Caleb Strong (January 9, 1745 - November 7, 1819) was Massachusetts lawyer and politician who served as the governor of Massachusetts between 1800 and 1807, and again from 1812 until 1816.

He was born in Northampton, Massachusetts. During the American Revolution he served on the Northampton Committee of Safety. He was a delegate to the 1779 Massachusetts Constitutional Convention and helped write the 1780 state constitution. He was elected as a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1780 but did not serve. He sat on the first Massachusetts Governor's Council, and was a state senator from 1780 to 1789.

Strong was elected as a delegate to the Philadelphia Convention that drafted the U.S. Constitution. Illness of his wife forced him to return to Massachusetts before the work was completed, so he did not sign the document. However, he supported its adoption by the state's ratifying convention.

Governor Strong opposed the War of 1812 to the point of refusing to call out the state militia to support the war. A strong Federalist, he nonetheless adhered to the states' rights view that only the governor had the power to call out the state militia, not the U.S. President. Near the end of the war, during the Hartford Convention, Strong entered secret negotiations with the British which would have ceded them northern Maine in return for agreeing to a separate peace with Massachusetts. However the Treaty of Ghent ended the war before terms could be finalized.

Strong died in Northampton, Massachusetts, and is buried at the Bridge Street Cemetery in Northampton, Massachusetts.

The town of Strong, Maine is named after Governor Strong. Windham, Ohio was also originally named in Strong's honor; the original name of this village was Strongsburg.

References

External links

• Official Commonwealth of Massachusetts Governor Biography