Gouverneur Morris (1752-1816) was an American statesman who represented Pennsylvania in the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and was an author of large sections of the Constitution of the United States. In 1775, he was elected to represent his family estate in the New York Provincial Congress, an extralegal assembly dedicated to achieving independence. He went to Europe on business in 1789 and served as Minister Plenipotentiary to France from 1792 to 1794. His diaries written during that time have become an invaluable chronicle of the French Revolution, capturing much of the turbulence and violence of that era. He returned to the United States in 1798 and was elected in 1800 as a Federalist to the United States Senate.