has this kind of quasi aristocratic lineage. He left. He’s left to mostly make his own way in the world, but he does very well. He’s both working as a lawyer and especially through land speculation. He’s very good at making money.

3:03 He kind of comes up, as so many of the founders did through revolutionary politics. He’s part of the New York Provincial Congress. He helps to push New York eventually to join, somewhat belatedly, to join the independence movement. He’s one of the principal authors of the first New York state Constitution. He then goes on to join the Continental Congress, where he spends the fall of the terrible winter at Valley Forge with with Washington in the troops.

3:26 He signs the Articles of Confederation, the nation’s first stab of the national teams, a totally inadequate signing off on behalf of New York. But he signs the Articles of Confederation. He works as deputy superintendent of finance for a while. For the Confederation Congress. And then, of course, he attends the Constitutional Convention. I think most of what we’re going to talk about today centers on that. So I’ll skip that for now.

3:49 I will say, though, after the convention, Hamilton, Alexander Hamilton urged him to contribute to the Federalist or what we sometimes called the Federalist Papers. So it’s initially supposed to be the trio of Hamilton Morris and John Jay, who are all good friends, kind of up and coming New Yorkers who wrote The Federalist. And it’s only after Morris declined that Hamilton turned to Madison,

4:11 which thinks Madison is one scholar put it, the most consequential backup choice in the history of political theory. You know, and that’s fascinating to think how The Federalist might be different if Morris had written for it instead of Madison. I think we can say for certain Morris would be much more famous today than than he is now. Anyway, he after the convention was close, he went to Paris.

4:32 He eventually followed in the footsteps of Franklin and Jefferson. He became the American minister of France. So he’s there at the convening of the States General. He’s the only foreign diplomat from any country who stays in the country all the way through the terror. He’s a skeptical of the French Revolution from the get go, even before Edmund Burke. And I think a lot of his warnings about the chaos that the revolutionaries,

4:54 revolutionaries would unleash were borne out. You know, when things are at his worst, he hides people in his apartment from the guillotine, so he sees plenty of violence. Very, very close up. He travels around a little bit in Europe for a few more years, comes back, serve the second half of a senatorial term from 1800 and 1803. He. In 1804,

5:16 after the famous duel between Hamilton and Aaron Burr, Morris is the one who sits at his Hamilton side at his deathbed. He gives the official eulogy at the request of Hamilton’s widow, Eliza, a line that says, Morris, you’re the best friend he had in the world, which, as most viewers will know, was not enough to earn him even a bit role in the musical, which is a real missed

5:37 opportunity to have this this painfully wicked regret dancing around on the stage. Anyway, I’ll be brief here. Late in life, you undertook two more great projects. He helped to lead a commission that planned the, the grid layout for the streets of Manhattan. And also another commission to plan that you were a canal. And then in its very last years, as a sort of elder statesman

5:58 in the Federalist Party. He grew so disenchanted with the ascendancy of the Republicans, with the War of 1812, that he supported the secession of New England in New York from the Union. One more fact I have to include even his death was colorful. It’s rather grisly. And I’m never sure whether to to see this, but my my 12 year old son

6:21 things I should. So here goes. He. Morris seems to have frequently suffered from painful blockages in his urinary tract, perhaps the result of venereal disease. And when he was 64, he tried using a whalebone to remove the blockages. And it killed him. He died from the resulting lacerations. So I don’t know if I wanted to do that, but. So.

6:42 But maybe. Maybe I should have asked you. What didn’t he do? Rather than, you know, what did you hear about? Just an amazing, public and also colorful private life. So going back to the convention, so as you point out in the book, he he spoke an awful lot at the convention and was quite influential in all the deliberations.

