Mapping Slavery

kirkaracha — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 08:07:05 -0800

Mapping Slavery. In September 1861 Edwin Hergesheimer of the United States Coast Survey produced a map based on data from the 1860 census showing the distribution of slaves across the South. It's interesting to compare this to other maps. Map of secession votes by counties throughout the South (with the color scale reversed) and for secession in Virginia. Areas with fewer slaves were less likely to vote for secession. Presidential votes by county in the 2008 election corresponds with cotton production in 1860. The "black belt" region has rich soil from when it was the shore of a tropical sea during the ate Cretaceous Period. African-American population distribution in the 2000 census shows some correlation to the distribution of slavery. The Coast Survey map is pictured in Francis Bicknell Carpenter's painting First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation of President Lincoln. The president used the map to identify possible areas of Southern Unionists and follow the advance of Union troops. The map on the table behind Secretary of State William Seward is the Coast Survey's 1863 "Map of the State of Virginia." The Cartography of Slavery and the Authority of Statistics is an extensive discussion of antebellum and Civil War maps of the free and slave states, notably Reynolds's Political Map of the United States and A.K. Johnson's General Map of the United States. Charting a More Perfect Union is a collection of Coast Survey maps prepared during the war.

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