The cartography of slavery and the authority of statistics

Civil War History

Volumn 56, Issue 1, 2010, Pages 5-32

  Schulten, Susan ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 77952080782     PISSN: 00098078     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (65)

1. Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Simon &Schuster, 2005), 464
2. Harold Holzer, Gabor S. Boritt, and Mark E. Neely Jr., "Francis Bicknell Carpenter (1830-1900): Painter of Abraham Lincoln and His Circle," American Art Journal 16.2 (Spring 1984): 66-89
3. Susan Schulten, "Mapping American History," in Maps: Finding Our Place in the World, ed. James Akerman and Robert Karrow (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2007), esp. 188-96
4. Patricia Cline Cohen, "Statistics and the State: Changing Social Thought and the Emergence of a Quantitative Mentality in America, 1790 to 1820," William and Mary Quarterly 3d ser., 38.1 (Jan. 1981): 35-55
5. After this census was published, Congressman John Quincy Adams requested Secretary of State John C. Calhoun to investigate its reputed errors, a nice illustration of the early influence of sectionalism on information. Thomas Hietala, Manifest Design: Anxious Aggrandizement in Late Jacksonian America (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1985), 27-29, 54, 110
6. See also Albert Deutsch, "The First U.S. Census of the Insane (1840) and Its Use as Pro-Slavery Propaganda," Bulletin of the History of Medicine 15 (1944): 469-82
7. This discussion of the politics of the 1850 census relies on Margo Anderson's The American Census: A Social History (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1988), esp. 35-45
8. The 1854 report recommended the creation of a permanent Census Office, which did not occur until 1902. Paul J. FitzPatrick, "Leading American Statisticians in the Nineteenth Century," Journal of the American Statistical Society 52.279 (Sept. 1957): 309
9. See Anderson, American Census, 56
10. Joseph Camp Griffith Kennedy, "The Origin and Progress of Statistics," read before the American Geographical and Statistical Society, Journal of the American Geographical and Statistical Society 2 (1860): 92-120, quotation on 94
11. Kennedy quotation appears in J. K. Wright, Geography in the Making: The American Geographical Society 1851-1951 (New York: published by the Society, 1952), 47
12. I have found only a few examples of interest in the graphic display of census data prior to the war. See, for example, "Population of the United States," Scientific American 8.1 (Sept. 18, 1852)
13. Harper's New Monthly Magazine 8 (1853): 264
14. On the early mapping of yellow fever, see L. G. Stevenson, "Putting Disease on the Map: The Early Use of Spot Maps in the Study of Yellow Fever," Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 20 (1965): 226-61
15. On thematic cartography generally, see Arthur Robinson, Early Thematic Mapping in the History of Cartography (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1982)
16. Steven Johnson, The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic-and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World (New York: Riverhead, 2006), 191-201
17. See also Tom Koch, Cartographies of Disease: Maps, Mapping, and Medicine (Redlands, Calif.: ESRI Press, 2005)
18. Herman Friis, "Statistical cartography in the United States prior to 1870 and the role of Joseph C.G. Kennedy and the U.S. Census Office," American Cartographer 1.2 (1974): 131-57. On Kennedy's admiration of Barton, see his "Origin and Progress of Statistics."
19. Dr. A. Petermann, Mittheilungen aus Justus Perthes' geographischer Anstalt über wichtige neue Erforschungen auf dem Gesammtgebiete der Geographie 1 (1855). Table 11 maps the average population density of slaves in each state and territory based on the figures from the 1850 Census: Volks-Dichtigkeit der Sklaven im J. 1850-Tafel 11. I am grateful to Derek Holmgren for his translation of Petermann's atlas and commentary
20. Significant progress had been made, however, in mapping winds, rainfall, and temperature in the 1850s. See Robinson, Early Thematic Mapping
21. J. W. Schuckers, The Life and Public Service of Salmon Portland Chase (New York: D. Appleton, 1874), 141
22. David M. Potter, The Impending Crisis: 1848-1861 (New York: Harper Perennial, 1976), 162-64
23. "Nebraska Territory! Defence of the Missouri Compromise. Protest against Its Violation. Great Meeting at the Tabernacle. Citizens of New-York in Council," New York Daily Times, Jan. 31, 1854
24. The map appears in the New Hampshire Statesman, Apr. 1, 1854, issue 1714, column C; it was originally published in the New-York Independent, drawn by George Colton
25. John Jay, America Free; or, America Slave: An address on the State of the Country (New York: Office of the New York Tribune, 1856), 9
26. Hinton Helper, The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It (New York: Burdick Bros., 1857), chap. 1
27. Another attempt to map the injustice and shock of the Kansas-Nebraska Act for northern voters in 1856 can be found in The Rocky Mountain Club, "Political Chart of 1856, with a Comparative Statistical View of North and South," http://lincolnat200.0rg/items/ show/166
28. Map of the United States (1857)
29. engraved by W. and A. K. Johnston, Edinburgh
30. Friis, "Statistical Cartography," 131-33
31. See Robert S. Levine, Martin R. Delany: A Documentary Reader (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2003), 358-60
32. The new ways of representing topographic variation on a map are discussed in the Coast Survey's annual report for 1860, http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/ cgs/001-pdf/CSC-0009.PDF
