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  • | Map

    The Seat of War in Eastern Virginia

    This map from the front page of the May 6, 1862, New York Daily Tribune helped Americans unfamiliar with the geography of eastern Virginia sort out the landscape and resources associated with the names of towns and railroad junctions coming from newspaper reports. The constant flow of war information and visual representations like this map kept Americans abreast of far-away developments.

  • | Map

    The Battle of Camden, North Carolina / Fort Macon and Vicinity

    Also known as the Battle of South Mills, the Battle of Camden depicted here took place April 19 and the seige of Fort Macon lasted from March 23 to April 26; both were part of General Ambrose Burnside's North Carolina Expedition. On May 6, 1862, these New York Daily Tribune maps provided readers with detailed images of fields of battle and transportation resources hundreds of miles of away - bringing images of warfare and the geography of an enemy region into their homes.

  • | Map

    Field of Operations on the Potomac

    This map from the New York Daily Tribune is an example of the methods newspapers used to help Americans visualize the geography of warfare — shaping their perceptions of the war and the landscapes on which it was fought. This map illustrates the position of Union forces along the Potomac just days before many of the troops headed south to begin the Peninsula Campaign.

  • | Map

    Railroad access trend line by state, 1861

    Using a fifteen-mile buffer around the railroad networks for each state in 1861, and an algorithm to distribute a county?s population across the landscape, this estimate of the percentage of county residents who had access to the railroad depots shows the South?s advances in the 1850s. The addition of more railroad miles reached a point of diminishing returns in every state.

  • | Map

    Railroads and war zone counties, 1861?1865

    If the presence of the Union army and/or a battle constituted a war zone, then only in Virginia did the Civil War?s destruction touch the majority of counties. Vast sections of the South remained out of the war zone, but over the course of the war destruction tended to follow closely along the pathways of the major lines of communication and transportation. From Paul F. Paskoff, ?Measures of War: A Quantitative Examination of the Civil War?s Destructiveness in the Confederacy,? Civil War History, Vol. 54, No. 1 (March 2008). (Reproduced with permission of Paul F. Paskoff)