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Who really said it

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

Disputed — Washington as recalled by Gouverneur Morris Gouverneur Morris 1752–1816 · Constitutional Convention delegate; author of New York's official 1799 eulogy for Washington
Disputed Free to reuse

These sentences survive in exactly one place: Gouverneur Morris’s Oration, upon the Death of General Washington, delivered at New York on 31 December 1799 and printed there in 1800, where Morris presents them as Washington’s words spoken informally before the Federal Convention had even reached a quorum. James Madison’s Convention notes have nothing like them — Wikiquote records that they are absent from Madison’s summary of 25 May 1787 — and Henry Cabot Lodge concluded the wording was Morris’s own — while George Bancroft accepted the passage as genuine.

Last verified 27 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“It is too probable that no plan we propose will be adopted. Perhaps another dreadful conflict is to be sustained” Attributed to George Washington, but documented only in Gouverneur Morris, "An Oration, upon the Death of General Washington" (New-York: John Furman, 1800), 20–21 — a eulogy delivered 31 December 1799. The words do not appear in Madison's Convention notes; Henry Cabot Lodge judged the language Morris's own, though George Bancroft accepted it as genuine. — Quotle.info

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to George Washington. Use the credit shown above instead.

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Provenance

The eulogy that is the only source

Work
An Oration, upon the Death of General Washington
Author
Gouverneur Morris
Delivered
New York City, 31 December 1799, at the request of the Corporation of the City of New-York
Printed
New-York: printed by John Furman, opposite the City Hall, 1800 — passage at pp. 20–21

AMERICANS! let the opinion then delivered by the greatest and best of men, be ever present to your remembrance. He was collected within himself. His countenance had more than usual solemnity — his eye was fixed, and seemed to look into futurity. “It is (said he) too probable that no plan we propose will be adopted. Perhaps another dreadful conflict is to be sustained. If to please the people, we offer what we ourselves disapprove, how can we afterwards defend our work? Let us raise a standard to which the wise and the honest can repair. The event is in the hand of God.” — This was the patriot voice of WASHINGTON; and this the constant tenor of his conduct. Oration, pp. 20–21

Transcribed from the 1800 New-York printing; eighteenth-century typography normalised. Note what Morris says a few lines earlier: “It is a question, previous to the first meeting, what course shall be pursued” — he places the remark before the Convention convened, which is why no Convention record could contain it.

Printed pamphlet, New-York, 1800
Read the 1800 printing at the Internet Archive
Morris's oration in Farrand's Records of the Federal Convention, vol. 3

Paper trail

Public domain

The text quoted here comes from the 1800 New-York printing of Morris's oration ↗. Published in 1800 and written in English, it is long out of copyright in the United States; Lodge's George Washington, quoted above, is likewise public domain and freely readable at Project Gutenberg.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

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Fact-check

How the quotation drifted

Nobody invented this line out of thin air — Morris was a delegate reporting a colleague. What has drifted is everything around the words: where they were said, who was presiding, and how they end.

Respectfully Quoted (Library of Congress, 1989) wrong body

The LOC's own reference book prints the passage as “remarks at the first Continental Congress, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, May 14, 1787” and adds “Washington was the presiding officer.” No body called the First Continental Congress was sitting in 1787 — the meeting in question was the Federal Convention. See entry 340 ↗.

Morris himself, and everyone downstream not yet president

Morris writes “He is their President” of a moment he simultaneously dates “previous to the first meeting.” Lodge points out the contradiction ↗: if Washington said this at all, he said it before the delegates had assembled and elected him.

John Fiske, The Critical Period of American History invented scene

Lodge records that Fiske “describes Washington as rising from his president's chair and addressing the convention with great solemnity” ↗ — and answers that there is “no authority whatever” for it.

Quote-graphic sites mangled tail

The line is routinely served as “…the rest is in the hands of God,” as here ↗. The 1800 printing reads “The event is in the hand of God.”

