Mapping the Nation by Susan Schulten

Author:Susan Schulten
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
Published: 2012-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

4.6 [US Coast Survey], “Map of Virginia Showing the Distribution of Its Slave Population from the Census of 1860” (June 13, 1861). Lithographed by H. Graham. Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress. 49 × 68 cm. See website for other editions.

Hergesheimer and his fellow German emigrants shared an intense hostility to slavery and a corresponding sympathy for the Union. This alone might have predisposed Bache and his staff at the Coast Survey to map slavery.28 But the immediate impetus was the political upheaval in the border states in early 1861. In the two months following Lincoln’s election, the states of the Lower South decisively left the Union. The states of the Upper South—especially Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina—were far more cautious and divided in their response. Throughout the winter and spring of 1861, Unionists battled secessionists for the upper hand, leaving the political fate of the Confederacy in question for an agonizing period that extended well past Lincoln’s inauguration. The Unionists of the Upper South held the advantage throughout this period, but their political power collapsed when the president summoned troops just days after the attack on Fort Sumter.29

During this intense debate over secession, Census Superintendent Kennedy turned his office into a clearinghouse for Union propaganda. In February, hoping to capitalize on a Unionist insurgency throughout Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia, Kennedy asked census workers to gauge political sentiment in those states. He then organized a massive mailing to undermine secession, together with William Seward and Charles Francis Adams, two of the most prominent leaders trying to end the crisis.30 Kennedy’s efforts focused on Virginia, so it is not surprising that he supplied the data that made the slave map possible. Virginians had been aware of the conflicting interests within their state long before the secession crisis, with slavery concentrated in the east. On April 4, members of the Virginia convention that was debating secession defeated a proposal to join the Confederacy. Then, after the crisis at Fort Sumter, Lincoln called up seventy-five thousand volunteers, and, just days later, the Virginia convention voted again, and this time chose to secede. The decision was officially ratified on May 23. Three days later, General George McClellan (then commander of the Department of Ohio) invaded western Virginia and spent the next two months fighting to secure the region for the Union.31

The Coast Survey issued its first map of slavery in Virginia in June, in the midst of this momentous division within the state. To the left of the map are population data from the census, which Kennedy funneled to the Coast Survey long before releasing it to commercial mapmakers. Notice that the counties are ranked not according to geography or absolute population, but relative to the percentage of its population enslaved. Prior to the Civil War, abundant maps of Virginia covered county boundaries and railroads, topography, internal improvements, and hydrographic surveys. But this map was the first to show the statistical distribution of slavery and one of the first thematic maps made of the state.

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