John Bachmann’s spectacular trio of views of the Atlantic coast, issued to capitalize on patriotic enthusiasm in the early months of the Civil War.

The views employ a panoramic, or “bird’s-eye view” perspective to depict the Atlantic coast of the United States from Delaware Bay to Key West. The coverage also extends westward along the Gulf Coast, with New Orleans dimly visible in the background, and inland as far as the Appalachians. The views include topographical features and waterways; cities, towns, and forts (with major cities rendered in a vaguely pictorial manner, while important forts are delineated in more detail); as well as roads and railroads. Tiny crossed swords indicate battle sites, primarily outside Alexandria, Virginia, while the bombardment and capture of Forts Clark and Hatteras by Union forces in August 1861 is depicted pictorially.

All this is done without any particular attention to the requirements of scale or geographic precision.  In particular, the geography is foreshortened along the east-west axis, so the Appalachians appear deceptively near to the coast. But the bird’s-eye perspective is striking, compelling, and remarkably suited to purpose: It rendered 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 three views also feature dozens of naval vessels along the coast, many flying the Stars and Stripes and apparently hovering around important Confederate ports. This reflected the Union’s grand strategy, the so-called “Anaconda Plan” devised by General Winfield Scott. This was designed to strangle the South by blockading its Atlantic and Gulf Coast ports and gaining control of the Mississippi. 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
These three views were part of John Bachmann’s ambitious “Panorama of the Seat of War” series, which also included views of “Louisiana, Mississippi, and Part of Florida” and “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. Using shading and pictorial symbols, they portray both the physical terrain and settlement patterns, especially major cities and towns, as well as roads and railroads… 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 spectacular set of Civil War views, rarely encountered together.

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.