April 11, 2018 • 31 mins
Elbridge Gerry signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation. Gerrymandering is the drawing of political districts to give a particular party or group an advantage or disadvantage, and it's named after him.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey everybody. Before we get started, we have a couple
of live shows to announce. First April, we will be
at Universal Fan Con in Baltimore, Maryland. Our exact schedule
for that show is still in the works, but this
will include a live show, and our listeners can get
discounted tickets using the offer code History. And for all
(00:20):
the folks who have asked us to do a show
in the Boston area, of which there have been many,
we are finally on the way with the show in
Quincy at Adams National Historical Park on Sunday, July eight
at two pm. That one is an outdoor show. It
will happen rain or shine. And we also have more
appearances that will be announcing soon, as well as more
(00:41):
details about both of these shows, and we will put
that all at our website also at miss in history
dot com. Welcome to Steph you missed in history class
from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'll fry so
(01:04):
l Bridge Gerry not really a household name unless you
start talking about jerrymandering, which at this point is a
household word and is named after him. So just in
case you're not familiar, jerrymandering is the drawing of political
districts to give particular advantage or disadvantage to a party
(01:25):
or a group. And back when we talked about the
Wilmington's Que earlier this year, we got a number of
angry letters about how we should have specifically said that
both major parties in the United States jerrymander, even though
we talked about both major parties doing that in the episode.
A lot of those letters also suggested that we should
do a podcast on the history of jerrymandering to remedy
(01:47):
our obvious ignorance on that subject. But the funny thing was,
at that point it had been lingering on my short
list for a really long time, based on having already
educated myself. So it's not April of eighteen. Just last
month the U. S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in
a gerrymandering case, and they had heard arguments in a
(02:08):
previous case the previous October, and then the North Carolina
case that we mentioned in that Wilmington Que episode was
put on hold pending decisions and all that, so it
seemed like a good time to actually move this thing
that's been on my short list for more than a
year up to the top. We are not going to
get into the details of the cases that the Supreme
Court is examining right now. Uh, there is a ton
(02:31):
of very good, reliable, nonpartisan coverage that is very easy
to find if you google something like jerrymandering Scotus or
jerrymandering Supreme Court. Today's show is more about the history
of congressional districts and who this l Bridge Gary person
was and how he became associated with a district that
was so convoluted that the whole practice of drawing skewed
(02:53):
political districts is now named after him. So in the US,
the word jerrymandering can apply to any political district, but
it's most often used to describe state and federal legislative districts.
The various states have their own particulars, but for the
most part, state legislative districts follow the same basic principles
that the congressional districts do, but with different numbers. The
(03:17):
United States has four hundred thirty five congressional districts, which
are distributed among the states based on their population, and
that population count comes from the census, which has been
conducted every ten years since se The census is something
that Congress is empowered to conduct in Article one, Section
two of the Constitution, so it's right there in the
(03:38):
nation's founding document. The census is used for a lot
of other things as well, but it's primary purpose is
connected to creating congressional districts, and the idea that the
districts will be allocated to the states based on their
population is also in the Constitution, also in Article one,
section two, which is amended in Section two of the
(03:59):
four teenth Amendment, quote, Representatives shall be apportioned among the
several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole
number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed.
The Indians not taxed part is connected to the idea
of tribal sovereignty, and at the time, tribal persons who
(04:22):
were not paying any taxes were not being counted. We'll
get to that a little bit more later. All the
congressional districts across all the states are supposed to have
roughly the same number of people, and although that basic
idea has been part of the process from the very beginning,
it wasn't until the Apportionment Act of eighteen forty two,
that the law really spelled out that every state should
(04:44):
be divided into congressional districts, with a single representative elected
from each one. The congressional districts themselves are divided and
distributed through a process called apportionment, which is governed by
federal law. The exact method of a portion mint has
changed several times over the centuries, and all those methods
are actually pretty tricky to explain in the course of
(05:06):
an audio podcast, so we will put it this way.
It is a math exercise intended to ensure equal representation nationwide.
The current system of apportionment goes back to nineteen forty,
at which point it was also decided that there were
no longer any Indians, not text to be factored into
the equation. The number of congressional districts corresponds to the
(05:28):
number of seats in the House of Representatives, so the
nation started out with sixty five seats in seventy seven,
which increased to a hundred and five after the first
census was conducted, apart from a temporary increase between when
Alaska and Hawaii became states and they each got one representative,
and then when the next census was held, which point
(05:51):
it dropped back down. The number has been fixed at
four hundred thirty five since Arizona and New Mexico became
states in nineteen twelve. The District of Columba, Puerto Rico,
American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the US
Virgin Islands are each represented by a non voting member
of the House, which is separate from the four hundred
(06:12):
thirty five voting members. That limit of four hundred thirty
five congressional districts means that apportionment is a zero sum game.
There are four hundred and thirty five districts to go
around among fifty states, and each district nationwide is supposed
to have about the same number of people, So the
census reveals that a state's population has increased enough that
(06:34):
it requires another district to keep things balanced out. Another
state whose population has decreased has to lose a district
to make up for it. Since each district is supposed
to have about the same number of people, it's not
really possible to just add or subtract one in a
state without redrawing the entire map, and the states have
their own laws about exactly how such redistricting should happen,
(06:59):
and some states an independent voting commission draws the lines,
or the legislature draws the lines but is forbidden by
law from doing so in a way that favors their
own party. But in a lot of states, redistricting is
handled just like any other piece of legislation, with a
vote in the legislature and an approval or a veto
by the governor. That means whichever party has the majority
(07:21):
in the state government has the potential to put more
influence on the way that the map is drawn. Throughout
all these decades of adjustments to how many districts there
are and how they're apportioned, legislators have tried a number
of other tactics to influence the outcome as well. One
notorious example is the three fifths Compromise, which is an
(07:41):
Article one, section two of the Constitution. Along with the
census and the idea of apportionment. This was an appeasement
to the slave states, who wanted their enslaved population to
be counted in the census so they could get more
representation in Congress, but not to be counted in a
way that would affect taxation. So the compromise was to
count three fifths of the enslaved people in each state,
(08:04):
which gave the Southern states more seats in the House
during the apportionment process. That is why the fourteenth Amendment
specifies the whole number of persons in each state. The
idea of the three fifths compromise actually goes back to
before the drafting of the Constitution, and the practice of
gerrymandering goes back almost as far too, before the word
(08:25):
was even coined. The first recognized example comes from sight,
which was the year after the Constitution was ratified. Patrick
Henry was governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia that year,
and when Virginia was drawing its congressional map, he convinced
the state legislature to draw one of its districts in
such a way that would force James Madison to run
(08:47):
against James Monroe. His hope was that Monroe, who was
his political ally, would defeat Madison in the congressional race,
but that didn't work out. Madison was the winner. There's
a paper in the journal Early American Studies that argues
that these districts were fairly drawn, but people at the
time and in the decades since then have been positive
(09:08):
that Patrick Henry was doing this on purpose. James Madison,
the winner of that election, would later become the fourth
President of the United States, and during his second term
in office, to bring this back around to the subject
of the show, his vice president was Elbridge Gary. And
we're going to talk more about Elbridge Gary, who is,
of course the first statesman we all think of after
(09:30):
we first paused for a little sponsor break. Elbridge Gary
was born in Marblehead, Massachusetts, on July sevente four. His father, Thomas,
had emigrated to the colony from England in seventeen thirty,
and he'd become a prominent figure in the marble Head community.
