An extraordinary and unrecorded map taking anti-secession propaganda to new heights.

This map of the United States is densely populated with place names, forts and fortifications, and the names of Indian nations, while the topographic data is limited to the major river systems and mountain ranges. The shading indicates the real point of the map, which is to depict the United States dismembered into four smaller nations, just as “traitors & tyrants would have it.” West of the Rockies (with the exception of New Mexico) are the “Pacific States;” the “Interior States” occupy the mid-Atlantic and Plains; the “Atlantic States” include Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and New England; and the remainder constitute the Confederate States, the largest of the four. To our knowledge, no other map of the Civil War era depicted such an extreme vision of a secession-torn United States.

To emphasize the many threats to the Union, at lower right a bust of South Carolina secessionist John Calhoun rests on a plinth flanked by a snake, the “tyrant” of Great Britain is represented by a crowned lion gazing hungrily at the Great Lakes states, and at lower left Napoleon III of France presents a crown to another tyrant, the Emperor Maximilian of Mexico.

References
Not in OCLC, Phillips, Rumsey, or Stephenson’s Civil War Maps, and I find not record of another impression having appeared on the market. Provenance of the Warren Heckrotte Collection (PBA Galleries, Sale 586: Rare Cartography, Exploration & Voyages, lot 125.)