Elbridge Gerry (17 July 1744 – 23 November 1814) was Vice President of the United States from 4 May 1813 to 23 November 1814, succeeding George Clinton and preceding Daniel D. Tompkins, having previously served as governor of Massachusetts from 10 June 1810 to 4 March 1812, succeeding Christopher Gore and preceding Caleb Strong. He is the namesake of the political strategy of gerrymandering, which is the redrawing of congressional districts to benefit the majority parties; he used this strategy to be elected Governor of Massachusetts in 1810.
Biography[]
Gerry in 1770
Elbridge Gerry was born on 17 July 1744 in Marblehead, Massachusetts to a wealthy merchant family, and he graduated from Harvard College. Gerry opposed Great Britain's Intolerable Acts in the 1760s and was involved with the American revolutionary cause during the early years of the American Revolutionary War, being elected to the Second Continental Congress in 1775. Gerry signed both the US Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation, but he did not sign the US Constitution due to the lack of a Bill of Rights. After the bill was ratified, Gerry entered the US Congress and served in the US House of Representatives from the third congressional district of Massachusetts, and he was friends with members of both the Federalist Party and Democratic-Republican Party. He was a member of the delegation to France involved in the XYZ Affair, where the American diplomats were asked to pay a bribe in order to meet the French ambassador. He served as Governor of Massachusetts from 1810 to 1812, when James Madison chose him as his running mate, and he served as Vice President from 1813 to 1814 under Madison. He died a year and a half into his term, the only signer of the Declaration of Independence to be buried in Washington DC.