Gouverneur Morris

by Theodore Roosevelt

These last acts were done by a body that had been elected, with increased power, to succeed the third Provincial Congress and provide for a new constitution. Just before this, Morris had been sent to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia to complain that the troops from New England were paid more largely than those from the other colonies; a wrong which was at once redressed, the wages of the latter being raised, and Morris returned to New York in triumph after only a week's absence.

The Constitutional Convention of New York led a most checkered life; for the victorious British chevied it up and down the State, hunting it in turn from every small town in which it thought to have found a peaceful haven of refuge. At last it rested in Fiskhill, such an out-of-the-way place as to be free from danger. The members were obliged to go armed, so as to protect themselves from stray marauding parties; and the number of delegates in attendance alternately dwindled and swelled in a wonderful manner, now resolving themselves into a committee of safety, and again resuming their functions as members of the convention.

The most important duties of the convention were intrusted to two committees. Of the first, which was to draft a plan for the Constitution, Morris, Jay, and Livingston were the three leading members, upon whom all the work fell; of the second, which was to devise means for the establishment of a state fund, Morris was the chairman and moving spirit.

He was also chairman of a committee which was appointed to look after the Tories, and prevent them from joining together and rising; and so numerous were they that the jails were soon choked with those of their number who, on account of their prominence or bitterness, were most obnoxious to the patriots. Also a partial system of confiscation of Tory estates was begun. So greatly were the Tories feared and hated, and so determined were the attempts to deprive them of even the shadow of a chance to do harm, by so much as a word, that the convention sent a memorial, drafted by Morris, to the Continental Congress, in which they made the very futile suggestion that it should take "some measures for expunging from the Book of Common Prayer such parts, and discontinuing in the congregations of all other denominations all such prayers, as interfere with the interests of the American cause." The resolution was not acted on; but another part of the memorial shows how the Church of England men were standing by the mother country, for it goes on to recite that "the enemies of America have taken great pains to insinuate into the minds of the Episcopalians that the church is in danger. We could wish the Congress would pass some resolve to quiet their fears, and we are confident that it would do essential service to the cause of America, at least in this State."

Morris's position in regard to the Tories was a peculiarly hard one, because among their number were many of his own relatives, including his elder brother. The family house, where his mother resided, was within the British lines; and not only did he feel the disapproval of such of his people as were loyalists, on the one side, but, on the other, his letters to his family caused him to be regarded with suspicion by the baser spirits in the American party. About this time one of his sisters died; the letter he then wrote to his mother is in the usual formal style of the time, yet it shows marks of deep feeling, and he takes occasion, while admitting that the result of the war was uncertain, to avow, with a sternness unusual to him, his intention to face all things rather than abandon the patriot cause. "The worst that can happen is to fall on the last bleak mountain of America; and he who dies there in defense of the injured rights of mankind is happier than his conqueror, more beloved by mankind, more applauded by his own heart." The letter closes by a characteristic touch, when he sends his love to "such as deserve it. The number is not great."

The committee on the constitution was not ready to report until March, 1777. Then the convention devoted itself solely to the consideration of the report, which, after several weeks' discussion, was adopted with very little change. Jay and Morris led the debate before the convention, as they had done previously in committee. There was perfect agreement upon the general principles. Freehold suffrage was adopted, and a majority of the freeholders of the State were thus the ultimate governing power. The executive, judicial, and legislative powers were separated sharply, as was done in the other States, and later on in the Federal Constitution as well. The legislative body was divided into two chambers.

It was over the executive branch that the main contest arose. It was conceded that this should be nominally single headed; that is, that there should be a governor. But the members generally could not realize how different was a governor elected by the people and responsible to them, from one appointed by an alien and higher power to rule over them, as in the colonial days. The remembrance of the contests with the royal governors was still fresh; and the mere name of governor frightened them. They had the same illogical fear of the executive that the demagogues of to-day (and some honest but stupid people, as well) profess to feel for a standing army. Men often let the dread of the shadow of a dead wrong frighten them into courting a living evil.

Morris himself was wonderfully clear-sighted and cool-headed. He did not let the memory of the wrong-doing of the royal governors blind him; he saw that the trouble with them lay, not in the power that they held, but in the source from which that power came. Once the source was changed, the power was an advantage, not a harm, to the State. Yet few or none of his companions could see this; and they nervously strove to save their new State from the danger of executive usurpation by trying to make the executive practically a board of men instead of one man, and by crippling it so as to make it ineffective for good, while at the same time dividing the responsibility, so that no one need be afraid to do evil. Above all, they were anxious to take away from the governor the appointment of the military and civil servants of the State.

Morris had persuaded the committee to leave the appointment of these officials to the governor, the legislature retaining the power of confirmation or rejection; but the convention, under the lead of Jay, rejected this proposition, and after some discussion adopted in its place the cumbrous and foolish plan of a "council of appointment," to consist of the governor and several senators. As might have been expected, this artificial body worked nothing but harm, and became simply a peculiarly odious political machine.

Again, Morris advocated giving the governor a qualified veto over the acts passed by the legislature; but instead of such a simple and straightforward method of legislative revision, the convention saw fit to adopt a companion piece of foolishness to the council of appointment, in the shape of the equally complicated and anomalous council of revision, consisting of the governor, chancellor, and judges of the supreme court, by whom all the acts of the legislature had to be revised before they could become laws. It is marvelous that these two bodies should have lived on so long as they did—over forty years.