(09:52):
The family was also well off, but as devout members
of First Congressional Church, they weren't particularly showy about their wealth.
L Bridge was one of eleven siblings, although six of
them died while still in childhood. Gary went to Harvard College,
where he earned a master's degree, and in his master's
thesis he argued that the colonies should resist the British
(10:13):
government after the implementation of the Stamp Act. He returned
to Marblehead after he graduated in seventeen sixty five, where
he joined his father's merchant business and became active in
the growing movement for independence from Britain. This included serving
on a committee to enforce a ban on the sale
and consumption of tea. In seventeen seventy two, Gary was
(10:35):
elected to the colony's legislature, the General Court of Massachusetts,
and May of seventeen seventy four, after the Boston Tea Party,
the British Parliament passed the Intolerable Acts, which were a
collection of laws meant to both punish Massachusetts and to
try to bring the colony back in line. One of
these was the Massachusetts Government Act, which abolished the colony's
(10:56):
charter and replaced most of its elected members of the
government with people pointed by the Crown. When this happened,
the General Court reorganized itself as a provisional government called
the Provisional Congress, and Elbridge Gary was part of it.
In seventeen seventy six, Gary signed the Declaration of Independence,
and then he was elected to the Second Continental Congress,
(11:17):
where he served until seventeen seventy nine. I did find
one report that his term really lasted until seventeen eighty,
but after a dispute about how much to pay suppliers,
of which Gary was one, he walked out of congress
in discussed and didn't come back. That seems a little
incongruous with the reputation that he developed for himself of
being very dedicated. Afterward, Uh, there was this one source
(11:41):
that I found that made that claim, and then all
the other sources were echoing back to that one. And
I didn't find a mention of it in a biography
that was written during his lifetime. So maybe that would
have happened. I guarantee if anybody ever makes a movie
of his life, that will be included. Yeah. In his
work in the government Elbridge, Gary developed a reputation as
(12:03):
being highly dedicated and efficient. He was also obstinate and cantankerous,
and not afraid to stand by an unpopular opinion. He
wasn't nearly as eloquent a speaker as a lot of
the more famous founders, but he spoke tirelessly on subjects
that he thought were important. One of the things that
was really important to Gary was independence from Britain. He
(12:25):
was relentless in his efforts to convince colonies that were
on the fence about it that independence really was and
their best interests. John Adams described it this way, quote,
if every man here was a Gary, the liberties of
America would be safe against the gates of Earth and Hell.
In seventeen eighty three, after the end of the Revolutionary War,
(12:46):
Gary was elected once again to the nation's governing body,
which was now the Congress of the Confederation. He served
until seventeen eighty five. In seventeen eighty seven, he was
elected as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention. This was
the convention that was established to craft a replacement for
the Articles of Confederation, which had formed the basis for
(13:06):
the United States government after the Revolutionary War. Elbridge Gary
was also one of the signers of the Articles of Confederation.
Elbridge Gary had a lot of extremely strong opinions about
how the government that the Constitutional Convention was creating should work.
He wasn't so much behind the all men are created
equal language from the Declaration of Independence. He thought that
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humanity had a natural elite and that those elite persons
should lead the nation. He also thought that the new
government should take the best elements of monarchy, aristocracy, and
democracy and create a strong central government that also delegated
significant power to the states, but he wanted limits on
the central government that would prevent it from descending into tyranny,
(13:51):
and he wasn't in favor of having a standing army
because of its potential tyrannical uses. He also became one
of the most vocal supporters of the Greek Compromise. The
Constitutional Convention was considering two plans for the federal legislature.
One was called the Virginia or Large State plan, which
involved a bi cameral legislature, with the state's representatives to
(14:13):
both houses being determined by their population. The other was
the New Jersey or Small State plan, in which the
government would have only one house and each state would
have the same number of representatives. Neither side was willing
to budge, and the Constitutional Convention came to a complete deadlock.
The Connecticut Compromise or Great Compromise was a combination of
(14:36):
the two proposed plans b cameral legislature, in which one
house had the same number of representatives for each state
and the other house had a number of representatives based
on the state's population. This is what we have today.
