The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Forsaken Founder: Gouverneur Morris, the Unsung Patriot Who Wrote the Constitution, Stood Up to Slavery, and Survived the Reign of Terror by Scott S. Greenberger

Episode Date: September 29, 2026

The Forsaken Founder: Gouverneur Morris, the Unsung Patriot Who Wrote the Constitution, Stood Up to Slavery, and Survived the Reign of Terror by Scott S. Greenberger https://www.amazon.com/Forsaken-Founder-Gouverneur-Constitution-Survived/dp/1668094940 Uncover the little-known story of Gouverneur Morris, the brilliant yet overlooked Founding Father whose visionary ideas from writing key components of the US Constitution to helping create America’s first bank to holding an unwavering stance against slavery shaped the nation’s future. When George Washington and the Continental Army faced starvation, he turned to Gouverneur Morris to help devise a plan to provision the troops. When the fledgling nation needed a financial system to sustain the Revolution, Morris again was called upon to help design its first national bank and currency. When the compromises between North and South, large states and small, had to be stitched into a single governing document, the task of shaping the Constitution’s final language fell largely to him. At the Constitutional Convention, Morris spoke more often than any delegate save James Madison—and more forcefully against slavery. When Alexander Hamilton died in a tragic duel, his widow insisted that Hamilton’s closest friend, Gouverneur Morris, deliver the eulogy. Morris continued to serve the republic after its founding as envoy to France during the Revolution and Reign of Terror, and as an early visionary who grasped that New York, not Philadelphia, could become the nation’s economic capital if a canal opened the interior to the sea. And yet, despite these achievements, Morris’s legacy is little known today. In this deeply researched biography, The Forsaken Founder, Scott Greenberger restores this indispensable figure to history and asks why one of the most prescient and principled founders faded from memory. Was it his uncompromising opposition to slavery? His unapologetic aristocratic style? His belief that liberty required structure as well as passion? Moving from the battlefields of the American Revolution to the salons of Paris and the blood-soaked streets of the French Revolution, this book restores Morris to his rightful place in history. It is the story of a man admired by giants, resisted by factions, and ultimately forsaken by memory—and of a republic still grappling with the truths he dared to speak. About the author Scott Greenberger is the executive editor of Stateline. He was a newspaper reporter at the Austin American-Statesman and The Boston Globe and has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, and GQ. Greenberger has a bachelor’s degree in history from Yale University and a master’s degree in international relations from George Washington University. He lives in Takoma Park, Maryland.

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We're going about a very insightful historical book and uncovering some of these folks that got lost in history. I don't know what they're up to, but we'll find out. His book is entitled, The Forsaken Founder, Goviner Morris, the unsung Patriot who wrote the Constitution, stood up to slavery, and survived the reign

of terror by Scott S. Greenberger. We're going to get it with him and find now the Dietz. He's a multi-book author, and he is the co-author of the New York Times bestseller, critical what we can do about the health care crisis and the author of the unexpected president, The Life in Times of Chester A. Arthur. Currently, he is the executive editor of State Line and has been a newspaper reporter at the Austin American statesman and the Boston Globe. He has also written for the New York Times, The Washington Post, the WAPO, like to call it, Politico and G.E.Q. He has a bachelor's degree in history from Yale University

and a master's degree in international relations from George Washington University. And he lives in Maryland. Welcome the show. Scott. How are you? I'm good. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks for coming. We really appreciate it. Give us your dot com. So where do you want people to find out more about you on the interwebs? At dot org, which is where I'm the organization that I lead. There's a bio of me there. Also the Simon Schuster author page for the Forsaken Founder. And then I think you've got an upcoming event. We want to plug.

You're doing a, I think, speaking or book couture there. I am. Yeah, I have a date scheduled January 26th, that New York historical, formerly known as a New York Historical Society. And we'll get into this, but it's a fitting venue because that is where Gouverner Morris's wooden leg

is located. Oh, the man was a pirate and a peg leg. He was. He was. Not a pirate, but a peg leg. go. Ah. So give us a 30,000 over you. What's inside this book, please? As the subtitle suggests, Gouverner Morris was the Forrest Gump of early American history. He pops up everywhere. He was Valley Forge with Washington, helped him to reorganize the Continental Army, worked with another Morris, who was no relation, Robert Morris, to really shore up the finances of the

of the country to help us win the revolution. He was at the Constitutional Convention where he spoke more than anybody else and had more emotions adopted than anybody else and was the most outspoken opponent of slavery at the convention. He also was the best writer there and was tasked with writing the final draft. He was the one who wrote the preamble, we the people. And he also used his role as the guy writing the final draft to, in very subtle ways, remove any hint that slavery was just, which paved the way later and was very useful, the later abolitionists. And he found himself in France, where he succeeded Jefferson as ambassador to France during the height of the French Revolution was there during the reign of terror, actually plotted with Louis XVIth and

