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Gentleman
Revolutionary: Gouverneur Morris, the Rake Who Wrote the Constitution by
Richard Brookhiser Rating: •• (Mildly Recommended) |
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Cheerful I had heard Morris’ name, but knew little
else about this Founding Father until I read Richard Brookhiser’s new
biography, Gentleman
Revolutionary. This cheerful man had a huge impact on the founding of the
United States, and thanks to Brookhiser’s book, more people can now learn
plenty about Morris. Here’s an excerpt from the end of the book (pp. 214-5): Good principles make a man admirable; a good style
makes him arresting. Morris's sparkling prose still shines after two
centuries. Reading it, we hear a voice—so vivid, We imagine the speaker has
just left the room, and so delightful that we want him to come back. The
moral source of his style is confidence: he knows who he is, and that he is
right; he knows, from long experience, that he will please most of his
auditors; and he does not care about those he does not please. Morris performed two special services as a public
man. As Jefferson immortalized the Continental Congress's view of first
principles, so Morris had applied his finish to the Constitutional
Conventions view of fundamental law. Morris did not leave his country on
paper: he worked to plan a canal that should make it bloom. A handful of
other men might have buffed the Constitution almost as smoothly, but he was
the one who did it; a handful of New Yorkers pushed for the Erie Canal—he was
one of the most eloquent and energetic. For the rest, he gave many hours of
intelligent and industrious labor as a New Yorker, a financier, and a
diplomat. This more than compensates for his bad ideas arid outrageous
advice. He performed one more service that became known
only after his death. His diary bore witness to another Revolution and
Founding that did not go so well. Many other writers have told Frances story,
but his record—published in extracts in the nineteenth century, and fully
only on the eve of World War II—is indelible. Yet there is another sense in which he had not
lived in vain. Morris was an important founding father, but he was something
else, useful in a different way to his friends and acquaintances. He was a
gentleman. In his case, that is a moral even more than a social term. Born to
riches and power, he had also learned to live well. Nature gave him a buoyant
and appreciative temperament, but he had fostered those qualities, despite
severe trials. His conduct, from his teens on, is marked by courage,
courtesy, and warmth—by affection for his friends, sympathy for the
afflicted, and disdain for bullies. His example is still useful. The founding
fathers can show us how to live as citizens. Morris can show us how to enjoy
life's blessings and bear its hurts with humanity and good spirits. "At
sixty-four," he concluded his letter, "there is little to desire
and less to apprehend. Let me add that, however grave the form and substance
of this letter, the lapse of so many years have not impaired the gayety of
your friend. Could you gratify him with your company and conversation, you
would find in him still the gayety of inexperience and the frolic of
youth."" His gout became crippling in the fall. His diary
entries ceased early in October, with the first frost, and he made a new will
at the end of the month. David Ogden and Martin Wilkins were not mentioned.
Another nephew got a bequest, and yet another was told that if the principal
heir, Gouverneur Morris II, should die young, he might inherit the estate, so
long as he assumed the Morris name and arms. He gave his wife a life interest
in his property, plus an annuity of $2,600 a year ($32,500 today). If she
married again, her annuity would be increased to $3,200, "to defray the
increased expenditure, which may attend that condition." "Sixty-four years ago," he said as death
approached, "it pleased the Almighty to call me into existence—here, on
this spot, in this very room; and now shall I complain that he is pleased to
call me hence?" The end was painful. He suffered a blockage of his
urinary tract, and he tried to clear the obstruction with whalebone, no doubt
from one of his wife's corsets. But he had known pain before. On his last
day, November 6, he quoted poetry—not his own, but Grays Elegy Written
in a Country Churchyard: For
who, to dumb Forgetfulness a prey, This
pleasing, anxious being e'er resigned, Left
the warm precincts of the cheer fill
day, Nor
cast one longing lingering look behind?" This short biography fills in a huge gap
in knowledge about a remarkable character, and a fitting title for who he
was, a Gentleman
Revolutionary. Steve Hopkins, December 22, 2003 |
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ã 2004 Hopkins and Company, LLC The
recommendation rating for this book appeared in the January 2004
issue of Executive
Times URL
for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Gentleman
Revolutionary.htm For
Reprint Permission, Contact: Hopkins &
Company, LLC • 723 North Kenilworth Avenue • Oak Park, IL 60302 E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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