A collection of Civil War maps, many of which were used by Gen. Robert E. Lee and Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, is now available online at http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/maps/hotchkiss/.
The maps, from the Geography and Map Division, were obtained from Mrs. R.E. Christian, granddaughter of Maj. Jedediah Hotchkiss (1828-1899), a topographic engineer in the Confederate Army.
Jedediah Hotchkiss drafted this topgraphic map of the battlefield at Port Republic, Va., in 1862 while under the command of Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson.
"The Hotchkiss Map Collection" contains cartographic items by Hotchkiss (1828-1899), who made detailed battle maps, primarily of the Shenandoah Valley, some of which were used by Gens. Lee and Jackson for their combat planning and strategy. Several of the maps have annotations of various military officers, demonstrating their importance in the military campaigns. The collection also includes maps made or used by Hotchkiss during his postwar years, including maps with information about railroads, minerals and mining, geology and history. Most of them focus on Virginia and West Virginia, but also cover other states and even the world.
One such map, Hotchkiss' masterpiece, "Map of the Shenandoah Valley," prepared at the request of Stonewall Jackson and presented to the Library by Mrs. Christian in 1964, shows the offensive and defensive points of the Shenandoah Valley from the Potomac River to Lexington, Va. Hotchkiss also filled several notebooks with topographic and strategic drawings.
The collection consists of 341 sketchbooks, manuscripts and annotated
printed maps.
This online presentation includes all the materials in the Hotchkiss
Map Collection, some of which also appear in the complementary American
Memory collection "Civil War Maps, 1861-1865" at http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/civil_war_maps/. The
online presentation offers two essays, including one on "The Hotchkiss
Maps
In-Depth."
