Visually interesting and text-illuminating maps are among my favorite elements of any historical treatment, be it article, book, website, exhibit, and so on. They not only make text come alive, but can be used to illuminate concepts and trends that might otherwise remain obscured. It’s safe to say that as someone who loves geography and has an interest in environmental history, I orient myself to the world spatially probably more than many others. And given my interest in environmental and military affairs, maps are pretty much necessary for works seeking to communicate important nature-human relationships.
For my project on the Siege of Corinth, Mississippi, I took two maps – a manuscript map from 1862 showing the route of advance of Halleck’s U.S. Army ,and a state geology map for Mississippi – and georeferenced them using the technology at oldmapsonline.com. For this class assignment I checked on these again, and broke them down into separate entities for use in this post. The Halleck map, being from 1862, required more georeferencing (14 locations) than did the state of Mississippi geology map (4 locations).
The “Halleck Map”:
https://www.oldmapsonline.org/maps/ca4ccaf9-3b6e-523f-942b-9e171461ccc1/georeference
The Geology Map:
https://www.oldmapsonline.org/maps/8a5f5a89-9a71-42d5-9f31-fe61d09eaf4a/georeference
Here are the maps together:
https://www.oldmapsonline.org/compare#492431991644
There are tools on the right side of the screen that let you change the opacity of the maps. Doing this helped me correct – and make reasonable inferences about – any differences between them.
Printing out multiple versions of these overlays, I was able to trace the geology map an accurately represent Halleck’s advance over that geology on his way to Corinth. An artist friend assisted in making my creation on Microsoft Illustrator. The map was created in greyscale because it is designed for publication. Nonetheless I was happy with how the gradients of gray came through. The geology of the Tennessee-Mississippi border region near Corinth mattered for his soldiers’ access to water during the campaign, and was a critical component of the disease environment. The Selma-Demopolis Chalk (atop which Corinth, MS and Monterey, TN are located) drastically limited the water available to the U.S. Army during the hottest part of the siege. I submitted this map alongside a few other graphics/charts in my recently-submitted article.
