Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina & South Carolina Map 1858 Regional Print - Baltimore, Richmond, Raleigh, Charleston

This map of Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina 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, one of dozens of state and regional sheets in a cabinet-format volume sized to fit a writing desk rather than an atlas stand. The sheet depicts relief with hachures, colors each state's counties individually within a decorative border, and carries three separate insets detailing the District of Columbia, the vicinity of Charleston, and the vicinity of Baltimore, all engraved by Davies and Roberts and George Russell and Co. Published on the brink of the Civil War, the map spans a politically fractured stretch of coast running from the border states north of Washington down through the Carolinas' plantation lowcountry.

Maryland is anchored by Baltimore, given its own inset here as the region's largest port and industrial center just north of the national capital, with the separate District of Columbia inset marking the seat of federal government itself. Virginia is shown with Richmond as its seat of government, then already a center of tobacco trade and iron manufacturing on the James River. North Carolina appears comparatively rural, its capital Raleigh marked inland away from the coast, in a state with fewer large towns than its neighbors. South Carolina centers on Charleston, detailed in its own inset as the state's dominant port and one of the most committed centers of secessionist politics in the years just before the war.

Family history anywhere along the Chesapeake or Carolina coast makes this map a strong fit, as does an interest in the Upper and Deep South just before they split over secession. This sheet actually carries three insets, Washington, Baltimore, and Charleston, making it a rare single source for anyone researching any one of those cities' mid-century layout without buying three separate maps. It is available unframed in a full range of sizes, from a compact study print to a larger statement piece.