So this plan is most often associated with Oliver Ellsworth
and Roger Sherman, who largely proposed it, but l Bridge
(14:56):
Gary was the chair of the committee that was respons
well for coming up with a compromise, and he was
one of its most strident and vocal advocates. He called
for compromise again and again during this process, and he
pointed out that if the Constitutional Convention did not reach
a successful end, quote, we shall not only disappoint America,
(15:18):
but the rest of the world. Gary's work with the
Constitutional Convention went way beyond the Great Compromise. He also
advocated for checks and balances, including Congress being able to
overrule a presidential veto. He called for provisions for impeaching
the president, saying quote, a good magistrate will not fear them,
and a bad one ought to be kept in fear
(15:39):
of them. He opposed direct elections because he thought it
too easy for the voting population to be misled, but
when proposals were raised to have Congress elected president, he
argued that would make the president too dependent upon the
will of Congress. He suggested having state governors elect the
president instead, but in the end albret To Gary wasn't
(16:01):
happy with the constitution. That the that the convention created
and he refused to sign it. He thought there weren't
enough protections of individual liberties, and he proposed the addition
of a Bill of rights. And the Constitution today does
have a Bill of Rights, but that didn't come along
until after it was ratified. Even though Gary was highly
(16:21):
critical of the Constitution as it was drafted, once it
was sent for ratification, he toned down his criticism. He
still had his objections, but he thought if the States
didn't ratify the Constitution, the nation would either fall apart
or dissolve into a civil war. Ratifying the Constitution and
amending it later was the lesser of two evils, so
(16:42):
during and after the ratification process he kept advocating for
amendments and a Bill of rights. The Bill of Rights
was proposed by James Madison before the First United States
Congress on June eighth nine. Gary's work with the government
didn't stop there. He ran for governor of Massachusetts in
seventeen eighty eight and was defeated, and then he served
(17:03):
in the House of Representatives from seventeen eighty nine to
seventeen ninety three. In the middle of all that, he
married Anne Thompson in seventeen eighty six, and they would
go on to have ten children together, at the rate
of almost one a year. He eventually became disillusioned with
Congress after trying to work through extremely partisan bickering over
Alexander Hamilton's proposal to assume state debt and establish a
(17:27):
national bank. Gary retired at the end of his second
term in the House and went back to Massachusetts, where
he lived in Cambridge with his ever growing family. He
didn't stay out of politics completely for very long, though.
In seventeen ninety six he was a presidential elector in
support of John Adams, and the following year Adams appointed
him as an envoy to France. His mission there was
(17:50):
not very successful though. This all took place after the
United States and Great Britain signed the j Treaty, and
the j Treaty resolved some issues between those two nations,
but France thought it was in violation of earlier treaties
between the United States and France. So Gary and the
rest of the delegation were then part of the x
y Z affair, which could maybe be its own episode.
(18:13):
One day, the French foreign minister demanded a bribe before
negotiations could begin, and then the American delegation refused to
pay that bribe. This all blossomed into an undeclared naval
war that lasted until eighteen o one. Back home, Gary
was in and out of politics before being elected governor
of Massachusetts in eighteen ten. It was during his term
(18:35):
as governor that the term gerrymander was coined, which we're
going to get right back to in a moment. After
the Gerrymander, he ran for re election and lost in
eighteen twelve, But that same year, James Madison tapped him
to be his presidential running mate, hoping to win the
Massachusetts vote. Madison lost Massachusetts, but he won the presidency,
(18:56):
and Gary served as Vice president with the same cantanker
as diligence as he did the rest of his career.
Gary died in office on November fourteen, while on his
way to the Senate. He's buried at Congressional Cemetery, and
the monument over his grave bears a quote from him quote,
it is the duty of every man, though he may
(19:16):
have but one day to live, to devote that day
to the good of his country, which makes it kind
of sad that his legacy today is a practice that's
frequently criticized as being to the detriment of the country
and its democratic process, and we're going to talk about
that after we have a quick sponsor break. L Bridge
(19:42):
Gary signed the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation.
He was an unflagging presence at the Constitutional Convention. He
shared the committee that came up with a great compromise
and was one of its most vocal supporters at a
time with the Constitutional Convention was at risk of a
total collapse. During his inaugural address when he was elected
(20:02):
governor of Massachusetts, he called for an end to partisan
in fighting and for the political parties to work together.
But today his legacy boils down to one word, gerrymander,
something that goes directly against the democratic ideals he championed
during his legislative career. The map that led to the
term was drawn from Massachusetts state senate districts. Before eighteen twelve,
(20:27):
the Commonwealth of Massachusetts had senate districts that followed county
boundary lines, but that year Democratic Republicans and the state
legislature redrew the map to give themselves an advantage by
packing the federalist vote into only a few districts. This
new map was filled with bizarre shapes that the federalists
described as quote, carvings and manglings. The district that Governor
(20:51):
Gary lived in was shaped roughly like a lower case
are tilted backward. Gary wasn't fully in support of these
car mangled districts. In the words of contemporary biographer James T. Austin, quote,
to the governor, the project of this law was exceedingly disagreeable.
He urged his friends strong arguments against its policy as
(21:13):
well as its effects. After it had passed both houses,
he hesitated to give it his signature and meditated to
return it to the legislature with his objections to its
becoming law. But being satisfied that it conformed to the Constitution,
he doubted whether, against precedents to the contrary, the private
opinion of a governor on a mere question of propriety
(21:34):
or policy would justify the interposition of his negative and
he accordingly permitted it to pass. So that basically boils
down to, well, it's not unconstitutional, but that was really
only part of it. When he approved these districts on
February eleventh, eighteen twelve, Gary, who had long resisted joining
(21:55):
a political party, but was now a Democratic Republican was
highly concerned about what the Federalist Party was doing. He
thought that Federalist criticism of President James Madison's foreign policy
bordered on trees andus. He also feared that the Federalist
Party was becoming too close to Great Britain, and he
worried that Federalists secretly wanted to roll back American independence
(22:17):
and returned to the British Empire. It is extremely likely
that all of this influenced his decision. Page two of
the Boston Gazette on March twelve included a satirical picture
of Gary's district. The district's southern end, at the bottom
of the R ended in talents. In the northeast corner
(22:38):
had a dragon lake head two wings sprouted just below
the eastward bend at the top of the R, and
this picture ran under the heading the Gary Mander, followed
by a scathing article that began quote The horrid monster,
of which this drawing is a correct representation, appeared in
the County of Essex during the last session of the Legislature.