Marie Antoinette to save them from the guillotine, unsuccessfully, of course, came back to the United States after about a decade. Really, Le's claim could be the, is the father really the first person to conceive of the Erie Canal and also laid out the Manhattan Street grid. And as I alluded to before, he did all of that, or almost all of that, on one leg because he lost his leg in a carriage accident, although it was rumored that he had been jumping out of the window of a married lover. He was a bachelor until very late in his life and had many, many love affairs, was very popular with the ladies and wrote about a lot of it in these tremendous diaries that he kept in France, started keeping when he was in France, and they are just a ton

of fun and very honest. Yeah. Sounds like he was having a lot of fun there. Was it mostly in France? He was being a playboy, or was a playboy over here? He was a playboy here too. In France, he was he was France. So there were more, he found a more receptive population there to what he was up to. But he, no, was always known as a ladies man, was quite tall and handsome, had a similar build to Washington. They were both about six, four. In fact, he, when a sculptor was working on a sculpture of Washington. And while Morris was in France, Morris ended up being the model because he was so close to Washington's build. Yeah. Wow. That's wild. Now, was he one of the signers of our Declaration of Independence then? Not one of the signers of the Declaration.

but he was one of the signers of the Constitution. If he did these contributions, which obviously you've done the research and he did, how come he didn't sign the Constitution? And then how did he get lost? How come he didn't get on the record of this lost story of his life? Yeah. I think there's several reasons why he's been lost. One, I've talked about he was very successful with the ladies

and was not very shy about that. And that engendered some jealousy on some of his contemporaries. And they also, and then others disapproved of his lifestyle. though he was a bachelor to late in life. He was not married when he was carrying on like this. Also, the fact that at the convention, he was vehemently opposed to slavery. He made the other delegates uncomfortable. Many of them had mixed feelings about slavery, particularly the Virginians, Madison and Washington. They owned slaves, but they knew that it wasn't, didn't conform to their, to their morals or what they, what they were writing in these documents, the declaration

and the Constitution, and felt very uncomfortable about it. He was so outspoken and straightforward about it and unapologetic that I think that he rubbed some people the wrong way. And then also just generally, he was just sort of a larger-than-life personality, very brash and confident. And some people didn't like that. John Adams, for one, who was an old crotchety guy, you know, found him to be a little off-putting. And the victors write the history, right? And the four of our five first presidents were Virginians. And so he ended up as a New Yorker, I should say, Morris was a New Yorker with Hamilton and got written out of the early histories, and that just situated itself over the decades. Wow.

That's a, I've been single all my life, and those married guys, they get pretty jealous of lifestyle that I feel for this gentleman. It's understandable. I know it's like, they're like, I'm sitting here and married to one woman, and you're out just having fun. And I'm the same way. I'm very outspoken and loudmouth. That's funny.

I think that. So you have, ladies love it. You have an understanding. Yeah, you understand. You get gubernum. Yeah, you understand why. It sounds like some discrimination here on this gentleman that they were imposing on it. But I get a lot of that too.

A lot of my friends get married and they're in a relationship and they're like, you can't talk to Chris anymore because he's a bad influence. That's right. So it's probably some of the same. Well, their wives say that? Yeah, their wives say that. Yeah, their wives say that too. Yeah, I get that all the time.

Chris, we can't be friends anymore. Yeah. So you understand what happened to Govner-R. Your trouble. It was the same dynamic. Yeah, yeah. In fact, I think I saw him at Spirit Rhinel once. I don't know what that means.

You might have. Yeah. If we were still around, you'd see him around for sure. So how did you come across this story? And you're like, hey, man, this guy is like, someone, no one wrote about this dude. Yeah. I actually, I saw an article four or five years ago in the Washington Post. They used to have a column called Retropolis, which was just a history column, which I'm a bit of a history nerd.

