Morris is assisted during his tenure as Superintendent by his friend and assistant Gouverneur Morris (no relation).

He proposes a national economic system in a document called "On Public Credit".

This is the basis for Hamilton's plan of the same name submitted much later to Congress.

The Morrises propose to make the American currency a decimal currency, a progressive idea at the time.

On January 15, 1782, Robert Morris drafts a proposal that he later presents to the Continental Congress to recommend the establishment of a national mint and decimal coinage.

However, the United States Mint will not be established until 1792.

Oliver Ellsworth had joined the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in May 1787 as a delegate from Connecticut along with Roger Sherman and William Samuel Johnson.

More than half of the fifty-five delegates are lawyers, eight of whom, including both Ellsworth and Sherman, have previous experience as judges conversant with legal discourse. 

Ellsworth takes an active part in the proceedings beginning on June 20, when he proposes the use of the name the United States to identify the government under the authority of the Constitution.

The words "United States" had already been used in the Declaration of Independence and Articles of Confederation as well as Thomas Paine's The American Crisis.

It is Ellsworth's proposal to retain the earlier wording to sustain the emphasis on a federation rather than a single national entity.

Three weeks earlier, on May 30, 1787, Edmund Randolph of Virginia had moved to create a "national government" consisting of a supreme legislative, an executive and a judiciary.

Ellsworth accepts Randolph's notion of a threefold division, but moves to strike the phrase "national government."

From this day forward the "United States" is the official title used in the Convention to designate the government, and this usage will remain in effect ever since.

The complete name, "the United States of America," had already been featured by Paine, and its inclusion in the Constitution is the work of Gouverneur Morris when he makes the final editorial changes in the Constitution.

Robert Morris is elected to the Constitutional Convention in 1787.

He arranges to have Gouverneur Morris appointed to the Pennsylvania delegation.

Although Robert Morris says little at the Convention, Gouverneur and his lawyer, James Wilson, are two of the three most talkative men there.

Both oppose slavery during the Convention.

Gouverneur Morris writes the polished draft of the Constitution.

While it is widely known at the time that Morris is active behind the scenes, his only significant public role of record during the Convention is to nominate his friend George Washington as its President.

His nomination of Washington is done to end any questions as he is the only other person considered for that role by the leaders of the new country.

In this year, the Constitutional Convention declares that there shall be no religious criteria for holding public offices in the newly independent United States of America.

In September 1787, the Constitutional Convention at Philadelphia issues the Constitution of the United States of America and elects George Washington president of Convention.

Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison, in an effort to persuade New York to ratify the Constitution, in 1787 and 1788 have published a series of essays on the Constitution and republican government in New York newspapers, written under the pseudonym “Publius” and collected and published in book form as The Federalist; or, The New Constitution (1788). (The series' correct title is The Federalist; the title The Federalist Papers will not emerge until the twentieth century.)

Hamilton has recruited collaborators for the Federalist Papers project.

He enlisted John Jay, who after four strong essays (Federalist Nos. 2, 3, 4, and 5), fell ill and contributed only one more essay, Federalist No. 64, to the series.

He also distills his case into a pamphlet in the spring of 1788, An Address to the People of the State of New-York; Hamilton will cite it approvingly in Federalist No. 85 (August, 1788).

James Madison, present in New York as a Virginia delegate to the Confederation Congress, is recruited by Hamilton and Jay, and becomes Hamilton's major collaborator.

Gouverneur Morris and William Duer were also apparently considered; Morris had turned down the invitation, and Hamilton has rejected three essays written by Duer.

Duer later writes in support of the three Federalist authors under the name "Philo-Publius", or "Friend of Publius".

New York ratifies the United States Constitution on July 26 and becomes the eleventh U.S. state.

Thomas Paine, knowing that he would probably be arrested and executed, and following in the tradition of early eighteenth-century British deism, had written the first part of The Age of Reason before his arrest and imprisonment in France.

Assaulting organized "revealed" religion by combining a compilation of the many inconsistencies he found in the Bible with his own advocacy of deism, Paine calls for "free rational inquiry" into all subjects, especially religion.

The Age of Reason critique on institutionalized religion results in only a brief upsurge in deistic thought in America, but Paine is derided by the public and abandoned by his friends.

Regarded as an ally of the Girondins, he is seen with increasing disfavor by the Montagnards who were now in power, and in particular by Robespierre.

A decree is passed at the end of 1793 excluding foreigners from their places in the Convention (Anacharsis Cloots is also deprived of his place).

Paine is arrested and imprisoned in December 1793.

He protests and claims that he is a citizen of America, which is an ally of Revolutionary France, rather than of Great Britain, which is by this time at war with France.

However, Gouverneur Morris, the American ambassador to France, does not press his claim, and Paine will later write that Morris had connived at his imprisonment.

Paine thinks that George Washington has abandoned him, and he will quarrel with Washington for the rest of his life.

Years later, he will write a scathing open letter to Washington, accusing him of private betrayal of their friendship and public hypocrisy as general and president, and concluding the letter by saying "the world will be puzzled to decide whether you are an apostate or an impostor; whether you have abandoned good principles or whether you ever had any." (Paine, Thomas. "Letter to George Washington, July 30, 1796: "On Paine's Service to America"". Retrieved July 3, 2012.)

The original design for the streets of Manhattan above Houston Street and below 155th Street, which will put in place the rectangular grid plan of streets and lots that has defined Manhattan to this day, originated when the Common Council of New York City, seeking to provide for the orderly development and sale of the land of Manhattan between 14th Street and Washington Heights, but unable to do so itself for reasons of local politics and objections from property owners, asked the New York State Legislature to step in.

The legislature had appointed a commission with sweeping powers in 1807, and their plan was presented on March 22, 1811.

The Commissioners are Gouverneur Morris, a Founding Father of the United States; the lawyer John Rutherfurd, a former United States Senator; and the state Surveyor General, Simeon De Witt. Their chief surveyor is John Randel Jr., who is twenty years old when he begins the job.

The Commissioners' Plan is arguably the most famous use of the grid plan or "gridiron" and is considered by many historians to have been far-reaching and visionary.

Since its earliest days, the plan has been criticized for its monotony and rigidity, in comparison with irregular street patterns of older cities, but in recent years has been viewed more favorably by urban planners.

There are a few interruptions in the grid for public spaces, such as the Grand Parade between 23rd Street and 33rd Street, which is the precursor to Madison Square Park, as well as four squares named Bloomingdale, Hamilton, Manhattan, and Harlem, a wholesale market complex, and a reservoir.

Central Park, the massive urban greenspace in Manhattan running from Fifth Avenue to Eighth Avenue and from 59th Street to 110th Street, is not a part of the plan, as it will not be envisioned until the 1850s.