(23:00):
Are a couple of different versions about who exactly coined
the term Garymander. The common theme in all of them
is that somebody pointed out that this long bent district
looked like a salamander, and then somebody else responded with
something along the lines of no, no, no, It's a
gary Mander. And one version of this story it happened
over dinner, with illustrator el Cana Tisdale drawing a snaky
(23:23):
looking version of the map and poet Richard Alsop being
the one to say no, a gary Mander. And another
version it started with Boston Gazette editor Benjamin Russell hanging
a map of the district over his desk and artist
Gilbert Stewart seeing it there and adding on the wings,
head and talents, and then Russell was the one to
say that it was a gary Mander. And this garymandered
(23:46):
map had exactly the effect that the people who drew
it wanted. In the election that followed, Democratic Republicans earned
twenty nine seats while the Federalists earned eleven, But in
terms of the number of votes, Democratic Republicans got fifty thousand,
one hundred sixty four votes while Federalists got fifty one thousand,
seven hundred sixty six. So while the Federalists got the
(24:09):
majority of the votes. Those votes earned them well under
half as many seats in the Senate. As gary Mander
became part of the political lex con its pronunciation gradually
shifted to gerrymander the way that we say it today,
and it was included in Webster's Dictionary in eighteen sixty four.
Apart from that political cartoon of the the Gary Mander,
(24:32):
opponents of the Massachusetts redistricting during Elbridge Gary's term as
governor said it quote inflicted a grievous wound on the Constitution,
and partisan gerrymandering has been similarly criticized throughout American history.
When the Virginia Legislature created the map to force Madison
to run against Monroe, newspapers reported that it was violating
(24:53):
the rights of the people to choose their representation in
the government. President James Garfield, while he was serving in
the House of Representatives, said that jerrymandering was indefensible, no
matter a person's politics, and this criticism continues until today,
although there are definitely cases when politicians are more critical
of the other parties partisan gerrymandering than of their own.
(25:17):
Ronald Reagan called jerrymandering a national scandal, and Barack Obama said, quote,
We've got to end the practice of drawing our congressional
districts so that politicians can pick their voters and not
the other way around. Let a bipartisan group do it.
But there have also been attempts to use jerrymandering in
a positive way. After the Voting Rights Act of ninety five,
(25:40):
a number of states created one or more congressional districts
that were meant to guarantee at least one black representative
from that state. Sometimes the creation of these majority minority
districts was called things like benevolent or affirmative jerrymandering. States
that had a history of discriminating against black voters had
to have their voting laws pre cleared at the federal
(26:02):
level before they could be implemented, and there were cases
where states were ordered to redraw their maps to add
majority minority districts. But this is a contentious issue. Since
these districts concentrate minority voting power into one place, it
dilutes that power and the rest of the state. And
there have also been cases in which lawmakers used the
(26:24):
creation of majority minority districts as a smoke screen deliberately
packing the district to give themselves an advantage in the
rest of the state. So today, intentionally created majority minority
districts are usually only going to be found constitutional when
they really are absolutely necessary and not a cover for
(26:44):
partisan jerrymandering. The Supreme Court has made it clear that
racist jerrymandering to prevent minorities from having an equal political
voice is unconstitutional, and it has also issued a number
of decisions related to apportionment and other aspects of redistricting,
but it hasn't taken a clear stance on partisan jerrymandering
before this point, which could change with the cases currently
(27:08):
on the docket. Ideally, political districts reflect the people living
in the districts, so there will always be districts that
reliably vote for one party or another, and the general
consensus up to this point has been that some degree
of partisan influence on how the districts are drawn is
probably constitutional and to be expected. But what the Supreme
(27:32):
Court is looking at right now is mainly partisan jerrymandering
that followed the census, which is being described am using
this as a quote as extreme. According to the authors
of the book Jerrymandering in America, from Cambridge University Press.
Partisan bias roughly tripled in district maps in versus two thousand.
(27:53):
Also in two was an election that saw huge Republican
gains in state legislatures and governorships, which means at this
point gerrymandered districts are skewing Republican about three to four
times as often as they're skewing Democratic. Like we said
at the top of the show, in most states, whichever
party is in control of the state legislature has the
most poll in how the map is drawn. Yeah, we
(28:16):
got a lot of parties have always been doing this
after the Wilmington que episode, but like the parties haven't
necessarily been doing this to the extreme or scale that
they are right now, which is how this is again
in front of the Supreme Court. Yeah, I have a
little bit of listener mail, Tracy, Tracy Holli, I would
(28:36):
like to thank you for providing the listener mail today
because I could not for reasons. We had a little,
a little email problem on our end. So I because
I have lots of physical mail that I get, I
get to pick our our listener mail for the day.
And this is from our listener Roger who works at
(28:57):
the United States Department of Commerce National Institute of Standards
in Technology, UH, which I think is okay because he's
telling us about an event that happened there. I'm already
I'm already excited by It's pretty cool when you get
a package from that entity. In my book. We did,
and I was really excited. But this is from back
in February, so it's just taking a little while for
it to get to air. Uh, he writes, Dear Holly
(29:20):
and Tracy, The Colloquium Committee selected Bill Berry as one
of this year's twelve speakers as an asside for our listeners.
They may remember that Bill Berry was a guest on
our show when he came to talk about Hugh Dryden.
He is uh NASA's head of History. I think he's
his title is Chief Historian UM. And he said. It
was an excellent and well attended session and the Q
(29:42):
and A lasted a good twenty minutes. Following the seminar,
we had a nice luncheon in the executive dining room
and one of our Nobel laureates joined us. Afterwards. Our
historian displayed several Dryden related artifacts, including the model Empire
state building that Dryden used to study airflow around that structure.
A reconstructed bat and photos from the historical collection, uh,
(30:04):
and clothes. You'll find one of the posters announcing the colloquium.
The seminar will soon be posted on our YouTube channel
and I will send the link. Um. This was so
cool and I love getting the poster for it, and
it made me so happy because I really love speaking
with Bill Berry. Uh. He's incredibly sweet and really just
magnanimous and so happy to share his vast knowledge with people.
(30:24):
So I'm glad that he got to speak to more
people and that they enjoyed it because he's lovely to
talk to you and super fun. You can just throw
any question at him and he will construct a really
thoughtful answer. Hooray, thank you, Holly, My pleasure. So you
if you would like to write to us about this
or any other podcast, we're going to resolve our email
issues and that would be a great way to do it.
