Gouverneur Morris and the “determined resolution”

Alas, I can’t find any poetry written at the Constitutional Convention of 1787.

But there were verses composed during Virginia’s ratifying convention in June 1788.

Virginia was crucial to the prospects of the U.S. of A. It was the oldest colony, the largest state, the bridge from the mid-Atlantic to the three more southern states. It was the home of the only man many Americans could picture as the new chief executive, George Washington.

The convention included some strong proponents of the new Constitution, like James Madison and Edmund Randolph, and some powerful opponents, like Patrick Henry and George Mason.

Gouverneur Morris traveled south from Pennsylvania to watch the debate in Richmond. While there, he stayed with a lawyer named John Marshall. Both men were strong Federalists.

Morris left Marshall with an “Extempora” poetic comment on the proceedings:

The State’s determined resolution
was to discuss the Constitution
For this the members come together,
melting with zeal and sultry weather
And here to their eternal praise,
to find it’s hist’ry spend three days
The next three days they nobly roam
thro ev’ry region far from home
Call in the Grecian, Swiss, Italian,
the Roman, Dutch rapscallion
Fellows who freedom never knew,
to tell us what we ought to do
The next three days they kindly dip yee
deep in the River Mississippi
Nine days thus spent ere they begin,
let us suppose them fairly in
and then resolve my gentle friend,
how many months before they end.

This verse remained in Marshall’s papers and wasn’t published until the twentieth century.