War, like necessity, has been called the mother of invention. The same might be said of cartography, for with every war there is a great rush to produce maps to aid in understanding the nature of the land over which armies will move and fight, to plan engagements and the deployment of troops, and to record victories for posterity to study and admire. The American Civil War is a classic example of the effect that war has had on cartography.
Reproduced from Civil War Maps: An Annotated List of Maps and Atlases in the Library of Congress compiled by Richard W. Stephenson, 2nd ed. (Washington: Library of Congress, 1989).