Elbridge Gerry
Elbridge Gerry was born at Marblehead, Massachusetts, on the 17th of July 1744. His father was an enterprising merchant and sent his son to Harvard University where he graduated in 1762 with a high scholastic reputation.Thereafter, Gerry worked at the counting house of his father and became one of the most enterprising and wealthy merchants of his native town.
On the 26th of May 1773 he commenced his official career as a member of the Assembly of Massachusetts Bay then called the General Court. That body and the royal governor took a strong issue upon rights and wrongs. The unconstitutional acts of parliament were sanctioned by the latter and fearlessly censured by the former. A standing committee was appointed to scan the proceedings of ministers and parliament and to correspond with the other colonies relative to the important concerns of the nation. Mr. Gerry had been in that body but two days when he was made a member of this important committee. He became one of the principal actors on the tragic stage of the revolution, the drama of peace and formation of the Federal government. He walked shoulder to shoulder with Samuel Adams and John Hancock in the bold measures.
Mr. Gerry was a member of the Committee of Safety and Supplies. In April 1775 he narrowly escaped the grasp of his foes.
The Battle of Lexington
The night previous to the battle of Lexington Messrs. Gerry, Lee and Orne were at Cambridge through which the British passed on their way to the opening scene of hostilities. When opposite the house where these gentlemen were in bed a file of soldiers were suddenly detached and approached it rapidly. The patriots barely escaped. After the military left, they returned for their clothes and immediately roused the people to resistance.In July 1775, the government of Massachusetts adopted a new form of government. A legislature was organized and a judiciary established. Mr. Gerry was appointed Judge of the Court of Admiralty but declined that he might do more active service. On the 18th of January 1776 he was elected to the Continental Congress.
On the 14th of October 1779, Mr. Gerry proposed the expedition against the Indians which was successfully executed by General Sullivan. He proposed a resolution designed to guard against inducements to corrupt influence as follows:
"No candidates for public office shall vote in or otherwise influence their own election, viz: that Congress will not appoint any member thereof during its time of sitting or within six months after he shall have been in Congress, to any office under the States for which he or any other for his benefit may receive any salary, fees or emolument."
It was then lost but he revived and carried it in 1785. The principle has since been partly adopted under the Federal Constitution. As a member of the Committee of Finance he stood next to Robert Morris. In 1780 he retired from Congress.
The second year after his retirement he again took his seat in Congress, and in 1784 he was on the important Committee of Foreign Relations to revise the Treasury Department. The same session he presented a resolution for the compensation of Baron Steuben who had rendered immense services by introducing a system of military tactics and discipline into the American army by which it was governed and which was strictly adhered to long after the Revolution. It was warmly supported by Mr. Jefferson and others but was lost, charity would suggest, in consequence of the embarrassed state of the finances. In 1785, Mr. Gerry closed his services in Congress and retired to Cambridge near Boston.
In 1810 he was elected as the governor of his State. Three years later he was inaugurated Vice President of the United States.
At the city of Washington a beautiful monument is erected to his memory with an inscription as follows. "The tomb of ELBRIDGE GERRY, Vice President of the United States, who died suddenly in this city on his way to the Capitol, as President of the Senate, November 23d, 1814, Aged 70."