Signing Their Lives Away: Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts

Author’s Note:  This series of postings are taken from the book Signing Their Lives Away by Denise Kiernan and Joseph D’Agnese.  The publishers at Quirk Books kindly gave me permission to judiciously quote from it on my blog.  While I dispense with quotation marks, the sentences are lifted directly from the book.  The purpose is to introduce you to those who signed the Declaration of Independence and who often remain in the shadows of history.  This book is a must for the home collection of any avid reader, historian, or patriot.

 

Massachusetts                  By the sword we seek peace, but peace only under liberty

Elbridge Gerry.  Age at signing: 32, Profession: Merchant

Gerry was a well-to-do cod importer and shipping merchant by the time he accompanied his friend John Adams to the Second Continental Congress….Though he voted for independence he was unable to be in Congress on August 2 to personally sign the document.

…To our jaded eyes, Gerry’s behavior makes him seem like the model all future congressmen were built on, but his behavior really rankled his contemporaries….He used insider knowledge of the military’s needs to benefit his own business while denouncing war profiteers.

When Massachusetts sent him as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention in 1787, he angered everyone with hostile remarks and constant vacillation.  First, he opposed the concepts of democracy and allowing the people to elect congressmen….One attendee quipped that Gerry “objected to everything he did not propose.”  Gerry refused to sign the final Constitution because it lacked a Bill of Rights.  Two years later, he switched sides and claimed he did support it, even though the Bill of Rights had not yet been added.

…Gerry defected from the Federalist camp and became a Democratic-Republican.  That party nominated him for Massachusetts governor, and he was defeated four times before finally becoming the state’s ninth governor.  Once in office, Gerry backed a plan to creatively redraw the state senate voting districts to favor his party.  A political cartoonist thought one of the districts resembled a salamander, and the process was quickly dubbed “gerrymandering”.  The insidious practice continues to this day and is arguably one of the biggest threats to democracy.

What, Sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty. Whenever governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins.

Elbridge Gerry