116 A HISTORY OF AMERICA IN 100 MAPS
DEMOCRACY SUBVERTED
“The Gerry-Mander, or Essex South
District Formed into a Monster!,”
Salem Gazette, April 2, 1813
Those who bemoan the political polarization of
our own day may take comfort in knowing that this
is nothing new. Periods of intense partisanship
appear throughout American history, and in fact the
party system itself emerged out of bitter political
rivalries in the 1790s. Soon after the Americans won
independence from Britain, intense disagreements
over federal power, personal liberties, and the
nation’s future drove the birth of the Federalists and
the Republicans.
Moreover, the roughly equal power exercised by
the two parties in the early republic drove each of
them to seek any competitive edge they could find.
In 1811 Massachusetts—which had for years been
dominated by the Federalists—suddenly turned
toward the Jeffersonian Republicans. With control
of both the governorship and the state legislature,
the Republicans acted to maintain their advantage
by passing a redistricting bill that coincided with the
most recent census. Governor Elbridge Gerry signed
the bill, and Republicans immediately drew electoral
boundaries that confined Federalists to Essex
County’s interior in order to minimize their statewide
voting power. The gambit worked: in the next election
cycle, with fewer votes the Republicans managed to
elect more representatives than the Federalists.
The Federalists were understandably outraged,
and accused the Republicans of fraud. At a Boston
dinner party, a Federalist examining a map of one
of the newly configured districts observed that its
contorted shape resembled that of a salamander.
Another quipped that the district ought to be deemed
a “Gerry-Mander,” a jab at the governor who had
signed the bill. The joke morphed into Elkanah
Tisdale’s satirical map of the district, first published
in the Boston Gazette in 1812, and soon reprinted in
other Federalist papers. The map is not just named
for Governor Gerry, but also mocks him personally:
his profile is caricatured with a hooked nose at
Middleton and a jutting chin at Lynnfield. Gerry was
a signer of the Declaration of Independence and vice
president under James Madison. Despite this sterling
reputation, however, his name would be forever
associated with political manipulation.
The Federalist Salem Gazette published this
version of the map as part of a series that excoriated
the opposition and its tactics. The scandal coincided
with the outbreak of war with Britain in 1812, which
Federalists blamed on the Republican president
James Madison. This explains the Gazette’s urgent call
for “Federalists! Followers of Washington!” to turn
out on election day and outvote the Republicans.
The paper accused the Republicans of “unholy
party spirit,” for in redrawing district boundaries they
had taken advantage of representative democracy to
create a permanent political advantage. The nearly
hysterical rhetoric reveals the level of anger felt by
the Federalists. Despite the fact that they had
been the majority party in Massachusetts, shrewd
measures on the part of the Republicans had
effectively turned them into a minority. Hence the
paper’s argument that the Gerry-Mander was not
just politics as usual, but a technique that “stifles
the voice of the Majority.” To the Federalists, this
was nothing less than the betrayal of representative
government itself.
This rhetoric mobilized the Federalists, who
regained control of the Massachusetts legislature
and immediately repealed the redistricting law. But
the term “gerrymander” stuck, and has been invoked
ever since to describe perceived unfairness
in redistricting.
The practice of gerrymandering long predates
the term. To those who have used it successfully,
gerrymandering is a perfectly legal and democratic
instrument to maximize a party’s representation;
to those on the losing end, it signals an absolute
subversion of democracy. In our own time, we have
been reminded more than once that the electoral
college operates in the same way, whereby the winner
of the popular vote may still lose the presidency.
Efforts to redraw boundaries to ensure a particular
outcome have been reviewed by the Supreme
Court for decades. Yet the court has overturned
such redistricting efforts only when they effectively
diminish the representation of racial minorities. In
the 1990s Justice Sandra Day O’Connor pushed back
against bizarrely shaped districts in Texas, arguing
that they were clearly designed to dilute minority
voting power. By contrast, the court is only beginning
to rule efforts to limit the power of a particular party
as unconstitutional as shown on page 254. The
upshot is a nation with less competitive elections,
for voters have been sorted into safer districts. If this
seems undemocratic, it is as old as the republic itself.