Rare Book Monthly
Book Catalogue Reviews - June - 2003 Issue
Gentleman Revolutionary, By Richard Brookhiser
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Such accounts give us more picture and less varnish. Recognizing that so much verbal varnish has been applied to much of American history is an important step to seeing beneath its many layers. The facts are usually there. You just have to both know where to look and to be open-minded about what you find. Great book collections can be built on the pursuit of such truths.
Mr. Morris, who was born into the colonial aristocracy, was deemed to be very intelligent and was educated accordingly. By birth he was placed close to power and by physical proximity, close to the epicenter of English control and later the emerging American state. He was a contemporary of Washington, Hamilton and Burr and a skilled lawyer and advocate who served the nascent American government in various capacities. His life makes an interesting story as much for what he lived through as what he did.
Gouverneur Morris deserves to be the subject of several important book collections and to find his place peripherally in hundreds of others. In the ÆD the number of records that directly relate (including his name somewhere within their descriptions) are 64. But he was also a party to the lives of both Adamss, Jefferson, Washington, Madison and Monroe and to other important figures such as Aaron Burr, Dewitt Clinton, John Jay, Rufus King, Robert R. Livingston and Thomas Paine. Read this entertaining and informative book for an interesting perspective on this period. Build a collection of books and ephemera based on his life and the lives of his contemporaries to both know the period well and perhaps to ultimately add your own insights.
Mr. Brookhiser has also written about the Adamss, Alexander Hamilton and George Washington. In fact on Amazon there are ten titles by him currently available. He is prolific as well as entertaining.(br)
While in New York recently I took the No. 6 subway up to its second stop in the Bronx in order to see where Mr. Morris is buried. You'll find him on 138th Street in the family plot at St. Anne'e Church. Today the church provides day care and meals to many local children who stand nearby Mr. Morris' grave without knowing of his substanial accomplishments. Looking down 138th there is a sense of tough reality but every person I asked for directions to St. Anne's was very kind and helpful. Finally, a small portion of the property around the church retains an open feeling that Mr. Morris, when he attended church there, would have appreciated.