Pages citing “the opening of the Convention, 25 May 1787” not in the record

Wikiquote notes the words were not recorded in Madison's summary of the events of 25 May 1787 ↗, and Lodge argues from Madison's manuscript that Washington entered the Convention's debates only once, over Gorham's amendment.

The sentiment may well be Washington's — Lodge allowed that Morris “no doubt” heard him urge it “frequently and forcibly” — but the sentence you can actually quote was written by Gouverneur Morris, for a funeral ↗.

Context

The waiting week in Philadelphia

Washington reached Philadelphia on 13 May 1787, the day before the Convention was due to open, and a week went by before enough states arrived to make a quorum. In that idle week, Henry Cabot Lodge writes, there was “some informal discussion among the members present” ↗ between delegates who wanted an entirely new constitution and those who wanted only half-measures. Morris’s eulogy freezes one moment out of those unrecorded days.

The passage went on to become civic scripture — though what the stonemasons chose was its closing pair of sentences, not the opening lines this page is keyed to. “Let us raise a standard to which the wise and the honest can repair. The event is in the hand of God.” is carved across the attic of the Washington Square Arch in New York ↗, and Wikiquote records the passage engraved above the Fifteenth Street entrance to the Department of Commerce building and on a bronze plaque at Constitution Hall ↗ in Washington, D.C. — three permanent inscriptions resting on one eulogist’s memory.

The language is no doubt that of Morris, speaking from memory and in a highly rhetorical vein.

Lodge's case against the quotation, in three moves

Washington spoke once. Lodge cites Madison’s own bracketed note that when Washington took the floor for Gorham’s amendment “it was the only occasion on which the president entered at all into the discussions of the convention” — and says he examined the manuscript at the State Department himself.

Morris contradicts himself. The 1800 printing reads “He is their President. It is a question, previous to the first meeting, what course shall be pursued” (Lodge quotes it more loosely, as “previous to their first meeting”) — making Washington president before the delegates had met to elect him. Lodge calls this “a fair illustration of the loose and rhetorical character of the passage.”

The staging was invented later. Lodge notes that John Fiske described Washington rising from the president’s chair to address the Convention, and answers that there is “no authority whatever” for it. Lodge’s own verdict is generous but firm: the words are Morris’s presentation of a sentiment he had genuinely heard Washington press.

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Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

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Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Morris's oration, 1800 printing (full scan)archive.org

The primary artifact: the pamphlet printed at New York by John Furman in 1800. The passage sits on pp. 20–21.
Gouverneur Morris: Oration upon Washington (31 Dec 1799)consource.org

The oration as reprinted in Farrand's Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, vol. 3 — a clean modern transcription of the passage.
George Washington — Disputed quotationsen.wikiquote.org

Files this passage under Disputed, names Morris's oration as the source, and lists the Bancroft-vs-Lodge split and the three public inscriptions.
Henry Cabot Lodge, George Washington, vol. IIgutenberg.org

The fullest sceptical analysis: Lodge's chapter and its long footnote on why the wording must be Morris's, based on Madison's manuscript notes.
Respectfully Quoted, entry 340 (George Washington)bartleby.com

The Library of Congress reference book's entry — which prints the quotation but mislabels the venue as the First Continental Congress.
Did George Washington actually say the words on the Arch?washingtonsquareparkblog.com

A readable summary of the dispute, weighing Bancroft's acceptance against Lodge's rejection and Madison's silence.

The eulogist

The man who actually wrote the sentence

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.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source

Gouverneur Morris, An Oration, upon the Death of General Washington, Delivered at the Request of the Corporation of the City of New-York, on the 31st Day of December, 1799 (New-York: Printed by John Furman, 1800), 20–21. Reprinted in Max Farrand, ed., The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, vol. 3 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1911). No source earlier than this oration is known.

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Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘It is too probable that no plan we propose will be adopted. Perhaps another dreadful conflict is to be sustained’?” Last verified 27 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/it-is-too-probable-that-no-plan-we-propose-will-be-adopted/

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