Civil War newspaper maps: a historical atlas

Abstract

Bull Run - Ball's Bluff - Chickamauga - Antietam - Secessionville - Champion's Hill. To the Northern public during the War, they were exotic names of unfamiliar places where husbands, sons, fathers and brothers fought and died. Hungry for information from these far-off battlefields, Americans began buying daily newspapers in record numbers. Competition among publishers grew keen. Correspondents reporting from the field soon began supplementing written dispatches with battlefield maps, and before long newspapers were seeking new ways to portray topography and battle lines in clear, effective images. In Civil War Newspaper Maps, David Bosse shows how 19th-century advances in printing and engraving technology, coupled with an unprecedented public demand for information, led to the development of a means of mass communication still in use today - the quickly produced, up-to-the-minute newspaper battlefield map. Bosses introduction offers a concise overview of the subject, including how correspondents sent maps to their papers from the field, press-military relations during the war, and the economic problems of map printing. Following the text is an atlas of 45 newspaper maps printed by the Northern daily press. Each map is accompanied by a summary of the military operation it illustrates and a commentary on the map itself, including an evaluation of its accuracy based on comparison with other historical and cartographic sources. Arranged chronologically, the maps cover nearly every theatre of the war and represent a unique historical record of one of the pivotal events in American history. David Bosse is curator of maps at the William L. Clements Library at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and the author of Civil War Newspaper Maps: A Cartobibliography of the Northern Daily Press.