AS ONE TRIBUTE OF GRATITUDE IN THESE TIMES, THIS MONUMENT OF THE TALENTS AND
SERVICES OF THE DECEASED IS RAISED BY
The Centinel.
March 4th, 1801.
The Gerry-Mander. (Boston, 1811.)
The victorious Republicans, if less skillful than their adversaries in the burlesque arts, had their own methods of parrying and returning such assaults as this. At an earlier period in Mr. Jefferson's ascendency, the politicians, borrowing the idea from Catholic times, employed stuffed figures and burlesque processions in lieu of caricature. While the people were still in warm sympathy with the French Revolution, William Smith, a Representative in Congress from South Carolina, gave deep offense to many of his constituents by opposing certain resolutions offered by "Citizen Madison" expressive of that sympathy. There was no burlesque artist then in South Carolina, but the Democrats of Charleston contrived, notwithstanding, to caricature the offender and "his infernal junto." A platform was erected in an open place in Charleston, upon which was exhibited to a noisy crowd, from early in the morning until three in the afternoon, a rare assemblage of figures: A woman representing the Genius of Britain inviting the recreant Representatives to share the wages of her iniquity; William Smith advancing toward her with eager steps, his right hand stretched out to receive his portion, in his left holding a paper upon which was written "Six per cents," and wearing upon his breast another with "£40,000 in the Funds;" Benedict Arnold with his hand full of checks and bills; Fisher Ames labeled "£400,000 in the Funds;" the devil and "Young Pitt" goading on the reprobate Americans. In front of the stage was a gallows for the due hanging and burning of these figures when the crowd were tired of gazing upon them. Each of the characters was provided with a label exhibiting an appropriate sentiment. The odious Smith was made to confess that his sentence was just: "The love of gold, a foreign education, and foreign connections damn me." "Young Pitt" owned to having let loose the Algerines upon the Americans, and Fisher Ames confessed that from the time when he began life as a horse-jockey his "Ames had been villainy."
It is an objection to this kind of caricature that the weather may interfere with its proper presentation. A shower of rain obliterated most of those labels, and left the figures themselves in a reduced and draggled condition. But, according to the local historian, the exhibition was continued, "to the great mirth and entertainment of the boys, who would not quit the field until a total demolition of the figures took place," nor "before they had taken down the breeches of the effigy of the Representative of this State and given him repeated castigations." In the evening the colors of Great Britain were dipped in oil and French brandy, and burned at the same fire which had consumed the effigies.
Later in the Jeffersonian period, the burlesque procession—caricature vivante—was occasionally employed by the New England Federalists to excite popular disapproval of the embargo which suspended foreign commerce. Elderly gentlemen in Newburyport remember hearing their fathers describe the battered old hulk of a vessel, with rotten rigging and tattered sails, manned by ragged and cadaverous sailors, that was drawn in such a procession in 1808, the year of the Presidential election. There are even a few old people who remember seeing the procession, for in those healthy old coast towns the generations are linked together, and the whole history of New England is sometimes represented in the group round the post-office of a fine summer morning. The odd-looking picture of the Gerry-mander, on the previous page, belongs to the same period, and preserves a record not creditable to party politicians. Democratic leaders in Massachusetts, in order to secure the election of two Senators of their party, redistricted the State with absurd disregard of geographical facts. The Centinel exhibited the fraud by means of a colored map, which the artist, Gilbert Stuart, by a few touches, converted into the immortal Gerry-mander. Governor Gerry, though not the author of the scheme, nor an approver of it, justly shares the discredit of a measure which he might have vetoed, but did not.