144 A HISTORY OF AMERICA IN 100 MAPS
Like many Americans, the artist Francis Bicknell
Carpenter was heartened by President Abraham
Lincoln’s announcement of the Emancipation
Proclamation in 1862. At the invitation of the
president, Bicknell set up shop in the White
House in 1864 in order to prepare a portrait to
commemorate this policy, which fundamentally
changed the meaning of the war. As the battle raged
on, Carpenter set to work, studying each member
of the cabinet in order to reproduce the scene as
authentically as possible.
One day in the executive chamber, the artist was
struck by a map “showing the slave population of
the Southern States in graduated light and shade.”
It was in fact the Coast Survey’s map of slavery
(shown on the previous page), heavily used in the
White House. Thereafter Carpenter noticed that
President Lincoln frequently consulted the map, and
so he decided to include it in the portrait. Carpenter
took the map back to the studio in order to study it
more closely.
The president often visited Carpenter’s studio as
a relief from the pressures of the war and to monitor
the progress of the portrait; on his next visit he
immediately exclaimed “you have appropriated my
map, have you? I have been looking all around for it.”
The president then picked up the map and took it to
the window. There he traced Hugh Judson Kilpatrick’s
recent raid around Richmond, and observed that, if it
was successful, the Union Army would liberate quite
a few slaves.
Carpenter took pains to include the map in
his portrait because the president used it. Before
emancipation it helped Lincoln assess the strength of
Confederate sentiment, and thereafter it showed him
the military’s progress in destabilizing the enemy’s
greatest resource. The president had access to
innumerable maps, but very few like this. It confirmed
his belief that secession was not about state rights
but about the defense of slavery. It revealed that
slavery varied tremendously across the South, which
in turn shaped his military strategy. Little wonder
then that when President Lincoln saw Carpenter’s
finished portrait, he singled out the slave map in the
lower right corner as one of its most satisfying details.
Francis Bicknell Carpenter,
First Reading of the Emancipation
Proclamation of President Lincoln, 1864
LINCOLN’S MAP