By John Gilbert McCurdy c.2009 The New York Times
YPSILANTI, Mich. -- By July 4, 1776, Elbridge Gerry had tired of independence. A delegate at the Second Continental Congress, Gerry had worked for months to secure his country's freedom. But in the oppressive heat of a Philadelphia summer, Gerry's mind turned to the woman he had left behind in Massachusetts. While America's freedom was important to Gerry, he was simultaneously determined to extinguish a more personal type of independence: his bachelorhood.
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