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Map of the Seat of War in Virginia.
Washington, D.C.: C[asimir]. Bohn 268 Penn. Av. Washington D.C. and Old Point Comfort, Virginia; Baltimore, E. Sachse, lith., 104 S. Charles St., 1862. Chromolithograph, 11.25” x 15.75” plus margins. “1862” inscribed in pen next to the title. CONDITION: Very good, five small punctures in left margin, edgewear and a few chips to margins; black stains in lower-left corner of verso. A news map of southeast Virginia showing the locations of the rebel military along the coast and in Richmond, created by publisher Casimir Bohn and lithographer Edward Sachse, who frequently collaborated. This map shows a number of important rebel cities and towns, including the Confederate capital of Richmond and Petersburg, and depicts a range of rebel-held coastline embracing Norfolk and Yorktown. Rebel fortifications and military camps are underlined in red, while other details such as roads, towns, bodies of water, drainage, and railroads (Clover Hill R.R., Petersburg & Norfolk R.R., Seaboard & Roanoke R.R., etc.) are indicated in black. A table of distances from Norfolk to forty-nine Virginia locales is included in the lower-left corner. Relief is shown by hachure. Over the course of the Civil War, numerous maps of the seat of war, battlefields, sieges, and fortifications, etc. were created by various commercial firms, often to illustrate important events and situations for a public hungry for the latest information. Maps relating to events and places in the news during the war, especially those revolving around Union victories, were reliable income streams for publishers. Such maps were often based on eyewitness accounts, including from participants in the conflicts, and narrative text was sometimes added. Born in Germany, Casimir Bohn (1816–1883) was a Washington D.C.-based publisher of views and guidebooks. In Washington on View, John Reps suggest that “It might have been while in Washington working on the Weber-Bohn view of ca. 1849 that Sachse met Bohn. In 1850 Bohn published Sachse’s own first city view—a large image of Baltimore—after the artist began his own business, and the two collaborated on two more views in 1851.” Beginning in 1850, Bohn published a number of views that Sachse drew and printed. Bohn published two of Sachse’s lithographs of Richmond in 1865, and two more of Petersburg and City Point, Virginia in 1866. Bohn’s Hand-Book of Washington appeared in 1858, and he published several works during the Civil War, including District of Columbia and the seat of war on the Potomac (1861) and Encampment of U.St. troops at Newport News, Va. 1861 & 1862 (1862). Following the war, Bohn opened a large publishing house in Richmond, Virginia with H. E. Sardo, and later founded the Norfolk News Company. He died in Norfolk, Virginia in 1883. Like Bohn, Edward Sachse (1804–1873) was born in Germany, where he ran a small lithographic firm and publishing house before immigrating to Baltimore, Maryland in 1848. In 1850, he established his own firm, and from the 1850s to the early 1870s, Sachse was the primary lithographer of views of the Maryland-Washington area. During the Civil War, his company printed a number of views of military camps and hospitals, some of which were published and sold by Charles Magnus, with whom he had a close working relationship. The firm also produced labels, advertising posters, business cards, and book illustrations. Following Sachse’s death in 1873, the business was operated by his brother and nephews, and remained active until 1893. OCLC records six copies, at AAS, New York Public Library, LOC, Pennsylvania State University, West Point, and Connecticut Museum of Culture and History. REFERENCES: Civil War Maps (2nd ed.), #454; Reps, John W. Washington on View (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), pp. 93–148; “Casimir Bohn” at Find A Grave online.
Item #7649
Price: $950.00
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