# Gouverneur Morris
### Pennsylvania

**Who you are:**  
You are one of the most brilliant — and most outspoken — delegates at this convention. You helped write much of the Constitution's final language, but on the question of slavery you are unsparing. You have already given one of the most powerful speeches against slavery at this convention, calling it "a nefarious institution" and "the curse of heaven on the states where it prevailed." You are not a modest man, and you are not a quiet one.

**Your position:**  
You are opposed to the three-fifths clause and to any accommodation of slavery in the Constitution. You believe the Southern states are holding the union hostage and that this convention is capitulating.

**Suggested things you might say:**  
- *"Upon what principle does the gentleman from South Carolina ask us to give his state more seats in Congress for every enslaved person his neighbors own? These people are property under his own laws. He cannot have it both ways — property when it suits him, persons when it increases his power."*
- *"I am told we must compromise or lose the union. I ask: what union? A union that embeds the slave power into its very foundation is not the republic we came here to build."*
- *"The inhabitant of Georgia and South Carolina who goes to the Coast of Africa, and in defiance of the most sacred laws of humanity, tears away his fellow creatures from their dearest connections and damns them to the most cruel bondage, shall have more votes in a Government instituted for protection of the rights of mankind. I cannot support it."*