This is an I-Heart podcast.

And we continue with our American stories.

Our next story is about a founding father who wrote the most famous seven words in

American history, we the people of the United States. Those words, of course, appearing in the

preamble of the U.S. Constitution. Dennis C. Rasmussen is a professor of political science at

Syracuse University. He's also a Jack Miller Center fellow. Dennis is also the author of the

Constitution's Penman, Governor Morris, and the creation of America's Basic Charter. Let's take a

listen to the story. Governor Morris is relatively little known today, but he is one of the most

important and fascinating figures of the American founding era. One scholar declared recently that Morris may have been the most colorful individual in all of North America at the time of the founding.

And frankly, that sounds about right.

Morris was a peg-legged ladies man with a really wicked sardonic sense of humor.

He was without question one of the funniest of the founders, although granted that's perhaps not a super high bar.

Morris also led an immensely full life. He was originally from New York. He came from a wealthy family that owned most of the southwest part of what's now the Bronx. As a young man, he helped

to push New York to belatedly join the independence movement, and he's one of the principal architects

of the first New York State Constitution.

I mentioned that Morris had a wooden leg. He had his leg amputated when he was 28 years old as a result of a bad carriage accident, although there were always rumors throughout his life that he'd in

fact shattered the leg jumping out a bedroom window in order to escape the wrath of an ill-timed

husband. In 1778, Morris became a delegate to the Continental Congress,

and spent that terrible winter at Valley Forge with George Washington and his troops,

where he was sent to oversee the army's needs.

He was also a signer of the Articles of Confederation,

the nation's first stab at a national constitution,

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