Excerpted from
A Year in Review: Newly Scanned Maps of 2024 [Gerrymander cartoon]
Julie Stoner
Library of Congress' Worlds Revealed Blog January 2, 2025
https://blogs.loc.gov/maps/2025/01/a-year-in-review-newly-scanned-maps-of-2024/
The last map I want to highlight is the well known "gerrymander" cartoon, which first appeared in the Boston Gazette on March 26, 1812. The artist, Elkanah Tisdale, drew the cartoon to voice opposition to the new Senate district lines drawn for Essex County, Massachusetts. Governor Elbridge Gerry had signed a law the previous month drawing the lines in the county to heavily favor his own party. Tisdale drew out the new districts in a salamander shape, adding the head, wings, and tail, calling the creature a "Gerry-mander", a term still widely used today.
The Geography and Map Division holds the original wood block carvings used to print the cartoon. Wood blocks were used in early printing. The image would be carved into the wood blocks backwards so when ink was applied and pressed to paper, the image would show the right way. Below you can see both the original blocks and a print created from the wood carvings. You can read more about wood block printing in our blog post, Fabricating the World: Printing with Wood.
[Original woodblocks for printing "Gerrymander" political cartoon map that was issued in Boston gazette of March 26, 1812]. Elkanah Tisdale, 1812. Geography and Map Division. 
No comments:
Post a Comment