Civil War Maps online at the Library of Congress

The Library of Congress, founded in 1800, has had maps and atlases in collection since the beginning. Today the Library has over 5.5 million maps, 80,000 atlases and many more, including globes and three-dimensional maps. In 1993, the Library of Congress began scanning maps and placing them online for use by researchers and the public. The first collection selected for digitization was the Civil War maps, making these available any with interested in the United States Civil War. There are over 2300 items currently online, including maps made by Major Jedediah Hotchkiss (1828-1899), some of which were used by General Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson for combat planning and strategy. There are a number of maps drawn by Hotchkiss for the Shenandoah Valley campaign. The Hotchkiss collection has 341 sketchbooks, manuscripts, and annotated printed maps. The online maps are out of Copyright and as new Civil War maps are added to the collection that are also out of Copyright, they are scanned and placed online.

The maps online at the Library of Congress allow patrons to not only see the maps as a whole, but use technology that will zoom in to give a detailed view of the map information. The presentation will explore the Civil War Maps at the Library of Congress that are available for your use today.

Bio – Colleen Cahill

Colleen Cahill was born in central Pennsylvania, where she visited the Gettysburg Battlefield on many occasions. She studied to become a research librarian and has two masters degrees: a Masters of Library Science and a Masters of History. The thesis for her Masters of History was “The Status, Roles and Lifestyles of the Union Officers in the Civil War”. She worked at several libraries before being hired by the Library of Congress and there spent most of her 27 year career in the Geography & Map Division. She was a lead on the team that scanned cartographic materials.