Stephen Row Bradley (20 February 1754 – 9 December 1830) was a US Senator from Vermont from 17 October 1791 to 3 March 1795, preceding Elijah Paine, and from 15 October 1801 to 3 March 1813, succeeding Paine and preceding Dudley Chase. He was a member of the Democratic-Republican Party.
Biography[]
Stephen Row Bradley was born in Wallingford, Connecticut in 1754, and he graduated from Yale College in 1775 and served as a militia captain during the American Revolutionary War; he resigned his commission after his commander David Wooster was killed at the Battle of Ridgefield in 1777. In 1779, he moved to Westminster, Vermont, and he became a lawyer that same year. In 1780, he became the state's attorney for Cumberland County, and he became a county judge in 1783. He served in the State House of Representatives for seven years in the 1780s, and he was also a judge of the Vermont Superior Court and of the Vermont Supreme Court in 1788. On 4 March 1791, Vermont became part of the United States, and Bradley was elected as one of Vermont's inaugural US Senators, serving as a member of the Democratic-Republican Party. In 1803, he authored the Twelfth Amendment, which refined the process by which the President and Vice-President are elected by the Electoral College. Bradley retired from politics in 1813 and moved to Walpole, New Hampshire in 1818, dying there in 1830.