Elbridge Gerry
State: Massachusetts
Age at Convention: 43
Date of Birth: July 17, 1744
Date of Death: November 23, 1814
Schooling: Harvard 1762
Occupation: Businessman, Public Security and Interests, Real Estate Land Speculation, Mercantile, Manufacturing and Shipping, Investor
Prior Political Experience: Signed the Declaration of Independence 1776, Lower House of Massachusetts State Legislature 1786, Continental Congress 1776-1780, Confederation Congress 1783-1785
Committee Assignments: Chairman of the First Committee of Representation
Convention Contributions: Arrived May 29, was present through the signing of the Constitution. He chaired the committee that presented the Connecticut Compromise but did not think that the Constitution provided adequate protection for the rights of individuals and the rights of the States. He refused to sign the Constitution. William Pierce stated that “Mr. Gerry’s character is marked for integrity and perseverance … Mr. Gerry is very much of a Gentlemen in his principles and manners.”
New Government Participation: He argued against adoption of the Constitution, and attempted to attend the Massachusetts ratifying convention without success. Served in the First Congress as U. S. Representative for Massachusetts (1789 – 1793). Served as commissioner to France for President Adams during the XYZ affair (1797-1798). Served as Vice President to President James Madison 1813-1814.
Biography from the National Archives:Gerry was born in 1744 at Marblehead, MA, the third of 12 children. His mother was the daughter of a Boston merchant; his father, a wealthy and politically active merchant-shipper who had once been a sea captain. Upon graduating from Harvard in 1762, Gerry joined his father and two brothers in the family business, exporting dried codfish to Barbados and Spain. He entered the colonial legislature (1772-74), where he came under the influence of Samuel Adams, and took part in the Marblehead and Massachusetts committees of correspondence. When Parliament closed Boston harbor in June 1774, Marblehead became a major port of entry for supplies donated by patriots throughout the colonies to relieve Bostonians, and Gerry helped transport the goods.
Between 1774 and 1776 Gerry attended the first and second provincial congresses. He served with Samuel Adams and John Hancock on the council of safety and, as chairman of the committee of supply (a job for which his merchant background ideally suited him) wherein he raised troops and dealt with military logistics. On the night of April 18, 1775, Gerry attended a meeting of the council of safety at an inn in Menotomy (Arlington), between Cambridge and Lexington, and barely escaped the British troops marching on Lexington and Concord.
In 1776 Gerry entered the Continental Congress, where his congressional specialities were military and financial matters. In Congress and throughout his career his actions often appeared contradictory. He earned the nickname “soldiers’ friend” for his advocacy of better pay and equipment, yet he vacillated on the issue of pensions. Despite his disapproval of standing armies, he recommended long-term enlistments.
Until 1779 Gerry sat on and sometimes presided over the congressional board that regulated Continental finances. After a quarrel over the price schedule for suppliers, Gerry, himself a supplier, walked out of Congress. Although nominally a member, he did not reappear for 3 years. During the interim, he engaged in trade and privateering and served in the lower house of the Massachusetts legislature.
As a representative in Congress in the years 1783-85, Gerry numbered among those who had possessed talent as Revolutionary agitators and wartime leaders but who could not effectually cope with the painstaking task of stabilizing the national government. He was experienced and conscientious but created many enemies with his lack of humor, suspicion of the motives of others, and obsessive fear of political and military tyranny. In 1786, the year after leaving Congress, he retired from business, married Ann Thompson, and took a seat in the state legislature.
Gerry was one of the most vocal delegates at the Constitutional Convention of 1787. He presided as chairman of the committee that produced the Great Compromise but disliked the compromise itself. He antagonized nearly everyone by his inconsistency and, according to a colleague, “objected to everything he did not propose.” At first an advocate of a strong central government, Gerry ultimately rejected and refused to sign the Constitution because it lacked a bill of rights and because he deemed it a threat to republicanism. He led the drive against ratification in Massachusetts and denounced the document as “full of vices.” Among the vices, he listed inadequate representation of the people, dangerously ambiguous legislative powers, the blending of the executive and the legislative, and the danger of an oppressive judiciary. Gerry did see some merit in the Constitution, though, and believed that its flaws could be remedied through amendments. In 1789, after he announced his intention to support the Constitution, he was elected to the First Congress where, to the chagrin of the Antifederalists, he championed Federalist policies.
Gerry left Congress for the last time in 1793 and retired for 4 years. During this period he came to mistrust the aims of the Federalists, particularly their attempts to nurture an alliance with Britain, and sided with the pro-French Democratic-Republicans. In 1797 President John Adams appointed him as the only non-Federalist member of a three-man commission charged with negotiating a reconciliation with France, which was on the brink of war with the United States. During the ensuing XYZ affair (1797-98), Gerry tarnished his reputation. Talleyrand, the French foreign minister, led him to believe that his presence in France would prevent war, and Gerry lingered on long after the departure of John Marshall and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, the two other commissioners. Finally, the embarrassed Adams recalled him, and Gerry met severe censure from the Federalists upon his return.
In 1800-1803 Gerry, never very popular among the Massachusetts electorate because of his aristocratic haughtiness, met defeat in four bids for the Massachusetts governorship but finally triumphed in 1810. Near the end of his two terms, scarred by partisan controversy, the Democratic-Republicans passed a redistricting measure to ensure their domination of the state senate. In response, the Federalists heaped ridicule on Gerry and coined the pun “gerrymander” to describe the salamander-like shape of one of the redistricted areas.
Despite his advanced age, frail health, and the threat of poverty brought on by neglect of personal affairs, Gerry served as James Madison’s Vice President in 1813. In the fall of 1814, the 70-year old politician collapsed on his way to the Senate and died. He left his wife, who was to live until 1849, the last surviving widow of a signer of the Declaration of Independence, as well as three sons and four daughters. Gerry is buried in Congressional Cemetery at Washington, DC.
Related:
* indicates delegates who did not sign the Constitution
Connecticut
William Samuel Johnson – Roger Sherman – Oliver Ellsworth (Elsworth)*
Delaware
George Read – Gunning Bedford, Jr. – John Dickinson – Richard Bassett – Jacob Broom
Georgia
William Few – Abraham Baldwin – William Houstoun* - William L. Pierce*
Maryland
James McHenry – Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer – Daniel Carroll – Luther Martin* - John F. Mercer*
Massachusetts
Nathaniel Gorham – Rufus King – Elbridge Gerry* - Caleb Strong*
New Hampshire
John Langdon – Nicholas Gilman
New Jersey
William Livingston – David Brearly (Brearley) - William Paterson (Patterson) - Jonathan Dayton – William C. Houston*
New York
Alexander Hamilton – John Lansing, Jr.* - Robert Yates*
North Carolina
William Blount – Richard Dobbs Spaight – Hugh Williamson – William R. Davie* - Alexander Martin*
Pennsylvania
Benjamin Franklin – Thomas Mifflin – Robert Morris – George Clymer – Thomas Fitzsimons (FitzSimons; Fitzsimmons) - Jared Ingersoll – James Wilson – Gouverneur Morris
South Carolina
John Rutledge – Charles Cotesworth Pinckney – Charles Pinckney – Pierce Butler
Rhode Island
Rhode Island did not send delegates to the Convention.
Virginia
John Blair – James Madison Jr. – George Washington – George Mason* - James McClurg* - Edmund J. Randolph* - George Wythe*
Other:
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