An artful mode of districting a portion of territory for political purposes. Also used as verb. See particularly 1881.
1812. Mr. Hooper described the figure made on the map as “a chart traced by a jack o’ lantern; a plan marked out by the course of the wind, the flight of a bird, or the wanderings of a maniac.” Mr. Reddington said that “the lines by which the county of Essex was divided had given to one district of that county a figure more odious than a scorpion.”—Mass. Spy, March 25.
1812. The same paper prints a short article from the Repertory entitled “Gerrymander Senate.”—Nov. 4.
1812. There are some votes in Middlesex for Mr. Scattering; and some returns from democratic towns are not made conformable to the Gerrymander law of last February.—Boston-Gazette, Nov. 23.
1813. Essex Gerrymander District Address. This address is as crooked and wicked as the district is deformed.—Id., April 5.
1813. The term Gerrymander is now used throughout the U.S. as synonimous (sic) with deception. As, when a man has been swindled out of his rights by a villain, he says he has been Gerrymandered.—Id., April 8.
1813. Obituary notice of the Gerrymander, who “departed this life in the 14th month of his age.” Coffin with Gerrymander effigy. Hymn:
| Hark! from below a croaking sound, | |
| Mine ears, attend the cry; | |
| Ye Gerrymanders, view the ground | |
| Where you must shortly lie. | |
Id., April 15: from the Salem Gazette. |
1813. An official statement of the returns of voters for senators give[s] twenty nine friends of peace, and eleven gerrymanders.—Mass. Spy, May 12.
1813. The manner in which they have obtained this majority is by a species of gerrymandering.—Id., June 2: from the Columbian Centinel.
1814. [The Embargo] was consigned to the tomb of the Gerrymanders with much funeral pomp.—Id., May 4.
1816. [They] were among the men who Gerrymandered the State.—Id., Feb. 28: from the Centinel.
1821. It [a painted sign] presents you, now General Washington, or President Jefferson, then a Turk or an Indian, or a landscape; there a griffin, a dragon, the sea-serpent, or gerrymander.—Article in Portsmouth Journal, dated Naumkeag, July 23: J. T. Buckingham, ‘Miscellanies,’ i. 48.
1842. The claim … that Congress may break into our territorial limits, and there “gerrymander” our States into just such kind of Congressional districts as may please the fancy of the members of this body from other States, who have never seen our country.—Mr. Kennedy of Indiana in the House of Representatives, April 27: Cong. Globe, p. 317, App.
1842. The apportionment bill would put an end to the gerrymandering system for party purposes.—Mr. Kerr of Maryland in the U.S. Senate, June 6: id., p. 584.
1842. The grand gerrymandering system of Whiggery has commenced in the [Pennsylvania] senate.—Phila. Spirit of the Times, July 11.
1881. In 1812, while Elbridge Gerry was Governor of Massachusetts, the Democratic legislature, in order to secure an increased representation in the State Senate, districted the State in such a way that the shape of the towns [townships] forming such a district in Essex county brought out a territory of regular [irregular?] outline. This was indicated on a map which Russell, the editor of the ‘Continent,’ hung in his office. Stuart the painter, observing it, added a head, wings, and claws, and exclaimed, “That will do for a salamander.” “Gerrymander!” said Russell, and the word became a proverb.—‘Mem. Hist. Boston,’ iii. 212. (N.E.D.) This account is apparently taken, though not word for word, from J. T. Buckingham’s ‘Specimens of Newspaper Literature,’ ii. 91 (Boston, 1850).
