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| | The Constitution has a Preamble, which was added at the last minuted by Gouverneur Morris, a delegate from Pennsylvania who wrote the final text of the Constitution as part of his duties on the Committee of Style. | | The Constitution has a Preamble, which was added at the last minuted by Gouverneur Morris, a delegate from Pennsylvania who wrote the final text of the Constitution as part of his duties on the Committee of Style. |
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| − | "Gouverneur" was the French (Huguenot) maiden last name of his mother, and is not to be confused with "governor". Gouverneur Morris was never a governor, but he was homeschooled by tutors and entered college (Columbia University, then called King's College) at the age of 12. He was brilliant and is sometimes called the "Penman of the Constitution." He gave more speeches than anyone else at the Constitutional Convention, a total of 173. He favored a stronger national government. On the personal side, Gouverneur Morris lost one of his legs as a young man, due to a freak carriage accident (there were no cars then). He did not marry until he was 57 years old, | + | "Gouverneur" was the French (Huguenot) maiden last name of his mother, and is not to be confused with "governor". Gouverneur Morris was never a governor, but he was homeschooled by tutors and entered college (Columbia University, then called King's College) at the age of 12. He was brilliant and is sometimes called the "Penman of the Constitution." He gave more speeches than anyone else at the Constitutional Convention, a total of 173. He favored a stronger national government. On the personal side, Gouverneur Morris lost one of his legs as a young man, due to a freak carriage accident (there were no cars then). He frequently attended social events and had a terrific sense of humor, but did not marry until he was 57 years old. He and his wife had a son, before Gouverneur Morris passed away at age 64. |
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| − | He wrote the Preamble to the Constitution, which introduces the document like a fine ornament:
| + | Gouverneur Morris wrote the Preamble to the Constitution, which introduces the document like a fine ornament: |
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| | + | :We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. |
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| | + | The Preamble was incorporated into a song which schoolchildren sang in the 1970s.<ref>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHp7sMqPL0g</ref> Notice the artful phrase "to form a more perfect union," which became one of the most famous phrases in all of the founding documents of the United States. |
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| | + | == Records of the Constitutional Convention == |
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| | + | Although the rules of the Constitutional Convention required that everyone destroy their notes, such that only the Constitution itself was supposed to survive, some of the notes kept by participants were not destroyed and are used today to interpret the Constitution. Most notably, James Madison preserved his very detailed notes which he took during the proceeding, and they were published after his death decades later. |
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| | + | The surviving records of the debates and internal proceedings of the Constitutional Convention are available for free on the internet.<ref>http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/tocs/toc.html</ref> They should be used (even bookmarked) in order to complete some of the homework assignments in this course. |
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| | == The ''Federalist Papers'' == | | == The ''Federalist Papers'' == |