(30:46):
You could do that a history podcast at how stuffworks
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(31:06):
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Hey everybody. Before we get started, we have a couple
of live shows to announce. First April, we will be
at Universal Fan Con in Baltimore, Maryland. Our exact schedule
for that show is still in the works, but this
will include a live show, and our listeners can get
discounted tickets using the offer code History. And for all
(00:20):
the folks who have asked us to do a show
in the Boston area, of which there have been many,
we are finally on the way with the show in
Quincy at Adams National Historical Park on Sunday, July eight
at two pm. That one is an outdoor show. It
will happen rain or shine. And we also have more
appearances that will be announcing soon, as well as more
(00:41):
details about both of these shows, and we will put
that all at our website also at miss in history
dot com. Welcome to Steph you missed in history class
from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'll fry so
(01:04):
l Bridge Gerry not really a household name unless you
start talking about jerrymandering, which at this point is a
household word and is named after him. So just in
case you're not familiar, jerrymandering is the drawing of political
districts to give particular advantage or disadvantage to a party
(01:25):
or a group. And back when we talked about the
Wilmington's Que earlier this year, we got a number of
angry letters about how we should have specifically said that
both major parties in the United States jerrymander, even though
we talked about both major parties doing that in the episode.
A lot of those letters also suggested that we should
do a podcast on the history of jerrymandering to remedy
(01:47):
our obvious ignorance on that subject. But the funny thing was,
at that point it had been lingering on my short
list for a really long time, based on having already
educated myself. So it's not April of eighteen. Just last
month the U. S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in
a gerrymandering case, and they had heard arguments in a
(02:08):
previous case the previous October, and then the North Carolina
case that we mentioned in that Wilmington Que episode was
put on hold pending decisions and all that, so it
seemed like a good time to actually move this thing
that's been on my short list for more than a
year up to the top. We are not going to
get into the details of the cases that the Supreme
Court is examining right now. Uh, there is a ton
(02:31):
of very good, reliable, nonpartisan coverage that is very easy
to find if you google something like jerrymandering Scotus or
jerrymandering Supreme Court. Today's show is more about the history
of congressional districts and who this l Bridge Gary person
was and how he became associated with a district that
was so convoluted that the whole practice of drawing skewed
(02:53):
political districts is now named after him. So in the US,
the word jerrymandering can apply to any political district, but
it's most often used to describe state and federal legislative districts.
The various states have their own particulars, but for the
most part, state legislative districts follow the same basic principles
that the congressional districts do, but with different numbers. The
(03:17):
United States has four hundred thirty five congressional districts, which
are distributed among the states based on their population, and
that population count comes from the census, which has been
conducted every ten years since se The census is something
that Congress is empowered to conduct in Article one, Section
two of the Constitution, so it's right there in the
(03:38):
nation's founding document. The census is used for a lot
of other things as well, but it's primary purpose is
connected to creating congressional districts, and the idea that the
districts will be allocated to the states based on their
population is also in the Constitution, also in Article one,
section two, which is amended in Section two of the
(03:59):
four teenth Amendment, quote, Representatives shall be apportioned among the
several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole
number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed.
The Indians not taxed part is connected to the idea
of tribal sovereignty, and at the time, tribal persons who
(04:22):
were not paying any taxes were not being counted. We'll
get to that a little bit more later. All the
congressional districts across all the states are supposed to have
roughly the same number of people, and although that basic
idea has been part of the process from the very beginning,
it wasn't until the Apportionment Act of eighteen forty two,
that the law really spelled out that every state should
(04:44):
be divided into congressional districts, with a single representative elected
from each one. The congressional districts themselves are divided and
distributed through a process called apportionment, which is governed by
federal law. The exact method of a portion mint has
changed several times over the centuries, and all those methods
are actually pretty tricky to explain in the course of
(05:06):
an audio podcast, so we will put it this way.
It is a math exercise intended to ensure equal representation nationwide.
The current system of apportionment goes back to nineteen forty,
at which point it was also decided that there were
no longer any Indians, not text to be factored into
the equation. The number of congressional districts corresponds to the
(05:28):
number of seats in the House of Representatives, so the
nation started out with sixty five seats in seventy seven,
which increased to a hundred and five after the first
census was conducted, apart from a temporary increase between when
Alaska and Hawaii became states and they each got one representative,
and then when the next census was held, which point
(05:51):
it dropped back down. The number has been fixed at
four hundred thirty five since Arizona and New Mexico became
states in nineteen twelve. The District of Columba, Puerto Rico,
American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the US
Virgin Islands are each represented by a non voting member
of the House, which is separate from the four hundred
(06:12):
thirty five voting members. That limit of four hundred thirty
five congressional districts means that apportionment is a zero sum game.
There are four hundred and thirty five districts to go
around among fifty states, and each district nationwide is supposed
to have about the same number of people, So the
census reveals that a state's population has increased enough that
(06:34):
it requires another district to keep things balanced out. Another
state whose population has decreased has to lose a district
to make up for it. Since each district is supposed
to have about the same number of people, it's not
really possible to just add or subtract one in a
state without redrawing the entire map, and the states have
their own laws about exactly how such redistricting should happen,
(06:59):
and some states an independent voting commission draws the lines,
or the legislature draws the lines but is forbidden by
law from doing so in a way that favors their
own party. But in a lot of states, redistricting is
handled just like any other piece of legislation, with a
vote in the legislature and an approval or a veto
by the governor. That means whichever party has the majority
(07:21):
in the state government has the potential to put more
influence on the way that the map is drawn. Throughout
all these decades of adjustments to how many districts there
are and how they're apportioned, legislators have tried a number
of other tactics to influence the outcome as well. One
notorious example is the three fifths Compromise, which is an
(07:41):
Article one, section two of the Constitution. Along with the
census and the idea of apportionment. This was an appeasement
to the slave states, who wanted their enslaved population to
be counted in the census so they could get more
representation in Congress, but not to be counted in a
way that would affect taxation. So the compromise was to
count three fifths of the enslaved people in each state,
(08:04):
which gave the Southern states more seats in the House
during the apportionment process. That is why the fourteenth Amendment
specifies the whole number of persons in each state. The
idea of the three fifths compromise actually goes back to
before the drafting of the Constitution, and the practice of
gerrymandering goes back almost as far too, before the word
(08:25):
was even coined. The first recognized example comes from sight,
which was the year after the Constitution was ratified. Patrick
Henry was governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia that year,
and when Virginia was drawing its congressional map, he convinced
the state legislature to draw one of its districts in
such a way that would force James Madison to run
(08:47):
against James Monroe. His hope was that Monroe, who was
his political ally, would defeat Madison in the congressional race,
but that didn't work out. Madison was the winner. There's
a paper in the journal Early American Studies that argues
that these districts were fairly drawn, but people at the
time and in the decades since then have been positive
(09:08):
that Patrick Henry was doing this on purpose. James Madison,
the winner of that election, would later become the fourth
President of the United States, and during his second term
in office, to bring this back around to the subject
of the show, his vice president was Elbridge Gary. And
we're going to talk more about Elbridge Gary, who is,
of course the first statesman we all think of after
(09:30):
we first paused for a little sponsor break. Elbridge Gary
was born in Marblehead, Massachusetts, on July sevente four. His father, Thomas,
had emigrated to the colony from England in seventeen thirty,
and he'd become a prominent figure in the marble Head community.