33. The map also includes a serial number that the Coast Survey used to identify experimental maps. John Cloud, conversation with the author, Sept. 26, 2008
34. see Albert "Skip" Theberge's The Coast Survey, 1807-1867, archived at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, http://www.lib.noaa.gov/noaainfo/heritage/coastsurveyv011/CONTENTS.html
35. Daniel Crofts, Reluctant Confederates: Upper South Unionists in the Secession Crisis (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1989)
36. Richard Orr Curry, A House Divided: A Study of Statehood Politics and the Copperhead Movement in West Virginia (Pittsburgh: Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 1964), 7-8, 68
37. For typical contemporary maps see Richard Stephenson, Virginia in Maps: Four Centuries of Settlement, Growth, and Development (Richmond: Library of Virginia, 2002), 192
38. Lincoln recognized West Virginia in his July 4, 1861, address to Congress
39. Margo Anderson has considered the politics of the Virginia map in more detail in "From Tables to Maps: The Publication of Census Data in the Era of the Civil War," paper delivered to the Social Science History Association, Oct. 24, 2008, Miami, Florida
40. Curry, House Divided, 72
41. Joseph Henry, "Eulogy on Prof. Alexander Dallas Bache," in Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for the Year 1870 (Washington: GPO, 1871)
42. - On the rise of new forms of nationalism in the Civil War, see Melinda Lawson, Patriot Fires: Forging a New American Nationalism in the Civil War North (Lawrence: Univ. Press of Kansas, 2002), 181
43. J-Matthew Gallman, Mastering Wartime: A Social History of Philadelphia during the Civil War (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1990)
44. Sidney E. Morse, A Geographical, Statistical and Ethical View of the American Slaveholders' Rebellion (New York: Anson D. F. Randolph, 1863)
45. For an introduction to the exceedingly rich archive of Civil War maps, see Richard W Stephenson, Civil War Maps: An Annotated List of Maps and Atlases in the Library of Congress, 2d ed. (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1989), and Stephenson, Virginia in Maps
46. Abraham Lincoln, "Annual Message to Congress," Dec. 1, 1862. Lincoln made similar use of maps and census returns in his speech against the Kansas-Nebraska Act at Peoria in October 1854
47. Arguments that slavery would not likely spread to Kansas, he stated, could be refuted by a simple "glance at the map," which showed that shows that the climate of five border states was similar to Kansas, and that the census returns already showed nearly a million slaves north of the Missouri Compromise line. Lincoln, Speech at Peoria, Illinois, Oct. 16, 1854, in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1953), 262
48. Francis Bicknell Carpenter, Six Months at the White House with Abraham Lincoln: The Story of a Picture (New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1866), 25
49. Francis Bicknell Carpenter, Six Months at the White House with Abraham Lincoln: The Story of a Picture. Ibid., 25-28
50. - A brief treatment of the painting's composition can be found in Barry Schwartz, "Picturing Lincoln," in Picturing History: American Painting 1770-1930, ed- William S. Ayres (New York: Rizzoli, 1993), 135-55
51. See also Holzer, Boritt, and Neely, "Francis Bicknell Carpenter."
52. Adolph von Steinwehr's Map Showing the Distribution of Slaves in the Southern States (circa 1861), possibly modeled on Hergesheimer's map, was reprinted in Harper's Weekly, accompanied by a description that observed the widely differing levels of dependence upon slavery throughout the southern states. Harper's Weekly, Feb. 28, 1863, 141-42
53. See also Calvin Smith, The New Naval and Military Map of the United States (1862). Both the Steinwehr and Smith maps can be found in the Geography and Map Division of the Library of Congress
54. See Matthew Hannah, Governmentality and the Mastery of Territory in Nineteenth- Century America (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2000), 14 and chap. 5
55. Schulten, "Mapping American History," 190-94
56. Fulmer Mood, "The Rise of Official Statistical Cartography in Austria, Prussia, and the United States, 1855-1872," Agricultural History 20.4 (Oct. 1946): 209-25, esp. 213-16
57. Wright, Geography in the Making, 88, 392
58. Mood, "Rise of Official Statistical Cartography," 218
59. See also John K. Wright, "Daniel Coit Gilman, Geographer and Historian," Geographical Review 51.3 (July 1961): 381-99
60. See Oz Frankel, States of Inquiry: Social Investigations and Print Culture in Nineteenth-Century Britain and the United States (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2006)
61. Ian Hacking, The Taming of Chance (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1990)
62. Robinson's Early Thematic Mapping in the History of Cartography is limited to work in Europe. An exception is Gilles Palsky and Michael Friendly, "Visualizing Nature and Society," in Akerman and Karrow, Maps, 207-53
63. - Henry Gannett, Statistical Atlas of the United States (1885)
64. This discussion of the intellectual roots of Turner's thesis relies on Ray Allen Billington, The Genesis of the Frontier Thesis: A Study in Historical Creativity (Pasadena, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1971), 108-12
65. Mood, "Rise of Official Statistical Cartography"' A terrific study of the culture of information in the European context is Daniel Headrick, When Information Came of Age: Technologies of Reason in the Age of Revolution, 1700-1850 (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2000)