7:04 And he and he becomes the drafting, draftsman of the final document. So what was his just general importance of the convention? And before we get to some of the specifics. Sure. And I do think he is at least arguably the single dominant figure at the Philadelphia convention. He spoke more often than any other delegate. He proposed more motions than any other delegate,

7:25 that more of its motions accepted than any other delegate. His speech, if you read through Madison’s notes, his speeches, his interventions are super blunted, provocative. They all but leap off the page at you when you read through Madison’s notes. He serves on a number of important committees. He’s just kind of everywhere that that summer. He, And most importantly, if you’ve already suggested

7:49 he wrote the Constitution itself, he at the end of the summer, the delegates created what was called a committee of style to read the final draft of the constitution. And all evidence suggests the committee just basically had Morris do it. Which is, you know, just unbelievable to me that so few people know this. Everyone knows most of American schoolchildren can tell you that Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, right.

8:11 Very few people know that Morris wrote wrote the Constitution. I bet if you pulled a PhD in political science, I don’t know what the percentage would be, but it’d be a small number. Who could who could tell you about, You know, I’ve never done a formal poll, but I, you know, I’ve asked many people this question over the past few years, and, you know, most assume that Madison wrote it. Right? But the father, the so-called father of the Constitution, or there was just a collective effort,

8:35 and in some senses, of course, it was right. The Constitution’s provisions had been laboriously debated and voted on over the course of the summer. So it’s not like Morris could just choose the structure of powers of the government on its own. Say so. But, still, I think it’s fair to say that Morris wrote the Constitution every bit as much as Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. He radically reorganized.

8:57 So there’s an earlier draft constitution produced by what was called the Committee of Detail. Midway through the summer, his sprawling 23 articles, he condenses it down to seven. He changed or chose a great deal of the wording on his own initiative, oftentimes in inconsequential ways. And so when we put in, we constitutional lawyers and scholars pore over the fine details of the document right by this word rather than that word.

9:19 Why this semi-colon here? You know, we have more or less to thank or to blame, as it were, for these details. And he wrote the the famous preamble of the Constitution’s reading of purse ringing statement of purpose, basically from scratch. Right. So all this stuff about forming more perfect union, establishing justice, ensuring domestic tranquility, that’s all. Morris. And so, again, the basic point is he was certainly more than anyone else,

9:41 the author of the Constitution, this, you know, charter by which we still live, one of the most important texts in all of world history. Okay. Awesome. And so let’s let’s dig around in some of the specific sense. So what were his views regarding the shape of the legislative branch in article one? Well, there’s a lot that could be said here, right? I mean, in terms of the biggest debate.

10:03 So the, the the biggest debate that the delegates spent the whole summer, wrestling over is the question of, the basis of representation in Congress and especially the Senate. So they agreed pretty early on that the House of Representatives was going to be proportional to population. And so the real question is, is the Senate also going to be proportional to the population, or is it going to be equal for each state or something else?

10:26 And Morris was firmly in the typical large state camp, which is to say he’s firmly in favor of proportional representation in both houses of Congress. He thought, like the other sort of national minded delegates, he thought it was patently unfair, patently unjust to grant some people more effective political power. Just because they happen to hail from a smaller state.

10:48 But, you know, as people represent state representation would do and does do. And so this is why we tend to think of the Connecticut compromise, right? Proportional representation in the House, equal representation of the Senate. We tend to think of this as a, you know, nice, happy compromise, even stupid compromise. Most of the big names among the founders Madison, Hamilton,

11:08 Washington, Morris, James, Wilson, others took it as a devastating defeat. Morris was almost ready to leave the convention altogether, and just in disgust after this, this compromise was made. There’s plenty more that could be said. Let me just say maybe one more thing. About what? What he, says about the the his vision for Congress, especially the Senate, because he has very counterintuitive view of how the Senate should be constructed.

11:33 He argues in a very long leadership speech, he argues that the Senate should be made up exclusively of wealthy individuals who are chosen by the president to serve for life without pay. And strangely, he thinks that this is going to serve to check the political power of the rich. So why? Well, first of all, why does he want it to look like this?

11:55 He says, look, the main purpose of the Senate is to combat the sort of, what do you assume will be the turbulent populism of the House of Representatives? And he thinks the Senate, as he’s envisioned it, would do that. Right? The the fact that they’re all rich, they have an incentive to protect private property against inroads, against it. Their lifetime appointments give them the independence and the security.

