Mapping Sherman’s March
I recently came across one of the earliest attempts by the Superintendent of the Census to incorporate census data onto a map, made during the Civil War. The map is...
Civil War maps Posts
Lincoln, maps, and the invasion of East Tennessee
In the spring of 1863–exactly 150 years ago–the Coast Survey was in the midst of an effort to comprehensively map the rebellion on a series of regional maps at a...
Mapping the efficiency of slave labor
Recently I wrote a piece for the Disunion series on Edward Atkinson, who creatively used a map to demonstrate the inefficiency of slave labor. Atkinson is perhaps best known for...
Civil War maps at the Library of Congress
On November 12th I was lucky enough to catch the opening of the new Civil War exhibit at the Library of Congress. Thanks to the curatorial work of Ed Redmond...
The many maps in Spielberg’s “Lincoln”
I just saw Steven Speilberg’s film “Lincoln,” and was amazed by the space given to maps on the set. The maps are never referenced directly, for the plot of the...
The cartographic response to the secession crisis
Last April, CSPAN taped a lecture in my Civil War course for its “American History TV” program. The lecture aired this weekend, and I was heartened that people would actually watch a...
Why Republicans mapped slavery in the 1856 election
Jon Dotson, owner of Old World Auctions, recently showed me a political broadside from the 1856 campaign, when the new Republican Party ran its first presidential candidate, the celebrated western...
How maps get used, then reused
In late July I gave a lecture on early maps of what eventually became the Colorado Territory, as part of a conference hosted here at DU on the mapping of...
Private Sneden maps the Civil War
I have a piece in today’s “Disunion” blog at the Times on Private Robert Knox Sneden, a soldier with artistic talents who was attached to the Third Corps of the Army of the...