Mississippi, Louisiana & Arkansas Map 1858 Regional Print - New Orleans, Jackson, Little Rock

This map of Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas was drawn by G.W. Colton with text by Richard Swainson Fisher and published in 1858 in Colton's Illustrated Cabinet Atlas and Descriptive Geography, an atlas built around Fisher's descriptive text as much as Colton's engraving, meant to be read alongside the map rather than simply hung on a wall. The sheet marks relief with hachures, shows the region's extensive marshland in Louisiana's low country, outlines each state's border in bold red, and adds a separate inset detailing the vicinity of New Orleans, all engraved by Davies and Roberts and George Russell and Co. Published on the eve of the Civil War, the map records three Deep South cotton states at the height of the antebellum plantation economy, a few years before that world was upended by war.

Mississippi is shown with Jackson marked as its capital, a town built specifically to serve as the state's seat of government rather than grown from an existing settlement. Louisiana centers on New Orleans, given its own detailed inset here as the region's dominant port and the point through which most Mississippi River cotton and produce reached the wider world. Arkansas appears the least developed of the three, its capital Little Rock marked well inland along the Arkansas River, reflecting a state still sparsely settled compared to its Deep South neighbors. Louisiana's marshland, drawn in fine detail near the coast, further sets it apart from the higher, drier cotton country of Mississippi and Arkansas. Running through all three states, the Mississippi River ties the map together as the great commercial artery of the antebellum South.

Family ties to the Mississippi Delta, the Louisiana bayou country, or the Arkansas River valley make this map a natural pick, as does an interest in assembling a set of the antebellum Deep South. This 1858 Colton grouping of the three states together, with its dedicated New Orleans inset, offers a regional view distinct from single-state maps of the same period. It is available unframed in a full range of sizes, from a compact study print to a larger statement piece.