Community members gathered at P.S. 83 in Morris Park to pay tribute to Gouverneur Morris, a son of the Bronx who contributed greatly to the United States’ founding 250 years ago.
The May 15 event, organized by the Foundation for the Revival of Classical Culture, Morris Park Business Improvement District (BID) and the P.S. 83 student chorus, featured a reading of passages from the Declaration of Independence, songs and tales from the founding era, and a lecture by Tim Schantz of the Philadelphia Historic Society, who highlighted Morris’ significance as an early abolitionist and a “Penman of the Constitution.”
Schantz explained that Gouverneur Morris was an exceptional thinker, a child prodigy who graduated from then-Kings College, now Columbia University, at age 16. In Morris’ adult life, he was known for speaking out against slavery and pushing to have enslaved people counted under the law as full individuals, not as property or some other lesser status.
Though most others of his time disagreed, Morris wrote, “We shall learn to consider all men as our brethren, being equally children of the Universal Parent [of God].”
He also called on the newly formed country to embrace people of all nationalities, religions and statuses, especially the most vulnerable. Schantz said that Morris’ own words would be fitting on the Statue of Liberty: “America shall receive to her bosom and comfort and cheer the oppressed, the miserable and the poor of every nation and of every clime.”
Physically, Morris was easily recognizable for his wooden leg, the result of a carriage accident, which made him easily identifiable in the artwork of the time.
All in all, Morris was “a local hero of the Bronx” who had “a vision well beyond his time,” Schantz said.
The rest of the event tapped into the texts and music of early America. The selections included “Gun Hill Raids,” a song from a child’s perspective on the American Revolution, and “Buttermilk Hill,” traditionally sung by women left behind as the men went to war.
P.S. 83 students read the preamble to the Constitution in English, Spanish and Albanian and lead the audience in a sing-along of “Yankee Doodle.”
The event marked not simply the country’s 250th birthday but its founding strive towards equality, inclusion and governance by the people — not by kings — which made Gouverneur Morris, as Schantz put it, “one of our first true Americans.”
Reach Emily Swanson at eswanson@schnepsmedia.com or (646) 717-0015. For more coverage, subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram!
