GERRY, ELBRIDGE American statesman, was born in Marblehead (Mass.), July the son of Thomas Gerry, a prosperous Marblehead merchant. He graduated at Harvard in 1762 and entered his father's business. In 1772 and 1773 he was a member of the Massachusetts general court, and in I 773 he served on the committee of correspondence which became one of the great instruments of intercolonial resistance. In 75 he was a member of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress. The passage of a bill proposed by him to arm and equip ships to prey upon British commerce (Nov. 1775) was, according to his biographer, Austin, "the first actual avowal of offensive hostility against the mother country which is to be found in the annals of the Revolution." From 1776 to Gerry was a member of the Continental Congress, where he early advocated independence, and was one of those who signed the Declaration after its formal signing on Aug. 2, at which time he was absent.
Gerry was again a member of Congress in 1783-85 and in 1787 was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention. He served as an Anti-Federalist in the National House of Representatives in In he was sent by President John Adams, with John Marshall and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, on a mission to France to obtain from the government of the Directory a treaty embodying a settlement of several long-standing disputes. The discourteous and underhand treatment of this embassy by Talley rand and his agents resulted in the speedy retirement of Marshall and Pinckney. The episode is known in American history as the "X Y Z Affair." Gerry remained in Paris for some time in the vain hope that Talleyrand might offer to a known friend of France terms that had been refused to envoys whose anti-French views were more than suspected. This action of Gerry's brought down upon him from Federalist partisans a storm of abuse and censure, from which he never wholly cleared himself.
In he was governor of Massachusetts. His administra tion was especially notable for the enactment of a law by which the State was divided into new senatorial districts in such a manner as to consolidate the Federalist vote in a few districts, thus giving the Democratic-Republicans an undue advantage. The outline of one of these districts, which was thought to resemble a salamander, gave rise in 1812, through a popular application of the governor's name, to the term "Gerrymander" (q.v.). In 1812 Gerry, who was an ardent advocate of the war with Great Britain, was elected vice president of the United States, on the ticket with James Madison. He died in office at Washington, Nov. 23, 1814. See J. T. Austin, Life of Elbridge Gerry, with Contemporary Letters (Boston, 1828-29) ; Edward Channing, History vol. iv.; Yale, Chron icles of America; Henry Adams, History.