Morris, GOUVERNEUR, an American statesman, was born in Morrisania, New York, 31st January 1752, graduated at King's (now Columbia) College in 1768, and was admitted to the bar in 1771. He early showed a talent for finance, and took an active share in the political affairs of the Revolution period. In May 1780 he lost a leg through a fall from his carriage in Philadelphia. From 1781 to 1784 he was assistant to Robert Morris, superintendent of the national finance. In 1787 he took his seat as a delegate in the convention that framed the United States constitution, and the year after sailed for Paris, where for two years he devoted himself to private business. The greater part of the year 1791 he spent in England as a confidential agent of Washington's, and next served till August 1794 as United States minister to France. Returning to America in 1798, he sat for New York in the United States senate from 1800 to 1803, and was chairman of the New York canal commissioners from 1810 till his death, 6th November 1816.
See Memoirs of Gouverneur Morris, with Selections from his Papers and Correspondence, by Jared Sparks (3 vols. Boston, 1832), and Gouverneur Morris, by Theodore Roosevelt, in the 'American Statesman' series (1888), also The Diary and Letters of Gouverneur Morris, edited by his granddaughter, Anne Cary Morris (2 vols. 1889). The last contains many interesting glimpses of Paris in the fever of Revolution.