Posts Tagged ‘Civil War’
“A map does not just chart, it unlocks and formulates meaning; it forms bridges between here and there, between disparate ideas that we did not know were previously connected”*…
Just one of the scores of maps available at the University of Richmond’s Digital Scholarship Lab’s Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States.
And as a (more global) bonus: Edward Quin’s 1830 Historical Atlas in a Series of Maps of the World as Known at Different Periods, with an Historical Narrative, featuring 21 plates that visually depicted what Quin called “the world as known at different periods.” Dramatic clouds cover the “unknown,” rolling back slowly as time moves on.
Click the image above or here for an enlarged and animated version of the GIF that runs through the plates in sequence, from 2348 B.C., “The Deluge” (Quin, not unusually for his time period, was a Biblical literalist) through A.D. 1828, “End of the General Peace.”
* Reif Larsen, The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet
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As we travel through time, we might recall that it was on this date in 1861 that New York City Mayor Fernando Wood, a “Copperhead” (sympathizer of the incipient Confederate cause), suggested to the New York City Council that New York secede and declare itself a free city, to continue its profitable cotton trade with the Confederacy. Wood’s Democratic machine was concerned to maintain the revenues (which depended on Southern cotton) that maintained the patronage that provided its electoral margins.
Every picture tells a story…
… and some tell more complicated stories than others…
This [1897] chart, digitized by the Library of Congress, depicts major battles, troop losses, skirmishes, and other events in the American Civil War. (Click on the image to arrive at a zoomable version, or visit the LOC’s website.)
The “Scaife Synoptical Method,” advertised at the top of the timeline, aimed to fit as much information as possible into a single chart. Information on Arthur Hodgkin Scaife is scant, but the Comparative Synoptical Chart Company, apparently based in Toronto, also published his “Synoptical Charts” of the “Cuban Question,” English history, and the life of William Gladstone…
Read the whole story at Vault.
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As we concentrate on consolidation, we might recall that it was on this date in 1863 that Union Generals Alexander M. McCook and Thomas Crittenden were relieved of their commands and ordered to Indianapolis, Indiana, to face a court of inquiry following the Federal defeat at the battle of Chickamauga in Georgia (c.f., the chart above). As History. com explains…
Eight days before, the Union Army of the Cumberland, commanded by General William Rosecrans, had retreated from the Chickamauga battlefield in disarray. On the battle’s second day, Rosecrans mistakenly ordered a division to move into a gap in the Federal line that did not exist, creating a real gap through which the Confederates charged, thus splitting the Union army. One wing collapsed, and a frantic retreat back to Chattanooga,Tennessee, ensued. The other wing, led by General George Thomas, remained on the battlefield and held its position until it was nearly overrun by Confederates.
The search for scapegoats began immediately, and fingers soon pointed to McCook and Crittenden. Their corps had been part of the collapsed flank, so Rosecrans removed them from command. Crittenden’s removal stirred anger in his native Kentucky, and the state legislature sent a letter to President Abraham Lincoln demanding a reexamination of the firing. In February 1864, a military court cleared McCook and Crittenden, but their careers as field commanders were over. By quickly removing McCook and Crittenden, Rosecrans had been trying to save his own job. Within weeks after firing the generals, Rosecrans was himself replaced by Thomas.
lithograph by Kurz and Allison, 1890
How ya gonna keep ’em down on the farm?…
Urban Density “Shadow”
TOKYO: Population 42,607,376 – Area 7,408 km² – Density 5,752 pp/km²
From Cotonou in Benin, with just more than 1.5 million people, to the Tokyo metropolitan region, with more than 42 million inhabitants, a total population of 1.2 billion people– 35 per cent of the world’s urban population in 2010– live in one of 129 ‘extended metropolitan regions’ across the world. LSECities has taken a closer look:
Using Google Earth satellite imagery, we captured a ‘snapshot’ of where people live and estimated ‘net densities’ by systematically tracing the built-up area of each metropolitan region – including central zones, satellite towns and the peripheral areas (a detailed methodology can be found online). The fact that 23 million people in Manila occupy a space one eighth the size of the same number of New Yorkers, or that Atlanta in the USA is 25 times larger than Hong Kong with roughly the same population, says something about the capacity and resilience of urban form as well as physical and geographical constraints…
Explore further at LSECities’ “Measuring the World’s Urban Footprint.”
[TotH to Flowing Data]
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As we hail a cab, we might recall that it was on this date in 1864 that Union General William T. Sherman ordered residents of Atlanta, Georgia, to evacuate the city. Sherman had taken Atlanta with little effort, and had promptly destroyed rail lines that might connect the city with Southern reinforcements. Preparing to march on, Sherman didn’t want to be responsible for the civilian population of the city, so decided to evict them: from September 11- 16, 446 families, about 1,600 people, left their homes and possessions and were “dropped” by Sherman’s men far south of the city, in the vicinity of the remains of the defeated army of Confederate General John Bell Hood. In November Sherman and his men, having resupplied themselves with the goods that remained in Atlanta set out on their infamous “March to the Sea,” destroying nearly everything that lay in their path.
Sherman’s men destroying rail lines in Atlanta at the time of the evacuation order
ATLANTA TODAY: Population 7,506,267 – Area 6,888 km² – Density 1,090 pp/km²
Are you a man or a…
From the BBC, “Sex I.D.: The Brain-Sex Test“– complete a series of exercises, and discover whether your brain functions more like most men’s or most women’s.
As we ponder the mysteries of gender, we might recall that it was on this date in 1776 that South Carolina became the first American colony to declare its independence from Great Britain and set up its own government.
The Palmetto State clearly has an itchy trigger finger: your correspondent’s ancestral seat was also the first state to declare its secession from the Union. On April 12, 1861, Confederate batteries began shelling Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, and the American Civil War began.
Revolutionaries fighting the forces of the Crown, Charleston, 1776
(U.S. Army Center for Military History)
It’s not about the chocolate bunnies…
Your correspondent is off for points Iberian, and will be largely out of touch for a couple of weeks. While readers cannot be sure that they will be missive-free for the entirety of the trip, regular service is unlikely to resume until late April.
Meantime, with an eye to the festivities this weekend (and the ecumenical observation that sometimes a pretty egg is just a pretty egg), an illustrated primer on coloring eggs from Barefoot Kitchen Witch.
Tenga las buenas dos semanas…
As we prepare for a dip, we might recall that it was on this date in 1865, after four years of Civil War, approximately 630,000 deaths and over 1 million casualties, that General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia to Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant, at the home of Wilmer and Virginia McLean in the town of Appomattox Court House , Virginia.
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