Gouverneur Morris

1752–1816 · Pennsylvania delegate to the Constitutional Convention · U.S. Minister to France, 1792–1794

Gouverneur Morris sat on the Convention’s Committee of Style and Arrangement and is credited with the final wording of the Preamble — the change from “We, the People of the States” to “We, the People of the United States” — which earned him the nickname Penman of the Constitution. He later served as Minister Plenipotentiary to France. When Washington died, the Corporation of the City of New York asked Morris to deliver the city’s official eulogy, and it is that oration, not any Convention record, that gives us this quotation.

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“It is too probable that no plan we propose will be adopted. Perhaps another dreadful conflict is to be sustained”

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