Elkanah Tisdale

The Gerry-Mander, Boston Gazette, March 26, 1812 Elkanah Tisdale turned a Massachusetts electoral map into a winged, clawed monster, mocking the state senate districts redrawn for the Democratic-Republican Party and signed into law by Governor Elbridge Gerry. Nobody knows who coined the name, but the cartoon fixed it in the language, and the word is still the first one reached for whenever district lines look suspicious. Few cartoons can claim to have handed a whole political vocabulary a new noun and verb. The trick worked, too: the party kept control of the legislature, which is a reminder that a cartoon can win the argument and still lose the vote.