12:16 Right. They’re not looking over their shoulder at the next election. But. And this is something that a surprisingly large number of delegates advocated, having the Senate be a kind of quasi aristocratic party with with lifetime appointments and the like. But most of the other delegates advocate this because basically they just trust wealthy elites more than the common people. Morris weirdly does this because he doesn’t trust them.

12:39 He’s constantly saying the rich are corrupt, they’re power hungry. They’re always out to oppress the poor. And so the obvious question is the why just basically hand the Senate over to these corrupt people. And his argument, I don’t think it’s persuasive, but it’s interesting. He says, well, actually, the rich are going to be easier to restrain if we sort of isolate them, confine them to the Senate.

13:00 Now, we could, you know, the people, the people’s representatives in the House can scrutinize their every move, watch them like a hawk, but they’re ready to resist any oppressive measures that try to pass. This actually, John Adams suggests something similar. He refers to giving the rich the Senate as a sort of ostracism or ostracizing the rich of the Senate. So again, this is not without its problems.

13:21 I do not recommend this. But but this is his vision. It’s not going to be congenial to a lot of people, but, that’s his vision. Right? Well, the Anti-Federalists, were fearful of the Senate, being sort of a cabal of corruption. I can’t imagine if Morris got his way what they would have thought so, yes. Yeah. So, but but so what were his views regarding then?

13:42 The executive branch in, in article two, especially in terms of, the powers of the office and the, the, you know, the, the, term in office and selection by the Electoral College, etc.. Sure. So he was a, let’s say, along with James Wilson, he’s one of the two chief architects of the presidency as we know it.

14:02 He was much more influential in the debates over the presidency than in Congress. So you asked about presidential selection, you know, how is the president to be chosen? That’s, I’d say, the second biggest issue, the issue that the delegates wrangle on, wrangle over more than any other issue besides the basis of representation in the Senate. And it was a very close run thing. I don’t think many people today realize just how close

14:26 the convention came to having Congress choose the president, which would have gone a long way toward making the American system a parliamentary system rather than a presidential one, to use contemporary terms, because for almost the entire summer, all but a couple weeks, the plan on the table includes congressional selection of the president. It almost certainly would have prevailed were it not for Morris.

14:47 And I think also Wilson’s objections to it. Morris’s two main objections to this, to the congressional selection are, first, the result, the choice of the president is just going to be determined by Partizan or factional infighting. Instead, it would be like the election of a pope by a conclave of cardinals, and that it would just render the president subservient to Congress. Right. It would undermine checks and balances.

15:08 And so he advocated. And Wilson, what Morris and Wilson both advocated instead was direct popular election of the president. Just popular vote. Most of the other delegates found this to be utterly preposterous. There’s no way of that happening. And so the two of them, again, Morris and Wilson, devised Electoral College as kind of the closest thing

15:29 that they could get to a popular election, because, you know, it’s all some problems with regard to the small states and especially the slave states that, maybe we won’t get into, but, you know, the point is, again, he’s one of the two main architects of the Electoral College, but he regards that as a second best. He would have preferred a direct election by the people. In terms of the president’s powers, he basically did everything that he could to enhance the president’s powers.

15:52 He, wants the president to have pretty broad ranging power over foreign affairs, a role in setting the legislative agenda. He wants him to have an absolute veto over legislation, meaning a veto that Congress can override, and most of all, unbelievably expansive appointment power. So he thinks the president should be able to appoint cabinet officers

16:13 and federal judges and justices and remember, senators unilaterally, no need for congressional approval. And that’s, you know, very powerful, vision of the presidency. He wanted the president to be powerful enough to stand up to Congress, which he assumes doesn’t turn out to have been the case, but he assumes it’s going to be the strongest of the three branches and the most dangerous of the three branches.

16:36 He also wants the presidency to be so strong just because he knows, as everybody knew, that it was a foregone conclusion that the first president was going to be his friend and his political hero, George Washington. So he again has his he doesn’t get everything that he wants with the presidency, but he gets quite a bit more than he does with regard to Congress. All right. Great.

