How a Salamander-Shaped District Made the Word 'Gerrymander'

On February 11, 1812, Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry — a 67-year-old signer of the Declaration of Independence and future Vice President under James Madison — signed a redistricting bill that his Democratic-Republican party had pushed through the state legislature. The bill stretched and twisted the state senate districts so that Federalist votes would be packed into a handful of seats while Democratic-Republican votes would carry many. One of the new districts in Essex County, the one north of Boston, looked on a map like a long-necked, claw-footed lizard.

Six weeks later, on March 26, 1812, the Boston Gazette ran a cartoon by Elkanah Tisdale that drew the district as exactly that animal, fanged and winged, headlined "The Gerry-mander." The caption: A new species of Monster, which appeared in Essex South District in Jan. 1812. The pun was Gerry + salamander, and the editor — possibly Benjamin Russell of the rival Columbian Centinel, in one well-circulated version — coined it staring at the map on his office wall.

The political point landed. In the next election Gerry's party held the senate, but the Federalists won the lower house, the governorship, and the popular vote. Gerry was voted out. The word stuck.

Two awkward footnotes. Gerry's name was pronounced with a hard G, like "Gary," while the verb that bears his name is pronounced "jerry-mander." And Gerry himself is said to have disliked the redistricting bill — he signed it anyway, on the calculation that the alternative was worse for his party.

He became James Madison's vice president eight months later, in March 1813, and died in office the following year. The salamander in Essex County has outlived him by more than two centuries and counting.