Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland and Delaware in 1860 - Philadelphia, Baltimore, Trenton, Wilmington

This county map of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland and Delaware was published in Philadelphia in 1860 by Samuel Augustus Mitchell Jr., the first edition of the New General Atlas he issued after taking over the business from his father, Samuel Augustus Mitchell Sr., that same year. The sheet is finished in full color by county with bold outlines marking each state, and it carries two detailed inset street plans, one of Philadelphia and one of Baltimore, a level of urban detail unusual on a regional atlas map of this scale. Published on the eve of the Civil War, the map captures four Mid-Atlantic states at a moment of intense national tension, their dense rail and road networks already knitting together the industrial and commercial base that would prove decisive to the Union war effort only months later.

Philadelphia, shown in full street-plan detail as one of the map's two insets, was by 1860 the nation's second-largest city and a center of manufacturing, publishing and finance. Baltimore, given the same inset treatment, ranked among the busiest ports on the Eastern Seaboard, its harbor central to the grain and tobacco trade of the Chesapeake. Trenton, seated on the Delaware River, served as New Jersey's state capital and a manufacturing town squeezed between Philadelphia and New York. Wilmington, Delaware's largest city, sat at the confluence of the Christina and Delaware Rivers, its shipyards and mills already established as the state's industrial base. Together these four cities sketch a compact, densely developed corner of the country on the brink of war.

This map is a strong choice for anyone with roots across Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland or Delaware, or for a collector interested in Mitchell's first atlas as publisher. Buyers focused on Pennsylvania alone should note we also carry the state as mapped by Charles Desilver's 1859 edition, by Mitchell's own 1865 county map, and by Cram's 1875 railroad map of these same four states; this 1860 edition is distinguished by its detailed Philadelphia and Baltimore street insets, found on none of the others. It is available unframed in a full range of sizes, from a compact study print to a larger statement piece.