Elbridge Gerry’s infamous salamander

Published around 1820, this broadside is a reprint of the original 1812 newspaper article and cartoon illustrating the first use of the term gerry-mander.

In 1812, the Governor of Massachusetts, Elbridge Gerry, redrew a state senatorial district in Essex County so that it would contain more voters loyal to his Democratic-Republican Party. This outraged his opponents, who believed that Gerry had violated the territorial integrity of these towns by arranging them in a crazy pattern simply for his party's own electoral convenience.

This 1820 version of the cartoon also includes an essay entitled “Political History.” The essay explains the gerrymander's origins in the Massachusetts 1812 senate redistricting plan, and confirms that the results of the subsequent election favored the Democrat-Republicans, as anticipated. Although the editors called for the death of the “Gerry-Mander,” the practice survived. Two hundred years later, it remains a powerful part of our political lexicon as both a concept and a partisan strategy employed on both sides of the aisle.