Gouverneur Morris (January 31, 1752 – November 6, 1816)
“Mr. Gouverneur Morris is one of the Genius’s in whom every species of talents combine to render him conspicuous and flourishing in public debate. … No Man has more wit, nor can anyone engage the attention more than Mr. Morris.” – William Pierce (the Revolutionary War officer/Constitutional framer, not the 20th century white supremacist).
Well-named Founding Father; famous peg-leg (jumped from a lover’s window escaping a jealous husband); one-legged dancing enthusiast; classically educated polygot; Philadelphian; proponent of separation of powers; abolitionist (slavery is the “curse of heaven); patriot; outspoken nationalist; finisher/stylist/arranger of the Constitution (penned the preamble: “We the People, yadayadayada); builder of the Erie Canal; member of NY’s special militia despite numerous physical handicaps; creator of Manhattan’s street grid; champion of a free citizenry and independent nation (despite being born a wealthy aristocrat); idiosyncratic rake; unabashed womanizer; diplomatic agent in England; U.S. minister to France during the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror; U.S. senator; Continental Congress server; proposer of the decimal system for the national currency; inventor of the word cent.
The goodly Gouverneur said, waaaaay back in 1787….
“The rich will strive to establish their dominion and enslave the rest. They always did. They always will… They will have the same effect here as elsewhere, if we do not, by (the power of) government, keep them in their proper spheres.”
Horrifyingly, Morris died at age 64 after – in an act of desperation and agony – sticking a sliver of polished whale bone up his penis and into his urinary tract in an attempt to relieve a bladder blockage. Science!