[Transcriber's notes:
blank pages have been removed
Inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained. Corrected obvious printer errors:
page 51, "comparision" changed to "comparison." ("A comparison of the men ....")
page 270, "Tuilleries" changed to "Tuileries." ( "... the poor king was driven from the Tuileries.")
page 315, missing " added. ("... à casser les œufs.""")
page 365, missing "." added. ("Dalrymple, General, 125.")
page 366, "De Lancys" changed to "De Lanceys." ("De Lanceys, 16, 21, 45.")
page 368, "salôn" changed to "salon." ("literary life of the salon")]
American Statesmen
EDITED BY
JOHN T. MORSE, JR
American Statesmen
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS
BY
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1892
Copyright, 1888,
By THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
All rights reserved.
The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company.
INTRODUCTION.
Two generations ago the average Americanbiographer was certainly a marvel of turgid andaimless verbosity; and the reputations of ourearly statesmen have in no way proved theirvitality more clearly than by surviving theirentombment in the pages of the authors whoimmediately succeeded them. No one of thefounders of the Constitution has suffered morein this respect than has he who was perhapsthe most brilliant, although by no means thegreatest, of the whole number,—GouverneurMorris.
Jared Sparks, hitherto Morris's sole biographer,wrote innumerable volumes on Americanhistory, many of which are still very valuable,and some of them almost indispensable, to thestudent. The value, however, comes whollyfrom the matter; Mr. Sparks is not only avery voluminous writer, but he is also a quiteabnormally dull one. His "Life of GouverneurMorris" is typical of most of his work.[Pg vi]He collected with great industry facts aboutMr. Morris, and edited a large number of hisletters and state papers, with numerous selections,not always well chosen, from his Diary.Other merits the book has none, and it hasone or two marked faults. He failed to understandthat a biographer's duties are notnecessarily identical with those of a professionaleulogist; but for this he is hardly to blame, asall our writers then seemed to think it necessaryto shower indiscriminate praise on everydead American—whether author, soldier,politician, or what not—save only BenedictArnold. He was funnily unconscious of hisown prolix dullness; and actually makes profuseapologies for introducing extracts fromMorris's bright, interesting writings into hisown drearily platitudinous pages, hoping that"candor and justice" will