John Bachmann’s spectacular view of the Mississippi Delta and Gulf Coast, issued to capitalize on patriotic enthusiasm in the early months of the Civil War.

Bachmann’s view is remarkable for employing the “bird’s-eye view” perspective, which in the 1850s he had pioneered for the depiction of American cities (such as this 1850 view of Boston). Here, in contrast, he applies the technique to a vast region comprising many thousands of square miles. Drawn from an imaginary viewpoint far above the Gulf of Mexico, the view takes in the coast from Pensacola Bay in the east to Atchafalaya Bay in the west, while extending inland well past New Orleans and as far north as Jackson, Mississippi and Montgomery, Alabama.

Designed for an audience on the home front rather than for use in the field, the view shows towns, forts, roads, railroads, topographical features and waterways, without any particular attention to the requirements of scale or geographic precision. In particular, the perspective greatly compresses distances along the north-south axis. But the result is remarkably suited to purpose: It renders geographic information more readily accessible to the general public, which may not have been cartographically literate but sought a geographic context with which to follow news of the Civil War.

The view also features dozens of naval vessels in the Gulf, many flying the Stars and Stripes and concentrated around Atchafalaya Bay, the Mississippi Delta, and Pensacola Bay. This reflected the Union’s grand strategy, the so-called “Anaconda Plan” devised by General Winfield Scott. The plan was designed to strangle the South by blockading its Atlantic and Gulf Coast ports and gaining control of the Mississippi River. The former would block the Confederacy’s cotton trade with Europe and access to its armaments; the latter would split Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas from the rest of the Confederacy. The Anaconda Plan ultimately succeeded—New Orleans, for example, was captured in April-May, 1862—but at the time these views were published (probably late 1861) it was still largely aspirational.

Bachmann’s “Panorama of the Seat of War” series
The view was part of John Bachmann’s ambitious “Panorama of the Seat of War” series, which also included three views covering the Atlantic coast from Delaware Bay to Florida, along with a view of “Texas and Part of Mexico”. These five prints, when assembled end-to-end, yield a continuous view of the American coastline from the Delaware Bay to the Rio Grande. The series also included a sixth view, depicting Kentucky and Tennessee. All were pioneering in their use of the “bird’s-eye view” perspective, which hitherto had been used by Bachmann and other artists to depict cities and towns rather than regions tens of thousands of square miles in extent.

Of the series Ronald Grim et al have written,

“[The views were] intended to familiarize a general audience with the geography of the southern states.… While not very useful for planning military maneuvers because of exaggerated topography and inconsistent scales, these large graphic representations were useful in assisting a living room audience to visualize the geographic areas where the battles would eventually occur.

 

“What is truly remarkable about these views is that they were apparently the work of one artist, and he did not have the ability to observe such a large part of the country from an elevated perspective, other than in his creative imagination.” (Grim, Block, et al, Torn in Two, p. 104)

John Bachmann (ca 1815-ca 1895)
Born in Switzerland, between 1838 and 1847 Bachmann worked there and in Paris as an artist and lithographer. Soon thereafter he immigrated to America and settled in New York City, perhaps propelled for some reason by the Revolutions of 1848. In 1849 he issued his first American view, of New York as seen from an imaginary viewpoint above Union Square, which “marks the starting point of the bird’s eye view as a popular American genre.” (Case, p. 22) Over the next decade, while based in New York, he produced nearly 30 views of New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia and other major cities. Reps writes of these that they “are particularly outstanding and are justifiably regarded… as among the finest American views to be found.” (p. 161)

In 1860 Bachmann moved to Hoboken and then on to Jersey City. During the war years, in addition to his Seat of War series, he issued a few other views, including Central Park, Hartford, and Washington, D.C. After the Civil War Bachmann continued to produce views of the great metropoli of the East Coast, though somewhat erratically, suggesting that he battled financial and/or physical hardships (a view bolstered by the fact that between 1871 and 1878 he had no fewer than four different addresses in Jersey City.) His final view was an unfinished painted bird’s-eye of Havana, Cuba, done in or around 1894. After his death in 1895 his son John Jr. worked as a printer for more than three decades.

In all, a scarce and spectacular view of a major theatre of the Civil War.

References
Ronald Grim, Debra Block, et al, Torn in Two[:] 150^th Anniversary of the Civil War, pp. 104-105. Rumsey Map Collection, #5491. Stephenson, Civil War Maps, #2 (“Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and the District of Columbia”); #117.2 (“Florida and Part of Georgia and Alabama”); and #304.6 (“North and South Carolina and Part of Georgia”). For biographical information on Bachmann, see John Reps, Views and Viewmakers of Urban America, pp. 160-61 and especially Nat Case, “John Bachmann and the American Bird’s Eye View Print, Imprint, vol. 33 no. 2 (Autumn 2008), pp. 19-33.