'GENTLEMAN REVOLUTIONARY' A bit player who knew how to turn a phrase

Gouverneur Morris didn't write the Constitution, but he did make it punchier.
By RAY LOCKER
ASSOCIATED PRESS
"Gentleman Revolutionary: Gouverneur Morris -- The Rake Who Wrote the Constitution," by Richard Brookhiser (The Free Press, $26)
If Americans are getting "founder fatigue," it's hardly any wonder, with bookstores jammed with titles about Benjamin Franklin or John Adams.
As topics go, it's hard to argue with. The men who ripped the 13 Colonies from British rule also created the world's most enduring democracy. Among historical figures, few did so much with so little.
Now the wave of books about the founders has turned into a tsunami, washing ashore the stories of some of the lesser players, including Richard Brookhiser's "Gentleman Revolutionary: Gouverneur Morris -- The Rake Who Wrote the Constitution."
What's next, "Caesar Rodney's Wild Ride: The Man Who Galloped Delaware Into the Union"?
Brookhiser comes to the party with a long history of books about the founders, including biographies of Alexander Hamilton and the Adams family. And he does a creditable job on Morris, a New Yorker whose family was long involved in local and national politics.
But while Brookhiser writes a short, amusing chronicle of Morris, the wit who became a peg-legged Casanova, he's also guilty of r & eacute;sum & eacute; padding. Although Morris helped James Madison write the Constitution, he was mostly a skilled rewrite man, excising a clause here, amplifying another there.
The fundamental freedoms of modern America didn't exactly spring from his pen but benefited from his blue pencil.
Morris' greatest impact, Brookhiser writes, is in tweaking the Constitution's preamble to emphasize the American people rather than the states, an edit with tremendous consequences.
"When Gouverneur Morris changed 'We the people of the states' into 'We the people,' he created a phrase that would ring throughout American history, defining every American as part of a single whole. Those three words may be his greatest legacy."
Pivotal events
Because this passage comes on page 92 of a 251-page book, the reader is less than halfway through when its subject has done his best work. But while Brookhiser does puff Morris into a greater figure than his role deserves, he also uses Morris to take us on a fun ride through some of the pivotal events of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
After the Constitution took effect and created a presidential democracy, Morris went to Paris, where he represented the United States during that nation's traumatic revolution.
As he tried to further a young democracy's diplomatic goals, Morris also watched as France became soaked in its own blood.
Morris is definitely a character worth knowing, although perhaps better through a long magazine article than a book.