{"id":5926,"date":"2007-01-23T12:47:21","date_gmt":"2007-01-23T17:47:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=5926"},"modified":"2013-02-11T14:38:04","modified_gmt":"2013-02-11T19:38:04","slug":"gouverneur-morris-we-the-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=5926","title":{"rendered":"Gouverneur Morris: \u201cWe the people \u2026\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I love the many anecdotes about <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gouverneur_Morris\">this man <\/a>&#8211; he seems quite likable, and yet also intimidating (the intellect, the fearlessness).  Just came across a quote in a book I&#8217;m reading and it made me laugh.  <\/p>\n<p>Morris, despite his wooden leg (or who knows, maybe <i>because <\/i>of it) was quite a womanizer.  The ladies loved him.  And he loved the ladies. He&#8217;s the one who took Hamilton&#8217;s dare: &#8220;Go over there and pat Washington on the back and say, &#8216;How&#8217;s it goin&#8217;, dude?'&#8221;  Morris, gamely, took the dare.  Went over and cuffed Washington on the arm, saying some genial friendly like thing &#8211; and Washington froze him with a frigid stare.  Morris never got over the humiliation of the moment.  If the story is true, Morris counted it as one of the worst moments of his life (this from a guy who had had his leg amputated, and had lost the use of his arm as a child).  That tells you how bad it was!  He and Washington were good friends, though, so I think that made Morris&#8217; social agony in the moment even worse.<\/p>\n<p>Many of Morris&#8217; fellow revolutionaries were a bit chagrined by the open-ness of his womanizing; a gentleman should be more discreet.  John Jay wrote the following in a letter to a friend:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Gouverneur&#8217;s leg has been a tax on my heart.  I am almost tempted to wish he had <u>lost something else<\/u>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Morris is a guy I think I would have liked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I love the many anecdotes about this man &#8211; he seems quite likable, and yet also intimidating (the intellect, the fearlessness). Just came across a quote in a book I&#8217;m reading and it made me laugh. Morris, despite his wooden &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=5926\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[33,1103,1908,174],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5926"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5926"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5926\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63875,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5926\/revisions\/63875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}