Gore invested his fortune in a variety of businesses, including important infrastructure projects such as the Middlesex Canal and a bridge across the Charles River.

Gore was involved in a variety of charitable causes, and was a major benefactor of Harvard College, where the first library was named in his honor.

His palatial mansion in Waltham, Massachusetts, now known as Gore Place, is one of the finest extant examples of Federal architecture, and has been declared a National Historic Landmark.

[3] While at Harvard, Gore participated in a speaking club and formed significant lifelong friendships with Rufus King and John Trumbull.

[4] Gore graduated in 1776, and promptly enlisted in the Continental artillery regiment of his brother-in-law Thomas Crafts, where he served as a clerk until 1778.

[6] After his military service Gore studied law with John Lowell, and was admitted to the bar in 1778 after a comparatively brief tutelage.

Gore's clients included Loyalists seeking to recover some of their assets, as well as London-based British merchants with claims to pursue.

[9] In 1785 he married Rebecca Amory Payne, daughter of a wealthy merchant, maritime insurer, and director of the Bank of Massachusetts.

Grievances over harsh policies pursued by Governor James Bowdoin blossomed into Shays' Rebellion, which required militia action to crush in 1787.

Gore was one of several high-profile lawyers assigned to defend participants in the rebellion (included in this group were Theodore Sedgwick, Caleb Strong, James Sullivan, Levi Lincoln Sr., and Thomas Dawes).

In 1788 he and Andrew Craigie, a Boston businessman who had retained Gore for legal services, entered into a secret agreement to purchase Continental securities with a face value of $100,000 in a speculative bid that their value would rise.

[16] The success of Gore's speculations prompted him to enter a partnership with Craigie, William Duer and Daniel Parker in an attempt to acquire U.S. foreign debt obligations on favorable terms.

Parker was a business partner of Craigie's, and Duer was an influential New York businessman and Treasury Department official whose lavish lifestyle impressed Gore.

In 1789 he purchased a large mansion on fashionable Bowdoin Square, and also bought a country estate in Waltham that grew over time to 300 acres (120 ha).

Writing under the pseudonym "Manlius", he denounced the formation of "Democratic Societies" formed to oppose Federalist policy and support pro-French positions.

[31] Gore used this break to briefly return to America and assess the condition of his Waltham estate, where the house had been largely destroyed by fire in 1799.

During this trip, and later ones in England and Scotland, they took note of the architecture of country estates, and began planning a new house for their Waltham property.

[34] The Gore's social circle in England revolved around his good friend Rufus King, who was appointed Ambassador to Great Britain in 1796, along with other Massachusetts expatriates.

Selfridge was prosecuted by Attorney General (and future Gore gubernatorial opponent) James Sullivan, and the defense also included arch-Federalist Harrison Gray Otis.

His investments ranged widely, including maritime insurance (where is father-in-law had made his fortune), bridges, locks, canals, and textiles.

Not all of his ventures panned out: the canal was in the long run a financial failure, as were efforts with other collaborators to develop Lechmere Point, the Cambridge side of the Craigie Bridge.

He also spearheaded actions to drive Senator John Quincy Adams from the Federalist Party over his support of Thomas Jefferson's foreign policy.

[48] During Gore's term the principal domestic issue occupying state politics was a banking crisis stimulated by the federal policy of embargoing trade with Great Britain and France, then embroiled in the Napoleonic Wars.

The legislature passed resolves opposing the federal government's hardline policy against trade and diplomatic relations with the United Kingdom (then embroiled in the Napoleonic Wars), and Gore in early 1810 invited Francis James Jackson, who had been rejected as the UK's ambassador to the US, to visit the state.

This pressure may have played a role in President James Madison's decision to renew relations with the UK and accept Jackson's credentials.

[50] The lessening of the war threat, and the choice by the Republicans of the popular Elbridge Gerry as their candidate brought a challenge to Federalist control of Massachusetts in the 1810 elections.

He expressed approval of the 1814 Hartford Convention in which the New England states aired grievances concerning Republican governance of the country and the conduct of the war.

Although he was no longer active in politics, he continued to express opinions on the subjects of the day, opposing the 1820 Missouri Compromise and bemoaning the "great moderation & mediocrity" of Federalist Governor John Brooks.

[64] Gore spent most of his later years at his country estate in Waltham, suffering from worsening rheumatoid arthritis that made walking increasingly difficult.

The major beneficiary of the Gore estate was Harvard (which received an estimated $100,000), although bequests were also made to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Massachusetts Historical Society.