George Clinton (July 26, 1739 – April 20, 1812) was the fourth vice-president of the United States.
- A New Yorker, Clinton served in the French & Indian War and in the American Revolution
- He was one of the Anti-Federalists who opposed ratification of the Constitution (probably writing essays opposing it under the pseudonym "Cato"), and was one of the most prominent Americans insisting that it include a Bill of Rights after its initial ratification
- As Governor of New York twice, still is the longest-serving governor of a state in U.S. history -- 21 years (1777-1795 and 1801-1804)
- First vice-president to serve under two presidents (Thomas Jefferson (1805–1809) and James Madison (1809–1812)); John C. Calhoun was the only other VP to ever do this, serving under Pres. John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson
- Clinton was the first of seven U.S. VEEPs to die while in office
- First politician to lie in state at the U.S. capitol
- Uncle of DeWitt Clinton, who was a U.S. Senator, New York City mayor, and also Governor of New York and largely responsible for the construction of the Erie Canal
- Not related to 20th Century U.S. President Bill Clinton (who was born William Jefferson Blythe III, but later adopted his stepfather's surname)
- Pulitzer-prize winning Alexander Hamilton biographer Ron Chernow described Clinton this way:
For Hamilton, the major threat to the state could now be summed up in three words: Governor George Clinton. As wartime governor, Clinton had emerged from the Revolution with unmatched popularity and had been reelected three times. He was a short, thickset man with broad shoulders and a protruding paunch. His coarse features—shaggy brows, unkempt hair, and fleshy jowls—gave him the brawny air of a fishmonger or stevedore. Everything about him suggested bullheaded persistence. For most of Hamilton’s career, George Clinton was an immovable presence in New York, a craggy, forbidding mountain that loomed over the political landscape. If uncouth in appearance, he was a wily politician who clung tenaciously to power. Destined to serve seven terms as governor and two as vice president, Clinton represented what would become a staple of American political folklore: the local populist boss, not overly punctilious or savory yet embraced warmly by the masses as one of their own. As his biographer John Kaminski put it, “George Clinton’s friends considered him a man of the people; his enemies saw him as a demagogue.” . . . . During most of his time in office, this pooh-bah of the people sported the pretentious title “His Excellency George Clinton, Esquire, the Governor-General and Commander-in-Chief of all the militia, and Admiral of the Navy of the State of New-York.”
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