(09:52):
The family was also well off, but as devout members
of First Congressional Church, they weren't particularly showy about their wealth.
L Bridge was one of eleven siblings, although six of
them died while still in childhood. Gary went to Harvard College,
where he earned a master's degree, and in his master's
thesis he argued that the colonies should resist the British
(10:13):
government after the implementation of the Stamp Act. He returned
to Marblehead after he graduated in seventeen sixty five, where
he joined his father's merchant business and became active in
the growing movement for independence from Britain. This included serving
on a committee to enforce a ban on the sale
and consumption of tea. In seventeen seventy two, Gary was
(10:35):
elected to the colony's legislature, the General Court of Massachusetts,
and May of seventeen seventy four, after the Boston Tea Party,
the British Parliament passed the Intolerable Acts, which were a
collection of laws meant to both punish Massachusetts and to
try to bring the colony back in line. One of
these was the Massachusetts Government Act, which abolished the colony's
(10:56):
charter and replaced most of its elected members of the
government with people pointed by the Crown. When this happened,
the General Court reorganized itself as a provisional government called
the Provisional Congress, and Elbridge Gary was part of it.
In seventeen seventy six, Gary signed the Declaration of Independence,
and then he was elected to the Second Continental Congress,
(11:17):
where he served until seventeen seventy nine. I did find
one report that his term really lasted until seventeen eighty,
but after a dispute about how much to pay suppliers,
of which Gary was one, he walked out of congress
in discussed and didn't come back. That seems a little
incongruous with the reputation that he developed for himself of
being very dedicated. Afterward, Uh, there was this one source
(11:41):
that I found that made that claim, and then all
the other sources were echoing back to that one. And
I didn't find a mention of it in a biography
that was written during his lifetime. So maybe that would
have happened. I guarantee if anybody ever makes a movie
of his life, that will be included. Yeah. In his
work in the government Elbridge, Gary developed a reputation as
(12:03):
being highly dedicated and efficient. He was also obstinate and cantankerous,
and not afraid to stand by an unpopular opinion. He
wasn't nearly as eloquent a speaker as a lot of
the more famous founders, but he spoke tirelessly on subjects
that he thought were important. One of the things that
was really important to Gary was independence from Britain. He
(12:25):
was relentless in his efforts to convince colonies that were
on the fence about it that independence really was and
their best interests. John Adams described it this way, quote,
if every man here was a Gary, the liberties of
America would be safe against the gates of Earth and Hell.
In seventeen eighty three, after the end of the Revolutionary War,
(12:46):
Gary was elected once again to the nation's governing body,
which was now the Congress of the Confederation. He served
until seventeen eighty five. In seventeen eighty seven, he was
elected as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention. This was
the convention that was established to craft a replacement for
the Articles of Confederation, which had formed the basis for
(13:06):
the United States government after the Revolutionary War. Elbridge Gary
was also one of the signers of the Articles of Confederation.
Elbridge Gary had a lot of extremely strong opinions about
how the government that the Constitutional Convention was creating should work.
He wasn't so much behind the all men are created
equal language from the Declaration of Independence. He thought that
(13:29):
humanity had a natural elite and that those elite persons
should lead the nation. He also thought that the new
government should take the best elements of monarchy, aristocracy, and
democracy and create a strong central government that also delegated
significant power to the states, but he wanted limits on
the central government that would prevent it from descending into tyranny,
(13:51):
and he wasn't in favor of having a standing army
because of its potential tyrannical uses. He also became one
of the most vocal supporters of the Greek Compromise. The
Constitutional Convention was considering two plans for the federal legislature.
One was called the Virginia or Large State plan, which
involved a bi cameral legislature, with the state's representatives to
(14:13):
both houses being determined by their population. The other was
the New Jersey or Small State plan, in which the
government would have only one house and each state would
have the same number of representatives. Neither side was willing
to budge, and the Constitutional Convention came to a complete deadlock.
The Connecticut Compromise or Great Compromise was a combination of
(14:36):
the two proposed plans b cameral legislature, in which one
house had the same number of representatives for each state
and the other house had a number of representatives based
on the state's population. This is what we have today.