16:56 So we’ve done article one, article two links to article three. And so what are his views for especially that independent judiciary and also the power of judicial review you talk about. Sure. I mean, there’s somewhat less to say here. The delegates spent so much more time on the structure and powers of the presidency and Congress. Sometimes the judiciary seemed like an afterthought in the debates in 1787.

17:19 And so really, to get his vision, you have to glean from, you know, small, small statements here and there. But from what we can tell, he, really wanted to make the judiciary a true co-equal branch. This is one reason why he gives it a it’s own article. In most of the earlier drafts of the Constitution, there were a slew of articles on Congress, maybe 1 or 2 on the presidency, one on the judiciary.

17:42 He’s the one who chooses the structure that we have now. Article one Congress, article two presidency. Article three judiciary two kind of signal that they’re true co-equal branches. And he also wants, like the other more kind of national minded delegates. He wants pretty much what we’ve got, which is a full system of lower federal courts in addition to the Supreme Court, whereas the more

18:03 kind of local like minded delegates often want to just one Supreme Court. And he also wanted the courts to be armed with the power of judicial review, as you suggested, in order to keep Congress in check. And I think especially the state governments in in check. Right. All right. Great. So, maybe a more expansive topic. But but Morsris had a very strong antipathy towards,

18:24 what he considered to be, you know, the more wrong, the immorality of the institution of slavery. So can you tell us a little bit more about that and what happens at the convention? And it happy to because this is his, you know, almost certainly his finest hour at the convention. From today’s perspective, in these debates over slavery, no one speaks more passionately or eloquently

18:46 or a greater length about the evils of slavery than he does. He called it a nefarious institution. It’s the curse of heaven. On the States were prevailed. I’ve just pulled up. He gave a long speech on August 8th. I’ll read a section in a minute. It’s been called the first abolitionist speech in American public life, which is maybe an exaggeration, but has some some truth to it.

19:08 So just to set the context, he’s giving this speech in opposition to the 3/5 clause, right, to counting 3/5 of the enslaved population toward representation in the House of Representatives, and hence also eventually the Electoral College. And his basic point is, there’s no good reason why enslaved people should count at all according to any ratio, right? If enslaved people are human beings, as he believed will

19:29 then make them citizens, let them vote right? Then you can count them. But if they’re mere property, as the southern delegates contended, well, then he thought they shouldn’t be included at all. Right? No other properties counted for representation. Horses or cattle or land or whatever. And so, as he saw it, the 3/5 clause is just a way of augmenting the political power of the South, the slaveholding South,

19:50 in doing so in a way that encourages them to import still more enslaved people. So the political clout is further increased. So anyway, I want to read if I can, but just the kind of climax of his speech in opposition to this clause. So he says this, the admission of slaves into the representation when fairly explained, comes to this, that the inhabitant of Georgia or South

20:10 Carolina, who goes to the coast of Africa and in defiance of the most sacred laws of humanity, tears away his fellow creatures from their dearest connections and damns them to the most cruel bondage shall have more votes, and a government instituted for the protection of the rights of mankind than the citizen of Pennsylvania. New Jersey, suffused with laudable horror. So nefarious a practice.

20:33 And I we’ll keep reading. But he goes on to say that giving the South extra representation on behalf of these people whom he’s enslaved would require a sacrifice of every principle of right, of every impulse of humanity. Right. So talk about being on the right side of history. This is what you or I would say or, you know, wish we had the guts to say if we had been there. You know, and of course, for all of his moral

20:55 clarity and passion and eloquence, he doesn’t achieve that much. Right? The 3/5 clause is included against his objections, the clause protecting the overseas slave trade until 1808, the fugitive slave clause all over his fierce objections. So what I suggest in the book is he’s effectively the framers conscience on this issue. But as all too often happens, that conscience is sometimes ignored.

