George Clinton

George Clinton (1739-1812) was an American soldier and statesman who served as the fourth vice president of the United States from 1805 until his death in 1812, during the presidencies of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. He also served as the first governor of New York from 1777 to 1795 and again from 1801 to 1804.

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Biography

George Clinton was born in 1739 in Little Britain in the Province of New York to Anglo-Irish parents. In the French and Indian War he sailed on a privateer and then served in the provincial militia, reaching the rank of lieutenant. He afterwards read law, opened a practice in Ulster County in 1764 and became a district attorney the following year.

From 1768 to 1775 he sat in the New York General Assembly as an opponent of British policy, and he went to the Continental Congress in 1775. During the Revolutionary War he was a brigadier general in the Continental Army while also serving, from 1777, as New York's first governor, an office he held without a break until 1795. He fought the claims that became Vermont, opposed the ratification of the federal Constitution as an Anti-Federalist and pressed for a bill of rights.

In the 1790s he became a leader of the emerging Democratic-Republicans, who ran him for vice president in 1792; he finished third. He was governor again from 1801 to 1804 and then replaced Aaron Burr as Thomas Jefferson's running mate, serving as vice president from 1805. Re-elected in 1808 under James Madison despite seeking the presidency himself, he cast the tie-breaking Senate vote that blocked the recharter of the First Bank of the United States. He died in office in April 1812, the first vice president to do so.