Civil War Maps

Jedediah Hotchkiss (1828-1899)
Manuscript notebooks and map,
[1862-65]
Geography & Map Division

Map showing Routes and Camps of the Army
of the Valley District from Staunton, Virginia
to Washington, D.C. and back to Strasburg, Virginia
from June 27th to July 22nd, 1864
Geography & Map Division

Jedediah Hotchkiss (1828-1899)
Manuscript notebook [1862-65]
Geography & Map Division
Purchase from Mrs. R.E. Christian, 1948 (47.1a)

Jedediah Hotchkiss (1828-1899)
Map of Chancellorsville, 1863]
Hand-colored manuscript
Geography & Map Division
Purchase from Mrs. R.E. Christian, 1948 (42A.6)
[ G&M Digital ID #g3884c cwh00129 ]

Jedediah Hotchkiss, a topographic engineer in the Confederate States Army, prepared maps and provided geographic intelligence for Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, Robert E. Lee, Richard Ewell, Jubal Early, and John B. Gordon. His collection is the jewel among the more than 2,200 Civil War maps in the Library, containing 341 field notebooks, detailed reconnaissance maps, and finely drawn after-battle maps, some annotated by Jackson, Lee, and others, indicating their use in planning campaigns. The Library also holds a 27,000-item manuscript collection with diaries, correspondence, and notebooks compiled by Hotchkiss.

Born and educated in New York State, Hotchkiss moved to Virginia's Shenandoah Valley in 1847. At the outbreak of the Civil War, he offered his services to the Confederate army and was assigned to the staff of General Jackson as a topographic engineer of the Valley District, Department of Virginia. One of his most remarkable achievements was the preparation of a detailed topographic map of the Shenandoah Valley, measuring 71/2 by 3 feet.

Three items representative of Hotchkiss's work are illustrated here. The closed field notebook shows his inscription on the cover: "This volume is my field sketch book that I used during the Civil War. Most of the sketches were made on horseback just as they now appear. The colored pencils used were kept in the places fixed on the outside of the other cover. These topographical sketches were often used in conferences with Generals Jackson, Ewell and Early." Another field notebook, recording the positions of the Second Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia during 1864-65 engagements, is open to a page of rough sketch notes. The finished manuscript map covers the area from the southern Shenandoah Valley to Washington, D.C., and was one of the maps prepared for an atlas to accompany the final report on the Campaign of 1864. The atlas was not published, but a number of the maps were reproduced in the Atlas to Accompany the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 1891-95.

The collection was purchased by the Library in 1948, from Mrs. R. E. Christian of Deerfield, Virginia, the granddaughter and last surviving descendant of Hotchkiss.