21:17 I’ll say just one more thing about this, which is, of course, Maurice’s speech here makes him look pretty good from today’s perspective. I also think it makes the other founders look worse by comparison, in the sense that, you know, historians are always telling us don’t judge figures of the past on the basis of today’s values, which I guess is true, to a certain extent, that we shouldn’t do that.

21:39 But this speech of Maurice makes it harder for me to accept that the idea that, you know, the poor founders, the mere creatures of their times, they simply didn’t know any better. They couldn’t possibly have known any better with regard to slavery. You know, Maurice was one of them, and he knew better, and he taught them so. Right. It’s true that he’s a northerner, but he came from a slave owning family.

22:00 So his father owned or held in bondage several dozen people when he was a kid. When Maurice was a child, his mother still held three enslaved people. When she died the year before the convention in 1786. But for whatever reason, Maurice is very clear sighted about the evils of this institution she fought about against as far back as the New York State Constitution and in,

22:21 so the New York State constitutional convention in 1777. This is at a point. He’s still 25 years old. He’s just a the a kid still slavery, still legal in, practiced in every state. And he’s, you know, he fights against it that early. So he’s just again he’s at it’s courageous far sighted best when it comes to slavery. I mean, it really seems what you’re saying is that, like Benjamin Rush and John Jay

22:44 and some others, like he recognized that there was a contradiction between the natural law and natural rights principles that they were expounding upon, espousing, and, and with that institution that denied those that very humanity and those natural rights and so forth. So he’s really confronting that that contradiction of the founding really head on,

23:07 Yep yep. So, so back to our, original question, how did Gouverneur Morris shape American constitutional principles in the preamble and as draftsman of the Constitution, to wrap us up? Okay, so on the preamble. So again, he wrote the preamble basically from scratch.

23:29 So there was a draft preamble, in the Committee on details, draft constitution, but it was a very simple one. All it said was we the people of the states of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Providence Plantation, you know, so on down the Lennox seaboard do ordain and establish this constitution. So none of this stuff about forming a more perfect union, establishing justice

23:52 and training to a master, including all those things added by Morris. So we did all the substantive aims, the the statement of purpose, as it were, straight from Morris. We also get substituting we the people of the states of X, Y and Z, we the people of the United States. And this has obvious kind of nationalist overtones to it.

24:13 Right. What is in the first draft is unclear. Does the Constitution rest on the authority of the people or the states? It’s the people of the state. So it’s kind of it’s ambiguous. Whereas when he’s done with it, it’s we, the people of the United States. It’s clear that it’s a government of the people as a whole, the country as a whole, not formed, not a not a creature of the states or state governments.

24:33 In terms of drafting the Constitution, here I have to reference there’s a great and important, law review article by a guy named Bill Traynor, William Traynor, who was for a long time the dean of Georgetown Law School. He’s still at Georgetown Law. He wrote in the Michigan Law Review a couple of years ago, an article called The Case of the Dishonest Scrivener. Traynor goes through and compares the kind of draft constitution

24:57 and all of the provisions that were given to Morris to write up the final draft. What do you get, and then what the output is and compare very carefully goes through and compares the language and the provisions and, you know, tries to look at this more as make any substantive changes. He argues that more or less makes, I think it’s 13, small but

25:18 sometimes very important substantive changes all pushing in his own temple a federalist or national minded direction. The, the you know, the ideas that came about through all 13 of them now. But I do recommend to to viewers that’s the sort of the article which is very minor and it’s like 100 pages. It’s very thorough. If you want to know what thoroughness looks like, take a, take a look

25:39 at that, that article, and that that makes the case better than I could about, you know, the impact of him as a as the draft. Or we’ll we’ll check that out. But, first we will check out the constitutions. Penman. Dennis Rasmussen, I want to thank you very much for joining us to discuss your latest book. So congratulations on that. Thanks again.

25:59 Thanks for having. Me. All right. Thank you. And thank you all for joining us for this latest episode of, Scholar Talks in the America 250 series. Please, check out the other videos in our series and go ahead and click subscribe on our channel. Thanks.