So I was a big fan of it. And they wrote, they had a story about Gouverna Morse. And they actually focused largely on his disability and the fact that we had this founding father with a disability. that no one really talked about, much like FDR had a disability that people didn't talk about. And then during the course of the article, though, it mentioned all of these other amazing accomplishments at the convention. He was in France. He did all these things. And I couldn't understand why as a guy who's read a lot of American history and majored in history that I'd never heard of him. And then did a little bit of research, found out that no one had really written about him for a long time and not really in the way that I wanted to for a general audience. And I was off to the races. And he was just a fascinating figure.

I also mentioned one of the best things you can have as someone trying to write a book like this is a great primary source, a diary or a journal. And he had this incredibly colorful, entertaining diary that he started keeping in France with all of these sexual exploits. And it's just fantastic reading. It's a lot of fun. Yeah. Did you, and you include a lot of these journal entries of some of these, how do we want to frame it, salacious or maybe? Salacious, yeah. Yeah, interesting.

Salacious. However, yeah, he actually made a little bit. game of referring each it's almost like he tried to come up with a new euphemism for sex every every day he used dozens of him he was having a great time france yeah the yeah france is a beautiful place it's the place of love right it is yeah paris you got to go there and you got to love you that's right you're just keeping with the culture that's right he made the most of it yeah yeah and plus your ambassador so you can sling the title around you know hey baby that's right green and they loved and women he he made a point of noting his diary that

women were just fascinated by his leg, his wooden leg. It added to his appeal. Really? But sometimes like guys, they put a patch on the one eye. It would be sort of the most interesting man in the world kind of the thing. So that made him more interesting. Yeah.

I met him. He's really cool. I hung out one time at the, what was it, the champagne bar in Vegas? Oh, the most interesting man in the world? Who's actually a guy from Queens or something, right? A Bronx or something.

I'm not sure where he's from. Yeah. He was super nice. I've got a funny story about him. Yeah, great pro pro bono. He's super nice. He didn't say much when you talk to him. I think it was not the most interesting man in the world, as it turns out.

Maybe. I mean, but he's got free beers for life. He does. Yeah. It's like an astronaut. Yeah. And be, what is it? Stay frosty, my friends or something like that.

Do we get paid? Oh, that's not frosty. What is it? Stay thirsty. Stay thirsty, maybe. Yeah. Yeah. It's been a while.

They recently brought him back. He was a minute. Yeah. Why would you make that guy go? I don't know. I con it. He's back. Yeah, he's back now.

Yeah, smartest thing you can do. So, Blumen or Morris is the kind of guy. If they were making beer commercials, he was at the time, he's the kind of guy you'd want to feature there. He could have laid claim to being the most interesting man in the world at that point. Six, four, women love tall men. I'm six, too. So I, you stick out and stand out like a sore thumb and women love looking up to you

and if you're tall and stuff. So, a really good there. So was it hard to find? I guess he had a journal and probably a lot of different notes and stuff that you could dig through and find out more about. Yeah. The other great thing about him as a topic is because he was in the middle of all these important events, he was corresponding with Washington and Jefferson and Adams and all these people. All of those letters have long since been edited and organized and published,

and all that stuff is available online now, too. So it's actually, it's very easy since he was involved in all of these important events. and all these important episodes of history to just kind of find the letters between him and these various people. And he also, he was friends with Lafayette and was talked to, there were a lot of interactions with Lafayette in Paris. And then when he came back, as I mentioned, he was Hamilton's best friend delivered his eulogy. So there are all these, he pops up everywhere. And these are events that were pretty well documented and written about and described at the time. So it's, for research purposes, it made it a lot easier. Why didn't he sign the con, you said he kind of got maybe

excluded. No, no, he signed the Constitution. He wasn't at the, he was a member of the, of the, he wasn't yet a member of the Continental Congress when they signed a declaration. Yeah, he was still in the provincial assembly of New York where he also tried to, to ban slavery. But he was also very young. He was younger than most of the other founders, which is why he wasn't at there to sign the declaration. Maybe because he was younger, he wasn't, was built, built in with businesses that required slavery. And so they were, he didn't quite have the operations maybe or something. I don't know. He was a New Yorker, and he grew up in an aristocratic family, and those families did own slaves. His father did, and his grandfather did. But it wasn't he, at that time, at least in the north, there definitely were the idea of abolitionism was rising. And by the time he, you know, became an adult. He had absolutely no interest in having enslaved people working for him, even though he had this large estate in what is now the Bronx, was then part of Westchester, called Morissania.

