1832 Marshall Map of New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania

This is a rare map of central New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania during the American Revolutionary War issued for John Marshall's 1832 edition of the Life of Washington. The map covers the lands on both sides of the Delaware River from Alexandria, Sandy Hook, and Staten Island south pas Philadelphia and Trenton to Delaware and Maryland. Various rivers, major roads, and the sites of important battles are noted. Color coding illustrates the positions of the British (red) and American (blue) as each side battled to maintain control of major cities and river supply routes.

Marshall prepared this map to illustrate the important Middle Atlantic theater of the American Revolutionary War. Specifically this map documents the battles of Brandywine, Germantown, Trenton, Paoli, Princeton and Monmouth. Though both sides claimed significant victories, the greater strain fell on the British, who though successful in the capture of Philadelphia, suffered losses enough that the position became untenable. The ultimate source for this map was the work of John Hills who accompanied the British army as a cartographer and after hostilities moved to Philadelphia.

This map appeared in atlas volume attached to the 1832 edition of John Marshall's seminal work, The Life of Washington. Marshall composed the five volume biography between 1805 and 1807 and based the work on original papers and records provided by the president's own family. The earliest partial edition of the The Life of Washington appeared in 1824 as A History of the American Colonies. In 1832 Marshall revised and abridged the original voluminous work to just two volumes and some 400 pages – from which this map was extracted. The maps of the 1832 edition are notable and desirable in that, unlike the original edition, most had hand applied color work.