(GERRYMANDERING) | Early Gerrymander cartoon in the Columbian Centinal, No. 3026. Boston: Printed by William Burdick for Benjamin Russell, Wednesday, April 7, 1813

Property from the Eric C. Caren Collection

(GERRYMANDERING)

Early Gerrymander cartoon in the Columbian Centinal, No. 3026. Boston: Printed by William Burdick for Benjamin Russell, Wednesday, April 7, 1813

Large folio, 4 pages (20 7/8 x 14 3/4 in.; 530 x 378 mm) on a full-sheet of laid paper, fine patriotic woodcut vignette in masthead, text in five columns; some light browning, disbound. The consignor has independently obtained a letter of authenticity from PSA that will accompany the lot.

A premature report of the death of the gerrymander. The term Gerry-mander evidently first appeared in the 26 March 1812 Boston Gazette, although some credit its coinage to Benjamin Russell, whose Columbian Centinal was one of the most influential Federalist newspapers of the nation's infancy. The term was intended to ridicule the contorted redrawing of Massachusetts state senate election districts in a manner intended to benefit the Democratic-Republican Party of Governor Elbridge Gerry and resulting in one meandering district said to resemble a salamander. 

The maneuver helped lead to Gerry's defeat in the next gubernatorial election, which perhaps prompted the Centinal to print this notice, together with a political cartoon of a skeletal Gerrymander captioned "Hatched 1812. Died 1813." Under the headline "The Great Magician's Death!" the text reads, "We announce in our paper to-day, we confess with no regret, the Death of that far-famed, and ill-begotten Monster the Gerry-Mander. This 'delicate monster' has been pining ever since last November, when he terribly strained himself in attempting to swallow one of his parents. … a loud warning to all his relations in this and the neighboring States." This obituary appeared much too early, as the practice of gerrymandering continues today, throughout the United States and around the globe.