Yeah. Now, it says here he was, he also helped the nation's financial system. Yeah. Yeah. It was his idea, actually, he and with Robert Morris organized the nation's first bank. A big, one of the big problems during the revolution was getting the states to pony up money to support the troops. At that point, each state still thought of itself as its own entity, and there wasn't really this sense of a collective whole. And it was a constant battle for the federal government, which then, which, basically consisted of the Continental Congress to get the money it needed to, and that Washington needed to fight the war. Guvner Morris played an incredibly important role together with Robert Morris and trying to figure out how to develop sources of revenue and come up with the money and the

supplies for the troops to fight. Wow. You had to finance that revolutionary war somehow, right? That's right. Yeah. That's always the case when you're fighting war. Money always matters. Yeah, we're doing that now in 2026. We're all paying extra for gas so we can finance. That's right. Same concept. Yes, we are. Yeah, yeah. I think people forget that we had to ration a lot of stuff during World War II, and I believe World War I. And steel, probably gas, everything had to be rationed. And these things cost. And I think if you don't see the cost, then you end up with the Iraq and Afghan wars where it just eventually catches up to you. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. And now let's talk about your other book. The prior book that you wrote, tell us about that one. We were talking. Yeah, the unexpected press.

and that's about Chester Arthur, who became, I don't know if many of your listeners might have watched Death by Lightning, the Netflix series about James Garfield. Chester Arthur is a character in there. And Arthur was a machine politician from New York City and started out on a, on the straight and a narrow path and was a civil rights lawyer. He represented the woman who ended up in the case, ended up desegregating New York City streetcars. But after the Civil War, he became a kind of quintessential gilded age machine politician. and you saw some of that in that series. Corruption, and that was the start of money and politics and demanding patronage and all

that kind of stuff. And so he was put on the ticket with Garfield to basically because he was a lieutenant to the New York State political boss, a guy named Roscoe Conkley, another very colorful guy who was popular with the ladies. And no one ever imagined that this guy, this party hack, this crook, Chester Arthur, would become president. And then, lo and behold, Garfield is shot and his. and is lingering on his deathbed, and Chester Arthur becomes President of the United States eventually

when Garfield dies, and people were absolutely horrified. They thought that Arthur was going to bring the worst features of New York machine politics, big city politics, into the White House. And then incredibly, he turned out, he turned back to his better self and became this great reformer and past civil service reform. And one of the more interesting parts of the story is that one of the reasons that he made this transformation was that a series of letters he received from a mysterious young woman in New York named Julia Sand, who was sort of a political junkie of her time, but couldn't really participate as a woman, a young woman. And she wrote him these letters, these series of letters, which are at the Library of Commerce, urging him to kind of return to his

better self to rise to the occasion and to deliver the sort of reforms that everyone in America after the assassination of Garfield really wanted. And he did that. So he's also, it's an incredible story of redemption and also a very colorful character. I think he and Gouverna Morris would have gotten along well because they both enjoyed staying up late and eating and drinking too much and telling stories around the table and that kind of thing. So both fun guys to have at a dinner party. Yeah. The 21st president. Yeah, a lot of people don't know about the 21st president.

Maybe that started the thing where we kind of had this thing where when sometimes characters running for office can be. characters, but the presidency changes them and makes them better. That's right. That's right. You know, Obama shortly before he left office when Trump was running to succeed him, he told people, listen, the presidency is not going to change people. The presidency doesn't change who you are. It magnifies who you are. But I think I would say, it's fair to say that that has been the case with Trump, but that has not been the case, or was not the case, rather, with Chester Arthur. He really changed in office. He really did. come a different person or at least went back to the person that he'd been as a young man after

these many years of being a machine politician and basically a crook and he was a he was a terrifically entertaining character in in death by lightning if if you saw that on netflix he was he was great the guy from parks and wreck i can't who's the actor ron is it ron or is that is that his name on the show yes but on google they're showing a picture of him he had these sideburns that that's right Yes, yes, yes, yes. And he did a wonderful job. He obviously looks just like him. He looks just like him.