So this plan is most often associated with Oliver Ellsworth
and Roger Sherman, who largely proposed it, but l Bridge
(14:56):
Gary was the chair of the committee that was respons
well for coming up with a compromise, and he was
one of its most strident and vocal advocates. He called
for compromise again and again during this process, and he
pointed out that if the Constitutional Convention did not reach
a successful end, quote, we shall not only disappoint America,
(15:18):
but the rest of the world. Gary's work with the
Constitutional Convention went way beyond the Great Compromise. He also
advocated for checks and balances, including Congress being able to
overrule a presidential veto. He called for provisions for impeaching
the president, saying quote, a good magistrate will not fear them,
and a bad one ought to be kept in fear
(15:39):
of them. He opposed direct elections because he thought it
too easy for the voting population to be misled, but
when proposals were raised to have Congress elected president, he
argued that would make the president too dependent upon the
will of Congress. He suggested having state governors elect the
president instead, but in the end albret To Gary wasn't
(16:01):
happy with the constitution. That the that the convention created
and he refused to sign it. He thought there weren't
enough protections of individual liberties, and he proposed the addition
of a Bill of rights. And the Constitution today does
have a Bill of Rights, but that didn't come along
until after it was ratified. Even though Gary was highly
(16:21):
critical of the Constitution as it was drafted, once it
was sent for ratification, he toned down his criticism. He
still had his objections, but he thought if the States
didn't ratify the Constitution, the nation would either fall apart
or dissolve into a civil war. Ratifying the Constitution and
amending it later was the lesser of two evils, so
(16:42):
during and after the ratification process he kept advocating for
amendments and a Bill of rights. The Bill of Rights
was proposed by James Madison before the First United States
Congress on June eighth nine. Gary's work with the government
didn't stop there. He ran for governor of Massachusetts in
seventeen eighty eight and was defeated, and then he served
(17:03):
in the House of Representatives from seventeen eighty nine to
seventeen ninety three. In the middle of all that, he
married Anne Thompson in seventeen eighty six, and they would
go on to have ten children together, at the rate
of almost one a year. He eventually became disillusioned with
Congress after trying to work through extremely partisan bickering over
Alexander Hamilton's proposal to assume state debt and establish a
(17:27):
national bank. Gary retired at the end of his second
term in the House and went back to Massachusetts, where
he lived in Cambridge with his ever growing family. He
didn't stay out of politics completely for very long, though.
In seventeen ninety six he was a presidential elector in
support of John Adams, and the following year Adams appointed
him as an envoy to France. His mission there was
(17:50):
not very successful though. This all took place after the
United States and Great Britain signed the j Treaty, and
the j Treaty resolved some issues between those two nations,
but France thought it was in violation of earlier treaties
between the United States and France. So Gary and the
rest of the delegation were then part of the x
y Z affair, which could maybe be its own episode.
(18:13):
One day, the French foreign minister demanded a bribe before
negotiations could begin, and then the American delegation refused to
pay that bribe. This all blossomed into an undeclared naval
war that lasted until eighteen o one. Back home, Gary
was in and out of politics before being elected governor
of Massachusetts in eighteen ten. It was during his term
(18:35):
as governor that the term gerrymander was coined, which we're
going to get right back to in a moment. After
the Gerrymander, he ran for re election and lost in
eighteen twelve, But that same year, James Madison tapped him
to be his presidential running mate, hoping to win the
Massachusetts vote. Madison lost Massachusetts, but he won the presidency,
(18:56):
and Gary served as Vice president with the same cantanker
as diligence as he did the rest of his career.
Gary died in office on November fourteen, while on his
way to the Senate. He's buried at Congressional Cemetery, and
the monument over his grave bears a quote from him quote,
it is the duty of every man, though he may
(19:16):
have but one day to live, to devote that day
to the good of his country, which makes it kind
of sad that his legacy today is a practice that's
frequently criticized as being to the detriment of the country
and its democratic process, and we're going to talk about
that after we have a quick sponsor break. L Bridge
(19:42):
Gary signed the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation.
He was an unflagging presence at the Constitutional Convention. He
shared the committee that came up with a great compromise
and was one of its most vocal supporters at a
time with the Constitutional Convention was at risk of a
total collapse. During his inaugural address when he was elected
(20:02):
governor of Massachusetts, he called for an end to partisan
in fighting and for the political parties to work together.
But today his legacy boils down to one word, gerrymander,
something that goes directly against the democratic ideals he championed
during his legislative career. The map that led to the
term was drawn from Massachusetts state senate districts. Before eighteen twelve,
(20:27):
the Commonwealth of Massachusetts had senate districts that followed county
boundary lines, but that year Democratic Republicans and the state
legislature redrew the map to give themselves an advantage by
packing the federalist vote into only a few districts. This
new map was filled with bizarre shapes that the federalists
described as quote, carvings and manglings. The district that Governor
(20:51):
Gary lived in was shaped roughly like a lower case
are tilted backward. Gary wasn't fully in support of these
car mangled districts. In the words of contemporary biographer James T. Austin, quote,
to the governor, the project of this law was exceedingly disagreeable.
He urged his friends strong arguments against its policy as
(21:13):
well as its effects. After it had passed both houses,
he hesitated to give it his signature and meditated to
return it to the legislature with his objections to its
becoming law. But being satisfied that it conformed to the Constitution,
he doubted whether, against precedents to the contrary, the private
opinion of a governor on a mere question of propriety
(21:34):
or policy would justify the interposition of his negative and
he accordingly permitted it to pass. So that basically boils
down to, well, it's not unconstitutional, but that was really
only part of it. When he approved these districts on
February eleventh, eighteen twelve, Gary, who had long resisted joining
(21:55):
a political party, but was now a Democratic Republican was
highly concerned about what the Federalist Party was doing. He
thought that Federalist criticism of President James Madison's foreign policy
bordered on trees andus. He also feared that the Federalist
Party was becoming too close to Great Britain, and he
worried that Federalists secretly wanted to roll back American independence
(22:17):
and returned to the British Empire. It is extremely likely
that all of this influenced his decision. Page two of
the Boston Gazette on March twelve included a satirical picture
of Gary's district. The district's southern end, at the bottom
of the R ended in talents. In the northeast corner
(22:38):
had a dragon lake head two wings sprouted just below
the eastward bend at the top of the R, and
this picture ran under the heading the Gary Mander, followed
by a scathing article that began quote The horrid monster,
of which this drawing is a correct representation, appeared in
the County of Essex during the last session of the Legislature.
(23:00):
Are a couple of different versions about who exactly coined
the term Garymander. The common theme in all of them
is that somebody pointed out that this long bent district
looked like a salamander, and then somebody else responded with
something along the lines of no, no, no, It's a
gary Mander. And one version of this story it happened
over dinner, with illustrator el Cana Tisdale drawing a snaky
(23:23):
looking version of the map and poet Richard Alsop being
the one to say no, a gary Mander. And another
version it started with Boston Gazette editor Benjamin Russell hanging
a map of the district over his desk and artist
Gilbert Stewart seeing it there and adding on the wings,
head and talents, and then Russell was the one to
say that it was a gary Mander. And this garymandered
(23:46):
map had exactly the effect that the people who drew
it wanted. In the election that followed, Democratic Republicans earned
twenty nine seats while the Federalists earned eleven, But in
terms of the number of votes, Democratic Republicans got fifty thousand,
one hundred sixty four votes while Federalists got fifty one thousand,
seven hundred sixty six. So while the Federalists got the
(24:09):
majority of the votes. Those votes earned them well under
half as many seats in the Senate. As gary Mander
became part of the political lex con its pronunciation gradually
shifted to gerrymander the way that we say it today,
and it was included in Webster's Dictionary in eighteen sixty four.
