After attending King's College (now Columbia University) he studied law under Judge William Smith and earned admission to the bar.

Gouverneur Morris was born on the family estate, Morrisania, on the north side of the Harlem River, which was then in Westchester County but is now part of the Bronx.

Morris, a gifted scholar, enrolled at King's College (now Columbia University in New York City) at age 12.

Morris's mother, a Loyalist, gave his family's estate, which was across the Harlem River from Manhattan, to the British for military use.

[6] In 1779, he was defeated for re-election to Congress, largely because his advocacy of a strong central government was at odds with the decentralist views prevalent in New York.

"[8][9] Catherine Drinker Bowen, in her 1966 book Miracle at Philadelphia, called Morris the committee's "amanuensis," meaning that it was his pen that was responsible for most of the draft and its final polished form.

Duff Cooper wrote of Morris that although he "had warmly espoused the cause of the colonists in the American War of Independence, he retained a cynically aristocratic view of life and a profound contempt for democratic theories.

[14] Madison's summary of Morris's speech at the Convention on 11 July 1787 stated that his view "relative to the Western Country had not changed his opinion on that head.

His reason given for that was regional: "The Busy haunts of men not the remote wilderness, was the proper School of political Talents.

As a matter of principle, he often vigorously defended the right of anyone to practice his chosen religion without interference, and he argued to include such language in the Constitution.

[18] Based on this discovery, an application was submitted to the State of Pennsylvania to install a historic marker on Market and 3rd Street in Philadelphia to honor Miss Dally and the location where the "Penman of the Constitution" boarded.

Compare the free regions of the Middle States, where a rich & noble cultivation marks the prosperity & happiness of the people, with the misery & poverty which overspread the barren wastes of Va. Maryd.

The Houses in this city [Philadelphia] are worth more than all the wretched slaves which cover the rice swamps of South Carolina.

According to Madison, Morris felt that the U.S. Constitution's purpose was to protect the rights of humanity, which was incongruous with promoting slavery: The admission of slaves into the Representation when fairly explained comes to this: that the inhabitant of Georgia and S. C. 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 & damns them to the most cruel bondages, shall have more votes in a Govt.

instituted for protection of the rights of mankind, than the Citizen of Pa. or N. Jersey who views with a laudable horror, so nefarious a practice.

His diaries during that time have become a valuable chronicle of the French Revolution and capture much of that era's turbulence and violence and document his affairs with women there.

Compared to Thomas Jefferson, Morris was far more critical of the French Revolution and considerably more sympathetic to the deposed queen consort, Marie Antoinette.

[23] Commenting on her grandfather's sometimes Tory-minded outlook of the world, Anne Cary Morris stated, "His creed was rather to form the government to suit the condition, character, manners, and habits of the people.

In France this opinion led him to take the monarchical view, firmly believing that a republican form of government would not suit the French character.

"[25] On one occasion, when Morris "found himself the center of a hostile mob in favor of hanging him on the nearest lamppost, he unfastened his wooden leg, brandished it above his head, and proclaimed himself an American who had lost a limb fighting for liberty," upon which "[t]he mob's suspicions melted into enthusiastic cheers" (even though, as noted above, Morris had in fact lost his leg as a result of a carriage accident).

[27][28] After a change of the French government and after Morris was replaced as minister, his successor, James Monroe, secured Paine's release.

He returned to the United States in 1798 and was elected in April 1800, as a Federalist, to the U.S. Senate, filling the vacancy caused by the resignation of James Watson.

He even pushed for secession to create a separate New York-New England Confederation because he saw the war as a result of slaveholders, who wanted to expand their territory.

[43] Morris died on November 6, 1816, after he had caused himself internal injuries and an infection while using a piece of whale baleen as a catheter in an attempt to clear a blockage in his urinary tract.