He grew those and I think he gained some weight for the role too. Yeah, so yeah, yeah, he did a terrific job. I'll have to check into that series. I like him as an actor. He's a really good. Oh, it was quite, yeah, very entertaining series. Quite good. One of the guys from Succession was in a great, great cast, yeah.

Yeah, I'll have to look that up and see that. But a lot of people don't know about this, the 21st Presidents. Most people know about kind of the popular ones, the, you know, the Lincoln's and the that's right, George Washington. Washington and stuff and stuff. Yeah, that's why I was attracted to him. I think it's fun to find people have been forgotten. And he did civil service reform sounds kind of wonky, but it was incredibly important because it really laid the groundwork for the federal government that we have today. Back then, we had a tiny, tiny federal government, and it's hard to imagine that people would

have felt comfortable giving the federal government any powers at all if it was just filled with party hacks and crooks, which is what it was back then, even more so than today. And it looks like, from one of reading here, that the thing he did with the, he signed the Pendleton Civil Service Act of Act. That's right. Yeah, that was civil service reform, yeah. Yeah. Which reformed federal hiring based upon merit rather than political patron. That's right.

Before that, it was a small system. Yeah. Yeah. Put all your Goomba, you know, the supporters or whatever into the federal government. That's exactly right. That's the way it went. Yeah. And look, to some extent, we still have political appointees, of course, but we also have a large

professional civil service, people who ostensibly have some expertise and know the subject matter that they're working. You kind of want people who know what they're doing. Yeah, it's a, yeah, revolutionary concept, yeah. But it is now, yeah, isn't it, 22, or six? In fact, Peter Thiel just got done complaining to somebody about how there's too many morons without degrees in the White House, which is ironic because he's the guy who put them all there. Thanks, Peter. Yeah, let it go, buddy. That's right. It's all your fault. So, I think the reason he moved to Argentina is because the guillotine's probably coming. We'll see how that goes to.

Yeah. Well, I don't know. I think everyone's really sick of the whole system right now with gas prices and everything going on in an oligarchy. So I guess we're going to fuck around and find out see how it all ends. Yeah. I think just to get back to Chester for a moment, that was the,

the gilded age was the last time we had this incredible gap between the rich and the poor. And it did lead to when there was a lot of, actually a lot of immigration at the time, a lot of technological development with the railroads and everything. there are a lot of parallels, and it did lead to a period where we passed the progressive area, and we passed to Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson and whatnot, passed all kinds of food safety laws and all that kind of stuff. Sometimes these periods, not sometimes, very often,

we see parallels in history and periods of excess lead to periods of reform. Yeah, we could use that now. There's a whole mess of new food that's been declared we can't eat. Yeah, after this summer, yeah, with the explosive diarrhea lettuce and all that stuff. I mean, you're eating it. Taco Bell, so that's kind of given. But yeah, there's something else new they've come out with. I just post about a couple. Yeah, there's been a few things this summer.

Any future books you're working on? Do you mainly target finding these obscure lost in his books? Yeah, two of the three books have been about obscure figures. I don't know. I'm still looking around. I find in doing these that really the hardest part is finding a good topic, I think. You want to find something that's obviously interesting to you because you may spending a lot of time doing it.

something that folks are going to want to read about, something that hasn't been done recently, or at least or at all, or the way you want to do it. It's tough to find the right thing. But I'm always looking around. And obviously, I think history is fascinating. American history is particularly fastening. I think there are a lot of great stories out there that are waiting to be told. Yeah.

Chinese curse. Me, you live in interesting times. That's right. And what I feel cursed this year. But I guess you, I guess this is one of those things where you have to ride through it. and see what happens. That's the moment of history. Yeah, that's the other thing when you read history and you write histories,

you realize we've been through bad times before. We've been through times where people thought the walls were caving in. And things passed. Things happen and sometimes surprising things happen. Yeah. Hopefully we just to change things. We see as lucky as we've been for 120, 250 years. That's right.

