The Rehabilitation of Elbridge Gerry

T here may be no word — or practice — in 21st-century American politics as reviled as gerrymandering, the process of one political party’s legislators drawing districts for partisan, self-interested purposes. As campaigns for the 2026 midterm elections begin to heat up, gerrymandering is again on the minds of Americans due to the recent battles over mid-decade redistricting. Already, six states have undertaken a mid-decade redistricting, and more may follow.

And while politicians and cable news talking heads spend countless hours debating what constitutes a gerrymander, few Americans give much thought to the man responsible for this now legendary portmanteau, Elbridge Gerry.

Gerry was far more than the governor who signed into law a redistricting plan that included a Massachusetts state senate district allegedly shaped like a salamander and drawn to unfairly help his party, the Jeffersonian Republicans, or as we refer to them today, the Democratic-Republicans. He was a patriot, businessman, diplomat, congressman, governor, vice president, signer of the Articles of Confederation, participant in the Constitutional Convention, and, maybe most importantly, as we approach America’s 250th birthday, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. And Gerry deserves to be recognized as the American statesman that he was.

Gerry was born into a prominent, wealthy Massachusetts family. With these advantages in life, Gerry was able to attend and graduate from Harvard. After college, Gerry joined his family’s business, became active in politics, and was an early advocate of the American colonists’ cause.  He was elected to Massachusetts’ colonial legislative body in 1772 and became active in calling out abuses of the British monarch through the committees of correspondence. These committees operated throughout Britain’s American colonies as a way for critics of the crown’s policies to organize and disseminate information on royal abuses.

Gerry went on to serve in the Continental Congress, and as a member of the Continental Congress, he signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776. In the early days of the Revolutionary War, before independence had even been declared, Gerry was nearly arrested by the British Army during the battles of Lexington and Concord.

Elbridge Gerry’s role in the war effort was as honorable as his service in the Continental Congress. As a well-connected merchant, Gerry was able to obtain supplies that helped the Continental Army win the war.

After the war and years of experiencing less-than-stellar governance under the Articles of Confederation, Gerry participated in the convention that ended up producing a new constitution for the former British colonies. Gerry’s service as a member of the convention was noble and praiseworthy. At the convention, Gerry, an opponent of slavery and a man clearly ahead of his time, vehemently opposed the Three-Fifths Compromise and any constitutional sanction of slavery.

Ultimately, however, Gerry, along with Virginia convention delegates George Mason and Edmund Randolph, declined to support the constitution produced by the convention. But Gerry’s opposition was not motivated by any desire to see the new country fail. As a strong believer in limited government and opponent of tyranny, Gerry, like other prominent Anti-Federalists, insisted that the new charter contain a bill of rights.

The new constitution, of course, was ratified over the objections of Anti-Federalists like Gerry.  But in the end, Gerry and the Anti-Federalists prevailed when the first Congress, led by then Congressman James Madison, approved the ten amendments comprising the Bill of Rights.

Gerry himself served in that first Congress of the United States. And while his name has forever been attached to a word that most would associate with toxic partisanship, Gerry was anything but a partisan. He would later join the party of Thomas Jefferson, but as a member of Congress, Gerry backed the economic program of Jefferson’s great rival, Federalist Alexander Hamilton.  After leaving Congress, he even served as an elector in 1796 for John Adams, the Federalist Party’s candidate for president.

Gerry was a reluctant partisan. He only joined the Democratic-Republicans after having differences with Federalists in Adams’s administration over American foreign policy. In 1800, he was elected Governor of Massachusetts as a Democratic-Republican.

It was as Governor of the Bay State that Gerry signed into law the state senate district map that supposedly included the now infamous salamander-shaped district. But the map was not Gerry’s creation; the map was the handiwork of the Democratic-Republican–controlled Massachusetts legislature. While not happy about the highly partisan districts and crass partisanship of his fellow party members in the legislature, Gerry reluctantly allowed the maps to become law.

Gerry was defeated in his reelection campaign for Massachusetts governor, but that defeat would not be the end of Gerry’s political career. He was chosen as the Democratic-Republican nominee for vice president in James Madison’s race for reelection to the presidency in 1812. The Madison-Gerry ticket prevailed. Gerry’s time in the vice presidency, however, would be short: He died in office in 1814.

History can be unfair, and it certainly has been to Elbridge Gerry. He is, undoubtedly, more than just the politician lampooned by a clever political cartoon in a newspaper run by his political rivals. While he may never rank among our most revered Founders, and the word “gerrymandering” is unlikely to ever disappear from the American political lexicon, Elbridge Gerry deserves to be remembered for more than one public act. He was a patriot and a statesman, and as we draw closer to the country’s semiquincentennial, Americans ought to give this unappreciated Founder a second look.