A History of America in 100 Maps

ubiquitous feature of representative democracy that has only

grown over time (page 254).

Though the Articles of Confederation lasted less than

a decade, in that time Congress fundamentally shaped the

nation’s geography by passing the Northwest Ordinance.

That legislation provided for the survey, dispensation, and

settlement of land north of the Ohio River, which in turn laid

the foundation for the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois,

Indiana, and Ohio, and for portions of Minnesota. Further

south and east, new settlers streamed into upstate New York,

Kentucky, and Tennessee. This land rush was guided by John

Filson’s map of “Kentucke,” which portrayed the western lands

as fertile and free for the taking. In this respect, Filson was

part of a long tradition dating back to John Smith and Henry

Briggs, who designed maps to encourage frontier settlement

(page 102).

That migration also created administrative challenges.

While Filson was beckoning Americans west, the newly created

Post Office faced the daunting task of delivering mail across

this expansive national territory. American independence

directly stimulated the need to deliver mail between the

colonists; previously, most correspondence had been

conducted with Britain. Increased demand prompted Congress

to establish the mail as one of the federal government’s first

permanent responsibilities. Abraham Bradley’s large map

of the United States on page 108 captures the challenge of

building a network of communication over such sprawling

geography. Yet Bradley’s maps also implied that without a

reliable postal network this country could not become a nation.

Similarly, it was the inefficient delivery of mail across the

Atlantic that led Benjamin Franklin to investigate and map the

Gulf Stream in the 1780s (page 104).

When Bradley completed his first postal map in 1796, the

Mississippi River formed the nation’s western boundary. For

American settlers along the Ohio River, the Mississippi was not

just a national boundary but a crucial artery for transportation

and trade. Early in Thomas Jefferson’s presidency, the Spanish

and French limited American access to the port of New

Orleans. When Jefferson in response sought to purchase New

Orleans from the French, he was unexpectedly offered all of

Louisiana. Though the president was uncertain whether he

had the constitutional authority to acquire foreign territory,

he took the opportunity and instantly doubled the size of the

nation. But Americans knew little about this land, so Jefferson

proposed an expedition up the Missouri River then west to the

Pacific Ocean. By comparing maps of the West before and after

the expedition of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark

(pages 112–115), we can see how much information was gained.

The Louisiana Purchase was an unexpected windfall, but

many Americans wondered whether a healthy republic could

be sustained over such an immense region. For decades

thereafter American maps dismissed much of the western

plains and the Southwest as a “Great American Desert.” East

of the Mississippi, however, steamboats and canals were

swiftly transforming national geography in the 1820s and

1830s. Cadwallader Colden’s map on page 120 celebrated the

commercial power of the Erie Canal. This engineering marvel

linked the old Northwest and the Great Lakes to New York

City in a way that would have been unimaginable even a few

decades earlier. In a sprawling nation, the importance of these

technologies is hard to exaggerate: canals, steamboats, and

later railroads created new regions and networks, integrated

the population, and accelerated the circulation of goods and

information. The result was economic growth that had far-

reaching consequences. The emergence of the textile industry

in the Northeast, for instance, generated a demand for cotton

that entrenched and expanded slave labor into new lands and

profoundly shaped the southern economy.

We close this chapter with a map that both encapsulates

this era and anticipates the next. John Melish’s “Map of the

United States” (page 122) was published in the flush of victory

after the war of 1812. By including the information brought

back by western expeditions, Melish gave Americans a more

accurate sense of continental geography. The map was also

a tool of statecraft that was used to settle international

boundaries. But it was the suggestive picture of a nation

extending to the Pacific that made the map so striking. Long

before the phrase “Manifest Destiny” was coined, Melish’s

map anticipated the rapid territorial expansion of the 1840s.