We've had a good run. Yeah. We've had a good run during that period. Yeah. Anything on your website that you're offering, you want people take a look at, speaking just the book i would love for people to to check out the book i think particularly this year when it's the 250th anniversary of the country it's a great opportunity to take a look at some of the

to learn about rather some of the some of the people some of the heroes of that of that era that that folks aren't so aware of one of the things that's amazing to me actually i mentioned that morris was hamilton's best friend for some reason he is not even mentioned in the musical hamilton even though he is in chironow's book hamilton quite a lot so i don't know i I think maybe Lynn May and Miranda thought that Govner was so colorful that he would take attention away from Alex, so he left him out. But anyway, I think that many of your listeners will love this book because he is a terrific character. And I wrote this, I purposely wrote this in it for a broad audience and not for an academic audience. I think he's a fun character and it's a fun story.

Ladies love the romance. We have a lot of romance. Yeah, we got romance. He was actually very progressive in terms of his attitude toward a lot of. ladies. He was very successful with ladies romantically, but he also, in contrast with Jefferson, had great respect for women's political acuity and their insights, especially in France. Jefferson wrote home from France, he said one of the problems with this country is they let women involve themselves in politics. And Morris had a very difficult, the opposite view. And his view was that

the women he met in France were incredibly perceptive. And he felt like they were some of the smartest, sharpest political observers that he met in France. Wow. Maybe you got a musical here. You can rival the other one that you mentioned. I would like, you know, because you got romance in this one. Oh, you got romance. You got physical danger. Yeah, this can be on Netflix or Amazon or something. You got,

I would be opposed to that. You can call it, you can call it the haughty governor. Never mind, I'm just trying to. The peg legged playboy or something like that. Yeah. That's it. That is freaking it. I thought about it.

They wouldn't let me use that, but that was my first Yeah. The Pegleg Playboy who wrote the Constitution. That sells itself. I love it. I love that title. If you do a musical,

you have to name it out. I'm not sure. I don't know if you want to say Pegleg to anymore. I don't know. We should bring it back. I mean, they brought measles back in polio. Might as well.

That's true. Yeah. But I haven't even talk about the way he died. I don't want to ruin the ending for your readers. It's a very painful and embarrassing manner of this. I'll tease it. that way he tried climbing a bobwire fence and got caught high centered or so no he was he did a little operation on himself it didn't yeah i tried a few of those that doesn't yeah it doesn't ever go on a

particular part of himself too that was ah i'm not even going to pull the jokes now we're gonna stay good today boys and girls yeah so yeah that's i let a doctor do my vasectomy let's put it that way i don't know well that's usually i think that's probably the best way to go with that yeah yeah any any sort of surgery you leave it really yeah but yeah maybe particularly that one, but certainly. Especially back in those days when they didn't have an antiseptic or, I think what you just pour alcohol in some, you put a bullet in your teeth. Yeah, maybe. Yeah, maybe the lopium. There wasn't much. Yeah. Sounds like my hernia surgery. If you want to find out of the ending, folks, you got to buy the durn book and all that good stuff. And he sounds like he's a really

colorful guy. And one of the important things about history is the one, it's this thing I always say on the show, my quote, the one thing man can learn from his history is that man never learns from history and they're round and round, right? That's true. And if you don't learn from history, you're doomed to repeat it. That's right. History explains everything. You look around, you wonder why things are the way they are. History is the answer. And I've been single in my life for 35 years because I just never got tired of being happy. He essentially got tired of being happy. It was late in life. Did he really?

Late in life, he got in. He should have hung out with me, man. No. It should have been my wingman. But I might pick up a fake peg leg and just see if it works with The chicks. See if it works. Maybe we can bring this back as a fashion for dudes, peg leg dudes. I mean, it's worth a try. I think there's a way to do it. You just kind of put your whole tire your leg up and you can do it.

You can fake it. There's probably a way to, you know, just cut it off. And I don't know. There's a lot of guys that are short now and they're upset because most women are going after six foot tall guys. They also say that on social media. And so there's guys actually having their legs broken and extended because they want to be able to get chicks. That's height maxing, I guess. Isn't that crazy?

That is crazy, man. Yeah, I just go find a short woman that I was interested in. That's probably the thing. There's plenty of women there are five foot, five foot two. Absolutely. Yeah, you're not to be that tall. All right. Anything more we want to plug when we're here, Scott?

No, no, just the two books. And as you say, you want to understand what's going on. You got to read history. And there are some fascinating figures that you had didn't learn about in school. And these are two of them. Yeah. Maybe I'll mix the peg leg with a pirate patch. I'll just walk around and say,

Er. Yeah, then people, I think, assume you are a pirate with the patch and the peg leg. I am a raider. I am a Raiders fan. Oh, are you? You must be a year-happy. For the first time of a long time. Here's the thing about that.