Apart from that political cartoon of the the Gary Mander,
(24:32):
opponents of the Massachusetts redistricting during Elbridge Gary's term as
governor said it quote inflicted a grievous wound on the Constitution,
and partisan gerrymandering has been similarly criticized throughout American history.
When the Virginia Legislature created the map to force Madison
to run against Monroe, newspapers reported that it was violating
(24:53):
the rights of the people to choose their representation in
the government. President James Garfield, while he was serving in
the House of Representatives, said that jerrymandering was indefensible, no
matter a person's politics, and this criticism continues until today,
although there are definitely cases when politicians are more critical
of the other parties partisan gerrymandering than of their own.
(25:17):
Ronald Reagan called jerrymandering a national scandal, and Barack Obama said, quote,
We've got to end the practice of drawing our congressional
districts so that politicians can pick their voters and not
the other way around. Let a bipartisan group do it.
But there have also been attempts to use jerrymandering in
a positive way. After the Voting Rights Act of ninety five,
(25:40):
a number of states created one or more congressional districts
that were meant to guarantee at least one black representative
from that state. Sometimes the creation of these majority minority
districts was called things like benevolent or affirmative jerrymandering. States
that had a history of discriminating against black voters had
to have their voting laws pre cleared at the federal
(26:02):
level before they could be implemented, and there were cases
where states were ordered to redraw their maps to add
majority minority districts. But this is a contentious issue. Since
these districts concentrate minority voting power into one place, it
dilutes that power and the rest of the state. And
there have also been cases in which lawmakers used the
(26:24):
creation of majority minority districts as a smoke screen deliberately
packing the district to give themselves an advantage in the
rest of the state. So today, intentionally created majority minority
districts are usually only going to be found constitutional when
they really are absolutely necessary and not a cover for
(26:44):
partisan jerrymandering. The Supreme Court has made it clear that
racist jerrymandering to prevent minorities from having an equal political
voice is unconstitutional, and it has also issued a number
of decisions related to apportionment and other aspects of redistricting,
but it hasn't taken a clear stance on partisan jerrymandering
before this point, which could change with the cases currently
(27:08):
on the docket. Ideally, political districts reflect the people living
in the districts, so there will always be districts that
reliably vote for one party or another, and the general
consensus up to this point has been that some degree
of partisan influence on how the districts are drawn is
probably constitutional and to be expected. But what the Supreme
(27:32):
Court is looking at right now is mainly partisan jerrymandering
that followed the census, which is being described am using
this as a quote as extreme. According to the authors
of the book Jerrymandering in America, from Cambridge University Press.
Partisan bias roughly tripled in district maps in versus two thousand.
(27:53):
Also in two was an election that saw huge Republican
gains in state legislatures and governorships, which means at this
point gerrymandered districts are skewing Republican about three to four
times as often as they're skewing Democratic. Like we said
at the top of the show, in most states, whichever
party is in control of the state legislature has the
most poll in how the map is drawn. Yeah, we
(28:16):
got a lot of parties have always been doing this
after the Wilmington que episode, but like the parties haven't
necessarily been doing this to the extreme or scale that
they are right now, which is how this is again
in front of the Supreme Court. Yeah, I have a
little bit of listener mail, Tracy, Tracy Holli, I would
(28:36):
like to thank you for providing the listener mail today
because I could not for reasons. We had a little,
a little email problem on our end. So I because
I have lots of physical mail that I get, I
get to pick our our listener mail for the day.
And this is from our listener Roger who works at
(28:57):
the United States Department of Commerce National Institute of Standards
in Technology, UH, which I think is okay because he's
telling us about an event that happened there. I'm already
I'm already excited by It's pretty cool when you get
a package from that entity. In my book. We did,
and I was really excited. But this is from back
in February, so it's just taking a little while for
it to get to air. Uh, he writes, Dear Holly
(29:20):
and Tracy, The Colloquium Committee selected Bill Berry as one
of this year's twelve speakers as an asside for our listeners.
They may remember that Bill Berry was a guest on
our show when he came to talk about Hugh Dryden.
He is uh NASA's head of History. I think he's
his title is Chief Historian UM. And he said. It
was an excellent and well attended session and the Q
(29:42):
and A lasted a good twenty minutes. Following the seminar,
we had a nice luncheon in the executive dining room
and one of our Nobel laureates joined us. Afterwards. Our
historian displayed several Dryden related artifacts, including the model Empire
state building that Dryden used to study airflow around that structure.
A reconstructed bat and photos from the historical collection, uh,
(30:04):
and clothes. You'll find one of the posters announcing the colloquium.
The seminar will soon be posted on our YouTube channel
and I will send the link. Um. This was so
cool and I love getting the poster for it, and
it made me so happy because I really love speaking
with Bill Berry. Uh. He's incredibly sweet and really just
magnanimous and so happy to share his vast knowledge with people.
(30:24):
So I'm glad that he got to speak to more
people and that they enjoyed it because he's lovely to
talk to you and super fun. You can just throw
any question at him and he will construct a really
thoughtful answer. Hooray, thank you, Holly, My pleasure. So you
if you would like to write to us about this
or any other podcast, we're going to resolve our email
issues and that would be a great way to do it.
(30:46):
You could do that a history podcast at how stuffworks
dot com. We're also on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram
and Pinterest at the user name missed in History, and
we also have a website which is missed in History
dot com. Or you will find an archive of all
the episodes we have ever done. You will find show
notes for all the episodes that Holly and I have
(31:06):
worked on together. And you can also find our podcast
and subscribe to it in Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and
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thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com
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On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!