A large and exceptionally detailed map of eastern Kansas Territory, issued at a critical moment in the struggle over slavery that made “Bleeding Kansas” a prelude to the Civil War. “A splendid example of Kansas cartography.” (Heaston) The rare first state, with the title reading “Kansas Terretory.”

Congress created Kansas Territory under the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, overturning the Missouri Compromise’s restriction on slavery and leaving the question to “popular sovereignty.” The result was a rush into Kansas by Free-State settlers and pro-slavery Missourians, with the population rising from fewer than 10,000 in 1855 to perhaps 30,000–40,000 by 1857. Growing sectional tensions soon gave way to open violence, most notoriously the sack of Lawrence and John Brown’s killings at Pottawatomie Creek. Though the worst fighting had subsided by spring 1857, Kansas remained at the center of the sectional crisis. It was in this unsettled environment that MacLean & Lawrence issued the present map, probably in 1857.

The “Sectional Map of Kansas”
The map concentrates on the settled and surveyed eastern portion of the Territory. Population is still clustered principally along the Missouri and Kansas River valleys, while detail thins rapidly toward the west; Council Grove, on the Santa Fe Trail, is among the westernmost named settlements. The territorial capital at Lecompton appears prominently, along with Leavenworth, Atchison, Lawrence, Fort Leavenworth, Fort Scott and numerous smaller settlements.

This is a “sectional” map because it records the six-mile-square townships and mile-square “sections” laid out by the federal Survey of Public Lands, an essential step in before parcels could be bought, settled, and developed. The checkerboard of townships and sections spreads westward from the Missouri line, with surveyed lands giving way to large areas where the rectangular grid had yet to be imposed.

Of particular interest is the map’s detailed treatment of transportation. It traces the great emigrant routes running westward from Missouri through Kansas, including the Santa Fe Trail and routes associated with the Oregon and California migrations. It also delineates two major projected rail routes: the Kansas Valley Railroad along the Kansas River, and a north-south line associated with plans for a railroad between Kansas City and Galveston.

The map also depicts Indian reservations occupying much of eastern Kansas. Particularly conspicuous is the vast Pottawatomie Reservation, a 576,000-acre tract created by treaty in 1846 and extending across both sides of the Kansas River. In the northeast, the Kickapoo Reservation straddles Brown and Atchison Counties; the Kickapoo had been removed to the region in the 1830s, and their lands remained a substantial presence there in 1857. Along the southern edge are the “New York Indian Lands,” part of the 1,824,000-acre tract set aside under the Treaty of Buffalo Creek in 1838 for several New York tribes, though comparatively few ever removed there.

This is probably the first state of the map, with the “Terretory” spelling in the title. On the second state the title is corrected and a township-and-section diagram has been added at upper right (For the second state, see the Rumsey copy.) This first state appears to be far rarer, perhaps by a factor of ten.

Wiggin, MacLean, and Lawrence
None of the sources I’ve consulted have identified C. P. Wiggin, and he remains an elusive figure. Ancestry.com identifies no C. P. Wiggin resident in Kansas in the 1850s. Both it and Fold3 do, however, record a Charles P. Wiggin (or Wiggins) who at age 24 or 25 was commissioned in May 1861 as a First Lieutenant in the 2nd Kansas Infantry; was wounded at Wilson’s Creek, Missouri in August; and mustered out in October. In the early 1870s he moved to southern California, where an 1877 obituary records that he died of “consumption,” held the rank of Colonel (probably retired); and served as “Justice of the Peace, a Notary Public, and one of the Commissioners appointed by the Court to divide the Colonia Rancho. He leaves a widow, but no children.” The identification is tempting, but at present unprovable.

L. A. MacLean, Chief Clerk of the Surveyor General’s office at Lecompton, certifies on the map that it was compiled from the survey field notes on file there; he is presumably the MacLean named in the title, though I have found no independent confirmation. As for the identity of MacLean’s partner Lawrence, I have found no clues.

In all, a spectacular large-format image of Kansas at one of the most consequential moments in its history.

References
Robert W. Baughman, Kansas in Maps, pp. 46-51. Edward Eberstadt & Sons, Catalog 137: Kansas and the Great Plains, #407. Michael Heaston, “The Kansas Pocket Map, the Cartographer’s Orphan,” The Yale University Library Gazette, April 1980, vol. 54, no. 4 (April 1980), p. 174, (item #11, describing the 2^nd state). Philip Lee Phillips, List of Maps of America in the Library of Congress, p. 346 (2^nd state). David Rumsey Map Collection, #2378 (2^nd state). Colton Storm, comp., A Catalogue of the Everett D. Graff Collection of Western Americana, #4652. Thomas Streeter, Celebrated Collection of Americana Formed by the Late Thomas Winthrop Streeter, vol. 6 no. 3904. OCLC #83857442 records just two holdings of this first state, with the “Terretory” spelling in the title (Boston Athenaeum, Autrey Museum).