My hopes have been crashed so many times. It's kind of like that. Do you remember Lucy and I was the guy for peanuts? Yeah. Yeah. And she would always pull the football out. Yeah. So last year, we were 3 and 14.

So, you know, that's usually how we always roll. We win the first few games. And then it's just... Yeah. I'm a little to remember. I think you are, too, when you guys were perennial winners from the Aldeus years. I'm still angry at Tom Brady for stealing that last Super Bowl with that tuck rule bullshit. Oh, yeah.

I remember that game in Boston for that. But it's bittersweet. I have to forgive him now because he works with the Raiders and he's an owner, part owner. I'm still bitter at the Raiders for kicking the crap out of the Redskins in that Super Bowl. Oh, yeah, yeah. Open DC. Those are the good old days. That was bad.

Isn't it weird? changed the name of the team. Yeah. It's not so weird. But whatever, man. I guess there's another team that they pay a, they pay a thing. Oh, yeah, it's the University of Utah. They have the Uts.

The Uts, yeah. And I just found out recently they, they recently settled to pay the Ute tribe. I don't know if it's in Utah or wherever it's at. Yeah. But pay them some royalties for utilizing their name. It's kind of funny. Yeah. There are other ones that have a name for tribes too,

the Seminole, Florida. Oh, really? Seminoles, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So do they pay? I don't know if they do. I wasn't aware of that arrangement you described.

History as it was, folks. And the forsaken founder, things we can learn about these folks. And I'm getting me a peg leg and a cane and maybe a pirate thing. And I'm going to go out and pick some chicks on Friday. Yeah. I'll need all the like I can get. Thank you very much for coming this show, Scott. We really appreciate it.

Give us your plugs, your dot coms, wherever you want people to find out more about you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you can, you know, just forsaken founders on the Simon Schuster website or on Amazon. You can get it wherever books are sold. And my day job is executive editor of Stateline. We're stateline.org. Great information, great news on what's going on out there in state government across the country.

Thank you very much for coming on the show. And then I think you, did I mention you were an editor to a magazine? Yeah, I'm editor of this of Stateline. Yeah, I've done freelance writing for various magazines. And yeah, used to write for the globe and the Austin. What does state line cover? So we'll get a plug. So we cover basically what's going on in state government across the country.

A lot of stuff, a lot of stories about multi-state trends and so many, so many issues bubble up from the states, whether it's abortion or gun laws or tax stuff. All that stuff starts in the states, almost all of it. So that's what we write about it. Yeah. I'll have to check that out then because I like following this stuff. And all politics is local. So it usually starts. That's right.

That's right. Thank you. Yeah. You said that. Tip O'Neill, I think said that, right? Yeah, Tip O'Neill. In fact, we had his assistant. from Dateline. Was it Dateline?

Or no, it was the other one. Anyway, he used to be the big MSNBC guy. He was on the show a few years back. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but he worked under O'Neill. Yeah. Am I getting that right? Yeah. I'll lose my brain in the old end of the day here, evidently. Yeah.

Thank you very much for coming on the show. It's been an honor to have you, Scott. And thank you for sharing the wonderful stories and the insights and all that good stuff. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. I've enjoyed the conversation. Appreciate it. Thank you.

And order up as book, folks, wherever fine books are sold, the forsaken founder. The Forsaken Founder. governor, Goviner Morris. It's interesting spelling on the guviner. That's not part of the title, by the way. The unsung patriot who wrote the Constitution, stood up to slavery and survived the reign of terror. I think we're doing that right now with gas prices. Anyway, guys, the order of the book where fine books is sold, they'll be linked for it on the Chris Vos show.

Go to goodreads.com, Fortress Christchristch, Christfoss. LinkedIn.com, Fortress, Chris Foss. YouTube.com, Fortress Chris Foss. At Facebook.com. Forstst Chris Foss. One word, the original, Chris Voss. Thanks for tuning in. Go to Good Rees.

Oh, never mind. We certainly appreciate you guys and clearly on losing at the end of the day. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next. You've been listening to the most amazing, intelligent podcast ever made to improve your brain and your life. Warning. Consuming too much of the Chris Walshow podcast can lead to people thinking you're smarter, younger, and irresistible sexy.

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